The preparatory meeting for the Peace Conference on Africa finally got under way in Cairo during February, 1986. Europe, America and the Soviets were all duly represented, but their could be no doubt that it was being run, if not dominated by China and Japan. The other power blocs were distracted by domestic problems and by an acute awareness that the best they could hope for was to save something from the apocalypse that was befalling them.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqC9JERU96u
The Soviet Government was particularly distracted by the simmering revolt in their Central Asian Republics, which they knew was being stirred up by Muslim fanatics in North Africa. They maintained their nuclear threat against the fanatics, but the young men in the Kremlin were too shrewd to believe that a nuclear strike alone would solve their problems.
Eventually the Soviets tried the Anglo-Saxon ploy of saying that they would withdraw from the Conference unless there was an end to terrorists activities and propaganda. This had no effect on the North Africans, and since the Kremlin could not afford to be absent from the Conference their bluff was effectively called. But it remains a great weakness of the Peace Conference that it cannot begin to remove an apparent and constant threat of a nuclear incident.
When the Conference opened Europe and America were relatively free from terrorism--the Black Hand and ARM were as good as their word---but their governments' bargaining power was reduced by the clear signals that elections were going to go against the party in office in the four main powers. At this date (September 1987) three of these elections have been held: in Britain the Conservatives have been replaced by a coalition of the Alliance and the Commonwealth Group, consisting of over 100 defectors, mainly from the Conservative Party; in West Germany there is an SPD administration which is dependent on Green Party votes; while in France the Presidency has been retained by the Socialists against the trend which has carried a nationalist anti-African right into power in the National Assembly two years earlier. In the United States, with fourteen months of electioneering, Senator Specter seems to be forging ahead with his peace and reconciliation platform.
What these disparate electoral trends demonstrate is a feeling on the part of the majority th at they do not want to risk major hostilities in order to maintain some mastery over Africa. The basic mood is isolationist not imperialist, and that means that the North Atlantic community is playing a very weak hand in the restructuring of Africa-world relations which began in Harare, Zimbabwe, and is now proceeding in Kenya.
The initiatives have all been coming from Japan, China and Australia. It was Australian PM Robert Hawke who suggested Nairobi, Kenya as the venue of the Conference, thus saving Britain's face by making an international UN city out of the former British colony of Kenya. It was the Japanese and Chinese economic ministers who worked out the grand design for an Africa Central Bank.
In addition to the long term problems of restructuring, the preparatory conference in Cairo was faced by an immediate food crisis in the cities of Africa which had to be dealt with before any solid basis for restructuring could be created. Australia pulled one of its veteran international civil servants out of retirement, and within weeks the creaky clapped-out machinery of United Nations food relief was working as if new in collaboration with the international grain merchants, the urban guerillas, the churches and charities of the West, and such civil authorities as remained in Africa. It is the well publicized success of this relief effort which is not building the reputation of the new United Nations being established in Kenya.
Under powerful Asian influence the Cairo conference drafted proposals for an Africa Central Bank (ACB), comprising both development and monetary institutions. This was to be clearly affiliated with the UN, with its own voting structure which gave a slight majority of votes to Africa, but protected the management of the ACB from being dominated by the votes of its beneficiaries. The provisional President of the new body is the current Minister of Finance of Egypt.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMxJbHPMYq3
The ACB was the key to restructuring of the global economy and under the guise of economics it was to deal with the most delicate issues of national sovereignty. It was Takeshita's stroke of genius to discuss this machinery in a conference of finance and economic ministers accustomed to horse-trading and producing workable compromises, rather than in a summit of heads of government, each programmed to fight for every inch of national sovereignty.
The proposals which came out of the Cairo preliminary meeting gave very wide powers of initiative to the ACB's expert international staff. These technocrats were to ready plans for economic growth and the redistribution of resources resulting from that growth which would end "absolute and inhuman poverty in Africa" by the close of the millennium. These proposals would be debated and implemented in the 25-man board of the ACB, and when accepted they would be binding on all member states---the only alternative was resignation from the world economic community. The costs of this huge development program would be met in party by private investment, including borrowings by the ACB on the private markets of the richer nations; but the large amount of grant money which was needed for the poorest nations would be raised by a graduated tax on the gross national product of all nations whose income per head of population was above the poverty line, set at $1,00 per annum. A second tax would be levied on the consumption of non-renewable resources, such as oil, coal, copper, etc. Two controversial additions to this tax had been proposed by the Chinese: first, that it should be levied on the consumption of topsoil (i.e., the amount of fertile African soil lost through erosion); second, that it should apply to the consumption (i.e., purchase cost) of all weapons of war by African military regimes. China further proposed that the consumption tax should be increased for countries with a net reproduction rate above replacement level; but this attempt to penalize higher birth rates was so strongly opposed by Africa that China withdrew it, giving a warning that something like it would be introduced later.
The weapon tax was almost universally unpopular with African governments because it struck at what they saw as their basic reason for existence---to defend their sovereignty against enemies internal and external. But governments in the West were under pressure from their general public since all their expensive weaponry had so clearly failed to protect them against the menace of terrorism, and they were quite prepared to see a reduction in arms brought about by methods which diverted some funds to deal with the origins of such terrorism.
The only representative to speak openly against the proposal was Mr. Agner Eusebio, representing Mozambique. A few weeks later (August 4, 1986) these countries revealed their motive by declaring SORUSA their main enemy in Southern Africa and that South Africa's neighbors intended to form a multinational coalition to keep their nuclear-powered enemy in check.
This provided a crisis for the UN during its first week at its new headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The security council met at once and a resolution sponsored jointly by the US, Japan, the USSR, India, and Italy threatened an immediate economic blockade on the southern cone of the Dark Continent. Food and medical aid going to their cities was stopped at once. Faced by such determined unity, within 24 hours the countries of Southern Africa, led by Mozambique, withdrew their plans to unite against the SORUSA. Once again the new UN proved its mettle and won a battle without moving a soldier or firing a shot.
As the editor of this contemporary history I have been invited by Ngengi Njonjo, the new African Secretary General of the United Nations, to attend the opening of the Peace Conference on Africa which assembled in Kenya on August 15, 1986. In his speech of welcome the Secretary General said that this peace conference was meeting not in an atmosphere of universal defeat and total destruction after World War III, but in the more hopeful aftermath of Africa's war against poverty and neglect. While a major battle had been won in securing recognition by the affluent world that they could not afford to neglect the poverty of 3/4 of mankind, there remained a long hard struggle to reshape the international order, to change it from the present acquisitive, competitive jungle to a more collaborative, sharing society. Polite applause throughout the hall greeted these remarks, for both sides were really girding themselves for just such a competitive struggle.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyYEqPyAPT2
Looking around the hall that day I could see that the delegations of Africa were feeling aggressively confident that they could establish their new intercontinental economic order; the West aware how weak its hand was but assuming a cheerful poker face: the Soviet Union concealing its paranoid fear behind an unfriendly mask. Hardly the ingredients for a statesmanlike world settlement.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz9PNwCoi2m
Later that night I took the rough proofs of this book up to Ngengi Njonjo's suite at the top of the Masai Mara Sopa Lodge. I stood for a few minutes at the window overlooking the magnificent Serengeti plain, and down to the full-scale model of Lutyens' Whitehall Cenotaph, now dwarfed by the office tower blocks surrounding it, but still bravely commemorating those Africans who died to save the British Empire in two world wars. The Secretary-General spoke before I knew he had entered the room: "It is some comfort that we do not have to add our tribute to the dead of a third world war on that overcrowded cenotaph---at least not yet."451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMrj0snUYHu
I turned around to find the Secretary General standing in the door of his office with his previous visitor, a strikingly handsome black beside him. As they came over to where I stood I recognized him, even before he was introduced as "Sebastian Foxworth, who has been chosen by Liberia to represent it at this conference. Unfortunately, he must leave us now to preside over a new grouping 'Sub-Saharan Africa and the Africans of the Slavery Diaspora.'"451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡroH17gprTM
When Foxworth had left I gave Njonjo the proofs, and asked him how confident he felt that the Peace Conference would succeed in achieving peace and progress; had we learned anything in the past two years from the narrowly averted apocalypse?451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEPQZpAy3H8
He replied: "I have learned something---that this is Africa's chance and if it is a failure we will be to blame---not Europe, which has lost its empire here; not America, which in my view lost opportunities for world leadership in the last decade by fighting Moscow in Asia and losing.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8et58FN92L
"But where do we go from here? And who will take us? Among our Asian delegations I can detect some brilliant ideas: China understands the population problem and is trying to do something to deal with it; Japan realizes the futility of vast expenditure on weapons; India conceives the idea of intercontinental collaboration through the ACB. Even we in Kenya have some ideas about how to organize urban societies, which might help to solve the growing desperate problems of megalopolitan living.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKonVGYh4mC
"But nowhere do I find someone who has the vision of a comprehensive new world order, of a global village that honors the thrifty, the small consumer, and penalizes the extravagant who live beyond the means of their fellow villages. Jesus Christ understood this and despised the mania for conspicuous consumption, but today I can see no leaders who promise their followers anything except increased consumption, and that in a world of diminishing resources. Who is going to satisfy their desire for an ever higher standard of living without consuming scarce resources? And who will dare to tell the millions of poor in Africa that they will never become big consumers of material goods as Asians, Europeans and Americans are, and will continue to be?451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ02piuXbY8W
"But the African peasants too can be happy and fulfilled with more renewable resources.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN0QUgl020Y
"We have a very short time in which to match consumption with resources; but we cannot succeed unless the urge to acquire is matched by the desire to share, unless the prickly sense of sovereignty is defeated by the neighborly feeling of community. If we fail it will not need a nuclear war to make Africa, and beyond, a desert.451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRXYiZQ9w3M
"It is part of the African social heritage to share with neighbors in the village, but how far has that spirit been overlaid by the buffeting of competition from the West or perverted by the forced sharking imposed from above by successive governments in China. In the final analysis we must recognize that it is Africa's opportunity to make the world a safe home for all races, for poor peasants as well as rich merchants. The future of mankind is now in the hands of the continent from which mankind sprang!"451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqASua7gJiU
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THE END451Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8WIlHabmam
