Africa

by Guy Arnold

  The EU strategy as proposed raises many awkward questions. Why cannot Africa solve its own problems and, if it cannot, why is it assumed that the EU will do any better? Why are three civil wars taking place in a row? Do these wars threaten Western interests and is that why such an extensive strategy has been proposed? Creating a political and economic structure that binds three countries, each of half a million square miles of territory, will require an input of many trained EU-nominated personnel, but will they all work alongside a local member of the strategy team? This seems unlikely – it is a nostalgic throwback to the origins of aid at a time when such idealistic approaches were possible. If the Sahel countries cannot overcome their differences and work together, it is doubtful that they would be able to do so under the guidance of EU personnel. The EU Strategy may appear superbly logical on paper or in committee, but on application would fall apart.

  Kenya, meanwhile, not generally regarded as a Sahel country, has entered into a partnership with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help to construct a 440-mile wall along Kenya’s border with Somalia as a means of preventing terrorists from entering the country. Construction began in March 2016. It is a new development in the war on terror.

  DEMOCRACY AND THE COUP

  Old perceptions of Africa as a continent constantly beset by violence and tribalism were given new life in September 2015 as coups were mounted in Burundi and Burkina Faso. And though a majority of African countries have embraced democracy and, at least in theory, accepted its structures, the tradition is a weak one still and a change of government can more easily be enacted by a coup rather than through the ballot box. In Burkina Faso, landlocked and poor, a former member of the country’s military announced over the air waves that it had taken control shortly before countrywide elections were due to be held. A former ally of Blaise Compaoré, the long-lasting head of state who had been ousted in a coup a year earlier (in September 2015), was named as the new head of state. Initial violence led to the death of three opponents of the coup – and more violence was expected. The country’s borders were closed and a night curfew was imposed. It was the sixth coup in the country’s history since independence from France in 1960. The country’s interim president and prime minister were arrested. A communiqué criticized the electoral authority for barring supporters of Compaoré from voting. The coup leaders announced that General Gilbert Diendéré, the former head of Compaoré’s presidential guard, was in charge. The coup had followed a familiar pattern: a coming election; complaints about the behaviour of the existing government; military intervention; an interim government and growing evidence that the former head of state was behind the coup and the usual justifications for overturning the constitution.

  An observer in Bujumbura, Burundi, said: ‘Look, they are killing innocent people daily. How can we go and vote when the ruling party doesn’t respect the law?’ Burundi was rocked with violence from April 2015 when the ruling party announced that President Nkurunziza would try and extend his time in power and run for a third term. More than 100 people died. There was also an attempted military coup in May that provoked further violence before it was put down. In a programme designed to maintain Nkurunziza in power, the government harassed opposition and ordinary members of society, while foreign outlets were closed. Violence and intimidation ensured that the President obtained his third term in office, a move that went against the country’s constitution. In the end, the head of the electoral commission announced that Nkurunziza had won 69.41 per cent of the vote while his nearest rival, Agathon Rwase, leader of the National Liberation Forces, had only taken 18.98 per cent. The government faced the task of disarming thousands of soldiers and former rebels and creating a new national army, as well as many political, social and economic challenges.

  Everyone wants democracy except those in power. As the colonial empires faced their demise, many of the liberation movements based their demands for independence on the democracy that was practised at home by the colonial powers, most notably Britain and France. Democracy was indeed a ready tool in the hands of those fighting to force the colonial powers to relinquish their hold. Once independence had been won, however, rule according to democratic norms was not sustained. The new regimes that came to power might proclaim that democracy was their ideal, but it was an ideal that was often pushed aside. In many cases a one-party state or a military dictatorship was adopted. Most African colonies came to independence during the Cold War to find that the Western powers were only too eager to deal with one-party states and thereby confer legitimacy upon them. Even as the West insisted that democracy was the best form of government, African leaders discovered a new self-confidence and with it a growing determination to pursue politics in their own way. Perhaps the 1994 elections in South Africa represented the high point in the achievement of democracy on the continent. During the 1990s the West worked hard to persuade African leaders to adopt democratic practices that in many cases were tied to Western aid. In the post-Cold War years the West put considerable time and energy into insisting that democracy yielded the best form of government, but in the process they failed to understand or take into account the political forces at work in African countries: that democracy was an instrument on the road to power and not an end in itself, and that ethnic claims on the centre could destroy a neat democratic solution as to who has and who does not have political power.

  Indeed, the US government published a road map on democratization that set out a neat pattern of achievement: struggle, transition, institutionalization, elections and then a constitution. The ruling parties in many African countries were becoming adept at controlling the democratic process by a variety of stratagems that embraced corruption and vote-rigging, while in the extreme cases the coup or civil war became the ultimate policy in place of a democratic election. Even so, lip service was always paid to democracy.

  When, at the end of the century, an agreed approach to African development with Western aid was spelled out in the call for an African Renaissance, and a New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) was agreed in 2001, Africans saw this as yet another way of controlling Africa by means of aid. The West’s promise of New Millennium Goals had to be set alongside African acceptance of the ongoing aid packages. At the same time, China had now appeared on the scene as a major aid donor, operating far more to the taste of African leaders than the Western system that it now challenged.

  THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO AND ITS NEIGHBOURS

  The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has experienced continuous violence before and since achieving independence from Belgium in 1960. The years 1960–65 bore witness to a political bloodbath and the DRC was the first major independent country to experience a Cold War confrontation between the USA and the USSR. The DRC suffered an uneasy ‘dictatorship’ under Mobutu Sese Seko until his downfall at the end of the century when he was replaced by Laurent Kabila. The country then became the centre of ‘Africa’s Great War’ (1998–2005). For much of this time, the Western powers stood back rather than intervened in the conflict. Was this reluctance to intervene because the West thought it might be called upon to establish law and order? Or was it the vast storehouse of minerals that revived Western interest once the ‘Great War’ had come to an end? The name ‘Congo’ acts as a reminder of violence in Africa: it is a benighted country with civil disturbances and rival militias feuding for resources that find their way through Uganda and Rwanda to greedy external markets. Hutu military forces that fled the Tutsi seizure of Rwanda formed the Interahamwe in eastern Congo and ultimately their presence and the cross-border raids they launched against Uganda and Rwanda provided the justification for Rwanda to maintain part of its well-trained army on DRC territory.

  After a brief war, the rebel army of Laurent Kabila, who proclaimed himself to be the country’s new president in 1997, tried to persuade his eastern allies Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their forces from the DRC. However, the Rwandans only retreated to Goma, where they lau
nched a new rebel movement, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), to be led by the Tutsis who now wanted to overthrow Kabila. In their turn the Ugandans created another rebel movement, the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC) under Jean-Pierre Bemba. In 1998, the two rebel movements launched what was to be known as Africa’s ‘Great War’. They were led by Rwandan or Ugandan troops while three southern African countries – Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe – entered the war on Kabila’s side. In return for their aid they demanded a share of the DRC’s vast resources. Then in January 2001 Laurent Kabila was assassinated; his son Joseph took his father’s place and immediately called for peace talks to end the war. A peace deal with Uganda and Rwanda was agreed by which they were to withdraw their forces from the DRC while a UN Peacekeeping force (MONUC) was installed in April. But Rwanda would not maintain the peace and kept its forces in eastern Congo to act as a base from which to plunder the minerals of the region. Clashes between different ethnic groups provided a further excuse to keep their troops in the DRC. Kabila then brokered another deal by which he agreed to share power with his own DRC rebels and by June 2003 all foreign armies, except that of Rwanda, had left the country. Rwanda, however, wanted to control the vast mineral resources of the region whose leading ores were diamonds, copper, zinc and coltan. A provisional DRC government was set up until arrangements for elections could be made.

  On 30 July 2006 the DRC held its first multi-party elections since independence and a new constitution was drawn up. Joseph Kabila won 45 per cent of the votes and his main opponent 20 per cent. However, these results were disputed and led to violence in Kinshasa over 20–22 August: sixteen people were killed before the police and UN forces regained control. A second election was held on 29 October, and this time Kabila won 70 per cent of the votes cast and was sworn in as President on 6 December. But violence continued in the eastern Congo between rival militias and Rwandan forces. By 2010 estimates for the entire region suggested that as many as 45,000 people a month were dying of malnutrition and disease as well as a consequence of continued fighting between the different militias. Estimates of casualties in Africa’s Great War (1998–2003) as a whole were between 900,000 to 5 million dead. It will take generations before the DRC recovers fully from this devastation.

  When there was no actual fighting to contend with, a slow recovery of the economy was possible, though there were still huge problems: corruption, instability provoked by the warring militias, piracy of the resources that were produced and a sense of danger and risk in an area that should be one of the most prosperous in the world. Greed continues to motivate the fight to control the abundant resources of the region and goes back to King Leopold of Belgium whose ruthless exploitation of his ‘Free State’ established both a pattern and an expectation of violence. The failure of the central government (with or without UN backing) and the blatant theft carried out by DRC’s eastern neighbours means that one of the richest regions of the world has one of the most miserable, fearful and poverty-stricken populations. It is estimated that the DRC’s untapped mineral resources amount to $14 trillion. After years of deprivation the country needs to be left alone to establish political stability, while the world community should force Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw entirely from the DRC.

  The DRC’s vast natural wealth has also made it a target for development-hungry countries and corporations to the north of the continent – more recently the USA and the EU has been joined by China, as well as a new generation of business exploiters such as India and Malaysia. In January 2008 China made its largest investment in Africa when it pledged $59bn for development of infrastructure in return for minerals. China agreed to rebuild 2,050 miles of roads, repair 2,000 miles of railways, build 32 hospitals and 145 health centres, install two electricity distribution networks and construct two hydro-power dams and two new airports. Such Chinese bounty attracted comparisons with Western aid and in Kinshasa they say that the Europeans are now largely playing catch-up to the Chinese but they are unlikely ever to succeed.

  Change is possible. Between 2010 and 2012 economic growth in the DRC reached 7 per cent after the government signed a Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility with the IMF in 2009. The world was ready enough to improve production in the DRC if this could open the way to growth. Meanwhile, China has made it plain that it is prepared to invest huge sums in the DRC that would focus upon resuscitating the country’s infrastructure – sums that the West either could not or would not match.

  Under the long and despotic rule of Paul Kagame (President from the year 2000), Rwanda has achieved a degree of stability. Aided by the West, Rwanda built up a military machine far superior to its economic capacity and was able to maintain 10,000 troops in eastern Congo. A UN report of 2002 had recommended sanctions against certain companies and individuals, including a number from Rwanda, though the Rwanda Commerce Minister at the time, Dr Alexandre Lyambabaje, told BBC News online: ‘Up to now we have been meeting the UN inspectors and they have not been able to give us evidence of what is in the report.’

  Although Rwanda is a very small country, it is militarily very powerful and this has enabled it to intervene with considerable impact in eastern Congo. By 2005 rising prices for commodities and ores intensified competition for the rich mineral resources of the DRC, and economic growth in Rwanda has been achieved not least upon the mined ores from the eastern DRC which have been pirated by Rwanda. In 2005, Henri Mova, the DRC’s Information minister commented ‘Rwanda lives economically off Congo’s back now through a mafia-like exploitation of the zones it has occupied’.

  BURUNDI

  The modern state of Burundi was born in bloodshed when it achieved its independence on 1 July 1962. The rule of King Mwambutsa IV ended in a coup and from 1965 the dominant politician was a Tutsi officer, Michel Micombero (who became prime minister). He carried out purges of Hutus who were still working in the civil service so as to further entrench the Tutsis in power. Further purges of the Hutus in 1971 led to Hutu retaliation and bloody massacres resulting in 100,000 dead and a further 100,000 rendered homeless. In November 1976 Colonel Jean-Baptise Bagaza (chief of military staff) overthrew Micombero and tried to bring about reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis. An army coup in 1987 replaced Bagaza with Pierre Buyoya until 1993. However, in 1988 an explosion of ethnic tensions led to massacres of first Tutsis by Hutus and then retaliation massacres of Hutus by Tutsis. In 1990 the government issued a Charter of National Unity that bestowed equal rights to Tutsi, Hutu and Twa, although efforts at reconciliation did not work. Instead, a civil war ensued and between 1993 and 2000 some 200,000 people were killed.

  The new century saw 500,000 refugees fleeing from the ongoing violence and from 1997 Buyoya was prosecuting an all-out war against Hutu rebels. During the 1990s Hutu and Tutsi killing had become the norm. Burundi entered the twenty-first century deeply troubled as it tried laboriously to create a working democratic system. Following the mediation of South Africa, a power-sharing agreement was set up in 2001 and most of the rebel groups agreed a ceasefire.

  In 2005 Burundians voted in the first parliamentary elections since the start of the civil war. The main Hutu rebel groups won the election and their leader Pierre Nkurunziza became president. The new government faced the task of disarming thousands of soldiers and former rebels and creating a new national army. The Nkurunziza government was re-elected in 2010, although it had shown little ability in calming the situation in the past. Five years later, in 2015, all the signs pointed to a new bloodbath and the further re-election of Nkurunziza in July 2015 reignited fears of another civil war and genocide. Opponents of the Nkurunziza regime called upon the United Nations to intervene, although it had hardly acted with distinction in the past. Between 300 and 400 murders were committed over six months (though the figure was probably much higher). Nkurunziza set a deadline for rebels to hand in their arms, but as one of his critics alleged: ‘Nkurunziza has a strategy of eliminating all his opponents one by one.’

/>   Human rights groups were recording all the killings, assassinations and torture as they occurred. Meanwhile Belgium advised its citizens to leave the country and the EU advised its staff to leave as well. A UN Security Council resolution called for urgent talks and for the groundwork to be laid for peacekeepers to be employed to bring the country back from the brink of genocide. The Burundi government did not officially respond to the UN resolution. The main opposition group, UPRONA, said: ‘We deplore that the UN did not decide to deploy peace enforcement forces in the near future.’ As the police continued to kill and wound civilians, the atmosphere in Burundi appeared to contain all the tensions that had preceded the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. There was still no lead from the UN.

  THE EU AND AFRICA

  ‘It is now time to develop the basic principles that govern the relationship between Africa and the EU,’ according to the EU–Africa Summit in April 2014. Although meetings between the AU and the EU may draw up principles of joint behaviour, there is always the sense in these conferences that enlightenment is being passed from the EU to the African contingent and never any indication that the EU in its turn has much to learn.

  At the beginning of the century the EU had made specific efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs came about in part as a response to China and its expansion of activities on the African continent as much as an attainable target. In 2005, despite being the main donor to Africa, the EU should still have collectively increased its official aid to 0.56 per cent of gross national income (GNI) and then made the new target 0.7 per cent by 2015. Achieving the MDGs may appear to have been generous over the years 2000 to 2015, but it was the best way to help the AU countries reach their development goals. The West’s reaction to China’s no-strings-attached aid looked muddled at first, but from 2005 onwards the EU had resumed its former strategy and strings with aid had become acceptable again. It seems now that Africa’s economic problems have not been overcome – the Sahel countries have their civil wars, the French send troops to Mali and the CAR exactly as they would have done in colonial times. An EU spokesman claims that the road to good governance remains long. With a view to restoring the ‘state’ in African countries, the EU will work towards building elective and credible central institutions – to which end it will define good governance in support of the African Peer Review Mechanism (agreed in 2003).