Session I-4

Greg Mills

Dealing with African Conflict and Underdevelopment:

Progress through Partnership?

Dr Greg Mills1

At the start of the new millennium, we face a world which is both

fragmenting and integrating.

It is integrating because we operate in an age of global communications and

information technology -- what is termed globalisation. Globalisation,
among other things, means that international capital markets are working
together at an unprecedented pace -- and illustrates how the fortunes of states
are now, more than ever before, inextricably connected to external events,
and especially to the degree to which countries interact productively or
destructively with each other.

It is fragmenting because this emerging world has not brought benefits for all.

In todays environment, the poverty gap between peoples within states and
between states themselves is widening. We see the fragmentation of the
global community into rich and poor groupings, between those with and
those without access to the global economy and to inter-state justice. This
poses immense challenges to practitioners of international relations seeking
an equitable and stable world order.

My talk today will cover two central issues:2

First, what are the challenges posed by todays environment?

Second, how can Africa, and especially Southern Africa, work together in
tandem with the international community to meet these challenges? In
this regard, I would like to stress the theme of partnership not just
between South Africa and its neighbours and partners further afield in the
South and the North, but within South Africa and other African states in
the manufacture and implementation of foreign policy.

Todays Challenges

What are the challenges that Africa and South Africa faces in the emerging
world order?

1 DR GREG MILLS is the National Director of the South African Institute of International
Affairs (SAIIA) based in Johannesburg. This speech was given to the Japan Institute of
International Affairs (JIIA) seminar on Conflicts in Africa and a Culture of Peace and Co-
existence, Tokyo, 15 February 2001. PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY.
2 This talk draws on Greg Mills, The Wired Model: South Africa, Foreign Policy and Globalisation.

Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2000. Please see this publication for a full list of citations/references.

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Five issues have been identified as critical challenges for developing countries
in particular and for the inter-state system in general:

First, the declining ability of the state to provide for the welfare of its
burgeoning numbers of citizens, and to generate economic activity.
Second, the increase in activities, both legal and illegal, across state
frontiers. The former, legal category includes the vast increase in the flow
of international capital where the global value of foreign direct investment
topped US$800 billion in 1999 and where an estimated US$1.5 trillion is
traded in foreign exchange daily; while the latter category involves
pestiferous trans-national activities such as arms, drugs, vehicle and even
people smuggling.
Third, the emergence of issues that cannot be solved by states acting alone,
accompanied paradoxically by the fragmentation of systems of global
governance into action by, at best, regional units.
Fourth, the existence of widening inter- and intra-state social, economic
and political divides and tensions between the haves and have-nots. As
the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has noted, the gap between the
fifth of the worlds people living in the richest nations and the fifth in the
poorest has more than doubled between 1960 and 1997, to 74 to 1. Nearly
one quarter of the worlds population today lives in absolute poverty.
Fifth, the growing importance of access to technology and knowledge as a
basis for wealth creation.

One issue binds all these factors: that governments cannot alone meet the
challenge, and requires others, acting in partnership, to ensure a common yet
fragile good.

The African Challenge

Africa remains pegged at the bottom of the global development tree. For
example, in the UNs Human Development Report, which indexes 174 countries
on the basis of literacy, life expectancy, schooling, population growth, and
per capita GDP, the bottom 20 countries are all African. Personal conditions
have scarcely improved, and in many cases declined, in an environment of
war and economic collapse in many of Africas 54 states.3

In the emerging global context, Africa thus faces a demanding set of twin
challenges:

3 Including the Western Sahara.

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Firstly, the need to adapt to external realities in adopting democratic political

and liberal economic policies.

Secondly, the need to co-operate to end conflict, to promote stability and

security, and to foster regional economic partnership.

For South Africa, the challenge is all the more onerous, since the expectation
of the external community is that its national success will have a great impact
on the fortunes of future generations not only of South Africans, but on those
of the rest of the continent too. Here, perhaps South Africas most important
foreign policy tool is arguably therefore less the influence it carries abroad
than the success of its democracy and economic transition at home. As Robin
Renwick, the former UK Ambassador to South Africa, has argued: [i]n the
degree of economic success that can be achieved, will lie the ultimate test of
the proposition that South Africa can escape the fate of much of the rest of
Africa and, more than that, it can help to lead the renaissance of southern
Africa.4

Notwithstanding these domestic goals and their linkage with external

relations, the emerging global environment poses critical challenges for
foreign policy, intent as it is in South Africas case on achieving an African
renaissance. Yet South Africa is today aware that engagement with Africa in
seeking to promote this, will not always be smooth sailing. Pretorias
experience since 1994 has taught that democratic values do not always (if ever
until now) hold sway over vested personal financial and political interests;
and indeed, such values may be threatening to these interests.

Indeed, what have been the hard results of a democratic South Africas
foreign policy in Africa in turning this situation around?

In Africa, there has been, over the past five years, the development of an arc
of instability across the continent from Somalia in the East through Sudan, the
Great Lakes, the Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone in the West. However, in
too many cases, the resolution of conflict has been held hostage to vested
political interests and, even more tragically, to the economic stakes of
different actors with an interest in perpetuating war.

This is what we have come to term the political-economy of African

conflicts, where wars are fuelled by the export of diamonds, oil and other
commodities, and by the import of all-too readily-available weaponry. Of
course, Africas natural resources should be used as critical assets for
development and wealth creation. Yet in the absence of political stability, a
popularly accountable government and necessary regulatory environment,
these resources have brought only continued misery and sometimes death to

4 Robin Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa. London: Macmillan, 1997, p.158.

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the vast majority of the Africans in states mired in civil wars and inter-state
conflicts.

In the southern Africa region, things at the end of 2000 looked considerably
worse than they did 12 months earlier. Peace in the Congo still appears
elusive, despite considerable diplomatic efforts; mainly it seems because the
warring parties do not want peace at all. The assassination of President
Laurent-Desire Kabila in January 2001 might make the search for a peace
easier, though his role in the process was only part of the overall problem that
is the dysfunctional nature of the Congo itself.5

Peace also appears a long way off in Angola, and its prospects may have been
worsened by the strengthening alliance of the disaffected throughout the
western coast of Africa involving Charles Taylors Liberia, Burkina Faso,
Guinea, Togo, Jonas Savimbis UNITA movement in Angola, and Libyas
Muammar Ghaddafi. Elsewhere, even relatively stable Mozambique and
Tanzania have suffered election-related violence hiccups, while the Swazi
monarchys reluctance to reform the political system threatens a full-scale
civil unrest backlash. Nearly three years after the last general election
resulted in widespread violence and a South African military intervention, a
much-anticipated election process remains uncertain in Lesotho. Critically,
following President Robert Mugabes failure to alter the constitution through
a referendum in February 2000, violence, too, has been the order of the day in
South Africas largest African trade partner and neighbour, Zimbabwe, an
issue that had racial connotations inside the Republic and has also posed
questions about the willingness of Pretoria to make hard choices with its
erstwhile Southern African Development Community (SADC) and liberation
movement partners.

Ironically, the issue that has arguably contained the greatest costs for Africa
in terms of negative perception Zimbabwe was the one that Pretoria was
paradoxically best placed to address, though it apparently lacked the political
will to do so. And the issues where South Africa has placed the greatest (at
least presidential) effort, were those on the global stage where the country has
possessed the least immediate leverage.

A More Positive Picture?

While many might prefer to view African events in a sensationalistic and

tragic manner, it should be said that there is also much to be optimistic about
on the African continent.

5For an excellent description of these problems see Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr
Kurtz. London: Fourth Estate, 2000; and Adam Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of
Greed, Terror, and Herosim in Colonial Africa. New York: Mariner, 1999.

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Although this was not widely reported in the media, there was overall
improvement in Africa during the 1990s. Between 1996 and 1998, 35 of the 48
sub-Saharan African countries registered positive GDP growth per capita,
with 29 countries achieving this in 1998. According to the World Bank, sub-
Saharan economic growth per capita is expected to rise to 3.3% in 2000-01.
Between 2002 and 2008, this is expected to rise again to 3.6%.

This is not by accident. Many African countries, including South Africa, have
liberalised their economies and instituted macro-economic reforms including
privatisation, deregulation, currency exchangeability, and fiscal restraint.

And such reforms are not confined to the area of economics. There were just
four democracies in Africa in 1980. Since the early 1990s, 42 sub-Saharan
states have held multiparty presidential or parliamentary elections.

A recent editorial in the Washington Post noted:

Africa's apparent hopelessness is now so widely accepted that it is in danger

of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But it went on:

Yet this does not mean that progress is impossible. In the 1960s and 1970s,
East Asia shared many of these weaknesses; but the pessimists who
dismissed the region as caught in a poverty trap have been proved
spectacularly wrong.

How can Africa and the international community join in partnership in

turning this situation around?

The Need for Strategic Partnership and Shared Vision

The question that South Africa is asking at this point is how we can advance
in co-operation with key partners in addressing these critical issues of African
stability and development. There are a number of self-evidently important
reasons why the international community must work together to solve these
problems:

First, we know today that threats to human security and development, like
Aids, tuberculosis, water shortages, ecological imbalances and new trans-
national criminal threats such as drug, people, arms and vehicle smuggling
and money laundering, are no longer limited by national boundaries. These
problems are also closely inter-related and are impossible to solve in isolation
from each other.

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These are global problems that demand global answers. The existence of
sound functioning states in Africa is part of the solution. The chaos brought
by failed or dysfunctional states in Africa (or elsewhere) has costs for global
stability. Conversely, stability in a region inhabited by 800 million people, as
Africa is, offers a larger world economy and market for products, capital and
services.

Second, it is axiomatic that South Africa has a special responsibility in Africa,

and Africas fortunes will reflect those of the Republic. As the economically
most powerful state in the continent where its GDP equals nearly 45% of the
total of sub-Saharan Africas, we have an obligation to help combat these
insecurities and the perception of inevitable failure they bring, by engaging
constructively and by demonstrating the possibility of success in our own
country. But this arguably cannot be done alone -- neither South Africa nor
Africa can succeed without a global political and economic system that
accommodates the complex and daunting developmental challenges of the
African state.

These challenges are related to the colonial history and the cultural and
linguistic make-up of African states. The nature of the colonial administration
in the Congo, Angola and Mozambique, for example, and the manner in
which independence was gained and ultimately ceded, is in no small part
accountable for the difficulties that have ensued.

Our own experience has taught us that only a sustained commitment to peace
and not attempts to impose victory by force of arms can bring a long-term
solution. In the same vein, we should strongly oppose those, in Angola, in
Africa or elsewhere, who seek to profit financially from the misery of such
wars. Similarly, corruption is a blight that cannot be addressed solely by
African governments. The European and other corporations doing business
with Africa have also to bear their share of the blame for participating in
corrupt practices and the obligation to help stamp it out.

The Importance of Domestic Peace and Visionary Leadership

How can stability be brought about in African conflict situations?

South Africas own transition and its experience in African conflict mediation
illustrates that successful resolution of inter-communal problems rests on the
need for communities to recognise the rewards of co-operating -- and,
conversely, the costs of not doing so.

Here it is possible to identify four criteria (or conditions) for successful

mediation from African attempts:

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First, there has to be a real basis for an internal settlement. This must not thus
be viewed as a zero-sum game, and a way has to be found in which the major
conflicting parties can both simultaneously achieve essential elements of what
they want. If the settlement merely puts off the day of reckoning (as, for
example, it has done in Angola), then mediation efforts are not going to
progress far or any agreement stick for a prolonged period of time.

In South Africa, it could be argued that while the African National Congress
wanted to be in government, it recognised, too, that it required the white
governmental and business establishment if it was going to make a success of
things. At the same time, the white establishment wanted to preserve its
position in South Africa, but needed the involvement and support of the
ANC government in order to prosper and achieve this goal in the long-term.

Here the critical issue is less the need for institutional mechanisms that can
serve to provide this glue in society, as shared normative political values
which can hold a settlement together in the event of the collapse of trust
between leaders or of institutions.

Second, there has to be a reasonably united international community, in

which different outside parties can bring pressure on the rival domestic
parties to settle.

Apart from South Africa itself, the only post-Cold War case in which a
negotiated solution to a Southern African conflict situation has worked
successfully, is Mozambique. There, as in the transfer from Rhodesia to
Zimbabwe in 1979, the amount of leverage that the external mediators could
bring on the domestic combatants was critical. The same could be said of the
Namibian side of the Angolan-Namibian accords in 1988 which stuck, even if
the Angolan part of that deal did not.

By contrast, in the turbulent transition from the rule of President Mobutu

Sese Seko in the former Zaire in 1997, another unsuccessful attempt,
Washington and Paris had their own (sometimes competing) agendas. It was
clear, too, that southern African leaders were also, often for reasons of
personality and jealousies rather than policy substance, not in agreement over
what to do in Zaire.

Critical in this external engagement is the need to give the parties the tools to
do the job properly. Some 350 military UN peacekeepers in Angola were not
sufficient for UNAVEM IIs mandate between May 1991-February 1995
leading Margaret Anstee to comment I have been a 747 to fly with only
enough fuel for a DC-3 in joking reference to the UN Security Council
Resolution 747 which formed the mandate for UNAVEM II;6 nor were 4,220

6Cited in Judith Matloff, Fragments of a Forgotten War. Penguin: London, 1997, p.75. See also
Dennis Jett, Why Peacekeeping Fails?. St Martins Press: New York.

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military personnel for UNAVEM III (1995-97); neither will 5,500 be in the
context of MONUCs inter-positional mission in the DRC. But 8,000 UN
forces (including 4,500 military observers) were sufficient to do the job
necessary in Namibia (UNTAG) from April 1989-March 1990, as were some
10,000 personnels (with 6,625 troops) in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) between
December 1992 and 1994. 7 Why the unwillingness to contribute enough
troops to do the job properly, particularly in places like Angola and the
Congo which are both vast territories with poor infrastructure? A
combination of the end of the strategic imperative that drove Cold War
engagement, pressing domestic political and regional economic integration
initiatives, doubts about the efficacy of UN peacekeeping, and a weariness of
Africas seemingly unsolvable problems have all contributed in compounding
fashion to an increasing unwillingness overall by the West to offer forces to
such African missions.

Third, most successful transitions have hinged on crises (or historical turning
points) to bring about change, such as the end of the Cold War impacted
positively on transition in Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique. It could
be argued that events in the DRC, Angola and Zimbabwe, in this regard, do
more for the creation of common value systems in the longer-term than a
slow disintegration of regional political fabric and values.

Fourth, and finally, there is a need for leadership to seize the moment. It is
unclear whether African leadership, say for example in Angola, can make the
necessary mental leap from ethnic to national politics as displayed, for
example, by Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk between 1990-94. There is also,
related to my first point, a need for civil society institutions to bridge these
divides in the absence of such leadership.

The Need for External Partnership and Action

Once peace has been established, however, how can states progress
economically and socially and maintain the support of their domestic
electorate in the face of the (competing) forces of high local expectations and
globalisation? The latter offers, after all, little manoeuvre for policy
experimentation, though the former demands rapid delivery.

In this regard, South Africas president, Thabo Mbeki, explicitly sees Africas
difficulties and solutions in terms of external, global action. This belief has
found expression in the Millennium Africa Renaissance Plan (MAP), in which
Africa takes responsibility for its own destiny, but does so in partnership and
for the joint benefit together with the North.

7 See http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/ops.htm.

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Mbeki has set his foreign sights on creating a rules-based international

system, attempting to level the global playing fields between rich and poor
states, and to effect a resource-transfer from the developed North to
developing South. As he put it at the EU-Africa Summit in Cairo in April
2000,8 Most of our countries [in Africa] are trapped in a vicious cycle of
poverty and lack of capital. A good part of the required capital must therefore
come from abroad We seek the agreement of our European friends that
extraordinary measures will have to be taken to encourage larger foreign
direct investment inflows into Africa.

Africa has not yet been privy to the finer details of the Millennium Africa
Renaissance Programme outlined by Mr Mbeki at the World Economic
Forum (WEF) summit in Davos in January 2001, and developed jointly with
presidents Adbelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Olesegun Obasanjo of Nigeria.

As Mbeki announced at the unveiling in Davos, Our starting point is a

critical examination of Africas post-independence experience, and acceptance
that things have to be done differently to achieve meaningful progress. The
South African president argued that the MAP would hinge on a concrete
programme of action covering the following priority areas:9

The creation of peace, security and stability along with democratic

governance.
A comprehensive human resource strategy.
The development of Africas resource-based sectors to lead an industrial
strategy.
Investment in the IT sector to bridge the digital divide.
Improved infrastructure.
The development of a financing mechanism.

The MAP could thus represent a significant departure from past largely
rhetorical attempts to create a new (and positive) future for Africa. Unlike the
usual begging bowl approach of which donors have tired, Mbeki said that
The focus of the programme is not increased aid but increased investments
in viable infrastructure and business opportunities. This language represents
a refreshing break from the past and sends out also a more positive image
and message from South Africas sometimes beleaguered president under
personal attached throughout 2000 for his stance on Zimbabwe and HIV-Aids,
and the controversial manner in which he has handled allegations of financial
impropriety and corruption over South Africas R44 billion arms package.10

8 Africa calls on fortress Europe, Business Day, 5 April 2000.

9 For the full text of his speech, see Sidelining Africa a risk to global stability, The Star, 29
January 2001.
10 In September 1999, the South African government agreed to purchase arms initially worth

R21.3 billion, later escalating to R43.8 billion, namely: 3 Type 209 (German) submarines; 4
German Meko corvettes; 9 Swedish/UK Gripen fighters; 12 British Hawk jet trainers; and 30
Augusta A-109 (Italian) light helicopters.

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However, in addition to the obvious reaction to such a framework as

presented to the WEF of the devil lying in the detail, it must be noted that
this plan, like the African renaissance notion itself may obscure the hard
choices behind African development in its attempts to solicit global assistance.
An Africa-wide plan contains, by definition, the danger of a sweeping and
not nuanced approach to African development: lumping South Africa with
Nigeria let alone Somalia and Sierra Leone is not only analytically misleading
but could contain risks for the more stable and prosperous African states. In a
related area, while actions (ironically non-governmental- rather than state-
led) at debt-relief have been largely successful, developing country efforts, of
which South Africa has been part, to bring about a more equitable
international trade regime, have delivered little.

Moreover, the need for action in the external milieu cannot, and should not
however, obscure the need for difficult domestic choices.

The Importance of Domestic Partnership

Once peace is achieved, there is a need for an inclusive approach domestically

to development.

For example, South Africas strongest assets lie in the strength of its human
and technological skills base. These are the assets that will make South Africa
and the Africa continent prosper. But in realising this fact, Pretoria also has to
employ these skills in the manufacture and implementation of its foreign
policy.

As is highlighted above, this includes the building of a closer relationship

between government, business as critical partners in African development
and prosperity, civil society, and the media. For example, in realising the key
objectives in the SADC region of fiscal discipline, appropriate monetary
policies, a liberal trade regime, the restructuring of the state sector, the
provision of modern infrastructure, and constitutionally guaranteed property
rights, South Africas business and government will in the future have to
work together in the following practical ways, through:

First, sharing professional expertise and experience, and developing

human capital through secondments, training programmes and
internships.
Second, jointly promoting South African trade and investment efforts
through information sharing, and joint policy planning and advice with
the establishment of business-government delegations and corporate
councils.
Third, the creation of public-private African investment partnerships.

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Conclusion

The overarching theme of this talk has been on partnership, on the critical
value of a sometimes overlooked, yet most positive aspect of inter- and intra-
state activity. Strategic partnership is imperative if Africas vicious cycle of
underdevelopment, poverty and instability is to be broken and a more
positive virtuous cycle realised. In this way Africa is not simply a passive
adherent but rather a strong proponent of globalisation and the benefits it
offers.

The creation of a virtuous circle of peace, stability, economic growth and

social provision has to flow both from global action and from the dedicated
commitment of African states themselves. Bad governance is a deterrent to
foreign investment in Africa and a curse too often in the past visited on the
peoples of our continent.

There is an old African saying that it takes a village to make a child. In

the age of globalisation, it is in our best direct interests to engage together in
partnership, both domestically and internationally, with the problems facing
African and other developing states, so as to arrive at global solutions to what
are, indeed, global problems.

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