Problems in Africa- 3 | UPSC Mains: World History PDF Download

Zimbabwe Under Robert Mugabe

(a) An impressive beginning, 1980–90

Robert Mugabe, prime minister of the newly independent Zimbabwe, had been an uncompromising guerrilla leader with Marxist opinions. He soon showed that he was capable of moderation, and pledged himself to work for reconciliation and unity. This calmed the fears of the white farmers and businessmen who had remained in Zimbabwe and who were necessary for the economy to flourish. He formed a coalition government between his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), whose main support came from the Shona people, and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), supported by the Ndebele people in Matabeleland. He kept his promise made at the Lancaster House Conference (see Section 24.4(c)) that the whites should have 20 guaranteed seats in the 100-seat parliament. Measures were introduced to alleviate the poverty of the black population – wage increases, food subsidies and better social services, health care and education. Many commentators felt that in his first few years in power, Mugabe showed great statesmanship and deserved credit for keeping his country relatively peaceful.
Nevertheless there were problems to be dealt with. The most serious in the early years was the long-standing hostility between ZANU and ZAPU. The Shona people of ZANU felt that ZAPU could have done more to help during the struggle for black majority rule. The coalition between Mugabe and Nkomo was uneasy, and in 1982 Nkomo was accused of planning a coup. Mugabe forced him to resign and had many leading members of ZAPU arrested. Nkomo’s supporters in Matabeleland retaliated with violence, but were brutally suppressed. However, resistance continued until 1987 when at last the two leaders reached agreement – the so-called Unity Accord:

• ZANU and ZAPU united and became known as the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF);
• Mugabe became executive president and Nkomo became a vice-president in a power-sharing scheme;
• reserved seats for whites in parliament were abolished.

The other worrying problem was the state of the economy. Although in years of good harvests Zimbabwe was regarded as ‘the breadbasket of southern Africa’, success depended heavily on the weather. During the 1980s there were more than the usual periods of drought, and the country also suffered from the high world price of oil. It was becoming clear that although Mugabe was a clever politician, his economic skills were not so impressive. Since the 1987 Unity Accord, he had been pushing to turn Zimbabwe into a one-party state. However, this was thwarted when Edgar Tekere formed his Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) in 1989. Nevertheless, in 1990 Mugabe was still immensely popular and regarded as a hero by much of the population because of his vital role in the struggle for freedom. In 1990 he was re-elected president in a landslide victory over ZUM.

(b) The hero’s image begins to tarnish

• During the 1990s Zimbabwe’s economic problems worsened. After the collapse of the USSR, Mugabe abandoned most of his Marxist policies and attempted to follow western free-market methods. He accepted a loan from the IMF and, very much against public opinion, agreed to abide by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme it imposed. This involved unpopular cuts in public spending on social services and jobs. Difficulties were compounded in 1992 by a severe drought, bringing a poor harvest and food shortages. More problems were caused when squatters occupied hundreds of white-owned farms. About 4000 white farmers had stayed on in Zimbabwe after independence, and between them they owned about half the country’s arable land. The government encouraged the squatters and the police gave the farmers no protection; consequently the areas occupied by squatters were not cultivated, and this added to the food supply problem. Unemployment and inflation rose and the spread of AIDS began to cause concern.
• By the late 1990s unrest was growing. Mugabe’s intervention to help President Laurent Kabila in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was unpopular, since it was widely rumoured that his motive was to protect his own personal investments in that country. In November 1998 there were protest demonstrations when it was announced that Mugabe had awarded himself and his cabinet large pay increases.

(c) Opposition increases
Around the turn of the century, opposition to the regime increased as Mugabe’s rule became more repressive and dictatorial.

• In February 2000, men claiming to be veterans of the war for independence began the systematic and violent occupation of white-owned farms. This continued throughout the next four years, and was clearly a deliberate policy organized by the government. When the UK government protested, Mugabe claimed that it was the fault of the British: they had broken their promise (made during the 1979 Lancaster House Conference) to provide adequate compensation to white farmers. Britain declared itself willing to pay extra compensation provided that the confiscated land was given to ordinary peasant farmers rather than to members of Mugabe’s ruling elite.
• Another proviso was that the elections due in June 2000 were free and fair. In February 2000, the people had rejected a new pro-Mugabe draft constitution, a clear indication that his popularity had dwindled. This probably led him to take whatever measures were necessary to win the June elections. Although he had agreed that they should be free and fair, he apparently did little to make sure that this happened.There was widespread violence and intimidation of the opposition before and during the election, and international observers were severely restricted. Even so, the result was close: Mugabe’s ZANU-PF won 62 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 57. The MDC had support from trade unions and by the prominent, but mainly white Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU). However, the president had the right to nominate 30 of the 150 members, and so Mugabe maintained a comfortable majority.
• The forcible occupation of white-owned farms continued during 2001, bringing more protests from the UK and the USA. Mugabe accused the British government of running a neo-colonial and racist campaign, supporting whites against blacks. The dispute brought mixed reactions from the rest of the world. The majority of black African states expressed sympathy and support for Mugabe. President Mbeki of South Africa, on the other hand, claimed that the land seizures were a violation of the rule of law, and ought to stop; but he urged a conciliatory approach and refused to apply economic sanctions against Zimbabwe, since these would only ruin the already ailing economy. However, the EU condemned Mugabe’s policy and imposed sanctions (February 2002), the Commonwealth expelled Zimbabwe for one year, and the World Bank cut off its funding because of Zimbabwe’s huge debt arrears, which had risen to over $380 million.
• Meanwhile, Mugabe took steps to muzzle the mounting criticism of his policies within Zimbabwe. There was now only one independent daily newspaper, the Daily News, and its journalists were increasingly harassed and intimidated, as were members of the MDC. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, was charged with plotting to overthrow the president, and the government tightened its control over TV and radio. When the Supreme Court ventured to criticize Mugabe’s land policy, he sacked three of the judges and replaced them with his own nominees. As the presidential election of March 2002 approached, restrictions were tightened further. Public meetings were banned, except those of Mugabe’s supporters, and it became an offence ‘to undermine the authority of the president by making statements or publishing statements that provoke hostility’. No foreign observers were to be allowed into the country to monitor the elections.

During the election campaign ZANU-PF took the line that the MDC was a puppet political party being used by the West to destabilize the nationalist and fundamentally Marxist attempt to redistribute wealth in Zimbabwe. Jonathan Moyo, the Minister of Information and Publicity, accused the MDC of being unpatriotic because they supported the CFU in their attempts to derail Mugabe’s land-redistribution exercise. It was no surprise when Mugabe won the election and was sworn in for a further six-year term, although he was 78 years old. He took 56 per cent of the vote while Morgan Tsvangirai could muster only 42 per cent. Tsvangirai immediately challenged the result, claiming that ‘it was the biggest electoral fraud I’ve seen in my life’. He complained of terrorism, intimidation and harassment; tensions ran high as he demanded that the High Court overturn the result.

(d) Zimbabwe in crisis

• Rejecting the opposition’s accusations, President Mugabe declared a ‘state of disaster’ (April 2002) because of the food situation. The whole of Central Africa was suffering the effects of a prolonged drought, and the harvest was expected to be only half its usual size. Yet Mugabe continued with his controversial land-seizure policy, although agricultural experts pointed out that this would threaten the vital crop of winter wheat.
  Protests against the government continued in various forms, and so did the suppression of criticism. Mugabe used almost every means possible to stay in power: war veterans, youth militias and members of the security forces were used to intimidate the opposition. In February 2003 the Cricket World Cup competition was held in Zimbabwe; in Zimbabwe’s opening match, two of their players – one black and one white – wore black armbands in order, they said, to ‘mourn the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe. We cannot in all conscience take the field and ignore the fact that millions of our compatriots are starving, unemployed and oppressed.’ They did not play for Zimbabwe again. Later in the month, 21 Christian church leaders were arrested when they tried to present a petition asking the police to behave with less violence and more regard for human rights.
• But the opposition refused to be silenced; in March the MDC organized a mass protest across the whole country, demanding that Mugabe should either reform his regime or leave office. Many factories, banks and shops closed, but the government dismissed it as ‘an act of terrorism’. It was reported that over 500 opposition members, including Gibson Sibanda, vice-president of the MDC, had been arrested. Supported by a number of Western countries, the MDC called for foreign intervention and appealed for the UN to get involved in future elections. They also called on neighbouring states, asking them to take a more active role in Zimbabwe’s affairs. Through the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) there were a number of attempts at mediation. Presidents Mbeki of South Africa and Obasanjo of Nigeria several times tried to persuade Mugabe to form a coalition government with the MDC, but although representatives of Mugabe and Tsvangirai held talks, no solution to the deadlock could be found. Mugabe insisted that Zimbabwe was a sovereign country which could run its own affairs without interference from other states; issues pertaining to Zimbabwe could only be solved by Zimbabweans themselves. He also argued that Western talk of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe was simply political rhetoric and part of a neo-colonial strategy to continue influencing what went on in Zimbabwe. Jonathan Moyo has linked the recent farm seizures to the 1970s war of liberation from British colonial rule. He described the farm takeovers as the third ‘Chimurenga’, a Shona word for the war of liberation, the first and second Chimurenga being the wars started by black natives against white settlers during the 1890s and 1970s.
• When the Commonwealth summit met in Abuja (Nigeria) in December 2003, the issue which dominated the conference was whether or not Zimbabwe’s suspension should be lifted. Mugabe was hoping to split the Commonwealth along black–white lines, but after intense discussion, the majority of members, including many African countries, voted to continue the suspension. Bitterly disappointed, Mugabe withdrew Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.
• The tragedy was that by the summer of 2004, as well as the dire human rights situation, Zimbabwe’s economy was in a state of collapse. It was reported that since the land reform programme began, agricultural production had fallen catastrophically: in 2003 the tobacco crop fell to less than a third of the 2000 crop; worst of all, the wheat crop was less than a quarter of the total in 2000, and the numbers of cattle on commercial farms fell from 1.2 million to a mere 150 000. Although the government claimed that 50 000 black families had been settled on commercial farms, the real figure was less than 5000. Many of the best farms had been given to the president’s supporters; vast amounts of fertile land were lying uncultivated because of shortages of seeds, fertilizers and agricultural machinery. In May 2004, the unemployment rate stood at over 70 per cent and the inflation rate was over 600 per cent, one of the highest in the world. The EU decision to continue sanctions for a further year did nothing to help. As usual, the main victims were Zimbabwe’s poverty-stricken, oppressed and neglected people.
• In spite of all this, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party won a decisive victory in the parliamentary elections of April 2005, taking 78 seats out of the 120 contested. The opposition MDC could muster only 41 seats. With the 30 seats that the president could fill with his own appointments, he would have more than the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution. A smiling Mugabe said that he would retire when he was ‘a century old’. There was less violence than during the two previous elections, and South African observers reported that the proceedings had been free and fair. However, the MDC and many European observers claimed that there had been widespread abuses, fraud and intimidation of voters; they accused the South African government of turning a blind eye to the fraud in order to discourage the MDC from resorting to violence, which would destabilize South Africa’s frontier with Zimbabwe. In fact, the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, decided not to launch a legal challenge to the results and rejected calls for armed resistance. As the UK Times put it: ‘It would be a brave group indeed which would openly confront the thugs of ZANU-PF.’ In March 2007 when the MDC did criticize Mugabe and staged a protest march, Tsvangirai and several other protesters were arrested and beaten up and one of them was killed.
• In 2008 both parliamentary and presidential elections were held. With the economy in dire straits, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF suffered a narrow defeat by the MDC, and Mugabe himself came second to Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of the election for president. However, Tsvangirai had narrowly failed to win the requisite 50 per cent to secure victory in the first round. A run-off took place almost two months after these results were announced. During that time ZANU-PF launched a campaign of violence against the MDC and its supporters in which 86 people were reported killed, hundreds injured and hundreds more driven from their homes. Five days before the run-off Tsvangirai announced that he had withdrawn from the contest; there was no point in running, he said, when the election would not be free and fair, and when the outcome would be decided by Mugabe himself. He claimed that his supporters risked being killed if they turned up to vote for him. Mugabe retorted that he had only withdrawn because he knew he would be humiliated in the vote. The run-off went ahead and predictably, since Tsvangirai was no longer a candidate, Mugabe took around 90 per cent of the votes. In June 2008 he was sworn in for a further term as president. There was widespread international condemnation of the result, and the African Union insisted that the only fair outcome would be the formation of a government of national unity. Talks were held between ZANU-PF and the MDC under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and mediated by South African president Mbeki. In September 2008 a power-sharing agreement was signed: Mugabe was to remain as president, Tsvangirai was to become prime minister, both would share control of the police and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF would be in control of the army.
• Over the next four years the economy at last began to make some progress, although in June 2012 an MDC report stated that ‘the transport system remains in a complete shambles’; all major roads were in need of upgrading and the secondary roads were full of potholes. At the same time the UN Human Rights Commissioner reported that in spite of the unity government, polarization was still very pronounced; she expressed grave concerns that the next elections, due in 2013, could turn into a repeat of the 2008 elections. Only a week after the Commissioner’s visit an MDC official was murdered by ZANU-PF supporters and several others were severely beaten. Clearly Mugabe’s conception of sovereignty has more to do with the perpetuation of his own rule than the protection and well-being of his people. In the words of one of the disaffected Anglican priests, in 2012:
• Zimbabweans continue to suffer under Mugabe’s rule. There is general suffering across Zimbabwe, and unemployment is a serious problem in every part of the country. Moreover the involvement of the military in the politics of the country means that the idea of free and fair elections continues to be a fantasy in the minds of many Zimbabweans.

Confusion And Civil War In Somalia

(a)  Somalia united

• The territories occupied by the Somali people had been colonized in the nineteenth century by the French, British and Italians. By 1960 both Britain and Italy recognized the independence of their areas which were united to form the Republic of Somalia. There was a long history of frontier disputes between the Somalis in the south-west of the country neighbouring Kenya, and between the Somalis in the north-west of Somalia, bordering on the Ethiopian province of Ogaden, and the Ethiopian government. In 1963 a boundary commission recommended that the Somali-populated area bordering on Kenya should be included in the new Republic of Kenya. When the British government agreed to this there were protest riots across Somalia and the Somali government broke off diplomatic relations with Britain. This alarmed Ethiopia where border skirmishes had already occurred in Ogaden in 1962. The president of Sudan and the King of Morocco offered to mediate, and following talks in Khartoum, hostilities between Somalia and Ethiopia were suspended temporarily. However, sporadic border clashes continued until 1967 when President Kaunda of Zambia mediated more successfully. Meanwhile the small French colony of Djibouti, situated between Somalia and Eritrea, voted to remain separate as a member of the French Union. The French finally withdrew in 1975 and Djibouti became an independent republic in 1977. Though small, the new republic included the port of Djibouti, which was vital for the trade of the landlocked state of Ethiopia and extremely desirable for Somalia. The republic’s population was mixed, consisting both of Ethiopians (Afars) and Somalis (Issas).
• In October 1969 the Somali president Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke was assassinated and the army took over, with Major-General Mohamed Siad Barre as president. The country’s name was changed to the Somali Democratic Republic, but this did not solve one of its basic problems – it was divided into a large number of tribes or clans, and sub-tribes. Before independence these had only been held together by the colonial power, and after 1960 some tribes began to act more independently. The new president Siad Barre, a member of the Marehan tribe, aimed to reassert central control from the capital, Mogadishu, with himself as the uniting force. He gained the support of several other clans and introduced a programme of socialist reforms.

(b)  War and civil war

• In 1977, expecting help from the USA, President Siad Barre launched an ill-advised invasion of Ethiopia. When American help failed to materialize, his forces were easily driven back by the Ethiopians, who received support from the USSR and Cuba. After the Ethiopians had invaded Somalia in 1982, the country gradually deteriorated into a terrible civil war lasting well into the next century. The former British area in the north declared itself independent under President Muhammad Egal, though only Djibouti gave it official recognition. A number of tribes united and in 1991 forced Barre to leave the country. However, they immediately fell out again and continued to fight each other. The leading figures were now Muhammad Farah Aided, who was supported by Islamist groups, and Ali Mahdi Muhammad, whose forces controlled Mogadishu and who declared himself president.
• Meanwhile the unfortunate population suffered famine, epidemics and drought; millions were forced to flee from their homes. At one point there were over 20 different aid agencies at work in the country. Sadly they were often terrorized and robbed by local militias, and at the end of 1992 a UN mission (known as UNOSOM) was sent to try to make sure that the aid reached the right people. This group was eventually enlarged to 28 000 (of which 8000 were from the USA) and given authority to disarm the warring factions. When this proved beyond them, the Americans decided it would be easier to back Ali Mahdi and eliminate Aided, rather than trying to bring the two together in peace talks. They were in for a great disappointment: an American force sent to arrest Aided failed to capture him and lost two helicopters and the lives of 18 teenage American soldiers. This was too much for President Clinton, who decided to pull all American troops out of Somalia. UNOSOM forces soon followed (1994). They had totally failed to disarm the militias and certainly to reunite the country. Aided was killed in 1996 but it seemed to make little difference. In reality, Somalia had no government, just a collection of warlords each ruling his own patch.
• In 2000 it seemed that some progress was being made: a group of warlords met in Djibouti and set up a government, though at first it controlled only about 10 per cent of the country. In August 2004 a National Transitional Federal Parliament of 275 members was inaugurated for a five-year term and Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected president. The new government was forced to spend the first year based in Kenya, because Somalia itself was too violent, but eventually it was able to move to the town of Baidoa. More violence followed in 2006, this time caused by a group of Islamists calling themselves the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC). They seized Mogadishu and took control of most of the south. President Yusuf tried to reach a peace agreement with them, but no progress could be made. At this point the Ethiopian government intervened. They considered the Islamists to be a dangerous threat to their territory and to the region in general, and carried out a series of air strikes against them. Ethiopian troops joined the Somali government’s struggling forces and together they regained control of Mogadishu. By the end of 2006 most of the Islamists had been forced out of Somalia. The Americans joined in, launching air strikes against the retreating Islamists whom they suspected of having links with al-Qaeda. These were widely condemned in a number of Muslim countries which claimed that the Americans had killed more ordinary Somalis than Islamist rebels.
• The Islamists soon regrouped and the militant wing of the SICC, known as Al-Shabab, grew much stronger in 2007. Supported by many local warlords, they recaptured much of the south. One encouraging sign for the beleaguered government was that many moderate Muslims supported it, and when President Yusuf resigned at the end of 2008, parliament elected Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a moderate Muslim cleric, as the next president. In 2010 Al-Shabab announced that it acknowledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and in July it claimed responsibility for a bomb blast in a restaurant at Kampala, the capital of Uganda, which killed 75 people. Ugandan forces had been helping the Somali government, and the explosion was clearly meant as a warning to any other countries that might be considering similar assistance. Even the weather was cruel to the Somalis – in the summer of 2011 there was a prolonged drought. This caused a famine in most of the south where thousands were reported to have died from malnutrition and thousands more had migrated into neigh-bouring Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food. The government had proved incapable of controlling the Somali pirates who had been terrorizing the seas off the coast of East Africa for many years. Since 2000 hundreds of vessels have been attacked, though only a small proportion of these resulted in successful hijackings. Many countries have joined an international task force to eliminate piracy. This had some success and the number of attacks was reduced, though in February 2012 pirates were still holding ten ships and 159 hostages. In September 2012 Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was unexpectedly defeated when MPs voted for Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as the next president. He was described as being ‘a more moderate Muslim’ than his predecessor. He was an academic who had once worked for UNICEF.

The Sudan

• At the end of the twentieth century no fewer than 17 African countries were experiencing crises of various kinds, and the UN rated Sudan as probably the worst. Since 1956, southern Sudan had been ravaged by civil war between the Arab-dominated government and the African tribes, many of whom were Christians. The Africans felt they were not receiving a fair deal; they had been refused the right to secede and had not even been allowed a certain amount of independence as part of a federal state. In 1983 the government in Khartoum introduced fundamentalist Islamic law, which only exacerbated the rift between Arabs in the north and the black African tribes in the south. Government forces were strongly influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF) while the rebels’ main supporters were the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). In 1989 a group of army officers led by Omar al-Bashir overthrew the Sudanese government and took over the presidency. He was still president in 2012 though he has promised to stand down in 2015. The fighting ended in 2002, but peace was fragile, and in February 2003 rebel groups from African tribes in the Darfur region again took up arms against the government in the struggle for more land and resources. In retaliation the government used various Arab militias including the Janjaweed to disguise the fact that they were really waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against people of African origin. The government itself did nothing to stop the violence. By the summer of 2004, the situation in the Darfur region was chaotic: some estimates put the number of deaths as high as 300 000, between 3 million and 4 million people were homeless, and over 2 million were in urgent need of food and medical attention. To make matters worse, consecutive years of drought and floods had ruined tens of thousands of livelihoods, and living conditions were said to be appalling. The infrastructure was in ruins, with scores of schools and hospitals destroyed, there was no electricity, disease was rife and trade depended on barter. UN and other aid agencies were desperately trying to provide for basic survival needs; food was dropped in from planes because there were no good roads. The whole of the south was desperately backward and under-developed. Yet the country had plenty of valuable assets which were not being fully exploited: the soil was fertile and watered by the Nile – properly cultivated, it could easily provide sufficient food for the population; and there were rich oil resources.
• Hopes for an improvement rose in August 2004 when the African Union began a peace-keeping mission. In January 2005 representatives of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Khartoum government signed a peace deal in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. It was agreed that Southern Sudan would be autonomous for six years, and that there would then be a referendum to decide whether it was to remain part of the Sudan. However, the new deal seemed to have little immediate effect in Darfur, where fighting continued, in spite of all international efforts to bring peace. In March 2009 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of President Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. He continued blithely in office and in April 2010 he won the first multi-party elections to be held in Sudan since 1986. This was no surprise since most of the opposition parties boycotted the elections. The leader of the SPLM, Salva Kiir, was re-elected for another term as president of the semi-independent Darfur.
• In January 2011 the referendum over the future of Darfur provided for in the 2005 peace agreement took place; 98 per cent voted in favour of independence. President Bashir accepted the result and said he would not stand for re-election at the end of his term in 2015. In July 2011 South Sudan officially became independent as Africa’s 54th state. Even then tensions between the two continued, mainly over possession of oil fields and disputed frontiers. In April 2012 the South took over some disputed oil fields but withdrew after the Sudan launched air attacks. The African Union gave the two sides three months to resolve all their issues, but the future did not look promising.

Africa And Its Problems In The Twenty-First Century

• In November 2003 the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan complained that since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the USA, the world’s attention had focused on the war against terrorism, and that Africa and its problems had been, if not exactly forgotten, then certainly neglected. Resources that might have gone to help Africa had been diverted to Afghanistan and later to Iraq, which turned out to be a much more difficult problem than the USA had expected. He appealed for $3 billion (about £1.8 billion) to help provide basic services such as food, water, medical supplies and shelter. It was pointed out in comparison that the US Congress had voted to spend $87 billion on rebuilding Iraq.
• After gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea had a difficult time. There was continuing tension with Ethiopia over the exact position of their frontiers. Border clashes broke out in 1998. Both governments seemed to be obsessed with building up large armaments in case of a full-scale border war, and spent millions of dollars which they could ill afford on warplanes and weapons. Unfortunately, as well as using up vital resources, this also took men away from the farms where they were needed for ploughing and bringing water. Fortunately a peace agreement was signed at the end of 2000. Eritrea also suffered four consecutive years of drought; the once fertile plains were barren and the wind was blowing away the topsoil. The harvest was only 10 per cent of normal, and it was estimated that 1.7 million people were unable to feed themselves. Border tensions continued and clashes between frontier forces at some stage every year, the most serious recent skirmish being in January 2010 when Eritrean forces killed 10 Ethiopians.
• Tanzania had the problem of how to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled from the civil wars in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Similarly in West Africa, Guinea’s frontier areas were crammed with refugees from neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia. Southern Africa was feeling the effects of drought. Malawi was badly affected: in January 2003 the government declared a national emergency after a drought and the failure of the maize crop. Then storms and heavy rains washed away bridges and flooded riverside fields; by April the World Food Programme claimed it was feeding around 3.5 million Malawians – a third of the population. Things did not improve in 2005 when more than 4 million people had insufficient food.
• Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland were suffering from similar problems. The outlook for the future was not encouraging: experts were predicting that unless global warming could be controlled, droughts would become progressively worse and some parts of Africa might become uninhabitable (see Section 27.5). On top of this, all the countries of Africa were suffering in different degrees from the HIV/AIDS pandemic (see Section 28.4). In fact, although the West was understandably obsessed with the threat of terrorism, Africans were most concerned about AIDS, since, by and large, it was affecting the most active generations – the 20 to 50 age group.
• On the other hand, there were encouraging developments on the political and economic front. At a summit conference of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) held in Mauritius in August 2004, a new charter of regulations for the conduct of democratic elections was drawn up. This included, among other things, allowing a free press, no vote-rigging, and no violence or intimidation. There was also to be a commitment by presidents to submit themselves for re-election when their term of office ended, and not to use armed force to keep themselves in power. As a demonstration of good faith, the presidents of Tanzania, Mozambique and Namibia indicated that they would be stepping down soon. In October 2008 the African Free Trade Zone was set up with 26 members. Experts believed that this would encourage African internal trade and boost economic development, as well strengthening the bloc’s bargaining power when negotiating international trade agreements.