Downhill all the way?

Martin Meredith ended his 1984 book on Africa, The First Dance of Freedom, with a quote from a recent report by the Economic Commission for Africa which looked ahead to the continent’s future over the next 25 years. On existing trends, it predicted, poverty in rural areas would reach ‘unimaginable dimensions’, while the towns would suffer increasingly from crime and destitution. ‘The picture that emerges is almost a nightmare.’

Africa has not disappointed Meredith. Twenty years on he is able to conclude this volume on the cheerful note that ‘African governments and the vampire-like politicians who run them are regarded by the populations they rule as yet another burden they have to bear in the struggle for survival’.

This conclusion somewhat contradicts the quotation from Pliny on the title page: ‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi.’ Meredith is saying he got it right 20 years ago and nothing has changed. The Second Dance of Freedom is worse than the first.

Maybe. I will come back to that, but first of all this book does deal with the primary reasons for Africa’s failures: African politics. The aid agency view of Africa presents us with the starving African child and tells us all we need to do is to give aid and forgive debt and the child will live and prosper. The impression is left that the child is hungry and sick because it is African. Africa is seen as a poor place that needs our care and money. No link is made between the child and President Mugabe or Beshir, or King Mswati. The politics are ignored.