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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived document may not work.


Africa: British Policy, 2 Africa: British Policy, 2
Date distributed (ymd): 020213
Document reposted by Africa Action

Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for Africa at http://www.africaaction.org

+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++

Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+

SUMMARY CONTENTS:

Among rich country leaders, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken the lead in calling for increases in development aid, opening Western markets to African imports, support for the "New Partnership for Africa's Development" framework presented by African leaders, and greater attention to addressing global and African poverty. In meetings of the G-7 Finance Ministers and other fora, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has delivered the same message.

This message, contrasting to the indifference to Africa displayed by Blair's and Brown's counterparts in Washington, won applause on Blair's recently completed trip to West Africa. But commentators also raised many hard questions about British policies.

This posting contains:

(1) a critical analytical commentary from African scholar Mahmood Mamdani, originally published in a shorter version in The Guardian (Feb. 8, 2002). It is reposted with permission of the author, and includes several paragraphs that were dropped from the Guardian version for reasons of space.

(2) a statement by Tanzanian civil society groups on the $40 million sale to Tanzania of a militarily capable radar control system from the UK firm BAe, and

(3) several additional links with commentary on the Blair trip and related issues.

A related posting also sent out today contains excerpts from the pamphlet Tackling Poverty: A Global New Deal, published this month and based on recent speeches by Gordon Brown.

+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Misrule Britannia

It's good news that Tony Blair wants to help heal the scars of Africa, says Mahmood Mamdani, but first he needs to realise how they got there

Mahmood Mamdani

The Guardian
February 8, 2002

As you spend your second morning in Africa, Mr Blair, I hope you are beginning to recognise one fact above all else: the predicament of Africa is a consequence of failed policies. A turnaround will require a new policy consensus, not just more cash.

Your recognition that "mutual interest and self-interest increasingly walk hand in hand" is surely the beginning of political wisdom in a globalised world. Just as sure, however, is the need to recognise that oneness is not sameness. True, places such as Rwanda, Congo, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone symbolise the current African crisis, but each is an outcome of a blend of processes: some specific, others illustrating a shared African history and relationship with the rest of the world. The time is right to draw lessons from both action and inaction, in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

[If there is a single event that stands for both the contemporary African tragedy and a callous global indifference in its face, it is the Rwandan genocide. When I began to do research on the buildup to the Rwandan genocide, I could find no evidence of political violence that pit Hutu against Tutsi before the colonial period, even though there had been differences in wealth and power between the two for centuries.

I thought the big change began with Belgian colonialism. It debased the Hutu as indigenous and uncivilized and exalted the Tutsi as foreign and civilized. Instead of coming to grips with this legacy, the nationalist revolution of 1959 built on it: Hutu revolutionaries were determined to turn the tables and create a Hutu nation in which the Tutsi had at best the status of resident aliens.

The genocide in Rwanda was not an inevitable outcome of this history. Besides the colonial heritage and the nationalist failure to transcend it, there were two other contributory factors. The civil war was regional in making. When armed Tutsi refugees crossed the border into Rwanda in August, 1990, they were exercizing the final option in a postcolonial context where the right of citizenship was tied, not to individual residence, but to group ethnic identity. The final contributing factor was global: had it not been for the callous indifference of the so-called civilized world, the civil war would not have ended up in genocide.

The genocide turned Rwanda into a smoldering volcano. The postgenocide state considered itself morally responsible for the fate of every living Tutsi anywhere. The next time a Tutsi minority was denied citizenship rights on grounds of ethnicity -- this time in Kivu in eastern Congo -- the Rwandan state intervened. You are right, Mr. Blair, that the Congo crisis demands the world's attention but you need to remember the ageold wisdom that the best way to contain a fire may not be to rush to its center.

Of the constellation tied together as the African Great Lakes, the only knot loose enough to be untangled is Burundi, why Britain will do well to urge Western nations to focus their energies on Burundi, so as to set an example that may be followed elsewhere in the region.

The time is right to draw lessons from both action and its inaction, in both Rwanda and Sierra Leone. It has not been easy to shed the legacy of the Cold War. Recall how Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan held a protective umbrella called 'constructive engagement' while apartheid South Africa moved from a policy of 'd�tente' to one of 'total onslaught', unleashing terror in Mozambique and Angola through local proxies. Think of the British response to January 6, 1999, when R.U.F. gunmen maimed and raped their way across Freetown, Sierra Leone, killing more than 5,000 civilians in a day. The response then was to pressure the government of the day to share power with the rebels. Even if the Cold War had ended, the high tolerance for local terror had not.

Fortunately, the end of the Cold War meant that it was possible to learn local lessons in local places. British inaction in Sierra Leone did turn into action.]

The lesson of action in Sierra Leone is no different from the conclusion drawn by the UN commander in Rwanda: a few thousand well-armed and disciplined UN troops would have prevented massacres from turning into a genocide. That lesson, Mr Blair, needs to be etched in our historical memories: zero tolerance for terrorists, for those who target civilians and the infrastructure of civilian life.

But just as many in Africa have been quick to note the difference between the shift of British policy in Sierra Leone and continuing western indifference to developments in the African Great Lakes (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda); they have also noted the difference in the British response to recent developments in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

What, many Africans ask, is the difference between the stolen election in Zambia and the election that may be stolen in Zimbabwe? Why heightened British concern for Zimbabwe and cold indifference to Zambia? Could British preoccupation with one previous colony, and not another, reflect a narrow concern for the future of British "kith and kin" in Zimbabwe?

It may be wise to take into account African sensibilities and apply the same standards to Zambia and Zimbabwe. You are right to speak of the need to come to terms with "failed states" before they fester. But to really tackle this problem, you must understand its genesis. The ethnic conflicts in the Great Lakes, as in many other places, are not between the resource-rich and the resource-poor; they are between those who have a right of citizenship and those who don't.

The sad fact is that the form of citizenship which exists in contemporary Africa has been bequeathed by the colonial experience. The idea that citizenship for Africans should be a group and not an individual right, and that only members of those groups recognised as indigenous should be granted citizenship, is an idea whose vintage goes no farther than the colonial period. The plain fact, Mr Blair, is that before colonialism ethnicity was a cultural identity. It was not a political identity, the basis of belonging to a political community.

The core political legacy of British "indirect rule" in Africa was the absence of a modern state. Britain ruled its middle African colonies through a range of "native authorities", each of which dispensed with the rule of law in the name of "tradition". The colonial fiction was that African tradition, particularly political tradition, was ethnic. The result was to disenfranchise those considered ethnically not indigenous to an area, even if they were born there.

The social legacy of indirect rule, meanwhile, was the absence of a national intelligentsia. When Frederick Lugard, the British colonial administrator, moved from India to Nigeria, he was determined that Britain's new African colonies would be immunised against "the Indian disease", by which he meant the creation of a westernised native intelligentsia. The sober fact is that it was not the colonial interlude, but nationalist independence, that laid the basis of a university-educated intelligentsia in middle Africa.

Despite current belief, the story of independent Africa is not one of unremitting decline. The first two decades of independence were decades of moderate progress. Between 1967 and 1980 more than a dozen African countries registered a growth rate of 6%. This included not only mineral-rich countries such as Gabon, Congo, Nigeria and Botswana but also countries such as Egypt, Kenya and Ivory Coast. To be sure, there was a downside. That was the failure to transform agriculture, and thus to bring the vast majority of the population into the development process. This shortcoming in economic policy went alongside and was sustained by a political authoritarianism.

This downside provided an opening for a dogmatic assault by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank calling for so-called structural adjustment at the height of the cold war. Whether intended or not, its effect was to scupper the state-building project undertaken with modest success by nationalism.

Structural adjustment called for an all-round and drastic reduction in state involvement. Growth up to 1980 had been sustained mainly by domestic savings: close to a third of African countries had savings rates higher than 25% by 1980. Today, the rate of savings is closer to 10%. The difference is larger than the entire aid flow to the continent.

The assault on social expenditure - including university funding - combined with an emphasis on importing expatriate intellectuals through technical assistance programmes. Together, the two devastated the national intelligentsias, the most competitive of whom fled to the west. No wonder there are more expatriates in Africa today than in the heyday of colonialism.

Finally, there was the promotion of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Said to be a measure to bolster democracy in newly independent Africa, this initiative ended up undermining whatever democratic traditions had been built up in civil society. If truth be told, the proliferation of NGOs has been central to the creation of a begging-bowl public culture. Contemporary Africa has not been ignored; it has been wronged. What Africa needs immediately is not a pile of cash, but a changed policy context.

Without a consensus on a policy shift, there will be no way ahead. You are right, Mr Blair, to think that contemporary Africa shares the dilemma of Afghanistan: it is a victim of the cold war and the subsequent self-righteous walking away by western powers. As in Afghanistan, in Africa the prerequisite to recovery will be the construction of state independence. To achieve this, we need to shed the cold-war dogmatism designed to trim the state and liberate the market - whose one consequence has been to contribute to state collapse throughout Africa.

Recognise that history gives us only two ways of building a public power: through waging war and through the provision of social services. By undercutting the role of the state as a provider of social services, structural adjustment turned the relationship between the state and the population into one of naked coercion through security and armed services.

Recognise also that without an active state role, the historically weak classes in Africa - entrepreneurs and intellectuals - will not thrive. Before you increase aid, you may consider sharply curtailing technical assistance - that self-motivated subsidy given by western countries to their own largely unemployable cadre and passed off as aid. Employ African technical personnel on projects in Africa and hold them accountable to African constituencies, not just to donors.

Finally, you should stop promoting a non-accountable NGO culture and try to strengthen local democracy instead.

It is true, Mr Blair, that Africans must determine their own destiny. But Africans must first have the chance to shape their destiny - an enabling policy context - before they can be held responsible for it.

* Mahmood Mamdani is director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University.


Civil Society's Common Statement
on the Government of Tanzania / BAe Radar issue

26th January 2002

Recently the Government of Tanzania (GoT) concluded a deal to buy a sophisticated radar air control system from the UK firm BAe Systems worth US$40 million. The issue only came to light in Tanzania after major differences of opinion within the British cabinet were leaked to the British press. To date, both Tanzanian and British governments have failed to clarify (albeit the attempt by Tanzanian government in the 'Daily News' yesterday) the military or commercial nature of the equipment, or the rationale for the large price tag, when adequate equipment for civilian purposes costs one quarter of the price, and can be obtained through grant aid.

Given that Tanzania is a highly indebted poor nation which has just qualified for debt relief under the HIPC initiative, it is very shocking to learn --from external sources-- that the Tanzanian Government has secretly committed the nation to an additional $40 million of commercial debt to add to its existing unsustainable debt stock.

We, Tanzanian civil society organizations (CSOs) note with concern that the negotiations for the radar system have been going on secretly for a number of years, and a down- payment made, during which time we and other like-minded organisations have been campaigning for debt cancellation in order to improve access to basic services for the majority of Tanzanians.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is concerned about protecting the jobs of 250 BAe workers in the Isle of Wight, while ignoring the cost of the radar to Tanzanian citizens, who on average earn US$250 a year. We strongly condemn the decision by the UK Government to issue a license to BAe for the radar, an act that is inconsistent with their international aid, debt relief and sustainable development policies. It is most unfortunate that the progressive work of Gordon Brown and Clare Short in terms of promoting these noble objectives should be undermined by such an unwise deal.

It is ironic that the UK gives budgetary support to Tanzania worth US$40 million a year, thus giving vital support for debt relief with one hand and taking it back with the other.

We Tanzanian CSOs are convinced that the BAe radar is too expensive for Tanzania to afford, and that we do not have the military capacity to make good use of the equipment in question, if indeed it is a military system.

The Tanzanian public deserves answers to the following questions:

On whose authority and with what internal scrutiny in the cabinet and parliament has this deal been negotiated? Have MPs ever had the opportunity to deliberate on it? Has it been the subject of discussion under the Public Expenditure Review and other financial policy bodies? Why was there no tender floated by the Government for such a big transaction? Why does the government insist on buying such expensive equipment when there is a cheaper alternative available under grant aid? Why is Barclays Bank extending a loan to the GoT at lower than commercial rates? Have we been informed of the total cost of the deal or just the first installment of something much more expensive, bearing in mind that when the radar deal was originally proposed the price tag was more than �100 million? How was it possible for BAe to proceed to assemble the radar equipment without formal government approval?

We are thankful to the Bretton Woods Institutions for showing concern for the people of Tanzania by opposing the deal. We would like to see the demands for public interest scrutiny such as the radar extended to all major investment projects, including those financed by soft loans from the IFIs themselves.

We urge our government to forthwith suspend the deal to purchase the radar, pending a full public enquiry into the issues raised above.

We also demand that, in future, any acquisition of multilateral, bilateral or commercial debt should be made public and involve wide participation of people, including parliament, where we believe the people's interest should be protected.

We urge Clare Short, U.K. Minister for Overseas Development, to instruct the Department for International Development (DfID) to withhold the budgeted $40 million (�28 million) in budget support for the GoT for 2002/03 pending the results of the public enquiry into the deal.

Lastly, we Tanzanian CSOs urge the governments of Tanzania and the UK and the donor community in general to take seriously their collective commitment to open government and pro-poor policies, which will fail miserably if such murky deals are allowed to proceed unsanctioned.

SIGNED: TCDD (Tanzania Coalition for Debt and Developoment), TANGO (Tanzania Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, TADREG (Tanzania Development Research Group), PELUM (Participatory & Ecological Land Use Assocation) Tanzania, ACTIONAID Tanzania, The Leadership Forum, National Youth Forum, TGNP (Tanzania Gender Networking Project), IGODENI and OxfamGB Tanzania.


Additional Recent Articles and Links

Note: some of these links may be temporary. If they do not work, try the search on the site indicated.

"Arms to Africa scar Britain's conscience,"
Richard Bingley, Feb 3, 2002, The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,643774,00.html
Bingley is spokesman for the Campaign Against Arms Trade

"British arms sales to Africa soar,"
Kamal Ahmed, Political Editor, Feb. 3, 2002, The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,644096,00.html

Campaign against Arms Trade
http://www.caat.org.uk

Blair Speech to Nigerian National Assembly, Feb. 7, 2002 http://www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp?5877

Blair Speech to Ghanaian Parliament, Feb. 8, 2002 http://www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp?5879

"Cash and carry misery in Ghana, Britain is backing reforms which are deepening Africa's poverty", John Kampfner
The Guardian, Feb. 8, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4352110,00.html
John Kampfner is making a film for the BBC on the impact of IMF/World Bank reforms on Ghana.

"Time Bush got Brown's Message,"
Simon Maxwell, director, Overseas Development Institute
The Guardian, Feb. 11, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4353525,00.html

Bretton Woods Update, Jan/Feb 2002
"Brown's 'New Deal' suggests enhanced Bank, Fund roles"
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/reform/r2608newdeal.html


This material is being reposted for wider distribution by Africa Action (incorporating the Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa). Africa Action's information services provide accessible information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and international policies toward Africa that advance economic, political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.

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