Hello All
A very interesting article from Business Day.
Leaders Of Angola Are Not Interested In Peace, Only Profit
March 3, 1999
By Simon Barber
Johannesburg - Last Friday, the United Nations (UN) Security Council voted to withdraw peacekeepers from Angola, there being no peace left to keep. Coincidentally, the state department issued its annual human rights report for last year.
The chapter on Angola paints a repellent picture. One line stands out: "The country's wealth continued to be concentrated in the hands of a small elite who used government positions for massive personal enrichment."
Now that, as they say, is telling it like it is. No diplomatic persiflage there. Earlier in the week, World Bank president James Wolfensohn spoke to a group of African cabinet ministers - no Angolan among them - who had come to Washington for Vice-President Al Gore's Global Forum on Fighting Corruption.
Wolfensohn preached the latest gospel of development, namely that the first commandment, from which hang all others, must be: "Thou shall stamp out corruption."
"I do not start with finance. I do not start with water. I do not start with education... if you cannot have in a country a sense of proper governance that is unambiguous in its opposition to corruption, then general statements or even specific statements that we make will fall to the ground."
There is no point, in other words, in even talking about development strategies for countries whose governments are heavily on the take. The collapse of the 1994 Lusaka Peace Accords and the return of the MPLA and Unita to the mattresses - to use a completely apposite metaphor from the Godfather, as we are talking of mobsters here - is generally ascribed to Unita's failure to comply with its treaty obligations to demobilise, surrender its weapons and hand over areas under its control to state administration.
That may well be the proximate cause. But what should be obvious by now is that neither side gives a damn about the reconstruction of their country, or even winning the affection or support of their countrymen.
As UN secretary-general Kofi Annan observed in his January 17 report to the Security Council there has not been "any evidence of a genuine effort to build political support by improving the basic living conditions of the population". However brutish Jonas Savimbi and Unita may be, or have become, war appears to suit the MPLA elite also.
"The security factors that inhibited the country's transition to full multiparty democracy" the state department report notes, "had a similar effect on the country's transition from a directed, state-dominated economic system to one based on market principles. The government's economic policies remained geared towards war, creating an environment that enabled the government to resist calls for greater transparency in public accounting."
Not content with stealing whatever is left over from oil and diamond revenues after arms purchases, the MPLA has also "failed to liberalise its import regimes or control its regulatory agencies to the extent needed to allow the importation of the goods and services on which the economy depends." Why? Because reform would interfere with another important source of "massive personal enrichment".
So greedy are the MPLA barons that they do not pay most of their police and soldiers. Sure, they shell out fortunes - even give oil concessions - to their Washington consultants, and they do take care to keep elite military units happy.
As for the rest, "the government gives tacit permission for security personnel to pay themselves through the extortion of the civilian population". That, of course, gives rise to terrible human rights abuses, the perpetrators of which - surprise, surprise - are seldom, if ever, brought to book.
The MPLA gets away with all this principally because it has Savimbi - now clearly exposed as a ruthless and paranoid killer, as relentless in the pursuit of power as the MPLA is on keeping it - for an enemy. As long as he remains in the field, he sanctifies the ruling party's murderous kleptocracy.
Think of it this way. With Savimbi out of the picture entirely and the contest over, how great are the chances that the MPLA would win a fair, unbought, election, assuming it even agreed that one should be held? What, exactly, has the MPLA done to win the loyalty of Angola's ordinary citizens, except use them as cannon fodder while stealing the nation's patrimony?
No more than Unita, in whose territory, the state department reports, civilians live under "a primitive and brutal form of economic feudalism.
Their crops and other goods are subject to seizure by armed Unita elements, and they are vulnerable to forced labour, including military service."
Let us forget real politik for a moment. Angola is in the thrall of truly wicked men. Its gangsters, both government and rebel, pose a threat to the entire region as their fight spreads across borders. The MPLA obtains international acquiescence in its loathsomeness through its oil.
Unita buys arms and fuel with diamonds. Both, in their own way, are equally corrupt and corrupting. Both endanger the region. Both need to be quarantined and treated like the criminals they are.
Few governments are more deserving of revolutionary overthrow than that of President Eduardo Dos Santos. Few rebel movements are less deserving to accomplish that overthrow than that of Jonas Savimbi.
May they both pay dearly, for the sake of the countless innocents they have butchered, maimed, or dispossessed.
Regards |
