French Colonial
Past Casts Long Shadow Over Policy in Africa
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/world/africa/18francafrique.html?pagewanted=2
Published: April 17,
2011
PARIS President Nicolas
Sarkozy, having suddenly engaged France
in shooting wars in Libya and Ivory
Coast, seems to be harking back to the
old days of French African policy, sometimes
known as Françafrique, when Paris and its
army dictated politics in its former colonies
and reaped economic rewards.
Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
A French soldier kept
watch Saturday in Abidjan, the economic
capital of Ivory Coast, a former French
colony.
French troops and helicopters were vital
in bringing the drama in Abidjan to a close,
striking the heavy weapons and presidential
palace of the defeated Ivory Coast
presidential candidate Laurent
Gbagbo and making possible his arrest.
And France has been the country that has
pushed hardest for intervention in Libya on
behalf of the opposition to Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi.
But Mr. Sarkozy and the Foreign Ministry
reject the suggestion of a return to colonial
reflexes, emphasizing that in both cases
France acted under a mandate from the United
Nations Security Council that authorized
the use of force to protect civilians. French
officials also point out that Libya was an
Italian colony, never French; that French
troops did not arrest Mr. Gbagbo; and that
Paris was slow to understand the depth of the
anger in its former protectorate, Tunisia.
Mr. Sarkozys line for Africa has
been neither interference nor
indifference.
Frances colonial empire covered much
of North and West Africa, from Algeria to
Ivory Coast. The colonies were gradually
granted independence in the 1960s, but France
still has troops based in Africa and close
business, political, linguistic and personal
ties to its former colonies, which as a whole
give France more importance in the world.
Accusations persist of France taking sides
to make new presidents or overthrow old ones,
of illegal political contributions and
payoffs, of parallel but separate policies
run by the Élysée and the Quai dOrsay.
The newspapers, for instance, have depicted
the friendship of Mr. Sarkozys former
wife, Cécilia, with the French wife of
Gbagbo rival Alassane
Ouattara, and Mr. Gbagbo played heavily
on anti-French sentiment in his effort to
retain power.
The French newspaper Libération said of
Ivory Coast that even if wrapped in a U.N.
resolution and supported by countries in the
region, this French mission resembles the
interventions of the past and risks being
seen as such by young Africans. Fifty
years after African independence, the paper
said, France has found itself anew on
the front line in a continent to which
Nicolas Sarkozy promised a renewed
relationship, the end of old privileges and a
military disengagement.
Achille Mbembé, a Cameroonian-born
historian and critic of French involvement in
Ivory Coast, said that France continued to
support African dictators, mentioning the
leaders of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Chad and
Togo. He saw a continuity in the
management of Françafrique this
system of reciprocal corruption, which, since
the end of colonial occupation, ties France
to its African henchmen.
Albert Bourgi, a professor of law and
brother of Robert Bourgi, a lawyer who helped
manage African matters for France for Jacques
Chirac and his successors, wrote in Le
Monde that Ivory Coast reawakens the
memory, sometimes damning, of numerous
excesses of French African policy between
1960 and today.
He recalled the words of Louis de
Guiringaud, a former foreign minister, who
said in 1978, Africa is the only region
of the world where France can take itself for
a great power, capable of changing the course
of history with 500 men.
But other historians and analysts suggest
that Mr. Sarkozy was sincere when he said
that his African policy would emphasize
partnership and not paternalism, and note
that he does not share the same ties to
Africa as his predecessors, in particular Mr.
Chirac and Valéry
Giscard dEstaing, infamous for a
scandal over African diamonds allegedly
received as a gift.
Sarkozy has no nostalgia for the
former colonies, and I believe there has not
been any real change in his African policy,
said Antoine Glaser, former editor in chief
of Lettre du Continent, an African newsletter,
and co-author of Sarko in Africa
and How France Lost Africa. He
added: The policy is still marked by
realpolitik and pragmatism. For Sarkozy, its
much more the political, diplomatic and
geostrategic opportunities of the moment.
In a way, Mr. Glaser said, Mr. Sarkozy was
trapped in Ivory Coast, with
French troops protecting thousands of French
citizens in Abidjan and being asked by the
United Nations to end the Gbagbo standoff,
which troops loyal to Mr. Ouattara seemed
unable to do. Even in 2002, when French
troops arrived to separate the two rivals in
a civil war, France did not choose sides, Mr.
Glaser said, a major departure from
colonialist policy. But with presence
of the French troops, even under a U.N.
mandate, theres always the
phantasmagoria of Françafrique, all the
colonial past. France has not yet been able
to turn the page completely.
Stephen W. Smith, former Africa editor of
Le Monde, co-author with Mr. Glaser and now
an instructor at Duke
University, said that France was not
returning to the period of Françafrique,
which largely ended in the mid-1990s and was
most closely associated with Jacques Foccart,
who ran Africa for Charles
de Gaulle.
Sarkozy is not interested in Africa,
but sees it as more of a nuisance than an
asset, Mr. Smith said. Africa is
important for energy and Frances self-image,
he said, but French presence and influence in
its former colonies are much reduced with
generational and political change. As the
long Gaullist period ended in France, so did
the reign of the early African fathers of
independence, most of them French-trained or
empowered, and democracy has loosened what
were effectively partnerships.
Françafrique was a Franco-African
construction, Mr. Smith said, a
deal struck with African leaders who knew
what they were doing. With time and
politics, he said, the deal degraded into
corruption, secret political financing and
more personal ties. Foccart guaranteed
a continuity impossible in France today and
the African fathers of independence were in
power a long time, he said. When
you started to have more democracy and
alternation in power, the system fell apart.
Today, France has little corporate
involvement in the main economic pillars of
Ivory Coast, cocoa, coffee and oil, Mr. Smith
said. In the 1980s, there were 50,000 French
expatriates in Ivory Coast; now the number is
12,000, of whom at least 7,000 are dual
nationals.
France is visible in construction,
electricity and telecommunications, but has
bigger investments in non-Francophone Africa.
In Ivory Coast, France ranks only fifth in
import-export totals, while Nigeria is first.
Still, French businessmen are investing
all over Africa, and many feel a tie to a
French-speaking former colonial empire. But
the special French mix of accusation and
guilt over African colonialism is a kind of
relic, Mr. Smith said.
In the period of Françafrique,
there were very few dissident voices in
France, Mr. Smith said. There is
a kind of rediscovery, a soul-searching
exercise that is also an exercise in identity.
Many French dont look at Africa as it
is, but at themselves, as a mirror effect,
mostly as a villain, but sometimes as a help.
But on the left and the right, Mr. Smith
said, the centerpiece is always France.
In a straitened French media world, too, he
said, which can afford fewer foreign
correspondents, the presence of the
people of Africa dwindles.
Libya and Ivory Coast represent, then, a
kind of caricature of Françafrique,
said the Socialist legislator François
Loncle. But as Mr. Glaser said, So long
as France has soldiers deployed on African
soil, the ambiguity will last.