IN MANY ways the African Union (AU) is outdoing its European counterpart. It has never presided over a continental currency crisis. No member state is threatening to quit. And you could walk from Cairo to Cape Town without meeting anyone who complains about the overweening bossiness of the African superstate. But this is largely because the AU, unlike the EU, is irrelevant to most people’s lives. That is a pity.

Before 2002, when it was called the Organisation of African Unity, it was dismissed as a talking-shop for dictators. For the next decade, it was led by diplomats from small countries, picked by member states precisely because they had so little clout. But then, in 2012, a heavyweight stepped in to run the AU commission. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and a woman who had held three important cabinet posts in South Africa, was expected to inject more vigour and ambition into the AU. As she prepares to hand over to an as-yet unnamed successor this month, it is worth assessing her record (see article).

This matters for two reasons. First, because Africa’s forum for tackling regional problems needs to work better. Second, because Ms Dlamini-Zuma apparently wants to be the next president of South Africa. Her experience at the AU, supporters claim, makes her the best-qualified successor to President Jacob Zuma, who happens to be her ex-husband.

Running the ill-funded AU is hard, but even so, nothing she has achieved there suggests that she deserves to run her country. Her flagship policy, Agenda 2063, is like a balloon ride over the Serengeti, offering pleasant views of a distant horizon and powered by hot air. By 2063, when none of its boosters will still be in power, it hopes that Africa will be rich, peaceful, corruption-free and enjoying the benefits of “transformative leadership in all fields”. In the shorter term, Ms Dlamini-Zuma has called for a shared currency, a central bank and a “continental government” to tie together states that barely trade with one another. None of this is happening. She also wants to introduce a single African passport letting citizens move freely across the continent by 2018. A splendid idea, but for now the AU issues them only to heads of state and senior AU officials.

Ms Dlamini-Zuma has also failed to grapple with Africa’s conflicts. AU troops have done a creditable job in Somalia, but promises from AU members to send troops to quell fighting or repression in Burundi and South Sudan remain unkept. Under Ms Dlamini-Zuma, the AU has condemned blatant coups, but its monitors have approved elections that were far from free and fair. Knowing that African leaders find the International Criminal Court too muscular, she backs an African alternative that explicitly grants immunity to incumbent rulers.

From the Union to the Union Buildings

This is the opposite of what South Africa needs. Under Mr Zuma, corruption has metastasised. Ruling-party bigwigs dole out contracts to each other and demand slices of businesses built by others. Investors are scared, growth is slow and public services, especially schools, are woeful. South Africa needs a graft-busting president: someone to break the networks of patronage that stretch to the top. Instead, Mr Zuma, who is accused of 783 counts of corruption, is paving the way for his ex-wife, whom he expects to protect him. Her family ties and time at the AU suggest that Ms Dlamini-Zuma is the last person to help Africa’s most advanced economy fulfil its potential.