Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs
Issue 4 - Evidence - Meeting of February 1, 2005
OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 1, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs met this day at 5 p.m. to examine the development and security challenges facing Africa; the response of the international community to enhance that continent's development and political stability; and Canadian foreign policy as it relates to Africa.
Senator Peter A. Stollery (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, tomorrow there will be a meeting of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association at 3:30 p.m., so we will not start our committee meeting before 4:30 p.m., since some of our members will be attending that meeting of the executive.
This is our first meeting under our order of reference from the Senate to examine the development and security challenges facing Africa; the response of the international community to enhance that continent's development and political stability; and Canadian foreign policy as it relates to Africa.
I would like to tell our witnesses that when we have a term of reference we try to be as encompassing as possible, so do not feel that you are restricted by our term of reference. This is our first meeting of what I think will be a fairly in- depth examination.
Welcome, and please proceed.
Mr. Philip Zachernuk, Professor, Department of History, Dalhousie University, and President, Canadian Association of African Studies: Mr. Chairman, I hope to make three broad points in my brief to this committee. First, that the forces of African history since at least the 19th century — especially outside forces — have been more disruptive than constructive, but not by any means simple or wholly negative. Second, our understanding of this history remains incomplete and partial. Third, in light of these points, anyone wishing to wrestle with African problems needs to proceed with due awareness of the biases and limitations of our understanding, and to seek input from diverse experts.
A quick overview of Africa's history over the last two centuries reveals, first, profound disruptions by external historical forces. States and merchants which had adapted to the demands of the Atlantic slave trade with some success were thrown into disarray by the abolition of slave trading in the early 19th century. The new systems developed in its wake, exporting African resources to Europe's industrial revolution, often used now readily available African slave labour, in short order creating some of the most extensive slave economies in the world.
Before this transformation settled in, however, Europeans arrived at the close of the 19th century as imperial conquerors. Reassured by their racist assumptions, they used state mechanisms to divert African labour and exploit African land directly. When the European powers intensified their meddling in African lives during the 1940s, with the hope of improving production, they quickly unleashed social and economic change they could not control, and gave in to African demands for self-government. The rapid end to colonial rule was as disruptive as its beginning.
The new African rulers assumed power fired with ambition, but hobbled by governments and ideologies largely inadequate for the challenges they faced. As these shortcomings became increasingly obvious from the 1960s, ongoing external disruptions undermined attempts to work out better solutions: meddling by American and Soviet Cold War strategists, the oil crisis, mounting debt, structural adjustment, agricultural collapse. The 1980s were perhaps the depth of this decline.
Africa, in short, has been a troubled spot not for decades but for centuries. It has been neither isolated from, nor much helped by, the broad sweep of modern history. It is very important, however, to get beyond this simple narrative in which Africans come across only as the victimized and the subjugated. First, we need to remember that colonial control was always incomplete and underfunded. The colonial rulers' actual achievements for the most part fell far short of their intentions. Colonial power was limited in part because Africans, in diverse ways, organized in many forms, consistently endeavoured to remain in control of their lives. They, of course, resisted changes that were harmful, but they did much more. Many sought to maximize their advantages in the processes of modernization and economic integration underway. Achieving this, or even knowing how, was never easy, but it involved avid adoption of new practices, adaptation of established practices and, often enough, resistance.
Two things follow when we recognize the diverse impacts of Africans on their own history. First, generalized overviews of Africa's recent history which attempt to tell the story along the lines of westerners versus Africans will fail to grasp what has happened and what is happening. Africans did not all respond in the same way. Second, modern African history is full of examples, some more successful than others, of Africans' practical and intellectual attempts to shape their own modern societies. These stories should be recognized and drawn upon in any effort to address Africa's problems.
My second broad point is that our understanding of Africa's history has grown in a particular way, and thus has certain qualities of which we all need to be wary. Our understanding is grounded in outsiders' writing, especially grounded in writing by Europeans of the colonial era. This writing was marked by an assumption of African inferiority. In this tradition, Africa was often regarded as a place beyond history, unable to change on its own without outsiders' help.
African intellectuals and African historians have rebutted this view for decades, but legacies of it continue to plague the way we approach African questions. Popular violence, for example in Rwanda, is still sometimes presented as ``ancient tribal rivalry.'' In fact, even the so-called tribes here were very much a product of modern political forces. Also, Africans are often treated as passive victims stuck in tradition, needing our help to solve their problems. In fact, their problems often cannot be explained unless we understand how they are embedded in larger historical forces which also affect us.
To understand what has gone on in African societies, we need to understand African history not just as external disruption, but also as a story shaped by diverse African efforts. Our ability to understand this history remains imperfect as we continue to recover from the profound deficit created by the not-so-distant denial that Africans could even make their history. To sustain an approach to African problems which might highlight Africans' efforts and best efface lingering biases, I would encourage this committee to consult experts from a wide spectrum of opinion and, not least, scholars of African affairs well rooted in the African continent. A vibrant diaspora of African-trained African experts and scholars now exists, with many members connected to Canadian institutions. Their knowledge should be drawn upon and their sometimes divergent perspectives appreciated.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Stapleton, please proceed.
Mr. Timothy Stapleton, Associate Professor, Department of History, Trent University: I will talk mostly about southern Africa, my area of specialty. That is where I lived and I go back to just about every year. My expertise is focused mostly on South Africa and Zimbabwe. I will review a few important historical and current factors that the committee should be aware of and should take into account during its study.
The history of settler colonialism and minority rule is very strong in the history of southern Africa. It created a history where extreme racism, racial segregation and state violence were the norm. This did not end decades ago; rather, it ended recently, and elements of it still exist.
Land alienation was one result of this. In most of southern Africa, African people were systematically pushed off their land to make room for settler commercial farmers. Minority settler regimes, such as in South Africa and in southern Rhodesia, passed legislation in the early 20th century that sought to undermine African commercial agriculture to subsidize and support settler commercial agriculture. Again, this did not end 50 or 60 years ago. People were being forcibly removed in South Africa in the 1980s and in Zimbabwe during the war in the 1970s. It was that recent, and so it is fresh in people's minds.
The migrant labour system was developed in southern Africa with the mining industry as the main beneficiary. It worked because of the mechanisms of taxation and the land alienation that I mentioned. African people had to pay cash to the government, but they did not have the land to grow cash crops to sell to earn that money, so they had to go off to the mines and become a class of very low-paid, exploited, vulnerable labour. This led to massive social dislocations.
There is a strong history of liberation struggle in southern Africa. Warfare, extreme nationalism and a struggle mentality are common and, unfortunately in some cases, they have led to post-colonial authoritarian governments. There is a sense that, if you were not part of the struggle, then you are not part of the nation and, therefore, you do not have a say in the politics, et cetera.
The Cold War legacy is strong. People do not forget that, in general, Western countries backed the settler colonial governments. There is a general distrust of the West, even though people aspire to a western, middle-class standard of living — everyone would love that. Conspiracy theories abound that tend to blame all problems on the West. Anyone who is in conflict with the West is often seen as a hero, and so Communists are seen as good people who helped.
I will never forget being in Zimbabwe during the first Gulf War when I saw many people wearing Saddam Hussein T-shirts, although there is no obvious presence of Islam in that area. Many believed that, if Saddam Hussein was fighting the West, then he must be good. Of course, the memory of all these things can be manipulated for political purposes. We have seen that lately in a few cases, especially in Zimbabwe. It is easy to label opposition politicians as people who want to bring back the bad old days of colonialism. Extreme poverty, of course, is a constant reality. Hopelessness, desperation and a variety of crime are quite common. Naturally, this dovetails with many problems.
The last item I will mention is something that I hope we will discuss and the committee will take into account: the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has hollowed out southern African society by hitting the most productive group. Certainly, I would not want to give the impression that this is a problem or a disease of the poor. Most people who are HIV positive are poor, but that is because most people in the region are poor. This pandemic has hit the wealthy, intellectual people just as much and that has been devastating to society. Many medical professionals, teachers and business people are gone. The pandemic has been worsened by poverty. Certainly, death rates can be explained in terms of poverty, but there is more to it than that. I will leave my comments at that.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Cooper, please proceed.
Mr. Frederick Cooper, Professor, Department of History, New York University: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Two visions of blame for Africa's woes are in competition: Africa the victim of colonialism; and Africa caught in its own cultural incapacities. Let me instead stress that African-European actors are the co-authors of Africa's current situations and solutions will be co-authored as well. We are not looking at a single, essential Africa, but at a continent changing and interacting with the rest of the world. Colonial states faced the same dilemma as African kings, that is, how to control an African population when geographic dispersal and organizations that decentralized communities gave a strong exit option. The easy part of colonization was conquest and the hard part was to routinize power. Modern colonizers did what empire builders long did: co-opt indigenous peoples into subordinate roles in empires. This had consequences in that colonial reliance on chiefs rigidified ethnicity. Herein lie the roots of many of today's ethnic cleavages.
Economically, colonial Africa became a patchwork of zones of African agricultural initiative, areas of white settlement, mine towns and cities, all surrounded by larger areas from which labour could be temporarily pulled but where the state had neither the will nor the power to effect systematic change.
Colonial regimes could control port cities, build narrow communications routes and collect import and export taxes. Colonial experts proposed more ambitious development programs in the 1920s, but French and British governments refused to fund them because they did not want to spend metropolitan taxpayers' money in colonies or upset delicate arrangements with African chiefs. Thus, we have the making of the gatekeeper state, which is able to manage and profit from the interface between the colonial territory and the world market with weak ability to control and transform interior spaces.
Most Africans had every reason to distance themselves from the colonial economy. Only when a wave of strikes and urban riots began in the late 1930s did the British undertake a new initiative: the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940. The French acted similarly in 1946.
In the mid 1950s, France and Britain, caught between radical anti-colonial movements and claims of imperial citizens and subjects, and equality within empire, began to rethink the wisdom of colonial rule. Debates over developmental colonialism helped to convince colonial rulers that many Africans believed in modernization and would want to keep ties to former colonial powers. Decolonization became imaginable.
This process turned colonial development into national development projects. The first generation of African leaders had experienced the power of claims made on the basis of citizenship from workers, students and farmers. Two African politicians who had mobilized and engaged citizenry, Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana and Sékou Touré from Guinea, were the first to crack down on labour and farmers' organizations as soon as they acquired power. They became increasingly autocratic.
For the leader of a new state, the dilemma is understandable. The nationalism evoked in the independence struggle was thin. He had reason to fear other politicians or independent entrepreneurs. For the ruled, insecurity led to a strategy that economists call ``scrabbling.'' Different family members moved back and forth between local agriculture, urban wage labour, and maintaining village social networks and seeking client relationships with city politicians. These do not reflect an outdated culture that values collectivity over the individual but, rather, efforts to preserve a variety of social ties.
The coups that began in the 1960s suggest that rulers were not paranoid. Instability was characteristic of the gatekeeper state. With so few alternatives for getting wealth, the gate was worth struggling for.
That said, the range of variation is great, and it would be a mistake to let the Congo of the 1960s or the Sudan today stand in for the entire continent. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kenya and the Côte d'Ivoire managed the gatekeeper state reasonably well. South Africa is the best example of an economy that is complex enough to avoid being a gatekeeper state. On the other extreme, some rulers are unable to maintain any kind of state, as in Somalia.
For all the weaknesses of gatekeeper states, the development era from the 1940s to the 1970s had its achievements: average annual growth rates of per capita income of 2.4 per cent between 1950 and 1975; doubling the percentage of children enrolled in primary school; and increasing lifespan from 40 to 52 years. Some countries did worse than others, but the general negative picture of African economies we now have misses the development gains of the late colonial and early independence periods, and largely reflects the 1970s and 1980s.
The inability of African states to reduce vulnerability to the world economy cost them dearly in the oil shocks and world recession of the 1970s. The remedy prescribed by international financial institutions did not cure the patient. Whatever the merits of structural adjustment plans, budget cutting meant reversal of past improvement in education and health services.
Politically, the effects were worse. The fledgling democracy movements of the 1990s lacked the resources to show that honest government could pay off for the average citizen.
Development is on the world agenda again. Looking to the future, we should remember both the historical dilemmas in which Africans find themselves and the fact that development efforts in some circumstances improved people's lives. Politically, we should remember the moment when Africans embraced the politics of citizenship.
In the 1940s and 1950s, social and political movements turned imperial powers' need for legitimacy into claims for equality and wages, education and public services, as well as politics. In the 1990s, democracy movements challenged dictators in Nigeria, Zambia and Kenya. For decades, a principal movement battled apartheid in South Africa.
All such movements combined activism within Africa with support from overseas. Conversely, the staying power of Mobutu in Zaire could only be understood by his combination of patronage and repression at home, and support abroad.
Will a fully implemented world development effort put Africa on a path away from ethnic cleavages and toward economic integration? Only if we confront the complex and varied specificity of African societies and their changing relationship to the rest of the world will that happen.
In conclusion, I would emphasize that what is in question is not just specific measures but how we think about the future in ways informed by the past. First, to think realistically, we need knowledge and context to understand the constraints under which leaders and ordinary people operate and their need for security. We should not let a singular image of Africa stand in for analyses of specific problems and trajectories.
Second, we need to recognize that the gatekeeper state is neither an African illness nor a European imposition, but a Euro-Afro-American coproduction. We should look critically not only at African states, but also at the institutions which constitute the world economy.
Finally, from the days of anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements, successful political action depended on the resonance between the concerns of local people and supporters in distant lands. Political change does not come simply from do-good outsiders or authentic local communities. Experience makes clear that the possibility that powerful structures can be changed is not entirely Utopian.
The Chairman: The staff and I have been wrestling with this for the last month. Africa is a very large continent. I spent an important part of my youth in much of Africa. Professor Zachernuk talked about Africa as a whole and Mr. Stapleton talked about the southern part, which, as you point out, you know about. You made some important and interesting observations, particularly about the late colonial period. There was a period when things seemed to be not so bad. The colonial period was not just all the same. It lasted for quite a long time and there were changes. It was not the same everywhere.
Africa is huge. The continent stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the South Atlantic, although we are generally concerned here with south of the Sahara. In your minds, do you divide it? I, personally, do tend to make certain divisions in my mind. For example, I think of West Africa separately, and that is probably because there was no settler movement in the west.
As Mr. Stapleton said, there is an enormously long and complex history of southern Africa — of South Africa and central Africa. That is very different from the long history in West Africa. I will not touch on the Congo and East Africa.
Do you have a breakdown that would make it easier and more digestible for the committee to deal with? I find it difficult to refer to Africa as a whole because of the enormous complexities that exist there.
Would anyone care to take a crack at that question?
Mr. Stapleton: I would add that even within African countries there is incredible diversity. South Africa has 11 official languages, plus a few others that are not official languages. Zimbabwe has fewer, but there is still a lot of diversity even within those countries.
The Chairman: Then we have the areas where the Muslim meets the Christian/Animist. That line is of enormous importance. Does anyone have any ideas on that?
Mr. Cooper: To pursue the point that you make, let us consider one of the current crises that is most severe, the Côte d'Ivoire situation. This is a crisis not of separation but of connection. The wealth of the Côte d'Ivoire and the cocoa industry was largely built on the labour of people from the Muslim north. It was the integration of southern proprietors and northern labourers that made the Côte d'Ivoire economy one of the best in Africa through the 1980s. However, it is within that micro society that things have broken down in a terrible way.
You could say something similar about Rwanda, where the people on both sides of the genocide basically share the same culture. Therefore, the inference that I would make in response to your question is we have to deal with regions as they are, not simply east, west, north, south, but by understanding these kinds of dynamics; otherwise, people might get things very wrong.
An example of people on the outside getting things very wrong is Rwanda in 1994, where it was easy to say that African tribes were ``going at it.'' However, they were not tribes and they were not culturally distinct groups. The explanation for that was more complex, and therefore the situation politically that the world faced in 1994 was much more complex.
Mr. Zachernuk: I do not think there is a simple answer to your question. You must recognize that we only see Africa from the outside. Although it is not apparent until recent times in history, Africans only saw themselves as Africans when they stepped outside the continent.
Any kind of grouping or interior boundaries you want to make should be based on what question you are asking, what context. At times, you can talk about the whole of Africa — when you are responding, for example, to African union initiatives or statements and policies. At other times you might want to consider language boundaries or different kinds of economies. You may also want to highlight religious affiliations.
I think the way to divide Africa should be loose. It should be tied to a given and always tied to a question about what you want to know, what you are pursuing, because there are no givens for the entire continent.
The Chairman: We are pursuing what is set out in our term of reference. Development and security challenges are a concern of the international community. We must have some order in our minds. When develop mentalists talk about Africa, I hear disorder. That disorder has not helped the situation. I also recognize the religious divide. We also have to recognize the settler countries and countries that did not have settlers. Those delineations are clear in my mind. I do not think you have helped me very much.
Mr. Stapleton: To put it simply, you must realize that certain issues are common to many African countries, but then there are many very peculiar regions, sometimes country specific and sometimes even within countries. Certain districts have specific issues. We have to be flexible.
The Chairman: We certainly do and we try to be.
Senator Grafstein: I think the chairman has tried to articulate a dilemma that most members of this committee would have, and which I believe is shared by you, which is: How do we inform ourselves with respect to advising the government, which is our task, about Canadian foreign policy?
We have structured our foreign policy historically in two ways. Our terms of reference have broadened it. They deal with the political aspects of foreign relations and trade. This committee is expert in trade. Then there is the new overlay, which is security, that is, the responsibility to protect the whole raft of new notions of foreign policy that are yet to be fully developed.
Our traditional foreign policy element was the political aspects as they related to foreign states and trade.
Perhaps I can help us in this analysis. We do not have endless time. We have to prioritize our time and attention to issues that can be most helpful to us, that is, our Canadian interests. That is our primary concern — at least it is for me.
Let me suggest three different ways of looking at Africa. I want to separate Africa from the Mediterranean Basin. I believe that there is a whole different dynamic in that region than pertains to the sub Sahara and below. Let me deal with the south, the west and the east, but not the north.
The first way to do this is to look at successful states within the dynamic — and there are some success stories — that are moving towards renovating their society to increase their economic standard of living. What are those success stories?
The second way to look at it is to say what are the natural comparative advantages in economic terms that the various states we are dealing with have? We know many of the African states are rich in resources and agricultural lands. Where is our trade or investment potential with those countries?
The third way to look at it, perhaps, is to look at the politics of hope, or the politics of despair. Where can we look most quickly at the politics of hope as opposed to the politics of despair? That is yet another question.
I give you those three examples. There are more. We are trying to look at a prism so that we can focus our activities and inform our government.
Mr. Zachernuk: These are questions more of contemporary rather than historical expertise. On the politics of hope, of course, we could highlight South Africa since 1994; and with regard to the politics of despair, we could highlight South Africa since 1994 with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Rather than try to give a list off the top of my head of ways we might characterize states, I would again revisit a point that Professor Cooper raised. These things can change. There are success stories like the Côte d'Ivoire that rose and fell. Kenya was the great promise, but it is no longer. There is no historical pattern that you would want to rest on. These are contemporary conditions.
That being said, the resources in some places, such as the minerals found in South Africa, have been the great promise and the great curse to the people who were there before the white miners arrived.
You can look to the southern part of the continent for its ability to sustain heavy industrial investment, which is not possible in West Africa. What is done is very much related to rises and falls in conditions. As I said, my expertise does not give me a ready list of states to slot into these categories for 2005.
Mr. Stapleton: For successful states, in southern Africa, I would mention Botswana. Again, it is successful for some people and not successful for others. However, as a whole, I would say it has fared better than most. That success is based on the diamond industry. If you take that away there is nothing. It will again be a marginal community as it was before the diamonds were mined.
It is interesting that, while diamonds have fuelled Botswana's relative economic miracle, you might say, in other places in Africa where there have been diamond discoveries, it has been a curse. They talk about the resource curse in Africa because when you have a mix of very valuable natural resources and a collapsing state, there are opportunities for people to enrich themselves using violence and so on.
Botswana has been successful because it has had a very strong state as most southern African countries do, unlike countries in other parts of Africa. Sometimes that can be an advantage and sometimes not.
It is difficult to answer your second question which deals with the comparative advantages of these states. I believe I talked about that to some extent. As Professor Zachernuk said, South Africs is both, successful and not successful.
As for the politics of hope versus the politics of despair, one will find that everywhere. If you are one of the elite in Botswana, you have hope. If you are one of the 25 or 30 per cent of the people who are HIV positive, then maybe you are in despair. Botswana has been able to transfer its funds into anti-viral drugs.
Mr. Cooper: The value of the three-fold clarification forces us to ask questions about what are the central issues. Why do countries with a comparative advantage geologically — such as Congo (Zaire) with minerals, and Niger and Angola with oil — turn out to be in such a mess? Why does a country such as Senegal, which literally has peanuts, have a stable political regime? We are forced to think about these kinds of questions.
It comes down to the point that Mr. Stapleton made regarding Botswana. Diamonds are good for Botswana, whereas they were bad for Sierra Leone and Angola, because Botswana has the basic institutions of a state that work. Perhaps that is what we should be thinking about, namely, how one can support basic state structures that deliver services to people — education, health services and security. That might make the difference between resources being a curse and resources being a blessing.
When the resources are there, there is a very strong temptation when the resources are there to dole them out to one's clients rather than to dole them out on some other principle. If we think politically about the ways in which states go to the extremes of gatekeeping and trying to guard jealously the ability to get resources out of the country and into the world economy, maybe we can start to pose the important questions that those of you on this committee want to be thinking about.
Senator Di Nino: You probably have the feeling that all of us are grappling with this enormous challenge we have undertaken. I am no different. I, too, am trying to focus my thoughts on which areas we should we be starting to consider.
I will come at it differently and refer to our mandate. One of our concerns is the response of the international community to enhance that continent's development and political stability. How the world has responded to Africa? Your responses may lead us to focus on certain areas in the coming months. Would anyone care to tackle that general question?
Mr. Zachernuk: One element of the response in dealing with Africa — something that we like to forget about but which is not forgotten — is the legacy of racism. The profound denial of Africans' very humanity, not very long ago in the context of South Africa through to the late 20th century, is slow to disappear.
Whereas we might think that we have faced this issue and dealt with it, that is not so as seen from inside the continent. Reactions from Africans studying with me to the recent outpouring of aid for the tsunami victims compared to the lack of outpouring of aid for the HIV/AIDS pandemic are interpreted often as an endemic denial or refusal to confront Africa, which is read as being a legacy of racism. It is written off. It is not important. The problem cannot be solved, therefore, we do not bother with it. That is something worth confronting directly. There is a sense that this is an ongoing issue. There is an ongoing effort by several prominent scholars for reparations from the West to Africa for the damage caused by the slave trade, colonial rule, and so on. It persuades a lot of people, on those grounds, of an attitude towards Africa that is general to the whole continent and based somehow on an incidence of Africans being different. That is an issue that should not be left aside as having been solved.
Mr. Stapleton: I would agree wholeheartedly with what was said. The world has not responded well to African crises. There are unlimited examples. The Kosovo intervention in 1998-99 was massive. It must have cost billions of dollars. At the same time, there was a similar kind of civil war, worse really, going on in Sierra Leone. There was no response to it. People just forgot about it.
It also has to do with the media and the way the Western media — and, let's face, it most of the world's media is based in Western countries — look or do not look at Africa and their predisposition to feel that it is normal for Africa to be in crisis — that is the way Africans are. Ideas of savagery and a primordial ethnic conflict are present in what is covered by the media. Sometimes no coverage is given, so that Canadians sometimes do not even know what is going on.
I will end with another example. We just had the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a beyond- horrible episode in history. The German government was involved in those ceremonies. I think the German President remained silent during the memorial because of the responsibility of his government in that. The German government was also involved in the genocide in southwest Africa, in Namibia, between 1904 and 1907. It was genocide. There was documentary evidence from German officers, and so on, instructing their soldiers to wipe out the Herero and Nama. Yet the German government has recently refused to apologize for that. There is obviously a double standard there.
Mr. Cooper: I would emphasize the point that my colleagues are making, namely, that we need to guard against the politics of the write off — that is, as seeing Africa as hopeless and as racially defined. This notion of the write off and the willingness to use but not to confront the realities of Africa is important regarding the perceptions that Africa has of the rest of the world.
Let me emphasize another side of the story, that is, the way that politics involves a great deal of networking between Africa, Europe, North America and other parts of the world, which has actually changed world events and perceptions.
Colonialism used to be a banal fact. An empire was an empire. There was nothing unusual or problematic about it. That is no longer true. That reflects much of politics over many decades. More recently, in our own adulthood, apartheid in South Africa is being reconfigured around the world. That is because of political movements that went on in Africa and political movements that occurred in other places around the world.
Since the 1940s, the concept of development is on world agendas. That the development is a discussable, debatable issue, and is a matter of conscience and political action in bodies like this one is notable. However, the question that Africans will always ask is: What is the bottom line? How will it be implemented? Will these kinds of issues, whether they be moral or practical economic ones, be implemented with the same seriousness as certain related issues were in other parts of the world?
Senator Di Nino: Would you care to give us an opinion about Canada's response, more specifically, to the same general question that I posed before?
Mr. Cooper: It seems to me that it is better than that of the United States as it relates to taking issues such as aid seriously. Canadian development assistance has a worldwide reputation for quality, but my Canadian colleagues may differ in their views.
Mr. Zachernuk: I am not sure I can speak usefully to that except anecdotally from my own experience. I am always welcomed and recognized for being a Canadian as distinct from being an American.
Canada remains an attractive place for Africans to study, but in terms of policy or broad perceptions, I cannot say.
Mr. Stapleton: I will be the more critical one. I think we can do more, and while Canada has a general reputation of being generous and good and less racist than other western countries, I think we trade on that quite heavily and it is not always true. Let us not forget that Canadian peacekeepers beat a Somali to death and sent a general to Rwanda without even a proper map to head up a peacekeeping mission there. Our record is not spotless.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Thank you, sirs. Admittedly, this is a very complex issue. I was one of the senators who hounded the chairman of this committee for many years to examine the situation in Africa. Today, on reading the agenda and reviewing the mandate that the committee has received from the Senate, it is clear that the task at hand is a rather difficult one.
We asked you for some suggestions in terms of setting parameters for our study. You have given us a historical and political perspective on the AIDs question, and so forth. I would like your opinion on how, as part of our study, we could examine the plight of African women. We often hear people say that if ever the situation in Africa turns around, the credit for the turnaround will go to women. I am acquainted with many African women and I have faith in their abilities. I would like to hear your views on the subject. People talk about sustainable development and there can be no sustainable development without women. So then, how do we go about including the women of Africa in our study?
[English]
Mr. Zachernuk: I believe that you are quite right in your sense that women need to play an important part. As a historian I would add that the history of women in these last two centuries is not as well known as it needs to be. It has been remarkable, and it has been very much up and down. There have been moments when women have grabbed opportunities like colonial law to assert their rights very effectively against social changes working against them, yet often these are grabbed back.
There is not only a recent tradition but a long tradition of women engaging with modern changes to try to solve problems that have been generated. In this sense, I think that the role of women will be important. Recognizing the historical struggles and the solutions once worked out and then perhaps quashed is something that needs to be done. It is both something to learn from and an inspiration to women working today. A gendered sense of the past, of the people and the solutions of the past, and of the memories of the past all play a part in this. Happily, there is a rapidly unfolding body of work that is doing exactly that — writing the history of the struggles of women in Africa against colonial rule and men, and many other problems. At least historians are playing the part historians should play, which is to provide a sense of the past for the future.
Mr. Stapleton: I think there should be a special session on this subject. You could hear from the many African women who are experts in this field.
To contribute a small point, there are many stereotypes of African women and their place in society, especially with regard to southern Africa. There is a stereotype of African women as being oppressed by a patriarchal society in the colonial period and as being victims of male colonial rule. Let us not forget that colonial rulers were patriarchs in their own male-dominated society. It is more complex than that, though certainly elements of that are true, and it even fits into the issue of HIV-AIDS. The subject of women not being able to assert themselves about sexuality is often raised in Zimbabwe in discussions about HIV-AIDS. Yet, those stereotypes do not hold. Many dynamic women who do not fit into those stereotypes are trying to change things.
Mr. Cooper: I think the starting point is that there are African activists and feminists who are playing a role to focus attention on the very real and easily stereotyped situation of gender discrimination and patriarchy in African societies.
The way not to approach the problem, it seems to me, is for white men to lecture black men about how they treat black women. The more likely way of getting something out of it is to engage with black women, and I think there are possibilities for political cooperation with feminist movements in different African countries.
Senator Losier-Cool: I agree with you completely. We have to think of the lady from Kenya who won the Nobel Prize.
Following on what Senator Di Nino asked about, that is, what direction Canada's aid should take, if there are success stories on women's issues, and I know there are many, could it be one of the recommendations of this committee that we put a great deal of stress on women's education programs and the positive story? Is that a direction that this committee should take?
Mr. Zachernuk: It is key to not simply focus on women but to focus on local efforts and locally organized groups of whatever type. It is crucial to look for African solutions on the ground at work already, and to try to understand and assist those rather than to come in with outside ideas ungrounded in what Africans themselves have figured out. Women's organizations are a prime example of those kinds of groups that are working from the bottom up and deserve support.
Mr. Stapleton: That has become standard for development NGOs and the like. Initiatives like that exist.
Mr. Cooper: I believe I have said what I need to say.
The Chairman: It seems to me that what we would like to see, and I am sure what Africans would like to see, is prosperity. We would like to see prosperous countries with social systems that are appropriate to the people who live there.
We talk about collapsing economies and collapsing states and the like. As I say, Africa is a complicated place. It is not what people think it is.
I, personally, have begun to focus on agriculture. Being from downtown Toronto, what do I know about agriculture? In fact, I do know a bit about it because I spent years wandering around agricultural areas observing and talking with a cross-section of farmers, peasants and landowners. The other day, I went to a meeting in Dar es Salaam where I listened to the President of Uganda, Mr. Museveni, say that 86 per cent of the people in Uganda, which should be an enormously rich country from an agricultural perspective in that it has good land, are in subsistence agriculture. I know that in many other countries the figures related to subsistence agriculture would not be very different.
With 86 per cent of people in subsistence agriculture, how can we possibly conceive of any improvement in the standard of living of the people of Uganda if they do not have access to markets? I am not an agriculture economist, but if there is not a system that allows subsistence farmers to succeed, how can Uganda possibly succeed?
Mr. Zachernuk: I am not entirely up to date on Uganda's economic history, but I believe that that figure does not go very far back in time. I am sure that the number was lower in some of the heydays of the Ugandan economy, before Idi Amin. I am sure there were markets and mechanisms in place and that farms did succeed in getting their material to market in Uganda.
We should think about the historical conditions when that arose, rather than assume that it is a long-standing condition that needs to be fixed. I suspect that we can track better and worse systems in the recent past for creating cash-cropping economies in Uganda. I am sure that the moment Museveni is quoting is right for the contemporary period, but it might not have been right for a long history.
The Chairman: I was in Uganda and in the Congo in 1959. There were Belgian settlers in Kivu, but not in Uganda. If my memory serves me correctly, most Africans were involved in subsistence agriculture. I do not know the figures, but I suspect they were not very different from what they are now, except for in Kivu where there were some Belgian coffee farmers. There were Asian tea planters in Uganda. One saw thousands of Africans on the roadside, just as you see today, who are subsistence farmers.
It seems to me that in Africa today, just as in so many parts of the world today, the economy is based on agriculture. If you do not have a policy for agriculture, there is no chance in the world of any improvement.
What do you think about what I have said?
Mr. Stapleton: Yes, essentially African countries have agricultural economies. In Zimbabwe, a similar percentage of people live by subsistence agriculture, or perhaps it is a little smaller.
You must remember that the Mayan method of wealth extraction for a colonial state and economy was through a certain type of agriculture production — cash cropping. Through taxation, Africans almost forced to go through this transformation from subsistence farming of various types to a kind of capitalist farming based on selling cash crops and, of course, that was sometimes detrimental to them because you cannot eat cotton and so forth.
The monocultures that were created, the specialization on certain crops, was also dangerous because, if the world market for coffee collapsed, as it did just before the Rwandan genocide, it would hit that region very hard. We have to ``re-imagine'' what our role will be in developing African agriculture, which is obviously very important.
In Zimbabwe, there is a much criticized redistribution program, and it certainly has many problems. Now, a fairly large group of people, who each have 100-hectare plots, want to become commercial farmers, yet most of the economic and development ties with Zimbabwe have been cut because of how that came about. Yet, the people are there. There is no going back to the way things were. Perhaps the Canadian people should help the Zimbabwean people to create a commercial farming sector that is more acceptable to them and not just dominated by a very small elite.
The Chairman: Is there any serious disagreement, then, with my observation that if there is not an agricultural policy — which subject is discussed in the WTO at the Doha Round, which is the agriculture round — that allows subsistence farmers in all the different places to develop in some way, an increase in the standard of living will not happen?
Mr. Cooper: As for the importance of agriculture, you are absolutely right. Subsistence agriculture is more complicated. The term is a questionable one. Subsistence farming means that the people are trying to do something else and are unable to do so. Historians have found that there is great times depth in the marketing of agricultural produce. I am not just talking about the colonial era, but well before that. The idea that Africans grow something on their farm and eat it is by and large a myth. It was a myth in the 18th century, not just in the 20th century.
The term ``subsistence agriculture'' is often used to mean not plantation agriculture, such as someone with a big tea plantation. However, there is a lot between a big tea plantation and someone growing cassava.
The Chairman: Which they also sell in the market. I agree with you that the word ``subsistence'' can be misunderstood. My view is that they grow things in small plots and sell it in the markets.
Mr. Cooper: Yes, most producers are relatively small scale, although most use labour in addition to their own efforts. They may be kinsmen, but it is labour.
Let us look at an example of when agricultural change seemed to be going in a good direction. In Kenya in the late 1950s and 1960s Kenyan exports were shooting upwards. Where did that come from? It was not from the old white settler sector, which was falling apart, but from small and middle-sized African producers. At that time, these producers had incentives to produce for markets. We are talking to some extent about crops like maze and beans that were feeding the capital city, but we are also talking about coffee, which was being exported. These small and middle- sized farmers were producing at much increasing rates. They had a set of incentives to do so and they had institutions that could handle it. The marketing mechanisms were good enough for this to happen.
To a certain extent this is continuing in Kenya, but to a certain extent it has been eroded by politicians like the former President Moi who basically wanted to suppress anything that his clients did not want. The question that leaves us with is: What kinds of structures can we support that will produce the mechanisms that integrate small farmers into markets, for we know small farmers can and have done so? We also know that they have tried to hold the market at arm's length when the market was doing them harm.
What will make the integration better? What will help them balance growing some crops for themselves, since they have every reason not to want to depend on wheat from Kansas or Alberta to survive, but also to produce something that will be bought by a Canadian or U.S. citizen like coffee? That is the kind of dynamism we want to think about.
Clearly, this does have to do with the structure of world trade, under which people in countries like those in North America do have an interest, and there has been a lot of talk — and I think there should be — about the agricultural subsidies in wealthy countries that make it very difficult for African farmers to break out of the low-equilibrium trap that economists talk about. There is something that is quite relevant to policy in countries like yours and mine.
We must also consider what in general this has to do with state structure, the capacity of states to function in some way other than as a mechanism for looting and stealing. It has to do with education and it has to do with health. In all those kinds of ways, support for having institutions that function and operate in a reasonably transparent manner will have a major effect on farmers.
The Chairman: I think that is fundamental. However, never mind what I think; I will ask Senator Robichaud what he thinks.
Senator Robichaud: Professor Cooper, you mentioned education. Have we paid enough attention to education in all our interventions? You have given us history lessons on Africa in general, but have we not jumped the gun in some places whereby we tried to go to economics and development before giving those people the right tools to deal with that? With a little bit of money, could we probably have achieved a lot more?
Mr. Cooper: The gains in education of the early independence period were considerable. You can see a doubling of literacy rates in many countries within about 20 years. However, the gains were fragile. You start to see a lot of stagnation in the statistics on participation in education in the 1980s. That is no surprise, because that is when the economic crisis hit. That was when governments were under pressure to cut budgets so that the budgets would balance. In that situation, they do not cut out expenditures which will help their clients but, rather, they cut big-ticket items such as education.
These are fragile gains, but again we know from past records that they can be quite significant. There are quite significant gains in the education of women in quite a few parts of Africa. Those two are important but fragile.
The answer is that when resources have been available, quite a bit was done. There has been steady but not spectacular progress, but it has been enough to give people a chance. Africans, especially of my generation, come from remarkably modest backgrounds, and that education is in jeopardy. As it becomes scarcer, it tends to reproduce a privileged class, rather than be open to new avenues of people. It is very much a matter of continuing to provide the resources, particularly when times are difficult. If Senegal depends on selling peanuts to educate its children, it will reach limits very early on. Senegal has done a lot over the years, but it is very much constrained by resources.
Mr. Stapleton: I think Zimbabwe is a good example of what we are talking about. After independence in 1980, great strides were made in education. Throughout the 1980s, literacy rates rose to match some of the highest on the continent, and that was because the government invested a lot in education. However, with the current bad economic situation, the education system has begun to degenerate simply because, in hyperinflation — in the summer, it was 400 per cent — the cost of going to school constantly increases. It is impossible for people to pay for their children to go to school. You must have a stable economic situation to have a good educational system.
I would add that, anything Canada does, as with all development, should be appropriate and sustainable.
Mr. Zachernuk: Education, rightly, must be a high priority.
Professor Cooper talked about the great strides that were made in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the well-to-do West African colonies and states, when literacy rates doubled and tripled. Africans learned many lessons about what happens when people are educated but they cannot get a job, especially when the countryside is collapsing and there is a rural-to-urban migration. One of the legacies of education policies has been the migration of highly educated Africans out of the continent because they cannot do the research that they want to do in their own universities. They want to do research on Africa in Africa, but they have to do it from other countries.
However, recognizing that education needs attention and to be expanded should come with a sense of past attempts to do that, that is, what happened and what went wrong. Africans know best what happened when education became the leading priority without clear thinking about what would happen as a result of creating a population of literate young people.
It needs attention. It needs to be addressed in the context of past advances and the results of those, because we can learn from history.
Senator Robichaud: I certainly agree that Africans are the ones who know, and we should make sure that they are part of the process rather than trying to give them something because it is something that we are ready to give them. If it is not the right thing, they have to be in on it.
Professor Cooper, in your presentation, the second-last paragraph reads:
Africa has been told endlessly what it should do to conform to the world market; the more difficult question is how institutions which constitute the world market can be restructured to give the world's poor and excluded more of a chance.
Do you think we have a chance of accomplishing that?
Mr. Cooper: Your expertise is much greater than mine in that regard. Think of the example of how Europe and North American countries subsidize farmers and the effect that has on making Africans unable to compete. Can that be changed? It certainly would level the playing field as far as African farmers are concerned. Is it politically viable in the United States, Canada and the European Union?
Senator Robichaud: If I may, Professor Cooper, we have been fighting with the United States and the European Union in regard to production subsidies for grains and other commodities. Our farmers find that to be quite a problem. Do you think we have a chance to change the mindset of officials on the subject of subsidies? That would help Canada as well as those countries that require those changes.
Mr. Cooper: I suspect it would only happen in a coordinated way, otherwise, you would have a free-rider problem. The Western country that did not change would gain the advantage intended for Africa.
However, that this issue has been raised so strongly in world political foray does give me some hope that it is possible. Political leaders will have much more to say than a professor of African history.
The Chairman: That is what the Doha Round is supposed to be about. It is said by experts that the process will take 10 years.
Senator Robichaud: The question is: Is it changing?
The Chairman: That is what we are discussing as we sit here and, presumably, in Geneva at the Doha Round.
[Translation]
Senator Prud'homme: I have reviewed the aim of our study, which is to examine development challenges. The document that was distributed to us makes for some very serious reading as it is quite long. It contains 67 chapters and that is a lot of material to absorb in three days.
I have been in politics for 41 years. In my student days in the 1950s, I was involved with the World University Service of Canada. At the time, we focused a great deal on Africa. Over the years, I have noticed that there has been considerable talk of corruption in Africa. I read your documents and others as well and have observed frequent references to corruption.
As the former Chairman of the House of Commons National Defence Committee, I have always been interested in security issues. Can corruption be this prevalent if there is no one to perpetrate this corruption? I have often observed that the persons responsible for the corruption did not live in the same country or on the same continent where the corruption is prevalent. Have I missed something here? Has everything changed suddenly, and corruption now springs solely from within a country's borders?
Different sensibilities and problems prevail, and racism is ever present. I hope that our mandate extends to addressing the question of security as well as stability. Perhaps the time has come to have in place a truly well-equipped inter-African force, comprised of and headed by Africans, to ensure stability and security, instead of a military regime.
The Chairman: That is already the case.
Senator Prud'homme: I know, but the regime is still more or less armed. It is poorly organized, but it is a start. Are we on the right track? I believe that we are.
[English]
I am often colourful in my language. I will be attentive; I will choose the word ``disgust.'' When I see people who have nothing in their bellies, yet the country has better arms than the Canadian Armed Forces. It disgusts me. I know that these arms are not produced in Africa. I know that they are not suddenly showing up in all the places that we can find in Africa that you know better than I.
This must be included in our reflection. You are the first witnesses we have heard on this subject, and I am honoured to meet the three of you. I am pleased to be under the chairmanship of Senator Stollery, my ex-colleague in the House of Commons.
Could you comments on both of these issues: Corruption and corruptors; and armed forces to ensure better stability and control of arms, that is, where those arms come from, and so forth? Is that part of the problem?
Mr. Zachernuk: The corruption issue is one of those stereotypes of Africa that was abused by many people to dismiss the subject. I think you are absolutely right that a corruptor is required. For example, during the Cold War, there were pretty obvious candidates for those roles, for example, Mobutu in Zaire and others elsewhere during the liberation in southern Africa, Angola and so forth.
If it is true that corruption is an endemic problem in Africa, and I think the case can be made, you must ask why. Is it founded in African culture? No. Is it something about Africans? No, it is about the system. The system has been well- analyzed in the concept that Professor Cooper was using of the gatekeeper state. That was the idea in the 1960s and 1970s. The state became the one locus of power. In the game where everyone is trying to control the state, which has limited abilities and little power to affect things on the ground inside the country but all of the powers to affect things going to and coming from the country, that is a recipe to create corrupt governance. The historical creation of corruption needs to be analyzed and needs to be separated from the idea that it is an African culture. Corruption can be eliminated by, I think, a new structure of power. That power would involve popular voices controlling government as opposed to gatekeeper states.
On the subject of a security force, my only observation would be that, it is now a matter of great urgency for people like Thabo Mbeki and others who are promoting the new African union in replacement of the old organization of African unity, in the sense that Africans should somehow be able to intervene on their own continent and not rely on outside interference.
Whatever the strategic or military implications, the political and cultural implication of Africans in that role is most important. It is part and parcel of what the African union agenda and dream is about. It should be supported. For other reasons it does not make sense. However, it does bear some consideration. It is a statement in reaction to the sense of Africans being left outside of the making of their own history, to which I referred. Inside African ruling circles this subject has a significant resonance.
Mr. Stapleton: On the issue of corruption, I agree with the stereotype issue, but I also agree it is a reality in many places. This is a concept that can be used by politicians to manipulate. In Zimbabwe now, to be accused of corruption is a way to get rid of political rivals. To understand corruption in Africa we must also understand that the colonial system was inherently corrupt. It was about ripping people off. The governments that replaced them adopted the same system. You have to change that tradition and system. I do not think it has anything to do with African culture or anything like that, it is about that system.
I do not wish to blame everything on the colonizers of the past. Africans must be responsible. There is a growing awareness of that.
On the subject of corruptors, who is buying all of the, let's say, illicit diamonds? This subject has been addressed by the UN. There is a worldwide market for illegal diamonds coming from Sierra Leone, Mbuji-Mayi in the Congo, and Angola. It is not Africans who are buying them. There is a market for endangered species or parts of endangered animals, for example, parts of gorillas, rhino horns and ivory. The market is usually not within Africa.
The concept of an African force is embryonic. In fact, it exists. However, the problem is that most African armed forces do not have the money or the infrastructure to make it work. Capable Rwandan soldiers going to, say, Darfur, would have to use American or British transport planes because no African government has a fleet that can airlift up companies or battalions of troops. I agree that it is something that has to be developed.
Having former colonial powers come in and try to be peacekeepers is problematic. Belgian paratroopers were killed in Rwanda. You have to read Roméo D'Allaire's book to know about the problems he had because some of the troops under his command were from a Belgian army, and because Belgium was a former colonial power there was local hostility towards them. They were behaving towards Africans badly. They were racist and patronizing.
You must remember that, in creating an African force such as that, different African governments have different interests. For the longest time, between 1998 and 2002, Uganda and Rwanda were at war with Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia over the loot of the resources of the DRC. No one declared a war, but they were fighting and they were backing different sides in the war.
We were talking about weapons before the session. Areas have been flooded with firearms and it heightens the level of destruction that can be achieved. That is a legacy of the Cold War. I used to teach at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. It was the crucible of a struggle. Famous people attended the university. Nelson Mandela was expelled from there in 1940; and Robert Mugabe went there. For a long time, it was the only university Black South Africans could attend. The students were very struggle-minded. You could buy an AK-47 in the student residences for 50 Rands. That is about $10 now, and it was about $20 almost 10 years ago. I do not think you can do that now, but it demonstrates the level of firearms saturation.
I would not agree that the firearms in many places in Africa are very up to date. They are usually quite old, usually of former East Bloc origin, but there are arms dealers who are making a lot of money selling this surplus from the Cold War, and that has to be clamped down on.
The best way to maintain peace in an area is to get rid of those weapons; not to just compromise; they have to be collected.
Mr. Cooper: I agree with my colleague. I want to underscore that the structural condition that makes for corruption and the arms deals that distribute these guns is a huge disparity of resources, that is, you are in the wrong side of the gate. If you live in an African country you can see what is available outside. The differences are so enormous that the possibilities for dubious deals at that interface are huge. Having resources available by other means will do something to alleviate that.
You made a point about African security forces, which I think is valuable. We did have the intervention of ECOWAS into Sierra Leone. It had its problems but it does show that there is an effort to have Africans do collectively what individual countries cannot do. That is one other way to look forward.
Senator Losier-Cool: Would you advise the committee to look at the transparency of international reports? That is a way by which we may determine which countries are the most corrupt. Will that help us in any way?
Mr. Cooper: That is a start but there are many ways of being corrupt. What actual interfaces are involved? The conflict diamond issue needs to be looked at in a specific way. With respect to the oil pipeline that is being built to Chad, attempts are being made to closely monitor not only how it is done but also what happens to the oil revenue to ensure that this is done not in the cozy way of rounding up the usual suspects but in a more international way. These issues need to be confronted, but you have to view the corruptors and the corrupt in the same framework. How do you break into this vicious circle?
The Chairman: I would add about that it is a complete myth that Africa is particularly corrupt. I just returned from my 24th trip to Columbia. I have spent a lot of time in South America. We are on the record, so I will not give any specific instances, but in my experience corruption is the result of poverty. People who have no money, have nothing, become corrupt.
Senator Mahovlich: In the history of Africa has there ever been a time when they tried to unite into a dominion or a confederacy? Was there ever a time when they tried to get together and unite all the states?
Mr. Stapleton: It was an idea in the 1950s and 1960s. Pan-Africaism as a concept goes back to the late 19th century or early 20th century, perhaps even before. It came from African-Americans and it originated with people such as W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century who were responding to racism in their own homes, in the U.S. and colonial Jamaica. They saw going back to Africa as a way to escape those problems, and they tended to view it in a romantic way. They had the idea that all people of African descent, Africans and African-Americans and so on, should unite and there should perhaps be a United States of Africa.
Those ideas led to the creation of an organization of African unity in the early 1960s, but many other forces were working against it. You had also the Monrovia group who were against that vested interest in local states. I think pan- Africaism was never taken seriously, and too many things were working against it.
Mr. Cooper: Another attempt that was more institutionally grounded was in French Africa just after World War II. Some of the political leaders there did not want independence in the sense of each little colonial territory becoming its own nation state, but they wanted, rather, French-speaking Africa as a whole to become a federation. Leopold Senghor was one of the leaders of this movement. He was trying to build an empire-to-federation rather than empire- to-nation state transition. Had that succeeded, it might have changed the picture quite a bit. Masy vested interests were leaning the other way. One was France which did not want to have such a powerful and united force and could not imagine any form of federation of equals. It would have to be a federation of everyone underneath France.
The other interest comprised a few of the leaders within the French colonies who would organize political movements or political machines in some cases within their own territory, and they were afraid that if their territory was subsumed into a larger federation, they would be undercut from somebody outside. Since some territories were richer than others, the richest ones had the least interest in supporting a federation. There were these strong forces against it.
It is interesting that in Senghor's case there was a 15-year period where there was an attempt to get serious about how to build institutions to create a federation. Senghor himself saw the failure of this as one of the great tragedies of his lifetime.
The Chairman: On behalf of my colleagues, I thank you very much. As I said, we are just beginning our study, and we have a lot to grasp. If I sound confused, it is because I am confused.
The committee adjourned.