RENAISSANCE BEGINS WITH THE ABUJA-PRETORIA AXIS

by Phyllis Johnson

The African leadership renaissance has begun, in two related events that took place within days of each other in different parts of the continent, at the end of May 1999.

On 29 May, the world's most populous and influential black nation returned to civilian leadership with the inauguration of Olusegun Obasanjo as President of Nigeria.

He spoke of democracy, human rights and good governance; transparency and rejection of corruption; human development including educational and social reform; and sustainable economic development, including debt relief.

Nigeria is set to enter the new millennium with an experienced, elected President, who had previously inherited a military regime from an assassinated leader in 1976 and handed over to civilian rule three years later.

His first administration was not afraid to exert its influence for the advancement of African liberation, and it played a role so significant that the southern African leaders of the Front Line States included Nigeria as an informal member of their group during that period.

One key pressure point in maintaining the momentum towards Zimbabwe's independence was Nigeria's threat to nationalise the Shell Oil Company and other British investments if the British government recognised the short-lived government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia established by Ian Smith.

These principles extended to Obasanjo's later role as an international statesman, in co-chairing the Eminent Persons Group established by the Commonwealth in 1986 to examine ways of ending apartheid, a process that lead eventually to majority rule in South Africa.

His new counterpart in South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was elected on 2 June, just a few days after Obasanjo's inauguration. Mbeki was chief representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in Nigeria and lived in Lagos 20 years ago, during Obasanjo's first term of office. Obasanjo is now 62, just six years older than Mbeki.

The intimate knowledge and understanding that the two leaders share of each other's national reality, therefore, has already shortened the distance between Abuja and Pretoria to that of neighbouring capitals. Relations can be expected to be close, though competitive.

Notwithstanding the commercial and political rivalry that exists at national level and will develop further between the two African countries - including for example over a place on the United Nations Security Council - the leaders will remain in close and regular contact.

They passionately share the vision of an African Renaissance, and they command the national, regional, and continental power bases to facilitate it. Nigeria's population numbers around100 million, almost half of the population of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

"Nigeria has been a pariah, under military rule for so long [16 years]," said one African diplomat, "that it is difficult to remember the time when they used their power and influence. Maybe the last time was the period of South Africa's invasion of Angola [1975] and Zimbabwe's independence [1980]."

The Commonwealth welcomed Nigeria back into its ranks in May 1999 with the same enthusiasm that accompanied South Africa's return in May 1994.

"Nigeria's return to its rightful place in the Commonwealth is not mere symbolism," said the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, himself a Nigerian. "There is a real expectation that Nigeria will quickly take up its traditional leadership role as a major player within the organisation."

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has similar expectations, according to the Secretary-General, Salim Ahmed Salim, a Tanzanian.

Nigeria has chaired the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and South Africa currently chairs SADC.

Nigeria plays a key role in regional peace-making in West Africa, and South Africa is being encouraged to do so elsewhere. Obasanjo, in South Africa for Mbeki's inauguration on 16 June, told a news conference that "under the right auspices and the right conditions: a Nigerian peacekeeping force could be dispatched to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)."

He outlined a possible joint approach to conflict resolution on the continent, saying that, "our two countries can be instruments of assistance and a vanguard of hope for the management and resolution of conflicts."

The new Nigerian president has experience on that score as well, having been deployed as a young platoon commander in the Nigerian contingent of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Congo in 1960-61.

Obasanjo wrote about that experience some years later, saying that, "Our Congo experience, however, heightened our Pan African fervour. We realised that Africa divided by outsiders and within itself, would remain perpetually exploited, suppressed and backwards." (SARDC)