Word: africanism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...will note that there is not yet much stable democracy. Mali is still struggling to institutionalize democratic practices, and Rawlings still runs Ghana after two questionable elections. Neither of these countries--along with Eritrea and Mozambique--qualifies as anything other than a one-party state, despite token oppositions. Many African leaders, good and bad, share Museveni's belief that real multiparty elections are a luxury these fragile states cannot afford until they have the education, the middle class, the rule of law and the firm economic base on which American-style democracy rests...
There is a word we heard over and over in Africa: ubuntu. It's different in every dialect, but the meaning is always roughly the same: a complex, highly nuanced precept governing the way individuals relate to the community. Ubuntu is the organizing principle of the African mind, defining the pre-eminence of the interests of the community over the individual, the duties and responsibilities the individual owes the community, the obligation of the individual to share what he has with the community. It is both blessing and curse, the root of Africa's strong families and social customs...
...more rural magic comes into play. The newest local healer lumbers into the countryside on 17 tons of armor plate and giant steel wheels. The Frelimo government has invested its scarce cash to bring in a fleet of Casspir demining vehicles, operated by a private subsidiary of the South African army, to get rid of the mines that keep farmers and herders off the country's lush lands...
...essential first step for African nations is the step back from the edge of famine. The Mozambicans are doing other things right too. Theirs is a people's peace, driven by popular refusal to continue the conflict and a fierce determination to live a normal life. Today political stability--though not much democracy--has been achieved through the government's policy of "no victor, no vanquished." Four years ago, Renamo elected impressive numbers to the national assembly; now it has a stake in running the country, and hostilities find voice mainly as parliamentary debate. Frelimo jettisoned its socialist economic credo...
That little speck of rock in the harbor of Dakar, Senegal, is the black-American equivalent of Auschwitz or Treblinka, a blood-drenched monument to a genocidal past that all too often is ignored. On it stands the House of Slaves, where tens of thousands of Africans were herded into cramped holding pens to be fattened up for the Middle Passage to a life of slavery in the New World. Their last contact with the African motherland came at the Door of No Return, where they were whipped across a narrow gangplank to the slave ships...