Heal Africa by Backing a Major Recovery Plan

By ANTHONY HAZLITT HEARD

Aug. 31, 2001 12 AM PT

Anthony Hazlitt Heard, a former editor of the Cape Times, Cape Town, South Africa, is a special advisor to the office of the South African president. The views expressed here are his own

Reparations for slavery is one idea for making up for the wrongs of the past. But here’s another that should be on the table this week at the United Nations’ world conference on racism in South Africa: acknowledging past horrors by throwing U.S. weight behind the new African recovery plan.

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, working closely with other key African leaders, such as Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, has been burning the midnight oil to come up with a plan that offers the U.S. and other developed nations a partnership with a peaceful, well-governed continent in return for major financial assistance.

This would not be a handout, but an investment in Africa’s future that also could help the world economy. One thing is sure: An Africa that is violent and dying and a burden to the world brings only continuing refugee flows and unchecked violence and pestilence.

The cynicism in developed countries about Africa’s capacity to beat its many swords into plowshares (to use Atlantic Charter language) is based on the post-colonial history of freed Africa since the late 1950s.

But there is a new and powerful breed of African leader in Africa, democrats such as Mbeki and Obasanjo, who are determined to end war and want and who also know their economics.

At the same time, Africa’s regional and continental groupings are working resolutely at substituting socioeconomic progress for conflict. Toward that end, they are increasingly prepared to isolate and blackball rogue states.

African recovery--particularly considering the HIV/AIDS epidemic that afflicts the continent--is a tall order. The job is to demonstrate that the continent can rejuvenate itself politically, socially and economically.

For its part, the United States could lead the way among the Group of 8 developed countries to help Africa. This would go a long way toward healing a continent that has suffered horribly from slavery.

This week in Durban, depending on the degree of its involvement, the United States could have a creative influence.