Africa, it seems, is the center of the universe, what with the pope and President Clinton making visits this week.
Africa has more often been the backdrop for somebody else’s show–whether it was the Cold War or all those old “Tarzan” and “Jungle Jim” movies that gave us geographically challenged Americans a glimpse of a continent that existed in some screenwriter’s imagination. But now, thanks to the Pope and the president, many eyes that are usually turned to other dramas on the world stage are focusing on Africa.
The Pope just ended a three-day trip to Nigeria, after repeatedly urging that country’s leaders to respect human rights. Clinton, who launched a six-nation visit Monday, addressed a crowd estimated at more than half a million in Accra, Ghana. Ever the Southerner and diplomat, he heaped praise upon African nations best known in the U.S. for seemingly unrelenting strife of one kind or another.
“Although democracy has not yet gained a permanent foothold even in the most successful nations,” the president said, “there is everywhere a growing respect for tolerance, diversity and elemental human rights.”
Clinton did not gloss over the problems of a continent that has 22 of the world’s 30 poorest countries. He ticked off a few: “The genocide in Rwanda; civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, both Congos; pariah states that export violence and terror; military dictatorship in Nigeria; and high levels of poverty, malnutrition, disease, illiteracy and unemployment.”
A brief stop in Rwanda was added to the president’s itinerary because of criticism that his original schedule threatened to ignore the bad and ugly while illuminating only the good. But even the new-and-improved itinerary demonstrates the treacherous waters the U.S. enters when it decides which African rulers to befriend.
Clinton concludes a visit to Uganda on Wednesday and plans a brief trip to Kigali, Rwanda, also squeezed in Wednesday. Both countries have autocratic rulers. They “brook no opposition and seem more comfortable with the strict military chain of order and command than with the compromise of politics,” Keith Richburg, author of “Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa,” wrote in Current magazine.
He added: “The old litmus test for Western support was anti-communism; the new version is free-market principles and structural adjustment programs.”
Clinton and members of his huge delegation of business leaders and politicians are emphasizing trade on this trip, buoyed in part by an Africa trade bill passed in the House earlier this month. Clinton has hailed the African Growth and Opportunity Act as the opening of “a new era of U.S.-Africa trade and investment relations.” But it is so controversial that while Clinton, Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Charles Rangel were among its strongest supporters, the vote split even the Congressional Black Caucus: 24 were in favor, 12 against. Whether the Senate will pass it is anybody’s guess.
Critics argue that it may pave the way for a loss of U.S. textile industry jobs, would give the U.S. too much of a say in African nations’ economic policies and doesn’t go far enough to promote human rights. Among Africans, some critics fear that its emphasis on trade portends a reduction in aid and that, in the rush to make money, Americans will trigger a capitalist stampede rivaling the older version of colonization. Who knows?
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At a minimum, we may learn a lot more about Africa than we already know–one of the president’s objectives, by the way. But more needs to emerge from this historic trip than pretty pictures. The president pledged that the U.S. would “work with Africa to nurture democracy” and promote prosperity. And Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has assured us: “We’re not just blowing smoke.”
I hope not.