Last year, I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) warning of a rift between African countries and the West over how to administer peace and justice on the continent. That was coming out into the open over Darfur and Zimbabwe, forcing Western liberals to balance a commitment to “African ownership” with their desire to stay involved in African affairs. Now, a trenchant critique of “African solutions to African problems” rhetoric comes from Tsoeu Petlane, a South African scholar:

As we enter a New Year, we have to acknowledge that the “African solutions for African problems” approach has had some glaringly painful failures. The continuing crises in Somalia, in Zimbabwe, in Darfur and in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the surrounding Great Lakes region all demonstrate the weaknesses of the way “African solutions” have been implemented in 2008.  These weaknesses must be addressed in 2009. The year ahead should be one of rethinking how Africa deals with problems in a manner that is effective and restores the continent’s image and initiative.

Petlane anatomizes the problem thus:

There are three key reasons for failure: an almost unquestioning adherence to protecting state sovereignty, dependency on forces outside the continent and lack of leadership. Together, these stifle innovation, limit the effectiveness of proposed solutions and alienate potential allies.

First, the continent’s endorsement of the leaders of collapsed or collapsing states such as Zimbabwe, Somalia and the DRC, far from promoting sovereignty, negates it.

Sovereignty resides in the people, who only delegate it to leaders. In a situation in which the expression of this sovereignty is denied the people, such as in Zimbabwe; where those entrusted with it are unable to exercise it practically, such as in the DRC; or where the institutions supporting it are in question, such as in Somalia, protecting a government makes no sense – it allows a regime to maintain a veneer of statehood only on the basis of recognition by others. Thinking beyond this paradigm is urgently needed.

Second, while African leaders appear united in calling for indigenous solutions, few have demonstrated a conceptual or practical commitment to the notion. Their initiatives and solutions have depended on Africa’s “partnership” with the nebulous “international community”. A major component of this “community” comprises the very same former colonists who, we claim, have (i) “created” Africa’s problems by colonising them, (ii) “interfered” in Africa’s internal affairs, (iii) shaped the international system to serve their own interests (in trade, economy and international relations), (iv) dictated values of good governance and economic performance that are “foreign” to Africans, and (v) “abandoned/marginalised” Africa by withdrawing aid and political support after the Cold War.

This kind of dependency – developing solutions on the basis of actions of others, and blaming them when things don’t work – points to our lack of good leadership.

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One of Africa’s few shining lights, Ghana, is on tenterhooks as it awaits the result of an incredibly closely-fought general election. Publication of the results has been delayed, as the remote outpost of Tain in the west has yet to vote in the second round because of problems with voting materials. The national result is so tight that Tain, with just 23,000 voters, could be decisive. The poll there will open on Friday.

Ghana is important not just because it is one of very few West African countries that is not mired in corruption, civil strife and abject poverty (although there is plenty of the latter and not a little of the former if you look hard enough). It is also one of only a handful of countries on the entire continent that has regular peaceful democratic elections (it has had five since 1992). After the debacles in Kenya and Zimbabwe in the last two years, and after the recent coups in Guinea and Mauritania, it is crucial that Ghana’s poll passes off peacefully.

So far, there has been relatively little unrest, but as Chris Blattman reports, tensions are rising by the day:

My friend Naunihal sends me this dispatch, cobbled together hastily this afternoon (he urges me to tell you):

The situation is starting to look like Bush v. Gore. The election commissioner just said that the opposition leads by 23,000 votes and that there is one constituency where there was no election for security reasons which has over 50,000 votes that will vote just after new years.

But it gets messier. The incumbent party (NPP) points out that 2 big constituencies in Kumasi (its key area of support) were not included in the officially counted votes (probably because they are contested) and that it won one of those by over 51,000 votes.

In addition, they point out that in 11 constituencies in the opposition’s key area of the Volta region, NPP poling agents were thrown out and did not sign the election returns. I’ve seen the violence done to one of the party election observers – he was beaten and stoned and may lose his eye.

Right now fear is running high in Accra. Makola Market, the main market, is closed because of fear of violence. I’m getting reports right now from people aligned with the NPP, so I’m only hearing about NDC “Machomen” riding around in empty streets.

The constituency that has yet to vote for the President, voted against the incumbent party at the Parliamentary level, thus kicking out the incumbent MP. So it looks good for the opposition in that area, but everything is really too close to call.

And rumors are spreading that the election commissioner is under pressure from the incumbent government to throw things their way.

None of this is good in terms of street level tensions and legitimacy for whichever candidate gets declared.

Update: Fortunately, the election concluded peacefully, as Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party graciously conceded defeat to John Atta Mills’ National Democratic Congress. A rare example of a peaceful democratic transition, then, from one African party to another, and further evidence that Ghana really is a beacon of hope for the region. Let’s hope leaders in other parts of the continent take note.

We have posted various snippets about the tragedy of Zimbabwe. The Times expresses its dismay at the  failure of British diplomacy to do anything. Today’s Leader neatly captures the British Government’s empty rhetoric

The world has watched the slide towards starvation and collapse in despair. At each stage, Britain, the former colonial ruler has muffled its reaction. Diplomats appeared to think that quiet diplomacy in tandem with Zimbabwe’s neighbours would achieve more than an open call for Mr Mugabe’s overthrow, which, the Foreign Office believed, would be used by the President as proof that colonialists were plotting against him.

Mr Mugabe has made a mockery of African neighbours who urged him to negotiate with his opponents. He has danced rings around the so-called international community. He has outwitted the political Opposition, scorned the result of an election and killed his defenceless compatriots. He is now convinced that he is untouchable, that he cannot be removed from power either by his opponents in Zimbabwe or by any external force.

So far, he has been proved right. Harsh words at international meetings have had no effect. Isolation makes no difference to a country where money no longer has value and government no longer functions. It is high time David Miliband recognised that international intervention is the only course now available to save more than seven million people from catastrophe. Britain’s reticence has been not only fatuous; it has encouraged Mr Mugabe in his hubris and the pampered party and military elite to believe they can hang on and outlast their enemies.

Britain is guilty of more than feeble diplomacy. It has failed to ensure all the loopholes are closed in this country. The United States Treasury has named some 21 companies that it has placed on its blacklist that are still trading with Zimbabwe. Disgracefully, many of these are in Britain or in terrorities controlled by Britain.

The Prime Minister has declared “enough is enough”. He should call for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and authorise armed intervention. As The Times suggests

There are enough legal powers, including the visible threat Zimbabwe’s collapse now poses to the health and security of its neighbours. Mr Miliband should respond to Mr Mugabe’s odious claim with his own démarche. The world can take his despairing country from him. And it must.

Nevermind the bargains at Woolies this week, Country Road Casual Wear in Harare is the place to go if you’re a member of Zimbabwe’s army – as Tom says to Nick the Greek in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: “It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the Sale of the fucking Century!”

Meanwhile Mugabe is cracking some hilarious jokes – his latest one: “there is no cholera”! According to The Herald newspaper:

George Charamba, Mr Mugabe’s spokesman, said that the octogenarian president was using “sarcasm” when he made the statement.

Awesome.

Courtesy of The Times

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According to John Robb a Hollow State has:

The trappings of a modern nation-state but it lacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historical counter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways.

A good example of a Hollow State is Zimbabwe where the Government under Mugabe no longer has legitimacy. Government systems are either in a state of collapse (witness the looting of food carried out by the Army) or are non existent (the health system). State infrastructure is broken (water) and the population has to rely on other sources, from charities or private citizens.

Zimbabwe has been spiralling out of control for years, and it’s only recently that the international community has had sufficient leverage over the Mugabe regime to bring about change, but the results have been limited. The failure by the international community to intervene both early on and with force (not necessarily hard power) has allowed Mugabe to operate with only a few (in some cases meaningless) constraints.

The widely reported cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe seems to have motivated the international community to speak out once again. Today Gordon Brown argued that:

“This is now an international rather than a national emergency. International because disease crosses borders. International because the systems of government in Zimbabwe are now broken. There is no state capable or willing of protecting its people. International because – not least in the week of the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights – we must stand together to defend human rights and democracy, to say firmly to Mugabe that enough is enough.”

But let’s be realistic. We can ramp up the rhetoric to the nth degree but without firm action, under a UN mandate, Mugabe and his horrifc regime isn’t going to disappear. Unless an individual or organisation takes the initiative this tragedy will continue to unfold.

Update: The arguments for not doing anything with Mugabe are numerous. Two arguments stand out: first the lack of an international mandate; second, a deficeincy in our collective moral responsibility. But I notice in today’s Observer online that the Archbishop of York is calling for President Robert Mugabe to be toppled from power and face trial for crimes against humanity. Could this be the moral outcry that creates the environment for a Chapter 7 intervention?

Gordon Brown is getting a good write-up for his speech to the UN on Africa and development.  It’s short, sharp and effective.  Here’s the essential extract:

In the museum in Rwanda, which commemorates the thousands killed as the world looked on and looked the other way, there is a picture of a young boy who was tortured to death and the plaque reads:

Name: David
Age: 10
Favourite Sport: Football
Enjoyed making people laugh
Dream of becoming a doctor
Last words: the United Nations will come for us.

But we never did. Even as he died, that child believed the best of us. In reality, our promises meant to him nothing at all.

Today, facing famine, we promised we, the United Nations of the world, will come to help, but the hungry are dying while we wait. Facing poverty, we promise that we will come to help, but poor are dying while we wait. Facing betrayal of the Millennium Development Goals, we say again we will come, but many continue to die while we wait. And I believe our greatest enemy is not war or inequality or any single ideology or a financial crisis; it is too much indifference. Indifference in the face of sole-destroying poverty, indifference in the face of catastrophic threats to our planet.

A powerful point. But you can’t just wish away “war or inequality or any single ideology or a financial crisis”. As I’ve argued here before, differences over how to handle conflict and ideological tensions are increasingly complicating Europe’s relations with Africa. Brown’s focus today was development, but what about issues like Darfur (that’d be in the war file), the ICC indictment of Bashir and Zimbabwe (revealing deep ideological tensions)? The PM didn’t mention these – wisely - but they are fouling up the West’s relations with Africa pretty badly. And they aren’t about indifference, but real political differences over who governs Africa and how.

This is a theme that I discuss in a guest post over on the iR2P blog, where I argue that a Euro-African alliance that flourished around issues like the Responsibility to Protect a few years ago is withering.  We can’t just keep on blaming ourselves for indifference towards Africa, although we have to remain wary of it.  We need to explore the real political obstacles to continued Western engagement there.

Listening to Gordon Brown’s speech today, Philip Stephens notes that “Mr Brown kept his audience in its comfort zone”:

Though he set out the challenges Britain faces in a period of tumultuous global upheaval, Mr Brown did little to challenge his audience’s preconception that the present mess was all the fault of greedy capitalists.

Reading that brought to mind another Labour Conference speech in times of global upheaval: Tony Blair’s back in 2001.  Remember this?

This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

I re-read the whole thing this afternoon, and was struck by a) its brilliance, b) its insight, c) how it soars compared to Brown’s speech today and d) the extent to which - in retrospect, with all that’s happened since – it shines with an eerie messianic fervour.  It’s well worth another look: full text below the jump.

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It’s ten days since seven UN troops were killed in Darfur – today, one more has been killed.  In between, there have been a series of events that raise big questions about the UN’s future in Africa.  First, there was the defeat of the US-UK effort to slap arms sanctions on Zimbabwe in the Security Council – notable less for China and Russia’s vetoes than the African Council members’ (pace Burkina Faso) rejection of the resolution.  Then there was the ICC decision to charge Sudan’s President Bashir with genocide in Darfur - again, the most striking part of the international response has been the level of African opposition, with the AU’s “Panel of the Wise” announcing the charges could “lead to a lot of danger”.

The convergence of these events may mark a turning-point in how Africa fits into the international system.  African leaders are setting limits on global governance. 

For most of the last decade, the continent has been a laboratory for international institutions: it has hosted the bulk of UN peacekeepers; been the testing-ground of the Millennium Development Goals (and so the G8′s efforts to hang with Bono); and was the ICC’s focus even before the Bashir indictment.  The AU has emerged as everyone’s favorite new regional institution, not least for taking on Darfur.

For quite a few commentators, myself included, it has been almost axiomatic over the last few years that better international institutions mean a better Africa.  But we mostly missed the politics of institution-building: the interests and ideologies of African governments, and the limits on their desire to be subsumed into supranational organizations (hey there, EU specialists, does this ring a bell with you?).  There’s been lots of talk of “African ownership” over all this institution-building, but it’s all too often hollow.  In May, I was at a seminar in Berlin at which the African participants gave the phrase a kicking (check out the event report).

It was never going to be possible to keep on piling international institution on international institution in Africa.  I wrote a short piece in October 2006 arguing that the UN might find itself “Out of Africa” sooner than expected -  that looked silly as the Security Council went on to mandate blue helmets for Darfur, and mused about sending them to Somalia.  But I may not have been so wrong.  It’s too early to know whether July 2008 is a turning-point or a blip in international engagement (or interference, depending on your perspective) in Africa.  But it should be the moment we start thinking what “African ownership” really means.

The Russian and Chinese veto of UNSC sanctions against Zimbabwe may in hindsight have been predicable, even inevitable, but on day of the vote they came as a clear surprise to many, not least British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who only days earlier told the House the tougher sanctions were in the bag.

Leaving aside whether you believe sanctions are a good idea – I certainly do – what happened? Had Russian President Dmitri Medvedev not signed up to sanctions only days before at the G8 Summit in Japan? Did the Prime Minister simply not take “Njet” for an answer? Bit by bit, the run-up to the vote is emerging. 

It now seems the issue was driven not by No. 10, but from the 7th floor of the U.S State Department, where Jendayi Frazer, U.S Assistant Secretary of State, sits. Even though no U.S interests are at stake, Ms Frazer, an academic colleague of Condi Rice’s from her Stanford days, has focused intently on Zimbabwe, apparently raising the issue whenever she meets African leaders.

Ms. Frazer – who is known to abhor her British opposite number Lord Malloch Brown from his UN days – apparently was in the driving seat on Zimbabwe policy, after having waited in vain for a UK lead. With the US Ambassador to the UN, Zal Khalizaid, she apparently pushed hard for a tough resolution. Better to make a stand, the argument went.

But after the G8 meeting, British diplomats apparently thought that the Russians would balk and became nervous. In fairness, Brown – who had been micro-managing the issue – thought he’d gotten Medvedev on board. But either little thought was given to whether the Russian president could in fact deliver – especially after the British Prime Minister harangued him at his first summit – or the issue was not deemed important enough to merit a Russian rejection.

To be on the safe side, however, the Foreign Office apparently asked Bush to call Medvedev and Rice to raise the issue with her Russian counterpart. None of this happened and things began to fall apart. The Chinese, who diplomats believe would probably have abstained if the Russians had not decided to veto, moved to veto as well.

By then the Prime Minister had already sounded confident in his post-G8 address to the House during PMQs. As a last-ditch effort, diplomats considered tabling a weaker resolution, giving South Africa more time to find a solution and thus putting the onus back on Tabo Mbeki and, ultimately, Robert Mugabe. But the U.S – who chaired the UN Security Council – decided to go for broke, tabled the old text and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the aftermath of the no-vote, the U.S government has been quick to point out that the Russian veto shows Russian cannot be seen as a reliable partner. Russian officials have reacted angrily at this, saying Medvedev never promised support for U.N. sanctions.

But what does the episode say about U.S and UK foreign policy?  That even on an issue of such totemic importance to Britain – and where the Prime Minster has taken a personal interest – the U.S remains in the lead, yet unable or unwilling to do the necessary due diligence to ensure more than declaratory success. 

An interesting signal in the ether today from Sky News’s political editor Adam Boulton, who has this to say:

Simon Jenkins has a good piece in the Sunday Times about the decreasing willingness to contemplate humanitarian intervention.  The humanitarian creed, he says:

can no longer override considerations of state sovereignty and the natural caution of diplomats and generals.

While opposing every intervention known to man, Jenkins goes on to lament:

This noble cause has vanished in the wind. Almost before it is put to the test it is gone. The failure to intervene in Darfur and the deference shown to the dictators of Burma and Zimbabwe indicate a pendulum swinging fast in the other direction.

It is not hard to see why the negativity. The West has failed to intervene in Burma and ships are now being forced to return after waiting in vain. The EU military mission in Chad was originally conceived by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as a repeat of the U.S safe zone created in the Kurdish areas in Iraq. But instead of a mandate to go into Sudan, it has had to sit on the Chadian side of the border. Problems, of course, plague missions in Iraq and Afghanistan while Kosovo refuses to solve itself.

But Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan argued against this pessimism in the Washington Post last year.

America has frequently used force on behalf of principles and tangible interests, and that is not likely to change.

The duo behind the League of Democracies, remind readers that the U.S has intervened between 1989 and 2001 with significant military force on eight occasions — once every 18 months. This interventionism, they go on, has been bipartisan — four interventions were launched by Republican administrations, four by Democratic administrations. The implication: interventionism is here to stay. It is as much a part of international politics as state sovereignty.

I have to say I agree with Daalder and Kagan. The West is only temporarily numbed by recent failures, as well as being logistically constrained because of troop overstretch. True, in Europe few governments seem willing to spend the necessary funds on the required military and civilian capability. True, the U.S electorate is in a particularly sour mood, to the extent that more Europeans now support democracy-promotion than Americans.

But this will pass. And once a new U.S president begins a draw-down in Iraq – a policy I expect from both Senators McCain and Obama – and surge in Afghanistan – again something to expect form both – the balance of sentiment will be re-calibrated in favour of intervention. 

However, we need a re-definition of interventionism, a Chicago speech for the new post-Iraq millennium. And David Milliband is the man to give it, in my view.

Richard mentioned Mike Davis’ compelling book Planet of the Slums a while back and I’ve recently finished it, coincidentally it seems, just at the point when shanty towns and squatter camps in and around Jo’berg have erupted into violence. As Davis argues in his book

the contemporary mega-slum poses unique problems of imperial order and social control that conventional geopolitics has barely begun to register. If the aim of the “war on terrorism” is to pursue the erstwhile enemy into his sociological and cultural labyrinth, then the poor peripheries of developing cities will be the permanent battlefields of the twenty-first century.

In Jo’berg attacks have taken place in Alexandra, Reiger Park, Diepsloot, and Primrose. Estimates of the numbers of immigrants chased from their homes range from 13,000 to 20,000 with police patrolling the streets and the army called in to quell the violence – the first time they have been on the streets since the end of apartheid.

The wave of violence against foreigners in South Africa has now spread to Cape Town where Somalis and Zimbabweans have been attacked by mobs who have looted their homes and shops overnight. The cause of the outbreak is down to rapidly escalating food and fuel prices mixed with a healthy dose of xenophobia with South Africans accusing foreigners of increasing crime and taking jobs.

The Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague issued a press release on Tuesday calling on David Miliband, foreign secretary “to take urgent action with regard to the Chinese ship, currently heading to Uganda carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe”.

From the FT blog:

Hague’s intervention sent the Foreign Office into a spin, as officials pored over atlases trying to work out how the Chinese vessel might achieve the unlikely task of offloading its weapons in a land-locked country in the heart of Africa. Perhaps he envisaged the ship heading up to the Mediterranean, taking a right turn down the River Nile and then making the tortuous journey through sub-Saharan Africa to Lake Victoria. Not sure whether the river is up to taking ocean-going ships though. “What is he talking about?” asked one government official. So far there has been no explanation from Mr Hague’s team about this strange Ugandan affair

Aware that readers of Global Dashboard are an imaginative, thoughtful and pragmatic bunch we want to know how you would best transport the shipment of arms onboard the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang from is current position (off the South Western coast of Africa via Uganda to Zimbabwe). A small prize will be awarded for the best post.*

* Very small…