U.S. Mission Wends Through an Africa Struggling to Change : Diplomacy: National Security Adviser Anthony Lake is trying to boost democratic hopes. His eight-day trip is taking him to nine nations.

In the torpid heat of the Mozambican summer, in a village far from paved roads and running water, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake sat on a stool and heard the story of fisherman Jose Chemane Bizho--the simple story of Africa’s fragile hopes and frightful danger.

“When I was young,” said the bearded fisherman, “I joined the army for two years. But I fought on for 17. Today, I want my own fishing project. I’m looking for somebody to support me and buy me some nets.”

Here in the south of Africa, sounds of gunfire have died out. A brutal civil war has ended. The same is true in Ethiopia to the north, Rwanda in the center. Even Angola in the west is struggling from the exhaustion of war and searching for the terms of a peace.

Soldiers are being asked to become citizens, voters, fishermen. New leaders with business suits and college degrees are trying to build nations in a fresh model.

So on a sweeping pre-Christmas tour of transitional Africa, Lake, the preeminent Clinton Administration expert on the subject, has been sifting through the ashes of continental catastrophe to stir up embers of hope.

He has rejected America’s “Afro-pessimism” and championed the emerging generation of African leaders and their commitment to democracy. “Afro-realism,” he calls it.

He has also sounded a warning: This may be Africa’s last chance. The vast energies spent on destructive political struggle must now weave the fisherman his nets.

“The world around Africa is fast coming together. And this continent risks being the odd man out,” Lake said in a speech in Ethiopia to the Organization of African Unity.

By happenstance, Lake’s nine-country, eight-day hopscotch across the continent with a delegation of military officers, diplomats and scholars comes at a significant moment in African history and in Africa’s post-Cold War relations with America. The trip had been long planned and often postponed.

When Lake finally made his way to the continent last week, Ethiopia--his first stop--adopted a new democratic constitution that promises its fractious ethnic groups the right to self-determination. He arrived in Rwanda as a new Parliament was seated.

In Mozambique, the newly elected president appointed his government on the eve of Lake’s arrival.

Lake stopped in Burundi as moderates faced extremists in their long ethnic struggle for that small Central African nation. In Zambia to the south, the national security adviser took the measure of a young and peacefully achieved, if imperfect, democracy.

Also during his trip, Angola has wobbled on the unsteady legs of a Nov. 22 peace accord--still skirmishing and still talking after 19 years of civil war. “End the hostilities once and for all,” Lake urged the warring factions Monday, at the beginning of a two-day visit. “The time has come to match your words with actions.”

Lake plans to continue on to the western coastal nations of Benin and Ghana, other potential showcases of African progress. And he is to wind up his trip on the far western edge of the continent in Senegal, noted for its stability.

For all that, however, the American delegation has been on the defensive. After a failed peacekeeping effort in Somalia and following the senseless horrors of Rwanda, the American public seems to have lost its stomach for Africa. The United Nations is stretched thin. New Republican leaders of Congress want less engagement here, not more.

“We recognize signs of hope,” Lake said. “But many African nations are but one step away from crisis.”

Why should America care? Because it is in the heart of Americans to care, said Lake. “And we care because the great global challenges of tomorrow can be seen in the challenges facing Africa today.”

This theme of longing versus despair is not Lake’s alone but also has been voiced along the way by scores of Africans.

In Ethiopia, scholar Jalal Abdel Latil said his country’s move away from authoritarianism “is irreversible. They are dismantling the old order. The trouble is, nobody has a model for a new order.”

In Rwanda, where ethnic divisions are so powerfully deep that few people can be truly optimistic, Mache Nkongoli is vice president of the new Parliament. There is no money for hotel rooms to house representatives from out of town; there is only one photocopying machine, and the rain still comes through shell holes in the Parliament building. “But the positive thing is that our representatives are here and ready to work,” he said.

In Zambia, a multi-party election in 1991 peacefully brought down a 27-year ruler. But one election does not create a democracy. “Our next election will be the hard one,” said Foston Kakala, a Zambian democracy advocate. “In 1991, there was one common enemy. In 1996, it will be more difficult.”

Even Lake’s diversions have showed the two sides of Africa. One morning, his party flew by helicopter to Moamba, Mozambique, where platoons of ex-soldiers are clearing anti-personnel mines, inch by painful inch, from the land. With the detonation of a string of freshly found Russian mines, the smell of cordite was still raw on the sweltering breezes.

Six hours later, Lake drove to a Zambian wild game ranch outside Lusaka. With his field guide to birds, he correctly identified the bird on the Zambian currency as the fish eagle. His party also discovered a nest of young pythons and a profusion of African antelope. And they watched the sun drop over the savanna, turning the sky the bright color of blood.

White House officials seemed to indicate that Lake’s foray, one of several high-level Administration missions to Africa in recent months, is a prelude to a presidential visit to the fast-changing continent in 1995. However, it has not been simple to determine where an American president should go, except for South Africa.

“No matter what, Africa is at the bottom of America’s priorities. And it’s going to stay there for a long time,” said Shawn H. McCormick, an Africa specialist who is traveling with Lake from the Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic and International Studies. “For it to move up, something else would have to fall behind. What would that be? Europe? Asia? Latin America? Russia?

“But it’s still an exciting time here. After colonialism and since the Cold War, now is the time Africans can decide for themselves what to do. The 1990s will be the decade when Africa defines its own future. You could argue it has no other choice.”

On this path, Africans feel an urgent dependence on America and the West, as much now as ever. In Mozambique, 71% of the government budget comes from outside donors. In Zambia, the amount is almost as high. In Rwanda, the government has virtually no resources at all except what it is given.

Some cynics, from both the West and Africa, see multi-party democracy as just a continuation of what happened during the Cold War--rich, domineering nations imposing their view of government by checkbook. And African leaders respond to please: The civic leaders of the Zambian capital recently changed the name of Saddam Hussein Boulevard to Los Angeles Boulevard.

So, naturally, African leaders are openly nervous about the American political mood. The Cold War may have had room for corrupt and inept governments, but not this new lean-and-mean trans-global economic order.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, an African diplomat said he was impressed by the Clinton Administration delegation. But he said to Lake, “For all your goodwill and noble protestations, you may not have the wherewithal to realize your ideals.”

Indeed, replied Lake.

He said Africa should not “over-read” the results of the American congressional elections. “We will continue to work with the leadership of the Republican Party and with the Republican moderates who are dedicated to engagement in the world.”

But he added: “We need to be able to show results, practical results. . . . In Africa, and elsewhere, the windows of opportunity can remain open for only so long. . . . The warlords--and, tragically, their people--cannot always count on an international safety net.”