Building peace and bringing stability on the age old maxims of democracy in an age of ever changing globalisation, Africa’s journey is long and arduous. The current reign of terror in Africa is spread by Boko Haram (Nigeria), al-Shabaab (Somalia), al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM-Algeria)-all affiliates of either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (ISIS) is once again putting the continent back to a medieval age
Africa is fighting a war with her own people with some of the bloodiest conflicts like the one in South Sudan, Nigeria and other places, in the continent appearing never to end.
Most of the wars that Africans are fighting today can precisely be described as ‘un-wars’. It is so because these wars don’t have clear goals and lack firm ideologies wherein the rebels’ vision is inscribed.
Jeffrey Gettleman strongly argues, ‘What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else-something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you’d like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry’.
With the changing tides of globalisation, though Africa has also moved ahead, yet its perennial problems of poverty, endemic corruption, mal-administration, poor health conditions and finally decades of authoritarian rule has left most of the newly Independent nations shattered.
It has been noticed that in these innumerable wars between civilians and armed men, terror is guiding the rebels for immediate economic gains leading to power and unleashing of endless reign of torture against political rivals and hapless people.
For example the crisis in Darfur has devastated the region’s economy; shredded its fragile social fabric; driven millions of people from their homes, creating an unstable environment filled with fear.
The current reign of terror in Africa is spread by Boko Haram (Nigeria), al-Shabaab (Somalia), al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM-Algeria)-all affiliates of either al Qaeda or the Islamic State (ISIS) is once again putting the continent back to a medieval age.
Also the youngest nation of the world, South Sudan has not been able to manage its own affairs and many feel that the Sudan People’s liberation Movement/Army (SPlM/A) of Salva Kiir does not have clear roadmap for nation-building.
Besides, the recent incidents of violence brought by ISIS agents in Burkina Faso and in Mali simply demonstrate that Africa’s woes would be endless as in the midst of poverty and lawlessness, the ugly heads of Muslim terror may erase the last hope for peace and vitality to most of its countries.
The African rebels today possess all that they desire: cash, guns, licence to rampage over a huge tract of territory and unlimited power creating their ‘Sacred leviathan’, so it is extremely difficult to bring them to the negotiating table unless they wish to.
They are almost ruling like ‘sovereigns’ (Boko Haram in North East Nigeria and Al Shabab in South Somalia) on their own people despite having national and international collaboration to fight them all through.
It’s sad and disgusting that remnant of colonial empires, superpower rivalry, corporate greed, authoritarianism and religious schism, finally adding fuel to the statelessness and darkness of Africa.
It is time to give peace a chance in the troubled states of the most resource rich continent so that its populace gets their due. But all is not lost in Africa.
Africa in the 1970s was a continent still in the grip of colonialism in some areas, with wars of liberation being fought in the Portuguese territories of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe.
Many other African nations like Comoros, Djibouti, Seychelles and Western Sahara were about to attain their Independence while Rhodesia and South West Africa were also fighting the last days of colonial yoke. The most glaring example of exposing the foreign rule, treading the non-violent Gandhian way was spearheaded by Nelson Mandela in South Africa wherein the white minority was clinging tenaciously to power.
But this Africa was swept by the waves of globalisation and most significantly the ‘Spring’ of the continent which indeed crisscrossed the vast land much before the advent of the historic Arab Spring. The era of coup d’etat is over in Africa. In the 1990s, coups occur at the rate of 20 over a decade, but currently it is much lesser and electoral chicanery which was rampant before, now it is strongly met with local and international outcry both from within and outside.
Many blame the most historic provision in the Organisation for African Unity (OAU)’s provision which precisely outlined that no African State could violate the sovereignty of another for any reason or cause, including oppression or even the massacre of its citizens for the ills of the continent. Strikingly the African Union (AU), the organisation that replaced the OAU in 2002 has changed the old organisation’s non-interference codicil and created a ‘peer review’ mechanism to monitor governments that come to power through coup.
During the course of the Cold War, both the USSR and the USA used and protect respective African states according to their interests locally and globally. Mostly African states were badly used as ‘pawns and vote banks’ by the bipolar superpowers in the UN General Assembly for either supporting or blocking various issues in carrying out their agendas without taking into account the former’s pathetic economic and political crisis.
In the midst of ghastly wars between races and diverse ethnic factions, the rebirth of South Africa from the shackles of white regime of FW de Klerk under the legendary Nelson Mandela had rather propelled reverberating louder the cry for change across Africa.
Though the nature of warfare is changing and taking a more violent turn in many parts of the continent, but the wars have become less frequent in the Sub-Saharan Africa since the end of the Cold War. Events like Rwandan killings in 1994 and Darfur in the mid-2000s are rare today.
Of course political violence is on the rise and there has been a significant shift in it. However, ‘today’s wars typically are smaller. They most often involve small insurgencies of factionalised rebels on the peripheries of states. Today’s wars also play out differently. They exhibit cross-border dimensions, and rather than drawing funding from big external states they depend on illicit trade, banditry, and international terrorist networks’ (Strauss).
But for sure, wars have not come to an end in Africa and whatever form it comes, it deserves larger scrutiny both at home and globally. Geopolitical changes meaning the end of the Cold War has reduced major sources of funding for the rebels from outside the continent. The interference in internal affairs is always there among the African states, but it mostly does not provide enough force and source to the rebels’ capacity to overthrow the existing governments. The emergence of multi-party system has engaged many of the outlawed organisations into open political confrontations in some countries which in a way downsizing the strength and scope of banditry. The rise of China with its authoritarian development model and its deep engagement in Africa particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, has contributed to the stability of national governments as it hardly interferes in internal affairs and provides strong hand to the rulers, not to the anti-national forces.
Above all, the engagement of multinational and regional peacekeeping efforts undertaken by the AU, ECOWAS, ECCAS, IGAD and SADC are enormously helping in quelling and healing conflicts across the continent.
Building peace and bringing stability on the age old maxims of democracy in an age of ever changing globalisation, Africa’s journey is long and arduous.
Because, ‘Democracy in Africa is fragile. Single parties still tend to dominate and backsliding is common. There will be more setbacks. But democracy has a new resilience and undeniable momentum’ (McDonald). Hope Africa gradually passes on to the land of multi-party democracy instead of managed democracy of authoritarian rulers in the years to come. Analysing the most egregious ‘bottlenecks to developments in Africa’, occurring at all spheres-individual, national and global, Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the ‘Green Belt Movement’ calls for responsibility and accountability while fighting enduring poverty and cultural upheavals across the continent.
She appeals for a ‘moral revolution’ among Africans, who she advocates are, culturally deracinated, adrift between worlds. Henceforth, to be frank and fair, today Africa does not need any more new states, its teeming millions engraved in poverty, lawlessness and in despair, demand true and honest statesman in the likes of Nelson Mandela who could offer hardheaded hope and pragmatic options for life and living in a better tomorrow.
(The writer is an Independent political analyst based in Delhi)