Karamba,
Thanks for sending in this information, it really wakes me up.
Arnold Beichman's conclusion that" The tragedy of Africa, primarily south of the Sahara, has been its inability to produce democratic leadership in the last half-century since the decolonization movement exploded." Sums it all. Even though i may disagree with him in some of the analysis he made but the fact of the matter is that Leadership, i mean good leadership is a problem in Africa.
And this brings me to the conclusion that rather than view African rulers as buffoons, we should see them and their actions from the perspective of the interests they serve. The failure of democracy and economic development in Africa are due to a large part to the scramble for wealth by predator elites who have dominated African politics. They see the state as a source of personal wealth accumulation. There is high premium on the control of the state, which is the biggest and most easily accessible source of wealth accumulation. The people in power and those who seek power use all means to attain their goal. This includes fostering ethnic sectarianism and political repression. Competition for control of the state, whether between the military and civilian classes or between civilian political parties, is invariably ferocious and generates instability. Gambia is a classic case here, we don't even need to go far.
Franz Fanon in his book 'The Wretched of the Earth' published in 1961 eloquently described the character of the class that inherited power from the colonialists. It is "a sort of little greedy caste, avid and voracious, with the mind of a huckster, only too glad to accept the dividends that the former colonial powers hands out. This get-rich-quick middle class shows itself incapable of great ideas or of inventiveness. It remembers what it has read in European textbooks and imperceptibly it becomes not even the replica of Europe, but its caricature." This class, said Fanon prophetically, is not capable of building industries "it is completely canalised into activities of the intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket. The psychology of the national bourgeoisie is that of a businessman, not that of a captain of industry." The description remains accurate for today's elite who have grown through civilian politics, military governments, business and the civil service.
As long as African political rulers and administrators are drawn from this class of predators, no amount of preaching the virtues of good governance or tuition on public administration will fundamentally alter the quality of governance. This is not to say that constitutional reforms and increasing civil society infrastructure are not important. They are. But they are not the key to solving the problem of bad governance.
Good governance is the effective exercise of power and authority by government in a manner that serves to improve the quality of life of the people. This includes using state power to create a society in which the full development of individuals and of their capacity to control their lives is possible. A ruling class that sees the state solely as a means of expropriating the nation's limited resources is simply incapable of good governance. More specifically, such a class will by its character and mission abuse power.
An underlying cause of many of the manifestations of bad governance, including political repression, corruption and ethnic sectarianism, is the endeavour by the ruling classes to be and remain part of the global elite despite their nation's poverty. The competition for national resources leads to conflict and repression. It is difficult to see how there can be good governance when the orientation of the elite is to stay in the running and be part of the fifth of the world's population that forms the international consumer class.
Bad governance is not a mainly problem of ignorance or lack of infrastructural capacity or even of individual dictators. States in Africa are incapacitated as instruments of development because ruling classes, including people in and outside government, are motivated by objectives that have little to do with the common good. When i look at my son i try to figure out the questions he will asked me when he grow up. I said to myself will i have all the answers for him? Can i even answer those questions?
The Struggle Continues!!!
Ndey Jobarteh
>From: "
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>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list <
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>To:
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>Subject: [www.washtimes.com] The Failures in Africa
>Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 02:38:38 +0000
>
>
[log in to unmask] has sent you an article from The Washington
>Times.
>
>This was in tuesday's Washingtontimes
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
>THE FAILURES IN AFRICA
>
>Arnold Beichman
>Hoover Institution
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
>The tragedy of Africa, primarily south of the Sahara, has
>been its inability to produce democratic leadership in the
>last half-century since the decolonization movement
>exploded.
>
> One can argue that Europe itself hasn't exactly been a
>model in producing democratic leadership — V.I. Lenin, Josef
>Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco,
>Antonio Salazar — but Europe has learned its lessons. Today
>with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, Europe is a
>collection of more-or-less peace-loving democracies.
>
> Not so in Africa. Except for Nelson Mandela and the
>recently deceased Leopold Senghor of Senegal, what
>more-or-less democratic leaders has Africa produced? And now
>we see another African super-tyrant on the move — Robert
>Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who is ready to exterminate his
>opposition rather than surrender his despotic power.
>
> It will not do any longer to blame the European powers
>for Africa's problems. Britain (except for Kenya and the Mau
>Mau), France (except for Algeria), Portugal (except for
>Mozambique and its West African holdings) gave up their
>colonial empires without too much struggle and bloodshed.
>
> What have we seen since the scramble out of Africa
>began in the 1950s? Ethnic dictatorships, serfdom,
>kleptocracy, soaring infant mortality rates, tens of
>millions dying of AIDS and tens of millions already dead, no
>access to clean drinking water by 70 percent of Africans,
>child slavery, genocidal attacks on neighbors by Sierra
>Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and an 18-year civil war in
>Sudan which has taken 2 million lives. Remember Idi Amin,
>Emperor Boukassa, Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, Sekou Toure,
>Kwame Nkrumah? And now we have Mr. Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The
>list seems endless.
>
> Much blame for the African disaster is supposedly due
>to the West, particularly America's "bungling," its refusal,
>regardless of what party is in the White House, to get
>involved and help a helpless Africa get to its feet. But is
>that a valid accusation? It is not.
>
> Despite alliances with France and England, the U.S.
>supported — sometimes covertly through the CIA, sometimes
>openly — anti-colonial movements in Algeria, Tunisia,
>Morocco, Kenya, Cyprus among others. No post-colonial area
>got as much U.S. attention as sub-Saharan Africa going back
>to the days of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. White
>House state dinners, presidential and vice-presidential
>visits to Africa, support for AFL-CIO union activity in
>Africa, vocational training schemes, scholarships, and
>money, money, money. It's no secret where all the money
>went: either into Swiss bank accounts or phony socialist
>schemes, like "Ujamaa," in Julius Nyerere's Tanzania.
>
> Here, almost a half-century since Africa's liberation
>began, and we have a new tyrant, Robert Mugabe. Having ruled
>Zimbabwe for 22 years and fearing defeat in presidential
>balloting next March, he has done everything to prevent a
>free and fair election. Laws passed by Zimbabwe's, or rather
>Mr. Mugabe's, parliament ban independent election monitors,
>restrict voting rights and make it a crime to criticize the
>president. Opposition supporters have been beaten, killed,
>imprisoned.
>
> What are other African leaders doing about this crime
>against democracy? What can they do or say when, as the New
>York Times has pointed out, Angola condones maltreatment of
>journalists, Zambia refused to grant the opposition time on
>government radio during the country's own election last
>month? The Times quotes the International Crisis Group (ICG)
>as saying: "Many [African] governments are hesitant to
>penalize Mugabe this week for something for which they may
>be accused next week." In a special report (obtainable on
>the Web), the ICG states:
>
> "The economic and political turmoil in South Africa's
>northern neighbor threatens the credibility of the embryonic
>New Partnership for African Development [NEPAD], an agenda
>for renewal crafted by [South Africa's President Thabo]
>Mbeki, Nigeria's President Obasanjo, Algeria's President
>Bouteflika, and Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, among
>others as a vehicle for a new relationship between Africa
>and the world.
>
> "While NEPAD seeks to promote Africa's full integration
>into the world economy, the Zimbabwe crisis is further
>marginalizing the continent, producing a decline in
>investment, confidence in local currencies, and tourism. The
>regional southern African economy is threatened further by
>an influx of refugees from Zimbabwe."
>
> And all this comes at a time when Sub-Saharan Africa's
>gross domestic product is about the same as that of Belgium,
>a country with one-forty-fifth the population of Africa as a
>whole, according to the World Bank. Africa's population has
>doubled since 1965 which, because of stagnant economies,
>means constantly rising unemployment and underemployment.
>Some 100 million people, more than a quarter of the
>continent's population, suffer from chronic food shortages.
>
> Is there a solution to this ever-mounting human
>tragedy?
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>This article was mailed from The Washington Times
>(http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020122-26525803.htm)
>For more great articles, visit us at
>http://www.washtimes.com
>
>Copyright (c) 2001 News World Communications, Inc. All
>rights reserved.
>
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