The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  As public discontent with his regime grew, Nkrumah’s grip over Ghana became ever tighter. When dock and railway workers went on strike in protest against the sharp rise in the cost of living, he arrested strike leaders and imprisoned them without trial. To deal with political dissidents and critics, he set up special courts to handle political offences, with judges appointed by himself, from which there was no right of appeal. For his personal protection, he came increasingly to rely on security personnel recruited largely from his home district.

  Nkrumah’s downfall in the end came not as a result of Ghana’s desperate economic plight, or high-level corruption, or government mismanagement, but because of his fatal decision to interfere with the military. His attempt to subordinate the military to his own purposes and to accord favourable treatment to the President’s Own Guard Regiment, an elite unit regarded as his private army, caused deep and dangerous resentments among the officer corps. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was abroad, Ghana’s generals struck. On the streets of Accra and Kumasi, large crowds gathered to welcome the soldiers and celebrated by ripping down the framed photographs which adorned offices, factories and homes. Outside parliament, Nkrumah’s statue was battered to the ground and broken into bits.

  The decline of Ghana did not stop there, however. Over the next two decades, a succession of governments, both military and civilian, engendered further collapse. Cocoa production fell by more than a half between 1965 and 1983. Food supplies were unpredictable. Hospitals and clinics lacked drugs and basic equipment. Thousands of trained teachers and other professionals fled abroad. Encumbered by massive debts, falling output, endemic corruption and incompetent management, Ghana by the 1980s had been reduced to little more than a wasteland.

  Civilian rule in Nigeria survived for less than six years after independence. From the outset, rival political parties from the country’s three regions engaged in a ferocious struggle for supremacy over the federal government and the spoils of office. The North was determined to maintain its hegemony; the two southern regions sought to break it. Because each region produced its own political party dominated by the major ethnic group based there, the struggle turned into ethnic combat. Politicians on all sides whipped up ethnic fear, suspicion and jealousy for their own advantage and to entrench themselves in power. Public funds were regularly commandeered for both political and personal gain. In return for political support, party and government bosses were able to provide their followers and friends with jobs, contracts, loans, scholarships, public amenities and development projects. At every level, from the federal government to regional government down to local districts and towns, politicians in office worked the system to ensure that their own areas and members of their own ethnic group benefited, while opposition areas suffered from neglect. Election campaigns were increasingly marred by bribery, fraud and violence.

  The end of civilian rule came with sudden and violent finality. In January 1966, spurred by disgust at the flagrantly corrupt and avaricious manoeuvres of the country’s politicians, a group of young army majors attempted to mount a revolution. Rebel officers in Lagos murdered the federal prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, dumping his body in a ditch. The premier of the Northern Region, the premier of the Western Region, and several senior army officers were also killed. ‘Our enemies,’ said one of the leading conspirators in a radio broadcast, ‘are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in the high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten per cent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists.’ But the revolution faltered and then failed. Loyal army commanders took control. Instead of revolution came army rule and a precipitous slide into civil war.

  While the January coup was greeted by scenes of wild rejoicing in the South, it gave rise to deep suspicions in the North. Northerners noted that all but one of the seven principal conspirators were Igbos from the Eastern Region, and that many of the principal victims were from the North while no prominent Easterner had been touched. Moreover, the result of the coup had been to wrest power from Northern politicians and to place Nigeria in the hands of a military government led by an Igbo general. Brooding over the course of events, Northerners became ever more convinced that the majors’ coup, far from being an attempt to rid Nigeria of a corrupt regime, was in fact part of an Igbo conspiracy to gain control.

  In July, a group of Northern officers struck back in a counter-coup, killing scores of Eastern officers and other ranks. In a savage onslaught, disgruntled Northerners attacked minority Eastern communities living in segregated quarters – sabon garis – in their midst, killing and maiming thousands. As Easterners sought to escape the violence, a massive exodus to the East began. Abandoning all their possessions, hundreds of thousands of Easterners – traders, artisans, clerks and labourers – fled from Northern homes. From other parts of Nigeria, too, as the climate of fear spread among Igbos living there, thousands more, including civil servants and academics, joined the exodus. By the end of the year, more than a million refugees had sought safety in the East.

  Led by the Eastern Region’s ambitious military governor, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, an inner circle of Igbo officials began preparing the way for secession. Revenues from rich oilfields located in the Eastern Region had made the idea of an independent state an eminently viable proposition. Starting production in 1958, the oilfields by 1967 provided Nigeria with nearly a fifth of federal revenue, a figure expected to double within a few years. To rally the Eastern population behind secession, Ojukwu relentlessly pumped out radio and press propaganda to keep popular opinion at fever pitch, stressing details of the atrocities that had taken place and warning of the dangers of genocide. On 30 May 1967, he proclaimed the independence of the new state of Biafra amid high jubilation.

  The Nigerian civil war lasted for two and a half years and cost nearly a million lives. As the federal noose tightened around Biafra, starving refugees sought to survive in fetid camps. Foreign relief agencies, alarmed by the spectacle of mass starvation, organised an airlift of food and medical supplies, but their aid was used by Ojukwu to prolong the war. Despite the appalling suffering of Biafra’s population, Ojukwu remained intransigent, doggedly holding on to the notion of independence even when there was nothing to be gained, spurning efforts at international mediation, and presenting himself as a symbol of heroic resistance. Two days before Biafra formally surrendered in January 1970, its people exhausted, demoralised and desperate for peace, he fled into exile declaring that ‘whilst I live, Biafra lives’.

  In the aftermath of the war, Nigeria was divided into a federation of nineteen states in an attempt to diffuse the rival power blocs that had led it to disaster and to allow some minority groups their own representation. But the same scramble for political control and the wealth that went with it continued unabated, now fuelled by an ever rising tide of oil money.

  In his old age, after ruling Ethiopia first as regent from 1916, then as emperor from 1930, Haile Selassie found it increasingly difficult to maintain personal control of his empire. The imperial structure he had built depended on his decisions alone. Even small administrative matters or items of petty expenditure required his approval. In his late seventies, he showed no sign of willingness to loosen his grip on power. Nor would he discuss the issue of his succession, distrusting the abilities of his son, the crown prince. His authority remained absolute. Yet the frailties of old age began to overtake him. He no longer possessed the energy to master the business of empire. Moreover, the empire itself was in trouble once more.

  In the outer regions of Ethiopia, local rebellions broke out with increasing frequency during the 1960s. An Oromo revolt in Bale province in the south, where tribesmen had lost much of their land to armed Amharic settlers and absentee landlords, lasted for seven years. Somali insurgents in the Ogaden launched a campaign to drive out the Ethiopians and link up with Somalia, which had gained independence in 1960. Peri
odic clashes between Ethiopia and Somali government forces erupted along the border.

  Another threat to the empire came from Eritrea. Through a mixture of patronage, devious manoeuvres and intimidation, Haile Selassie managed to incorporate Eritrea into the empire in 1962, treating it in the same autocratic manner as the other thirteen provinces of the empire. Various advantages that Eritreans had enjoyed in the post-war era – political rights, trade unions, an independent press – were whittled away. Amharic replaced Tigrinya and Arabic as the official language. Amhara officials were awarded senior posts in the administration. The principle of parity between Christians and Muslims, once carefully observed, was abandoned. The result was a guerrilla war which eventually required a whole division of Haile Selassie’s troops to contain. The brutal methods of repression that the Ethiopians employed to hold on to Eritrea, burning and bombing villages and inflicting reprisals on the civilian population, served only to alienate increasing numbers of Eritreans, Christians as well as Muslims, and fan the flames of Eritrean nationalism.

  Encumbered by Haile Selassie’s growing infirmity, Ethiopia drifted along in a state of paralysis. Government ministers and leading aristocrats recognised that the system of government was far too archaic to suit the modern needs of Ethiopia, but, afraid of displeasing the emperor, they took no initiative. When drought and famine afflicted the province of Wollo in 1973, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, the government, though aware of the disaster, made little attempt to alleviate it. Nor did it seek help from international agencies, for fear of damaging the country’s reputation.

  In early 1974, discontent within the army over pay and conditions led to a series of minor mutinies. Simultaneously, a chaotic profusion of strikes and demonstrations broke out in Addis Ababa and other towns; civil servants, teachers, students, journalists, even priests and prostitutes, took to the streets, protesting over pay, rising prices and a multitude of other grievances.

  The old order soon collapsed. A group of radical junior officers formed a military ‘committee’ or ‘Derg’ and stage by stage began to dismantle the whole imperial structure, imprisoning ministers, officials and members of Haile Selassie’s family. In September, three officers arrived at the emperor’s Grand Palace with a proclamation dethroning him. He was taken prisoner, confined to rooms in the palace for the rest of his life and murdered there in August 1975.

  Ethiopia’s revolution, initially accomplished without bloodshed, turned increasingly violent. An ambitious ordnance officer, Major Mengistu Haile Mariam, emerged in control and embarked on what he referred to as a campaign of ‘red terror’ to root out all resistance.

  The succession of coups in Africa swept on so rapidly that many episodes passed by in little more than a blur. In the first two decades of independence, there were some forty successful coups and countless attempted coups. Dahomey (Benin), over a period of ten years, went through six coups, five different constitutions and ten heads of state. Not once was there an occasion when an African government was peacefully voted out of office. In justifying their actions, coup leaders invariably referred to the morass of corruption, mismanagement, tribalism, nepotism and other malpractices into which previous regimes had sunk. Only the military, it was said, with their background of discipline and dedication, were in a position to restore national integrity and bring about a return to honest and efficient government. On seizing power, coup leaders also emphasised the strictly temporary nature of military rule. All they required, they said, was sufficient time to clear up the mess which had prompted them to intervene in the first place.

  A few military regimes were noted for ruling effectively and for their efforts to root out corruption. But Africa’s military rulers generally turned out to be no more competent, no more immune to the temptations of corruption, and no more willing to give up power than the regimes they had overthrown. The results, in most cases, were disastrous.

  In the aftermath of his coup in 1965, General Joseph Mobutu set out to create a ‘new Congo’ from the shambles it had become after five years of civil war and political strife. Acting ruthlessly to suppress disorder and dissent, he managed to impose some form of central control over most parts of the Congo within a few years. His economic strategy was equally effective. Inflation was halted, the currency was stabilised, and the giant copper mining industry was nationalised. In a bid to create a new national identity, he ordered the country to be known as ‘Zaire’, a name derived by the Portuguese from a Kikongo word, Nzadi, meaning ‘vast river’.

  But Mobutu then began to turn Zaire into his personal fiefdom. He established a single national political party, set himself up as its sole guide and mentor, assumed grand titles and laid down an ideology to which everyone was instructed to adhere. Year by year, he accumulated vast personal power, ruling by decree, controlling all appointments and promotions and deciding on the allocation of government revenues.

  He next turned to self-enrichment on a scale hitherto unknown in independent Africa. In 1973, citing the need to give Zaire greater economic independence, he ordered the seizure of some 2,000 foreign-owned enterprises – farms, plantations, ranches, factories, wholesale firms and retail shops – handing them out without compensation to favoured individuals. The main beneficiaries were Mobutu and members of his family. He used the central bank for his own purposes, commandeering whatever funds he required, funnelling huge sums abroad to buy luxury houses, office blocks and grand estates in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries. He built himself a huge palace complex costing $100 million in the depths of the equatorial forest at Gbadolite, a small village 700 miles north-east of Kinshasa (Leopoldville) that he regarded as his ancestral home. The airport there was capable of handling supersonic Concordes which Mobutu often chartered for his trips abroad.

  While Mobutu was busy accumulating riches, Zaire plunged ever deeper into decline and decay. Corruption and embezzlement spread to every level of society. Civil servants and army officers routinely siphoned off state funds. Teachers and hospital staff went unpaid for months. Hospitals closed for lack of medicine and equipment. Most of the rural road network was unusable for motor traffic. The river transport system disintegrated. Agricultural production plummeted. Large imports of food were required to keep the urban population alive. The level of employment fell below that at independence. Relief agencies estimated that two-fifths of Kinshasa’s inhabitants suffered from severe malnutrition. The state existed only to serve the interests of the ruling elite. The mass of the population were left to fend for themselves.

  In the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa’s regime became renowned not just for its brutality but for extravagance and folly unsurpassed in Africa at the time. Soon after seizing power in Bangui in 1965, Bokassa promoted himself to the rank of general and began to think in grandiose terms. He liked to describe himself as an ‘absolute monarch’ and forbade mention of the words democracy and elections. As well as making fortunes from diamond and ivory deals, he used government funds to acquire a string of valuable properties in Europe.

  He became obsessed with the career of Napoleon, a general who had become an emperor, calling him his ‘guide and inspiration’. In an attempt to emulate Napoleon, in 1976 he declared the Central African Republic an empire and himself emperor of its two million people and made elaborate arrangements for his coronation, using as a model the ceremony in which Napoleon had crowned himself emperor of France in 1804. No expense was spared. Bokassa ordered from France all the trappings of a monarchy: a crown of diamonds, rubies and emeralds; an imperial throne; carriages and thoroughbred horses. To the strains of Beethoven and Mozart, mixed with the throb of tribal drums, Bokassa crowned himself emperor at the Palais des Sports Jean-Bédel Bokassa, on Bokassa Avenue, in December 1977. The French government, keen to keep Bokassa within the French orbit, picked up most of the bill.

  But Bokassa’s folie de grandeur, taking place in a country with few government services, high i
nfant mortality, widespread illiteracy, only 260 miles of paved roads and in serious economic difficulty, added to a groundswell of grievances among Bangui’s population. In January 1979, students demonstrated in protest against an imperial order instructing them to buy and wear new school uniforms bearing Bokassa’s name and portrait manufactured by a textile company owned by the Bokassa family and sold exclusively in their retail stores. The demonstrations were brutally suppressed by troops, but strikes by teachers and civil servants continued. When Bokassa’s own car was stoned, he ordered the Imperial Guard to round up schoolchildren. More than one hundred died in prison in a massacre in which Bokassa himself participated. In France, the media dubbed Bokassa the ‘Butcher of Bangui’.

  No longer able to stand the embarrassment of propping up Bokassa’s regime, the French government decided to remove him and install his cousin, David Dacko, as president in his place.

  Uganda’s fate was to fall victim to two megalomaniac dictators: Milton Obote and Idi Amin. Like so many other African states, its initial prospects were promising. Uganda began independence in 1962 with a booming economy and a carefully constructed federal constitution that allowed the kingdom of Buganda to exercise a measure of internal autonomy, to retain its own parliament, the Lukiiko, and monarchic traditions, while the central government in Kampala remained in effective control nationally. In a spirit of compromise, the Baganda king, the Kabaka, Sir Edward Mutesa, was appointed head of state, while Milton Obote, a Langi from the north, headed a coalition government which included the Baganda royalist party, the Kabaka Yekka.

  From the outset, however, Obote strove to gain absolute control. When his plans for a one-party state met resistance, he staged what was in effect his own coup d’état. In 1966, he ordered the arrest of leading cabinet ministers, announced he was assuming all powers, abrogated the constitution, suspended the National Assembly and dismissed the Kabaka as president. He also appointed a new army commander, Idi Amin, a former sergeant in the colonial army who had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel with command of his own battalion. When the Lukiiko tried to oppose Obote’s coup and rallied supporters, Obote ordered Amin to attack the Kabaka’s palace on Mengo Hill. Several hundred Baganda died in the assault. The Kabaka managed to escape after climbing a high perimeter wall and hailing a passing taxi. He spent the rest of his life in exile in London. His palace, meanwhile, was turned into a base for Amin’s troops. In 1967, Obote completed the rout by abolishing the kingdom of Buganda altogether.