While South Africa deals with another outbreak of xenophobic violence, migrants and refugees on the continent’s northern tip are in even more danger.

In this last week alone, more than 1200 have died in the Mediterranean, their promised land in sight but unreachable. The latest incident claimed more than 800 lives, when an unseaworthy and overloaded vessel capsized in the middle of the sea. Hundreds of people were locked inside the middle and lower decks, unable to even attempt to escape.

“It was a sight that broke the hearts of even men of the sea like us,” said Vincenzo Bonomo, a sailor on the first Italian rescue boat on the scene. “I saw children’s shoes, clothing, backpacks floating in the water. Every time we saw a shoe or a bag, any sign of life, we thought we might have found a survivor. But every time we were disappointed. It was heart-breaking. We didn’t find a single survivor – not one.”

In the wake of the disaster, the European Union has come in for a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. Last year, the EU dismantled the enormously successful Mare Nostrum operation which it had put in place in the wake of yet another migrant boat disaster – the 2013 Lampedusa tragedy in which 365 migrants died. Mare Nostrum was a substantial and expensive sea rescue mission, but it worked. Authorities estimate that it saved around 70,000 lives.

But politics soon got in the way, and an increasingly right-wing and xenophobic Europe concluded that Mare Nostrum was a “pull factor” for migrants, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that the decisions of migrants had little to do with the scale of the European search and rescue operation. So Mare Nostrum was dismantled and the relatively tiny and ineffective Operation Triton established in its place.

It was only a matter of time before disaster would strike again, and that time has now come. European leaders are now scrambling to make up for their mistakes, and have already promised to beef up Operation Triton. It’s too little too late for the hundreds who have already drowned, but it might just be enough to help the next boatload, and the next and the next.

But enough about Europe, which is not doing enough but at least is doing something. Africa, on the other hand, seems to be keeping very quiet.

The African Union communications department has been very busy lately, issuing statements on subjects as varied and diverse as the Sudanese elections; the killing of Ethiopian citizens by Isis in Libya; the xenophobic violence in South Africa; and the marketing of Africa’s Agenda 2063 to Polish investors. Nothing, however, on the boatloads of Africans risking everything to escape the continent. Nothing on the hundreds of corpses floating in the Mediterranean.

The silence makes a kind of twisted sense. To confront the migrant boat crisis requires a closer examination of why so many Africans are so desperate to flee in the first place, and that requires the kind of critical self-examination at which the AU and its member states have never upheld. And, pragmatically, there are questions about what the AU can really do about it. The 2050 Africa’s Integrated African Maritime Strategy pays lip service to the fight against human smuggling and trafficking, but in reality the AU’s hands are tied by the reluctance of member states to get involved.

“Within the current setup the AU has no real ability to do anything. Everything is dependent on what member states do. It can support initiatives originating within states or within regional communities which have a cooperative and international goal. There’s nothing obligatory here. It’s all down to what member states do in terms of creation of policy,” said Timothy Walker, a specialist on African maritime issues at the Institute for Security Studies.

Nonetheless, the AU’s silence is still surprising. If ever an issue demanded continental leadership, this is it: Africa’s migrant routes weave across national boundaries, deliberately muddling ideas of sovereignty and responsibility, to deal with them effectively requires a continental response.

It’s not like the AU doesn’t have that kind of continental leadership when necessary – even on this particular issue. In late 2013, the continental body declared a continent-wide day of mourning to commemorate those lives lost in the Lampedusa tragedy, “an opportunity to express solidarity with the families of the victims and reiterate Africa’s grave concern regarding the recurrence of this kind of tragedies”.

And in late 2014, the AU partnered with the EU to launch the Khartoum Process, which aims to facilitate dialogue amongst countries involved in migration routes to try and find a way to address the root causes of irregular migration. A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told the Daily Maverick that the AU has been particularly involved in awareness-raising programs in refugee camps on the continent, trying to convince refugees that there’s no golden pot at the end of a rainbow that awaits them in Europe.

This is a good start, but so far it’s nothing more than that. Those migrants dying en route to Europe are not just Europe’s problem, but Africa’s too. In fact, going on the death toll alone, they represent one of the continent’s most pressing human security issues, and the continental response should reflect that. DM

Photo: Some of the estimated 250 detained migrants at the Abu Salim detention centre in Gasr Garabulli, Alaqrablola, 60 kilometers east of Tripoli, Libya, 21 April 2015. With the recent drowning of an estimated 800 migrants when the boat they were on sank in the Mediterranean, the EU has held an emergency meeting to explore ways to stem the ever growing trafficking of people from the North African coast to Europe where they are seeking a better life. EPA/STR