isopatch, With the election approaching here's an analysis of the election and its effect upon African foreign policy and energy activites are mentioned too....
What will US's new Africa policy look like?
Business Day Publishing
24 October 2000
What will US's new Africa policy look like?
I HOPE that, should Texas governor George W Bush win the US presidential
sweepstakes on November 7, Simon Barber's upbeat speculation on a Bush
administration's Africa policy is not wishful thinking.
Assuming his sources are impeccable, there may be hope after all if Bush's
prospective national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, is implying that a
President Bush would go beyond Clinton's raising of the profile on Africa. It is
also one more suggestion of the increasing potential for a bipartisan US policy
towards Africa amid a globalisation-linked realignment of Democrats and
Republicans on Africa policy; one that erodes the Democrats' "progressive" edge.
Republican support for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which a majority
of Democrats opposed, tells the story as graphically as anything.
As to the Clinton administration's manipulation of Africa policy to serve as a
racial politics "setaside for African-Americans", that is a charge that is lent
substance by who Clinton picked and did not pick for certain posts.
AfricanAmericans of known specialist expertise on Africa were ignored or
marginalised in favour of AfricanAmericans who could score domestic political
points irrespective of their expertise or commitment.
This observation is not intended as a reflection on Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs Susan Rice, who by all estimations should be a rising star in
the US foreign policy establishment, but who may not have considered Africa her
priority commitment.
An African-American foreign affairs specialist should not be synonymous with
Africa policy; neither should a "country preacher" like Jesse Jackson.
Otherwise, raising Africa's profile in US foreign policy while treating it as a
domestic ghetto may have been an intentional strategy aimed at seeing that
Africa did not intrude unduly on President Bill Clinton's notoriously short foreign
policy radar screen. Will Gore or Bush be any different?
Having Rice as national security adviser and Colin Powell as secretary of state
would indeed lessen the pressure to "play quota games in filling positions like
assistant secretary of state for Africa".
On the other hand, this could still work in favour of continuing a tendency to pass
over and marginalise African-American expertise on Africa, as has been the case
with Clinton. Bush's white team is likely to pursue the same logic as Barber.
In the mean time, the wars in Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola await
whomever wins next month, as does stabilising west Africa amid the dicey
situation in Sierra Leone, the destabilising role of Liberian President Charles
Taylor, the threateningly explosive tensions in Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire and, on
the eastern side of the continent, the unresolved civil war in Sudan and tension
between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
There is a potential downside to the otherwise upbeat prospects of Bush: Angola.
Would a Bush approach to bringing an end to the Angolan civil war be any
different from the Clinton approach, which seems so heavily solicitous of the big
oil companies?
Bush and his vice-presidential running mate, Dick Cheney, after all, are
card-carrying members of this club. Or should we think wishfully that since they
hail from this exclusive club, they are in a perfect position to influence the oil
giants to balance the "dirty diamonds" pressure on Jonas Savimbi's Unita with
petro-pressure on Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos's corrupt MPLA
government? Would a Bush-Cheney administration really do Africa this favour?
The Republicans have something to atone for on this one. The civil war in Angola
is rooted in then-president Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary for Africa
Chester Crocker's pro-Pretoria constructive engagement policy, which financed
Unita's military build-up.
This commitment in no little way contributed to the selfgenerating momentum of
perpetual war, misery and pestilence in post-Cold War Angola. Pretoria's
destabilisation of southern Africa happened on the Republican watch. Not that
this lets the Clinton administration off the hook.
There is an atonement awaiting Gore and his vice-presidential candidate, Joseph
Lieberman, as well, should they win the race. They have to redeem a Clinton
policy that, except for the late commerce secretary Ron Brown's trade and
investment forays on the continent, came unstuck in Washington's ignominious
disengagement from Somalia, which begot the genocide in Rwanda.
This, coupled with a militarisation of interstate politics in east and central Africa
through the backing of an African "new bloc" of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and
Eritrea, is integral to the quagmire that is the Great Lakes conflict.
This conflict, in turn, feeds disarray within the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), again compounded by Washington's uncritical backing of
the Dos Santos government in Angola.
In short, Gore and his Africa team will have to unravel this interlocking mess as
Clinton finally began doing in Sierra Leone.
The US's Africa policy will be on hold until well after a new administration takes
office next year. This may provide sufficient time for President Thabo Mbeki's
regional diplomacy to help establish the playing field for whatever "allout
diplomatic offensive to pacify" Congo the new US administration begins. Let us
hope so.
Perhaps this is what the recent summit meeting on Congo in Maputo was all
about. It is linked, moreover, to Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" in Zimbabwe, which
urgently needs an exit from Congo to begin addressing its own explosive
domestic problems.
This is where a new US administration will have to be responsive in achieving a
"soft landing".
Finally, whichever party takes the White House, much depends on who
dominates the congress, especially the senate. If it is the Republicans,
everything will be easier if Bush is president.
The other side of the US Africa policy coin is African proactivity. This is where
Mbeki's working relationship with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is crucial in pushing for Washington's
backing of an African "Marshall plan". In other words, whoever is next in the
White House, Africa is effectively in a position to shape the US's Africa policy.
Kornegay is Bradlow Fellow, SA Institute of International Affairs. |
