The New Africa: Dispatches from a Changing Continent

Christian Century, Feb 21, 2001 by Wiebe Boer

The New Africa: Dispatches from a Changing Continent. By Robert Press. University Press of Florida, 380 pp., $24.95.

NELSON MANDELA's release ten years ago from nearly three decades of imprisonment by the South African apartheid state was the sign that the so-called "third wave" of democratization that had swept through Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe since the 1970s was now coming to Africa. During the last decade of the 20th century the political structure of sub-Saharan African states underwent great transformations. These metamorphoses ranged from elections in which longtime incumbents were voted out, as in Zambia, to elections in which dictators were transformed into democrats, as in Ghana, to the total collapse of states in which no one emerged to take full control, as in Somalia--and, it now appears, in the Congo.

In the 1990s Africa witnessed 72 elections (there had been only a dozen or so in the '80s). The political turn toward democratization was given further credence by the '99 vote by the Organization of African Unity declaring that heads of state who come to power illegitimately will not be permitted to attend the OAU's annual summit for African political leaders. Academics, journalists, politicians, development experts and other analysts are still trying to understand how and why all of these changes came about.

The Christian Science Monitor's Africa correspondent, Robert Press, spent much of the '90s bouncing around Africa, reporting on crisis after crisis. His book attempts to capture the decade's events concisely, bringing a message of hope about Africa's future in spite of all the continent's problems. He argues that the monumental changes in Africa in the 1990s were more dramatic than those of any other period in recent memory, and that the reason for these changes was a greater desire for freedom on the part of the average African.

Both of these points easily can be challenged. Although the '90s did indeed bring about dramatic changes in African political structures, in the context of the entire range of African history these changes do not appear nearly so revolutionary. In the 19th century Africans were conquered, colonized and arranged into appendages of European nation-states, with random boundaries they had no voice in delineating. With these new arrangements came new languages, a new religion, new educational systems, new modes of production, new markets, new products, new identities, new cultural forms and much more. Through various, often competing forms of adaptation, adoption, resistance and hybridization, these new developments were adjusted and Africanized.

Then in the mid-20th century the wheel of revolution led to decolonization and newly gained freedom. But within a decade of independence most Africans found themselves again without political freedoms. The only difference was that this time the domination was by indigenous rather than foreign rulers. When Africans inherited the reins of power they simply Africanized the undemocratic, centralized, coercive African colonial states into African postcolonial states. Then, three decades after decolonization, the wheel of revolution began turning again, leading to the changes of the '90s. In this sense, then, the '90s were not as significant a transformation as Press and many others might have us believe. They were simply part of the much longer process of change through which Africans have lived over many years.

The '90s also were not necessarily a time when Africans had a greater desire for freedom than ever before. Though superficially Africans may appear to have been rather passive, choosing to suffer quietly rather than to rise up in massive rebellion, the struggle for freedom and independence has always been an important part of African life.

Until recently, Africa was one of the most underpopulated continents. The average African was and still is a farmer, and once there was plenty of land available. Any time a city or a state became powerful enough to control a vast piece of territory, it would need to establish a system of taxation to enable it to govern. Overtaxed Africans could vote with their feet, leaving the territory to find farmland elsewhere. The relatively "uncaptured" African peasant was the bane of kingdom--and empire-builders. The inability to procure vast amounts of tax revenue and labor made it almost impossible for kingdoms to last long, or to build lasting monuments to their memories.

Tourists in Europe or Asia may marvel at all the architectural wonders that surround them. But those very wonders are also symbols of oppressive and overbearing states that could coerce hundreds of thousands to spend their lives laboring on projects erected to enhance the ruling class. Africa's lack of such structures is a monument in itself, a monument to the adaptivity and resistance of Africans. When Europeans colonized the continent, they faced the same problems as did the African state builders before them. Their attempts to tax, govern and make a profit were often thwarted not by' massive rebellions, but by everyday forms of resistance. By walking away, planting the wrong crops, filling rubber and cotton quotas with rocks and sand, smuggling produce across colonial borders, or simply not cooperating, Africans made colonial domination impossible and unprofitable. Coming to terms with their inability to properly monitor and manipulate their citizens as effectively as Western governments do is one of the problems African leaders still face as they try to build modern states.