On elephants and grass

Oct 07, 2008 Editorial

There is an old African saying that says: whether elephants fight or make love, the grass always suffers. The Africans obviously know a thing or two about elephants – including some from the human species.

And well they might. Over the centuries, many elephants from the north have cavorted over their continent, leaving the grass in a seemingly permanent state of stupefaction.

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, as the young European elephants battled to exploit the wealth of the “new world”, the grass of Africa was cooperatively scythed, as millions of her people were shipped off into slavery to labour in tropical plantations.

In the nineteenth century, Africa was carved up by arbitrarily drawn lines in the salons of Europe to create “colonies” for the exploitation of raw materials and the dumping of manufactured goods.

The grass, in the expression of our Walter Rodney, became even more “underdeveloped”. Finally, in the post WWII era, after “independence” had been won, the grass became even more grotesquely trampled when the two elephants left standing – the US and the USSR – squared off for the right to declare who was Numero Uno.

With the Humpty Dumpy-like breakup of the USSR in the closing decade of the twentieth century, some optimists thought that Africa might now at long last be given some breathing space for its grass to re-sprout. But there are troubling signs that a new round of elephantine trampling might, unbelievably, be in the offing for African grass.

Last week, the US Government announced that it was creating a new command to coordinate all of its military operations in Africa.

Dubbed “Africom,” it joins the five other commands that coordinated the US world-wide military programme. This does not mean that prior to Africom the US did not undertake operations in Africa, but these were overseen by three other commands – European, Pacific and Central.

What it does mean is that Africa is now deemed important enough to the US strategic interests to deserve its own nerve centre. This is an understandably controversial programme that many Africans fear has a hidden agenda skewed by the war on terror and a self-interested scramble for resources.

The US has tried to reassure intensely skeptical African Governments that view it as an unwelcome expansion of the U.S.-led war on terrorism and a bid to secure greater access to the continent’s vast oil resources.

Some cite the increased presence of China in the continent as the trigger for the move, and fear the consequences of the old polarisation among elephants. Several countries have refused to host the command, and officials say Africom will be based in Stuttgart, Germany, for the foreseeable future.

The US has asserted that the change reflects a new orientation for its military forces – an orientation that is supposedly exemplified by the activities of Southcom, which oversees military operations in our neck of the woods in South America.

The mission, it is stated, is to complement and support American security and development policies to include missions like deploying military trainers to improve the abilities of local counter-terrorism forces, assigning military engineers to help dig wells and build sewers, and sending in military doctors to inoculate the local population against diseases.

However, a number of specialists in African and Latin American politics at non-governmental organisations express apprehension that the new emphasis of both these commands represents an undesirable injection of the military into American foreign policy, a change driven by fears of terrorists or desires for natural resources.

Refugees International released statistics showing that the percentage of development assistance controlled by the Defence Department had grown to nearly 22 from 3.5 percent over the past 10 years, while the percentage controlled by the Agency for International Development dropped to 40 from 65 percent. These are not reassuring numbers for Third World Governments on the mend from the old rivalries.

It is our sincere hope that the unfortunate history of elephants, whether frolicking or fighting, does not repeat itself either in Africa or in South America. For peace on earth, the grass must be allowed to grow.

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On elephants and grass

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