Was Madeleine Albright correct in hailing Africa’s ‘strong new leaders’ as ‘beacons of hope’ during her recent tour of the continent? Chris McGreal reports
aThey have been hailed as the “new breed” of African leaders, the kind of men who front this continent’s renaissance heralded by Thabo =0BMbeki. Others have disparaged them as little different from their predecessors, noting that every one of those now embraced as Africa’s best hope since independence came to power at the point of a gun, and not one has held genuinely open elections.
But whatever the merits of the next generation of leaders, this year saw Africa’s old politics turned on its head and throw up the greatest test to date of just how “new” the new breed are.
The overthrow of former Zaire’s veteran despot, Mobutu Sese Seko, exposed beyond doubt that Africa’s old guard can no longer rely on defunct alliances. The manner of Mobutu’s departure would have been unthinkable just five years ago, even after the end of the Cold War. France, and possibly the United States, would surely have intervened to prop up an old friend, especially in the face of such an unreliable challenger as Laurent Kabila.
But more significant than the retreat of direct Western intervention — brought about not just by the Cold War’s demise, but also the American debacle in Somalia and France’s double dealing during the Rwandan genocide — was the role of Zaire’s neighbours in its war.
Tiny Rwanda’s army chief, General Paul Kagame, broke all the old rules by invading the vast country that was Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, to bring down Mobutu. He did so with the firm backing of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who helped pluck Kabila from 30 years of obscure and sporadic resistance against Mobutu’s regime to front the invasion.
While most of the fighting was led by the Rwandans, Ugandan troops played an important role in the early stages of the war. Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos dispatched forces across the border to help Kabila as he swept to final victory. Ethiopia’s Males Zenawi gave his support. Zambia helped out by allowing forces fighting for Kabila to pass through its territory. So did otherwise ostracised Burundi.
The key players in the drama were praised by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as Africa’s “strong new leaders” and “beacons of hope” during her tour of the continent in December.
Museveni personifies the new order, though he has been in power for 12 years. The relatively orderly and decent administration he has imposed in the wake of Milton Obete and Idi Amin has won him much praise. The US State Department has nudged aside congressional criticism of Museveni’s ban on party politics by calling Uganda a “uni-party democracy”.
Museveni was fated to lead only a relatively small country, as is Kagame as Rwanda’s vice-president, army chief and the real power in the land. But between them they threw up a man who by association is now deemed to be part of their club, and will provide the acid test of whether this “new breed” lives up to the billing.
With Kabila’s administration rests a considerable amount of influence over whether the efforts of his backers bear fruit in helping to fundamentally reshape Africa, or whether they will simply be remembered as a valiant failure.
As president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kabila inherited a plundered country. But its size and potential wealth place it at the heart of Central Africa’s revival.
Political stability and development could potentially lay the ground for imaginative solutions to the seemingly unbridgeable divisions in Rwanda and Burundi. But, first, the Congo has to be dragged back on to its feet.
In Kinshasa there is some evidence of a different mindset from the nihilism of Mobutu’s rule. Corruption is still rife. The government shows a strong streak of authoritarianism, including a ban on political activity. And the Cabinet is severely lacking in experience.
But the new administration has already brought a degree of responsible fiscal management severely lacking in recent years, and drawn up plans for economic revival which have been given a nod of approval by the World Bank, the US and the European Union — touchstones for the “new breed” leaders seeking international approval.
Others have ample reason to wish Kabila success. Kagame organised the October 1996 invasion of Zaire in an attempt to dampen the rising instability caused by the sprawling Hutu refugee camps around Goma. He is a shrewd tactician who once served Museveni as his intelligence chief before taking up arms to liberate his own country, Rwanda, from Hutu extremist domination.
Kagame won that war in 1994, but only after a genocide in which the abhorrent Hutu regime organised the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Nonetheless, he has long recognised that just because his overwhelmingly Tutsi army was victorious, the Tutsi minority’s best interests are not served by a repressive dictatorship. Neighbouring Burundi is a sobering reminder of that.
Kagame and his victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front made a sincere attempt to reach out to moderate Hutus and establish a broad-based government. There was much talk of reconciliation and a new Rwanda. It was undermined not least by the international community’s indefensible maintenance of the sprawling Hutu refugee camps in the Congo while the extremists re-organised.
Yet Kagame’s hope that his army’s invasion of the Congo and clearing of the camps would bring greater stability to his tiny nation have not been fulfilled.
Hutu militias have reorganised inside Rwanda, targeting Tutsi civilians in ever more frequent massacres. At times, Kagame’s army has responded with brutality against civilians, perhaps frustrated that the real target proves elusive.
Above all, Kagame’s image as a man of the new wave has been tainted by the massacres of Rwandan Hutus in eastern Congo. There is little doubt that some, if not most, of the slaughtered Hutus were women, children and unarmed men. And there is little doubt that Rwandan Tutsi soldiers were responsible for some of the killings.
Africa’s old guard has looked on nervously through the year. Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi can feel confident of being re-elected for another five years on December 29. But Kenya’s electoral system can hardly be considered free and fair, and the conduct of the government remains strongly authoritarian.
Moi must have wondered if Mobutu’s demise might presage his own, given the average Kenyan’s unhappy lot. For the moment, with questions still hanging over the “new breed”, Kenya’s president can breath a little easier. But if Kabila can be dragged around to proving a better president than his detractors predict, a new philosophy may truly have taken root in Africa.