Comest thou to me?
The five-nation African tour of US President George W Bush comes at a time of rising anti-American sentiment in Africa -- a continent facing mounting social, health and economic woes, writes Gamal Nkrumah
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US President George W Bush is welcomed to the Presidential Palace in Dakar, Senegal, by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade
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The visit to Africa by United States President George W Bush this week inevitably draws parallels with former US President Bill Clinton's March 1998 African trip. But Bush's somewhat unavailing trip compares unfavourably to Clinton's triumphant tour. Clinton was warmly welcomed by the governments and peoples of Ghana, South Africa and other destinations during his historic African tour. More than 500,000 Ghanaians turned out to welcome Clinton on the streets of the capital Accra, and the welcome was obviously genuine.
The Clinton African tour, however, preceded the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Clinton tour also preceded the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. The US has put aside $100 million to combat terrorism in Africa, most of the funds designated for a handful of East African nations. Kenya, an East African country that has seen its foreign exchange earnings plummet because of the ruinous impact of terrorist attacks on its tourism sector, is demanding at least $400 million in compensation from the US and Western nations.
In sharp contrast to the jubilating crowds that greeted Clinton in Ghana in 1998, a pitiful few onlookers this week bothered to watch Bush's motorcade in Senegal. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade was courteous, but there was no mistaking the cold popular reception of the Senegalese.
Officially, however, Bush had the African leaders' attention. The presidents of seven democratic West African countries Mathieu Kerekou of Benin, Pedro Pire of Cape Verde, Yahya Jammah of Gambia, John Kuffor of Ghana, Amadou Toumani of Mali, Mamadou Tanja of Niger and Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone were summoned to the Senegalese capital for an audience with Bush.
West Africa is of special interest to the Bush administration. The region has in the past decade emerged as a key supplier of US oil. Some 17 per cent of US oil is now imported from Africa south of the Sahara and US reliance on African oil imports is forecast to increase in the future.
The Guinean President Lansana Conteh was snubbed because he was one of the few leaders of the region not to be democratically elected. Conspicuously absent, too, was the democratically elected Liberian President Charles Taylor. Before he embarked on his African tour, Bush warned that US peace-keeping forces would be sent to Liberia only on condition that Taylor steps down from office. Nigeria offered Taylor political asylum last week, and the Liberian president in turn expressed his willingness to accept the Nigerian invitation, but declines to say when he will accept the offer.
The Bush administration, Britain and Liberia's immediate neighbours -- Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast -- accuse Taylor of backing anti-government insurgency groups in neighbouring countries. Taylor is also wanted in Sierra Leone for supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) -- an anti- government armed opposition group that was routed by the British two years ago. RUF is accused of committing gross human rights violations, killing and maiming tens of thousands of people in Sierra Leone. Last month, Taylor was issued with an indictment by the United Nations Special War Crimes Court for Sierra Leone.
The deplorable humanitarian situation in Liberia is cause for grave concern among Liberia's neighbours and international relief agencies. The Liberian civil war has rendered hundreds of thousands of people in Liberia homeless. Bush has dispatched a US military contingent to Liberia to assess the humanitarian needs of the war-torn country.
From Senegal Bush flew to South Africa and on to Botswana, a mineral-rich but landlocked southern African country, a third of whose population suffers from HIV/AIDS. Botswana happens to be among Africa's wealthiest nations per capita. The country is also among the most stable democracies on the continent. Politically, it has enjoyed Western-style multi-party pluralism since its independence from Britain in 1966. Bush pledged $15 billion for the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.
In South Africa, Bush was snubbed by former South African president Nelson Mandela -- an outspoken critic of the Bush administration for its decision to war against and occupy Iraq. Mandela was conveniently out of the country during Bush's four-day stay in South Africa.
Another country on Bush's itinerary is Uganda which has managed, largely through destigmatising the disease, to reduce HIV/AIDS infection rate by two-thirds.
Bush's African tour was replete with symbolism. The five- hour stopover of the US president in Senegal included a 20 minute tour of Goree Island, the notorious island off the Senegalese coast where Africans were once shipped off to the Americas as slaves. Bush's trip to Goree included a stopover in a slave house built by the Dutch in 1776. The visit highlighted the uneasy historical US relationship with Africa. The trans-Atlantic journey of millions of Africans into servitude in the US was a grim reminder of what US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice bluntly called "America's birth defect".
Aboard the presidential yacht of his Senegalese host, Wade, on the short trip from the Senegalese capital Dakar to Goree, no mention was made of the combustible topic of reparations.
Bush's relatively inauspicious welcome was partly indicative of Africa's somber mood. It was also a warning that Africans do not approve of the Bush administration's bullying tactics. The US aggression against and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is not seen as heroic in Africa. And just like Bush forcibly ousted Iraq's Saddam Hussein from power, he seems bent on being Liberian President Taylor's ouster.
The big difference between Taylor and Saddam Hussein is that the Liberian president was democratically elected in 1997. Some 80 per cent of the Liberian electorate voted Taylor into office. The burning question now is whether the Bush administration will set a dangerous precedent by truncating the democratic process in Liberia. While African leaders appear to favour US intervention in Liberia, they do not want the Americans to interfere in the democratic process and impose solutions on Africans. They want the Americans to come in as impartial peacekeepers. On 4 June the leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa met in the Ghanaian capital Accra and reiterated their position that an international peacekeeping force must not be an interventionist, occupying army. An international peacekeeping force must be prepared to work in tandem with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional economic grouping of 16 sovereign states and the legitimate -- democratically elected -- authority in Liberia.
But, perhaps it is a little too naive of African leaders to expect the Americans not to dictate terms at a time when the US commands such military prowess. The 1975 fall of Saigon is now long forgotten. Most African leaders believe that the days when underdeveloped and impoverished nations could hope to defy superpowers are long over. They believe that in Africa, as in the rest of the world, Pax Americana rules supreme today.
Simply put, it is a question to farewell dreaming, welcome to the real world. Still, Africans want "African solutions to African problems". Thousands of Senegalese students and activists demonstrated against the Bush visit in front of the American Embassy in Senegal. The small West African country is a predominantly Muslim nation and the population was strongly sympathetic to Iraq and critical of the US aggression against Iraq.
Bush is expected to face even more scathing anti-American protests in South Africa and Nigeria later in his African tour. The African leaders he will meet will no doubt ingratiate themselves with Bush. Three at least, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade, will attempt to persuade him to pay more attention to the much touted New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), marketed as a blueprint for the continent's economic survival by the continental body, the African Union. NEPAD is, however, severely criticised by academics and activists in Africa as reinforcing African dependency on Western largesse. They argue, instead, that African economic recovery can only kickstart if Africa's crippling debt is written off; the subsidies on the agricultural products of Western nations reduced; and the markets of the West opened to African commodities. The Bush administration is adamantly opposed to writing off Africa's debt. And, it is very difficult, under the circumstances, for ordinary Africans not to see Bush as anything but an international bully.
