Interventions (22 page)

Good governance is not built on elections alone, but on accountable and responsible leadership—and institutions that build the rule of law. Responsibility for the future of the continent's political landscape, in regimes built upon by the rule of law over the aggrandizement of individuals, is the responsibility of Africa's people and the demands they make for themselves today. Enduring good governance is not a gift that can be given, but one that must be demanded, made, and shared by the people themselves and as a whole. Agency lies with the people. But as these and other stories show, outsiders can help as well.

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Y
ou can't say this. The UN Secretary-General cannot present this to an assembly of African heads of state!”
On June 2, 1997, I was in Harare, Zimbabwe. Assembled in the audience were the heads of state and government from all of Africa, many of whom were in that position only by the grace of arms: coup-plot leaders enthroned simply because of the illegitimate power represented in their military uniforms. A brand-new secretary-general and the first black African to hold the post, I was there to carry a new, and to many a surprising, message to Africa's military governments. As I walked to the lectern, I cast my eye over the crowd and recalled those stressed words of warning regarding the speech I was about to give—poorly formed but, sadly, traditionally conceived advice from one of my senior African aides.

I decided to open the speech directly on the issue that African leaders and diplomats had conspired to ignore for too long: “Armies exist to protect national sovereignty, not to train their guns on their own people,” I said. “Africa can no longer tolerate, and accept as faits accomplis, coups against elected governments, and the illegal seizure of power by military cliques, who sometimes act for sectional interests, sometimes simply for their own.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to a new doctrine for African politics. Where democracy has been usurped, let us do whatever is in our power to restore it to its rightful owners: the people. Verbal condemnation, though necessary and desirable, is not sufficient. We must also ostracize and isolate putschists. Neighboring states, regional groupings, and the international community all must play their part.”

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M
y long-held stance on military regimes goes back to their impact on my home country of Ghana in particular and across the continent generally. Between January 1956 and December 2001, a staggering 80 successful coups d'état took place on the continent, in addition to 108 coup attempts. Africa has many challenges—social, economic, geographical, and environmental. But in my view, and I see Africa's history as bearing this out, leadership is the ultimate cause of the plight of Africa, and the greatest destroyer of leadership and good governance in Africa has been military regimes. The perversion of democratic rule, gross abuses of human rights, and economic mismanagement—the truly great curses of Africa—stem in so many instances from this one infection: the military coup.

Military regimes are collectively the worst-offending examples of poor leadership in Africa. But there are important considerations for the role of leadership in Africa more generally. Many Africans, particularly older Africans, will give you a single, blanket explanation for why Africa has had its problems: colonialism. Many academics will also give you an explanation for why Africa is in the state that it is, often focusing on the structural factors holding it back economically and so underpinning its long-troubled position in the world.

It is true that Africa's short and intense experience of colonialism was destructive and divisive. It is also true that many African countries are landlocked and so denied the vital economic asset of direct access to seaborne trade routes—which many economists emphasize as an essential part of the explanation for Africa's previous poor economic performance as a whole. However, it is inaccurate and, worst of all, irresponsible for Africans to blame colonialism alone. Similarly, if you consider some of the great failures of African development, such economic impediments are not the heart of the problem.

Leadership, and the responsibility of Africans for it, is the lynchpin of modern African history. This is the position that has informed my diplomatic interventions in Africa to this day. Consider my home country of Ghana. Ghana won its independence from Britain in 1957, at which point its per capita income was $390. Malaysia, too, won its independence from Britain in the same year, a country with, at that time, apparently similar prospects for economic development to Ghana's but with a lower per capita income of $270. However, Malaysia went on to construct a framework of parliamentary government that formed the basis for a strong political system under which successful and prevailing economic growth could be fostered. Ghana, by contrast, went on to experience a repeating cycle of military coups, with the first striking as early as 1966, allowing the country only a sputtering process of political institutional development for many decades.

The contrasting impact of these different trajectories on the lives of all men, women, and children in these two countries is now very clear: today Malaysia has a per capita income approximately thirteen times higher than Ghana's. Taking this example, colonialism is practically irrelevant to the debate. The nub of the problem is African leadership and African institutions.

Another example is Madagascar. This island nation is free of the economic curse faced by many African countries of being landlocked and of the threats to economic prosperity that can arise from having unstable neighbors on one's border. In the late 1990s, Madagascar began to take advantage of the United States' African Growth and Opportunity Act, which offered a more beneficial arrangement for African exports. Through the creation of a special export-processing zone, and effective government policies enabling conducive conditions for business activities, almost three hundred thousand jobs were created in a very short time. But when the president, Vice-Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, lost an election, instead of stepping down, he had the port blockaded for eight months to force acceptance of his continued rule. This killed off the export-processing zone, which otherwise may have come to create a striking example of how a very poor African country could take off and break into the world market.

Africa's problems are often portrayed as if they were predetermined, as if the trials it has faced were inevitable, or, if not entirely inevitable, then made so by the colonists. But as the Madagascar story and others like it reinforce, nothing could be further from the truth. The responsibility lies with Africans, their systems of rule, and their leaders. Africa has had the experience it has, most of all, because of the decisions made by individuals and the systems of rule deliberately enacted by leaders and their supporters. Africa, the poverty of Africa, the violence of Africa, is not the inexorable product of its environment but rather the consequence of choices and decisions made by its leaders.

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A
frican leadership, however, was rarely blamed when I came into office. Colonialism and the economic policies of the outside world, particularly donors, were the sole source of the problem, it seemed. Worst of all, the continued fostering of an anticolonial and outsider-blaming stance was really the servant of a few inglorious individuals in Africa. Typically among ruling cliques, these men had no interest in allowing changes to the moribund status quo that ensured their narrow interests. The function of the overarching debate on the evils of colonialism in Africa was really their tool, thus diverting the people from demands for real progress. It was a backward stance, in all respects.

This is why I sought to use my position to change the debate from early on. In my first year in office, the Security Council requested a report on African issues and how the international community could strive to address the results and causes of conflict in Africa. I tasked a team of UN officials, led by a senior African official, to set about compiling this report, and they put together a document that projected all too many of the same old arguments, with the focus once again on the evils of colonialism and the failures of donors.

I was disappointed with the text, to say the least. The authors had written a report in the same manner Africans had too often adopted when presenting their case internationally. It was an out-of-date, unhelpful, and ultimately dishonest mind-set that needed breaking. But, being an African, I knew I now sat in a prime position to force a change in the African side of the debate. Africans would not be able to dismiss my voice as easily as they could others'.

On seeing the draft of the report, I called in a new team to take over the project and entirely rewrite it. Three new officials took over the lead, including, importantly, a young African, Stanlake Samkange of Zimbabwe, who represented a different mind-set to those of the older African generation. My instructions were simple: to pay the peoples of Africa the tribute of truth, by candidly assessing their challenges and aspirations. The old narrative of colonialism and the failures of donors as the chief target of blame for all Africa's ills was to go, I said.

“It's almost un-UN,” commented Under-Secretary-General Karl Theodor Paschke on its release. The Africa Report was direct and frank. This was not how UN reports had been written in the past, and with its release we were shedding a tradition of overt caution in the face of diplomatic sensibilities.

“For too long, conflict in Africa has been seen as inevitable or intractable, or both,” I said, when presenting the report to the Security Council on April 16, 1998. “It is neither. Conflict in Africa, as everywhere, is caused by human action, and can be ended by human action.” I was applying the new tone of accountability and responsibility that the report sought to invoke. “More than three decades after African countries gained their independence,” the report went on to say, “there is a growing recognition among Africans themselves that the continent must look beyond its colonial past for the causes of current conflicts. Today more than ever, Africa must look at itself.”

The implication, as clear as I could make it, was that the failures and human tragedies in Africa hitherto were failures of Africans and their leaders, as much as anything else. The report noted the impact of colonialism, but as a historical factor among many, confining it to the periphery in explaining the present. It emphasized the failures of the international community, too, including the UN's failure, in helping the peoples of Africa, the failure of all to help them ensure peace and create the conditions for sustainable development. But it stated these failures as orbiting features of a core problem: internal African politics and African leadership.

Africa was my home, my identity, but I had to be a secretary-general for all regions in the world and all 192 member states, as was the function of my office. That there would be no special treatment or preferential pleading was the message I was determined to put out from the beginning of my tenure.

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T
o accomplish the tasks of a secretary-general, one must work with the entire global community. Most people do not realize that if you define yourself narrowly—such as being concerned only with African issues—then you exclude countries from your concerns and so constrain your own agenda. Those whom you ignore will come to ignore you. But you need
everyone
to participate to get things done in a world such as ours—especially for Africa, where outside help was more vital than for any other region. Why should Latin American or Asian member states help me as a secretary-general working on only African problems? By casting myself as an African secretary-general, surrounding myself with Africans, and prioritizing mostly African issues, I would have actually
been less effective for Africa than I was otherwise.

The reaction from the younger generation of Africans, and also from non-Africans, vindicated this method of tough love with my home continent. They welcomed my frank engagement in the discussions of Africa's problems, which did not lay blame unfairly at one source in the old style, a stance they, too, had felt was designed to negate African responsibility. This position earned essential credibility with other governments, particularly the wealthy donor countries, and gave my voice greater presence when I did turn to them for Africa, cajoling them for greater outside assistance. Member states now knew I was as candidly harsh on Africa's failures as I was realistically sensitive to its needs. And they knew I was as serious and intent on issues outside Africa that directly concerned them.

Following the report, progress at the highest levels of international diplomacy was kick-started: a special Security Council meeting of foreign ministers soon convened, endorsing practical solutions recommended by the report; the General Assembly, too, began producing supportive resolutions shortly after; and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) began devising new international solutions in partnership with local African efforts. It also contributed attention for impoverished countries, which set one of the enabling conditions for the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September, 2000.

As part of the ongoing follow-up discussions on the report, in November 1998 I addressed a summit in Paris. African solutions to African problems was a common refrain at these meetings—and it carried an important element of truth to it. But I knew that to succeed African countries would also have to be supported internationally. There was no way around that. Yet African defensiveness regarding colonialism muddied the waters—it led to the suggestion that development assistance may still be insidious and colonial.

This stance and the cement-firm blame of outsiders led to a position that effectively rejected outsiders while simultaneously pleading for more outside help. I wanted to shift parties away from this dysfunctional position, which was only clouding the real goal: a better Africa for the sake of Africans.