(The Capuchin, Spring 1989, pp.10-11)
At present, there are about 8 million refugees in the world. Five million of these are in Africa. Zambia, a country with a population about twice that of Ireland’s, has about 130,000. Another way of putting that is to say that the refugees in Zambia equal in number the population of Cork city. That’s a large problem for a country which has many problems of its own to cope with. However, Zambia’s eastern neighbour, Malawi, has an even bigger problem. Malawi is about one and a half times the size of Ireland; its population is about twice ours. It is struggling to care for nearly 500,000 refugees from the civil war in Mozambique. That’s about the population of Belfast.
Tackled at Root Cause
In the long term, the problem of refugees in southern Africa has to be tackled at its root cause by means of a political settlement regarding the civil war in Angola, independence for Namibia, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. It will probably be a very long-drawn out process, especially in the case of South Africa, as the ending of apartheid there is, by itself, no assurance of future stability. It could be the spark that would set off a new series of conflicts. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, a South African tribal chief, Chaka the Zulu, sparked off a series of wars which devastated southern Africa for half a century. It could happen again.
Signs of Hope
So what are the prospects? In some ways there are signs of hope. The two superpowers have lessened the distance between them, particularly by signing and implementing the INF treaty on reducing intermediate range land-based nuclear weapons in Europe. That move helped to create an atmosphere for progress in other areas. The United States helped ease the Soviet Union out of the mess it had created for itself in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union, for its part, is pressuring Vietnam to leave Kampuchea. In each case, there is ground for hope that refugees from those countries will be enabled to return to their homes. Improvement in superpower relations in those areas is beginning to pay some dividends in southern Africa, as those powers pressure their proxies in Angola to come to terms with each other. (In passing, it’s worth mentioning that while America learned some lessons from its failure in Vietnam in the sixties, other countries didn’t. And so, the Soviet Union had its “Vietnam” in Afghanistan; Cuba had its “Vietnam” in Angola; and Vietnam had its own “Vietnam” in Kampuchea.)
If relations between the superpowers continue to improve, there is hope that they will see it as being in their own political and economic interest to stop fighting wars with each other by proxy, and bring an end to regional conflicts. That would help very substantially to tackle the root cause of the refugee problem.
Home-Made Problems
However, the solution is not entirely in their hands. In Uganda, perhaps a million people have died since the early seventies in what is essentially an inter-tribal war. Successive leaders, Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, in turn have slaughtered their opponents, and are leading Uganda to a Lebanon-style cycle of self-perpetuating violence as various factions, some with external support, fight for supremacy. On the other side of the continent, the former Nigerian president, Shehu Shagari, expelled between one and two million foreigners in a fortnight by a simple administrative decision, intended, it seems, to help him win an election. A good number of refugee problems are home-made. To solve these problems, or, better still, to prevent them in the first place, will call for a greater degree of maturity than some leaders have shown in Africa in recent years.
Readjustment of Priorities
How does Africa cope with such problems? In the case of the Nigerian expellees, they were foreign workers being sent back to their own countries. No war was involved. Their own families, or extended families, that is, their relatives, took them in and cared for them until they could establish themselves. However, where refugees are driven out of their own country by warfare, there is need for outside specialized help. One startling fact about the care of refugees is how cheap it is. While national defence budgets are sometimes reckoned in billions, those for the care of refugees are in millions. A single fighter plane would pay for food for several thousand refugees for a year. At present, Africa somewhere between 1½ and 2½ times as much on defence as it receives in foreign aid. So a readjustment of national priorities is called for. The solution to the problems of refugees may, perhaps, be found within Africa itself.