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end, in 1963 the countries of Arabic-speaking North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa came together to create the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the current African Union. The leaders identified three major goals: to decolonize the entire continent; to promote unity; and to effect economic and social development in order to rid Africa of ignorance, disease, and poverty. These were monumental tasks, perhaps beyond the scope of some of these leaders, especially given the inherited legacies of theslave trade, colonialism, and the burden of the Cold War between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies.
    Rejecting the direct and indirect meddling by foreign powers in the politics of independent African nations, the OAU made efforts to exert some sovereignty and committed itself to a policy of nonintervention in the internal affairs of member states. Ultimately, this decision, while understandable in the historical circumstances in which it was made, would paralyze the organization's ability to stop gross human rights violations within Africa by African leadership. Perhaps it was also a clear reflection of the lack of financial and military means at the disposal of the OAU that would have been necessary to give weight to any actions against those considered rogue leaders. There were also many points of nonconvergence: history, language, ethnicity, race, culture, religion, and national boundaries. Even the difference between Francophone and Anglophone black Africa was a factor. It was hard for the OAU to establish a single identity, and not long after its inception it splintered into unofficial factions, rendering it largely ineffective.
    Through the 1970s and ’80s, the struggle for influence in Africa between the East and West intensified, precipitating some of the most devastating internal wars for political and economic control African nations had ever experienced. For instance, proxy wars consumed Angola and Mozambique for years, during which more than a million people lost their lives. Tragically, the power blocs of both West and East also used the Cold War to justify the tolerance throughout Africa of dictatorial leaders who oppressed and facilitated the exploitation of their people politically and economically, and who routinely violated the rights of any citizen who dared to ask questions or dissent. The superpowers and their allies supported these leaders with a combustible mix of development aid and massive quantities of weaponry. In subsequent years these arms notonly helped to silence citizens, but whether in the hands of the state police or used by self-styled (and sometimes politically sponsored) street militias, they caused further carnage in the streets of many African cities.
THE CRACKED MIRROR
    Another reason—both more nuanced and yet perhaps even more devastating—for the dearth of good leadership in Africa was the destruction of Africans' cultural and spiritual heritage through the encounter with colonialism. This experience, commonly shared among colonized peoples, is not widely acknowledged in analyses of the problems facing the continent of Africa, which tend to be economic or political in orientation. However, the lack of self-knowledge that comes from Africans' cultural deracination is one of the most troubling and long-lasting effects of colonialism. Like other peoples who experienced not only physical colonization but also what might be called a colonization of the mind, Africans have been obscured from themselves. It is as if they have looked at themselves through another person's mirror—whether that of a colonial administrator, a missionary, a teacher, a collaborator, or a political leader—and seen their own cracked reflections or distorted images, if they have seen themselves at all.
    For five centuries, the outside world has been telling Africans who they are. In much the same way as happened with the Aborigines in Australia, the native peoples of North America,