Why the Africa Criminal Court can't replace the ICC.

The Africa Union- AU- wrote to the ICC recently requesting that the cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto be referred back to Kenya, or for their trials to wait until they are through with their terms in office. The African body also requested that the trials continue without the two being present, as they need to perform their constitutional duties.

The ICC has never really found a friend in Africa- or at least among the Continent's leaders. They accuse the ICC of only targeting African leaders, and attempting to introduce neocolonialism through the back door. In fact, some even go further to allege that the court functions as a regime change agent, and can prop up
leaders it deems will toe the Western line. In the last elections for example, many perceived that the CORD candidate, Raila Odinga, was favored by the West. In Zimbabwe also, the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was accused of relying on the Western powers to oust Robert Mugabe. A long time independence war general even threatened that he would return to the bush if MDC won the elections.

However, Africa is also the place where there are many conflicts, and the ICC could make wayward leaders think twice. One could argue that the reason the Kenyan 2013 elections were peaceful was because the Kenyan leaders feared being indicted by the ICC. Even though Africa Union proposes that the African Criminal court could take up the national weighty cases, few AU projects have ever gotten off the ground. For example, the AU military intervention in Somalia has been assisted by the European Union, and the UN. The French armed forces have helped stop the Malian northern rebels from advancing to the capital, Bamako, and take over the government. NATO was instrumental in ousting Muammar Gaddafi from power. So, both financially and logistically, an African criminal court is still a far fetched idea, and the ICC would still continue to indict wayward African leaders until the continent has both the resources, and the will, to bring its own bad leaders to book.