Editor,

RE: "Why Africa's opposition to ICC will only get louder” (The New Times, August 20).

Action speaks louder and more effectively than words. Instead of Africa's opposition to ICC getting louder, what practical steps are African countries, collectively or singly, exactly taking to show that opposition?

We have now heard that opposition expressed on many occasions; the AU has made representations to the UN Security Council (where three of the five permanent members refuse to be subject to the ICC but have the right as members of the Council to refer others to it or to block such referrals as they wish) and to the ICC demanding respect for African positions against the indictment of incumbent leaders by the Court, but have at all times been rebuffed unceremoniously like small children.

Given the fact they all (except for a very few amongst them like Botswana) now realise this Court is not what they really thought they were signing to when they acceded to it and gave it the legitimacy it needed to start functioning (against them for Western geopolitical interests), what stops them from initiating the process for withdrawal from it?

We need to understand that, while synchronized mass withdrawal would be a death-blow to the Court, even single un-synchronized pullouts would inflict serious damage on an institution that has predictably turned into a weapon of Africa's recolonization by Western Powers.

A close study of how it has been used shows very close similarities to Berlin 1885-86, except in Rome in 1998 African representatives were complicit in their own countries' subjugation (unknowingly of course) and put their thumbprints to the treaty without even receiving the pieces of calico or strings of beads African chiefs received for 'giving away' their lands to their colonizers.

And as in the original colonial project, the new version was and continues to be sold as being in the fundamental interest of those being subjugated. It is, apparently, for our own good.