Africa

Africa

Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

By: Richard Dowden

This book was written by Richard Dowden, who spent over 20 years in various parts of Africa as a journalist and schoolteacher. The book spends time on general themes touching the entire continent and individual chapters on specific countries.

Africa (in general)

The external factors begin with bad geography and bad history. Africa is endowed with natural resources, minerals, forests, and parts of it, water in abundance. It is a rich continent with a lot of poor people. But economic development in Africa was designed to benefit outsiders, not Africans. Look at the railway systems. All go from a coast port inland to a mine. They were not built to link peoples or towns or regions, they were designed to extract Africa’s mineral wealth as quickly and cheaply as possible and ship it overseas.

Before colonization, there were traders, artists, and framers, and a ruling class. After colonization, there were only farmers and a small random group that had secured their status through Western education or by being soldiers—a status unrelated to traditional power structures or the rest of society. A huge gap existed between the professionals and the people. A class of skilled artisans, urban and rural, seemed to be absent. African societies were becoming deeply fractured. That could have work in in its favor, freeing up societies and releasing creative entrepreneurs. The opposite happened.

Asian countries, as opposed to African countries, explored how to sell goods more cheaply than the rest of the world. Their economic miracle depended on the combination of skilled, disciplined but cheap labor, a port near the factories for export and a stable government that investors trusted.

European and American trade barriers helped block Africa from economic development. Heavy import tariffs discouraged the export of African goods into Europe and America. In addition Europe and America undermined African agricultural producers by giving their own famers fat subsidies that lowered the world price of many African farm products. US Cotton subsidies lowered the price of cotton by 14%. All of this is true, but also affected Asian countries. Asians, however developed strategies around this including manufacturing palm oil in Malaysia and production of coffee in Vietnam.

Sept 11^th changed the West’s agenda towards Africa: the war on ‘terror’ and oil. African countries no longer had to respect human rights or hold elections if they produced oil and co-operated with America in its war with Al-Qaeda. Libya, for example, formerly regarded as a rogue state, became a western ally but its dictator, Colonel Qaddafi stayed on, repressive as ever.

African countries have been cursed with diamonds: Angola, Congo, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone. Only in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana have they created wealth. In all of these countries oil has been controlled by the company De Beers.

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is ethnically divided with the Shona living in the North (80% of the population) and the Ndebele live in the South-west. Zimbabwe was formally a British colony known as Rhodesia, ruled by Ian Smith. Zimbabwe’s independence can be traced back to Robert Mugabe.

Robert Mugabe grew up poor, one of six children. He went to a catholic mission school and trained as a teacher at Fort Hare, the university for blacks in South Africa. He became heavily involved in politics and became a Marxist. He was imprisoned for 11 years, where he continued his fanatical studies, earning up to 3 degrees, one from London University.  When out of jail, he helped lead the guerilla forces, trained in Mozambique to overthrow the white ruled government. Mugabe has always been driven by respect for the Western mentality for logic and order and a passionate sense of injustice and rejection by the whites.

Lancaster House Agreements (1979) Ian Smith and the African national leaders talked at Lancaster house to negotiate a transfer of power. It was agreed that the British would maintain overall rule, but the issue of land went unresolved (which would prove problematic later). After the Lancaster Agreements, Mugabe’s party intimidated voters in the villages to vote for him. In 1980, Mugabe and the ZANU-PF were victorious. During his victory speech he called for reconciliation and rejecting revenge. However, during his tenure, he would kick out all white farmers. Mugabe became a de-facto dictator similar to Ian Smith preventing people from meeting and discussing politics without government permission.

Robert Mugabe

August 11^th, 1997 was a national holiday (Heroes’ Day), which remembers all of those that fought for Zimbabwe’s independence. War veterans (part of Mugabe’s own party) demanded pensions for their work during the war. Mugabe dithered and ordered the Finance Minister to pay them pensions. It ended up busting the budget.

In 1999, the opposition formed a new party, The Movement for Democratic Change, with Morgan Tsvangirai as their leader. In 2000, Mugabe’s party lost a referendum on a new constitution, which frightened him because he believed that he had full control of the government. He decided to oppose them by destroying the economy. He set the ‘war veterans’ on the farmers. He added a clause in the constitution for the government to seize land without compensation. The war veterans marched onto farmland, killed animals, destroyed crops, and burned buildings. This led to an economic collapse. Inflation rose over 160,000% and 4 million Zimbabweans left the country. South Africa propped up the economy seeing Zimbabwe as an ally in the Africanist movement against white rule, however the ANC and ZANU did not see eye-to-eye. Both had Marxist origins, however the ZANU (Mugabe’s political party) took an Africanist view believing the separation between the poor and wealthy were on racial lines, not just class lines like Marxism believed. Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa took a meek stance towards Mugabe and spent almost $3 billion to support Zimbabwe. Mugabe continued his dominant, ruthless dictatorship over the country in the elections of 2005 having his thugs kill those that supported the opposition party.

Sudan

Quick Facts:

·      Capital of Sudan: Khartoum (meets on the two sides of the Nile: the fast flowing blue Nile and creamy brown with mud from the Ethiopian highlands)

·      Capital of southern Sudan: Juba

·      Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) formed in 1982: southern Sudan (supported by Israel and the United States)

Sudan’s history is intertwined between the rule of the Ottoman’s from the 1880’s and the English in the beginning of the 20^th century. There has always been an Arab-African divide between the northern and southern portion of the country and now South Sudan is recognized as its own country. There are heavy influences by neighboring counties including Libya and Gaddafi from the north, Ethiopia (Christianized) from the east, and Uganda from the south.

A large theme of the book is the affect of aid from non-profit groups, the UN, and other governments. The author describes the way combatants in civil war will trick will-intentioned aid groups into supplying their military with food, supplies, and ammunition.  Although it would seem that bringing food, water, and baby supplies to people that are starving would be a no-brainer, it is much more complicated and political than that.

Origins of the Darfur Conflict

Darfur’s six million people are divided between 30 different ethnic groups and never had the same difficulty with Arab-African relationship as other parts of the country. However, in 2002 oil was found in Sudan, which made Khartoum and other parts of the country very wealthy. For a long period of time, Darfur has been neglected and their citizens were destitute and starving. An Arab supremacist group, the Janjaweed took root and rebellion broke out between rebels and the military-supported Janjaweed.

Angola

Quick Facts:

·      Capital: Luanda, Currency: Kwanza

·      1983: rise of the MPLA-PT (People’s movement for the Liberation of Angola). Roots in the East European Communist Party.

·      UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) Rebel Movement led by Jonas Savimbi. In 1975 the US backed UNITA giving $27 million in aid. Savimbi led with an iron fist, his main weapon was fear. Anyone who questioned him was imprisoned and executed. He died in 2002.

·      Sao Tome and Principe: A Portuguese colonized island where sugar was planted and was abundant.

Angola was a bizarre sideshow of the Cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. The Marxist regime set up by the Soviet Union and Cuban influence was backed by money from oil extracted by American companies. The heaviest European influence in Angola was Portugal. They intermarried with local women and created a new social ethnic group: the mesticos (mixed ones). Portuguese traders major reason for leaving Portugal was seeking freedom from the Portuguese crown and its tax collectors.  After WWII the Portuguese encouraged the migration of hundreds of thousands of poor rural Portuguese to immigrate to Africa. Portuguese colonies included Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

Before the Europeans arrived, slavery was already the norm in most of Africa. The colonization of North and South America created a new demand for slaves. The trade became the industry of Angola. Oil became a major commodity after the MPLA won the war. Along with sugar, slaves, rubber, wax, ivory, diamonds, coffee, and cotton, African oil was the most lucrative of all. Oil creates an enclave economy: the money comes directly into the treasury straight from the oil companies and no mechanism exists to spread it around.

Jonas Savambi

·      4 forms of European engagement with Africa

o   1^st-over-seas business go between on the coast of Africa

o   2^nd- the settler farmer who actually took land and became self-sufficient

o   3^rd: the imperial European administrator who ruled over Africans, but neither traded nor took land.

o   4^th: the missionaries, teachers, aid workers who came to Africa to implant their faith or impart their knowledge.

Burundi/Rwanda

Quick Facts:

·      Burundi Capital: Bujumbura. Rwanda capital: Kigali

The Batwa are pygmy people that were native to the lands before colonization. Next came the short, dark, round-headed (described by colonists) Hutu farmers who settled the land. The tutsis were tall, long-faced cattle keepers that migrated from the north-east. They dominated the Hutus and built two powerful kingdoms: Rwanda and Urundi. The Germans arrived in 1890. The Belgians took over Burundi and Rwanda from Germany after WWI (1919) through the League of Nations Mandate and classified every citizen as Hutu or Tutus and selected the ‘superior’ Tutsis to be educated as teachers, priests, and doctors.  The Belgians replaced Rwandan institutions with a centralized, tiered power structure with a blend of Rwandan tradition and European model; they abolished the system of multiple chiefs and replaced them with a Tutsi. In their last days of administration the Belgium government switched support from the Tutsis to the Hutus. However, Tutsis maintained control of the country until 1993 when Ndadeye became the first Hutu President of Burundi.

Burundi was ruled by Tutsis since independence in 1962. The Tutsis aligned with the Soviet Union and radical international anti-imperialism after their power diminished with the rise of democracy and Hutus winning 84% of seats in the national legislature elections of 1960.

President Juvenal Habyarimana (Hutu) boarded a plane to Dar es Salaam in 1994 and was killed by missiles fired at the Kigali airport. His death triggered the most rapid genocide in recorded history (800,000 were killed). Hutus mercilessly killed Tutsis during this time.

Scary part of the genocide: NGO’s had a direct impact on its continuation. “The aid agencies ignored the survivors of the genocide across the border inside Rwanda. Instead, they swamped the camps with so much food that the defeated genocidal army encamped nearby was able to gather it up, sell it and buy guns and ammunition.

Rwanda is now ruled by a small elite of formerly exiled Tutsis who hold all the powerful—though not necessarily senior—positions in government.

Sierra Leone

Quick Facts:

·      All the rhythms of rock and jazz, reggae and soul have their roots in Africa.

The first British encounter with the country was in 1562 when John Hawkins, pirate, slaver, and British sea hero, sailed into the huge estuarine lake that is now Freetown Bay and seized some locals as slaves. He sailed across the Atlantic and sold them in the Caribbean, marking one of the first instances of the trade in African slaves that was to create vast wealth for Britain. Hawkins did not return, but later British traders established good relations with the kings who ruled the harbor zone and the peninsula.

In Sierra Leone, in addition to Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammed, many also still believe in powerful local spirits who control destinies and inhabit special rocks, trees, rivers, springs, and animals. At the heart of Africa with all its physicality, immediate in its pain and joy, close to life and death, lies a deep sense of the numinous and supernatural.

Story told by a child soldier in Sierra Leone

Congo

Quick Facts:

·      Formally known as Zaire, president Mobutu Sese Seko (took over after King Leopold, one of the more grotesque figures to rule in independent Africa.

·      Congo Brazzaville: President: Pascal Lissouba

·      Eastern Congo: The Banyamulenge—a group of Tutsis who live up in the hills above Lake Tanganyika.

If you are interested in the history of Congo, please read the book King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. It gives a very extensive history of the tyrannical and murderous rule of King Leopold, of Belgium of Congo to extract natural resources from the country.

Corruption in Congo—the local Congolese take a pragmatic approach to surviving from day to day. The judges fall into three categories: Those that take bribes (very rare), those that call litigants and ask for a bribe, there are those who give an honest judgment but then afterwards they go to the winner and ask for some money. The judge he interviews falls into the last category, because how can you survive $10/month.

South Africa

·      Umkhonto we Sizwe-the guerilla wing of the ANC, led by Chris Hani. Chris Hani was murdered by a Polish immigrant in 1993

·      P.W Botha-The great Crocodile

·      The Soweto Uprising of 1976

Dutch and English protestants left their homes at the same time as the Afrikaners first settled in South Africa. They sailed west rather than south and helped found the most liberal state yet known to humankind, the USA. They too were informed by the puritan ethic and the gratifying feeling that God had rewarded them with a land of their own. But although they were liberal toward each other, the new American overwhelmed and exterminated the native population. If today’s white South Africans as colonists, so are the non-indigenous populations of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. The only difference is in the numbers of surviving native peoples. In the US, descendants of the original inhabitants make up 1.5% of the population. In South Africa, the indigenous people are 75% of the population.

·      Black consciousness was a philosophy forged by Steve Biko, the most charismatic and articulate South African of his generation, killed in a jail by the police in 1977.

·      The Truth and reconciliation commission revealed that South Africa had biological and chemical weapons, developed with the help of Israel. The Jewish state, born of European racism and forged by Nazi genocide, armed with the world’s last ideologically Nazi state of the 20^th century with chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons, the weapons of genocide.

·      In 2003, Mbeki introduced the Black Economic Empowerment, a code that forced all companies to give a share of ownership to blacks, give a percentage to black owned companies and employ a proportion of black workers at specific grades. Mbeki also demanded complete loyalty and suppressed the tradition of debate within the party. The ANC became closed and fearful.

·      The most serious economic factor hindering South Africa was the failure of the energy supply.

·      Today, blacks and whites do not talk to each other. They live in their separate worlds with their very different thoughts and feelings about South Africa.

·      Jacob Zuma rose to power in strange circumstances, he won 60% of the vote from Mbeki. He was the former head of intelligence for the ANC. Resentment for Mbeki led to Zuma’s rise. The world was stunned as they did not know that there was a fracture within the ANC. Zuma’s theme song was ‘Bring me my machine gun’ and faced rape charges in court. More importantly, he has been connected with corruption selling weapons in South Africa.

Kenya

Quick Facts:

·      Capital: Nairobi; 1982 President: Daniel arap Moi.

·      Jomo Kenyatta: Kenya’s founding father.

·      The earliest humans walked in Kenya.

·      Has one of the most unequal societies on earth.

·      Two of the worst slums in the world are Kibera and Mathare Valley.

Kenya was nearly White Man’s country, like Algeria, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Ironically it was the great imperialist, Winston Churchill, who argued against it. After the WWII a Kikuyu rebellion began, Mau Mau, aimed at reclaiming the land.

KADU (Kenyan Africa Democratic Union) was founded by Daniel arap Moi and teamed up with the Luo (second largest ethnic group) led by the fiery communist, Oginga Odinga to topple the British. Kenyatta was released from jail and led the country to independence. No truth and reconciliation commission was set up in Kenya after independence.

Today Nairobi hosts the largest UN presence in Africa, and many multinational corporates and NGO’s base their East African operations there. In recent years it has been a very close ally with the US in the war on Al-Qaeda.

There is no single commodity that Kenya has that provides wealth for the country.

Corruption is prevalent in the political system. The sheer scale of the looting is shocking. $4 billion left the country fraudulently, but the total loss from 1992 to 2002 mat have been 3x that. It is even more shocking that it was done under the eyes of Western donors, the IMF and the World Bank

2007 was a perfect political storm. In all elections from 1991, voting was rigged through bullying, violence and vote buying. However, the margin of victory in 2007 was too thin. Raila Odinga the leader of the main opposition party, which won in 6/8 provinces and the largest number of parliamentary seats, refused to concede defeat. The violence escalated quickly and 1500 Kenyans died and over 600,000 made homeless.

 

Jomo Kenyatta

Africa (moving forward)

Guiding principle for relations with the countries of Africa: do no harm

4 ways governments of the world could help Africa moving forward:

1.     Stopping agricultural export subsidies that undercut African farmers and prevent them earning their living as equal producers in the world

2.     Recognize that aspects of globalization damage counties with weak economies. It is blatantly hypocritical for Western governments to force African countries to remove trade barriers and drop subsidies, while protecting their own markets in the same way

3.     Managing migration of Africa’s best-educated talent from Africa and retain them in Africa. There should be incentives for Africans to stay in their home country, but continue to move upward in society.

4.     Corruption internally in Africa occurs at epic proportions, however the international banking system allows those guilty of stealing money to travel the world unhindered. Steps must be taken to prevent corruption, especially in the international marketplace.

Aside from economic growth, Africa will be affected by other various factors including climate change, population growth and identity.  As these populations grow, can African leaders forge a common identity, a common idea of what it means to be Nigerian or Angolan?