All Change in
Nigeria and South Africa
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 26, 1999
LAGOS- Finally, at the end of this week, Nigeria will
step out of the shadows cast by the single-mindedness of
oppressive military rule into the uncertain daylight of
democratic government. And a few days later South Africa is
to re-confirm its short-lived democracy with a general
election--though with mixed feelings, as President Nelson
Mandela steps down in favour of Thabo Mbeki.
This is the new Africa, one that pessimists have always
maintained could never happen.
They could still be right. Post-Mandela, South Africa may
degenerate into the self-serving ways of a one party state
as a triumphant African National Congress, wielding a
two-thirds majority in parliament, amends the constitution
to suit itself, tramples on any opposition, black as well as
white, and rides the gravy train for its own benefit,
alienating both foreign investors and home-bred
capitalists.
In Nigeria, a country where the state has already been
looted dry, the president-elect, Olusegun Obasanjo, may find
that the government machinery, so deeply embedded are
Nigeria's corrupting ways, will not respond to the levers he
pulls. Corruption, more than endemic, has become a way of
life for this oil-rich giant. Obasanjo says he is "not just
going to crack the whip, I am going to use it." But at the
same time, as he told me in a recent conversation, he knows
there could all too easily be another coup and that his life
is in perpetual danger.
But if the pessimists are wrong these two events could
mean that the continent is about to turn a major corner,
with its two most powerful nations giving the lead in the
construction of a more dynamic and confident political and
economic future.
Already, despite civil war in a number of countries,
there are many signs of forward momentum. Ten years of often
painful economic reforms have put a majority of African
countries back on the road to economic growth, ahead of the
rate of population increase. 40 out of 47 countries are now
showing increases in their annual per caput incomes. South
Africa and Nigeria, with their immense resource of scarce
raw materials, have no excuse for not becoming African
dynamos. Both have the potential to become the Malaysias of
Africa. The economic knowledge that would enable them to
grow at rates of 7 to 8% per annum is available. It is up to
them to provide the political framework to ensure such
progress. One thing is already clear in Africa, as Botswana
has amply demonstrated with many years of growth of over
10%--there is nothing wrong with the aptitudes of the work
force.
Part of the trick is to integrate the new with the old.
In one way Africa is lucky. Because it has access to new
technology it can leap-frog years of hard-won industrial and
technological progress. The danger is that one small segment
of society races ahead, whilst the majority is left in
primitive economic conditions. This, as Obasanjo told me,
"is not politically sustainable. It is morally wrong and
socially dangerous".
He told me the story of the priest who visited a village,
not far from Nigeria's modern capital, Abuja, where once you
leave the town you are quickly in the countryside of
thatched mud houses without electricity and good drinking
water. "The priest had to leave his car and walk across a
stream that didn't have a bridge. The village head came and
saw him wading through the water. The priest said to the
headman 'there must be something wrong with our country. In
Abuja we have bridges where there are no rivers and in your
village where there are rivers you have no
bridges.'"
"I think we got it wrong initially," concludes Obasanjo,
"to see development as whatever we can import and graft on
to our big cities, not what we can do for ourselves. But
what we can do for ourselves IS development."
Beyond economics is the complex issue of tribal
divisions. Yet, as Obasanjo argues, contrary to what is
often implied in the West, his country's tribal and
religious divisions are not as deep-rooted as
ex-Yugoslavia's. They are not so ancient, nor so
uncompromising. Obasanjo plans to move quickly to deal with
the very valid resentments of the Ogoni and Ijaw peoples who
inhabit the oil-rich Niger delta but have seen almost
nothing of the country's wealth invested in their region. "A
real, terrible injustice", Obasanjo calls it. He also has to
find a way to win back the trust of his own mainly Christian
Yoruba people who by and large did not vote for him because
they regard him as a stooge of the strong northern Muslim
elites.
For Thabo Mbeki the issue is how to placate the educated
whites who are leaving the country in droves. The big
talking point is crime and it probably cannot be cracked
until there is some effort to apply the positive eliments of
New York's lessons in "zero tolerance". "Being tough on the
causes of crime as well as being tough on crime" is all very
well but the latter has to be given priority. South Africa
simply cannot afford to wait for black unemployment to be
reduced or for the social deprivation that breeds crime to
be repaired overnight. Still, there is much more that could
be done with UNICEF-type basic needs programs, that don't
cost very much but make an immediate impact on family
well-being.
We will soon know whether the pessimists or optimists are
right. By the turn of the millennium much will be clear in
both countries. And they will decide whether the African
giant finally finds its footing.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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