Anthony Gifford, Contributor
I HAVE returned from a week in Mozambique. The images which I saw were of a positive people on the path to recovery from disasters which were not of their making. They were celebrating 30 years of independence from Portuguese colonial rule. There was a parade of enthusiastic young people. There was a superb ballet performance. President Guebuza, an energetic former cadre of the liberation movement FRELIMO, spoke of pride in being Mozambican, and hailed the progress made in reducing poverty and increasing education. In the field of justice, which I studied more closely, I saw young judges and prosecutors being trained to go out and administer the law with honesty and compassion.
I returned via London in time to watch the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. The images of Africa which I then saw were of starving children and people on their knees. The performers were overwhelmingly white, and in the audience of 200,000 I could see only a tiny number of black people. The message was that African children were dying and the good people of the West could save them by putting pressure on their governments. The causes of the disaster were said to be civil war, corruption and misgovernment. No presenter attributed any responsibility for Africa's problems to the policies of those governments.
Mozambique was plundered for centuries by Portuguese colonists who did virtually nothing for the African people. After independence, a vicious campaign was launched by the apartheid regime to destabilise Mozambique. It trained, armed, financed and transported into Mozambique squads of so-called 'rebels' whose mission was to destroy the infrastructure throughout the country. The cruellest blow of all was when the South African military in 1985 engineered the plane crash which killed President Machel.
APARTHEID DEFEATED
In the 1990s, with apartheid defeated, Mozambique had to pick itself up from the ground again. Their problems were compounded by floods and drought. They worked with the governments and aid agencies of the West to build a system of multi-party democracy subject to severe structural adjustment. The country was opened up to privatisation and foreign investment, and while some became rich, the majority remained desperately poor, especially in the rural areas.
But poverty is not the whole story. In spite of all the blows, Mozambique in 2005 seems to be turning a significant corner. There are other African success stories: Ghana, Senegal, Botswana, Tanzania and, of course, South Africa, are some of the well-governed democracies where the dominant picture is far removed from the pathetic images on the screens in Hyde Park. I wish that Bob Geldof had shown less virtuous pity and more respectful solidarity, including having African artistes on the platform. Given the influence of Africans on the music of the West, and the objective of supporting Africa, to have a nearly all-white line-up was wrong.
But I do not dismiss the actions of the millions who turned out to register a protest, however simplistic, against the injustice of African poverty. It is not for the West to save Africa. Africans are capable of saving themselves. But if the leaders of the G8, in response to the voice of the masses, can remove the economic shackles in which they still keep Africa bound, if they can agree to pay back a fraction of the wealth which they took from Africa, then African progress will be accelerated. And when that happens, the crowds in Hyde Park may understand that Africans can be role models and not just victims.
Anthony Gifford, attorney-at-law, was invited by the Mozambique government to take part in the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of independence.
