Tony Blair urges his people to show the same compassion to the African victims of, what he calls, ‘man-made disaster’, that they have shown to Asian victims of natural disaster.

The small question though is: which man has been responsible for Africa’s man-made disaster? We shall not go too far back into history. Let’s just look at the last two decades and only two major wars – economic and military – which have devastated the continent.

The continent is the most war-torn region in the world. In the last decade, there were 12 wars taking place in 10 countries on the continent. Eleven were supported by the US through arms sales or military training. Many of these wars were offshoots of the Cold War years. According to one estimate, during the Cold War years (1950-1989) US sent some US$1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa. And this trend has not stopped in the post-Cold War period. Africa has yet to reap the so-called peace dividend.

From 1991-1995, 50 of Africa’s 53 countries received military assistance from the US. US arms sales and military training to Africa totaled more than $227 million. And US’s junior partner, UK, follows suit. British arms sales to Africa rocketed from ?52 million in 1998 to ?125 million in 2000 and topped ?200 million in 2001 after the deals with Tanzania to sell ?28 million military air defence and ?100 million to sell Hawk jets to South Africa. Under Tony Blair’s new labour government, military sales to Africa increased from 1.6 per cent of all sales to the Third World to 19 per cent.

Gordon Brown’s compassionate offer to pay 10 per cent of Tanzania’s debt to the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank amounting to some $40 million over the next ten years sits rather awkwardly with $40 million that was spent a couple of years ago to get the radar from a British company with Blair’s support. At the time one British MP, Tony Worthington, commented in the House of Commons: ‘The idea of going to Dar es Salaam to negotiate debt reduction and then agreeing to something that adds $40 million to that debt does not sound like prudence, does it?’ Well, in the imperial mindset, it does.

Arms trade is “good” business. It is “good” economics and “good” politics. It creates jobs, increases profits and ensures a safe continent for Western multinationals to continue siphoning off resources and expatriating super-profits which keep the capitalist engine running. And as a bonus, the military-industrial complex of the West keeps reproducing the dependency syndrome in Africa, caricatured in the African child with a begging bowl.

The aid-dependency syndrome in Africa, which is deployed variously – for domination, for compassion, for humiliation, for intimidation – is an important plank in the relationship between the West and Africa. While we are pilloried with ‘aid-fatigue’ in response to our begging bowl, Western rulers get very angry when some countries (very few indeed and none in Africa) try to extricate themselves from the world wide aid net.

It is revealing that when India refused to accept any aid from the West for tsunami victims, the Western world was outraged. Journalists ridiculed and questioned India’s motives – ambitions of a regional super-power, seeking a seat in the Security Council, acting big brother to neighbouring countries. These are the same people who hardly ever question the motives of Western aid. No, Western aid is out of altruism and human compassion.

Mwalimu (Julius Nyerere) was hated by the West more for preaching self-reliance rather than socialism. If he survived the wrath of the CIAs of this world (unlike Nkrumah) it was perhaps because we never practiced self-reliance and Mwalimu never wrote a book, ‘Self-reliance, the First Stage of Liberation’, the way Nkrumah did, ‘Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism’.

Anyway, so much for the military war. What about the economic war?

For the last two decades beginning with structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s, Africa has been involved in implementing neo-liberal policies handed down by the West through their so-called multilateral institutions. SAPs have devastated the continent. Since 1980 African debt has increased 500%. 313 million Africans lived in absolute poverty in 2001 compared to 200 million in 1994.

Life expectancy has dropped by 15%; literacy rates have fallen. More than 140 million young Africans are illiterate. In ten years, between 1986 and 1996, education spending per capita in Africa has fallen by 0.7% a year. Primary and secondary school enrollment has gone down as parents cannot afford cost-sharing imposed on them. University students have rioted as they find themselves without employment and therefore unable to repay loans. In Tanzania, non-payment of educational loans has been criminalized!

Mr. Blair need not ask which men are behind Africa’s man-made disaster? But can Africa’s men and women swallow the rhetoric of compassion and forget the reality of exploitation?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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