(10 of 10)
Indeed, the Reagan Administration has sliced its aid to Zimbabwe from $75 million to $40 million, partly out of concern about Mugabe's increasingly undemocratic and anti-Western policies.
Some experts contend that the proliferation of authoritarian governments in Africa represents a stage in the political development of what are still very young nations. "We have to recognize that the constitutions we bequeathed to our former African colonies don't work in some places," says a British official. "It is not a mortal sin for these countries to adapt them to their own particular circumstances.
When one looks at the reality, it is remarkable that Africa is as stable as it is."
According to Wole Soyinka, a well-known Nigerian playwright and essayist, Americans and Europeans should not measure democracy in Africa by their own standards.
"When Westerners speak of a democracy," he says, "they think of specific structures: a legislature or parliament, elections conducted by secret ballot, certain formalities of debate — in short, the rituals that were bequeathed to the ex-colonies in the hope they would remain house-trained." Soyinka argues that "the veneer of democracy" bestowed by the former colonial powers "has badly peeled." Its worst manifestation, in his view: the one-party states that have too often become en trenched civilian dictatorships.
Many thoughtful Africans believe that, given time, some sort of home-grown democratic system will take root, although few are able to describe what form it will take. In Africa, as everywhere, economic growth requires a stable political environment.
The evidence so far suggests that countries such as the Ivory Coast, Botswana, Senegal, Cameroon and Kenya have achieved political stability through a mixed economy, a strong, pragmatic central government, and evolving democratic institutions, however imperfect.
A quarter-century after Uhuru!, African leaders must recognize that anticolonial rhetoric may win votes, ,but it will not solve problems. However they may feel about the colonial era, it cannot be expunged from history. The positive legacies of the past must be emphasized, while new ideas are tested to deal with the problems of the present and future. A high priority will be to chip away at divisive tribal enmities. Finally, Africans must accept the essential requirement of political stability: the orderly, peaceful transfer of power in the best interest of the governed. Without that resolve, nationhood in Africa will too often be, as it has been in the past, a sad parody of itself. —By Russ Hoyle. Reported by John Borrell/ Senegal, Marsh Clark/Kenya and Peter Hawthorne/Mozambique