For post-colonial Africa, hopes deferred
Ghana celebrates its 50th year of independence this week, the first of many such anniversaries.
from the March 6, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
From independence in 1964 to 1980, Kenya's GDP grew at an average rate of 6.5 percent. But by the 1990s, one-party rule, increasing political corruption, and brief flirtations with socialist policies had erased many social and economic gains. Primary education enrollment dropped from 91 percent to 82 percent between 1989 and 1995. The AIDS crisis made its mark, too, raising the infant mortality rate from 62 to 78 per 1,000 births, and lowering life expectancy from 57 to 47 years, according to the World Bank.
"People say independence was a good thing because it means we can make our own decisions," says Njoki Muruiki, a travel agent in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. "But we are still not really free. We rely on donor money to survive – so are we really free to run our country the way that we want?"
Others agreed that independence was a good thing in and of itself, but the country was still a long way from political maturity.
Peter Mutua, a 65-year-old retired civil servant, says: "So many leaders – like our own – became dictators or refused to listen to the people, but it has only been in very recent years that people here have been demanding real democracy. I hope that if you come back in 15 or 20 years time that we can tell a different story."
Hope for better governance
Despite disappointment, no one wants a return to colonial rule.
"We still have problems of tribalism here, but that's nothing like the racism that was here under the British," says John Mbugua, a taxi driver. "Schools and hospitals were often reserved for the whites. Our fathers and grandfathers tell us it was as if the black man was a source of labor while all the good things were reserved for the white man."
Some harkened back to a golden age in the early years of independence.
"Things were good before [former president Daniel Arap Moi] came to power [in 1978]. People could live really well," says Cosmas Munyao, who ekes out a living selling newspapers in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. "In the past few years, all the essential costs have doubled, so life is becoming more and more difficult."
Still, Africa experts warn against undue pessimism about Africa and its future.
"When you look at Africa as a continent, you don't want to get trapped in an Afro-pessimism, nor trapped in a ludicrous optimism," says Sean Morrow, a historian of Southern Africa, at the Human Sciences Research Council in Tshwane, as the capital, Pretoria, is now called. The loudest voice of pessimism often comes from Africa's educated middle class, who point to bad governance, corruption, and the lack of education and health care services.
Yet this pessimism itself may provide its own silver lining, Dr. Morrow adds. "One of the achievements of the independence period is the creation of the rightly discontented middle class, many of whom are now in places like South Africa or the US" as doctors, businessmen, and academics. "They are products of independence, too."
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