\chapter[African independencies and communism]{African independencies and communism (1960-1998)}
\chapter[African independencies and \enquote{communism}]{African independencies and \enquote{communism} (1960-1998)}
\chapterauthor{Francis ARZALIER}
@ -38,7 +38,6 @@ Words are not innocent, linguists and psychoanalysts know this well.
They take the place here of evidence and compensate for the lightness of the assertions, the death figures which are only a matter of possibility (“for the period February 1977-June 1978, the figure of 10,000 political assassinations has been put forward”, p. 751).
Invective is elevated to the rank of historical analysis, structured by the negative aspects of the period 1974-1991 alone.
Seventeen years of the history of the peoples of Ethiopia is thus demonized, amputated from everything that was progress or popular struggle for a generation.
For finally, let us return to the historical reality: the revolution of 1974, under the leadership of the military and progressive intellectuals of the DERG, overthrew the Ethiopian Empire, one of the most anachronistic feudal regimes in the world.
In the following years, it tried to force Ethiopian society into a modernity tinged with socialism:
agrarian reform and cooperative development, secularization of a hitherto clerical state, literacy, pensions for wages, national unity, etc.
@ -60,8 +59,7 @@ It is therefore necessary to recall what even the Western press did not deny; th
In Angola, the colonial repression carried out by the Portuguese fascist regime from 1961 to 1974 against the armed liberation movements (MPLA of Marxist inspiration, UNITA and FNLA more ethnicist and anti-communist) led to independence, thanks to the Portuguese democratic revolution of the “carnations”.
The Angolan people did not long enjoy their new freedom: in 1975, the FNLA and especially UNITA installed their separatist power, particularly in the diamond-producing regions, with the financial, material and human support of the two pro-Western governments of Zaire and South Africa, and the CIA.
Defeated on the ground by the forces of the MPLA government, helped by a Cuban contingent, UNITA mercenaries, supervised by the South African special services, officially supported by the United States of Presidents Reagan and Bush, continue to manage various parts of the country, to multiply terror raids against villages that do not accept their law.
Defeated on the ground by the forces of the MPLA government, helped by a Cuban contingent, UNITA mercenaries, supervised by the South African special services, officially supported by the United States of Presidents Reagan and Bush, continue to manage various parts of the country, to multiply terror raids against villages that do not accept their law.
According to UN publications, the toll of a decade of war, from 1978 to 1988, is more than 300,000 dead, hundreds of thousands maimed, and as many refugees.
The gradual collapse of apartheid in the GDR finally forced UNITA and its US protectors to accept an end to the fighting: the 1992 peace agreements explicitly provided for the departure of foreign contingents, and elections.
They took place in 1992, under the control of observers from all over the world and gave a large majority to the MPLA. And Savimbi's UNITA, refusing the popular verdict, restarted the civil war: in 1994, the UN estimated that this new conflict killed a thousand Angolans a day!
@ -77,11 +75,10 @@ What do the few abuses, human rights violations and executions, attributed by ou
Angola, Mozambique: crimes of communism or criminal consequences of African and international capitalism?
\section{Capitalism and Africa since the 60s}
Because finally, this is what it is all about: the “black continent” is not an isolation, it is inhabited by the same ideological controversies, the same economic and social structures as the rest of the universe.
Let us not repeat the manipulations of the Black Book in reverse: ideologies are not responsible for the criminal excesses of those who claim to be so.
In Rwanda, in 1994, nearly a million human beings, because they were Tutsi or democrats, were exterminated in a few weeks by the Interhahwe militias of the fascists and racists of the “Hutu Power”.
@ -181,9 +178,13 @@ Six years later, in liberated South Africa, the “truth and reconciliation comm
The daily management of apartheid from 1960 was a long police and judicial oppression, punctuated by collective murders in case of organized popular resistance:
— in March 1960, in Sharpeville, the police machine-gunned the crowd, killing 69 people and wounding hundreds;
— in June and July 1976, demonstrations by students and high school students were fiercely repressed: 300 dead in Soweto, a thousand in total in the country...
{
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{---}
\begin{itemize}
\item in March 1960, in Sharpeville, the police machine-gunned the crowd, killing 69 people and wounding hundreds;
\item in June and July 1976, demonstrations by students and high school students were fiercely repressed: 300 dead in Soweto, a thousand in total in the country...
\end{itemize}
}
This was until the surrender of the “white power” in 1990, asphyxiated after the popular uprising and the erosion of American support, and the electoral victory of the ANC in 1994.
Nothing is definitively closed in South Africa, struggling with the heavy legacy of apartheid still inscribed in social inequalities;
@ -205,10 +206,11 @@ Industrial firms in Western countries are all the more overwhelmed by their wast
Therefore, to dump the most toxic waste at a lower cost along the African coasts, to pay so that he closes the eyes of some president, some minister, a tidy sum, what could be easier for the technocrats running large transnational corporations?
In 1988, a contract signed by the British company Sesco-Gibraltar to four ministers from Benin provided for the delivery of 1 to 5 million tonnes of toxic waste for ten years for a ridiculous official fee of \$2.5 per tonne.
Pierre Péan (L'Argent noir(Black money), Fayard, 1988) revealed some other visible elements of this problem: like an iceberg, the essential is hidden, but very real.
Another aspect of the African reality is hunger, which has become in our world mediatized to the point of excess, as a symbol of the black continent.
Who does not remember these images of bloated children, crowds fighting over the bag of saving rice brought by generous patrons?
However, this image of Africa, even if it was born of good feelings, is false, it is enough to realize it by visiting cities and villages.
Certainly, hunger is a very real scourge, which has wiped out tens of thousands of Africans over the past ten years, and is still preparing to do so;
Admittedly, this endemic hunger sometimes originates from climatic causes (in the Sahel where the desert extends), and even more demographic (population and herds too numerous for fragile grazing areas).
But famine in Africa is only contingent; it occurs, against a backdrop of difficulties, when society is disturbed by an armed conflict, which prohibits seeds and crops, transport and food storage.
@ -230,7 +232,6 @@ Let us conclude this overview with an enlightening example, most recently highli
In sub-Saharan Africa, 7.4\% of men and women between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with the virus. There are 2.4 million of them in South Africa, 25 to 30\% of adults in Botswana.
Everywhere, life expectancy, which had increased by nearly 15 years from 1960 to 1990, is falling again.
The most dramatic finding is the growing gap in care between industrialized and African countries.
In Western Europe, the number of reported AIDS cases in 1997 was 30 per cent lower than in 1995:
this is, for the most part, due to the effectiveness of current treatments, particularly triple therapy, which costs more than 100,000 francs per year in Europe.
@ -239,6 +240,7 @@ At the international meeting in Abidjan in December 1997, the President and the
And the representatives at the World Bank conference immediately rejected this possibility, for it was contrary to healthy “liberal” logic.
Professor Gentilini, for his part, denounced to the delegates “a crime against humanity that future generations will tragically reproach us”.
Let's say it: this crime against man, in Africa, is called capitalist profit. The century that will begin will surely answer what is for the moment only questions and uncertainties.
We do not know in what sense, but one thing is clear, regardless of the ideologues of the “crimes of communism”:
in this Africa, which is called French-speaking because it was a French colony half a century ago, dreams and hopes of well-being, equality and freedom are not embodied in technocrats and dictators manufactured by the French military academies or the IMF:
@ -253,18 +255,22 @@ Francis Arzalier is a historian, professor at the IUFM of Beauvais, responsible
\section{Rough Bibliography}
C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, \emph{Afrique noire, permanence et ruptures}(Black Africa, permanency and ruptures), Harmattan, 1992.
\emph{Fin du Tiers Monde}, collective dossier, La Découverte, 1996.
P. Péan, \emph{Affaires africaines}(African businesses), Fayard, 1983.
P. Péan, \emph{L'Argent noir}(Black money), Fayard, 1988.
Faligot, Krop, \emph{La piscine}(The swimming pool), French Secret Service 1944-84.
M. Cahen, \emph{Mozambique, révolution implosée}(Mozambique, revolution imploded), l'Harmattan, 1987.
Mr. Cukierman, \emph{Cap sur la liberté. Afrique du Sud}(Heading toward freedom. South Africa), Messidor, 1987.
J. P. Chrétien, \emph{Le défi de l’ethnicisme. Rwanda, Burundi}(The Challenge of Ethnicism. Rwanda, Burundi), Karthala, 1997.
A. Gascon, \emph{La grande Ethiopie}(The great Ethiopia), Éd. CNRS, 1995.
Centre bordelais d'études de l'Afrique Noire: D. Bach, \emph{La politique africaine du général de Gaulle} (The African policy of General De Gaulle), Éditions Pedone, 1980.
\emph{Changement du climat et production agricole} (Climate change and agricultural production), PAO study by F. Bazzaz and W. Sombroek, Ed. FAO-polytechnica, 1997.
Collection of the journal \emph{Aujourd'hui l'Afrique}, from n° 53 (Nov. 94) to 65 (January 1998), articles by Y. Grenet, R. Borrelly, C. Grandrien, S. Cerqueira, F. Wurtz, M. Dos Santos, M. Macheve, H. Ibrahim Ali, B. Bouché, J. Kagabo, P. Kaldor, F. Arzalier, etc.
\emph{Journal de la paix, Pax Christi France}, special feature France Sudan, June 1995.
Powderkegs of the planet, published by \emph{Le Monde Diplomatique}, January-February 1998, articles by A. Conchiglia, P. Leymaire, C.Braekman, J. L. Pénina.
{
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{}
\begin{itemize}
\item C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, \emph{Afrique noire, permanence et ruptures}(Black Africa, permanency and ruptures), Harmattan, 1992.
\item\emph{Fin du Tiers Monde}, collective dossier, La Découverte, 1996.
\item P. Péan, \emph{Affaires africaines}(African businesses), Fayard, 1983.
\item P. Péan, \emph{L'Argent noir}(Black money), Fayard, 1988.
\item Faligot, Krop, \emph{La piscine}(The swimming pool), French Secret Service 1944-84.
\item M. Cahen, \emph{Mozambique, révolution implosée}(Mozambique, revolution imploded), l'Harmattan, 1987.
\item Mr. Cukierman, \emph{Cap sur la liberté. Afrique du Sud}(Heading toward freedom. South Africa), Messidor, 1987.
\item J. P. Chrétien, \emph{Le défi de l’ethnicisme. Rwanda, Burundi}(The Challenge of Ethnicism. Rwanda, Burundi), Karthala, 1997.
\item A. Gascon, \emph{La grande Ethiopie}(The great Ethiopia), Éd. CNRS, 1995.
\item Centre bordelais d'études de l'Afrique Noire: D. Bach, \emph{La politique africaine du général de Gaulle} (The African policy of General De Gaulle), Éditions Pedone, 1980.
\item\emph{Changement du climat et production agricole} (Climate change and agricultural production), PAO study by F. Bazzaz and W. Sombroek, Ed. FAO-polytechnica, 1997.
\item Collection of the journal \emph{Aujourd'hui l'Afrique}, from n° 53 (Nov. 94) to 65 (January 1998), articles by Y. Grenet, R. Borrelly, C. Grandrien, S. Cerqueira, F. Wurtz, M. Dos Santos, M. Macheve, H. Ibrahim Ali, B. Bouché, J. Kagabo, P. Kaldor, F. Arzalier, etc.
\item\emph{Journal de la paix, Pax Christi France}, special feature France Sudan, June 1995.
\item Powderkegs of the planet, published by \emph{Le Monde Diplomatique}, January-February 1998, articles by A. Conchiglia, P. Leymaire, C.Braekman, J. L. Pénina.
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