Makau Mutua
20 June 2004
opinion
Nairobi — President Ronald Reagan pursued a corrosive, hateful and ultimately racist policy towards Africa. It is shocking that the American Press has over the past week engaged in revisionist history over President Reagan's legacy. He was perhaps the most polarising, insensitive and simple-minded American president of the past century.
Both his domestic and foreign policies were disastrous. in the US, who can forget his cutbacks on social programmes, including lunch programmes for needy school children, his sacking of striking airport tower control workers, his opposition to affirmative action, his refusal to recognise the Aids crisis, his tripling of the nation's red ink, and his coddling of racist individuals and groups such as Bob Jones University? In foreign affairs, he supported Contras, destabilised Nicaragua, traded arms for hostages with Iran, paid homage to Nazis by his visit to a death camp in Eastern Europe, and committed countless other foreign policy blunders.
But Reagan saved his most hateful policies for Africa. With Jeane Kirkpatrick, his UN ambassador, Reagan developed and amplified the policy of support for right-wing dictatorships around the world, as long as those despotic states could be used as pawns in the Cold War. Thus, he supported Apartheid South Africa, and declared that Nelson Mandela and the ANC were terrorists. He vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Sanctions Act, but was overridden by the Congress and it became law. You may also recall that Reagan referred to Jonas Savimbi's Unita killers as freedom fighters!
He called Mobutu of Zaire and Samuel Doe of Liberia great African statesmen!
With respect to Kenya, I must say that Reagan shielded and coddled former President Moi, even when it was clear that he was running a corrupt, bankrupt, murderous and dictatorial regime. Reagan regarded Moi and Kanu as bulwarks against communism, and gave them military, diplomatic and financial support. It is true that Reagan was embarrassed by some American journalists, like Blaine Haden and groups like Amnersty International, but his support for Moi was resolute. I remember that during the Reagan years, it was very difficult for us (Kenyan human rights activists and human rights groups in the US) to bring the US government to end its support for Moi.
The Kenyan Embassy in DC then worked with paid lobbyists to demonise us, to deny the government's human rights abuses, and to paint Kenya as an African beacon of hope in a raging sea of chaos. But we made inroads through our friends in the US
Congress and the Senate and in the early 1990s, US policy towards Kenya changed dramatically when Moi was forced by donors, including the US, to repeal Section 2A which outlawed political parties other than Kanu. But this happened after Reagan had left office.
Makau Mutua is the Director of the Human Rights Centre at the State University of New York's Buffalo Law School.
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