Poverty, resources and the troubled road to democracy
The sense of increasing pessimism that had replaced the immediate postindependence euphoria did, however, begin to lift in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The victory of liberal democracy over socialist autocracy in the Cold War quickly emboldened opposition groups in Africa into demanding a shift away from the one-party state towards a more pluralistic political system.
For example, in 1990 the first freely contested local elections were held in Algeria and in 1992 democracy returned to Ghana after a prolonged absence. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War also helped to bring about the termination of the civil wars that had racked Angola and Mozambique since independence and sealed the fate of Mengistu's regime in Ethiopia. Above all, however, the new spirit of optimism in the continent was symbolized by South Africa's unexpectedly smooth transformation into a fully democratic state and by the statesmanship displayed by Nelson Mandela.However, in a number of countries the shift towards democracy proved to be a false dawn. All too often the new leaders turned out to be just as corrupt as those who had been voted out of office. Another problem was that some opposition parties proved to be unacceptable to the established elite. For example, in Algeria in January 1992 the army stepped in to re-establish martial law in an effort to prevent the Front Islamique du Salut from winning the country's first free national election. This in turn sparked a savage civil war that lasted for the rest of the decade.
The most tragic case, and the one with the greatest consequences for those bordering upon it, was that of Rwanda. Ever since 1959, shortly before independence from Belgium in 1962, politics in Rwanda had been dominated by the Hutu majority, with the Tutsi elite who had traditionally controlled the country being forced into either submission or exile.
In the late 1980s economic problems caused by a rapidly increasing population, land pressure, declining commodity prices and anger at government corruption led to calls for the authoritarian Hutu government of President Juvenal Habyarimana to agree to multi-party elections. The apparent weakness of the Habyarimana regime, in turn, led the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), a group of Tutsi exiles in Uganda, to launch an abortive invasion of the country in October 1990. While this invasion did not succeed, it did spur on the democracy movement, consisting of both Hutus and Tutsis, to increase its pressure on Habyarimana. Consequently, in 1992 Habyarimana was forced to form a coalition government and then in 1993 to sign the Aruya peace agreement with the RPF, which would allow the latter to become part of a transitional administration that would steer the country towards free elections.At this point radicals within the Hutu elite decided to take violent action in order to ward off the threat of democracy and overcome the economic crisis by seizing Tutsi land and property. Utilizing the government propaganda machine and their own client networks, they inculcated among poor and unemployed Hutus a fervent hatred of the Tutsis, drawing on the memory of what was perceived as the latter's gratuitous repression prior to the breaking of their hold on power in 1959. The trigger for genocide came in April 1994, when following the assassination of Habyarimana, the Hutu extremists proceeded to carry out genocide against the Tutsi population and against Hutu moderates who supported the trend towards democracy. Over the next two months some 800,000 Tutsis, about 11 per cent of the total population of the country, were slaughtered.
The potential for genocidal violence in Rwanda was clear to anyone willing to observe the situation, but both before and during the events of the spring of 1994 the international community showed little interest or willingness to act. Indeed, such was the level of international inaction that the genocide in Rwanda soon spread to infect much of southern central Africa.
To a substantial degree this occurred because the action taken by the Hutu extremists provoked the RPF into launching a new and this time successful invasion of Rwanda. Fearing Tutsi retribution, more than two million Hutu refugees fled into Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire, bringing disaster to the latter two countries. In Zaire the ensuing crisis was particularly serious, for the influx of refugees led to increasingly serious outbursts of inter-communal violence, particularly against Tutsis living in the eastern province of Kivu. Citing concern for this community, but also motivated by an interest in gaining access to Zaire's abundant raw materials, the Rwandan and Ugandan governments intervened by providing assistance to anti-Mobutu rebels led by Laurent Kabila.The ensuing civil war brought about Mobutu's fall from power in 1997, but the nightmare was not yet over, for, soon after he gained power in Kinshasa, Kabila broke with his Rwandan and Ugandan backers. As a result the newly renamed Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) became immersed in a prolonged and bitter conflict, in which rebels in the east of the country received armed support from Rwanda and Uganda, while Kabila himself turned to Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia for military assistance. This escalation of the fighting into an international war once again arose largely out of the desire of the DRC's neighbours to gain access to its vast mineral wealth, which included coltan, a mineral vital in the production of mobile phones. The result was the bloodiest African conflict of the post-colonial period in which it is reckoned that more than three million people died. Eventually in January 2001 Laurent Kabila was assassinated. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph, who quickly acted to start talks with his father's political enemies. The result in July 2002 was a negotiated settlement that brought a measure of peace to the country, although violence continued to erupt periodically, particularly in the areas bordering on Uganda and Rwanda.
Competition for control over mineral wealth also led to conflict elsewhere in Africa. The worst case came in Sierra Leone. From 1991 rebels against the government in Freetown started to receive support from the warlord Charles Taylor, whose fiefdom in neighbouring Liberia bordered on the diamond-rich eastern provinces of Sierra Leone. This sparked a nine-year war that brought misery to both Liberia and Sierra Leone. At first, the international community distanced itself from this chaos, leaving the restoration of order to the neighbouring states in the region in the form of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). ECOMOG, which in reality was a vehicle for Nigerian claims to be the regional hegemon, proved, however, to be incapable of bringing peace and found its forces dragged into the morass. In the end the hopeless anarchy in Sierra Leone and the inability of ECOMOG to restore order led in 2000 to a British intervention followed by the arrival of a large UN peacekeeping force, and soon after the rebels were defeated. Following on from this reverse of his fortunes, Taylor, who had prospered enormously from the diamond trade, was forced in 2003 to stand down as president of Liberia and peace finally returned to the two war-torn countries.
While some countries in Africa leaned towards becoming failed states, in other areas notable progress was achieved. For example, Botswana continued to act as a beacon of democracy, while Mozambique and Tanzania made rapid economic progress, achieving annual growth rates of 8 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. However, even in these areas of relative stability, problems still existed. The most serious was the rapid spread of AIDS/HIV. According to UN calculations, by 2000 there were 24.5 million people infected with the virus in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the rate of infection being particularly serious in the southern half of the continent. For example, in Botswana, 35 per cent of the population were believed to be infected.
Another serious issue was that many of the African states still suffered from the high level of indebtedness inherited from the 1970s. This debt burden was hard to shake off, for the continuing fluctuations in commodity prices and the refusal of the West to accept free trade in agricultural production restricted the ability of African states to earn sufficient revenue from exports. What Africa needed therefore was for the West to agree both to a coherent programme of debt relief and to the reduction of subsidies to agriculture, particularly in the United States, Japan and the European Union (EU).European Union (EU)
A political and economic community of nations formed in 1992 in Maastricht by the signing of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). In addition to the agreements of the European Community, the EU incorporated two intergovernmental — or supranational — ‘pillars' that tie the member states of the EU together: one dealing with common foreign and security policy, and the other with legal affairs. The number of member states of the EU has expanded from twelve in 1992 to twenty-seven in 2007.
However, in order to persuade the West that Africa was worth supporting, it was necessary for the continent’s leading political figures to demonstrate that they were willing to act responsibly in the cause of development, thus banishing the image of corruption and ineptitude. An important move in this direction was made in 2001 with the launching of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which was the brainchild of the South African president, Thabo Mbeki. The fifteen governments that signed the NEPAD agreement committed themselves to the pursuit of good governance, democracy and sound economic management and in return sought better terms of trade with the West allied to debt relief. To a degree, NEPAD met with a positive response in the West, but the rhetoric and promises made by leaders such as the US president, George W. Bush, and the UK prime minister, Tony Blair, at events such as the G-8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005 were frequently not matched by actions.
In part, this was because Africa remained a low political priority but it also reflected the ingrained belief that many governments in Africa were simply not deserving of support. In particular, Mbeki himself was tarnished in Western eyes by his blindness to the causes of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa and by his unwillingness to criticize the increasingly harsh and inept government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.Africa therefore continues to be plagued by the colonial legacy and its poor terms of trade with the West. While some success has been achieved in terms of the spread of democracy and higher economic growth, and while the continent has largely benefited from the emergence of South Africa as a significant voice within the international community, old and new problems ensure that progress remains fitful. Moreover, all too often Western governments and institutions either ignore or misunderstand Africa’s problems.