Like the rest of the world, Africa witnessed from afar Russia’s annexation of neighbouring Ukraine’s Crimea region. While the international community, led by the US, condemned the land grab, no African nation wished to put forth an opinion, much less a condemnation.
Instead, on a continent largely led by despots even in purportedly democratic nations, the lesson learnt was that still in the 21st century might makes right.
What excited Africa’s ambitious leaders about Crimea is that ethnicity could be used successfully by an advanced nation as a pretext to confiscate a neighbour’s territory. With Africa’s tribal and ethnic populations literally all over the map, Moscow’s plan to bring all Russians “home”, by force if necessary, is inspiring for ambitious leaders with territorial aspirations.
Africa learnt from Russia’s own tribal leader, Vladimir Putin, that the process of annexing territory calls for a combination of adroit propaganda and military might set in motion by prefabricated alarm that a group of people who are of the aggressor’s own ethnicity are imperilled within a coveted plot of land.
While the menace premise is whipped up by a full-scale media assault, troops are moved into place. Nothing says possession as clearly as a military occupation.
On a continent where one country’s national resources may be coveted by neighbours, a UN report finds that Uganda and Rwanda are engaged in land grabs by proxy, supporting militias to destabilise DRC to loot mineral resources there. Socially, African peoples, like the Russians, are new to democracy and are still more devoted to ethnic and tribal ties than to democratic ideals.
The danger of regions taken over by powerful neighbours is now on display in east and central Africa. These developments are not new and have been a part of Africa’s post-colonial history.
Idi Amin’s military incursion into Tanzania in 1977-1978 was a land grab. His excuse for invading the Kagera region of Tanzania was to pursue anti-Amin army forces there.
However, Amin annexed Kagera, claiming the land had always belonged to Uganda.
Tanzania mounted a counter-offensive that led to the collapse of the Amin regime and his exile to Saudi Arabia.
Uganda’s authoritarian president since 1991, Yoweri Museveni, had a role in Amin’s overthrow but also learnt from Amin lessons on cross-border incursions. Days after the South Sudan’s capital Juba was shaken by factional fighting in December, Ugandan troops moved northwards into the country, ostensibly to protect Ugandan citizens there.
After Ugandan nationals were evacuated, the troops remained as “security”. The Ugandan occupation has further destabilised South Sudan, a young but oil-rich country.
Rwanda’s infamous 1994 genocide in which 800 000 Tutsi people were massacred was based on a desire for territory. In a small but populous country where tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes arose from the joint sharing of a single place, ethnic cleansing was seen as the answer to this competition by Rwanda’s Hutu-led government in 1994.
Carving ethnic enclaves out of sovereign nations has been a form of territorial acquisition found whenever there is a civil war in Africa. All the self-declared “break-away regions” and “autonomous homelands” are attempts by niche populations to replace a democracy in which a country’s peoples work toward a common cause while safeguarding the rights of minority groups, with autocratic enclaves that serve one group while excluding others.
The Séléka militant group overthrew the government of the Central African Republic on March 24 last year to create an Islamist state. Séléka’s atrocities were so widespread prior to their ousting from the capital Bangui in February this year that an anti-Muslim backlash erupted which has created its own atrocities.
To the north-east, the jihadist group Boko Haram seeks to overthrow Nigeria’s government and create an Islamist state, and would have an autonomist Islamist state carved out of present-day Nigeria in which religion and ethnicity determined citizenship.
When it comes to short-term political or territorial gains, African leaders laugh at international sanctions, the way Uganda’s Museveni dismissed the loss of international aid withdrawn in protest against his persecution of gays.
African leaders feel that Russia’s situation is much like their own. Like the proud Russians, Africans have long-held grievances and decades of poverty which inoculate them against any inconveniences or economic setbacks that sanctions might bring. The most common trait of African society is endurance, against nature and against human occupiers. Eventually, Africans know, the weather will change and the occupiers will depart.
As soon as an opportunity arises, territorial confiscations will be made by African leaderships remembering Putin in Crimea, not Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.