4 April 2002
editorial
Recently, First Deputy Prime Minister Eriya Kategaya reminded an audience of the late Ugandan academic Prof. Samwiri Karugire's remark when he said, "Africans read history to pass exams, not to learn from it".
Africa is the one continent that has continued to grow poorer. The crises persist. In Somalia, an already fragmented nation has broken down further with the formation of another breakaway Somali state.
Madagascar is also slipping towards breaking down into two states as president Didier Ratsiraka's supporters battle Marc Ravalomanana's people. Ravalomana is presumed to have won last year's presidential election by his supporters, and he has effectively seized government. Ratsiraka's says the win was narrow, and there should be a run off. Now bridges connecting the capital Antananarivo, which took years to build, are being blown up by Ratsiraka to isolate and starve Ravalomanana.
Burundi, as usual, is being rocked by another round of violence despite the best attempts to make the fragile government that came out of the Arusha peace accord work, and the presence of South African peacekeepers.
On the other hand, after nearly 25 years of one of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts in Africa, the rebel UNITA - whose intransigent leader Jonas Savimbi was killed recently by government troops - and the MPLA regime have signed a ceasefire accord.
Up north, a war that has lasted nearly as long, between the oppressed "black" south and "Arab" north might ease with the recent agreement between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.
The roots of Somali's break-up are traceable to the dictatorial politics of Siad Barre. Likewise in Madagascar, Ratsiraka has ruled for 20 years. One would have thought that was more than enough. To him it isn't, and he would rather see his country wrecked than give up power.
The folly of this is apparent in Angola and Sudan. If these countries teach us anything, it is that either the government and rebels will fight themselves to a stalemate and thus be forced to settle their differences through a peace pact, or one side will win the war and the other will be forced to sign in order not to lose everything.
If this is the inevitable, it is better to cut a deal directly with your opponent instead of waiting to do it after hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, and the economy wrecked.
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