Bro Abdou,

Thanks for forwarding this harrowing rendering of our collective welfare
dilemma.

I cannot remember when Africa has ever been so much in the news as it is
now. But as usual, it has always been Western journalists and media parading
Africa's seemingly endless litanies of woes and obituaries: unpredictable
outbreaks of Ebola in Gabon and Central Africa; the vicious scourge of
malaria amongst Gambian toddlers, the outbreak of fresh slaughter in
Liberia, widespread famine throughout Southern Africa, the ravages of AIDS
throughout sub-Saharan Africa (even in Gambia), and mass and massive poverty
all over the place. True,  the recent burying of the OAU for something
tentatively hoped to prove better, the impressive but still rhetorical
resolve of respectable leaders to live up to the promises of NEPAD - a
commitment to observe and respect the Human Rights of Africans, and to
rethink and reshape Africa's economic thrust - all suggest that the news
have not been all bad. But the rate at which we are burying the dead in
Africa simply dwarfs the speed at which the wires are able to report the
good news. John Jeter's article on the Post just confirms that position.
Nevertheless, I am placing a caveat lector on the said article.

It has been fashionable for Western journalists to make sweeping and
reckless generalisations in describing historical circumstances in Africa,
the result, I presume, partly of propagandistic leanings and partly
professional indescretion toward all matters African. For how else must we
read Jeter's assertion that .. "we're seeing an entire continent struggle to
make the passage from authoritarian, Marxist-style government to a modern,
market-driven democracy".  Such wooly thinking in a paper as major as the
Washington Post, with its authoritative pitch, intructs EVERYONE that all
African governments were not only Marxist (sic!) but that these governments
are responsible for widespread destitution in the continent. Even where one
is unwilling to be ideologically strident, that kind of assertion is simply
false. Most African governments, at anytime after independence, were
capitalist. Much less than half paid lip-service to a marxist-leninist
ideology and even fewer still made any serious inroads to experiment with
socialist economic organisation. It is incredible that Jeter fails to
mention that Sotuth Africa, the subject of his work, is  perhaps modern
history's most grotesque capitalist monstrosity! He can therefore be
forgiven for missing the observation that the rest of the world indeed
reflects Apartheid cum post-apartheid's structural discrepancies through and
through. Capitalism like socialism, equally failed in Africa., but only less
dramatically, wrote Ousman Manjang. It is our business to find out why and
put the necessary corrections in place!

On the other hand, the people of South Africa must push for the Mbeki
government to take its responsibility and implement BIG. It will be a more
significant political and economic milestone that all the huge talk about
NEPAD. African governments but especially African peoples need to understand
that the governments they elect and pay tax to are responsible for their
welfare; it is time that African governments stop liberating themselves from
the people. As soon as the governments begin committing themsselves
practically to feed every citizen, they would have come a long way in
respecting their Human Rights.

Momodou S Sidibeh, Stockholm/Kartong

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