Africa Goes South

Ledeen, Michael

Michael Ledeen Africa Goes South Sub-Suharan Africa remains mired in poverty, corruption, and disease—and its condition isn't likely to be improved by the Faustian bargain struck last year in...

...And are the families of those murdered by the ANC prepared to do the same for those who orphaned and widowed them...
...Dashed hopes are the order of the day...
...The outcome was fixed in a most unusual way: as the tally The American Spectator April 1995 31 began, each of the major parties had a great fear...
...Once South Africa has abolished the currency controls, so that investors can take profits out whenever they wish, then Western governments can offer the usual kinds of incentives—loan guarantees, grants for feasibility studies, etc.—to private-sector investors...
...Zulu leader Mangosothu Buthelezi was afraid his Inkatha Freedom Party would get less than 10 percent, which would deprive them of national legitimacy...
...Even leaving aside the risk from infection, will anyone wish to invest in such a society...
...Mobutu lived for months on his houseboat—exceptions being made for Christmas holidays in the luxurious hotels of Cape Town, South Africa—and it is now his enemies who are scrambling for survival...
...If the South Africans succeed, then Mozambique will be as Cuba was to the United States—a tourist paradise, a land of good agriculture and exotic food, and a source of intellectual and cultural energy...
...T he two very dark clouds hovering over South Africa have to do with urban violence on the one hand, and the urge for revenge on the other...
...it can happen anywhere, anytime...
...Under the circumstances, why run the risk that the voters might screw things up...
...One big happy family, as it were...
...The result has been a governing party that spends most of its energies on internal political maneuvering rather than attending to the many miseries of the Angolan people...
...On the government's side, the usual African problem of taking forever for simple decisions was compounded by an overlay of pidgin Marxism (by way of the Cubans), in addition to the Byzantine political scheming so dear to Portuguese, tradition...
...Given the surprisingly good performance of Mandela's government, there is a temptation to help it via foreign aid...
...Dos Santos is a charming and talented man, but he does not seem to have the grit, vision, and charisma necessary to lead Angola out of the hellhole into which it has fallen...
...Meanwhile, having campaigned on promises of houses and jobs for their people, the ANC leaders are busily adding slots to the already-bloated bureaucracy, and telling the big corporations that any new jobs should go to black people—just the sort of policy to ensure the degradation of standards that has characterized black rule over the rest of sub-Saharan Africa...
...We know, for example, that the ANC groups in exile were extremely tough with their own comrades, and there is no lack of horror stories involving torture and even murder within the "external" organization...
...Unlike Angola, Mozambique has retained a lot of charm, and in the capital, Maputo, there is a frenzy of construction, one of the finest hotels in all of sub-Saharan Africa, and some of the most romantic vacation spots in the world, including several incredibly romantic small islands amidst flourishing coral reefs...
...He is convinced his survival is the result of good advice from his witch doctor, who told Mobutu that so long as he stayed on water, he was secure from his enemies, but if he returned to land, he might be in grave danger...
...And if we succeed in getting the government off the backs of the South African people, and the country devotes its considerable talents and energies to the creation of new wealth, then we will have assisted in creating a model that can inspire the entire region, and even possibly the continent as a whole...
...De Klerk felt his National Party needed around 20 percent to be a credible opposition force...
...entire cities have been bombed to rubble in the last phases of the war, so that tens of thousands of people now wander the countryside...
...The great democratic revolution, which has so dramatically transformed the political landscape in Latin America, virtually all of Europe, the Soviet Empire, and even our own legislature, has not left Africa untouched...
...Western policy toward South Africa should consist of massive pressure to end the currency restrictions, get the government out of the business world, and avoid a repetition of our unhappy experience with "equal opportunity...
...Michael Ledeen Africa Goes South Sub-Suharan Africa remains mired in poverty, corruption, and disease—and its condition isn't likely to be improved by the Faustian bargain struck last year in South Africa...
...we would probably witness the first quarantine of an entire continent, or something very close to that...
...It's not likely, but it's not impossible either...
...32 The American Spectator April 1995 anywhere near under control, and in the meantime it will test the patience of the public...
...If these trends continue, South Africa's civil service will grow to half a million in the next couple of years (from around 200,000 at the end of apartheid), and there will be more and more people doing less and less work...
...Maputo will once again be South Africa's main eastern port...
...CI The American Spectator April 1995 33...
...It had taken a Communist to demonstrate entrepreneurial flair...
...Even where democratic transitions have occurred, be a worsened situation as an improvement...
...If the AIDS virus should mutate into a form that could be spread by insects or by aerosol (sneezing, coughing, etc...
...There's a dangerous consensus building among the international election-managers and cease-fire supervisors (careers with a future) that, once the guns have been collected and the ballots counted, the best thing to do is get the winner to share Savimbi was our guy in the war so long as the Soviets and the Cubans were backing the government side, yet he conducted an electoral campaign based on intimidation, xenophobia, and antiWestern diatribes, some quite explicitly aimed against the United States...
...Housing Minister Joe Slovo, the late chief of the South African Communist Party, proved to be one of the few ministers who actually knew how to get things done...
...Many believed the war in Angola had finally ended two years ago, only to see it flare up again when Jonas Savimbi decided he'd rather fight on than accept electoral defeat...
...Instead of waiting for a new budget, and then begging for funding, Slovo, who had known for several years that he was dying of cancer, found pockets of money in regional treasuries, cajoled more from the business community, and started building housing—private housing...
...If Mandela has found the way to transcend tribalism, Africa's number-one problem can be solved...
...Certainly there must be a crash educational program for the millions of illiterate blacks, as there must be something like an apprenticeship program for those who have no useful skills in the current marketplace...
...In the attendant confusion, the country was greatly relieved to hear that most folks' wish list was confirmed, and so South Africa's first black-led government was duly sworn in—with Hillary and Al present to represent the United States...
...But to impose a new set of pro-black quotas on a country that has only just escaped from the pro-white quotas of apartheid would be very sad...
...Still, it's better than the national unity government that was avidly backed by the U.N.'s man in Maputo, Aldo Ajello...
...Unfortunately, the governing party hasn't yet understood the message, and continues its tradition of corrupt incompetence...
...Meanwhile, nervous rumblings have run through Zaire and Nigeria, the two resource-rich giants whose futures, along with those of Angola and South Africa, will most likely determine the future of the African enterprise for the next generation...
...I suppose it's churlish to suggest that there's something scandalous about the South African elections, when just about everyone down there is delighted with the results...
...Starvation and the attendant diseases are rampant...
...land mines are omnipresent and there are few medical facilities for the maimed...
...The bad news is that the new government is predictably corrupt, inept, and statist, so that the bureaucracy is rapidly expanding along with taxes and regulations, while the desperately-needed steps in the direction of free-market capitalism have not been taken...
...de Klerk, have all but disappeared as political players, and de Klerk himself went away during the summer to rethink his role . . . only to return and do precisely what he had done before: cheer on Mandela...
...This will enrage the South Africans, but it is the better part of valor...
...T he South African elections last spring were universally hailed as "free and fair," but the official results probably had little to do with the actual ballots...
...Violence has grown exponentially, not the warlike conflicts between the politicized tribes that filled the press in the run-up to the elections, but the sort we know so well: random murder, kidnapping, carjacking, armed robbery accompanied by mugging and rape...
...The recent elections gave a solid majority to President Chissano and a very slight parliamentary plurality to his party...
...This amazing act was helped by the fact that the Electoral Commission was having incredible difficulties counting ballots, and had organized tial foreign investment, the currency controls are going to have to be abolished, and the top-heavy public sector must be privatized...
...At least half the cabinet has either been indicted or sacked under a cloud of nasty allegations...
...De Klerk didn't much like it—some of his own dirty laundry being likely to come out in the wash—but also intimated that the ANC might not be happy if all the stories were told...
...It is going to take quite a while before this one is If the South Africans succeed, then Mozambique will be as Cuba was to the United States—a tourist paradise, a land of good agriculture and exotic food, and a source of intellectual and cultural energy...
...And these numbers were pretty much what most everybody in the country wanted...
...Nonetheless, the overall assessment of South Africa's prospects must be cautiously positive...
...The National Party and its leader, F.W...
...I have long argued that it is indispensable for countries emerging from tyranny to know, as fully as possible, their own histories, and I think it's clear that some of the former Communist countries are suffering today from a lack of good history...
...30 The American Spectator April 1995 If Africans don't agree to put tribal conflict behind them, that future's going to be very bloody...
...If not, the tensions that emerge during the investigations may blow the lid off the delicately blended stew...
...screw up, the people can vote in somebody else...
...The very savvy message from the electorate seems to be: Chissano looks a lot better than his opponent from Renamo—the conservative guerrilla movement that attracted some support in the U.S...
...But it's a dreadful precedent, and one has the fear that they're going to pay for it sometime in the future...
...Elections have been held in many countries, sometimes with amazing results, as founding fathers such as Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda and Malawi's Hastings Banda have been voted out of office, thereby validating the principle—for the first time since independence—that governments derive their legitimacy from the people...
...So the good news from South Africa is that they've avoided the doomsday scenarios so many had drawn, there doesn't seem to be any reason to expect large-scale violence in the near future, and the maximum leader is better than we expected...
...Mandela was afraid that his African National Congress (ANC) would get more than two-thirds, which would enable them to write the new constitution by themselves...
...All of this is now rampant, and not restricted to downtown neighborhoods...
...This would be an utterly foolish thing to do, for that money would accelerate the corruption that always accompanies the ascension of a new political class, and would fuel the further growth of the already large central state...
...the most likely way to get good information is to guarantee immunity to the sources...
...Savimbi was our guy in the war so long as the Soviets and the Cubans were backing the government side, yet he conducted an electoral campaign based on intimidation, xenophobia, and anti-Western diatribes, some quite explicitly aimed against the United States...
...Are black South Africans prepared to issue advance amnesties to their oppressors, torturers, and killers...
...Everyone knows this, and yet all the talk from top officials is about postponing the decontrol of the rand...
...If South Africa's going to have substancontinent can hardly be overstated...
...In Mozambique, the other former Portuguese colony, there seems to be some chance the contending sides have learned from the Angolan horrors...
...areas report that in many towns and villages there are old people and very young people, but the central age group in the population is decimated by disease...
...One needn't search for exotic reasons to despair over Africa, for there is plenty of conventional misery to go around...
...T his may nevertheless be a positive turning-point in the history of sub-Saharan Africa...
...Hell, when Nelson Mandela says publicly that South Africans would be better off with lower taxes, you know you're living in revolutionary times...
...The other issue is harder to gauge...
...0 ther regions may have problems, even very severe problems, but only Africa's are such that we can imagine everything south of the Sahara figuratively sliding off the edge of the world into a limbo of misery, mayhem, and disease...
...The mostly white, well-to-do suburbs are walled encampments, with everybody armed, all homes with large dogs, and well-trained security companies patrolling round the clock...
...Weapons are very cheap—you can get surplus AK-47s from the now-demobilized Mozambican armies for less than $100—and the police (who are, as usual, the main victims of the violence) are overwhelmed...
...While the old Soviet system may have set a high standard for government corruption, Africa is certainly competitive...
...Will there be enough manpower to sustain life if AIDS-ridden countries are left with only the old and very young...
...during the civil war—but Chissano's party doesn't look nearly so good...
...Yet efforts at democracy and economic liberalization have failed in several other countries, most notably in Zaire, where President Mobutu was pronounced politically dead three years ago and yet continues to rule...
...Alas, their other unenviable field of expertise is killing, and while the quantity of murder in Rwanda was greater than in other recent tribal wars, the nature of the conflict was altogether familiar: tribal slaughters have gone on in Angola, Liberia, Sudan, and Mozambique...
...So the parties agreed on these as the official figures, and nobody felt like challenging them...
...Anyone who has worked his way through the shakedown chokepoints in Lagos airport or "the beach" at Kinshasa—where one boards or leaves the ferry across the Congo River—knows that in this area, at least, Africans have extraordinary efficiency and entrepreneurship...
...In Zimbabwe, there are so many deaths from AIDS that insurance companies are demanding blood tests for anyone who takes out a policy worth $50,000 or more (half of what it used to be), and are considering a five-year grace period so that anyone who dies of AIDS within five years of buying a life insurance policy is excluded from coverage...
...But if South Africa fails, then Mozambique will crash and burn within minutes...
...I don't have numbers for Zambia or Zaire, but travelers in those Michael Ledeen is foreign editor of The American Spectator and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...whenever some time is devoted to the nation's non-military problems, the outcome is as likely topower with the loser...
...At least this way, if Chissano & Co...
...When he died late last year, he had become one of the most respected members of the new government...
...For the moment, however, it's impossible to get anyone down there to listen very long to any remarks critical of Nelson Mandela, and with good reason: he has outperformed even the most wildly optimistic forecasts...
...The real numbers on AIDS are very hard to come by, but the rule of thumb is that the official figures approach one-third of the real level of infection, so the official HIV-positive figures of 20-25 percent in Zimbabwe are truly horrifying, especially when the great majority of these are in the most productive age bracket (20-40 years old...
...He wanted to make sure the other political forces participated in the drafting process, both because he wanted to keep the radicals in his own party at bay, and because he believes it's a mistake to exclude any major part of the polity...
...This was an ANC initiative, and they clearly had in mind to expose the systematic repression and murder of ANC leaders...
...the legacy of corruption and inefficiency has proven very difficult to overcome, as the Zambian experience under Chiluba has demonstrated...
...He has quieted a lot of very violent spirits and given an example of cheerful dignity that has inspired the country...
...And, in one of the most sensitive areas—housing—help came from an unexpected source...
...Yet one must handle this matter sensitively...
...Somehow, the warfare between Qhosa (Mandela's tribe, and that of most of the ANC leadership) and Zulu (Buthelezi's tribe) has ended, and if the peace holds it will be a major accomplishment whose importance for the the voting so poorly that they had to extend the election by a full day to let additional people vote...
...These guys seem to have forgotten that democracy—like capitalism—is based on conflict, and if there's no opposition there's something wrong...
...The government has created a special commission to investigate the crimes committed, and covered up, under apartheid...

Vol. 28 • April 1995 • No. 4


 
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