Speaking Truth to Strangers (Huffington Post)

For the past two decades, Western donors and the international banks have nurtured, coddled and sustained some of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes on the African continent. They have done it rather craftily. First, they created the fictional character of the "new breed African leaders" and promoted them as Africa's saviors. They were presumably much different than the old style in-your-face dictators like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin and the self-coronated Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The "new breeders" were said to be committed to multiparty democracy, economic reforms and civil liberties. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair lionized Meles Zenawi and his ilk (Yoweri Musaveni of Uganda, Kagame of Rwanda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa). Of course, Clinton and Blair knew they were selling the natives the same old rancid wine of dictatorship in a new bottle labeled "New African Democrats." Zenawi gloated and basked in the sunshine of Western praise and used that fame devastatingly against his opposition: "I am the one, and only one. So I am by the grace of the Western donors."Read more...