African War Communitys Easter Message

Andrew McKillop

DISASTERS HAPPEN

First, our Sponsor’s message: Grace and peace be multiplied unto you.

We are all survivors on this Planet, the missionaries tell us, like the Mulvihill Farmer Community working to improve human adaptation to global warming at the World Outreach Abidjan center in Ivory Coast. This is the fight, or even war against global warming and climate change that now has a neat pious gospel ring to it, but we can stay in Africa and look at the real world of other fighting and other wars that are happening – and are coming.

In the 19th century, and the 20th, taking a blank piece of paper and inventing African countries and their boundaries on a somewhat, or even total arbitrary basis was the game of European politicians and their map-drawing committees working secretively in “smoke-filled rooms”, before smoking bans were invented. This map-drawing game either followed, or preceded both local wars and European wars.

The maps produced started with the outline of a country, only made easy when it concerned islands, and moved on to both skirting around, or including mountains and rivers. Here and there, towns and villages, joined mostly by unpaved roads, and very occasionally by railway lines and real roads, would be shown in their new and right country. The new national territory.

Today you can buy software games that allow you to daydream-design your own countries, after which you can have your Designer Wars to restore “peace and harmony”. The basic problem, which is always avoided is that the real world is not a blank piece of paper. It existed before. It will exist after. Ideally, today’s African leaders who permanently complain about “the legacy of colonialism” would introduce a democratic process allowing Africa’s people to choose the boundaries of their own countries.

That would be ideal, but firstly would require that African leaders trusted their people to vote the right way, and also in the real world, that the map-redrawing committees would avoid bringing in the players and boundary designers with an eye for the main advantage. Those big deposits or even potential deposits of oil, gas, gold, diamonds, uranium, manganese, iron ore, in fact anything you can think of, not forgetting the water rights, future tourist wildlife parks, and all the rest.

REGIME CHANGE

The African Union formed in 2001 from the preceding OAU-Organization for African Unity consists of all 55 African states excluding Morocco, which is barred due to the ongoing Western Sahara dispute. Of the AU’s 54 member states, it is not possible to accurately classify how many are outright military juntas or dictatorships, how many are oligarchies with the trappings of democracy, and how many could be called “western type” democracies, including monarchic democracies. Human Rights Watch currently lists 26 African states as having serious or critical humans rights issues. Certain countries on the black list may surprise. Despite South Africa’s strong constitutional protection of certain human rights and relative success at providing basic services, this is an uphill struggle. Financial and economic malinvestment and mismanagement, and endemic corruption—especially at local government level—are accompanied by unfortunately regular atrocities, such as the gunning down of 34 striking miners at the Lonmin platinum mine in August 2012. In South Africa but also in the majority of African states, not only the 26 states “blacklisted” by HRW, the accelerating clampdown by government on all news media bodes as badly for the future, as does the endemic corruption.

Africa is the Black Continent for military juntas. In all cases, juntas only change by force, and are replaced by another junta – as in Central African Republic at this moment. The possibility of any other issue or outcome is close to zero. Tyranny replaces tyranny.

Unknown to many and despite the high level of instability and political violence in Africa, only in part due to its baleful colonial heritage of unrealistic national borders, the continent is enjoying solid economic growth for the most part. This is often, but not exclusively due to still-high commodity prices and large-scale projects to produce and export metals and minerals, and increasingly consumer goods and food crops. High economic growth relative to the Lost Decades of about 1985-2000, when a large number of African states were subjected to debt-torture by the IMF and Club of Paris with their “structural adjustment plans”, has now resulted in what can surprise. Much higher levels of national antagonism and readiness to fight. Africa is ready to fight and is doing so.

Many other types and kinds of regimes – not only political – have changed in Africa. These stretch from weather and climate regimes, with a major break in the series of long-term drought in the Sahel, to demographic regimes as slowly falling birth rates begin to even affect Africa south of the Sahara, to regime change of popular arts and culture less and less dominated by Western models, to the insidious regime change of African politics and society. Perhaps surprising to some, this has resulted in more assertiveness – and greater readiness to fight – among themselves, in Africa.

AFRICAN DESPOTS

For at least the past 10 – 15 years Africa has gone it alone. Its former colonial masters move less often, and less arrogantly to tell or force Africans to “do the right thing”. Outbreaks of clear military activity by former colonial “mother countries” are so rare that the Mali war of France has to be considered an exception, and will likely end soon, simply because of its cost to France. The polite but firm refusal of almost all European countries, the USA, Japan and other “western developeds” to help finance France’s war in Mali, to supply weapons, or troops, to supply anything but “supportive statements” is a clear sign of the times. France has had much better luck with its attempt to get backing from Western countries for its supply of more weapons of higher lethality to intensify the civil war in its former colony of Syria, while pleasing Qatar and Saudi Arabia for their services to French football and the purchase of a string of luxury hotels in Paris.

As Vladimir Putin acidly put it: France fights Islamic fundamentalism in Mali and helps it in Syria.

African despots do not have any need for, but can certainly use Islamic fundamentalism as another plank for building their continental civil war. Called the “Pan African Civil War” by several political historians, this Africa-wide civil war can be dated as starting at least 30 years ago, in the early 1980s.

With added impetus from several factors – economic growth, often a doubling of national populations in under 40 years, and other game changers as mentioned above – the Pan African Civil War is likely now starting its widest and wildest phase. The existing, former colonial boundaries will play a major role in intensifying this continental civil war but in no way will limit them.

The continent-wide reach of military and terror actvity is easy to prove. Taking only the very recent or ongoing cases of the Mali war and the change of junta in Central African Republic, the number of African states with either formal military presence in these two countries, or with undeclared but real military presence in these two countries, is at least 12. This may be a low count. This importantly does not count the both undeclared, and non-national armed fighting groups operating in these two countries – and very widely elsewhere in Africa. This for example includes the so-called “al Qaeda and jihadist” fighting groups as well as known and dangerous pseudo-Christian terrorists such as the originally Uganda-based Lord’s Army. Awash with small calibre weapons, most recently increased by the sack of Khahadi’s arsenals, Africa is armed and ready to fight.

Unpleasant but real indicators of the present long-term one-way trend to recruiting fighters include the very large, and growing numbers of orphans in the majority of African states. Orphanages, somewhat like madrassa in Muslim countries are easily shifted from “civil” to “military” and become training centres for future militias, bandits, and terrorists. The image of Child Soldiers toting a large heavy 50-cal machine gun is above all an African image. War is endemic.

AFRICA’S DEMOCRACY DEFICIT AND DEMOCRACY’S SHORTCOMINGS

All kinds of arguments are put forward to say Africa is a “special case’ hostile or even unsuited to democracy in part due to its colonial past and unrealistic borders. Africa has endemic poverty, high illiteracy and very young populations of persons who are ineligible to vote. Its Muslim dominant countries bar womed from voting. Election campaigns in Africa soon degenerate into violence with large loss of life and are followed by ballot box stuffing and counting irregularities.

This only covers some of the reasons why democracy “cannot take hold” in Africa. Democracy itself is also under test, as an institution and political regime, in its earliest region of widespread use – in Europe. As we know, abstentionism is often high, and the final result of elections is often hairsbreadth splits on the 50.1 – 49.9 model, meaning that at most 20% – 25% of the population decided which party or coalition of parties obtained the next governmental mandate. Some 75% or 80% did not. Is this “democracy” as it is presented, communicated or taught to children in State-controlled schools?

Apart from all the other defects of European or American-type “liberal democracy” the process is de facto oligarchy-generating, that is a small group of powerful and highly motivated persons, sometimes acting “behind the scenes” but often acting openly, decide who will run the country and make its laws. As we also know, the so-called “cult of technocrats” in Europe increasingly sidelines the elected leaders when it concerns decisions on how people run their lives. The elected leaders become figureheads or glove puppets fit for opening orphanages, helping disaster victims, widows and the forgotten ones in society, as well opening the next unnecessary airport or nicely flowered roundabout. This may have seemed a “timeless role” for Europe’s democrats, through the good times of the 1950s and 1960s or 1970s, but that time was long ago.

For the African despots and warlords this is grist to their mill, another justification for their existence but for the Europeans is a clear warning of what comes next if they cannot get their democratic act together. Being pious about democracy and claiming it gives “timeless teaching” on how to run society is now contradicted by the real world results – in the European hearth of modern democracy. In Africa, this present degraded model of a fragile method and process for running society and the economy is basically not applicable – and this is now openly on view.

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