boubacar diop. it details some of france's
longstanding interference in and control over
african states. my impression is that the u.s.
played a considerably minor role compared with
france, the u.k., portugal, with a few obvious
but relatively minor exceptions, like liberia,
ethiopia, for a while. etc. it is now playing
small catch-up ball, but has little interest in
serious investments. an economist might confirm or correct this impression.
on the other hand, one could take boris's words,
word for word, and apply them to latin america and the u.s.
ken
>La Vie en %$! Why is France still propping up
>Africa's dictators? BY BOUBACAR BORIS DIOP |
>JULY/AUGUST 2010 Almost as soon as they had been
>elected, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama began
>planning high-profile trips to Africa. Surely
>the French and American presidents had more
>pressing priorities than addressing a continent
>so long ago judged unimportant to global
>affairs. But as it turned out, this curious
>exercise of "talking to Africa" offered the
>perfect opportunity for these two novice Western
>heads of state to prove that they embodied
>exactly what they said they did: leadership
>unwedded to the conventionalities of business as
>usual. So our two guests came, portraying
>themselves as friends of the continent -- and
>indeed possessing an affection so profound that
>they were unafraid to say out loud all the
>unpleasant truths about Africa usually reserved
>for whispers in private. Like the gentleman who
>fondly lectures the beggar before dropping a
>meager coin into his jar, they came to Africa
>with an innate sense of superiority. Their
>sentiment derived, of course, from a conviction
>that they had done all in their power to avoid
>making such a mess of things, unlike the beggars
>-- the African countries themselves. Obama and
>Sarkozy, it seemed, were tormented by the desire
>to restore reason to the world's most
>irresponsible nations. COMMENTS (21)SHARE:
>Twitter Reddit Buzz More... But what a shameless
>rewriting of history! Certainly, Obama was
>courteous enough in his trip last year to Ghana.
>Yet even he needed reminding of the extent to
>which Cold War America pushed so many countries
>toward becoming today's "failed states." Between
>the two presidents, however, Sarkozy is surely
>the leader most deserving of rebuke. For never
>in modern political annals has there been
>anything close to the powerful, inseparable
>synergy between France and its former empire. At
>the very moment it realized decolonization was
>historically inevitable, Paris concocted a true
>masterpiece of political genius: undertaking all
>that was necessary in pulling out of Africa --
>and doing so in such a way as to, in fact, not
>budge an inch. Gen. Charles de Gaulle's trusted
>advisor, Jacques Foccart, was the architect of
>this neocolonial ruse. His methods were simple:
>install trusted African politicians, some with
>French nationality, as the heads of these 14 new
>states and maintain the firm, French grasp on
>their natural resources. It was a system that
>naturally bred corruption and instability -- and
>could hardly persist without massive abuses of
>human rights. ________________________________
>France's Colonial Days in Africa Are Long Past
>But no matter; Africa's new dictators could rest
>easy. Thanks to its almost 60,000 troops on the
>continent, the French Army could rush to their
>aid at a moment's notice -- and had already
>agreed to do so as part of defense agreements in
>which certain key clauses were kept secret. The
>French secret service was also poised to
>undertake, if necessary, the liquidation of the
>dictators' most formidable rivals. The list of
>African opposition figures who perished this way
>is dreadfully long. In truth, the greatest fault
>of the French model was not that it existed in
>the first place, but that it so unabashedly
>survived the Cold War. At the time, when Moscow
>and Washington were behaving even more savagely
>in their respective spheres of influence,
>Paris's meddling in Africa seemed relatively
>benign. But today, it would be unimaginable to
>see the British prime minister interfering in
>the succession of the Ghanaian or Kenyan heads
>of state. And Sarkozy? He did exactly that last
>year when Ali Bongo emerged victorious in
>Gabon's disputed presidential election -- with
>the endorsement of the French president to
>succeed his father. No wonder: Bongo senior was
>himself installed by de Gaulle back in 1967.
>Jacques Chirac similarly backed the son of
>Togo's Gen. Gnassingbé Eyadéma in 2005. And so
>it goes: France destabilizes and destroys the
>countries of Africa, as if nothing in the world
>had changed. Indeed, among all the former
>European colonial powers, France is unique in
>its refusal to decolonize. And the countries
>that have refused this "friendship" with Paris
>-- Vietnam, Madagascar, Cameroon, and Algeria --
>have paid for their liberty with many hundreds
>of thousands of lives. Consider Niger, where
>France is not content to simply extract uranium
>from the country while paying Third World
>prices; it does so under such exploitative
>conditions -- sucking the groundwater dry --
>that agriculture has become an impossibility in
>this agricultural nation. Suicidally focused on
>supplying 40 percent of France's uranium needs,
>Niger may be the world's second-largest uranium
>producer, but it is also today one of the
>poorest countries on the planet. And Paris will
>have it no other way; the French secret service
>was widely rumored to have ousted the country's
>first president, Hamani Diori, in 1974 after he
>said that his country benefited not one bit from
>the mineral's extraction. Niger's current
>instability -- three coups since 1996 and an
>ongoing internal rebellion -- is directly linked
>to the French imperative to control its
>strategic resource. For years, many assumed that
>this Françafrique had become an anachronism, one
>that would eventually wither and die a natural
>death. Yet somehow or another, the marriage
>keeps on working, in Gabon and Chad, Niger and
>the Republic of Congo, with no apparent sign of
>duress. France is content to pull the strings
>from behind the scenes in such a way that no
>popular African revolt could ever take aim at
>its involvement.
>________________________________ The Failed
>States Index 2010 Photo Essay: Postcards from
>Hell In the Beginning There Was Somalia Instead,
>French leaders have done all in their power to
>nourish a profound emotional complicity in their
>African counterparts. In his memoirs, de
>Gaulle's advisor Foccart insisted upon the
>importance of maintaining deeply personal
>relationships with African presidents, far
>beyond what protocol requires. De Gaulle was
>irritated that Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central
>African Republic always called him "Papa," but
>he held his tongue, surely so as not to
>compromise France's provisions of tropical wood
>and diamonds. African counterparts felt more at
>ease, it was believed, with Chirac, less snobby
>about good food and even an aficionado of bawdy
>jokes -- in short, not a very complicated man.
>Such a philosophy rests upon the uncomfortable
>notion that Africans, "joyous by nature," as
>Chirac once said, are simply big children. That
>assumed immaturity authorizes France to act in a
>way so undemocratic in Africa that its practices
>would be unimaginable back home. Unfortunately,
>my continent doesn't have to imagine those
>realities because we live them every single day
>-- with every deprived citizen who wants for
>education, for health care, or even, at times,
>for so much as a bowl of rice to eat. France, meanwhile, is satiated.
Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
harrow@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755
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