Time to Move on Africa

Africa will never know peace and its people will have little cause to walk with their heads held high until it stops casting around for scapegoats and begins to honestly confront its problems, most of them of its own making. It’s as simple as that.
Unless we start owning up to our problems, to our culpability and complicity, we will be nowhere near finding a solution.

Famine again, not for the first time, threatens millions of lives in the Horn of Africa, straddling several countries. UN agencies estimate that US$2,48bn is required to feed and clothe victims. The British government is donating more than £100m, including £13m from the public. Canada is chipping in with C$50m.

The SA government has come to the party with a paltry million rand. As a colleague remarked mischievously, it’s not even enough to pay for Blade Nzimande’s official limousine. At least government has kindly appealed to the public to make donations. So far, no other African country has made a donation.

 The suffering of ordinary people, sadly, does not often rouse our leaders into action. They are more likely to spring to the defence of people like Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi than visit the refugee camps that the actions of these despots may spawn.

Former president Thabo Mbeki, now an arm chair philosopher, has been venting his spleen on the travails of Africa. He lays the continent’s problems at the door of the West and the UN. He flays the West for the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, and the UN for being its handmaiden.

Mbeki is no bumbling fool. He’s an intelligent man, passionate about Africa’s progress and its wellbeing. He should know that the progress he seeks cannot be achieved by purveying such half-truths. It merely sidetracks people from the real issues.

French intervention in Côte d’Ivoire prevented a calamitous civil war, stoked by its leaders, while Africa stood by. There is probably a lot to criticise about the UN mission in Libya. But it was meant to avert the slaughter of innocent people while Africa’s leaders happily sided with the murderer.

The last time the UN sat on its hands was with respect to Rwanda and around a million people (too many to count) were hacked to death. An eminent African, Kofi Annan, was at the helm of the UN peacekeeping force. Paul Kagame is still making political capital out of it. Maybe the UN and the rest of the international community need to take their share of the blame. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we had started by blaming the machete-wielding thugs who did the actual killing. Why don’t we look at ourselves? Who knows, we may just collide with a solution.

We keep removing the scabs on our scars to expose ancient wounds. “Look what they have done to us,” we say plaintively to those who care to listen. We are forever victims, never masters of our own fate. But every handout that assaults our dignity, every emaciated child who dies needlessly, is an indictment on Africa.

We have it within us to erase such a stigma and stereotype. Dastardly deeds were done to us and many other people a long time ago. But the world has moved on. It’s time we did so, too.
By 
Barney Mthombothi: Editor of Financial Mail.