COLUMN: Africa still far from rebirth

From Roberto Mantaro Samaniego's, "Kill the Octopus'," Fall '98 From Roberto Mantaro Samaniego's, "Kill the Octopus'," Fall '98The scene on the road from Maputo, Mozambique, to the South African border captured the state of much of sub-Saharan Africa. Every 30 feet lay the contorted corpse of a car or bus that was blown off the road during the 16-year civil war. Yet I watched enterprising souls, who had walked half a day from Maputo, drag the rusting hulks back into the city to sell them for scrap. But this collective sigh of relief may be premature. Renewal is not uniform across the continent, as highlighted by the pope's rebuke of political arrests in Nigeria during his visit there last week. Only some of the conditions that drove Africa into the dust have changed. The Cold War is over. There is an almost global consensus on the unacceptability of sponsoring corrupt or client governments. Democracy and free markets are the norm. Still, many African economies remain as undiversified and vulnerable as before, their people poor and their governments corrupt and unable to invest due to the burden of the debts of the past. Food aid is a flimsy insurance mechanism. Hindering African countries from true development are their inherited colonial economies. These depend on a few mining and agricultural products for trade. Fluctuations in international prices can -- and sometimes do -- decimate their economies. Meanwhile, the rural poor depend on subsistence farming and plantation work, exposed to the temper tantrums of the climate. In this context, the current fashion for democracy and free markets may do many Africans little good. The allegiance of many is to a clan, ethnic or linguistic group rather than to the national boundaries colonialism left behind. Majority voting has sometimes resulted in the dominant ethnic group ruling, which does little to guarantee peace and government responsiveness. Given that foreign powers will use aid and trade concessions to continue meddling in African affairs, they should encourage serious decentralization rather than a mere circus of democracy. Then at least Africans would have a choice over representatives who might do something for them, and political positions would be more than mere sinecure. If "free markets" mean foreign investment and trade, they are even less likely to solve Africa's economic uncertainties. Many governments are too weak to maintain stability, yet sufficiently strong and centralized to afford officials free rein in allocating, say, mining rights. Consider James Blanchard III, a Texas millionaire who once joined the South African apartheid regime in funding the brutal RENAMO movement that tore Mozambique apart. He is set to make a killing from huge land leases in Mozambique by building a luxurious beach resort/safari park. Of the local communities, Blanchard's articulate general manager said, "We gonna come here and say 'Okay, now you're in a national park. Your village can either get fenced or you can have them wild animals walking right through your main street'." Clearly, villagers had little say in the matter: all land in Mozambique is technically owned by the state. It does Africa little good if U.S. Steel troops in and drags away the cars on the Maputo-South Africa road to sell them for scrap. Foreign commercial interests continue to snap up Africa's main resources at the expense of locals. Meanwhile, movements for individual property rights or political decentralization that might help put some of the profits of so-called "development" in African pockets have precious little political momentum in the face of foreign investors' dollars. There will be no complete African Renaissance until such momentum builds -- just a few more African fat cats. What the poorest countries need is stability and for local problems to be addressed in situ. The institutions that preach salvation by the market forget that these are not problems like "should we increase the interest rate by 0.2 percent?" Rather, these problems can be as basic as rebuilding roads, wells, schools and hospitals, creating a functional day-to-day legal system and de-mining the countryside. The International Monetary Fund's pressure to defer post-war reconstruction in Mozambique because it might encourage inflation shows how absurdly out of touch some of these institutions can be. Socialism and nationalism were not panaceas. But neither are policies promoted in the name of "democracy" and "free markets," however strong the commercial and academic interests that back them. Clinton's Africa trip is ostensibly about trade, which -- though important -- should not be Africa's priority. More African blood will be shed before its people enjoy the fruits of international trade. "Democracy" and "free markets" are about letting people get on with their business. When domestic institutions are as weak and centralized as they are in Mozambique, the laws of the "free market" become the Law of the Jungle where the biggest beast wins. Far more than trade, Africans need the power to decide what happens to themselves and their belongings before their fields and minds can bloom.