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A BROKEN AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CONTINENT
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Africa is a continent that seemingly defies analysis. Its prospects for the new millennium are grim and it is the least-developed region in the Third World. While all other regions have made some, albeit difficult progress, sub-Saharan Africa continues to be mired in crushing debt, poverty, squalor and social destitution. Economic success stories in Africa are pitifully few.
War, disease, state terrorism and wanton carnage have devastated a continent that once had hope and continue to sap the vitality of its resilient people. Civil wars continue to disrupt economic activity -- especially agriculture -- uproot people, and send refugees streaming across borders. Africa's refugee population continues to rise. These wars have nothing to do with Western colonialism or imperialism. Nor do they have anything to do with artificial colonial borders or ancient tribal rivalries. These wars are over one thing -- POWER: Power to allocate resources to oneself, cronies and tribesmen; power to crush one's enemies; and power to perpetuate oneself in office.
Rebel soldiers do not seek to redraw colonial boundaries; they head straight to the capital city -- the seat of POWER. Nor is ethnic rivalry the determining factor in Africa's wars. Somalia is the most ethnically homogenous country in Africa. Yet, from time to time it has imploded. With the exception of the 1998-2000 Ethiopian-Eritrea war, virtually all of Africa's wars have been intra-state in origin and the basic cause of these wars has been the "politics of exclusion."
"Government," as it is usually conceptualized, does not exist in many African countries. Governments use the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, their cronies and kinsmen and exclude everyone else ("the politics of exclusion"). The richest people in Africa are heads of state and their cohorts of ministers. The chief culprit is often the head of state himself. Groups which are excluded from the gravy train eventually rebel. They may seek to remove the ruling vampire elites by force through a rebel insurgency (for example Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone); break away or secede (for example Biafra, 1967; Somaliland 1993); or vote with their feet to become refugees elsewhere. It should be obvious that the solution to all these senseless wars is the "politics of inclusion."
Across Africa, leaders have subjected their own people to the most heinous forms of brutality and oppression. Political tyranny reigns supreme on a continent that has more autocrats than any other region. Out of the 54 African countries, fewer than 16 are democratic. Some are in a perpetual state of transition to democratic rule. The vast majority of Africans live under brutally repressive and undemocratic political regimes that deny them basic political freedom and exclude them -- through various acts of chicanery -- from effective participation in the electoral and the decision-making process. Attacks on liberty are rampant on a continent, whose leaders are intolerant of dissent and alternative viewpoints. As if these were not enough, the AIDS pandemic is decimating Africa's labor force, posing a serious threat to the continent's economic recovery efforts. Africa has 70 percent of the world-wide cases of AIDS and has lost 12 million of its population to the disease. It is a disease that has no cure and instead of focusing on PREVENTION through AIDS awareness education programs, African leaders choose to blame the West and a "racist plot," while spending their limited resources on weapons to suppress their people.
The post colonial story of Africa is not pretty; it is both sad and maddening. Sad because it is a continent plagued with poverty, never-ending crises, and human suffering. The scale of human misery and suffering is horrendous. This was not what its people asked for at independence from colonial rule in the 1960s. It is a truculently painful tale of betrayal of the freedom they fought so hard for.
In fact, true freedom and independence never came to much of Africa. Most Africans would affirm that, at independence in the 1960s, one set of masters was replaced by another set. Only the skin color changed and the brutal oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated. Truth be told. In some countries, the incoming black administrations were worse than the colonial masters they replaced. And this is no attempt to justify colonialism but a statement of a painful fact.
Most Africa's nationalist leaders who took over after independence failed their people. The leadership that has rampaged across the continent has been an assortment of black neo-colonialists as some Africans call them, "Swiss Bank" socialists, quack revolutionaries, crocodile liberators, and briefcase bandits-ranging from Field Marshall IdiAmin, General Samuel Doe, General Mobutu Sese Seko, General Siad Barre, General Sani Abacha, General Robert Guie, General MoussaTraore to Charles Taylor. Note the frequency of the title, General.
"Only socialism will save Africa," these leaders chanted in the 1960s. But the "socialism" they practiced was a peculiar form of "Swiss bank socialism" that allowed the head of state to plunder their African treasuries for deposit in Swiss and foreign banks. According to one United Nations estimate, $200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan part of the continent's gross domestic product (much of it illicitly earned), was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone" (The New York Times, 4 February 1996, 4).
In ruining their continent, African leaders had help, not only from the West but also from Africa's own intellectuals and the opposition. Another painful aspect of Africa's sad post colonial story is that, many of Africa's highly educated intellectuals, who should have known better, sold off their conscience, integrity and principles to serve as errand-boys of brutal despots with half their intelligence. Even Idi Amin could always find intellectual prostitutes to serve at his beck and call, as did General Samuel Doe and General Sani Abacha.
Political tyranny was also aided and abetted from a least expected quarter: Africa's opposition. In many countries, the tyrants succeeded in maintaining their grip on power, not so much because of their ingenuity but rather because of the hopelessness of the opposition. In country after country, the opposition is grievously fragmented into factions and incessantly squabbling, allowing the tyrant in power to exploit divisions in the opposition, play one faction against the other ("divide and conquer) and maintain his grip on power. Susceptible to bribery and corruption, factional and opposition leaders can easily be co-opted or bought. It is nearly impossible to get opposition leaders to unite against a "common enemy." Such has been the case of rebel movements that set out to kick a brutal despot from power. Even before they accomplish their liberation mission, rebel movements often splinter into factions along tribal lines and turn their guns on themselves. This was the experience of liberation movements in the 1960s in Angola (MPLA and UNITA); in the 1970s in Zimbabwe (ZANU and ZIPRA) and in the 1990s in Ethiopia (Eritreans, Oromos and Tigrayans), in Liberia (Charles Taylor and Roosevelt Johnson), in Somalia (United Somali Congress and Somali National Movement), in South Africa (ANC and Inkatha) and in Sudan (RiakMachan and JohnGarang factions). Still, the opposition in many African countries remains splintered.
For example, in 1994, 12 opposition parties were formed to challenge the ruling CCM's monopoly lock on power in Tanzania. With a divided opposition, the incumbent regime won handily. It was exactly the same story in Kenya for the December 1997 elections. Kenya's opposition parties numbered 26, which fielded 13 presidential candidates to challenge Moi. Imagine. It also happened in Benin's 1990 election (only a second runoff election defeated Mathieu Kerekou) and in the Ivory Coast where 42 opposition parties were registered in 1994, although there was some election rigging. In Mali, 73 opposition parties were registered in 2001. Africa's despots never learn but tragically neither does the opposition. In 2005, Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC fractured to the delight of the murderous despot, Robert Mugabe. The strength or viability of democracy is not determined by the number of political parties in a country but by the imagination of the political leaders. An intelligent opposition is needed to make democracy vibrant.
The African story is also maddening because there is no earthly reason why a continent, rich in mineral resources should be in such dire straits. Name the mineral and it can be found in Africa: gold, diamonds, titanium, palladium, col tan, oil, among others. But the mineral wealth of Africa has not been utilized to lift its people out of grinding poverty. Instead, mineral wealth has brought misery, ruin and pain. Angola, Chad, Congo, and Sierra Leone are some of the African countries where mineral wealth has turned into a curse.
Africans are angry (Angry African Voices). And they are determined to fight back and reclaim their continent from the black neo-colonialists, "Swiss bank" socialists and crocodile liberators, who have left economic devastation and human debris in their wake (Fighting Back). The modern leadership in much of Africa is a despicable disgrace to black people. The exceptions have been trenchantly few. A leadership, characterized by arrant sloganeering, brutal repression and frenzied plunder, is a far cry from the type of leadership Africans have known under their chiefs and kings for centuries. Name one traditional African ruler who plundered the tribal treasury for deposit in Switzerland. The modern leaders have been a failure, not by Western or Eastern standards but by Africa's own indigenous standards.
The crisis in leadership remains a major obstacle to poverty reduction and has many manifestations. It is characterized, among others, by the following dispositions and failings: The "Big Man" syndrome, subordination of national interests to personal aggrandizement, super-inflated egos, misplaced priorities, poor judgment, reluctance to take responsibility for personal failures, and total lack of vision and understanding of even such basic and elementary concepts as "democracy," "fairness," "rule of law," "accountability," and "freedom" -- among other deficiencies. In some instances, the leadership is given to vituperative utterances, outright buffoonery, stubborn refusal to learn from their own past mistakes, and complete absence of cognitive pragmatism.
Believing that their countries belong to them and only them only, they cling to power at all costs. Their promises are worth less than Al Cappone 's. They stipulate constitutional term limits and then break them: Angola, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, and Uganda. African leaders themselves drew up a New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2001, in which they inserted a Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), by which they were to evaluate the performance of fellow African leaders in terms of democratic governance. What happened? To be fair, they acted in reversing a military coup in Togo in February but went on vacation when elections were stolen in Zimbabwe and Togo.
Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a Ministry of Less Government Spending. Then there is the Ministry of Good Governance (Tanzania). They set up an Anti-Corruption Commissions with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (John Githongo of Kenya) or issue a Government White Paper to exonerate corrupt ministers (Ghana in 1996). To be sure, multi-party elections have been held in recent years in many African countries but the electoral process was so contumaciously manipulated to return incumbents to power. In 2005, four such a coconut elections were held in Zimbabwe, Togo, Congo (Brazzaville), and Ethiopia.
Ask them to place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies (Uganda). Or ask them to move a foot and they will demand foreign aid in order to do so. In 2003, some 30,000-ghost names were discovered on the payroll of the Ministry of Education, costing the government $1.2 million a month in salaries heisted by living workers. When Ghana demanded foreign aid to purge the payroll of these ghost names, Japan coughed up $5 million.
The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. In 2005, only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic, fewer than 8 are economic success stories, only 8 have a free and independent media.
Leadership failure by "indigenous African standards" may sound strange because there is still much mythology about Africa's native institutions. However, it needs to be stated categorically that the European colonialists introduced no new institutions into Africa -- only different and more efficient forms of already existing institutions. Much of the mythology that persists about Africa arose from the failure to distinguish between the existence of an institution and different forms of the same institution. Consider these institutions as examples: money, marriage, market and democracy. The West did not invent any of these.
Money, since time immemorial, has been used as a medium of exchange and various objects and commodities -- cattle, precious metals, gold coins, paper currency, credit cards -- have served as different forms of money at various times. The Europeans arrived in Africa; the natives were using a variety of commodities -- gold dust, cowrie shells, and salt -- as money. Fact that the Europeans introduced paper currency into Africa does not mean they "invented" money -- just as the absence of church weddings in African villages mean that Africans don't marry.
Similarly, there are various forms of a market -- a place where exchange can take place between buyers and sellers. There are flea markets, malls, bazaars and village markets. One may not find an air-conditioned mall in an African village but that does not mean the market institution has never existed in Africa. In fact, there were free village markets, free trade and free enterprise in Africa before the colonialists stepped foot on the continent (Indigenous Africa). Timbuktu, Kano, Salaga and Mombasa were all great market towns in times past.
In the same vein, there are various forms of the institution of democracy: representative, participatory, direct and parliamentary democracy. For centuries, most African societies have practiced a form of "participatory democracy" based upon consensus under their traditional rulers. African chiefs do not impose themselves on their people; declare their villages to be one-party states and themselves "presidents-for-life." Nor are the people excluded from the decision-making process. Village meetings, where decisions are taken by consensus, are not only open but also antithetical to the precepts of a dictatorship (Indigenous Africa). Of course, there were no boxes with "ballot" inscribed on them; nor a roofed building emblazoned with the inscription, "parliament." But it does not mean Africans had no conception of popular participation in government, holding their rulers accountable or the institution of democracy.
The Free Africa Foundation believes that the wholesale rejection of Africa's own native institutions, not so much by the ignorant Europeans but by Africa's own nationalist leaders, lies at the root of Africa's woes. The Foundation seeks to restore to Africans their native freedoms: Their freedom to express their thoughts without harassment, their freedom of worship, their freedom to participate in the decision-making process; and their freedom to engage in what economic activities they choose. The Free Africa Foundation also believes it is the systematic stripping away of these native freedoms that is largely responsible for the post colonial ruination of Africa. The continent is in a mess mainly because the economic, political and ideological systems imposed upon Africa by its nationalist leaders are alien to Africa's own indigenous systems. The result is a continent littered with the carcasses of borrowed or imported systems.
It has been trendy -- and indeed politically correct -- to blame Africa's woes on external factors: Western colonialism, slavery, American imperialism, hostile and unjust international economic system, inadequate foreign aid, exploitation by greedy multi-national corporations, the IMF and the World Bank. For more than three decades, this "blame-game" was a favorite sport of corrupt and incompetent African despots to conceal their own failures. And according to the New Partnership for Africa 's Development (NEPAD), which seeks $64 billion in investments from the West, the reasons for Africa's dire condition include "its continued marginalization from globalization process." (para 2).
Even Africa’s children don’t buy this. Chernoh Bah, president of the Children's Forum asserted that Africa's socio economic problems are a direct repercussion of incompetent and corrupt political leaders who usurped political office via the gun. "Some blame colonialism for Africa' plight while others blame the continent's harsh climatic conditions. I think the reason is the kind of political systems we have had over the past decades, he said. (Standard Times [Freetown],April 2, 2003; web posted). At the United Nations Children's Summit held in May 2002 in New York, youngsters from Africa ripped into their leaders for failing to improve their education and health. "You get loans that will be paid in 20 to 30 years and we have nothing to pay them with, because when you get the money, you embezzle it, you eat it”, said 12-year-old Joseph Tamale from Uganda (BBC News, May 10, 2002). United Nations Secretary-General, KofiAnnan, addressing a press conference in London in April, 2000, lambasted African leaders who have subverted democracy and lined their pockets with public funds, although he stopped short of naming names (The African-American Observer, April 25-May 1, 2000; p.10).
While external factors have played a role, the Free Africa Foundation believes far greater emphasis should be placed on INTERNAL FACTORS (bad leadership, corruption, military vandalism, capital flight, senseless wars, brutal repression and exploitation of the African people). The Foundation thus stresses "internal solutions" and believes most of the solutions to Africa's crises lie inside Africa itself (The Solutions). The West and foreign organizations can help but the initiative must come from Africa itself.
Even getting this viewpoint across has been an uphill battle. Whites who point out the foolish policies of African leaders are routinely denounced as "racists" and "colonial apologists." And blacks who do so are vilified, pilloried, and attacked as "traitors," and "Uncle Toms" -- for "washing Africa's dirty linen in public" and for "providing ammunition to racists." These denunciations may be politically expedient but they defy common sense. The average intelligent person looks both ways before crossing a street, or risk being hit by a truck. Africa is in bandages because Africa's leaders and their allies looked only one way -- at the external factors.
African leaders may blame the West in whatever way they want but the West isn't going to come and solve Africa's problems. In fact, the international community, quite frankly, is fed up with the incessant whining, badgering and buffoonery of African leaders. Some African intellectuals may claim that it is the West that puts and props up these "bad leaders." And, therefore, it is the responsibility of the West to remove them.
Unfortunately, this argument, which has gained currency in African academic circles, defies logic. It should be obvious to even the uninitiated that if the West removes these despots, they will replace them with those that serve their (Western) interests. The fact is, foreigners do not go to Africa to advance the interests of Africans. Americans go to Africa to pursue their (American) interests -- just as the British, the French and the Russians do. Certainly, the Chinese don't go to Africa because they love black people so much. It is the height of insanity to expect foreigners to come and solve Africa's problems. Even if they do, they will do so to their (foreign) advantage.
Over the years, the positions taken by the Free Africa Foundation have thoroughly been vindicated (The Vindication). For example, the Foundation coined the expression, "African solutions for African problems," back in 1994 following the Somali debacle. Since then, the expression became the mantra of the Clinton administration and many African leaders. Furthermore, the Foundation has consistently argued that Africa's salvation lies in returning to roots and building upon its own indigenous institutions. It is noteworthy that the essence of this dictum has not only been captured by the expression, African Renaissance, but it also underscored the ethos of the democratization movement in the early 1990s. The "sovereign national conference" was a vehicle that was used to make a peaceful democratic transition in Benin, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia. That vehicle was a modernization of the indigenous African institution of "village meeting."
We at the FreeAfrica Foundation do not expect everyone to agree with our viewpoints and positions. Those who disagree are free to do so but owe it as a duty to Africa to table better proposals and point Africa in the right direction. We believe strongly in freedom of expression. And the West did not invent that either.
(Page Updated: August, 2006)
George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D.
President, The Free Africa Foundation,
Distinguished Economist, AmericanUniversity
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