Africa's ongoing descent

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 11, 2002]

Three variations of corruption are threatening the continued existence of any reasonable hope for stability and humanitarian progress in Africa as we enter 2002: The first and most devastating is the HIV/AIDS epidemic that destroys victims' ability to resist any disease or infection. The second is the sharp increase in violent conflict between tribes, individuals and countries throughout the African Continent. The third is dictatorship and repression, currently most egregiously represented by Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe.

Though originally elected under the democratic electoral and parliamentary process inherited from the former white administration of colonial Rhodesia, and though pledged by his oath to uphold the rule of law and the constitution, President Mugabe has chosen to violate both. First, he turned loose his mob-following of unemployed youths and a few veteran soldiers from the anti-colonialism campaigns of a generation ago, to ravage white farms and their owners. Now, aware he could not win reelection in an open and fair contest, Mugabe has shredded legal and constitutional procedural restraints. He has packed the court with judges loyal to his dictatorship. He has banned a free press and free political speech. And he has virtually prohibited election participation by any avowed opposition. Zimbabwe is now, as a result, on the brink of economic bankruptcy and faced with both censure and sanctions from the Commonwealth alliance of former British colonial entities and from the up-to-now, financially supportive, European Union. . . .

Meanwhile, in South Africa, as well, there is great unrest as unemployment has spread and the resource-stretched government has been forced to deny normal services to thousands who no longer can pay for electricity, garbage collection and other basic needs. Throughout much of Africa, crime and gang wars, rebellions and tribal animosities are constantly undermining efforts to stabilize and make sound extremely fragile governments, which might cope with a vast array of untended social needs and numerous destabilized economies.

The United States Institute of Peace, a Washington, DC think tank, recently sponsored a panel discussion in which it was agreed that AIDS and violent conflicts are hopelessly disruptive throughout Africa. The Institute's panelists reported that the decade of the 1990s "witnessed a steady climb in violence across sub-Saharan Africa, with the number of states at war or with significant lethal conflicts doubling from 11 in 1989 to 22 in 2000." At the same time, in the same countries below the Sahara Desert, "more than 25 million people (were) infected" with HIV/AIDS (70% of the world's cases) and 17 million have died. The twin killers, AIDS and war or violent strife are not only murderously destroying thousands of lives every day. They have so upset country and regional economies, agricultural and industrial production, and community cooperation and teamwork that Africa can almost meet the definition of the Apocalypse with anarchy, war, pestilence and starvation.

-- Jay Parker, excerpted from "Zimbabwe's Mugabe: Gone Bonkers," Lincoln Review newsletter, January-February 2002. Parker is director of the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, Washington, DC.

Copyright © 2008 Issues & Views