THE MAIL AND GUARDIAN
Johannesburg, South Africa. March 23 2000
The building has begun
While war and Aids continue to bedevil Africa, UN secretary general Kofi
Annan believes the continent is heading in the right direction.
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CAMERON DUODU reports
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LAST Tuesday night saw two of the most outstanding African diplomats of our
time -- Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, and Emeka
Anyaoku, secretary general of the Commonwealth -- on the same podium in
London.
Annan, of course, will go down in history as the man whose skills saved the
people of Iraq from suffering another barrage of Western bombs, as a
punishment for the intransigence of Saddam Hussein.
And Anyaoku has, in the 10 years he's been secretary general of the
Commonwealth, presided over the suspension, in 1995, of his own country,
Nigeria, from the Commonwealth for operating a barbaric military form of
government, only to be readmitted, four years later, as a full democracy.
Meanwhile, Anyaoku himself had adroitly stayed put, though the country that
had nominated him for the post was out in the cold. His crowning glory,
however, was to assist South Africa to regain entry into the club, and to
perch itself firmly on the pole of leadership planted so shakily on the
African continent.
The occasion that brought the two together was the Commonwealth Lecture,
which was given this year at the Commonwealth Institute in London by Annan.
Anyaoku was in the chair.
When I saw the topic for Annan's lecture, I was sceptical. It read: Africa:
Maintaining The Momentum. My mind immediately asked, "Momentum? What
momentum?" I was glad to see that Annan didn't duck the issue. He spoke of
the "substantial programmes of technical assistance" that the UN and the
Commonwealth had put in place to help Africa overcome its conflicts, false
starts and lost decades. However, he admitted, it had not "been enough". At
the dawn of the new millennium, conflicts continues in almost all regions in
Africa, swelling "the ranks of refugees and internally displaced persons".
Some of the conflicts had completely vanished from world headlines: Angola
(where fighting continued unchecked); southern Sudan (ceasefire observed
more in name than in fact); Somalia (still no recognised government);
Ethiopia-Eritrea (war now in its third year, having already taken "55 000
lives").
While "nothing can excuse the stubbornness of those who persist in using
violence against their fellow men and women", said Annan, "the guilt of a
few unscrupulous leaders" should not be used to "excuse the callous
indifference with which most of the world treats the victims of these
near-forgotten wars" in Africa.
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Annan added that, terrible as it was, conflict was not "even the worst" of
Africa's scourges. Last year, "Aids killed far more people than all the
region's conflicts combined. And of 36-million people now living with Aids
worldwide, 23-million are in sub-Saharan Africa. In Côte d'Ivoire, a teacher
dies of Aids every school day. The average child born in Botswana today has
a life expectancy of 41 years, when without Aids, it would have been 70."
(I must say I personally always take UN figures on HIV/Aids with a pinch of
salt. I simply do not believe that UN Aids-monitoring agencies and the
national health organisations with which they work are as yet adequately
equipped to have the capability to provide accurate figures on the real
incidence of HIV/Aids in Africa. I think they depend far too much on
extrapolating small, probably unrepresentative samples, into global/regional
figures. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the trend illustrated by the
figures, flawed though the figures themselves might be.)
Annan also touched on the contribution of poverty in Africa to war and
disease. But he didn't only recite what he called a "litany of deprivation
and despair". The era of coups d'état and single-party monopoly of power was
giving way to the restoration of constitutional government. Coup leaders
were no longer welcome at Organisation of African Unity summits, and in one
case, a former dictator accused of torturing thousands of his fellow
countrymen (Hissene Habre of Chad) had been arrested in another African
country (Senegal).
Difficult political problems in Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau and
Niger had been resolved; Nigeria had returned to constitutional rule, and
although it had been experiencing an upsurge of communal violence, no one
should imagine that a country of more than 100-million, with great ethnic
and religious diversity, would make the transition from dictatorship to
democracy without encountering problems.
Annan added: "South Africa, the other giant of Africa, has made an admirably
smooth transition from the era of President [Nelson] Mandela to that of
[Thabo] Mbeki, following an exemplary electoral process. Not long ago, chaos
and bloodshed seemed to be South Africa's destiny. Instead, today, we see
not a problem-free South Africa, but a people tackling its problems through
the mechanism of multiracial, multi-party democracy, with a Constitution
that sets new standards in upholding human rights and enshrining the rule of
law."
Annan also paid tribute to South Africa's most notable ambassador for peace
in Africa -- Mandela, who, "seemingly tireless, even at the age of 81, has
placed his enormous prestige and wisdom at the service of fellow Africans",
by accepting the "arduous role" of facilitator in the Burundi peace process.
To sustain the momentum of positive developments in Africa, Annan offered
the following thoughts:
better, faster, more efficient debt relief;
higher levels of aid;
opening up of the markets of the industrialised countries to African
products; and
investment in human resources, which today means training in the new
information technologies.
Annan concluded: "The agenda is clear. The calendar is full of opportunities
to turn things around. President Thabo Mbeki likes to say about today's
South Africa that 'the building has begun'. And I think one can say the same
of Africa as a whole."
-- The Mail & Guardian, March 23 2000.
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