| Military Rule: The Scourge Of Africa
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Hopes were riding high when Colin Powell, the first African-American Secretary of State, made his first official 4-nation tour of Africa -- a continent ravaged by endless conflict, grinding poverty, and AIDS. On the Secretary's itinerary were Mali, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. Mali, whose 1992 transition to democracy has been hailed as a model for Africa, has chalked up an impressive rate of economic growth. South Africa has the highest AIDS infection rate in Africa. One in five (or 4 million) South Africans is infected with the AIDS virus. The country also hosts 2 million refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe, where a despot, Robert Mugabe, has brought the economy to the verge of collapse.
One purpose of Secretary Powell's trip was to erase the impression created by President George Bush during his presidential campaign that Africa is of little strategic importance to the U.S. "Africa matters to America, by history and by choice. Our futures are closely intertwined," he declared in Johannesburg on May 25. He flew next to Kenya, where the U.S. embassy and the one in Tanzania were bombed in August 1998 by terrorists linked to the Saudi Arabian fugitive, Osama bin Laden. More than 240 were killed and 5,000 injured in the twin bombings. Kenya has also been the destination of refugees fleeing civil war in Sudan, which the State Department has certified as sponsor of state terrorism. The U.S. Congress has allocated $3 million in logistical assistance to the southern Sudanese rebels fighting the Islamic government of Khartoum.
In Uganda, Colin Powell's main object of concern was the Congo crisis, dubbed Africa's First World War that has sucked in 6 African nations (Angola, Burundi, Chad, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe). The conflict has claimed more than 2 million people, largely through famine and starvation. The most recent peace effort (the July 1999 Lusaka Accord), collapsed due to the intransigence of the late Congolese leader, Laurent Kabila. His assassination and the ascension to power of his son, Joseph, paved the way for a resumption of the Lusaka Accord. However, an April 16 U.N. panel report, accusing Uganda and Rwanda of plundering the riches of the Congo, so infuriated President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda that he pulled out of any further peace negotiations. Powell praised Uganda's efforts to cut its HIV/AIDS infection rate by half since 1992 -- the first African country to reduce its infection rate -- and promised $50 million in additional assistance to fight the disease.
However, his trip left many African leaders disappointed. Instead of substantial "gifts," they got a lecture. In South Africa, Secretary Powell condemned the "totalitarian methods" of President Mugabe and called upon him to hold "free and fair elections" in Zimbabwe. In Kenya, Mr. Powell called on Africa's "big men" to step down after decades in office -- an obvious reference to President Daniel Arap Moi, who has been in power for 22 years.
Africa's autocrats weren't pleased -- naturally -- and dismissed the call as "interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations." They roundly criticized the $200 million promised by the Bush administration in a global effort to fight AIDS in Africa as "woefully insufficient." U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan had said that a $7-$10 billion global AIDS war chest is needed. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to assure African governments that the U.S. contribution was "seed money." Further, African leaders have assailed the $14 million in compensation so far paid to the victims of the embassy bombings as "inadequate" and have permitted lawsuits to be filed against the U.S. government. Perhaps, the complaints of Africa's big men signify a welcome shift in U.S.-Africa policy, which has been in need of a thorough revamping from the Clinton era.
To their credit, President Clinton and former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright paid more attention to Africa than previous U.S. administrations. The Clinton administration placed Africa on the front burner and adopted a pro-active engagement with Africa. High-profile White House conferences with African ministers, trade missions to Africa, and tours by senior government officials were regular fares. Secretary of State Madelein Albright toured Africa on several occasions. First Lady Hillary Clinton and Chelsea visited February 1997 and in March 1998, President Clinton himself visited Africa for the first time, with another visit in August 2000.
During his term, President Clinton pledged to support African nations undergoing transformations toward peace, democracy, human rights, and free markets through expanded economic opportunities and stronger cooperation. A new initiative, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), was launched in May 2000 to expand U.S.-Africa trade and investment. Another was the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), consisting of African troops to be deployed to intervene in serious crisis situations to avert a Rwanda-like conflagration. However, the high-profile engagement with Africa, amid much pomp and fanfare, achieved little results. The continent's woes multiplied and worsened.
Africa's economic growth rate in the 1990s came nowhere near the 7 percent needed to reduce poverty rates. It averaged a paltry 4.3 percent, which, given a 3 percent population growth rate, meant stagnant income per capita income. Accordingly, the list of African economic success stories touted by the Clinton Administration in 1994 (The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) shrunk to two (Ghana and Burkina Faso) although three new countries were added in 1998 (Guinea, Lesotho, Eritrea and Uganda). However, the coup in Guinea, the senseless Ethiopian-Eritrean war and the eruption of civil wars in western and northern Uganda have knocked off most of the new “success stories.” On AGOA, only two countries (Mali and Mauritius) were qualified by Dec 2000, although 35 African nations are positioned to benefit from it.
Worse, the democratization process stalled and more African countries imploded under President Clinton's watch: Somalia (1993); Rwanda (1994); Burundi (1996); Zaire (1996); Congo-Brazzaville (1997); Sierra Leone (1997); Congo (1998); Ethiopia/Eritrea (1998); Guinea (1999).
African American Congresswoman, Rep Cynthia McKinney (D, Georgia) was scathing: "I am sorry to say this (Clinton) administration has no Africa policy -- or what it has has tremendously failed" (The Washington Times, April 14, 2000; p.A17). And in a January 2000 interview with The East African newspaper, she described Clinton's Africa Policy as "such an abysmal failure." "How can someone so friendly end up with such an outrageous, atrocious, horrible policy that assists perpetrators of crimes against humanity, inflicting damages on innocent African people?" she asked. Similar sentiments were expressed by Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica that spearheaded the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. He dismissed Clinton’s policies in Africa as a “disaster.”
Clinton's Africa policy failed for two reasons. First, his Africa policy was intended more to play to a domestic audience -- to placate the African American constituency -- than to address the fundamental causes of Africa's problems. For example, on his first trip to Uganda in 1998, President Clinton apologized for America's involvement in the slave trade but was silent for 8 years about the enslavement of blacks by Arabs in Mauritania and Sudan until December 6, 2000 when he did denounce "the atrocities of Sudan," including "the scourge of slavery" on Human Rights Day. Further, President Clinton relied almost exclusively on African Americans for counsel in the formulation of U.S. Africa policy. While African-American leaders may mean well for Africa, they analyze Africa's problems differently. For example, the appointment of Rev. Jesse Jackson as Special Envoy to Africa was not seen as advancing the cause of freedom.
When he was sent in June 1994 to help defuse Nigeria's political crisis, pro-democracy forces refused to meet with him because of his support of the former military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida. Some even threatened to stone Rev. Jackson if stepped foot in Nigeria. And Sierra Leonians have not forgiven Rev. Jesse Jackson for brokering the 1999 Lome Accords which awarded a ministerial position to Foday Sankoh, the barbarous warlord whose band of savages (the Revolutionary United Front) chop off the limbs of people, including women and children, who stood in their way. Sierra Leonians were particularly outraged when Rev. Jackson compared Fodah Sankoh to Nelson Mandela.
Second, the Clinton administration seldom made a distinction between African leaders and the African people. It blithely assumed, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, that a "government" in an African country that represents the people, cares and is responsive to their needs. What exists is a "gangster state," where Africa's big men use government machinery to plunder the state and enrich themselves, their cronies and tribesmen, while excluding everybody else. And for reasons of political correctness, the Clinton administration was unwilling to criticize Africa's big men and, to make matters worse, the Clinton Administration’s Africa policy was “leader-centered.”
During his 1998 trip, President Clinton hailed Presidents Laurent Kabila of Congo, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaiah Afwerki of Eritrea as the “new leaders of Africa” and spoke fondly of the “new African renaissance sweeping the continent.” The administration sought to develop warm, cozy relationships – euphemistically called “partnerships” – with these "new leaders" of Africa to transform their society. As Grace Bibala wrote in The East African (Jan 18, 2001), "William Jefferson Clinton's desperate and possibly naïve search for a partnership with a `new breed' of African leaders was doomed to failure." Indeed, barely two months after Clinton's return to the U.S., the so-called "new leaders of Africa" were fighting each other in the Congo conflict and the Ethiopian-Eritrea war.
Mr. Powell's willingness to take on Africa's big men is a refreshing and much needed shift from the old cozy relationship of the Clinton era. But it is not enough to ask Africa's despots to step down or hold free and fair elections. Presidents Moi of Kenya and Mugabe of Zimbabwe have been in power for more than 20 years because of the control they wield over state institutions: the military, the electoral commission, the media, the judiciary, the civil service, etc. The media, for example, has been the target of unrepentant despots. "Freedom of the press is an outmoded right," said Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's Minister of Information on April 5, 2001 in a BBC interview. Accordingly, editors and journalists have been hounded, jailed and killed in many African countries. Radio stations shut down in many others. In February, the Daily News, a private newspaper was firebombed in Zimbabwe.
The media has been instrumental in ensuring free and fair elections in Africa. In Ghana's December elections, for example, private FM stations were crucial in enforcing transparency. But the Clinton administration did not pay much attention to the establishment of independent institutions, choosing instead to place its faith in the rhetoric of Africa's big men. This needs to be reversed by the Bush administration. As Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, pointed out on May 1, the four most democratic countries in West Africa today -- Benin, Ghana, Mali and Senegal -- all have private, flourishing FM talk radio stations. "Let's stop sending Africa lectures on democracy. Let's instead make all aid, all I.M.F.-World Bank loans, all debt relief conditional on African governments' permitting free FM radio stations. Africans will do the rest," he wrote.
Fortunately for the Bush administration, a set of propitious developments has occurred that offers the African people a chance to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty. It appears African leaders are finally getting serious about tackling the continent's woes. They have dissolved that scandalous Organization of African Unity (OAU), which couldn't even define "democracy," and replaced it with the African Union. And after realizing the futility of blaming others for Africa's problems, African Finance and Planning Ministers met in Algiers from May 8-10, craft two Africa initiatives: The Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Program (MAP) led by Presidents Mbeki of South Africa and Obasanjo of Nigeria and Bouteflika of Algeria, and the OMEGA Plan proposed by President Wade of Senegal.
Although Africans have seen such grandiose plans in the past, these developments nonetheless present the new Bush administration with a unique opportunity to fundamentally alter the U.S. policy toward Africa by de-politicizing and de-racializing Africa policy. The problems Africa faces today have little to do with the slave trade, colonialism or racism but more to do with bad leadership and bad governance, originating from the establishment of defective economic and political systems and the debauchery of state institutions. Cut these institutions loose from the clutches of the despots and the African people will do the rest of the job of transforming their societies.
George Ayittey,
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