AFRICA: Fresh Wind of Change Brings Hope

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

LONDON, Jun 10 1997 (IPS) - A fresh wind of change is bringing hope to Africa, hope of eventual relief from conflict, hunger, disease and poverty.

Those hopes are beginning to evolve following changes in governments in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and most recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

“Those countries have competent leaderships… who will not resort to looting their countries,” said former Tanzania president Julius Nyerere, voicing a degree of optimism during a recent visit to London.

Nyerere, who ruled Tanzania from 1963 to 1985, said all the five leaders — Isiah Affwerki of Eritrea, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Laurent-Desire Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo — got rid of h ard-core Cold War dictators.

The latest victim, to be swept by the broom of those ‘young turks’, is Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.

“The Mobutus of Africa are on their way,” Nyerere told a packed lecture, titled ‘Africa Today and Tomorrow’, at the London School of Economics over the weekend.

He said most of African dictators like Mobutu, who abused and plundered their countries, were propped up by the superpowers during the Cold War. “And now that the Cold War is over…it is time they go.”

Mobutu, toppled after 32 years in power, was a dour Cold War era disciple of Washington. His role in the conflict in Angola, at the behest of the United States, has earned him the wrath of the Luanda government which played a leading role in the Kabila i nsurgency.

“That new alliance runs from Eritrea on the Red Sea to Angola on the Atlantic Ocean,” said Keith Hart of the Africa Studies Centre at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

At the heart of this sweeping revolution is Museveni whose overriding objective appears to be to change the political face of the east and central Africa, adds Sir Anai Kelueljang, editor of the London-based Southern Sudan Bulletin magazine.

Prominent in this alliance is Colonel John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), whose rag-tag rebel army has been battling successive governments in the Sudan since May 1983.

Garang, a contemporary of Museveni at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s, shares the same philosophy as those new crop of African leaders. Garang cut his political teeth in Dar es Salaam, where radical African socialists sojourned when Nyerere

was in power in Tanzania.

Nyerere strongly believes that the successful stories in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo would compel military regimes in the Sudan, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Nigeria to democratise.

But apart from Burundi and Sierra Leone, the Kabila-type of insurgency that overran Zaire in seven months is unlikely to happen in Sudan and Nigeria.

“The crisis in the Sudan is too complex. And it will not be a walkover in Khartoum as it happened in Zaire,” said Kelueljang.

Hassan al Turabi, a top Sudanese spiritual leader has warned that Sudan has the capacity to destabilise its neighbours. He claims Khartoum is ready to unleash hundreds of thousands of Eritrean, Ethiopian and Ugandan dissidents living in the Sudan to wrea k havoc in their respective countries.

As for Nigeria, it is chief among nations determined to ensure that change in Africa suits its agenda. “Stability in Nigeria is important for the peace in the entire West Africa sub-region,” Nyerere said. “Without Nigeria there would have been a lot o f instability in Liberia.”

Nigeria is heading a motley West African peace-keeping force (Ecomog) in Liberia. Ecomog has also been mandated to monitor the polls in Liberia, a small nation along the Atlantic Ocean, founded by freed slaves from the United States in the last century.

Nigeria is also currently engaged in an unenviable effort to reverse a bloody military coup by junior army officers in Sierra Leone.

Nyerere expects General Sani Abacha of Nigeria to ditch his military uniform for civilian attire — like Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings of Ghana — if he is ever elected by his country’s estimated 100 million people in the 1998 proposed general electio ns.

But for all military-ruled Nigeria’s efforts by force of arms, Nyerere hopes that it will be the Museveni-led alliance of leaders, whose lands cut across Africa, that will provide the strength to bring democratic stability to rest of Africa.

Additionally, south of that buffer zone is the 11-nation Southern Africa Development Cooperation (SADC) group whose leaders such as Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have made it clear that they will not tolerate any military r egime in their region.

SADC, powered by the might of South Africa, is the economic powerhouse of Africa. “I think that some of these crisis will disappear when Africa begins forming regional blocs,” said Hart.

Nyerere said he expects the East African Community (EAC), being revived by Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and to include Rwanda and Burundi, to eventually merge with SADC to form a solid economic and political bloc.

In West Africa, the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) grow until it is ready to merge with SADC into a single bloc. Hart believes that the formation of such a bloc will help Africa, which commands a meagre 0.7 percent of world national

product, to get out of the poverty trap.