stitution, however, could remove the bar. In any
case a democratic constitution is more in tune
with the times and appeals to his Western donors.
Creditable too has been his early admission of the
disaster AIDS was creating in Uganda and the
efforts of education made by the administration to
curb its devastating spread. Uganda as a result is at
the lower end of sub-Saharan countries where the
young are infected with AIDS, far lower than
Zimbabwe and South Africa. Not everything,
however, has gone right. In Africa, decades of per-
sonal rule have led to widespread corruption and
Uganda is no exception. Museveni’s intervention
in the conflicts of the Congo have been costly and
unpopular and ruinous for the people of the
Congo. Uganda in 2005 still had not overcome
the fanatical and brutal ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’
of guerrillas, notorious for abducting children,
which makes violent forays into Uganda. Uganda
borders the most lawless region of Africa where
death and violence are a daily occurrence. Is the
world getting better? Not for those who have to
live in the worst areas of Africa.
Human-rights abuses were common in the one-
party African states, and democracy was quickly
discarded as part of the colonial past. Some
African states were notorious for their leaders’
savagery, not least Benin in the 1970s, whose
president was executed for genocide after a coup
in 1979. The height of absurdity was reached in
one of Africa’s poorest countries, the Central
African Republic, where Colonel Jean-Bedel
Bokassa seized power in December 1965 and, not
satisfied with becoming president, had himself
crowned emperor. He invited over 3,000 digni-
taries from all over the world to his ruinously
expensive coronation. He curried favour with
France, calling de Gaulle his ‘adoptive father’ and
presenting diamonds to those whose favours he
wished to win. The murder of a group of children
in 1979 proved his undoing; he was beyond pro-
tection now and with the help of French troops
he was ousted later that year. Like Amin he was
not brought to account for his crimes, but was
allowed a comfortable exile in the Ivory Coast.
A horrifying example of the world’s selective
conscience – no intervention as long as black
people are slaughtering black people (or Asians,
Asians) – were the massacres that occurred in two
small independent African countries, Rwanda and
Burundi. Here, the Tutsi minority ruled over the
majority Hutu. Tribal wars began in 1959 and
thousands of Tutsi fled. In 1963, in fear of a Tutsi
invasion from neighbouring Burundi, the Hutu
massacred thousands of Tutsi. In Burundi, after
an uprising of the Hutu in 1972, at least 100,000
of them were slaughtered. The tribal warfare did
not end there. The Burundi army next killed
thousands of Tutsi in 1988. The world confined
itself to relief work by the UN High Commission
for Refugees. Rwanda and Burundi remain caul-
drons of tribal hatreds. Independence suited
Belgium, the former colonial power in the two
countries, which were not prepared for inde-
pendence nor given adequate assistance.
In Rwanda and Burundi the conflict between
the Tutsis and Hutus goes back to colonial times.
The Tutsis adapted better to Western develop-
ments and formed an aristocracy of cattle-owners,
while the majority Hutus largely belonged to the
poor peasantry. Both countries, once in German
colonial control, became Belgian League of
Nations mandates. The Belgians maintained the
feudal hierarchy in which the giant Tutsis domin-
ated the Hutus. In Burundi the Tutsis retained
power for thirty-one years after independence in
1962, bloodily suppressing any risings by the Hutu
majority; their rule came to an end only after elec-
tions in 1993. The new prime minister was then
assassinated and the Tutsi-dominated army massa-
cred thousands of Hutus. In Rwanda the Tutsis
lost power at the time of independence and many
fled to Uganda, where they were not welcome. In
the early 1980s they joined Museveri’s National
Resistance Army and helped it to victory in 1986.
In 1990 they set up their own military force with
Ugandan help and occupied northern Rwanda.
Following the Burundi massacres of 1993 the
Hutu leadership in Rwanda, threatened by the
invading Tutsi force in northern Rwanda, decided
on a ‘Final Solution’, the genocide of more than 2
million Tutsis still living in Rwanda. When the
plane in which the Rwandan prime minister was
travelling was shot down on 6 April 1994 the
Hutus launched the most horrific massacre in
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