Daring To Intervene in Africa

Burundi, a small country in East Africa, is on the verge of imploding. Members of its diaspora plead for intervention. In the West, many are hesitating; not necessarily due to indifference, but because they don’t know how to intervene without causing controversy.

Even if the formulation was meant to be diplomatic, John Kerry delivered his analysis with brutal honesty: “We are deeply concerned about President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision, which flies directly in the face of the constitution of this country.” The repudiation is biting. The position is clear: The U.S. does not approve of the Burundian president’s candidacy for a third term. Since the announcement of Nkurunziza’s candidacy, the small neighboring country of Rwanda has entered a spiral of violence that is taking on alarming proportions. Even yesterday, the police fired live bullets at protesters.

There is a long way to go before John Kerry’s statement leads to American intervention (in any form whatsoever). But no matter what, this position represents a remarkable break with the verbal caution that has become the norm when it comes to Western intervention in African affairs.

“Not restraint,” diplomat objected, “but rather disappointment since Africans betrayed their word after Kananaskis …”*

The Promise of Kananaskis

In June 2002, at Kananaskis in Alberta, Group of Eight (G-8) leaders were asked to support a new plan for development aid in Africa, presented by African leaders themselves. The central element of this plan was a mechanism for judgement of the continent’s leaders by their peers, in hopes of promoting good governance.

Just a few months later, the president of Zimbabwe, a ludicrous dictator, plunged his country even further into its denial of democracy and decided to expropriate the land of white farmers. The crime is caricatural. African leaders should have had no difficulty dissociating themselves from one of their own who violated the most elementary rules of law. Instead, many supported him, claiming that Western criticism constituted an interference inspired by disguised neocolonialism. “The fear of being labeled a neocolonialist has become an unspoken restraint for many Western leaders.”**

Thus, there remain two principal currents of complaisant discourse on the African continent: the relativists — who say that the West has its own faults, which delegitimizes any criticism of Africa — and the “compassionate” — who excuse Africa’s blunders as a result of the wounds (slavery, colonialism, etc.) of the past. We could also add the “conspiracists,” who absolve Africans of all responsibility by citing a global or world-power conspiracy to deny the continent its right to happiness.

Any honest and effective intervention in Africa must first go through a liberation of critical speech. After all, sometimes tough love is the best medicine.

Could it be that John Kerry’s remark has finally launched a new era in which we refuse to see Africa die from our polite indifference? Let’s hope so. For Burundi, meanwhile, it is already urgent to move beyond the stage of discourse.

*This quotation, although accurately translated, could not be independently verified.

**This quotation, although accurately translated, and its source, could not be independently verified.