AFRICANEWS

Africa

Clinton puts Africa on the american agenda

Politics

Hesitation and reluctance are President Bill Clinton's style in foreign affairs. He responds to international events only when he can no longer neglect to do so.

Clinton's pattern of hesitation contrasts with his African overture. He orchestrated the 12-day tour of Africa into the longest foreign trip of his presidency. Until Clinton travelled to Africa, Africa wasn't on the American agenda. Clinton put it there.

It would have been easier and more comfortable for Clinton to continue ignoring the promises and problems of African politics. The Euro-American masters of the "international community" have denigrated Africa and removed it from the agenda. However, Philip Gourevitch suggested recently in The New Yorker that this "actually helped to create the opening that Mr. Clinton has stepped into."

President Clinton has stated his aim was "to help to introduce the people of the United States to a new Africa... an Africa whose political and economic accomplishments grow more impressive each month."

The new Africa Clinton speaks about emerged entirely on its own from the post-Cold War neglect of America. "A new generation of African leaders saw the West's withdrawal as an occasion to take responsibility for their own political destinies," wrote Gourevitch, adding: "having tolerated both apartheid and genocide, the West no longer had much credibility in Africa."

The planning for Clinton's itinerary began well before the world heard of Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey and Linda Tripp. Richard Anthony Joseph, professor of political science at Emory University and an expert in African politics, told the Cincinnati Post newspaper that he personally was "very delighted" with the choice of countries. There's a good regional balance and most are trying to democratise, he said. The visit to Africa was "a long time in coming," according to Rae Shan Johnson, 24, student at the University of Cincinnati, but on the other hand: "it's one thing to face the problems of Africa, another to deal with them." Clinton's itinerary avoided stops at factories that never produced, roads that go nowhere, and power plants that were left uncompleted - all projects financed by donor nations that were poorly designed and unproductive. This misspending left nothing behind except debt with no productive means to repay it.

Clinton did not address the external debt problem, though African leaders brought up the topic at a meeting in Uganda. The latest calculations estimate that African countries owe the United States about $4.5 billion. This is a small share of Africa's total debt burden. Current United States law prohibits forgiving the debt of countries that systematically violate human rights, that have excessive military spending, or are engaged in terrorism or drug trafficking.

In Uganda, Clinton's expression regarding American involvement in the slave trade was characteristically unremarkable. "Going back to the time before we were a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade and we were wrong for that," said Clinton. This was not an apology, according to Washington columnist Richard Cohen, but an expression of regret.

Texas Representative Tom Delay, the Republican House whip, was vexed with Clinton's extemporaneous remark. "He didn't quite apologise for the chieftains in Uganda that were selling the blacks to the slave traders, did he?" Although the New World slaves came from West Africa, not East, Delay's argument was plain, which is that the victims were somehow also accomplices. The former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan would have Clinton apologise for saying he's sorry. "When Europeans departed, most of them by the 1960," wrote Buchanan, "they left behind power stations, telephones, telegraphs, railroads, mines, plantations, schools, a civil service, a police force and a treasury." Buchanan's implication is that with Europeans gone, much of sub-Sahara Africa has reverted to chaos.

For others, though, the Atlantic trade in African slaves is a great crime and one that has never been properly acknowledged. An apology, commented Louis Menand in The New Yorker, "is not a substitute for material redress, but it may make material redress easier."

The spin-offs to Clinton's African trip could be many. The Congressional Black Caucus will find it easier to argue that the United States should restore direct bilateral aid to Africa to at least the $800 million level of the early 1990s.

Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., one of the authors of the African Growth and Opportunity Act who travelled with Clinton thinks that based on his experience of Africa, Clinton may push for Senate passage of the legislation. Jefferson is willing to work on amending the bill to accommodate the strong criticism of South African President Nelson Mandela. In general, Africans have argued that the legislation fails to adequately address Africa's debt, poverty and overall economic crisis.

Large nongovernamental organisations like Oxfam echoed Mandela's criticism of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, particularly the point that trade success should be measured by its impact on African people not just US business.

It is only normal that the constituency of the Congressional Black Caucus is composed of various opinions. Thus it was not difficult to find students at the University of Cincinnati who were opposed to foreign assistance to Africa, but a proper systematic survey of opinion was not carried out.

Bryan Evans, 21, believes that such aid creates dependence on help. According to him Africa already has the resources its needs for its development. Scott Bryant, 21, argues against such foreign assistance because "charity begins at home."

Now that Clinton's huge entourage has returned home after galloping across Africa, it is useful to recall, as Gourevitch does, the topic the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe addressed nearly two decades ago: "The Necessity for Cultural Exchange in a Spirit of Partnership Between North and South." Achebe drove home the point that for any meaningful dialogue between North and South there must be change in the way each perceives the other. While promoting partnership, Clinton and his entourage discovered that Africans talk back. It's not enough that Clinton got Africa on the agenda. Africans will have to believe that they are being not just listened to, but heard.

There is a desperate search for something positive to say about Africa, a quest for any signs of hope. There is a desperate need to make Africa's image more favourable, hence the increasingly fasionable tags on countries such as Uganda, Ghana, Eritrea and South Africa that have made enomous progress from extremely difficult social economic, and political situations. But until there is concrete economic development built on Arican cultural foundations and indigenous realities, it will be premature to divide Africa into one that works and one that does not,or to declare a full-blown renaissance when there are only signs of one in the making".

(Extracted From:The EastAfrican, April l6-12, 1998 -Sam Mwale

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