Egypt’s Uprising: Is Africa Sliding Back to the Early1980s?

Published on 8th July 2013

Recently, African leaders converged in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to take stock of their success and celebrate their “unity” which has remained elusive since the death of Nkrumah. Since 1990 when African intellectuals began to describe a “wave of democratisation” sweeping across the continent, Africa has been rapidly dismantling the vestiges of authoritarianism, military rule and satellite states.

A summit of the African Union’s predecessor for most of the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by military leaders: Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Samuel Doe, Museveni, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Mobutu Sese Seko, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Jerry Rawlings, Muammar Gadaffi, Ibrahim and Babangida, among others. Some king chiefs, one party supremos like Robert Mugabe, Daniel arap Moi, Kenneth Kaunda, Habib Borguiba, Omar Bongo, Paul Biya, Felix Houphouet-Boigny and the likes would also be in attendance. 

The end of the cold war led to the inevitable dismantling of cold war relationships. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the collapse of client states that failed to quickly realign themselves with the new unipolar world order. “Smart states” like Angola and Uganda survived the first wave of reversals by “resetting” themselves to the priorities of the West, adopting donor policies even where these policies were so disruptive and disingenuous.

Uganda Cooperative Union is spot-on, for example, for demanding that the government “recapitalise” their once giant Union with part of the $700 million in stabilisation taxes levied on the coffee sector in 1990-1992 when coffee prices rose above normal. The 30 per cent stabilisation tax levied at the behest of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank was never to return, as Unions and Cooperatives began a decade of decline and eventual collapse reduced to “selling” dumped US cooking oil for recurrent operations.

In other instances, age intervened. Following the Boigny model, political change arrived in form of either a smooth transition from father to heir, for example, the path of choice for Gabon, Egypt and North Korea whose father to son political transitions have many admirers on the continent; or failed transitions like the DRC, Tunisia (where a senile President Borguiba had to be led out of State House faculties impaired) and Malawi under Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

In 2010, there was fear that a wealthier Africa has a real opportunity to participate in the global economy due to the growing importance of its natural resources, commodities and rapidly transforming urban populations. This fear is not entirely unfounded. The list of failed states continues to grow.

Already Ivory Coast has descended into ethnic mayhem as militia aligned to  Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara battle for power. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, (Kenya for a moment looked like a failed state after the 2007 election debacle) and now the limits of authoritarianism have been tested to breaking point in Tunisia and soon in most of Arab Africa.

Each region will have a major failed state: Southern Africa led by Zimbabwe, West Africa led by Nigeria, Mali and the Ivory Coast, North Africa anchored by Egypt. Major demographic states like the DRC, Sudan met that definition a long time ago, unable to defend their borders and turning millions of their populations into “paper targets” for warlords.

Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Angola are such a patchwork of reality. Western largesse remains largely mobilised to maintain parasitic relationships that continue to impoverish the poor and have assembled impossible political bureaucracies at the helm to create the part cellphone - part teargas - part military state.

A Nigerian American professor friend of mine on his first trip to economic miracle Tanzania summed it up: Chaos and disorganization. After landing in the middle of a blackout, the immigration officer was so kind to my Chinua Achebe friend that he helped fill out his landing form under lantern light. My Achebe friend marveled at the tourists on the streets, economic venturers at every street corner but appalled at the core ineptitude of this economic miracle.

In Uganda, many of Kampala’s hills are now dissected by beautiful villas just like Kenya. If you were flying overhead, you could miss Nairobi or Kampala’s slums. It’s only when you fly closer to the ground that you realise that if you suffered a heart attack, a boda boda is your best bet to get to a hospital on time, not an ambulance. This is best explained in our cities by the time our fire tenders take before reaching fire scenes.

You have to see the age of Kenya’s fire engines to wonder why riot police must wear $45,000 worth of anti-riot gear pinned to their bodies while the fire engines stay in such a precarious state.

Sadly, whenever we have a “Tunisia” or an “Ivory Coast” in the news, the intelligentsia argue how this was just an exception, not a trend. Neat rows of ‘cooked’ statistics provide the “ammo” for these arguments. Only fearless, scientific, progressive and revolutionary thinkers can save Africa.

By Okwaro Oscar Plato.

The author is a political analyst with Quadz Consulting Africa.


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