LONDON: We thought the time of Africa had come in the 1960s, when many of the nations colonized by Britain, France and Portugal gained independence.
But in reality all that had happened was that the whites had transferred power to their half clones lawyers in wigs; merchants with foreign bank accounts; parasitic traders profiting from artificial shortages; teachers; accountants: “petty clerks” of all description. They could speak and write the colonizer’s language, so they were handed the keys to government and the people’s taxes.
Those producing the wealth, the illiterate cocoa and coffee farmers, the fishermen, the miners, the road-builders, masons and carpenters were told they could vote but not legislate. And very soon the results of that stupidity began to show.
If a parvenu could buy himself a Mercedes Benz by standing on a political platform and shouting his head off, why should he buy only one? If he could build himself a mansion in Accra or Lagos by merely signing a contract, why not one in London or Paris, too?
Thus evolved those monstrous corruption machines in human form — Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, whose personal property holdings extended from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, or Felix Houphouet Boigny of the Ivory Coast, who blew $300 million on a tomb to serve him at death. When the money ran out, the military began to play musical chairs with the presidential seats. Meanwhile, the hospitals turned into mortuaries; the roofs of the schools began to leak; roads crumbled and the poor went hungry.
Instead of trying to understand that Africa had been short-changed and needed a sympathetic hand up, her weakness was perceived by racists in the West as a disease that came with the skin colour.
In the London-based Observer newspaper, an academic called Norman Stone argued Africa needed more of the same medicine that had made it so sick. He called it “recolonization”. He’s been joined by Andrew Roberts (in Britiain’s Daily Mail) and Paul Johnson (the Spectator). The Independent ran a leader, urging that Britain should be contracted by rich countries such as Japan to run Africa.
No doubt such voices will be heard railing once more against Tony Blair and his Commission for Africa, for daring to suggest something positive can be done. But the time has come for the world to recognize the awful hand Africa has been dealt and to do something about it. The commission’s report does not prescribe all the answers. But it has opened a dialogue, which Africans, and those who care about Africa, must seize on.
The dialogue may have to last a long time before anything important comes out of it. For the objective must be no less than to revolutionize world trade. It is not acceptable that, as the report states, “most African countries still rely on a very narrow range of exports... [which] leaves them highly vulnerable to wild fluctuations in the world price of such commodities”.
From 1980 to 2000, the price of sugar fell by 77 percent, cocoa by 71 percent, coffee by 64 percent and cotton by 47 percent. If you consider that, during the same period, world inflation was adding huge costs to the imports of the producers of the above commodities, you will realize what a terrible bind they have been in.
Other recommendations of the commission — elimination of corruption or improvement of governance — are all extremely important. But you cannot live in the modern world without a reliable source of income. Europe and America must bail Africa out if it is to end its poverty.
Changing the existing pattern of trade will not be comfortably accepted in the West. That is why the Blair commission has only opened a dialogue. The outlook is bleak, but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with but one step.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
