[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 116 (Tuesday, July 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10254-S10255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      METAMORPHOSIS OF A CONTINENT

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the Chicago Tribune carried a remarkable 
story from Timbuktu, Mali by Liz Sly on what is happening in Africa. 
Really, it is two stories that are intertwined.
  I wish it were possible to put into the Record the maps and color 
shadings to provide a more accurate picture of some of the things that 
are illustrated in this article.
  But those who read the article will note that Africa is a place of 
hope and promise and despair.
  The little-known story of the spread of democracy in Africa is the 
story of progress that could be reversed easily.
  Africa needs our helping hand.
  I ask that the Liz Sly article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:
                [From the Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1995]

   Metamorphosis of a Continent--Democracy Seeks Hold Amid Poverty, 
                                Violence

                              (By Liz Sly)

       Timbuktu, Mali.--Not all of the news out of Africa is bad.
       For the first time in its long history, this remote town on 
     the edge of the Sahara has a mayor elected by the people, 
     Harber Sabane, 51, who has high hopes that democracy will 
     help Timbuktu reclaim its status as one of the world's great 
     cities.
       First, he acknowledged, there are a number of problems to 
     be ironed out.
       ``We have problems of development,'' Sabane said. ``We 
     don't have roads. We have a problem of water. We don't have 
     infrastructure. Our ecological system is destroyed because of 
     a lot of droughts and we have a problem of deforestation.
       ``Another problem is unemployment. We have no industry. We 
     are very, very, very poor. Most people are illiterate and 60 
     percent of our children don't go to school.''
       Unfortunately, Sabane could have been describing just about 
     anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Once synonymous with 
     everything that was exotic and alluring about the continent, 
     Timbuktu today is typical of everything that is wrong with 
     it--even down to the ethnic fighting last year that killed an 
     estimated 600 people and scared away the tourists, the town's 
     only source of outside income.
       By 1990, it had long been clear that sub-Saharan Africa was 
     torn by crises. Poverty, conflict and underdevelopment were 
     compounded by corrupt dictators who enjoyed the backing of 
     rival superpowers concerned more with their own strategic 
     agendas than with human rights or economic progress.
       This, however, was supposed to be Africa's ``democracy 
     decade'' in which the dictators, bereft of their Cold War 
     relevance, would be replaced by elected, accountable 
     governments heralding a new era of freedom and prosperity.
       Halfway through the 1990s, those goals are elusive as ever 
     for most parts of the continent. Instead, Africa's democracy 
     decade risks becoming yet another decade of disappointment. 
     Millions of Africans are still waiting for life to improve 
     after more than three decades of freedom from colonialism.
       A woeful array of collapsed states, hijacked elections and 
     ethnic conflicts litter the landscape south of the Sahara. 
     And even where democracy is taking root, Africa's hopes of a 
     brighter future are in danger of being buried under the 
     weight of its multiple problems, as Sabane is discovering in 
     Timbuktu.
       ``The world around Africa is fast coming together and this 
     continent risks being the odd man out,'' warned U.S. National 
     Security Adviser Anthony Lake on a recent visit to the 
     continent, summing up the world's growing impatience with 
     Africa's failure to find its way in the post-Cold war world.
       Chaotic Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda stand out as worst case 
     examples of that failure. The 1990s saw Cold War-inspired 
     conflicts in Ethiopia and Mozambique come to and end. But 2 
     million Africans have died since the collapse of the Berlin 
     Wall as a result of new wars unleashed directly or indirectly 
     by pressures from the democratic reforms that were supposed 
     to bring them new hope--10 times the number who have died in 
     the war in Bosnia.
       A recent report from the London-based International 
     Institute of Strategic Studies found some form of conflict in 
     26 of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries, offering a gloomy 
     assessment for the future. ``The potential for sudden 
     outbursts of violence exists in most [African] countries as 
     rising populations meet falling living standards and weak 
     governments confront regional or ethnic movements,'' it said.
       But is Africa's outlook really that bleak? It is just 50 
     years since the world ended a war that killed 60 million 
     people, and many Africans plead that it is unfair to write 
     off Africa now just because it is going through a period of 
     upheaval.
       ``From the outside, the universal view is one of despair, 
     and it must be tempting to repudiate the whole continent,'' 
     said political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, director of the 
     Center for Basic Research in Uganda's capital, Jampala. ``But 
     when one lives here, one recognizes the extent of the 
     problems but also the small improvements that are taking 
     place.''
       For better or worse, the 1990s already have proved 
     revolutionary for Africa. Until 1990, Africa had only three 
     governments that could be considered authentically 
     democratic. Since then, multiparty elections have been held 
     in 35 of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 nations.
       From the sandswept streets of Timbuktu to the stately 
     monuments of Cape Town, South Africa, new leaders are 
     experimenting with new ways to address Africa's problems, and 
     new freedoms are flourishing in places that once knew only 
     repression and dictatorship.
       Some have proved unexpected success stories, such as South 
     Africa, where the leadership of President Nelson Mandela and 
     the spirit of reconciliation that he represents shine like a 
     beacon of hope for the rest of the continent. Benin, Malawi, 
     Zambia and Namibia are among other countries that have 
     peacefully managed the transition to democracy.
       Africa's seeming tendency toward violence should be seen in 
     the context of these seismic changes, argues Gen. Amadou 
     Toumani Toure. He helped bring democracy to Mali, 

[[Page S 10255]]
     the modern state of which Timbuktu is a part, by overthrowing its hated 
     dictator in a military coup and then handing over power to an 
     elected civilian government.
       ``Africa is in the throes of a radical transformation,'' 
     Toure said. ``After 30 years of military dictatorship or one-
     party rule, we are moving to democracy. Sometimes that 
     process is violent, and it gives the impression Africa is in 
     crisis.
       ``Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, these are all struggles for 
     power in the new order. Some leaders are resisting change. 
     But take Senegal, Mali, Zambia, where people have chosen the 
     ballot over the bullet.
       ``Africa does have a future. But each country in history 
     has gone through crisis in arriving at its future. America 
     had a revolution. Europe had many wars. Africa also is in the 
     process of finding its future.''
       But where does Africa's future lie? With South Africa, 
     which also underwent violence before peacefully embracing 
     change? Or with Somalia and Liberia, which have disintegrated 
     into chaos?
       The prognosis for most African countries seems to be 
     hovering precariously between these extremes. Just 17 of the 
     continent's 35 elections have heralded genuinely democratic 
     forms of government, according to a study by the Center for 
     Strategic and International Studies.
       In countries such as Burkina Faso, Ghana and Kenya, 
     dictators were voted back into power in questionable 
     elections, and they continue to rule with little regard for 
     democratic principles. In others, such as Nigeria and Zaire, 
     corrupt regimes continue to resist change, making these 
     nations candidates for possible future upheaval.
       Mali is typical of those new democracies that are genuinely 
     trying to improve the lives of their people. But they are 
     doing so against a backdrop of poverty, ethnic rivalry and 
     falling Western aid budgets, all of which threaten to 
     confound even the best-intentioned efforts.
       Do-or-die economic reforms, ordered by the World Bank as a 
     prerequisite for continued international aid, have produced 
     economic growth in some countries that previously had known 
     only stagnation or decline. But the reforms are causing 
     considerable hardship among ordinary people, threatening 
     these fragile new systems with popular discontent.
       Poverty is already a key dynamic fueling conflict in 
     Africa, something overlooked by Toure's interpretation of 
     Africa's crises as the inevitable byproduct of political 
     transformation.
       In Mali, which the United Nations ranked the world's 
     seventh poorest country, 1992's peaceful democratic elections 
     coincided with an eruption of hostilities between Tuareg 
     nomads and local Malians in the desert region around 
     Timbuktu.
       Although these two groups have fought one another in the 
     past, both sides blame the recent fighting not on ethnic 
     differences but on the country's desperate economic 
     situation. Along the fringes of the Sahara, poverty has been 
     deepened by harsh droughts in the 1970s and 1980s that turned 
     former arable land into desert.
       ``It's poverty and bad economic conditions that cause this 
     antisocial behavior,'' said Timbuktu's Mayor Sabane of the 
     fighting, which has subsided.
       ``The causes of the fighting are economic,'' agreed Mohamed 
     Ag Ahmed, a leader of one of the Tuareg factions, the 
     Movement and United Fronts of Azawad, which is demanding 
     development aid for Tuaregs in peace talks with the 
     government.
       ``We could all live on the same land without conflict. But 
     the useful space has shrunk over time. The population of Mali 
     increases 3.5 percent a year, and now there is less land 
     available for an increasing number of people year after 
     year.''
       The simple logic applies to many parts of the continent. 
     Falling living standards, environmental degradation and high 
     population growth rates risk pushing already impoverished 
     communities to the brink of their capacity to survive, and 
     into competition for scarce resources. It is perhaps no 
     accident that Africa's worst crises of the 1990s all have 
     occurred in nations ranked among the continent's poorest 
     half.
       Yet there is no reason why Africa should be as poor as it 
     is. A recent International Monetary Fund survey notes that 
     Africa's ``overall low level of economic growth is anything 
     but foreordained.''
       Sub-Saharan Africa's 540 million people account for 10 
     percent of the world's population, living on about 15 percent 
     of the Earth. Their land is potentially some of the world's 
     richest, blessed with half the world's gold, most of its 
     diamonds, 40 percent of its platinum and rich reserves of 
     other minerals, oil and natural gas.
       But Africans share only 1.3 percent of the world's actual 
     wealth, and a disproportionate burden of the world's 
     suffering. According to the CIA, two-thirds of those in the 
     world risking starvation this year live in Africa. Africa 
     contains 62 percent of the world's AIDS cases and one-third 
     of its refugees.
       Africa's entire gross domestic product is smaller than that 
     of the Netherlands, with a population of just 15 million.
       Also, Africa is the only part of the developing world where 
     living standards have fallen over the past decade. Despite 
     receiving nearly half the world's total annual aid--$20 
     billion a year in the 1990s--the average African is no better 
     off today than he or she was at independence from colonialism 
     more than three decades ago.
       What brought Africa to this sorry point in its history? 
     Colonialism undoubtedly played a part in setting independent 
     Africa off on the wrong foot, said professor George Ayittey, 
     a Ghanaian national and professor of economics at the 
     American University in Washington.
       Independence also proved a hollow word for Africans, for no 
     sooner had they cast off their colonial rulers than Cold War 
     politics intervened to create a new form of foreign 
     interference. Western powers and the Soviet bloc poured 
     billions of dollars into propping up unsavory dictators--$100 
     billion in the 1980s alone--long after it was apparent that 
     they had no popular support.
       But increasingly, Africans are starting to realize that 
     their own leaders are to blame for their plight, Ayittey 
     said.
       ``The basic reason why we're having all this chaos in 
     Africa is because we had bad leadership,'' Ayittey said. 
     ``The colonial state was very authoritarian but those who 
     took over made things worse.''
       Uncounted billions of those aid dollars, which could have 
     gone toward building roads or educating children, were 
     squirreled away into Swiss bank accounts for Africa's leaders 
     or spent on weaponry to keep them in power, while ordinary 
     Africans grew steadily poorer.
       With the lifting of outside support for Africa's dictators, 
     many of their nations have been exposed as hollow shams, as 
     personal piggy-banks for narrow elites who had failed to 
     unite their multiethnic populations behind them.
       In finding its future, Africa therefore has not only to 
     battle harsh new economic realities, but also cope with the 
     burdensome legacy of its past mistakes.
       And it can no longer count on the largesse of the outside 
     world to help it through. The West already has given notice 
     that African leaders who fail to heed the new rules of fair 
     play and accountability will have their aid suspended. Yet 
     even those who do can expect no democracy bonanza; in the 
     U.S., a Republican congress is threatening to slash overall 
     aid levels to Africa, and Europe is also cutting aid.
       In Timbuktu, a city that lured countless European explorers 
     to their deaths in their quests for its wealth, Mayor Sabane 
     pleads with the world not to forsake Africa now.
       ``In Africa, we are apprentices in democracy. We need 
     help,'' he said.
       ``The current generation is very worried about our 
     situation and wants to lift us out of this malaise and 
     improve our lives. But we must have friendship so that Africa 
     can renew itself and find itself in the modern world.''
       But could it be too late for a continent that, time and 
     again, has failed to seize opportunities? Will the legacy of 
     mistakes prove insurmountable? Are ordinary Africans, 
     betrayed so many times by past leaders, in the process of 
     being betrayed again?
       Or is the continent merely witnessing the death throes of 
     the old order and the birth pangs of a new era, as most 
     Africans would like to believe?
       ``There is a saying in Africa, `never lose hope,''' Sabane 
     said.
       ``We don't lose hope.''
       

                          ____________________