10.00.08
Victoria falls
Africa. Land of majesty and tradition… brimming with diamonds, gold and natural wonder.
Pause
00.22 Tribal dancing, poverty But also the Dark Continent. Freed from colonialism, but not from corruption, famine and war.
00.38 Big Men Politics has degenerated into ‘winner takes all’…
– where an autocratic ruler, the ‘Big Man’, reminiscent of the all-powerful village chief, rigs elections, emasculates the courts, squanders resources and silences opposition
00.57 IV Andre du Pisani,
University of Namibia
The President is more popular than the constitution. The President has been put on a pedestal. He’s virtually untouchable. He is the Big Man of politics and to be a Big Man you must be able to command resources.
01.18 gold Resources Africa has in abundance, yet most of its people know only poverty. What holds this continent back? How can Africa unlock its wealth and emerge from the shadow of Big Man politics. Will it ever beat a path to true democracy?
TITLE Africa:
In Defiance of Democracy
01.52 Charles Taylor/ Emir’s court Nigeria Democracy has not found much succour in Africa. Out of more than 300 heads of state since 1960, less than 20 have stepped down voluntarily. Today Africa is governed by a mix of democracies, monarchies, one party states, Islamic republics and military juntas.
Zimbabwe Riots In the vacuum of fair political leadership which has yawned throughout Independent Africa, the ‘Big Man’ syndrome has crippled many economies.
02.29 Nigeria elections But the democratic process has taken root. First South Africa saw off apartheid and then helped foster an end to 15 years of military rule in Nigeria.
02.53 Mbeki helicopter lands ‘Amandla!’ or Power to the Blacks, a slogan resonating from apartheid South Africa when such things were the stuff of dreams. Since Independence scant African leaders have ruled wisely. Power has intoxicated and corrupted…
03.14 Mandela & Mbeki But with the emergence of Nelson Mandela as a world-class leader Africans were reminded that the Big Man can be beneficent and kind. He saw power as a privilege. His successor Thabo Mbeki says healthy African democracy means a better life for the masses.
03.36 IV Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa You hear people saying we want to live as the whites do. And when you ask what does that mean, they say we want to have a house, which must be electrified, must have running water, I must be able to buy a TV set and run it off the mains. That’s their vision. You’ve got to impact on the standard of living of people in that way, so that you, as I say, you pull them out of the poverty.
04.07 Girls dancing Mbeki is extremely sensitised to the dangers of the ‘Big Man’ syndrome. To govern is, he says, to work for the people rather than wield power over them.
IV Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa You’ve got to make sure that you don’t convey an image of yourself to the people, as somebody above them, who is out of reach, who is a little god, who kind of, when they appear you need to move aside, and open the way. You want to produce the opposite reaction. And to be able to engage the people and let them feel free to raise any issue.
04.51 cattle at sunset Across South Africa land reform has given tens of thousands of black farmers access to land, and to a feeling of belonging. Traditionally, Africans were subsistence farmers, but they were denied land under colonialism and apartheid. So their farming techniques remained rooted in the past.
05.12 IV
Samuel Etetumo,
farmer “In the old days we used to wear a goat’s skin. There were no shirts. We would only wear a goats skin to the fields. We’d look after about twelve cows.”
05.48 mentoring project But now mentoring projects see old guard white farmers teach black farmers the science of cattle selection and disease control.
06.04 cabbages A growth in black commercial farming will, in time, expand South Africa’s middle class. And it is hoped that the growth of the middle class will shore up South African democracy.
06.17 IV Tate Makgoe, Agriculture Project In my own estimation, in ten years we must be having a very serious class of emerging strong black farmers.
06.27 sunflowers Land reform is a painstaking process, but South Africa’s government is working towards a fair distribution of this key natural resource. Mbeki’s vision, which grew out of Mandela’s vision, where all citizens enjoy a democratic voice and economic fruits, is a blueprint for the whole continent.
Fade up SLOGAN Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia
(1964-1991)
‘ We must remember we are not elected kings ….our main concern is to leave behind us stable and genuine people's systems of government.’
07.13 MINERAL RESOURCES MAP Africa has around 30% of the world’s mineral resources… so it has every chance of wealth and success. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana dominate mining. Whilst in Sierra Leone, Angola, Namibia, and Botswana, mining keeps the economy afloat.
Graphic over map In 1999, Africa produced a staggering 80% of the world’s platinum, 55% of its diamonds, 36% of its cobalt, 24% of its gold,
23% of its titanium and 11% of the world’s oil.
07.54 Oil on water shots But few African leaders have chosen the Mandela blueprint and drawn up plans for social welfare. Instead they have enriched their own coffers with mineral wealth, or used it to fund civil war.
08.22 Khartoum In the bustling Sudanese capital Khartoum there is a growing breed of businessmen, profiting from newfound oil wealth despite the civil war here.
08.33 IV Abdul Nasser,
Hotel manager - I’ve been here for four months and I can say ”Hamdullah”, I like it very much!
- You don’t worry about the war?
- No, it’s nothing to worry (about), its very safe here in Sudan. You don’t even feel there is such a thing as a war in Sudan. You can walk freely at night, there is no robbery, you feel practically safe here.
08.56 oil pix There could be as much as $45 billion worth of oil in Sudan. The 220 000 barrels pumped daily, are touted by the government as the solution to the 19 year civil war here. But Human Rights Groups claim oil revenue, estimated at half a billion dollars in the year 2000, is now funding the government’s war on the Christians in the South.
09.23 Khartoum prayer calls
On paper Sudan has a progressive constitution, but in practise discriminates on religious grounds. Since 1989 it has considered itself Africa’s first Islamic state.
09.39 IV Abdel Aziz Shiddo, Vice-President of Sudan Our constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Fully. The constitution is based on the rights of the citizen to participate in common life irrespective of his religion or different ideologies.
10.02 Whilst Sudanese ministers tout their ‘Constitutional Democracy’, few Christians feel part of the process.
10.09 IV Alfred Taban, Journalist The recent Islamic revival has put a sort of a split. Because now you are either a Muslim who is with them, or you are not a Muslim who is not with them. This has made people to be conscious of their religious belief.
10.32 Missiles Sudanese government troops go into battle with high morale, armed with brand new missiles, now bought with oil as collateral.
10.47 burned villages And the army stands accused of razing villages to clear people off the southern oilfields.
11.01 IV Ousmane Dameri, farmer Those in the north should stop killing us and kidnapping our women and children.
11.14 Critics call the Islamic government a dictatorship.
11.18 IV Ghazi Suleiman,
Lawyer I haven’t seen this oil money, I haven’t seen it. You see, there is no way for any country to develop without transparency, and transparency it means for me democracy, and democracy means for me to respect the declaration... the universal declaration of human rights. I want you to give me one example in the world, in which there is development with a dictatorship.
11.53 oil shots
It’s clear that unless countries like Sudan break the cycle of war with political solutions, mineral wealth will only benefit foreigners and the ruling elite.
12.04 IV Ghazi Suleiman,
Lawyer My advice for any foreign company, if they continue investment in the Sudan, without observing human rights, without observing the struggle in the Sudan for establishing a democratic state, they are part and parcel of the dictatorship.
12.26 El Shifa factory
The bombed ruins of the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory. The US claimed chemical weapons were being made here. They lacked proof of that, but not of Sudanese support for international terror. Support which caste Sudan as a failed state.
12.48 Sufi ceremony, whirling dervish Sudan gained independence from Britain in 1956. Nearly fifty years on, its foreign and domestic policy is in chaos. The country embodies the barriers to progress faced by so much of Africa – the stand-off between rulers and ruled – between those exploiting resources and those who feel entitled to them. If Sudan ceased its war on the Christian South, oil wealth could help the whole country find its way to prosperity.
SLOGAN Charter of the Organization of African Unity
‘To harness the natural and human resources of our continent… peace and security must be established and maintained.’
13.45 MUSIC WAR SEQ Angola’s minerals have long bankrolled its civil war, which began soon after the country won independence from the Portuguese in 1975. Angola’s modern history is shaped by the Cold War, which swept through Africa’s newly independent nations.
14.06 Cold war seq, Savimbi During the cold war years, the socialist MPLA government enjoyed the full support of the Soviet Union and Cuba. Rebel UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was backed by South Africa and the West.
14.25 The Cold War was yet another chapter in the story of Africa’s build-up of foreign arms, making soldiers out of ordinary men. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, money from the western sponsors dried up. But Angola was already awash with arms, and thus the rebels were able to take control of vast swathes of countryside and begin mining diamonds.
14.52 Diamond mine So what began in Angola as a war over ideology, became another struggle for resources. Today the UNITA rebels earn an estimated US$700 million a year from diamonds. The government finances its war with oil.
15.12 Refugee camp Angola’s endless cycle of violence, interrupted only briefly in the mid 1990’s, creates an endless tide of refugees. Forced by bands of roaming UNITA rebels into the hands of a government unable to feed them. Thanks to hunger, disease, AIDS and war, one in three Angolan children will die before they are five. A 1999 UN report singled out Angola, beyond even Sierra Leone or Somalia, as the world’s worst place to be a child.
15.48 IV Maria Flynn, Aid Worker We are now going into the second and third generation of children, and they have really been conceived in violence, they’re growing in violence and the way things are going right now, very likely a lot of them are going to die in violence.
16.05 It’s the things they have seen which have scarred so many African children, like Andre, for life.
16.14 IV Andre We were sleeping when the soldiers came in. Mother tried to hide us, but they searched all over. They took my mother and my sister and when my father saw how many soldiers there were he tried to run- but they cut him on the shoulder. I started crying as I was with my little sister and brother – and now I don’t know where anyone is.
16.44 Africa is the poorest continent: Around half of its 750 million people live in poverty. Street children are among the most helpless.
16.57 IV Andre The most difficult thing about living on the streets is finding food. I have to beg. I do small jobs and carry water into buildings and scratch for food to eat. I also started stealing but I was getting caught, and they beat me. All I wanted was something to eat.
17.26 boys in sewer When Andre can't find room at the shelter, he lives in unimaginable squalor, in, or rather under, the capital.
In the worst place in the world to be a child, this must be the worst address. Andre and other teens share the city sewer.
17.48 Boy in red shirt Even in this stinking filth these children make an effort to feed themselves, from a vegetable garden planted in the septic sludge.
17.59 kids getting grain from under lorry Angola’s soil is blighted by 15 million landmines - more than one for each pair of feet. Mines mean the land can’t be tilled, and aid agencies keep many alive.
But the rebel leader Savimbi’s death in early 2002 led to a ceasefire, and hopefully a lasting end to 30 years of war.
18.21 Diamonds Control of mineral wealth has stoked civil wars not just in Sudan and Angola, but in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
WAR MAP
During the 1990’s, there were at least nineteen armed conflicts in Africa. A dozen wars still raged in the new millennium, with several countries embroiled in the war over minerals in the DRC.
18.51 diamonds The spoils in all of these wars are potentially huge. Behind these bomb-proof doors gleam some of the billion dollars worth of diamonds mined in Angola each year.
19.05 IV
Jakkie Pottgeiter, Institute for Security Studies This is not really a war for democracy. It’s not really a war for the people. It’s not a war from the people. It’s a struggle for power and a struggle for resources, and that’s what makes it such a revolting situation to keep your eye on.
19.18 Whites standing around diamonds The struggle for resources was the entire thrust of colonial rule. Democracy in Europe flourished, but the colonies were run like fiefdoms. Neither the bias of colonization, nor the chaos of the Cold War offered Independent Africa a model for peaceful democratic rule.
Fade up SLOGAN All-African People's Conference,
1958
‘All African peoples vehemently resent the militarization of Africans and the use of African soldiers in a nefarious global game against their brethren’.
20.02 Cold war/ Kabila with Che Guevara
Throughout the struggles for Independence Soviet doctrine offered Africans an alternative to imperialism. Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara even fought in Belgian Congo’s war for Independence.
20.17 Qadhafi arrives
Remnants of socialism can still be found all over Africa, like here in the Great Socialist Arab Jamahiriya of Libya, independent of Italy since 1951. When Colonel Muammar Qadhafi took power in a ‘people’s revolution’ in 1969, the country welcomed him as a strong nationalist leader. He vowed to unite the Arab world, and challenge so-called 'western imperialism'. He also sponsored international terror.
20.50 Qadhafi’s destroyed house In return he became the man America loves to hate – his infant adopted daughter was killed by US bombs in 1986.
21.04 Market At first glance the people of Libya are well off. There’s food to eat, people own their own homes, and unlike many Arab countries, women are free to work.
21.17 Green Book
During the 1970s, Qadhafi penned the ‘Green Book,’ which promotes Arab Socialism. In Qadhafi’s system people govern themselves through committees. Western democracies are seen as false.

21.31 IV Dr Ali Farfer,
Congress Moderator Decisions are taken on their behalf and this is theoretically, morally and politically false. This is illegitimate as we see it. So this is the idea, that the people should be let to decide their own future, to decide their own present.
21.52 conference Every citizen is a member of a ‘Basic People’s Conference’ – which can debate every issue – and make decisions at the highest level. At this twice-yearly General Congress, they even have the right to hire and fire the government ministers.
22.10 Man stops filming On paper it’s a model democracy, but in practise Libya remains a military dictatorship, with strict press censorship.
22.21 Though he behaves like a Head of State, Qadhafi holds no official post from which he can be dismissed. He is seen as the supreme educator. His ‘guidance’ is rarely disregarded.
22.35 Anonymous IV The regime is very oppressive and the risk is very high. Students of the revolutionary committees in Al-Fatah university have actually tried fellow students and hanged them in the university grounds.
22.58 rally The seven years of U.N. sanctions initiated in 1992 for Libya’s links to the Lockerbie bombing are reported to have cost the country US$26 billion in oil revenues.
23.12 To stave off criticism, Qadhafi has handed out fistfuls of petrodollars and built a generous welfare state.
23.21 But chaos and anarchy, rather than power to the people, define Qadhafi’s system. In the Great Jamahiriya, or ‘the State of the masses’ – there is no political opposition.
23.38 Even militant Islam has no voice. Muslim clerics, like journalists, are all controlled by the State. Only the Army has the cohesion to counter Qadhafi, and in recent years he has checked its power.
23.54 Unique democracy, or empty rhetoric? Either way, most see chaos for Libya after Qadhafi has gone.
24.07 SYNC Qadhafi
We should congratulate ourselves that the Libyan people have become a model to the world. You have the right as a citizen to voice your disagreement with any decision or law. You can protest again and again, until you are heard by the people….
24.36 Few would deny that Qadhafi has been a very successful African Big Man.
24.44 Man in audience shouting You are the finest creation of the Arab world. You are the present but you are also the promise of our great future.
Other man Bless us, dear leader!
Fade up SLOGAN Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana
(1960-1966) ‘We prefer self-government with danger, to servitude with tranquillity’.
25.20 Oil and dancing Oil and militant Islam threaten to splinter Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy.
25.27 Nigeria is one of the continent’s poorest countries, but it’s the world’s sixth largest oil producer. Gross corruption has pushed many of its 100 million people, particularly in the southern oilfields of the Niger Delta, to breaking point.
25.50 During the 1990’s, the ruthless General Sani Abacha stole up to $10 billion in oil revenue from his country’s coffers. But cars queue daily for imported fuel and fill-up only once a bribe to the military has changed hands. Those who can’t pay are forcefully sent on their way.
26.18 Mitee in car Ledum Mitee led a campaign with Ken Saro Wiwa against Shell Oil. Saro Wiwa and nine others were executed by the government. Mitee still holds Shell partly responsible for that crackdown.
26.33 IV Ledum Mitee, MOSOP Environmental Activist
They clearly were bringing some sort of blackmail against the government. Look we control over 50% of the oil and if we don’t have a free environment to exploit that resource it has a certain effect on the economy. If you have such a situation and a government that is dependent on only that sole commodity then you can understand, control of political power is almost control of oil resources.
27.02 Traditional landowners here get around $4 a hectare per year in rent from the oil companies. Nigeria’s colonial laws still deem everything beneath the ground belongs not to the landowner, but the government, which drills oil in joint ventures with foreign companies.
27.20 IV Monday Erebo,
Ijaw Activist We need infrastructure development, sustainable manpower development and sustainable infrastructure development. Since the laws cannot enable us to control our resources ourselves.
27.37 Oil spills
Oil pollution has driven youths to seize vehicles and flow stations to demand recompense. The oil companies have been seen as easier to influence than the unyielding government, but such hope was probably misplaced.
27.51 IV Bobbo Brown,
Shell Public Affairs The reality is that we’re just a company. We’re not a parallel government. And the government of Nigeria is the government of a sovereign country. Shell has only limited access, or leverage, with government. And that leverage comes from her being a good corporate citizen.
28.14 Obasanjo

Kaduna shariah destruction pix
In 1999 Nigerians elected a civilian government. President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian, challenged the monopoly on power held by the Muslim north. He also promised stability and an end to corruption, but commentators say more than 10,000 people have since been killed in army killings and ethnic unrest.
28.43 destruction Partly because Nigeria’s newfound democratic climate opened the way for Islamic or Shariah law to sweep across the Muslim north. Here in Kaduna more than 1,000 people died as Christians and Muslims butchered each other in the name of God. Ethnic conflict is a real threat to this young democracy.
29.14 The first governor to introduce Islamic Shariah law claims flogging, amputation and even beheading are deterrents for communities sickened by corruption and crime.
He denies using religion to gain political power, and disputes that Shariah has led to great bloodshed in communities like Kaduna.
29.37 IV Alhaji Sani Ahmed
Zamfara, State Governor Most of it are clashes, political and social interests of different groups of people. Who happen to be Muslim and Christian. Not because of Shariah.
29.50 Whilst the government sees Zamfara as a threat to national security, the governor is proposing power be shared:
29.59 IV Alhaji Sani Ahmed
Zamfara, State Governor
We want Shariah to be implemented, all Muslims in Nigeria. While the Christians will be governed by the common law.
30.07 Somali Islamic court About 40% of the continent’s population is Muslim. Islamic courts, like this one in Somalia, have influence across the whole of north and east Africa, particularly where government is unstable. It’s clear that poverty and desperation are catalysts for fundamentalism. But when Islam competes with democracy, tribalism flourishes.
30.39 military
Nigerian democracy now has to undo years of corrupt military rule, in a climate where both multinationals and government have deprived people of their land, their heritage and their hope.
30.55 IV Ledum Mitee, MOSOP Environmental Activist
To us land is not just some property, some factor of production to be exploited and wasted. To us land is more than that. It has some spiritual significance. It’s where our Gods are supposed to reside.
Fade up SLOGAN South Africa’s Umkhonto We Sizwe, (former military wing of the ANC)
‘We burrow into the belly of the earth to dig out gold, diamonds, coal, uranium. The white oppressors and foreign investors grab all this wealth’.

31.37 elephants

The bond between Africans and their traditional lands has been severed since colonial times, when peoples were moved, and borders re-drawn. By 1880 only a few intrepid European and American explorers had travelled deep into the heart of the African continent.



SPHERES OF INFLUENCE MAP
The Berlin Conference of 1885, partitioned Africa into spheres of European influence. Thirty years later, after a mad ‘scramble for Africa’, all but Liberia and Ethiopia had been annexed by the vast European empires.
The struggle for independence was long and bloody, and Ghana was the first black Independent African nation. By the mid 1960's the majority of African states were free from colonial rule. Yet political balkanization and land issues still dog the whole continent.
32.40 Like millions of other Zimbabweans, Ephraim Nyakajura and his family just scratch a living on an overcrowded plateau. The soil is thin and sandy here. But Ephraim remembers the valley where he grew up. Rich land, well watered, with space to spare — and the day in 1944 when British soldiers came to take it.
33.07 IV Ephraim Nyakajura, farm worker I was very, very unhappy. In my heart I felt it was the end of the world. I was born on that land and where I was sent I felt like a slave or a foreigner from another country. We didn’t even know where we were going. So that’s how we felt — we really suffered.
33.49 Zimbabwe’s warrior spirit - a celebration of the man who in 1980 led a guerrilla army to liberation from white oppression. Robert Mugabe had time to learn from the mistakes of other colonies.
34.06 After independence his policy was one of minimal state interference in the economy, and it performed well for many years. But when the economy started to turn, support for Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party faded.
34.22 Tobacco farm Mugabe shored up his failing grip on power by playing the race card. 70% of the country’s farmland belongs to just 4,500 mostly white farmers, and Mugabe backed a wave of farm invasions by his supporters.
34.39 Some invasions were peaceful, sometimes workers and farmers were beaten, or killed.
34.47 Mugabe speaks at rally Mugabe: Those farmers who are planning violence, please listen to this message. We can unleash greater violence than they.
35.02 riots On the streets of the capital Harare, increasing anger and anarchy. Corruption and economic mismanagement have pushed this country to the brink of collapse.
35.17 More than three quarters of Zimbabweans now live below the poverty line, with half the workforce unemployed. Those with jobs have seen 60% inflation eat into what little they have. Many hold Mugabe responsible.
35.32 IV Morgan Tsvangirai, Movement for Democratic Change The man has run around amok without any checks and balances. So parliament became irrelevant, the people became marginalized, and the man ruled like a king.
35.43 It’s Mugabe’s regression which has disappointed even his previous supporters. Many are unconvinced by his rhetoric of blame.
35.53 IV Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe We cannot continue to exist here, to live as if we are extension of the British empire - or England - we are Zimbabweans, fully independent, we get our instructions not from London, not from Downing Street, directly from our people and from nobody else!
36.22 One former freedom fighter says she went to war for democracy. But now she says Mugabe’s ethnocentricity is as odious as Ian Smith’s before him.
36.34 IV Margaret Dongo, former freedom fighter Mugabe is doing the same thing - he’s even much worse than Smith and that’s why I’m standing up to remind him to say that’s what we were fighting against, and you don’t have to repeat it yourself.
36.48 When Mugabe came to power in 1980 he preached reconciliation, and was the icon of an African nationalist leader.
37.00 B&W Mugabe speaking in 1980 It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us yesterday, when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil.
37.15 But soon after coming to power, Robert Mugabe’s vicious slaughter in Matabeleland (check sp) showed he could not cope with political opposition. His violent march to victory in the 2002 elections was down the same thing.
37.32 polo Mugabe wants his lasting legacy for Zimbabwe to be the restoration of the country to the black man, a righting of the imbalances of colonization. But his policies have led to death and mayhem, and undermined the logic of his argument.
37.47 IV Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe There is enough land in this country and out of 12 million hectares what we want are about half of that, 5 million plus, and only 4,000 farmers own 12 million hectares of the most fertile land in the country. Why can’t they agree to 5 million plus coming our way?
38.09 IV Rory Hensman, Tobacco
Farmer
I was born here. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve never had any intention of going anywhere else and I still don’t. I’ve sunk my life into this farm – I love it, I’ve got people working for me who worked for my father.
38.27 The issue of land reform looks set to dog the country for many years to come.
38.34 IV Morgan Tsvangirai
President, Movement for Democratic Change Some of the land stock that is in the government hands has ended up with senior government officials and ministers. The people who need that land have totally been excluded.
Song: Start the war…start the war – The war that won’t end.
38.53 They fought in the liberation struggle thinking that their future was going to be a better future. But the pursuit of power has once again forsaken the people. Everyone in Zimbabwe deserves more.
39.10 IV Eunice Muzonzini,
Farm Squatter Myself, I’m a widow. I have five children, no land, the same with my father in law. With this family, a family of seven, so when am I going to get the land.
39.26 IV Rory Hensman, tobacco farmer By just giving every Tom, Dick and Harry a hunk of land, is not going to solve that problem.
39.32 Singing Rory Hensman will get a million dollars for his tobacco crop this year. His workers get fifty dollars a month.
39.40 The Zimbabwe crisis has undermined the hopes of an ‘African Renaissance’, of healing the wounds of colonization, of progress without bloodshed.
Fade up SLOGAN Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo (1960) ‘We whose bodies and souls have suffered from colonialist oppression, loudly proclaim: all this is over and done with now’.
40.18 Mobutu’s palace Perhaps Mugabe will go the way of Africa’s archetypal Big Man, former Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko. This is one of his palaces, Gbadolite, in the dense Equatorial jungle. Installed by the CIA at the height of the Cold War, Mobutu ran copper mining into the ground whilst privately siphoning off diamond wealth. He amassed a fortune of $5 billion over 30 years in power. Constantly shuffling those in his government, he stoked anarchy to such a degree that only he could control it.
41.04 Mobutu slipped away with his millions in tact after Uganda and Rwanda backed Laurent Kabila to topple him.
41.17 Uganda has been touted in the west as an African alternative to foreign democratic models. It’s governed by an elected President, Yoweri Museveni, but there is no political opposition. Museveni argues democracy in a pre-industrial society won’t work: 94% of Uganda’s population is illiterate.
41.39 He calls his system ‘no-party’ democracy. Multi-partyism, he says, encourages tribalism. And Ugandans have not forgotten Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians and slaughter of up to half a million dissenters in the 1970’s.
42.00 Uganda school kids In economic terms, Museveni has danced to the tune of the World Bank. He privatized state businesses, abolished price controls and lifted restrictions on capital flow. Uganda’s economy rebounded from a complete collapse in the 1970s and ‘80s. During the 1990s it saw growth of 8%, which was the highest in Africa. This wealth regenerated the Ugandan education system, and thousands of new schools were built.
42.35 Museveni rally Looking at Museveni, it seems the Big Man can shape a uniquely African style of democracy, doffing its cap to both traditional culture and the west. But his critics say his autocratic style is long out-of-date.
Julius Nyerere,
President of Tanzania (1964-1985) ‘The only way in which leadership can be maintained as a people’s leadership is if the leaders have reason to fear the judgement of the people’.
43.16 Moi & cronies at airport
Few of Africa’s cold-war relics still cling to power. Kenya’s Daniel Arap Moi has been pressured to democratize, and Kenya became a multi-party democracy in 1992. But this is pseudo-democracy: embezzlement and political patronage have caused poverty, inflation, loss of foreign aid and the weakening of the judiciary. Most Kenyans live on less than a dollar a day.
43.46 Moi hailed at rally Any opposition to corruption, or to the president himself, is met with beatings, arrests, even murder. And Moi and his cronies have promoted tribalism to keep themselves in power.
IV Paul Muite, leader
SAFINA party With the corruption that there is, with the destruction of the economy, with the abject poverty in which the majority of Kenyans are involved… without doubt in the end this country will blow up just like Rwanda or Uganda or any of the other African countries.
44.20 music
Rwanda skulls Tribalism: the darkest side of the African psyche. When neighbour becomes executioner, and death spreads like a plague. The images of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when up to a million Tutsis were massacred by Hutus, sickened the world. It was a slaughter which had its roots in centuries’ old ethnic divides.
44.47 cattle For 400 years, the Tutsis had dominated the Hutus through control of cattle.
44.57 Rwandan Christians Colonization had reinforced Tutsi domination, but with Christianity came Hutu aspirations of equality. Shortly before Independence, the Rwandan Hutus revolted, killing 10,000 Tutsis and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring countries. So began a cycle of butchery in Central Africa, the most densely populated part of the continent, as Tutsi and Hutu have vied for political domination.
45.31 refugees Rwanda and its neighbour Burundi are tragic examples of the failure of traditional African institutions to adapt to modern times. Peasant societies, they were hopelessly ill-equipped for parliamentary or presidential democracy. It’s a vicious circle: democracy has the power to quell tribalism, but tribalism can just as easily thwart democracy. And if government only enriches its own, the tribe continues to offer some protection.
Fade up SLOGAN Jomo Kenyatta, President of Kenya
(1964-1978) ‘If we unite now, each and every one of us, and each tribe to another, we will cause the implementation in this country of that which the European calls democracy’.
46.34 carjackings
Lawlessness is also paralysing African societies. In several countries private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels have absolute power. South Africans are more likely to die by being shot than in a car accident. Apartheid’s brutal policing made the ‘law’ meaningless.
46.58 IV Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa
I think this is one of the greatest tragedies in this country, that I think deriving from the fact that you had an illegitimate government, an illegitimate system, people might have obeyed the laws because if you didn’t you got arrested. They didn’t feel that there was any moral force behind those laws.
47.278 Liberian boy soldier In Africa, a Kalashnikov can be bought for as little as $6, and many small arms fall into small hands.
47.37 Mozambique guns reclaimed Tackling crime starts with taking guns out of the hands of those most likely to use them. Mozambique is setting a startling example, despite 30 years of civil war and a devastated economy. This church project has taken 75,000 guns out of circulation, in exchange for tools.
IV Jacinto Muth, Mozambique Church Council

If they sell them they’ll never be free, because any step to be free they’ll get more money and go and drink and maybe buy another gun. But when they get tools to help themselves, to help their family, they start to become free from the violence.
48.20 Weapons unearthed And for some former fighters the church scheme offers a chance to lay to rest the ghosts of the past. After the civil war, which ended in 1992, many RENAMO guerrillas buried their weapons believing there would never be a lasting peace. Now they feel it's time to cash in.
48.41 Street children Mozambique has sustained economic growth of over 10%?? over recent years, thanks in large part to major debt relief. The rich nations have committed themselves to the ambitious target of reducing poverty by half by 2015.
49.00 George Bush has talked of poverty and inequality breeding terror – social exclusion on a global scale. Aid beneficiaries in the future, must be accountable.
49.13 Ghana markets Several African economies are moving forward. Since Ghana’s Economic Recovery Program began in 1983, it has achieved growth of around 5%. Some poor countries - Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia – are also attracting investment. South Africa and Egypt are currently seen as the most attractive countries to invest in.
49.40 factories Some argue that economic imperialism towards Africa still exists, citing tariffs of up to 300% on imports of African goods. African economies need to be allowed to compete on the world stage. Tony Blair, among others, has emphasized free trade, not aid, as the key to Africa’s future.
50.03 Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah envisioned a United States of Africa. Whilst that idea might be long buried, there is still much to be gained from strong geo-political unions, such as the SADC. But it will take years to close the skills gap which sees foreign contractors so often employed instead of Africans. Put bluntly, it will take years to challenge international mining interests.
Fade up SLOGAN
Nelson Mandela, President South Africa (1994-1999) ‘Apartheid's destruction on our subcontinent is incalculable’.
50.43 Ransacked house Africa is a continent in flux. Whilst peace has been restored in Sierra Leone, conflict in neighbouring Liberia has escalated. Liberians have weathered war since 1990 and they, like so many Africans, are desperate. Tina, a nurse, recently found her house ransacked.
51.07 IV Tina Beeley, nurse
I have now been here for 3 wars. I was first affected in Girlie Street in 1990 like this and I’m really discouraged about working and re-establishing my life. I’m sure all Liberians feel that way. We are so tired of this war. We all want peace. We want to live a normal life.
51.33 Bird soars in OKAVANGO, music The Okavango Delta in Botswana – southern Africa’s last great wilderness. Tourists pay huge premiums to soak up this fabulous beauty. Okavango is a metaphor for the fragile splendour of this whole continent, under threat as this wetland is from thirsty peoples.
51.57 The Okacom commission was formed to share water from the Okavango river between Namibia, Botswana and Angola. If not well managed, water could spark conflict. But there’s great awareness of the need to share this resource peaceably. Botswana has the strongest economy in Africa, but it’s heavily reliant on diamonds. Like many African countries, tourism could well be the new goldmine.
52.25 IV Moremi Sekwale,
Botswana Water Affairs We’ve been very dependent on minerals for a very long time, the minerals have now plateaued. We can’t depend on them forever, so we’re looking at other economic engines of growth and tourism is a promising one. But the Delta is more important to Botswana as a unique heritage. We realize it no longer belongs to us, we are now just the custodians. It belongs to everybody.
52.57 ANC youths of yesteryear, ANC youths today This is a hugely politicized continent. The generation who grew up under apartheid are the parents of today’s youth. Their children have political freedom. They know that politics is about social change, not just the struggle for power.
53.29 Church service History has certainly taught Africa harsh lessons. The bloody reign of the ‘Big Man’ in terms of the Mobutus, the Idi Amins, the Jean-Bedel Bokassas, is over. But the noble rhetoric of Independence has rarely been honoured. Constitutional advance is not the end of the struggle. The struggle is for democracy and peace.
ENDS

CREDITS:

Production Manager: Joanna Turner

Researcher/ Graphics: Sam Goss

Offline Editor: Sam Bailey

Author/ Editor: Keely Purdue

Executive Producer: Mark Stucke

A Journeyman Documentary in association with Films for the Humanities & Sciences & ABC Australia