By John Knox
The wildfire of popular uprising that has swept across North Africa may be putting the heat on the despots that have been ruling – and ruining – the rest of the continent for the last 30 years. A Charter on Democracy, drawn up by the African Union, has finally come into effect this month.
The 15th signature needed for the charter to become official policy has just been added by my old friend, Cameroon. I spent two years there as a volunteer teacher back in the 1970s when the founding father, Ahmadou Ahidjo, was master of all he surveyed. He ruled in the usual “Big Man” African style until he was ousted, in 1982, by the present lord protector, Paul Biya.
Biya's 30 years in power have been marked by the building of palaces, the accumulation of a $75m personal fortune (according to the New York Times), the occasional suspicious election, government corruption, the arrest of opposition politicians and troublesome journalists, outbreaks of sporadic violence and continued poverty and underdevelopment.
Meanwhile, Biya himself – known as the Sphinx for his silent method of government – has spent much of his time abroad. He is in the habit of taking three-month-long holidays every year in Switzerland and France, the former colonial power to which he is still very much attached.
This is a tragic scenario – repeated across Africa – in which the natural resources of the country and the hard work of the ordinary people never lead to prosperity, or even progress towards prosperity. The International Monetary Fund rates Cameroon as the 40th-poorest country in the world, despite its resources of oil, timber, diamonds, cotton, coffee, tea, palm-oil and bananas. One third of its 20 million inhabitants live below the official poverty line.
A World Bank report last month found that Cameroon was being held back by “an unfavourable investment climate”. In particular, it mentions poor and inappropriate infrastructure – only 10 per cent of the roads are paved – and a faulty education system. Over 90 per cent of the population still work in the informal sector, largely subsidence farming, and underemployment is estimated at 70 per cent.
On the human rights front, Amnesty International’s latest report on Cameroon is not exactly complimentary. It talks of detention without trial, restrictions on the press, an electoral commission appointed by the president himself, prisoners languishing on death row, discrimination against homosexuals.
Indeed Amnesty International’s report on the whole of Africa for the year 2011 makes worrying reading. “Elections in various countries,” it says, “were marred by violence and an increase in human rights violations. In nearly all cases, the human rights violations were committed with total impunity.”
Here in Scotland we have watched our twin country in Africa, Malawi, slide further towards dictatorship and poverty under Bingu wa Mutharika. Official British aid (£90 million a year) has been suspended, pending a review on how it is spent. The Scottish government’s aid programme (£3m) goes bravely on, but only because the funds go direct to independent projects and not via the Malawi government.
Malawi has not yet signed the new Charter on Democracy – indeed, only 15 of the 54 members of the African Union have done so. The rest, presumably, fear the bar is being set too high with its declaration that “The Charter is premised on universal values of democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, supremacy of the constitution and constitutional order in the political arrangement of states.”
It is a puzzle for us westerners to understand why Africa remains the dark continent while the rest of the world is waking up to the brighter prospects of peace, economic prosperity, the rule of law, decent minimum standards for all citizens in education, health, employment etc. Why this attachment to despots, tribal violence, cronyism, corruption and poverty?
These were, of course, western values until fairly recently, but why has Africa not joined us in moving on from them? Can we blame colonialism? Or extreme forms of Christianity or Islam? Or is it the African way to wait for consensus before everyone moves on together?
Whatever the reason, it has allowed evil tyrants to ruin their countries and steal their people’s wealth: Idi Amin in Uganda, Arap Moi in Kenya, Charles Taylor in Liberia, Sékou Touré in Guinea, Sani Abacha in Nigeria, Mobutu and Kabila in the Congo, Hasting Banda in Malawi, Jean-Bédel Bokasssa (whom I actually met) in the Central African Republic – and, of course, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
But perhaps African tyrants have seen the writing on the wall and, like King Belshazzar in ancient Babylon, they fear it is going to interrupt their feast. The uprisings which swept away Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya might spread south across the desert. So the Big Men are rededicating themselves to democracy in the new charter.
It is a strange irony that one of the main sponsors of the African Union is the People’s Republic of China, where democracy is only practised by a small sect, known as the central committee of the Communist Party. China built the African Union’s grandiose headquarters, opened in Addis Ababa last month. So it may be a rather peculiar form of democracy which emerges, if anything at all emerges from the new charter.
But there are a few signs of hope. Recent elections in Zambia and Nigeria have passed off relatively peacefully and with little corruption. The education systems, while crankingly slow, may eventually produce an educated class – as in North Africa – who will rise up to demand jobs, freedom, fairness and prosperity. The submission to tyrants – for fear of something worse – may soon be shown to be unnecessary. And the idea that “all men are created equal”, so slow to mature in Europe, may eventually take root in Africa.
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