I love Africa. I spent 12 years there, living in 5 very different countries — Nigeria, Lesotho, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, and Uganda — and travelling in most of the rest. In each case, I left, disillusioned at the lack of progress, at how African countries seemed to be working against their own interests. But each time I left, I went back, longing for the continent I loved.
I went to Cambodia just after the Khmer Rouge auto-genocide of some 2 million people. This had to be the lowest point of humanity in all of history. And yet, 29 years after I went to that basket case, the country has risen to the point of being classified a ‘lower middle-class’ country. It has surpassed almost all, if not all, African countries. So what’s wrong with Africa?
This question is not answered in the media, because most answers would be attacked as racist. “What’s wrong with Africans?” is pretty demeaning. But in my view, even to generalize the people as ‘Africans’ is racist, or at least ill-informed. On that huge continent, the people are as different as night and day.
I learned this when I first went to Nigeria, or more precisely, Maiduguri in Bornu — far north-east Nigeria near Lake Chad. Yes, that’s the place where the Boko Haram kidnapped those girls and have committed all sorts of atrocities. I was there to set up a new university, still existing as the University of Maiduguri. The people there are Kanuri: tall and thin, very dark-skinned, Muslim, and islamic-educated. We had several Ibo and other lecturers at our new university. They are short, stocky, and mostly Christian-educated, from Southeast Nigeria. They felt as foreign and out-of-place in Bornu as I did. I did most of my socializing with the ‘foreign’ Ibos, since we had so much more in common. Certainly these two groups of people could not be lumped together in any generalized ‘African’ rubric.
The Ibos and the Kanuris hated each other. Northern Nigeria had been instrumental in the starvation of thousands of Ibos back in the Biafra days. And therein lies, in my opinion, the crux of Africa’s problems. In a word: tribalism.
Just a few days ago was the 30th anniversary of the Rwanda massacre, where some 800,000 people were slaughtered. Then the West foisted ‘democracy’ on the country. Do you think that any Tutsi would vote for a Hutu? Not a chance. They vote for their own tribe, no matter how corrupt of criminal the candidate. That is the case all over Africa. ‘Democratic’ voting is by tribe, not by policy, intelligence, or philosophy.
Democracy is only a facade in Africa, as the parties are tribal factions, not real political parties. Are there any relative successes in Africa? True, you only hear about the horror stories in the media, but I’m not hearing about successes, except those silly happy-news Africa programs on CNN, which tell me nothing.
Sadly, it seems that the relative successes are countries where a strongman, who controls the army, keeps the tribes from killing each other. I lived in the Ivory Coast under President Houphouet-Boigny, who kept the Baoulé and the Bété from each others’ throats. It was the most developed country in Africa, and a real joy to live in. But when Houphouet left the scene, the country descended into chaos. One could also point to similar strongmen like Hastings Banda in Malawi, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and others, where the strongman kept the country together, but where chaos ensued after their departure.
Of course, there were other leaders who stayed in power simply by killing off the opposition tribe(s): Idi Amin in Uganda, Sekou Toure in Guinea, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
I also blame the colonial powers for drawing arbitrary lines on a map to form the newly independent countries. This process lumped together tribes who had hated each other and who had been killing and enslaving each other for centuries. They put the Hutus and the Tutsis together in the same ‘nation’. What did they expect? There again, it would be nonsensical to brand the tall, thin Tutsis, and the shorter Hutus with the same epithet of ‘Africans’.
I guess you can understand from the above why the media won’t touch this subject. I’m sure I will be attacked, but so be it.