Africa: Who Is Safe?

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To the Ill-Prepared. One of the great ironies of the 20th century is that independence came most quickly and with the least resistance to the world's poorest, most ill-prepared region. The vast swath of independent sub-Saharan Africa sweeps from Dakar on the Atlantic through the rain forests of the Congo, up and down the great lakes and Great Rift of East Africa, up to the bone-dry horn of Somalia. This 7,800,000-sq.-mi. area could almost contain Red China and the U.S., yet has only 186 million inhabitants. With few exceptions, the 29 nations of the region are abysmally poor, showing a per capita income of less than $100 annually (compared with Latin America's $295). Only 10% of the population can read and write.

Part of the blame for black Africa's current chaotic state lies with its for mer colonial rulers. "Divide and rule" was the watchword, and by encouraging tribalism, the colonial masters repressed the development of modern, nation-welding institutions in order to ensure easy administration. Over this mosaic of tribal loyalties and languages were laid arbitrary "national" boundaries, producing a cartography of chaos, a sort of automatic Balkanization that only heightened the African's confused sense of identity. The huge Bakongo tribe, for example, was split among three vastly different colonial regimes—the French Congo, the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola.

Guarding the colonial boundaries were armies of black conscript soldiers, whose white officers often encouraged their pride and savagery. Rarely did the colonialists train more than a thin rank of African civil servants, technologists or military commanders. In all the Congo, there were no doctors, one lawyer, 31 university graduates and 84 junior-high teachers when freedom came.

The New Class. The wave of independence that washed over Africa, beginning with Sudan in 1956, was followed almost immediately by a riptide of readjustment. From Ouagadougou to Bagamoyo, the bush dwellers flocked to the cities, ready to swap their tribal heritage for a briefcase and a $30 suit. The cities suddenly bulged at their seams: from a population of 15,000 in 1939, the Ivory Coast's capital of Abidjan has swollen to more than 250,000.

"Africanization" was the cry: turn out the white civil servants and let the Africans run the show. Thus arose Africa's own version of the New Class, comprising everyone with a salary. And the salary, in most cases, had to be just what the Europeans were paid. In Nigeria today, young Hausa tribesmen in pin-stripe suits earn as much as $8,400 a year as government civil servants, live in lovely houses on fashionable Ikoyi Island in Lagos. In Dahomey, fully 60% of the country's budget goes toward paying government personnel.