ment – this was true of Zimbabwe. In South
Africa the fighting between the Inkatha Zulu-
based black movement and the ANC was just one
of the more serious obstacles to creating a non-
racist nation.
The widening gulf between the few who were
rich and the poor masses made any genuine
democracy difficult to achieve. Survival rather
than representative government was the people’s
first concern. Survival in the conditions prevailing
in Africa required ingenuity, breaking laws when
necessary, taking advantage of patronage and
deals, engaging in bribes in return for favours.
To overcome the divisiveness within the
African nations, strongmen with their own tribal
base and with military backing became a common
post-colonial feature, only to exacerbate that very
divisiveness. A few authoritarian rulers, after
almost three decades, survived into the 1990s:
Mobutu in the Congo, Houphouët-Boigny in the
Ivory Coast and Hastings Banda in Malawi, but
old age and political change had removed the
fathers of other nations. President Kaunda of
Zambia, twenty-seven years in power after inde-
pendence in 1964, allowed himself in 1991 to be
elected out of office – a rare occurrence in Africa.
President Nyerere made a dignified voluntary exit,
unlike President Barre of Somalia, who was over-
thrown by rebels. Many years of unchallengeable
and uninterrupted power inevitably bred corrup-
tion and the patronage of a favoured tribe.
Bureaucracies on state payrolls became swollen,
though soldiers’ pay tends to have priority – when
it runs out, as it did in the Congo, anarchy threat-
ens. Western loans did little to promote sound
development, and much of the money was
wasted. Now black Africa is saddled with a debt
mountain. Meanwhile, some African leaders
enriched themselves, living in luxury and misap-
propriating their country’s earnings, to be
secreted in bank accounts abroad.
African nations also embarked on unsuitable
economic policies which, in the end, were disas-
trous. Central planning and state ownership
caused a deterioration in what had previously
been more efficiently managed in private hands.
Nor did the dash for growth through industrial-
isation result in products that could compete
internationally. Agriculture was neglected and
prices of farm produce kept artificially low. The
authorities’ emphasis on cash crops for exports
meant that food for the people was neglected.
Economic growth in the 1980s was among the
lowest of the world’s underdeveloped nations.
The European Union with its subsidised markets
grieviously hurt African farmers.
In sub-Saharan Africa food production actually
fell by a fifth in the two decades after 1970, but
the population was increasing annually by more
than 3 per cent and by the 1990s had reached
530 million. Drought, famine and wars had
created millions of refugees; those who survived
ended up in camps dependent on Western chari-
table aid. Yet, despite man-made disasters, AIDS
and the calamities of nature, the population of
Africa would continue to increase rapidly.
The end of the Cold War also had an enor-
mous impact, for both good and bad. The super-
power antagonists no longer jockeyed for
influence in Africa or bribed leaders with their
favourite imports – weapons. They no longer
backed opposing sides in civil wars, thereby
engaging in power struggles by proxy. The con-
clusion of the Cold War also meant that less inter-
est was now shown in propping up nations or
ending ruinous civil conflicts: economic reforms
and restructuring were insisted on before more
aid was granted. In countries with living standards
as low as those in Africa, what was right in text-
book theory could be politically disastrous and
lead to mass unrest when subsidised food became
too dear.
Transition from authoritarian rule to democ-
racy is not a smooth process anywhere. Africa,
where old tribal rivalries and political conflicts
have long been suppressed, is no exception. When
the strongman or the one-party state backed by
ruthless security forces is toppled, new conflicts –
even anarchy – may follow.
There was a positive side as the twentieth
century moved into its last decade: some civil wars,
such as that in Namibia, ended. There emerged
black leaders of wisdom and humanity like Nelson
Mandela, who assured South Africa of a better
future. The hope was that the lessons of past mis-
takes were being learnt. Half a century after the
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