Let’s not look at Africa

Bert Hetebry

12 hours ago

It’s been 30 years since the genocide of Rwanda.

I recall driving my children to school as the news was on the radio, the numbers grew larger day by day. At first explaining that the numbers killed were more than a capacity crowd at Subiaco oval, then the population of Perth south of the Swan River, then more than the population of Perth at that time.

Report after report the numbers grew. The numbers became meaningless, too hard to imagine.

And then the story faded, disappeared, became another forgotten part of African history.

Other conflicts filled the news, Bosnia, Croatia, Iran/Iraq, Iraq/Kuwait, 9/11, Palestinians throwing tantrums in Israel, Afghanistan and so forth.

So we can focus on the ‘guerre d’jour’, the war of today, particularly if it is not in Africa.

What we miss in the avalanche of war coverage is that so many ongoing conflicts are forgotten, the horrors of war are really only significant if it concerns people we, i.e.; ‘The West’ give a shit about. When it’s a bunch of black savages fighting in the middle of Africa, who cares!

At least that is the way it appears, but then, reading The Guardian this morning I came across a feature article about the ongoing conflict in central Africa, Rwanda, Congo, Central African Republic, and the brutality of that ongoing conflict.

The brutality, as described in the article concerns the use of rape as a weapon of war. A militant group called M23, a para military group of Rwandan and Congolese soldiers control parts of the border between the two countries.

Quoting The Guardian article:

“Within its territory, women appear fair game. When M23 entered Kisuma village on 30 June, they kidnapped then killed Maria’s husband, a teacher. Maria fled until stopped by a man holding an AK47. As instructed, Maria put down hew baby boy. Her daughters – aged 13, 12,10 and 8 – were ordered to stand in line. ‘He raped me in front of them,’ said the 25 year old.”

Other stories emerge of the last thing a man sees is his wife and daughters raped, and then he is shot. Much the same occurred in the Bosnia/Croatia conflict of the 1990s, Muslim women were raped while their husbands were forced to watch, daughters, virgins raped, reducing them to valueless as brides, and then the men shot.

I remembered a story from Dexter Dias book, Ten Kinds of Human, where he tells the story of surviving in that same part of Africa, also after the genocide. A young man, Francios, is clearing out his late father’s home and talks with the carer who had nursed him through his last days. Francios offers to drive the young lady to Cameroon because the ‘Seleka are coming’, a paramilitary group, but all she asks for is a gun.

‘A gun? A gun? What will you do with a gun? You think you can stop Seleka with a gun?’
‘I fight them a different way.’
‘How?’
‘The way I fight, they cannot beat me.’
‘Why?’ Francis said, but a chill was slowly spreading through him and he was unsettled. ‘You are crazy.’
‘It is crazy to be caught? I have spoken to others more now. It is crazy to be raped?’
(Page 532)

The young woman saw rape as an inevitability, and not so much defending against rape, asked to be armed so she could kill the rapist when he was most vulnerable.

The brutality of the ongoing conflict, with arms supplied and governments propped up through trade and development support to extract precious metals for the ever growing industrial needs of European, American and Asian markets, turns a blind eye to the violence. Noted in the article from The Guardian is Rwanda’s talent for fostering cosy relations with the US, UK and France – three of the five permanent members of the UN security council – as a factor. “Rwanda is no longer hiding… they are taunting the west.”’ (Mark Townsend in Goma and Kigali).

Consider how significant a friend such as that can be when the UN debates and votes on matters such as genocide when your very good friend has veto power in the UN Security Council.

There is more detail in the article, including a description of the slaughter of children which is sickening, too sickening to cite here, but once read, cannot be unread.

So let’s not look at Africa, let’s not look at the ongoing conflict in Sudan where for the past 65 years there has been an almost constant state of war, where people are moved from one part of the country to another, where starvation through the lack of providing adequate aid is rife, where crops have been destroyed, livestock killed, and that is not coming close to considering what is happening to the people as currently, two branches of the military fight it out for control of the land. This after a previous civil war fuelled by religious difference and a struggle for dominance, starting with independence from British rule in 1956 with a 17 year civil war, the second civil war from 1983 till 2005, the war in Darfur which included the secession of South Sudan and the ongoing current conflict.

When that finally settles to some semblance of order, moves can be made to grow the economy, Sudan is mineral rich and oil rich. Just waitt a while to see what government emerges so negotiations can take place.

The post colonial world, Africa, Haiti, the Middle East, Asia, even Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, has been rife with ethnic and religious tensions which have spilled over into bloody conflict, more often than not with the at best blind eye being shown to at worst partisan support for one side over the other. Interestingly, the world’s police, the US has been involved in most conflicts, happily selling the weapons of war, branding one side as terrorist the other side as somehow legitimate, and very often, we here in our little corner of the world are very quick to lend a hand when the conflict falls geographically with in our sphere of interest or influence.

The power vacuum left with the fall of a regime or with the departure of colonial government has left most emerging nation states with out the political skills to govern in an equitable way, rather that conflicts are polarised through ethnicity, tribal loyalties, religion or just greed.

The issue was raised in the BBC news this morning, as Syria comes out of the repressive 50 years of Assad family rule, headlined ‘What now for the 4.5bn Pound Sterling empire that bankrolled Assad’s regime’. Basically, as in so many post colonial states, the economy is pretty much dead, killed by the greed of the colonial masters, so needing to resort to other means of having a bit of cash flow, to at least pretend to have an economy. For the Assad family corporation, it was drugs, specifically Captagon, which became a popular drug among the wealthy youth of gulf nations, like Saudi Arabia and among the working class in countries like Jordan. This raises a couple of issues, not the least of which is how to rebuild the economy without resorting to dealing in illicit drugs.

As far as helping a new government to emerge, questions of regional and economic interests arise which seldom dress the underlying causes of the conflict.

It appears that the ethnic tensions in countries like Rwanda, Central Africa Republic and Democratic Congo Republic are far less important than the extraction of the mineral wealth, no matter what the source of labour is in the mining processes than to deal with the murderous factions seeking control. The cosy relationship mentioned above included the canvassing of Rwanda as the offshore detention camp for refugees daring to seek shelter and safety in the UK under the previous government.

So let’s not look at Africa unless it is to see what resources can be gained at good prices, that is in dollar terms of price, not in human cost.

Humanitarian concerns pale in significance when it comes to the further exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people on this earth.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote the song, Happy Christmas (War is Over).

It remains a dream.