Africa

Last Sunday we knew of the paper written by Lt. Gen. Díaz de Villegas in January after resigning as Commander in Chief of the UN operation in Congo. Then many accused him of being a coward running away. Because of it, he lost his third star and was thrown into the forgotten realms of the reserve. However, a detailed read on the document reveals another truth.

Díaz de Villegas complaints about the lack of soldiers, the lack of foreseen and the lack of equipment that, according to him, made impossible to accomplish the tasks of the mission. His military code of honor made for him resignation the only option available if he didn’t want to risk the lives of the men under his command. The facts have given him the point: everything he predicted will happen, happened.

Africa is still a forgotten world for (almost) everyone. In the 90’s, the UN suffered probably the most painful shame on his history because of the late, inefficient and clumsy answer to the genocide in Rwanda. More than a decade after that, the blame is still going on, for different reasons but in the same part of the world and with a different background, as Lt. Gen. Villegas briefing reports.

It isn’t better neither in the north neither in the south of the Great Lakes region. In the south, Zimbabwe is a clear example of a failed country. With a Government under suspicion, more than a 94% of unemployment, inflation rising to more than 200.000.000% (that really is a poisoned sweet for Mr. Biti, leader of the opposition party and new Minister of Finance), the only thing that could make things worse was a cholera epidemic, that already has taken more than 3.400 victims. But, of course, Mr. Mugabe is over all that, especially on his birthday day.

In the north, things go a bit better. Not much, though. It’s a good idea to unite African countries under a political umbrella similar to that of the UE. But to try to get over such an empire by being crown as “king of kings” isn’t. It reminds us dangerously to those old dictators and emperors form previous centuries. But it is even worse if we try to head east into Somalia.

However, even if as I said before “almost” everyone forgets about Africa, there are a few that don’t. One of the biggest investors in Africa is China. The hunger of the Asian tiger for natural resources and the richness of the black continent make them perfect partners.

In exchange for oil, iron and other minerals, China invests in development. The boom of new technologies in Africa depends deeply in the work of Chinese firms, like Huawei Tech. Surely that name will appear in the new African tour Mr. Hu Jintao will made these days (the fifth one in five years since he was elected).

However, what China is doing in Africa isn’t anything but an updated version of the European pillage in previous centuries. Only the Magreb and South Africa escape (a bit) from that. In the case of the North of Africa, its close position near to Europe eases everything. For South Africa, the big opportunity will come with the 2010 World Cup. However, the racist incidents of a year ago –have they learnt from their masters?- are a long deep problem to eradicate. In some other areas, instead, they are ahead of us. There, i.e., Mr. George Bush has already died. It seems that bushisms won’t die with his creator.



Photo via muchapasta.com.