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Bluntly Speaking: Africa: Is There A Silver Lining In The Third Millennium?  

Story Filed: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 8:28 PM EST

Accra, Apr 03, 2001 (Ghanaian Chronicle/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX)-- Africa entered the 1990s in a mood of hope and expectation. The first three months of the new decade saw the independence of Namibia, the unbanning of the Africa National Congress (ANC) and the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa; and across the continent, a growing wave of demands for democratic reforms as well as a greater respect for human rights.

In the first 18 months of the 1990s, eleven Africa heads of state fell from power - four of them were voted out of office, i.e. Benin, Cape Verde, Sao Tome & Principe and Zambia.

In Cote d' Ivoire, the late President Houphoet Boigny, the doyen of Africa autocrats, was forced by a combination of domestic protests and French political pressures to allow the formation of legal political opposition parties and to submit himself to a competitive presidential election. In our own backyard, Ghanaians were offered the opportunity to vote for a constitution which allowed the formation of a plurality of political parties leading to the 1992 presidential and parliamentary elections and the coming into force of the Fourth Republican Constitution.

The nature of politics in Africa seemed then to be changing and at a very fast pace. Close observers of the Africa scene including the direct participants, spoke of a "new era" for democracy and political reconciliation or even of the coming of a "second independence" for Africa.

A few years on, what does the balance sheet look for Africa? At first glance, it looks extremely depressing and bleak. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that Africa is heading for total insolvency- politically, economically and depreciation in terms of human survival. Hundreds of thousands of Africans have been killed in genocidal violence.

The list of Africans caught in the web of violence of one sort or the other - to name a few i.e. the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo Brazzaville, Burundi and Somalia attests to this fact. Some countries are even presently in a state of political and social disintegration. On a lesser scale, some countries have a de jury multi-party state, but remain de facto, single-party states.

Some countries have descended into a state of political instability and periodic factional violence whilst in others, the popularly elected governments after defeating other Presidents, have woefully failed to tackle massive economic problems their countries face. Indeed, some of them have gained a notoriety and reputation for autocratic decision-making.

This makes depressing reading. This may be interpreted as a failure of African political leaders to grasp the opportunities that presented themselves in the early 1990s and as an indication that somehow, Africa is politically immature and a permanent economic basket-case.

With the end of the Cold War and subsequent disappearance of super power rivalry from the African political and security equations, there emerged a belief, now shown to have been over optimistic and perhaps naive, that a major and malign influence had been removed from the continent for good. This was seen as an opportunity for Africans to make a new start politically and to try to achieve a greater level of continental, regional, national and human security than it had previously enjoyed.

This opportunity, according to some observers, had been missed and Africa appears to be descending into a state of anarchy. VOICES When the voices calling for democracy in individual African states began to be heard - and it should be remembered that the rise of one party states had not gone totally unopposed, - some proponents of greater democracy kept up the fight against autocracy in the 1970s and 1980g.

These were, in other parts of the world, an echo of the popular protesters gaining strength from the happenings in Eastern Europe.

Some African leaders such as Omar Bongo of Gabon even spoke of the "east wind shaking the coconut palms" and wrote off the pro-democracy movements as copies of those in Eastern Europe.

What he failed to realise, however, was that those events had a definitive bearing on the political barometer in Africa. It should be remembered that protests, which took place in Cotonou, Abidjan, Libreville, Rwanda, Der es Salaam and elsewhere predated or coincided with those of Leipzig, Prague, Sofia and Bucharest.

For example, President Matthew Kerekou's pro-Maxist government is permissible to argue, however, that while events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had some influence on the changing political attitudes in Africa, these were not the sparks which ignited the democratic movements, nor were they the major determinants of the course of events in Africa.

This argument is crucial to understanding why many western politicians and commentators experienced a crisis of expectation when the Angolan civil war resumed, when Burundi and Rwanda degenerated into ethnic confrontations and authoritarian rule continued elsewhere in parts of Africa. The expectations of a new dawn for Africa were based on a miscalculation of the extent of external influences than by Africa's own metamorphosis.

It cannot be denied that the demise of communism and authoritarian one party rule in the eastern countries did affect Africa, but it was only one of the factors which led to a resurgence in African demands for democracy, accountability of governments and an end to corruption and economic mismanagement as well as for a greater respect for freedom of speech and basic human rights.

The most powerful factor had been the failure of African governments to meet the needs of their people in terms of welfare, living standards and basic political and civil rights.

The growth of an educated urban, unemployed mass of young people, whose interests could only be served by improved economic and political conditions side by side, with the impact of political changes in neighbouring states, not to mention political pressures and their influence in Eastern Europe also had had some effects; these of necessity, were just catalysts and complimentary factors but not the primary causes.

It was more a matter of generative patience that had missed out, than the immediate effect of the "East wind" that propelled the ensuing changes that had taken place.

The rapid development of the democratic movements in Africa, the global effects of the end of the Cold War and the sudden willingness to apply political conditionalities of economic aid to Africa, all created the impression that irrevocable change was underway.

Those in Western Europe and North America who were in control of policy towards Africa appear to have had an arrogant and over-simplified belief in the effects of the Cold War and the power of their countries to influence events in Africa by exhortation, diplomatic pressures and the threat of the suspension of aid. In some cases, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were used as agents to overcome the stubbornness of those African states, which were not willing to conform.

What those observers and commentators failed to observe was not to look closely at the origins of change in Africa or the rate of the political and economic crisis which were affecting individual African countries.

They had the expectation that by removing the external factors, which were considered as encouraging dictatorial rule or engendering conflict, and by applying pressures, they could change the very nature of the African political arena.

This has proved to be a vastly inflated expectation of their own imaginations and of the capacity of African countries to evolve along certain perceived political lines.

What has happened and continues to happen in Africa has been governed by Africa's political and economic conditions and not strictly by external influences. These influences have only had a superficial effect on the contemporary African scene. Even when sanctions have assisted or accelerated domestically generated changes, they have not had decisive effects.

The expectation that the mere creation of a multiplicity of political parties would bring popular participation in government and accountability, has been frustrated by the belief that winning an election is the sole purpose of political parties in Africa; and that, that was an end in itself rather than the means to a broader end for the implementation of policies aimed at achieving political stability and economic development. The winning parties, including those founded to fight for political reform, have all too often acted as their single party predecessors did.

The concept of a functioning opposition with a right to question the policies and actions of government and to criticise constructively, has unfortunately failed to have had any solid foundation in many African States. If the thinking and modus operandi of African leaders as a collective, does not undergo any radical change for the better, the future for Africa might even become more unpredictable and possibly gloomy in the not too distant future.

by Anthony Forson, (former Attorney-General & Minister of Justice of Ghana)

Copyright Ghanaian Chronicle. Distributed by All Africa Global Media(AllAfrica.com)

 

Copyright © 2001, Africa News Service, all rights reserved

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PUNTIN SEES NO CAUSE FOR MILLENNIA  

 

January 1, 2000 (Galkaio) - The "world" seems to be dancing to the tune of a new millennium's euphoria. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to celebrate the demise of the old millennium and the advent of the new one. The skies of this world were illuminated with colorful fireworks. Sounds of wild joy reverberated long before the zero hour. Laser beams crisscrossed the dark midnight skies of the most populous cities in the word. World leaders made historic speeches to address the huge festive crowds gaping at the decorated skies and the below with awe and admiration. What world is that world? That is the world of "haves", the world of the developed nations. Some believe that it is the world of the "heartless","the soulless" and some of the snobbish other-worlders. The snobbish other-worlders are well defined by the Somali proverb whic has this wisdom, "baqashii fardo la mirataa ka-mid bay is-mooddaa!" which literally means, " a mule which grazes with horses overnight thinks that it is an equal".

Here is the other world, the world of "have-nots", "hostages to poverty, anarchy and lawlessness".  Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to illuminate the skies of certain world cities of the "haves", while hundreds of millions of people are wallowing with the painful bangs of hunger and disease, whose only cries are cries of agony not the cries of joy and ecstasy marking the celebration for the new millennium. In this latter world the only sounds of difference are explosions. The only sky illuminations apart from the natural ones are the deadly projectiles of the firearms showering on them.

Would a moral human being's celebration for the millennia be justified while witnessing the fireworks over Chechnya "fireworks meant to annihilate the innocent helpless civilians than to celebrate"? The two worlds share the same firmament, the same sun that brings the first hours of change in millennia and above all, the same globe. A happy new millennium for some, a horrendous one for others.

The Somalis who have been held hostage for a decade by uncompromising notorious half-human warlords share the same globe as well. The Somalis that the same celebrating world has thrown to the wolves, listen to the wild celebrations on the electronic media and wonder if the world has taken a leave out of its senses. "After all," they would like to reason it out, "this costly fanfare is for presumed dates that culminated in the hypothesized millennia not something natural which deserves all that cost and attention."

Let the "other-worlders" be herded to the doom by their next of kin; let the demons torture, kill and maim; let others be wild with joy, unconcerned with the suffering of their fellow human beings; and still let "the pretentious" simper at the new millennium celebrations. The fact remains that the haunting bugs in the cyber world might have been conquered, but still the bugs in the minds of the warlords and the moral values of soulless is still taking its toll. It is PUNTIN's wish that all these bugs are eliminated once and for all. That will be the time the humans will have a genuine reason to celebrate.

Prof. Abdirahman O. Warsame

January 1, 2000

http://www.puntin.org/