Africa's New Bloc

Dan Connell and Frank Smyth

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 1998

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Summary:  Once the playground of tyrants like Uganda's Idi Amin, Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Africa is finally shedding its postcolonial heritage of despotism and chaos. In Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, a new generation of nationalist leaders with strong and disciplined armies is emerging to take control of the continent. Their fights against the old foreign-supported order have left them suspicious of anything that comes from abroad, especially from France. Still, they are far more accountable and egalitarian than their predecessors-and they want to get into the United States' good books.

Dan Connell, author of Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution, is the founder of Grassroots International, a private development agency. Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist who writes frequently on Africa.

COMING OF AGE

Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing its most profound changes since the early years of independence. Forces that have long held sway over the region are now either waning or gone. For decades the United States, the Soviet Union, and France propped up dictators who served their interests-men like Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, Somalia's Mohamed Siad Barre, Rwanda's Juvenal Habyarimana, and the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko. The scaled-down presence of foreign powers has helped topple the regimes these men built. Other despots like Kenya's Daniel arap Moi and Cameroon's Paul Biya are also feeling unprecedented pressure for democratic change. Many were military officers who took advantage of the general disorder left by departing colonial forces to seize power. Once entrenched, each preached some form of nationalism, only to evolve cynical regimes which, in addition to being brutal, did little for their own people while shamelessly enriching their leaders' inner circles. Now, with the clear exception of Nigeria, Africa's postcolonial despotic order is finally breaking down.

But several new trends are evident. Since the departure of foreign powers, precolonial ethnic conflicts-exploited by local political forces-have reemerged with a vengeance. Although the divide between the Hutus and Tutsis dates back to at least the sixteenth century, Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which up to 800,000 people were slaughtered, was unprecedented. Ethnic and clan-based political identities are resurfacing elsewhere on the continent as well. In Nigeria they fuel a regionally based opposition movement to the central government, in Sudan an armed rebel group that threatens secession. And in places like Liberia and the Somali Republic, they have dissolved nations into anarchy.

Another rising trend is the propensity of African states to invade each other. Besides deploying combat forces, Rwanda helped plan, organize, and lead the rebel campaign that deposed Mobutu last year, turning Zaire into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Angola also marched against Mobutu and had a hand in Brazzaville's more recent leadership struggle. Uganda, which has a history of backing military campaigns in the Great Lakes region, is now allied with Ethiopia and Eritrea in support of rebels in Sudan. Ethiopia is also backing forces in Somalia. Nigeria has deployed peacekeepers under dubious mandates in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Africans are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. A new generation of leaders backed by highly trained and disciplined armies is assuming power. The most assertive of these new leaders are former guerrilla commanders who developed their character and worldview as their movements defeated foreign-supported, postcolonial despots in drawn-out struggles. While highly nationalistic, these leaders were once students of Marxism, organizing along democratic-centralist lines and planning to nationalize their economies. Although some still own Lenin's complete works, they are pragmatists, favoring free markets and insisting that corruption, not class difference, is the greatest threat to national development. Steeped in the values of secular nationalism, each has sought to incorporate disenfranchised ethnic and religious groups. Yet not one of these leaders can easily be called democratic, as each still ...

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