SUMMITRY / NEW PRESSURE ON AFRICA : ‘Give Us a Break’ on Calls for Democracy, a Leader Pleads

At a dinner preceding the Franco-African summit here this week, one of the African leaders complained to French President Francois Mitterrand that democratic reforms were too much to expect from many young African states.

“Give us a break,” Mitterrand quoted the African chief of state as saying. “Remember that only 50 years ago Europe had Nazis, Fascists, Stalin and dictatorships in Spain and Portugal.”

The comment, repeated by Mitterrand during his opening speech at the 35-nation summit, reflected the frustration many African leaders feel with the increasing political conditions placed on them by developed countries that control vital aid programs.

Western donor countries and Japan, pleased with the results of the democratic “conditionality” placed on the nascent East European states in the last year, clearly would like to apply the same rules in Africa.

The Background

Under terms of this new international buzzword, outlined in the charter of the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for example, developing countries must meet several “conditions”--including holding free and open elections, protecting human rights, developing multi-party systems and installing market-based economies--before they can qualify for aid.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have placed economic conditions on their loans for years, but it is the relatively new “political conditionality” that particularly concerned the leaders assembled for the 16th Franco-African Summit.

Many of the leaders, mainly from former French and Belgian colonies, had come to this Atlantic Ocean resort town seeking reassurance from France that it would continue its aid.

“We ask that these young African democracies be allowed to develop without putting a knife to their throat,” Morocco’s King Hassan II, the summit president, said in opening the meeting.

Instead, they were greeted by torrential rains that ruined the beach scene and a paternalistic, scolding speech from the French president. Mitterrand warned them that future aid programs would be “tied to efforts made in the name of freedom” in the African countries. In a press conference Thursday, Mitterrand added that the political conditions did not imply a complete cutoff of aid: “It just means that we will be lukewarm to countries that show no progress toward change, and we will be more enthusiastic toward those who do.”

Describing France as “Africa’s best friend,” Mitterrand announced plans to reduce the debt in four of the countries (Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Gabon) by putting a 5% cap on interest payments. He pledged that he would take up the African cause with his fellow leaders at the Group of Seven summit this summer in Houston.

Antoine Glaser, editor of “Letter from the Continent,” a respected French publication devoted to African affairs, summarized the summit thus: “They had all come here asking Mitterrand to be their spokesman in the West. He said ‘OK, but you have to clean up your house first.’ ”

The Reality

Among the 35 African countries that attended the two-day summit, only two, Senegal and Benin, can be said to have functioning multi-party systems.

Bending to pressure, the leaders in several states, notably Zaire and Ivory Coast, recently announced plans to end one-party rule in their countries.

Several leaders here complained about treatment of Africa and African issues in the French press.

“Since I got here,” said Senegal’s President Abdou Diouf, “the television coverage has been scandalous. They are dragging African leaders in the mud. They give the impression that we are all incompetent, for sale, corrupt and inefficient.”