In Africa today the suffering is caused from within. Wole Soyinka laments the loss of post-apartheid confidence and calls for stronger UN intervention
A wave of anomie, even a breakdown of humanity, is sweeping across the continent that must be particularly galling to those who so confidently trumpeted an “African renaissance”.
What we see today is the opposite: a reversal of the progress that seemed to have been signalled by the end of apartheid. At the heart of this reversal is the power syndrome. And it is destroying Africa, country by country.
Certainly, in Africa today the terrible suffering is not caused by external enemies, but from within. African leaders have created one another as their own worst enemies. And they are dragging their populations down into the abyss as they seek to establish their own individual domination.
Look at the crude and vicious way that President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is fomenting racial division to stay in power, manipulating genuine racial grievances for political ends. For 20 years he has been in power, all the while doing nothing about land injustice. For that alone, he ought to resign as an incompetent leader.
But suddenly, when his power is threatened, his lagging sense of justice awakes! It is political opportunism of the most despicable kind, a total slap in the face to the South African spirit of reconciliation that was going to raise the continent.
Instead of choosing men like former president Nelson Mandela as an example, leaders like Mugabe would rather see their countries on fire than give up power. I have spoken extensively to both the leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Privately, they tell me this war is not necessary. What, then, pushes them? Why don’t they call off this war, even with the United Nations threatening sanctions against them? How can one explain this madness? I can’t.
I further cannot explain the steep descent into barbarism of Africans against themselves. It was Belgian King Leopold of the so-called Congo Free State who started the practice of amputating the hands of the children of his enemies. This brutal method now seems to have spread like some psycho virus to warlords, including Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in Sierra Leone.
These men have indoctrinated their followers into the total abandonment of any traditional notion of man’s humanity to man. What new kind of monsters have been born in Africa?
Despite what Africans are doing to themselves, the international community, particularly Europe, does bear some responsibility for the destruction of our societies wrought by colonialism and by power plays during the Cold War. From that historical perspective, the abandonment of Africa today is not at all justified.
Further, what is at stake now in Sierra Leone is not just the rescue of the UN peacekeepers, but the rescue of the UN itself. Can we allow the UN to be abandoned, discredited and divested of moral influence? If so, the world will see only a cruel panoply of violently contesting forces, and not only in Africa. I do not envy the task of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in this rescue operation because it is against all odds.
Of course, this means that when the UN goes anywhere, it does not fool around with incompetent, lightly armed or underfunded troops. There is little point to future UN operations unless they will have what it takes to match the fighting forces on the ground and dominate the situation.
If Sierra Leone or the other UN peacekeeping failures point to any lesson, it is that it is foolish to rely on the goodwill of the warring parties, even if they have signed peace agreements. Not only is the UN the only entity concerned enough to try to do anything in Africa, it also should be that entity.
The idea of regional African peacekeeping forces won’t work. When the Nigerian army routed the rebels in Sierra Leone a few years back, the Organisation of African Unity was euphoric at this specific success of regional peacekeeping. But the excitement was premature because it laid the seeds of the current strife.
Whenever a country goes it alone against another country, it becomes an emotive point. Indeed, the rhetoric of the rebels in Sierra Leone was exactly this: “Look, we are being colonised by Nigeria.” So there was great pressure for Nigeria to leave.
When I discussed this at the time with Boutros Boutros-Ghali (the former UN secretary general), who in turn discussed it with Mandela, we agreed that the departure of Nigerian troops could not leave a vacuum but must be filled immediately by a multinational force. Otherwise – and this is what happened – the rebels would use the anti-Nigerian sentiment to exploit any vacuum and try to seize power.
The point is that warring parties in Africa will see any regional African force with a big power like Nigeria involved as bent on pressing its own interests against theirs. Everyone in Africa knows which states are supporting which rebels in the neighbouring areas. Any such force, assembled by the OAU or otherwise, will be riddled with suspicions about the motives of the participants, thus only further muddying the already filthy waters.
If peacekeeping or peacemaking is going to work in Africa, it must be done by an impartial organisation with no stake in the local fight, that is committed to a global view of resolving crises, no matter where. It is not a matter of using any force, but of legitimate force. Only the UN can fill this role.