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http://www.suntimes.co.za/suntimesarchive/1998/10/25/insight/in08.htm
Africa must be brought back from the brink
THE US State Department's Susan Rice has warned that the conflagration in
Central Africa could plunge the continent into its "first world war".
These words have been echoed by South Africa's Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Aziz Pahad, who has warned that the conflict could "explode into a major continental war".
These are rough words from the mouths of those who usually prefer to be more diplomatic, and there is good reason to take them seriously.
Already, there are at least 10 countries that have sent their troops to Congo to support the government of Laurent Kabila or his rebel opponents to the east. These forces are growing in number every day. Troops from Chad and Sudan, backed by Libya, are involved. The Southern African states of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia are involved.
Even more alarming is the decision by Kabila to mobilise the Interahamwe militia - the force that was responsible for the deaths of half a million Rwandans in Africa's worst genocide just four years ago.
This has, in turn, firmed the resolve of the Rwandans, who fear an all-out assault on their borders, to assist the rebels and maintain the buffer zone in eastern Congo.
In the west, Unita leader Jonas Savimbi and his 55 000 guerrillas are said to be better armed and more battle-ready than ever.
Congo has disintegrated into a truly stateless society in which foreign armies, warlords and bandits are fighting each other for the control of what is known to be one of the world's treasure chests of valuable minerals.
What, then, is a country like South Africa, which has thankfully kept its troops out of Congo, to do?
The first priority has to be the mustering of as much diplomatic clout as possible behind an effort to bring the governments of those countries embroiled in the war to their senses.
This President Nelson Mandela has already begun doing with a series of high -level meetings with heads of state involved in the war.
He must rebuild South Africa's credibility as a peace broker. His vacillation on armed involvement in Congo - he was against it and then suddenly for it - must come to an end, and he must return to an insistence on a cease-fire and the withdrawal of troops.
This appears to be the government's approach - for now, anyway.
Any doubts he harboured about the efficacy of military intervention must surely have been answered by the Southern African Development Community's poorly executed Lesotho intervention.
Mandela's second priority must be to prepare for a massive international administrative intervention in Congo aimed at creating a new civilian bureaucracy capable of bringing democracy to Congo.
Peace should not be followed, as has been the case over the past three decades, by yet another corrupt cowboy government that is more interested in dispensing mineral concessions to the highest bidder than the upliftment of the Congolese people.
And nobody should labour under the illusion that Congo should be left to pull itself up by its bootstraps. It is simply incapable of doing so.
When Kabila came to power, South Africa offered him technical assistance aimed at rebuilding the civilian administration, but this has come to naught as he has backed away from democracy.
Next time round, the administrative intervention needs the backing of the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations and a considerable capital investment by global institutions such as the World Bank.
The price Africa is paying for the conflict in Congo is mounting steadily as millions of dollars are squandered on this most pointless war.
It is not trite to say that the future of Africa and the prospects of an African renaissance are now in the hands of peace-makers like Mandela. They must act decisively in the coming weeks before all is lost.