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The Berlin Wall fell for Africa too – I'm living proof

By: Charles Onyango-Obbo

[ Posted On: 2009-11-25 ]

[ Charles Onyango-Obbo ]

The 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an event that marked the beginning of the end of Communism, has been a huge story almost everywhere in the world.

For most of November, I have not been able to turn on BBC or CNN without running into a programme on how the collapse of the Wall changed the world, freed Eastern Europe from Soviet oppression, and ushered in a new era of freedom.

In Africa, however, the anniversary has been largely ignored.

Generally, there is nothing in Africa that is celebrated with passion 20 years later.

This seeming shortness of memory has fuelled prejudices that we are a people who are allergic to serious thought.

As Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni likes to say, it is one reason why our ancestors sold their fellow Africans into slavery for trinkets and mirrors!

This criticism misses the point that our amnesia is purposeful.

It means we don't have centuries-old enmities like that between the Turks and Kurds.

Unlike Europe and Asia, African societies never fought against each other for 100 years.

Had that happened, in addition to tropical diseases, the ravages of famines, and dreadful poverty, Africans would all have perished.

Seriously, though, one reason why the end of Communism is not a big deal in Africa is because the "second liberation" wave that it unleashed ended in disillusionment.

One-party dictatorships (both pro-Soviet communists/socialists and pro-Western "capitalists") were overthrown; there was a return to multiparty politics; adoption of free-market economic policies; and the generals retreated to the barracks.

However, when the dust settled, where once there was a thieving and murderous "socialist" or "capitalist" one-party tyrant, soon we had pro-free market, corrupt thugs stealing elections and doing much the same things the pre-fall-of-Berlin Wall political bandits did.

Still, the fall of the Wall and the end of the East-West Cold War impacted Africa extensively.

For one, Nelson Mandela might never have been released, and South Africa would probably still be an apartheid state.

And there would be no "civil society" as we know it today.

Muthoni Wanyeki would not be writing a column on this page. And neither would I. I would probably be a bribe-taking sweaty civil servant in the Ministry of Culture and Gender in Kampala, who knows?

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Charles Onyango-Obbo -- is Uganda's leading political commentator. He is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products. Charles writes for The Monitor, and The East African, a Nation-Media publication. Be sure to check out his Article Archive.

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