A New Wind Of Change Blows Over Africa‎‎

By Bashir Goth

Many people write off Africa as a hopeless place where rampant civil wars use children as gun fodder, military coups keep peoples' aspirations for freedom at bay, diseases rob the continent's most productive workforce, and poverty forces thousands of youth to risk their lives in the high seas in a desperate attempt to go somewhere where they could at least find decent food and shelter if not education and wealth. Africa in the eyes of these people, is a continent where corrupt governments siphon nation's' coffers and stash international aid money in foreign banks while the continent's best brains wait tables in affluent industrial countries to earn a few bucks to feed infirm mothers and malnourished children back home.

This may be true; or at least it is the only image we daily view on television news and read in the international press and in today's world how you look is how the world media portrays you. Fortunately, however, there is a different image of Africa; an image that signifies a new wind of change blowing over Africa; a wind that has started from the Republic of South Africa, the continent's youngest and healthiest nation, and gathering momentum to sweep away all political, economic, social and environmental ills in Africa.

Africa has seen its first wind of change in the 1960s when most of the continent's countries threw away the yoke of colonialism. Tall figures like Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Patrice Lumumba and Léopold Sédar Senghor to mention a few held high the light of hope and change for a continent bearing the scars of the bloody struggle for independence while many of its sons were still groaning under foreign domination and apartheid. Although people's dreams for development and prosperity were dwarfed by the Cold War and Africa had soon become a battleground between the Soviet Union and the United States, the most significant achievement of the first wind of change was the liberation of most of the African countries including the belated newcomers like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and even South Africa.

The freedom of South Africa in 1994 marked the beginning of a new change for Africa. South Africa with its economic power, its industrial might and its most educated class of Africa, arrived at a critical time of the continent's history. The Cold War had just ended but still had its long shadow over Africa's political and economic landscape; the continent was in turmoil.

South Africa was destined to lead the continent from its political and economic morass and herald a new dawn of freedom, democracy, good governance and unity of will. Neslon Mandela has emerged as the icon of not South Africa but the whole continent.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by the epoch-making figure Desmond Tutu had set a shinning example for the rest of the conflict infested Africa; that it was only through truth and forgiveness that old wounds could be healed and the nation could mobilize its resources to fight other menacing enemies such as disease, poverty and illiteracy. Mandela's historic decision to leave power after serving only one term and at the height of his popularity had sent a rippling effect through the continent. Following his mentor's footstep, President Thabo Mbeki has also resisted the temptation of clinging to power and declared his intention to step down at the end of his second term, shaming the few surviving African dictators.

Despite being Africa's super power, South Africa refused to throw its weight around and opted instead to follow a policy of accommodation and egalitarian engagement with its fellow African countries, thus ushering a new dawn of African economic and political integration on several multilateral fronts while emboldening the continent to negotiate with the industrialized countries on new terms..

This emerging role of the South African-led agenda for change was the subject of a round table debate and a lecture by one of Africa's new intelligentsia in Abu Dhabi on the eve of South Africa's 12th year of freedom.

Talking first to Arab Journalists at the Emirates Palace, one of the architectural wonders of the UAE's ever expanding hotel industry, and later to a group of Arab elite at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, Dr. Chris Landsberg, head of South Africa's Center for Policy Studies, explained Africa's emerging role as a conduit of South-North dialogue through a new parlance of South-South cooperation and understanding.

He explained the African Agenda, through which South Africa has positioned itself as a special "middle ranked" power and with the rubric of an "African Renaissance" marked as a central tenet of the African Agenda.

Unlike the hegemonic and self-serving role taken by economic powers towards their lesser neighbors, Dr. Landsberg pointed out that South Africa had under the banner of the African Agenda saw its own future as inextricably linked to that of the African continent.

“Our policy openly states that South Africa would use its relative strength for mutual benefit, and not as an attempt to run roughshod over neighboring states," Dr. Landberg underlined.

We have seen such benevolent behavior in South Africa's handling of the Zimbabwe crisis in which South Africa with Nigeria has dwarfed attempts by commonwealth countries and the international community to impose economic sanctions against Zimbabwean people.

Dr. Lansberg viewed the launching of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEAPAD) as an innovative way to engage the outside world and spur Africa's development after decades of failures resulting from the legacy of colonialism, the Cold War, bad governance, unsound economic policies and management and destructive conflicts. South African Ambassador in the UAE, Dikang Moopeloa, also reiterated that with African Union and NEAPAD, Africa was witnessing a greater level of inter-country cooperation in the areas of telecommunications, trade, aviation, and tourism.

Meanwhile, Dr. Landsberg cited that South Africa had again spearheaded with its NEPAD allies, the introduction of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a mechanism that promotes democracy and good governance.

South Africa has played a crucial role in various African conflicts. It is the lead nation in the African mission in Burundi, and has contributed troops with the UN in the DRC, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Liberia. It also houses the AU and NEPAD and delights the African diaspora with the celebration of the African Day through out the world.

On the Africa-Middle East ties, Dr. Landsberg emphasized that African and Middle East Politics were inextricably intertwined, saying: " You cannot hope to have a peaceful Middle East without a peaceful Africa, and vice versa." No doubt a new history of Africa is being written silently and South Africa is its author.

bsogoth@yahoo.com

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