Africa

by Guy Arnold

  Like the United Nations, its greater prototype, the OAU suffered from the same problems, although it had no Security Council and did not have to contend with big powers wielding a veto. It had to settle for the lowest common point of agreement: the perennial issue of creating an OAU defence force bore this out. Since its foundation the OAU had seen the fight against colonialism in all its forms as its primary task and to this end had established the Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa, which was based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Committee’s task was to assist the various liberation movements and, by the 1980s, especially those concerned with the white regimes in Southern Africa. At least the fight against colonialism, unlike other problems the OAU faced, was shared by all its members. With the collapse of the Portuguese African Empire in the mid-1970s, when first Guinea-Bissau, followed by Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe, and finally Angola became independent, a total of 49 countries had achieved their freedom and 48 of them, but not South Africa, had joined the OAU. Then the Seychelles and Djibouti became independent in 1976 and 1977 respectively, but for another 13 years ‘confrontation’ by the front-line states with South Africa was to continue, although Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, 15 years after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Smith government in 1965. Finally, at the very end of the 1980s, Namibia would achieve its independence.

  ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

  During the 1970s and 1980s, despite confrontation between the front-line states and South Africa, the OAU paid increasing attention to Africa’s economic weakness and the need for joint action to promote the continent’s social, infrastructural and economic development, and to this end the OAU adopted a number of joint strategies and plans of action. The years 1973–75 had seen the fourfold increase in the price of oil, the rise of OPEC power (with its adverse economic impact upon Africa) and the United Nations Sixth Special Session held during May 1974 in Algiers, which launched the idea of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The OAU, meanwhile, had launched its 1973 Declaration on Cooperation, Development and Economic Independence. This was followed, in 1979, by the Monrovia Strategy for Economic Development of Africa with its remarkably prescient accompanying paper, Africa 2000, leading to the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action.

  These plans for continental action, unfortunately, were rarely translated into more concrete activities on the ground. There was no dearth of African politicians and intellectuals who saw what needed doing but their proposals were generally disregarded by individual countries whose development programmes were more narrowly focused. In 1986 the OAU produced its African Priority Programme for Economic Recovery. Africa’s problem over these years was, quite simply, its poverty. There was no shortage of ideas about recovery or co-operation but in individual countries there was little capacity to mobilize resources and this was reflected more generally across the continent as a whole. Moreover, despite being the world’s poorest region Africa did not remotely attract the amount of international support for reform that it required. Furthermore, the international community tended too often to see Africa as a politically troubled continent in which investment would be at risk. Against this background, African leaders met in Addis Ababa in 1990, at the end of the decade, to adopt a new declaration ‘on the Fundamental Changes taking place in the World and their Implications for Africa: proposals for Africa’s Response’. At this meeting in Addis Ababa Africa’s leaders insisted that the continent’s development was their responsibility (a recognition, in part at least, that the era of constant injections of aid was coming to an end). They stated their determination to rationalize the various economic groupings on the continent and establish an African Economic Community. This 1990 declaration represented a new step towards collective action on continental development and led to the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community. These commitments sounded fine, yet in 1989 the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa warned: ‘Africa may begin the next millennium with a greater proportion of its population being innumerate, illiterate and unskilled, than it did at the beginning of the post-independence era in the 1960s.’

  WARS AND REFUGEES

  Although economic problems usually dominated OAU considerations of continent-wide collaboration, human rights and Africa’s apparently unstoppable wars were also cause for major concern. In January 1981 a meeting of Ministers of Justice approved an African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which, subject to ratification by a majority of OAU members, would establish a Commission to investigate violations of human rights. In July 1987 the Assembly of Heads of State approved the establishment of an African Commission on Human Rights, after the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (approved in 1981) had been ratified by a majority of member states. The range of Africa’s wars witnessed endless human rights abuses and worked against the achievement of real unity and yet, perversely, strengthened an artificial sense of unity since African leaders were loath to criticize one another, thereby parading the continent’s weakness to the outside world.

  In the course of the decade at least a dozen African countries were troubled by civil wars or wars with their neighbours. Following the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979, Uganda passed through a period of instability and civil war until 1986 when Yoweri Museveni emerged as victor over the civil strife in which more people had lost their lives than during the Amin decade. Throughout the 1980s South Africa pursued its ‘destabilization’ policy against its ‘frontline’ neighbours by launching periodic cross-border raids that included attacks into Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe over the years 1982–87 Robert Mugabe entrenched his power, based upon his Mashona supporters, by carrying out what came to be called the ‘Dissidents’ War’ as he broke the power of the Ndebele, the political base of his rival Joshua Nkomo. In 1984 the division between North and South in Sudan, that for a time President Nimeiri had managed to control, descended again into civil war, which this time round would continue to the end of the century. In Angola the 1987–88 battle of Cuito Cuanavale between the forces of the MPLA government, aided by the Cubans, and the forces of UNITA, aided by the South Africans, led to a humiliating retreat for the South Africans that was a defining event in the developments leading to Namibian independence and the 1990 decision of South Africa’s President de Klerk to abandon apartheid. In August 1988 a fresh outbreak of killings (since those of the 1970s) occurred in Burundi; they affected the commune of Murangara in Ngozi Province, Ntegi in Kimundu Province and an estimated 10,000 people, mainly Hutus, in the Bujumbura area. The army was Tutsi-officered and all arms were under its control. About 65,000 Hutu refugees crossed into Rwanda. The relatively small scale of this uprising demonstrated the iron grip exercised over the country by the Tutsis at this time. The long-simmering discontents against the system that Siad Barre had imposed in Somalia came to a head in 1988 with the outbreak of a civil war that would lead to Barre’s fall in 1991 and continue through the first half of the 1990s. In Liberia, at the end of the decade, the 10-year rule of Samuel Doe was brought to a brutal end as the little country became engulfed in a civil war that would last to 1997. Eritrea’s war of secession from Ethiopia continued throughout the 1980s and by the end of the decade Eritrean persistence, aided by other defiance of Mengistu’s rule through much of Ethiopia, had brought the secessionists appreciably closer to achieving their independence from Addis Ababa.

  African rhetoric about the effects of colonialism, which continued through the 1970s and into the 1980s, often irritated the former metropolitan powers which accused Africans of blaming colonialism for problems of their own making. Sometimes this was true. Yet, too often, colonial decisions were at the root of problems that erupted many years after independence had been achieved. This was the case in relation to the short five-day war between Burkina Faso and Mali that occurred in December 1985. Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso) had been carved out of French West Africa by the French colonial authorities in 1919. In 1932, however
, the territory was divided between its three colonial neighbours – Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Niger. It was reconstructed as a single territory in 1947. As a result of this colonial division and restructuring Upper Volta’s three neighbours each had its own interpretation of the border regions. From the year of independence in 1960 onwards Mali laid claim to the Agacher Strip, which had been allotted to Upper Volta and was believed to be rich in minerals. At the end of 1974 the Malian claim led to a border dispute between the two countries, diplomatic relations were broken off and Mali sent troops to occupy the Strip. During 1975 the OAU acted as mediator and apparently settled the dispute to Upper Volta’s satisfaction. The dispute, however, continued to fester and the two countries did not resume diplomatic relations with one another. In 1983 the dispute was referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. The quarrel came to a head in 1985 (by which time Upper Volta had renamed itself Burkina Faso). Further African attempts at mediation followed and the Non-Aggression and Defence Aid Agreement (ANAD) of the Communauté Economique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEAO) sent delegations to both countries to hear their cases and urge them to keep the peace. Algeria and Nigeria also attempted to mediate. Burkina Faso and Mali, however, prepared for war. Mali moved troops to the disputed area and a government official claimed, ‘Our armed forces have done their duty.’ On 25 December 1985 fighting between the troops of the two countries broke out along their joint border as both countries claimed the whole Agacher Strip. The fighting was sporadic but caused an estimated 300 deaths on both sides over five days. Burkina Faso announced that it had bombed the Malian town of Sikao and that its troops had destroyed four of Mali’s tanks and routed its infantry. In its turn Burkina Faso suffered a Malian air raid on Ouahigouya where 13 people were killed and 35 wounded. Burkina Faso accused France of aiding Mali. Libya and Nigeria offered their services to mediate the dispute. Then in January 1986 President Sankara of Burkina Faso and President Traoré of Mali were reconciled at an ANAD summit held in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire, where heads of state of Niger, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo, as well as President Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire, the host, brokered a peace. Burkina Faso and Mali agreed to withdraw their troops from the border region. They each administered part of the disputed territory while they waited for a judgment from the ICJ. This was delivered in December 1986: the Court ruled that the Agacher Strip should be divided equally between the two countries and both were satisfied. In this instance the neighbours of the two disputing countries had acted with commendable speed to end the conflict.

  In 1970 there were about one million refugees in Africa, by 1980 three and a half million. Then, during the 1980s, the figure rose steadily, reflecting the continued disturbed state of Africa until by the end of the decade the number of refugees had reached five million, equivalent to a third of the world’s total refugee population. This figure was regarded as conservative. In addition, an estimated 10 million people were displaced within their own countries. All the principal causes leading to large numbers of refugees were present: political instability and civil wars, persecutions, droughts, famines and floods. As a consequence, Africa had become a major target for relief activities by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other non-government organizations (NGOs); even so, only about 40 per cent of the continent’s refugees received international assistance. Many refugees who fled from war situations came to areas that lacked resources of food and water or the infrastructure that would enable them to be properly serviced.

  Throughout the decade the countries of the Horn – Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan – were beset by both civil and interstate wars while the Ethiopian policy of resettlement and villageization led hundreds of thousands of people to flee from new environments to which they could not adjust. The heavy fighting in Eritrea and the Tigray Province of Ethiopia led to further massive migrations and these were made worse by drought conditions. Yet even as Ethiopia’s problems led to a mass exodus of its people, a large contra-flow of refugees from the wars in Sudan and Somalia entered Ethiopia. In 1989, according to UNHCR records, there were 385,000 Sudanese and 355,000 Somalis registered as refugees in Ethiopia and of these 45,000 Sudanese and 6,000 Somalis arrived in the country during that year. By the end of the decade the civil war in Sudan had created some 2.8 million displaced persons within the country and a further 425,000 refugees in Ethiopia and Uganda. Tackling such a vast human problem was never easy and relief efforts often collapsed because of poor logistics, lack of available resources or attacks upon relief columns. For example, a UN relief effort ‘Operation Lifeline’ brought temporary relief to 100,000 Sudanese in the South who were close to starvation before the effort had to be abandoned in late 1989 because of persistent attacks on the relief columns. At the same time that it faced these problems, Sudan itself became the principal destination for Eritrean and Tigrayan refugees fleeing the effects of both war and famine. By the late 1980s there were an estimated 663,000 Ethiopian refugees in Sudan and of these only about half (349,000) were in reception centres assisted by the UNHCR while the remainder had settled themselves along the border or had found their way to urban centres such as Khartoum. Sudan was also the recipient of refugees from the civil war in Chad with as many as 120,000 in the mid-1980s though the figure had dropped to no more than 24,000 by the end of the decade while in the far south some 63,000 refugees from Uganda had been received and subsequently repatriated.

  The civil war in Somalia gathered pace during 1988 to create a new flood of refugees in the Horn: about 355,000 moved into Ethiopia while others who fled to Djibouti in the north or Kenya in the south were treated harshly and in some cases forcibly repatriated. Both countries discouraged refugees from entering the neighbouring territory, forced them to return to Somalia or refused to accord them refugee status. Some Somalis fled from Kenya to Uganda or Tanzania to avoid being deported back to Somalia. At the same time there were large numbers of Ethiopian refugees in Somalia – they had mostly been there throughout the decade – though their numbers were disputed since the Somali government inflated the figures in order to obtain maximum relief supplies while independent observers downgraded the numbers. Thus, while the Somali government claimed assistance from the UNHCR and the World Food Programme for 840,000 refugees, most qualified observers suggested less than half that figure was the true number, between 350,000 and 365,000 since up to 400,000 of the original refugees had voluntarily repatriated themselves to Ethiopia.

  As a result of Museveni’s triumph in Uganda where he restored central government and peace, about 320,000 Ugandan refugees decided to return home although another 300,000 had been displaced internally; continuing rebel activity ensured constant internal displacements. In its turn Uganda was host to 50,000 refugees from Sudan and a further 118,000 from Rwanda although many of the latter had been living in Uganda since the 1950s. Tanzania was a generous host country to refugees and in the late 1980s had more than 265,000. They came from Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Zaïre and South Africa. Although they were provided with settlements the government encouraged them to develop self-sufficiency. The largest group consisted of 156,000 Hutus from Burundi, which they had fled in the wake of the 1972 massacres. Some of the most recent incomers into Tanzania at this time were from Mozambique, which they had fled since the mid-1980s to escape the RENAMO war.

  The Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana (RENAMO), Mozambique National Resistance, fought against the Frente da Libertaço de Mocambique (FRELIMO) government which came to power in Mozambique in 1975 through to the peace of 1992. Then, in 1994, RENAMO took part in nationwide elections. RENAMO was set up in 1975/76 by Ken Flower, the head of the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) in Salisbury, Rhodesia, under the illegal Ian Smith government, as a means of destabilizing the new FRELIMO government that supported the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which then maintained a number of base camps in Mozambique. The original members of RENAMO were recruited from Mozambicans who had fled fro
m the war into Rhodesia. When Rhodesia became independent as Zimbabwe in 1980, the new government of Robert Mugabe at once withdrew support from RENAMO, but by then Flower had already persuaded the South African government to take responsibility for supporting RENAMO, which it was willing to do since it saw the movement as a means of destabilizing its neighbour.

  The disturbed state of Southern Africa through the 1980s – South Africa’s policy of destabilizing its neighbours, civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Dissidents’ War in Zimbabwe and the continuing liberation struggle in Namibia – between them contributed to create large numbers of refugees in the region, both within countries affected by this strife and across borders. By the end of the decade, as increasing cracks in the apartheid system developed, exiles began to return and hopes were raised that relocated people would soon be able to return to their former areas within South Africa. The biggest source of refugees in Southern Africa was Mozambique, which, throughout the decade, was torn by the RENAMO war. Casualties from this war were horrific: at least 100,000 were killed, a further 500,000 died of starvation while many thousands were maimed. By the end of 1989 about 1.3 million Mozambicans had fled to other countries to escape the war. In April 1990 it was estimated that 4.3 million people had become dependent on foreign humanitarian aid and of these, two million were displaced within Mozambique with 500,000 of them inaccessible to relief efforts because they were isolated by RENAMO forces. At the beginning of 1990 Malawi was host to 812,000 Mozambican exiles most of whom had arrived in the country since 1986; during 1989 they had been arriving at the rate of 15,000 a month and represented a huge burden for one of Africa’s poorest countries. Swaziland was also host to 28,000 Mozambicans by the end of the decade while another 60,000 had resettled themselves along its border. Another 78,000 refugees had crossed into Zimbabwe. In Angola on the other side of the continent the war between the MPLA government and UNITA led to massive dislocation, high casualties and large numbers of internal and external refugees. As the war intensified from 1985 onwards some 438,000 Angolans became refugees in neighbouring countries while a further 638,000 rural people were displaced within Angola. In addition, another 400,000 rural dwellers were prevented from farming because of the conflict and so became dependent upon food aid and about the same number moved to urban areas where they settled in ‘vertical’ shanty towns of poor apartment blocks. The war displaced about two million Angolans, or one fifth of the population, with neighbouring Zaïre and Zambia receiving the highest number of refugees. More encouraging was the planned return of Namibians to their country when in 1989 it became clear that independence was at last about to be achieved. Following the US-brokered settlement of 1989 a mass repatriation of Namibian refugees got under way: 33,000 from Angola, 3,700 from Zambia, 1,600 from Cuba and the balance from some 40 other countries.