PERSPECTIVE ON AFRICA : Charity and Peace Begin at Home : Africans want an end to the crises inflicted by and on their own people. How to help? Stop aid to military regimes.

Rwanda evokes visceral reaction from Africans living here in the United States. “I don’t want to think about it; it’s a disgrace to Africa and it’s too close to home,” says Anita Shirima, a graduate student from Tanzania. “Rwanda is one more proof that the military is out of control in Africa,” declares Reminglus Kintu, president of Uganda Democratic Coalition. “The complicity of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni should not be overlooked in the Rwandan crisis,” he adds. “Where is the Organization of African Unity? What are African governments doing to resolve the Rwandan crisis?” asks Jide Osikomalya, the Nigerian publisher of Africa Forum.

Well, the OAU and African governments did something. At the OAU’s 30th summit in Tunis on June 15, Secretary-general Salim Ahmad Salim declared: “Africa must assume its responsibility.” Indeed, it produced a cease-fire agreement between Rwandan warring factions that bore no signatures. It also appointed--of all people!--President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire as the mediator. Zaire itself is on the brink of total collapse, wracked by civil strife and carnage. Virtually all formal institutions in Zaire have crumbled. Unpaid Zairean soldiers have been rampaging and pillaging villages. The business communities in Kivu and Lower Zaire decided to pay the salaries of soldiers there to prevent further looting. Zairean soldiers have even been robbing the Rwandan refugees encamped at Goma.

The frustrations of Africans over the hopeless incompetence of the OAU and African governments on Rwanda seldom receive play in the Western media, which prefers quoting politicians’ trite alibis for African inaction and gratuitous blaming of the United Nations and the U.S. government for acting too slowly. But most Africans are tired of these crises, the incessant blame and “parachute journalism.”

Year after year since 1985, Western journalists have hopped from one African debacle to another, parading grisly pictures of emaciated bodies of famine victims on television to appeal for humanitarian assistance: Ethiopia (1985), Angola (1986), Mozambique (1987), Sudan (1991), Liberia (1992), Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994). Many Africans are enraged by television images that deprecate their pride and dignity. Africa, it seems, is synonymous with famine, death and destruction. The horrific pictures also convey the mischievous notion that Africans are incapable of feeding themselves or solving their own problems. With a bowl in an outstretched hand, they are always begging foreigners for food. The responsibility for feeding Africans rests with African governments, not foreigners.

Yet every year there is a fete of massive relief for Africa. Back in 1985, it was Band Aid for Ethiopia and U.S.A. for Africa at a cost of over $1.6 billion. In 1992, it was “Operation Rescue” for Somalia, costing more than $2.6 billion. The Rwandan mission has passed the $250-million mark. And more African countries are standing in line, ready to blow up. The United Nations Development Program has targeted 10 on the brink of social disintegration: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Egypt, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Zaire and, of course, Rwanda. It would make more sense to spend a little money now to help prevent these crises, rather than waiting for them to explode, sending refugees streaming in all directions.

Refugees and famine victims must be helped; it is humanitarian and noble to do so. But African humanitarian relief should be coupled with a search for permanent solutions, or at least acknowledge the efforts that Africans themselves are making to find such solutions. Racism, colonial borders and legacies, American imperialism, the Cold War and ancient tribal rivalries are irrelevant in the analyses of these crises. Take Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan: All have been devastated by the adamant refusal of military coconut-heads to step down or share political power.

Africa has too many dictators--more per capita than any other region in the world. Only 13 of the 54 African countries are democratic. The least the international community could do to help Africa find permanent solutions to its crises is to aid only democratic countries and deny aid to any African country that spends more than 5% of its government budget on the military. (African governments spend more than $12 billion a year on the importation of arms and the maintenance of the military--an amount equal to what Africa receives in aid from all sources.)

On Rwanda, it is tempting for the international community, anguishing over the bloodletting and embarrassed by its apparent helplessness to halt the slaughter, to embrace and recognize the government formed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front. This government, boasts RPF leader Paul Kagame, is “broad-based,” with two moderate Hutus, Faustin Twagiramugu and Pasteur Bizimungu, as prime minister and president.

Although the RPF earned distinction by its remarkable display of discipline in battle and committed fewer atrocities, an RPF government is not viable. First of all, recognizing a group that shoots its way to power undermines the ideals of democracy that most seek to establish elsewhere in Africa. Furthermore, Africa’s protracted experience with civil wars shows that a vanquished faction simply does not evaporate. It flees into exile, regroups and returns with a vengeance to wreak mayhem. Says Labislas Habyatinana, a defeated Hutu soldier who fled to Munigi, Zaire: “I’ve killed at least 80 Tutsis with grenades. . . . I’m still young, I can fight again soon, then again and again until we win back Rwanda.” This is exactly what the Tutsi rebels did, fleeing into exile after being routed in 1959.

Despite assurances by the RPF that it will not seek revenge against the Hutus, it is unlikely that the 3 million Hutu refugees in Tanzania and Zaire will return anytime soon to Rwanda. Africa is a place where promises by governments have as much value as a 5-million Zaire note--less than a cent.

Rather than leave it to suffer the fate of Somalia--abandoned to the whims of armed vultures--Rwanda should be recolonized from within Africa. An interim, two-year transitional multinational government should be established, with representatives drawn not only from the remaining Hutu and Tutsi populations but also from groups organized along class, economic and religious lines to weaken the ethnic factor in government. The Rwandan military should be disbanded. And neighboring countries--Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire--should have seats in the interim government, with the right to veto legislation.

The neighboring countries, after all, have received huge numbers of Rwandan refugees, putting a severe strain on their meager social services. As such, they ought to have a say in the internal affairs of Rwanda.

But there is a more cogent reason for the involvement of neighboring countries: Their own domestic situations mirror those of Rwanda. Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Zaire are themselves sitting on the keg of ethnic explosion. An involvement in Rwanda may have a deterrent or therapeutic effect by impressing upon its neighbors the ravages of unremitting civil strife.

It is time to send a strong message to African governments: If they do not handle their internal affairs well, they will be recolonized or invaded by their neighbors. Perhaps the United Nations could take the lead instead of the OAU and establish an African-administered trusteeship over Rwanda and Somalia.

Admittedly, this proposal is not fail-proof. But as a Tanzanian proverb advises: “We start as fools and become wise through experience.” Making excuses for the OAU and African governments hardly gives them the incentive to make a start.