The East African (Nairobi)
Interview
Kampala
08.10.00
Cynthia Mckinney represents the Fourth District of the State of Georgia in the US Congress and has been vocal in raising concern on African issues. She spoke recently to Special Correspondent Ruth Nabukwe on the crises facing Africa, particularly the DRC conflict, the diamond trade and the recent US-Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
Q: Humanitarian organisations estimate there have been close to 1.7 million civilian deaths since the outbreak of the DRC conflict in 1998. Are the Congolese right in seeing double standards in the minimal reaction of the international community to the killings, which are ostensibly orchestrated by Rwandan and Ugandan forces?
A: The idea that Africans kill each other for no reason is an easy one to perpetuate. There is perpetuation of stereotypes and misery against people of colour all over the world, but particularly Africans.
Q: Why haven't other Congress members supported your concerns?
A: Well, we have had some support from Congress since we issued our call for action when we learnt that the US Congress was holding reserve money that was desperately needed to help African refugees. We pressed the US State Department to release that money and we got it. Money was released for refugees fleeing Sierra Leone. We also got money for refugee resettlement in Rwanda. We also pressed very hard for funding of the Great Lake's Initiative, which included the justice programme to allow Rwanda to build the necessary infrastructure to try the hundreds of thousands of people behind cells in an expeditious manner. The great disappointment has been the UN tribunal, which has spent tonnes of money and still not given the global tax-payer value for their money.
However, we have had some successes, but these aren't enough, especially when we begin to press for special interests. For instance, on the issue of diamonds, there are wealthy people in the US who have a close friendship with people who make US policy. So, when you start talking about diamonds, you are hitting a nerve centre. Of course, because of the Fowler Report, we know that they are accomplices of those who deal in the illicit diamond trade.
Q: Do you think that the lack of effective action is due to lack of appropriate and effective sanctions?
A: It is unfortunate that US policy in Africa has been such an abysmal failure. It is true that Bill Clinton is the most friendly US president to Africa in several generations, but how can someone so friendly end up with such an outrageous, atrocious, horrible policy that assists perpetrators of crimes against humanity, inflicting damages on innocent African peoples?
The whole world knows that Uganda and Rwanda are allies of the United States and that they have been given a carte blanche for whatever reason to wreck havoc in the Congo.
Q: Are your views on African conflicts getting a hearing and your concerns being taken into consideration, particularly by the US Congress?
A: As it relates to the Congo, I think we have had some modest success. Until Uganda and Rwanda evacuate their troops from Congo, we will still have problems. The RCD is now fighting with the Mayi Mayi. The RCD needs to withdraw from Kisangani. They are the proxies of Rwanda.
Q: Do you foresee the evacuation of foreign troops from Congo happening, given that there have been a lot of violations of the Lusaka Accord?
A: The most important objective is peace. I do not think there is any way to get peace until Uganda and Rwanda withdraw their troops from the DRC. They claim to have problems with insecurity. If they amassed their troops on their borders, then these people won't cross the border and enhance insecurity within Rwanda and Uganda. We also understand that those troops were not at their borders and their foward deployment was not Kisangani but Boma, on the opposite side of the country, which puts a lie to their claim that their intrusion in the Congo was due to border insecurity. Because there are so many diamonds in Kisangani, I am left with the question: Is that the reason they are fighting each other? Our UN Ambassador [Richard] Holbrooke has done a wonderful job in trying to turn around US policy and disengage the US from being closely allied with what are so obviously crimes against humanity and, as one UN representative said, "genocide in the city of Kisangani."
Q: The US and other powerful Western countries are perceived to be supporting the Rwanda-Uganda axis in the Congo war. Do you think this is partly why the war is not coming to an end?
A: I would like to commend [UN Secretary-General] Kofi Annan for his most recent resolution to the Security Council that literally demanded that Uganda and Rwanda withdraw from Congo. That resolution still stands and, as far as I am concerned, that is what we need to have acted on.
Q: You are one of those who believed that President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda were some of the new breed of African leaders that the continent needed. At what stage did you stop seeing them as such?
A: The violation of the territorial integrity of Congo pits Rwanda and Uganda against the founding principle of the Organisation of African Unity. It appears that Rwanda and Uganda are okay with being at odds with the OAU and the entire African continent. That is why Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe came to the defence of Congo.
The US invests all its hopes and aspirations for good and positive things in personalities. What US policy ought to be doing is building institutions, not individuals. And certainly not individual leaders. I intend to fully invest in the principles of democracy, respect for human rights and transparency. When I see those principles violated, then I feel duty-bound to speak out because it's tax-payers' dollars, from tax-payers from my constituency and the rest of the US, that goes to fund what is suppossed to be institution-building.
Unfortunately, that has not been US policy in the past and certainly isn't US policy now. My efforts will continue to be to divest the United States from this reliance on particular individuals and invest instead in non governmental organisations and government institutions that build in their structures respect for human rights and transparency.
Q: The US-Africa Policy is perceived as one in which US interests are forced down on Africa regardless of their negative consequences. Can you comment?
A: The United States has always done that. First it was colonialism, and the US was a partner to those colonial powers that went into Africa and colonised the people. They set up the economies in such a way that they would forever serve the interests of Europeans and not Africans.
Before colonialism, there was slavery. The United States was built on slavery and is part and parcel of the rape of Africa. After slavery came colonialism, then neo-colonialism and after that the Cold War. Africa has never had an opportunity to govern itself or to reap the fruits of it's vast human, mineral and natural resources.
For Africans and African leaders to think that the US is going to be the solution to their problems, they are sadly mistaken. US interests have never been to solve Africa's problems; US interests have often contributed to Africa's problems.
Q: How then can you describe the Clinton administration's "US Trade Not Aid Policy" espoused during his historic visit to Africa? Will it work?
A: I see the US's Trade Not Aid Policy as a continuation of the policies towards Africa which continue to benefit the US at the expense of Africa. The Africa Growth And Opportunity Act does not even do anything for debt-relief, which Africa is crying out for. It does not do anything about good governance and it does not do anything about nation-building or institution-building. What it does is to encourage African states to divest themselves of state-owned corporations and to sell them, hopefully, to American corporations - that is what the vision is.