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"Our policy with respect to the continent of Africa at best has been a policy that is inconsistent and incoherent," said NAACP Executive Director Kweisi Mfume, in Miami Beach last weekend for the organization's annual convention. "We've looked away in many instances because Africa was not politically correct or politically cute."

Mr. Mfume is wrong. United States policy towards sub-Saharan Africa has been consistent since August of 1960, when President Eisenhower ordered his national security team to arrange the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Congo had been nominally independent from Belgium for only two months, yet Eisenhower, far from looking away from Africa during his last months in office, was already embarked on a relentless policy of continental destabilization, one that has been fundamentally adhered to by every U.S. President that followed.

U.S. policy in Africa is anything but "incoherent." Rather, too many of us have "looked away" from the clear pattern of U.S. behavior and intent – a ferocious, bipartisan determination to arrest African development at every opportunity and by all possible means – including the death of millions.

War on African civil society

Belgians murdered Prime Minister Lumumba on January 17, 1961, no doubt with the collaboration of Eisenhower's men. Lumumba presented a danger to European and American domination of post-colonial Africa precisely because he was not a tribal figure, but a thoroughly Congolese politician, a man who sought to harness power through popular structures.  As such, Lumumba personified the threat of an awakened African civil society – the prerequisite for true independence and social development.

A popular and long held belief among Africans and African Americans is that the prospect of continental (or even global) African "unity" is what terrifies Washington, London and Paris. We wish that were true. However, the neocolonial powers know they have nothing to worry about on that score, having begun the era of "independence" with a clear understanding among themselves that conditions for meaningful unity would not be allowed to develop. African civil society itself would be stunted, hounded, impoverished – rendered so fundamentally insecure that, even should "leaders" of African countries band together under banners of "unity," few could speak with the voice of the people. Only leaders of intact civil societies can unite with one another to any meaningful effect – all else is bombast, and frightens no one.

Tribalism is, indeed, a problem in Africa. For Americans and Europeans, it is an obsession – the game they have played since the Portuguese planted their first outposts at the mouths of African rivers in the 1400s. However, there are limits to the effectiveness of tribal manipulation. Many "tribes" are very large – nations, actually. Setting one tribal group against the other, while suppressing the social development of each, is a tricky business. The colonizer must not to allow the "favored" group to accrue, through privilege, sufficient social space to aspire to nationhood. In that event, the formerly favored group must be crushed by the colonizer's own military force – a brutish and costly business.

These are generalities, and Africa is a big place. Numerous colonial powers at different times employed the full mix of coercion, manipulation, favoritism, and raw (including genocidal) force.

After World War Two, and for a host of reasons, the colonial arrangement had become untenable. Europeans would continue to engage in tribal manipulation in the new political environment, while the U.S. preferred bullets and bribes as it assumed overlord status among the imperialists. However, it was clear to the old masters – and especially to Washington – that the formal structures of independence would inevitably lead to the growth of dynamic civil societies that could impede the operations of multinational extraction corporations and agribusiness. Civil societies can become quite raucous and demanding, even in countries in which there are tribal divisions. Therefore, the process of African civil development had to be interrupted, not only in those new states that were economically valuable to Europe and the U.S., but in all of Africa, so that no healthy civil model might emerge. If this could be achieved, there would be no need to fear the actions of assembled heads of African states – an irrelevant gaggle of uniforms and suits, standing in for nations, but representing no coherent social force.

Assignment: crush the people

To thwart the growth of civil society in newly independent Africa, the imperialists turned to the Strong Men. It is probably more accurate to say that the imperialists invented the African Strong Man. Although both the neocolonial masters and the Strong Men themselves make a great fuss about indigenousness – albeit for somewhat different reasons – these characters arise from the twisted structures of colonialism. Their function is to smother civil society, to render the people helpless.

Joseph Desire Mobutu is the model of the African Strong Man. He was an American invention whose career is the purest expression of U.S. policy in Africa. With all due respect to the NAACP's Kweisi Mfume, there was nothing "inconsistent and incoherent" about Mobutu's nearly four decades of service to the United States. From the day in August, 1960 when Eisenhower ordered the death of Lumumba (Mobutu, Lumumba's treasonous chief of the army, deposed his Prime Minister the next month and collaborated directly in the murder) to his death from cancer in 1997, U.S. African policy was inextricably bound to the billionaire thief. It can be reasonably said that Mobutuism is U.S. African policy.

Mobutu and nine U.S. Presidents (Eisenhower through Clinton) utterly and mercilessly poisoned Africa, sending crippling convulsions through the continent, from which Africa may never recover. With borders on Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Congo (Brazzaville), and a land mass as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi, Mobutu's Zaire was an incubator of never ending war, subversion, disease, corruption and, ultimately, social disruption so horrific as to challenge the Arab and European slave trade in destructive intensity.

Mobutu's reign began in the heyday of European soldiers of fortune, allies of his like "Mad Mike" Hoare. By the time of his death, more than 100 mercenary outfits operated in sub-Saharan Africa, safeguarding multinational corporations from the chaos that Mobutu and his American handlers labored so mightily to foment. So integral have mercenaries become to Africa, a number of Black governments depend on them for their own security, forsaking any real claim to national sovereignty. This, too, is the legacy of U.S. African policy. (American mercenary corporations garner an ever-increasing share of the business.)

Millions died in Zaire-Congo and neighboring states as a direct or indirect result of policies hatched in Washington and executed by Mobutu – and this, before the genocidal explosion in Rwanda in 1994, leading to an "African World War" fought on Congolese soil that has so far claimed at least 3 million more lives, belated victims of the policies dutifully carried out by America's African Strong Man.

Bush cultivates more Mobutus

For 43 years U.S. governments have empowered Strong Men to do their bidding in Africa. The geography and riches of Congo-Zaire allowed Mobutu to wreak continent-wide havoc on Washington's behalf, while growing fabulously rich. However, many lesser clients have been nurtured by successive U.S. governments, their names and crimes too numerous for this essay. They and Mobutu's outrages are the logical product of the neocolonialist program. The actors come and go, but the underlying design remains the same: to prevent the emergence of strong civil societies in Black Africa.

The Strong Man's job is to create weak civil societies. Weak and demoralized societies, supporting fragile states hitched to the fortunes of the Strong Man and his circle of pecking persons, pose little threat to foreign capital.

The African Strong Man model suits the purposes of European imperialists and the United States, perfectly. Their overarching concern– especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union – is for the multinational mineral and petroleum-extracting corporations – what Europeans and Americans are actually referring to when they speak of their "national interests" on the continent. Representing himself and a small base of supporters/dependents, the Strong Man can be counted on to bully civil society into steadily narrowing spaces, snuffing out all independent social formations, while at the same time stripping the society of the means to protect itself outside of his own, capricious machinery. The nation itself atrophies, or is stillborn, as in Congo. Where nations have not had the chance to take full root or have been deliberately stunted, the Strong Man wraps the thin reeds of sovereignty around himself, denying the people their means of connectedness to one another, except through him. The state is a private apparatus and – from the standpoint of civil society – there appears to be no nation, at all. The people act, accordingly – that is, they do not act as citizens of a nation.

Thus, the Strong Man's most valuable service to the foreign master is to retard and negate nationhood through constant assaults on civil society.

What is commonly described as American "neglect" of Africa is nothing of the kind. Over the course of the decades since the end of formal colonialism, the governments of the corporate headquarters countries have arrived at a consensus that a chaotic Africa, barely governed at all, in which civil societies are perpetually insecure, incapable of defending themselves much less the nation, is the least troublesome environment for Western purposes.  The extraction corporations in Africa feel most secure when the people of Africa are insecure.

In Congo and Liberia-Sierra Leone, this unspoken but operative policy has plunged whole populations into Hell on Earth. African Americans typically criticize the U.S. for failing to treat Black lives as valuable – in other words, Washington is accused of neglecting the carnage in Central and West Africa because of racism. The reality is far worse than that. American policy is designed to place Africans at the extremes of insecurity, in order to foreclose the possibility of civil societies taking root. This policy has always resulted in mass death. Moreover, the U.S. did not simply sit idly by while genocide swept Rwanda and "World War" wracked Congo. Instead, the American government initially thwarted a world response to the Rwandan holocaust, and has prolonged the carnage in Congo through its two client states, Uganda and Rwanda, which have methodically looted the wealth of the northeastern Congo while claiming – falsely, according to a report to the UN Security Council – to be protecting their own borders. Uganda's list of "proxy" Congolese ethnic armies reaches into every corner of Ituri province, where "combatants…have slaughtered some five thousand civilians in the last year because of their ethnic affiliation," according to a Human Rights Watch report. "But the combatants are armed and often directed by the governments of the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], Rwanda and Uganda." ("Ituri: Bloodiest Corner of the Congo," July 8.)

Zimbabwean officers have also plundered the country, but have been involved in far less killing in their role as protectors of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government. Angola and Namibia also went to the Kinshasa regime's aid. The United Nations and African countries labored for five years to untangle the mix of belligerents – with only the most pro forma cooperation of the United States.

Prolonging "Africa's World War"

Had the U.S. wanted to end or at least scale down "Africa's World War," there is no doubt that Washington could have reined in Rwanda and Uganda, who received a steady stream of American military and economic assistance during the conflict. The Congolese (DRC) government, on the other hand, has suffered under severe sanctions from both the U.S. and the European Union.

It would have cost Washington far less than a billion dollars in bribes to quarantine "Africa's World War" – slush money for a super-power, and a fraction of the bribes Washington was willing to pay for favorable votes on Iraq at the UN. Instead, the U.S. provided aid to key combatants. That's not a lack of policy, nor is it indifference. In the larger scheme of things, Washington believed that prolonging a war that weakened and debased Africa was in its "national interest."

Uganda and Rwanda have reciprocated, shamelessly. "Recently Uganda publicly backed the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, defying the African position to endorse a UN-sanctioned war," reads the current message of the official State House website of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's government, in Kampala.

Rwanda's Ambassador to the U.S., Zac Nsenga, was even more obsequious when presenting his credentials at the U.S.  State Department, May 8:

"The Rwandan Government reaffirms its commitment to join forces with the United States and the free world to combat acts of terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head. The events of the 1994 Genocide and September 11th has taught us that we have to stand together as Nations to defeat these evil acts against humanity. For this very reason President Kagame stood firmly in support of the U.S. led attack on Iraq, not only to root out a terrorist dictator but also to free the people of Iraq."

Three million dead in Congo mean nothing when compared to two eager clients in the heart of Africa, who are more than willing to both defy "the African position" on Iraq and help keep Central Africa chaotic – Mobutu's old job.

As for Charles Taylor, the Liberian Strong Man responsible for the death, dismemberment and displacement of hundreds of thousands in his own country and neighboring Sierra Leone – at the time of this writing, Bush was still playing games over whether Taylor should leave for Nigerian exile before or after an African peace keeping force arrives to secure the capital, Monrovia.

Concerned American progressives debate what their positions should be if Bush sends significant U.S. forces to help pacify the country. He will not. If history is any judge, U.S. involvement on the ground in Liberia will be token, if any, and brief – just enough to show the flag. Had Washington desired stability for Liberia and its neighbors Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Ivory Coast, it would have eliminated Taylor years ago. He was allowed to live because he served U.S. policy, whether he knew that or not. Eternal warfare is the most effective way to smother civil society.

Americans may also one day learn this horrible lesson.

Reproduced from:
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Dr. Kweli Nzito

Dinosaurs, now long extinct, seem to have earned themselves a special place in the hearts and minds of white American folk.  White America beholds them with a passion that surpasses the enthusiasm they hold for animals, much less humans of color that are still extant. More than any other humans, White America has taken it upon itself to scan remote corners of the globe seeking to unearth the remains of this long vanished creature. It would seem that the sole purpose of this curious exercise is to allow the race the exclusive pleasures and joys of holding the beast in awe. One cannot help but surmise that a Freudian infatuation and identification with brute power and force underlie what may seem to the rest of us an utterly pointless exercise. Thus, having accustomed itself to centuries of brute dominance over fellow humans of color, this ongoing white fascination with morbid symbols of majesty and power becomes a means of reinforcing self-identity, no matter how fossilized the source of such symbols may be. The same may be said about White America's obsession with the imagined power and brutality of extraterrestrials, to the extent that a crazed segment among them will cheerfully partake of lethal poison, hitch a ride on Haley's Comet with the hopes of forging a posthumous union with the imagined beasts somewhere deep in the cosmic wilderness.

It would also seem fruitless to condemn dinosaurs, whatever the reason, simply because they are extinct. Besides, the condemning of disappeared phenomena will not likely aid in mending their ways. Unless, of course, such condemnation was issued with the express purpose of accruing benefits for posterity. But it requires a special turn of mind to imagine virtues that might obtain from condemning an extinct period that bears no special relevance to the present human condition, except deep in the psyche of White America. It is in this light that George W. Bush's trip to Africa might be usefully viewed. For in condemning slavery at Goree Island in Senegal, George W. would in fact appear to be flogging a dead horse. Because it is hoped that slavery is indeed dead. But in contrast to condemning dinosaurs, the reproach of slavery would be more meaningful if Mr. Bush had chosen to deliver it in politically more pertinent contexts. Whereas dinosaurs have no known modern day descendants that might benefit from condemning their beastly forefathers, descendants of African slaves constitute an inseparable part of the American landscape and narrative. Thus the censure of slavery will only carry significance if the real intent is to redress the balances and right those cruel wrongs among a people still suffering the inhumanity of that legacy of White America. Regardless, Mr. Bush's stand on affirmative action and his silence on reparations are too well known for such concerns to enter into his political agenda.

Natives and Blacks "noble" in death

Lessons on the evils and brutalities of slavery might be better served if they were delivered closer to Mr. Bush's birthplace, where an entire community and a culture, to which he belongs, and one that forms the backbone of his political support and base, arose. It is a community of White Americans loosely referred to as rednecks and one that subscribes to the ideology of White superiority, constituting his core constituency and the rank and file of the neocons. But Mr. Bush, the Supreme Chief of Rednecks, hardly dares take that challenge, lest he be labeled a "black person lover". On occasion, his kinsmen, with an uncommon patriotic zeal, are known to derive sadistic pleasure from lynching citizens of African descent and dragging them to their death on the back of pickup trucks. One might then be inclined to believe that while there may be political and economic rewards in a hastily arranged trip to Africa, a guided tour of American inner cities for Mr. Bush, where African Americans and people of color predominate, would be a more useful start. Because therein are to be found in vivid color, the enduring and wicked effects of the legacy of slavery. Having thus delivered his condemnation in such relevant settings, with unequivocal denunciations of racism – crude or subtle – and the initiation of unambiguous federal programs of redress for the wrongs visited on African Americans, only then might the first steps toward healing begin to emerge.

Mr. Bush claims that slavery made White America value freedom. This is perverted logic. Freedom being a natural human right, remained a persistent yearning among the enslaved, for what must have seemed to them in their state of bondage, an eternity. To White America, freedom – even in its distorted sense – was a given; to the enslaved it was hope unrealized and a dream to aspire to. To assert that slavery taught White America the virtues of freedom is to commit yet another Freudian slip of unwittingly justifying this heinous crime: that what constituted a natural human right should require that Whites enslave Africans in order for Whites to learn and appreciate the virtues of freedom. But for whom one might ask? We read of similar logic in the writings of Robert M. Pirsig (Lila: An Inquiry into Morals): that the Native American gave the world the idea that "all men are created equal" and that the frontier culture and freedom are native American-inspired. That may well be. But to so state arrogantly, and conveniently sidestep the horrors that Native Americans suffered in what is considered among history's worst genocides and dispossessions on a continental scale, is to assert that as a result, White America appreciates the merits of freedom, justifiable by such gruesome acts against fellow humans. Quite the contrary, one would be inclined to reason that it is the dispossessed more than the aggressor that appreciate the true meaning of freedom, which continues to elude them. If the aggressors, in this case White America, are to even begin to comprehend it's meaning, it will require they embark on an arduous path of self-discovery, one that will require abandoning their sense of superiority and invincibility.

Real intentions revealed

Together with the racist lies that the public had been fed to justify aggression against Iraq, Mr. Bush's visits and his remarks in Africa must therefore be seen for what they characterize: more lies and deceit. It is from this perspective that the real intention of his visit to Africa might be revealed. First, given Mr. Bush's track record of blatant lies that were spun to justify the criminal invasion of Iraq, the bona fide rationale for this visit might be understood much less from what issues from the mouth of the Supreme Commander of Rednecks than from what he does not say. Since much of the fabricated facts behind justification of the invasion of Iraq are now being retracted one at a time, we suspect that the declared purpose of visiting Africa will likewise become evident in time and not from the daily briefings from the White House, which has now become America's undisputed reservoir of official lies. But be that as it may, it was not for nothing that Mr. Nelson Mandela, that statesman of courage rarely visible among African leaders today, confirms what we already know about George: that he cannot think properly. True to form, Mr. Mandela had better things to do than keeping company with a racist idiot. Mr. Mandela promptly left town.

It is doubtful that all African leaders, indeed Africans in general, are unaware of the fact that the American President, in his bid to garner and consolidate his conservative constituency, one of his first acts was to deliver a campaign speech to an institution, Jones University, where the practice of social apartheid was very much in vogue. He could not have been oblivious of that fact and in delivering a speech with no mention of such unconstitutional and blatantly racist practices, the President became a willing accomplice to the apartheid and confirmed his status as a thoroughgoing racist himself. It is not therefore unreasonable to suppose that such racist postures issue from deep inside, manifesting themselves in the now familiar supercilious disregard for people of color. Africans themselves, having lived under racist colonial yokes for decades, understand only too well the nature of the beast they are confronting. They are therefore unlikely to be convinced that Mr. Bush's heart all of a sudden has developed a soft spot for Africans and is dying to help them.

Besides, Africans in the run up to the Iraq invasion had expressed their displeasure along with the rest of the civilized world, and were opposed to the invasion almost unanimously. Mr. Bush then paid no attention. It is with these same people that he now is seeking to promote what would obviously be a now familiar monologue. It is also tempting to speculate that Mr. Bush's two favorite African Americans, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, needed to be rewarded for their unwavering support of Mr. Bush's criminal agenda in Iraq. But while these two minions, whose intelligence quotients cannot be too far removed from that of their boss, are keen to present their chief as a person with empathy for people of color and that the visit to Africa is intended to demonstrate that Mr. Bush was neither in Iraq nor in Africa for oil. Neither were honest Enron CEOs motivated by greed. And Mr. Cheney did not label Mr. Mandela a terrorist while assiduously condemning apartheid by his kindred racists in South Africa. It should now be obvious that the two cronies did not and could not insist that Mr. Bush first undertake an internal tour of Black America, where they themselves presumably came from. Meanwhile, they must be content to serve as unprincipled quislings surrounded by opportunists and racists alike in the persons of Cheney, Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and criminal power mongers like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In the company of such distinguished con artists, Ms. Rice and Mr. Powell will continue to discharge their functions as errand boys and girls and no doubt with distinction, Harry Belafonte's characterizations of them notwithstanding.

To many, the offer of some $15 billion to help fight AIDS must seem like a godsend. Maybe. But with little doubt most of the money will be redirected to the coffers of American pharmaceutical firms. Now, having destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in one of the world's poorest nations, the Sudan, and killing an unknown number of civilians in the process, the United States may not be in the mood to encourage African countries, now reeling under the devastating effects of globalization, to help nurture a pharmaceutical industry that will enable African countries to produce anti AIDS medications affordably. That would do little to placate the American pharmaceutical corporations who have shown scant regard for the millions of Africans that have already died and continue dying of this scourge. And it is to corporations that Mr. Bush owes his existence and hopes for recapturing the presidency in the next elections. That could well be one other compelling reason for Mr. Bush's desire to visit Africa: to do the bidding of his corporate masters.

Another "civilizing" mission

Not unexpectedly, Mr. Bush declared U.S. intentions to use Africa as a base to launch his "war on terrorism." In his characteristic ignorance of world affairs, much less those of Africa, the President needs to be reminded that Africa itself has been reeling under racist terrors of colonialism and imperialism. In the days of anti-colonial struggles, such characterizations of colonized Africa must have sounded bizarre to White America. Along with its imperial brethren, the U.S. regarded colonization as a divinely ordained phenomenon and a blessing calculated to civilize "African savages" and reinvent Africans in the image of their colonizers. That said, Mr. Bush studiously avoided visiting the two nations hardest hit by terrorist operations: Tanzania and Kenya. The two countries suffered hundreds of casualties as a result of terrorist bombings targeting United States embassies. It did not escape the attention of the two countries in the immediate aftermath of the attacks that racist American rescue efforts were directed solely toward helping their own kind. That callous disregard for African lives was not lost on the African public. Now pressure is being applied to these countries to legislate against terrorism solely to protect American interests and such legislation, if passed, amounts to yielding sovereignty to American authorities and basically racist interests. This, in addition to the fact that religious communities that had co-existed for centuries are now being polarized and their Muslim minorities hounded in defense of a racist agenda.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, many African countries have been censured repeatedly in the past for curtailing individual freedoms in the name of national security. Now that many of them have adopted more tolerant political regimes with an independent press that would be the envy of much of the American cheerleading brand of journalism, they are being told to reverse these immense gains. Now racist interests and pressures from the US, where civil liberties for targeted populations have almost ceased to exist in the name of the war against terror, are about to reverse the hard-earned nascent democratic institutions in some African countries.

It also merits mention that Mr. Bush is reported to be in agreement with Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, over the questions of Liberia and Zimbabwe. Be that as it may, many corrupt and tyrannical regimes have fallen by the wayside, because Africans themselves are changing the political landscape via the electoral ballot. Zimbabweans are no doubt capable of following suit. But the real issue of who owns land in Zimbabwe is being obscured by Mr. Bush, presumably coming under the able tutelage of Mr. Tony Blair, both of whom are descendants of the world's most efficient land grabbers. To date, however neither of the two leaders has updated us as to how many farms in their countries are owned by Black Zimbabweans. Their concerns cannot therefore go beyond racist and kinship ones with little regard for the masses of landless Africans in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. It therefore becomes quite clear that Mr. Bush must have other undeclared intentions behind this bizarre visit.

Perhaps the following quote from the South African newspaper The Guardian, which likened the Bush administration to prostitution, is an apt summary for this visit: "Like the world's oldest profession, the Republican Administration of United States President George W. Bush has interests rather than principles…it would be a mistake to take Bush's ‘compassionate agenda' seriously." The paper went on to say that Bush's concerns are "domestic security, the advancement of corporate America and the securing of strategic assets, mainly oil." In conclusion, "Africa can exert some…influence in bringing the world's most destructive and rogue state back into line." Certainly true, but wishful thinking. In any event, such influence would hopefully dissuade Africans from turning their own countries into agents of a rogue and racist state.

Dr. Kweli Nzito is an Assistant Professor and Scientist at the University of Miami. His e-mail addres is Freshair234@att.net.
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