by Guy Arnold
As the decade came to a close a summary of developments, good and bad, included: the emergence of the one-party state as the most favoured form of government; the increasing power and ambition of the military; the fragile state of most economies and the growth of aid dependence; the black-white confrontation in the South that included a number of liberation wars; and the increasing impingement on the continent of Cold War pressures. Such developments induced a growing sense of realism: that most African states had little power, many problems and scant capacity to influence world events or the economic trends that most affected them. On the credit side was the fact that most of the continent had become independent, that it had created a number of structures such as the OAU, which reinforced a sense of African identity and solidarity, and that despite the limitations upon its tiny economies it had achieved a respectable level of economic growth. If Africa entered the 1970s with a sense of achievement behind it, the problems it faced, as it soon discovered, would tax its leaders to the full. At least a new sense of realism was beginning to replace the euphoria of the independence era.
PART II
The 1970s
Decade of Realism
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Patterns of Development
The 1970s were to witness huge upheavals through much of Africa: wars, economic and political experiments, the emergence of tyrannies and, everywhere, the pervasive manipulative influence of the dominant Western powers, with the Communists providing an alternative court of appeal. By 1970 the euphoria, which had accompanied independence, had passed; African leaders now had to discover how to steer their countries through an international minefield in which virtually all the levers of economic and political power lay outside their control. In North Africa the death of Nasser marked the passing of an era; in Libya the young Gaddafi decided to take on the oil majors and in the process gave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) ‘teeth’; in the west Morocco embarked upon a path of imperialism whose outcome was still undecided at the end of the century. The two superpowers brought the Cold War to the Horn as the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, Africa’s great survivor, finally ended in tragedy. Three African tyrants – Uganda’s Amin, Central African Republic’s Bokassa and Equatorial Guinea’s Nguema – did their best to justify all the accusations of barbarism that the continent’s white critics were so quick to level against it. A number of countries – Algeria, Nigeria, Tanzania, for example – embarked upon development strategies that gave rise to the hope that at least some of Africa’s new states would break away from aid dependence upon the West, although elsewhere on the continent aid came to be accepted as an integral part of every development strategy. Both Britain and France seemed intent on proving that Nkrumah’s accusations of neo-colonialism were justified with Britain constantly coming down on the wrong side for the wrong reasons and France intervening militarily and economically in its former colonies as though that status had never changed. There were brave attempts by radical leaders to steer their countries into development paths that would not be dependent upon the West; they rarely succeeded. At least a dozen countries were affected by a more or less permanent state of warfare – sometimes low-intensity guerrilla activity, at others escalating into major set piece battles as in the Horn. In Rhodesia the end of the decade would coincide with the emergence of an independent Zimbabwe. The collapse of the Portuguese Empire in 1974–75 brought immediate if only temporary peace to Angola and Mozambique before both countries would again be submerged in even more brutal civil wars, while brooding over the whole Southern African scene was the entrenched apartheid state. Much bitterness would be revealed as various states embarked upon policies of authenticity: changing names, nationalization, expropriating property and expelling metropolitan expatriates were gestures of repudiation signalling the African desire to throw off the remaining evidences of colonialism; but few of these gestures worked. Colonialism had gone deep and countries such as Mali that tried to break free were forced by economic necessity to turn back to the former metropolitan power for economic assistance and survival. This was provided but the price to be paid was a high one.
A brief survey of events in a number of individual countries follows to fill in the background for the decade as a whole.
ARAB NORTH AFRICA
Gamal Abdul Nasser died of a heart attack on 28 September 1970 to bring an era in Egypt’s history to an end. Vice-President Anwar Sadat succeeded him and, despite predictions that he was only a stopgap president, quickly consolidated his power. The 1970s, in fact, were to prove a momentous decade for Egypt. In July 1972 Soviet military advisers, a heritage from the Nasser era, were expelled from Egypt and Egyptians manned their military installations. In August the government announced plans to merge with Libya, one of those Arab unions that never came to anything, and relations between the two countries subsequently deteriorated. During 1972–73 there was growing unrest, especially among the student population, until the Yom Kippur War, launched by Egypt, took the world by surprise. When Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal on 6 October 1973, Sadat transformed his own position and the entire situation in the Middle East. Although the Israelis held their own, after the initial reverses, the Yom Kippur War was the first Israeli-Arab war in which the military honours were even rather than an all-out victory for Israel. A post-war agreement of 18 January 1974 between Egypt and Israel returned a strip of land on the Sinai side of the Suez Canal to Egypt, whose prestige had been restored, while a now confident Sadat had overnight become the hero of the Arab world. He granted an amnesty to political opponents and restored diplomatic relations with the United States. US President Jimmy Carter (1977–81) worked hard and with success to broker a peace between Egypt and Israel.
However, once Cairo was seen to be pursuing a bilateral peace with Israel so as to regain control of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt became progressively isolated in the Arab world. In November 1977 Sadat did the unthinkable when he visited Israel and addressed the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). On 26 March 1979, the outcome of the Camp David meetings, a treaty was signed between Sadat for Egypt and Menachim Begin for Israel under whose terms Israel would withdraw from Sinai over the succeeding three years. The two countries established diplomatic relations in February 1980 and by recognizing Israel’s right to exist Sadat isolated himself in the Arab world. The Arab League withdrew its headquarters from Cairo and Egypt’s membership was suspended.
Few would have predicted in 1969 that the young Muammar Gaddafi who came to power in Libya by means of a military coup would still be ruling Libya at the end of the century. He was to enjoy the great advantage of large oil revenues and a small population so that he always had a surplus of funds for external adventures, and as the world soon learnt external adventures were meat and drink to him. Three basic Gaddafi policies became apparent during the 1970s: the first, taking control of Libya’s oil; the second, the pursuit of Arab nationalism at home and in the region; the third, the implementation of a cultural revolution. It was Gaddafi who gave OPEC ‘teeth’ in the early 1970s; before that time the organization, which had been set up in 1961, had made no impression. Under Gaddafi Libya became a militant supporter of the Palestinians, pushing for greater action on their behalf than other Arab states were prepared to do. Gaddafi proposed a union with Egypt in 1972 and another with Tunisia in 1974; neither came to anything. Gaddafi’s radicalism was genuine enough; it would have been more effective had he been less erratic and unpredictable in his behaviour. As soon became apparent, both Arab and African leaders came to mistrust Gaddafi’s ambitions in much the same way that an earlier generation had mistrusted those of Nkrumah. Gaddafi supported revolutionary and guerrilla movements in Ethiopia, Rhodesia, Portuguese Guinea, Morocco and Chad (as well as other radical movements outside Africa) and from 1972 to 1979 provided Uganda’s dictator Amin with substantial assistance as well. In April 1973 Gaddafi called for a cultural revolution in Libya that involved the rejection of imported cultures, whether from
east or west, and the construction of a society based on the Koran. That year saw the beginning of Libya’s long involvement in Chad’s civil war when Libya claimed and occupied the 50,000 square mile Aozou Strip of northern Chad. In 1976 the General National Congress of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) was transformed into the General People’s Congress (GPC). On 2 March 1977 Gaddafi announced major changes in the GPC and the country was renamed The Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya with all power vested in the people. In 1979 Gaddafi resigned his official posts to concentrate upon ‘revolutionary work’. By that time, whatever people thought of him, Gaddafi had become a factor to be reckoned with in both the Arab Middle East and Africa. He was unpredictable and interfering but he had large oil funds at his disposal.
When the Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba was re-elected President unopposed in 1974 he was at the height of his influence. The following year the assembly made him President for life. But he had already been in power since independence in 1956 and there was growing discontent, especially at deteriorating economic conditions. The Union Générale Tunisienne de Travail (UGTT) (General Union of Tunisian Workers) initiated a number of strikes through 1976 and though the government offered a social contract that linked rises in pay to inflation this was not enough to stop the strikes or the demands for higher wages. Labour troubles came to a head on 26 January 1978 when the UGTT called a general strike. Rioting broke out in Tunis and a number of other cities, the army was used to restore order, 51 people were killed and several hundreds injured. The government imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency. Habib Achour, the militant UGTT leader, and 30 others were arrested for subversion. They were tried amidst widespread claims that the trials were unfair. Achour was sentenced to 10 years in prison and all but six of the others also received prison terms. This explosion of labour unrest was the worst crisis the government had faced since independence. Nonetheless, the government won the 1979 elections although voter turnout was down to 81 per cent rather than the normal 95 per cent. By the end of the decade there was growing uncertainty about the country’s political direction, which was exacerbated by speculations about the eventual succession to Bourguiba who was then nearly 80.
On the Atlantic coast of North Africa, Spanish or Western Sahara (the former Rio de Oro) was to become the focus of ugly antagonisms and warfare once Spain relinquished the territory as it did in 1976. When Morocco became independent from France in 1956 it had at once laid claim to Spanish Sahara on the grounds that the territory had formerly been a part of Greater Morocco. Its troops had made incursions across the border at that time but had been repulsed by the Spanish colonial forces. In 1960 Mauritania became independent and advanced claims of its own to Spanish Sahara. In 1963 large phosphate deposits were discovered in the north of the territory at Bou Craa and mining began under the Spanish in 1974. The indigenous people of the territory, less than 100,000 in number, formed a liberation movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO), which campaigned for an independent Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). POLISARIO rejected both the Moroccan and Mauritanian claims to the territory. In 1975 Spain entered into an agreement with Morocco and Mauritania that it would withdraw in February 1976 and divide the territory between the two African states. When Spain withdrew the following year Morocco occupied the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara and Mauritania occupied the southern third. POLISARIO, based in Algeria and receiving a certain amount of support from the Algerian government, formed a government in exile and commenced guerrilla actions against the two African countries that it regarded as invaders. The war for control of Western Sahara was to have a major impact upon both Morocco and Mauritania.
At the beginning of 1973 King Hassan of Morocco was unpopular and politically isolated. In order to improve his political standing and ensure the long-term safety of his throne, Hassan resorted to a series of nationalist moves that had a wide appeal. These included the confiscation of foreign-owned land (mainly French), the extension of the country’s territorial waters, the despatch of troops to the Syrian front in the Yom Kippur War and, most popular of all, the claim he advanced to Spanish Sahara. When it became clear that Spain simply wished to withdraw from its colony, both Morocco and Mauritania prepared for action. On 15 October 1975 a UN Mission to Spanish Sahara reported that the majority of the people wanted independence. In response to this report King Hassan mounted a brilliant public relations exercise: he ordered 350,000 unarmed Moroccan citizens to march into Spanish Sahara and claim it for Morocco. The march took place on 6 November 1975 and the marchers penetrated several miles into the territory before they were halted by Spanish troops. On 9 November Hassan called the marchers back home; the gesture had served its purpose and was wildly popular in Morocco. Once Spain had withdrawn, Morocco occupied the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara, and soon found that the war against POLISARIO was to be both costly and long lasting. By 1979 it was absorbing 25 per cent of Morocco’s annual expenditure and in the 1980s led to a breach between Morocco and the OAU.
In the first years of the 1970s Mauritania embarked upon a radical policy: it reviewed its post-independence agreements with France and left the franc zone to create its own currency. Then in 1974 the government nationalized the Société Anonyme des Mines de fer de Mauritanie (MIFERMA), which was responsible for mining the country’s major mineral resource of iron ore and provided 80 per cent of export earnings. Foreign, mainly French, interests controlled MIFERMA. At the same time Mauritania joined the Arab League. This process of radicalization reached its climax in 1975 at the congress of the Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM) when Ould Daddah presented a new charter that would turn Mauritania into an Islamic, centralist and socialist democracy. The charter received massive support including that of two opposition parties. The first half of the decade was also a period of great hardship as a result of the long Sahel drought that reached a climax in 1973 when large numbers of the national herd died and many nomads were forced away from their traditional life into the shanty towns of the cities so that by 1975 the country’s nomadic population had been halved.
The politics of Mauritania from 1975 to 1979 were to be dominated by the Western Sahara question. The division of Spanish Sahara, which had been agreed between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania in November 1975, allotted the southern province of Tiris el Gharbia to Mauritania but when Mauritanian troops occupied the province in 1976 they met fierce resistance from POLISARIO. Tactically, POLISARIO was probably wrong to concentrate its effort against the weaker of the two occupying powers but that is what it did. Moreover, it carried the fight into Mauritania, mounting attacks upon the railway line that linked the vital iron ore mine at Zouerate to the port at Nouadhibou. In June 1976 POLISARIO mounted a successful raid upon Nouakchott, the Maritanian capital. In response to this unexpectedly fierce resistance, Mauritania had to expand its small army from 1,500 to 12,000 and later to 17,000 men. Even so, Mauritania was unable to control the region of Western Sahara that had been allotted to it and instead became increasingly dependent upon Morocco while the POLISARIO war was generally unpopular with the people of Mauritania. By 1978 the country faced growing problems: it was unable to defend itself effectively from POLISARIO attacks while its economy was in ruins. Ould Daddah was overthrown in a bloodless coup: the constitution was suspended, the national assembly and the PPM were dissolved and a Military Committee for National Recovery (CMRN) was formed under Lt-Col. Moustapha Ould Salek. POLISARIO announced an immediate truce to assist the new government while Morocco moved 9,000 troops into the Mauritanian part of Western Sahara. A period of political instability in Mauritania followed and then in 1979 Mauritania renounced all claims to Western Sahara.
THE SAHEL BELT
The Sahel region consists of those countries lying to the immediate south of the Sahara desert and stretches from Senegal on the Atlantic to Sudan in the east. The Sahel includes parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, Northern Nigeria,
Chad and Sudan. The region is semi-arid, part desert, part savannah and links the Sahara to the more fertile lands farther south. It is essentially pasture land over which nomads graze their herds and where overgrazing has contributed to making droughts more severe when they occur. The drought which began in 1968 and intensified through to 1973 led to at least 100,000 deaths, the near extinction of a number of crops and the loss of between 50 and 70 per cent of some cattle herds. At the same time the Sahara desert advanced southwards by up to 60 miles as increased desertification took place. Another severe drought occurred in 1983–84. In the aftermath of the first drought the Permanent Inter-State Committee on Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) was formed in September 1974 comprising Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Upper Volta. Some of these countries were only covered by Sahel conditions in part, Nigeria being the most obvious example. The effects of the 1973 drought were especially devastating in the four giant countries – Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad. In Mauritania a large part of the national herd – cattle, sheep, goats, camels – was destroyed, with cattle numbers reduced from two million in 1970 to 1.3 million in 1976. Mali’s agricultural production was sharply reduced and output of the staples – millet and sorghum – fell from a normal 700,000 tons a year to 525,000 tons while rice output fell from 174,000 tons in 1971–72 to only 100,000 tons. In Niger cattle numbers were estimated to have fallen by two-thirds between 1972 and 1975 while fishing harvests from rivers and lakes fell by a third. Chad, by that time heavily involved in its civil war, also had its cattle herds devastated. Though not considered to be part of the Sahel, Ethiopia experienced a major drought in 1973 and this played a significant role in the downfall of Haile Selassie because of the inept way in which the government handled the subsequent famine in Tigre and Wollo provinces where an estimated 200,000 died. There were allegations of widespread corruption in the handling of relief supplies and a marked rise in food prices that was reinforced by a sharp increase in the costs of all imported goods and especially of petroleum products following the OPEC price rises at the end of 1973. In 1976 a Club of the Friends of the Sahel was formed. It prepared a report, Sahel Development Plan (1978–2000), whose object was ‘to enable the Sahel States to achieve food self-sufficiency whatever the climatic hazard’. By 1985, however, the CILSS had failed to achieve its primary aim of food self-sufficiency for the region and food production as a percentage of actual needs had fallen from 98 per cent in 1960 to 60 per cent in 1984.