By Robert Asketill

Outgoing ICC chief Moreno-Ocampo with his replacement Fatou Bensouda.

Moreno-Ocampo was well presented Thursday’s World Service (24/05/2012) seemingly eager to take over as the commander of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Listening to her we were apparently in the company of yet another African long departed from the real Africa with its vast number of tribal problems, without water and for many on the verge of starvation whilst victims of corruption where their mineral wealth is, and has been sold, to European billionaires.

Her praise of Uganda’s President Museveni, who has a long history of employing boy soldiers and heading a corrupt government, fails to mention. Her praise was given for his action of employing 100 specialist American combat soldiers to capture rebels on behalf of the ICC, although America does not recognise the ICC. Seemingly from what we heard on radio, her main target is President Al Bashir of the Sudan and it was mentioned that she was delighted to learn that two states in South Africa, themselves troublesome, will arrest President Al-Bashir if he steps on their soil. Certainly she gave us the feeling that she would, with the encouragement of the oil barons, pull Africa to pieces. Is she really the right choice?

Reading from the Guardian Legal network of December 2011 we have a picture of the new International Criminal Court leader:

Fatou Bensouda was raised in Banjul, The Gambia, by two mothers: her real mother and her father’s other wife, who lived under the same roof along with her own children. While her father, a civil servant, went out to work every day, the women would stay at home and tend to their brood, cooking, cleaning and designing bed sheets to sell. To Westerners, such an arrangement may seem distinctly uncomfortable. In The Gambia, however, polygamy is a widely accepted practice, and one – for Bensouda, at least – that worked extraordinarily well. “We were close to both mothers,” she says. All the siblings were close. We did not have this unfortunate rivalry that sometimes happens in polygamous families, and we were all very good to one another.”

Bensouda’s father died from diabetes when she was a young girl, but his inherent sense of fairness and ability to provide equally for both sides of the family has always stayed with her. This is perhaps one reason why she has managed to retain her popularity throughout her seven-year tenure as deputy prosecutor of the ICC – a court beset by controversy since its formation in 2002 – and emerged as a leading candidate for the top job.