Africa, Botswana and South Africa
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Notes Preface 1. Mauritius, where governments have changed as a result of elections, was independent in March 1968. 2. There were parallels with the democratization process based upon ‘working- class self-help’ in nineteenth-century England. Its characteristic was not individual effort but, as Hopkins stresses, ‘co-operation’ – people ‘working together to safeguard employment, and to make provision for sickness and ill-health’. The friendly society movement greatly expanded, co-operatives did likewise, and the organization and action of trade unions led on to working-class representation in parliament. Eric Hopkins, Working-Class Self-Help in Nineteenth-Century England: Responses to Industrialization, Lon- don, UCL Press, 1995, p. 3. 3. ‘Opposition to democracy is not as moribund as public rhetoric might lead us to suppose.’ Anthony Arblaster, Democracy, Milton Keynes, Open Univer- sity Press, 1987, p. 89. 1 Autocratic Elites and Enfeebled Masses: Africa, Botswana and South Africa 1. K. Good, ‘Corruption and Mismanagement in Botswana: A Best-Case Exam- ple?’ The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 32(3), 1994. But in mid-2000 there were reports of driver licences and residence and work permits being obtained through corrupt means. Joseph Balise, in The Mid- week Sun (Gaborone), 24 May, and Stryker Motlaloso, in Mmegi (Gaborone), 28 July 2000. 2. From 1966 to 1996 Botswana achieved the fastest growth of GDP per capita in the world. J. Clark Leith, Botswana: A Case Study of Economic Policy Prudence and Growth, Washington, DC, The World Bank Group, 31 August 1999, p. 1, and International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, Washington, DC, May 1999, p. 146. 3. Leys uses Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of capitalist barbarism, which referred to the destruction of culture, the dictatorship of militarism, dissolution into chaos and anarchy, and economic crises, and sees it gradually engulfing most of the sub-continent. Colin Leys, ‘Confronting the African Tragedy’, New Left Review (London), 204, March/April 1994, p. 34. What follows here is a consideration of representative and significant trends, not in any sense a complete audit of barbarism – Bokasa’s Central African Empire, Idi Amin’s Uganda, the warlords of Somalia, Mugabe’s massacres in Matabeleland, and Dhlakama’s Renamo in Mozambique, for instance, are not considered. 4. Mark Huband, The Liberian Civil War, London, Frank Cass, 1998, p. xvi. 194 Notes 195 5. According to Stephen Ellis ‘the figure of 150,000 to 200,000 commonly used for war deaths over the whole 1989–1997 period are a very high estimate’, and he suggests ‘a total of some 60–80,000 deaths directly caused by the war’ as ‘no more than an order of magnitude’. Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy, London, Hurst & Company, 1999, p. 316. 6. Jean-Francois Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Beatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa, Oxford, James Currey, 1999, p. xv. 7. Ibid., p. xv. 8. Business Day ( Johannesburg), 8 January 1999. 9. The Economist (London), 9 January 1999. Roadblocks were mounted to pre- vent people from leaving, and whole streets of houses were set on fire, sometimes after locking the residents inside. Lansana Fofana, ‘The Visita- tion’, BBC Focus on Africa (London), 10(2), April–June 1999, pp. 28–9. 10. Bayart et al., op. cit., p. xv. 11. Fighting swayed backwards and forwards in the Congo in the late 1990s between ‘Ninjas’ and ‘Cocoyes’ militia forces, each led by a competing Pres- ident, in which a victory was celebrated by the looting of the capital, and the country’s main artery between Brazzaville and Pointe Noire remained disrupted for months. The Economist, 25 October 1997. 12. Jonathan Steele, ‘A Catalogue of Hate and Murder’, Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), 23 December 1999. 13. The expenditure on armaments helped to maintain their lifestyles, of course. The report, ‘A Crude Awakening’, by the British pressure group Global Witness, discussed in The Economist, 15 January 2000. 14. Nicholas Shaxson, ‘Endless War’, Business Day, 10 March 1999. 15. Words of the report, cited by Abbey Makoe, in The Star (Johannesburg), 15 April 2000. 16. The Economist, 26 July 1997. Stephen Ellis added that Taylor gained a for- tune from the timber, gold and other natural products of the regions which his forces controlled, as well as from his international criminal linkages (as Bayart noted), and used this to buy arms and thence to run a successful political organization. Mail and Guardian, 25 July 1997. 17. As quoted by Elizabeth Ohene, ‘Chosen by God?’, BBC Focus on Africa, 8(4), October–December 1997. 18. Huband, op. cit., p. 219, and Chris McGreal, The Guardian (London), 13 August 1999. When Mary Harper visited President Taylor she reported that ‘apart from being physically wrecked, Liberia is also a country living with fear … many people are worried that something terrible is still looming around the corner.’ The ‘man who makes sure’ that ‘fear and intimidation are always lurking nearby’ was the Police Director, Charles Taylor’s cousin. Harper, ‘Think Big’, BBC Focus on Africa, 10(2), April–June 1999. 19. The rebels could hardly have done better. They were given four ministerial posts, and Foday Sankoh was accorded the ‘status’ of vice-president, and control of the country’s mineral-resources commission. Business Day, 9 July, and The Economist, 10 July 1999. 20. The United Nations, unusually, attached a disclaimer to this peace agreement, and there were indications that many ordinary people found it ‘pure black- mail’ and repugnant. Edward Conteh, a 52-year-old mechanic whose left arm was hacked off during the RUF assault on Freetown in January, said: ‘I don’t 196 Notes want this type of amnesty. If we have to forgive, then we are ready. But they should not go scot-free. They should admit to their wrongdoings and say sorry.’ E.E.C. Shears-Moses, President of the Sierra Leone Bar Association, said that ‘the government had no right to mortgage the right of the individual to seek legal redress against the man who chopped off their arm or killed their child.’ It laid the ground for future conflict, he added. As quoted by Chris McGreal, ‘I Will Wait. Then I Will Kill Him’, The Guardian (London), 6 August 1999. After eight years of civil war costing perhaps 100 000 deaths, the Alger- ian government offered an amnesty to rebels which specifically excluded ‘blood crimes’, rape or acts of terror in public places. Report by John Burns, The Sunday Independent (Johannesburg), 8 February 2000. 21. James Traub, ‘The Worst Place on Earth’, The New York Review of Books, XLVII (11), 29 June 2000, p. 62. 22. The Economist, 11 December 1999. 23. Quoted by McGreal, The Guardian, 13 August 1999. 24. The United States’ presidential envoy, Rev. Jesse Jackson, had played a large role in gaining acceptance for the Lomé agreement, and he was quoted in early May as comparing Fodah Sankoh to Nelson Mandela. The Economist, 20 May 2000. Jackson was also rumoured to be close to Charles Taylor. 25. According to detailed evidence released by Stephen Pattison of the British foreign office, in Business Day, 2 August 2000. 26. ‘Africa: the Heart of the Matter’, The Economist, 13 May 2000. 27. The Economist, 15 January, and Business Day, 25 January 2000. 28. After ruling Gabon for 31 years, President Omar Bongo won another seven years in power in December 1998 after getting more than two-thirds of the vote in presidential elections. The Economist, 12 December 1998. 29. The Economist, 4 July 1998, p. 44. 30. Huband, op. cit., p. 53, and BBC Focus on Africa, 10(1), January 1999. Huband notes that Compaore was also a ‘significant element’ in regional barbarism; he was linked through marriage to Charles Taylor and to Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, and he and the Ivorian leader extended important assistance to Taylor. Ibid., p. 105. 31. Bayart et al., op. cit., p. 5, and Editorial, The Economist, 3 January 1998. 32. Kaunda, Zambia’s Founding Father, was accused of being a closet foreigner – thus ineligible for high public office – and of being a coup-plotter. President Konan Henri Bedie in the Ivory Coast similarly tried to ban his presidential rival, Alassane Ouattara, from competing in elections by declaring him a foreigner. 33. Per capita income fell from $330 in 1978 to $285 in 1996, corruption steeply worsened, and the country was reduced to what Ngugi wa Thiongo called ‘ten millionaires and ten million poor’. Editorials, The Economist, 3 January 1998, and Mail and Guardian, 23 December 1999. 34. Robert Guest estimates that theft by Nigeria’s military rulers totalled ‘in the tens of billions of dollars’. General Abacha, it is said, transferred ‘$15 million or so to his Swiss bank account every day’ in the 1990s. It conti- nued till the very end of General Abubakar’s transitional government, as the country’s foreign reserves fell from $6.7 billion at the end of 1998 to $4 billion in March 1999. Robert Guest, ‘A Survey of Nigeria’, The Economist, 15 January, p. 6, and ‘Face Value’, The Economist, 5 February 2000. Notes 197 35. Elizabeth Blunt, ‘But Were They Clean?’ BBC Focus on Africa, 10(2), April–June 1999. 36. Peter Cunliffe-Jones, The Star, 28 May 1999. 37. The term was used by Clinton during his visit to six African countries in March 1998, and it intentionally embraced the ‘African Renaissance’ notion used by Nelson Mandela and vigorously employed by his successor Thabo Mbeki. Ray Hartley, ‘A New Wind for Bill Clinton’, The Sunday Times (Johannesburg), 29 March 1998, and The Economist, 8 May 1999, p. 45. 38. Speaking minutes later, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said: ‘I find these thoughts truly demeaning, demeaning of the yearning for human dignity that resides in every African heart.