FRENCH POLITICS IN FRONT OF AFRICAN CHALLENGES
Jean-Paul Gourévitch
International expert in human resources and specialist of African questions,
Jean-Paul Gourévitch worked for UNESCO, the World Bank, French Cooperation, the
European Union. he notably published Africa the cash, France (Pré aux Clercs
1997) Immigration the legal fracture (Pré aux Clercs 1998) and African France
(Pré aux clercs 2000). He also wrote interactive novels and attempts on the
youth literature and on the political image which he teaches the University of
Paris XII.
Yaoundé: at the end of the road or new departure
The French - African summit of Yaoundé which has from 17 till 19 January 2001
on " Africa in front of challenge of the globalization " gives the
occasion to wonder about the alterations of our politics towards French-speaking
Africa at these times when cohabitation in France is supposed to take care of
the definition of a consensual strategy as regards to French - African
cooperation. This strategy joins within the framework of a globalization from
which the high masses of Davos ( economic summit) and of Porto-Alegre ( social
summit) come to give us contrasted spectacle.
The summit of Yaoundé was the 21-th of the name since the president Georges
Pompidou had gathered in 1973 eleven countries of the French-speaking Square of
influence for a first seminar balance - project on the French - African
cooperation. It united about forty countries 25 of which represented by their
chiefs of state. It is less than the precedent which had gathered in November,
1998 in the Louvre 49 countries and 34 chiefs of State but loss of interest, it
explains partially by Laurent-Désiré Kabila's death on the eve of its opening.
Several chiefs of state involved in the Congolese conflict preferred to give up
the journey or to leave Yaoundé. On the other hand numerous international
institutions (World Bank, IMF, BAD, and OUA) were represented and the General
Secretary of United Nations, Kofi Annan had moved personally.
Speeches were, without surprise, consensual and set language: require for Africa
to take the train of an inevitable globalization while elaborating a frame
united and adapted to African realities; bludgeoning of the slogan market
economy yes, law of the market not; pleas in a good governance as all the
African leaders of state tell to call up of their wishes but which does not
exist in any country; and, " last but not least ", propositions of
world summits on the globalization. However, beyond formulae, is there new deal
from countries of the North towards Africa and how is situated French politics
in this meshing?
The French President wanted to be sharp: " The globalization of markets
became dominant reference... There is no alternative now Africa participates for
less than 1 % in international trade. It receives hardly 1 , 2 % of the streams
of world private investments. Africa is absent in the globalization of financial
markets. It is more consumer than producer of the globalization ".
Actually not only the African economics stay outside a globalization which makes
without them but they are penalized by the difficulty to make their farm
produces reach structured markets, regulated on their own, and subsidized as one
sees it for the CAP. Besides, economic alterations have led effects in the new
world order of the information, the densification and the diversification of the
networks of communication and the values of competition or tolerance generated
by economy opened and structured. Africa undergoes this state of affairs without
being able to make understand its difference.
In front of this shared report, no important decision was announced. Would this
summit be reduced to a media operation of moral rehabilitation and political
legitimization for the Cameroonian President Paul Biya, whose regime was pinned
last year to the charts of the corruption with its 15000 civil servants paid
ghosts and its false papers sold for 3000 F a complete set to the candidates for
the emigration? The country host that ravaged by poverty and insecurity did not
skimp on the reception and the mobilization of the populations for " a
globalization with human face ". One even saw John Fru Ndi, the adversary
of always, charismatic figure of Social Democratic Front (NFA) to participate in
the opening of the congress whereas one proceeded to the restoration of facade
of the capital of Cameroon due to the not refundable loans of the French Agency
of Development. Successful operation. Against summit organized by some
adversaries ended short with the successive departure of delegations incapable
to get on a motion. After all, with the recession, Yaoundé appears more as the
last summit of the 20-th century than as the first of the 21-th.
Setting back: the double game of the French politics
The moment would be nevertheless chosen well so that French politics makes its
aggiornamento. In its navigation, the two without French coxswain distanced its
competitor of across the Atlantic. America of George W. Bush has just made known
the fundamental of his African realpolitik. No American soldiers engaged in
conflicts. No priority for regions where America has no immediate interest. With
9.145 million dollars dedicated to the aid to the developing countries is 0,10 %
of the GNP, in second position behind Japan (15323 million dollars), the United
States consider that they make enough for the emergent countries. In third
position comes France, with 5.637 million dollars, is more 40 billion francs. It
dedicates to it 0,39 % of the GNP, what places her in a percentage just behind
Netherlands, Luxembourg and Scandinavian countries. These official figures are
eminently questionable and we had the occasion of showing* that while France
announced 17 billion of assistance in Africa, total aid amounted too in fact in
more than 30 billions. Remaining that they give an order of height which it is
necessary however to balance by an exam of the beneficiaries. 48 Least advanced
moved countries ( PMA) for which assistant all represented in 1999 7,5 % on
average of the GNP are not African even though Sao Tome with 79 % of the GNP and
Guinea-Bissau with 50 % appears to be leading the pack. Most of the countries of
the French Square of influence benefit from a bilateral and multilateral, public
and private help, total amount of which spreads out between 5 and 15 % of their
GNP.
Secondly France which got it alone is relatively spared by protest which grows
inside the Third World against international institutions as the IMF and the
World Bank accused for making the game of the United States. There is a lot of
excess in these attacks. Certainly the United States with their 17,5 % of voice
corresponding to their share have a minority of blocking in a permanent council
where decisions are taken with the majority of 85 % but this condition is also
valid for Europe (22,5 % of votes) and for group constituted by Russia, China
and Saudi Arabia. It is not because the persons in charge for these Institutions
are two Occidentals, German Horst Köhler and American James Wolfensohn that
politics is dictated by Washington, by Paris, or by Berlin, from which
conceptions are different and rival interests. However, today the dominant
speech of the French intelligentsia, fed with third world ideology, the demagogy
and surfing on the bad consciousness of the West occupies all the space of the
debate by obscuring a part of issues. It is the case to take only a single
example of the Monde Diplomatique which does not hesitate to speak about the
" capitalism of the friends "of the IMF" and the "
redistribution of the resources from the poor towards the rich ". It is
true that according to the own words of its chief editor Alain Gresh, Diplo is
not " a newspaper of debate but a militant newspaper " as moreover,
shows by the commitment for ATTAC of his general manager Bernard Cassen.
One can measure devastation caused on the international plan and particularly
with the African elite by one prejudice which rejects any divergent thought - I
experienced it! - notably the one that would question the dogma of the
unconditional cancellation of African national debt. It is today new magic
slate. After the moral debt of the draft of the Negroes and the colonization,
then the debt of blood of world wars, and finally the financial debt of the
profits which the companies of the North continue to make on the back of the
populations of the South, Africa found of virtuous lawyers to justify the state
of underdevelopment into which successive regimes plunged the continent, forty
years after independence: the culprit is stigmatized: it is fault in the IMF and
in its policy of structural adaptation. "we just need to do it".
Those that live in the contact of the Africans measure the harm fullness of this
simplification. it managed to convince a part of the ruling class and the
African public opinion of the truthfulness of a triple equation: international
help = West = the United States = profits on the back of the Africans.
Simplification all the more pernicious as information in this domain remains
economic notably because Africa is the big absentee in the redistribution of the
balances of the planet. The Africans were better represented in Davos (20.000
dollars the ticket) than in Porto-Alegre (50 dollars participation). Never the
less if they make understand their voice, they did not know how to mobilize on
their propositions. It is that globalization and anti-globalization operate on
world chessboards, rules of which are little applicable to informal savings and
the enclaves of the South.
Now France chose in this subject a median way, some will speak about double
game. In Davos, besides the director of the forum Claude Smadja, the heavyweight
Ministers, Laurent Fabius and Pierre Moscovici in charge of the economy and the
European affairs and Jean-Marie Messier, media boss of Vivendi Universal. To
Porto-Alegre, most media José Bové and the light weight Ministers of the
foreign trade and the united economy, François Huwart and Nöel Hascoêt.
Concern of managing at the same moment the economic decision-makers and the
society? Will to distance itself from the American older brother and notably to
retake place in a continent which this one after disappointments felt in Congo
tends to abandon? Or simply desire, after the cases of corruption, arms dealing,
and tax evasion which shook all the establishment since the tribe of President
Mitterrand until networks of Pasqua by way of chargé d'affaire for Africa, to
agree a break of reflection. Situation in Africa, says Jean-François Bayart, is
"purely hopeless".
The failure of models
Since it reached independence sub-Saharan, Africa experienced all the models:
. The cooperative model of a State which insures its development due to the
transfers of know-how assured by the technical aid and in the maintenance of
infrastructures and in the management of institutions inherited from the
colonial era;
. The model of breaking off the de-colonization adjusted with the populist stage
setting the glorious odyssey of an auto sufficient country which sends back the
men working abroad, seizes their possessions, block the transfers of capital
funds, and seek from the rest of international community aid in persons and in
resources indispensable to its development;
. Socialist state model, sometimes to the Soviet style sometimes in the Cuban
manner, with its popular assemblies, its elections in the unique party, its
collectivization of lands more or less rough, and to finish the vassalage of
institutions, economy and army controlled by the engineers of the country
defender;
. Revolutionary model in Sankara with the dogmatic purity, the mobilization of
the inhabitants, the choice of a modest way of life, the accent put on the youth
and the education, and the concern to export this model to renew corrupt Africa;
. Federative model with the stage setting of jointly together institutions and
resources of several countries, its common foreign policies and its permanent
advice for the management of the current affairs, its festivities of
inauguration and its system of harness and alternation of the authorized
spokesmen;
. Democratic model imported by Europe with its, in theory free elections since
the municipal level until the presidential ballot, its international
controllers, the constitutional courts guarantors for the equality of the
candidates and the fight against the fraud and the vote-catching, and the
premiums for the countries which would determinedly undertake in this way;
. Model, world bank with its big projects, the structural adaptation, its
reduction of public deficits, the deflation of the civil servants and the
privatization of services;
. Finally, model NGO-microdevelopement with the partnership, its twinning,
mobilization of the credits of nearness, and ideology of the small is better and
black is beautiful.
The loop is buckled. In spite of punctual results, none of these models was able
to be efficient or remain enough for a long time in the point to exercise an
effect of attraction in the bordering countries. Ideologies showed their
fragility, the elite their incapacity to put a lot for the development of their
own country and to resist to the seduction of more profitable functions abroad,
and the African funds their inclination to go where the money relates and
therefore outside the continent.
A program for Africa
After diagnoses, it is the time to remedy. Treatment of shock or alternative
medicines? " African plan for the Africans " initialized in Havana in
April, 2000 by his three godfathers, the Algerian Abdelaziz Bouteflika (who for
the first time participated in the works of the summit of Yaoundé), Nigerian
Olusegun Obasanjo and South African Thao Mbeki expect to think positive an image
of Africa which would attract the investors and would help Africa to use to
finish it with the African exception. The President Abdoulaye Wade proposes for
his part a " plan Omega ", kind of plan of the last chance for Africa.
In world press every editorial writer takes out his surgical case and drafts his
prescriptions. After Michel Camdessus's suggestion to tax the exports of weapons
to finance the development of the poor countries and Bechir Ben Yahmed to apply
rather this taxation to the consumption of tobacco, this is Young African
Economy * which enumerates the set of measures to be set
" The constitution of regional economic groups implying a regional trade
agreement which would allow the companies to widen their markets beyond national
borders, the end of the ecstasy of the idea of nation as the unique source of
legitimization of powers; a revision of policy applied by the international
organizations which tried to restore the solvency of developing countries by
imposing them Programs of structural adaptation which pressed on economic
recovery, a durable solution of the problem of the debt, an intensification of
international regulations against environmental risks, sharing universal values
(democracy, human rights, good governance) only susceptible to encourage
investments as much as populations, etc.... "
In a catalog, blank pages are as important as those that are filled . Since the
shouts of alert of René Dumont* which proclaimed in 1962 " Black Africa
has badly started " until the current shouts of Africans' revolt as Nicolas
Agbohou denouncing" the CFA franc and the Euro against Africa " by way
of the questioning of Axelle Kabou " and if Africa refused development
" and the denunciations of Jean-François Bayart on " the politics of
the womb ", literature concerning the French square of influence sank in
Afro pessimism without the good plans of " adult Africa " (Michel
Roussin) manage to invert tendency.
The bill of indictment was updated in 1993 by René Dumont
" I accuse the majority of the African leaders of resources at first taken
advantage of the privileges of power; I accuse the French cooperation for having
agreed to finance sumptuary projects; I accuse the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund for forcing these countries to an austerity paid by
the poorest; I accuse, especially, all the leaders by their politic, ignored,
ruined and disdained the African farmers. "
The same year, the study group constituted at instigation of the socialist
Minister of the cooperation Edwige Avice and piloted by Serge Michaïlof with
the cooperation of associations " Better to help the South " and
" for a new dialogue with Africa " developed the another scenario of
cooperation. Noticing that " the failure of the development in Africa is
today obvious and generalized ", it predicted a fast growth of Africa by
means of the French power:
" So certain regions of Africa are devoid of any potential, the others
abound in energy or mining wealth and comparative advantages for certain
agricultural speculations can become exceptional. Africa of the field of the
cooperation has considerable trump cards if one compares its situation with
those of the other numerous developing countries (Africa off-camera,
Bangladesh). It still has an exceptional economic infrastructure (roads, ports,
railroad network, telecommunications, energy production, and urban
infrastructure). Africa also has a technical and economic consequential frame,
which does not have to reinvent, by a long and painful learning, the rules of
the market economy... In this period where history hesitates, France has
henceforth to put in the background its vote-catching concerns to help primarily
the African teams leaders who are really worried to raise their economy to
settle objectives and realistic stages. "
Eight years after, the two pleads are always of current events but they changed
by no means the deal. There are always so many conflicts, miseries,
exploitations, aids, and of oratorical effects. One even multiplied national,
regional and international conferences as if the fact of meeting in a pleasant
and luxurious frame away from mass movement legitimized any reflection in vitro
and gave time to the time. There also, the end of road is close. Those that are
excluded from power can not any more wait in the doors of the luxury hotels on
which one decides on their lot in their place. Especially since, on the scale of
the planet the lobby of the anti-globalization gave example and showed that one
can obstruct the projects of politico-economic-military clans and invite itself
in his private clubs.
African challenges
Africa shelters today 800 million inhabitants. It will count it between 1,5 and
2 billions in 2050 even though the devastation of the AIDS and the other
pandemics, the economic and political insecurity, and the wars which ignite on
all the continent carry a blow to the decline of the birthrate. Africa will
leave with her children only the choice that between the misery and exile
towards these countries of the North all the screens of which offer them an
accommodating image and their brothers on the spot of which insure them that one
can always "manage" there.
Political solution: Pan-Africans according to Khadafi
Three scenarios can convince the Africans to stay at home, to return there or to
make return investors. The first way is political. It is Pan-Africans in a new
version, the United States of Africa, with in anti-American star, its herald,
the colonel Khadafi, who tempts with his petrodollars and his charisma to
restore hope in populations traumatized by dictatorships, tired by coup d'Etat
and disappointed by the consequences of democratic fervors. Adoption on July 12,
2000 at the top of the chiefs of state of Lomé of the incorporation of the
African Union intended to renew an unsuitable OUA, will it exceed the stage of
the incantation? The number of country signers is today of 41 on 53 member
countries of the OUA and that the countries which ratified it by their national
parliaments of 14. It should progress following Syrte's summit of March 2-3,
2001, a Libyan city situated in 450 kilometers from Tripoli. Rest that if one
can mobilize energies to favor the traffic of the persons and goods, creation of
a political authority and a specific monetary fund for Africa seem very
unpredictable.
This transfer of competence until now entered only its theoretical phase, the
one that has to prefigure the passage of the OUA in the African Union. In the
superstructure traced on the European Union with its conference of the chiefs of
state, its ministerial council and its permanent secretariat, the new African
Union will look like the OUA and will not doubtless question the borders of
States or the principle of non-intervention. The election of Pan-African members
of parliament in universal suffrage remains very problematic, just as much as
the rule of campaigns and the definition of powers. Can one consider in
desolation of sovereign power on behalf of chiefs of state held with their
nomenclature and of their army, and who consider that presidential regime with
its identification of the citizens to the government and its conception of the
" first leader servant of the people " is the only one who is
convenient for the African States? The only election, which mobilizes at the
moment the OUA, is that of his new General Secretary foreseen for July 2001...
But the heart of this reform, it is the creation of Pan-African institutions
(central bank, monetary fund, investment bank) which have to allow the Africans
to make understand their voice in the economic concert and o to engage a not
unbalanced dialogue with the financials. What can also change it is ideological
reference to human rights, to democracy, to society and to possible penalties
but one knows how the African democracies has between dictatorship and democracy
found with the personalized formulae which in their realism snap finger at these
beautiful principles.
France, one suspects it is not favorable to the Pan-African solution. Its does
not carry in its heart Khadafi which was never washed by the charge of attempt
on the flight UTA Brazzaville - Paris and of which one discovers that he
practices in his country a national preference without any unrealistic
humanitarianism immigrationiste. It is against Khadafi that French military
presence repositioned in the Chad and it is partially to counter in this threat
that the device Recamp was set up to help Africa to be its own policeman and to
avoid appearing henceforth in first line every coup d'Etat . However, recent
crisis inhabitant of the Ivory Coast showed that France could not remain neutral
when its economic interests, its political solidarity or simply the stability of
the country were threatened. What does not increase a brand image of France very
cut down t in African public opinion and particularly in its youth.
Economic solution: the cancellation of the debt
The second way is of economic order. It is the cancellation of the debt,
watchword that benefits from a current of sympathy in the Western opinion and
shows solidarity a part of the associative movement with Africa. Debt is for
Africa an unbearable burden. According to figures communicated in Yaoundé, the
foreign debt of the group of the African countries is been supposed to be in 20
years from 110 billion dollars to 350 billions with a rate of annual increase of
12 % superior to a very population growth superior to the economic growth. It is
to say that in this car chase Africa is losing on all the fronts. To speak
otherwise, it means that any African home owes to the 5-year-old financiers of
its resources. It is evident that if the African countries were forced to pay
off their debt, their savings would be in bankruptcy and one observes moreover
that for the good pupils, those that as Burkina-Faso honor their terms, the
account is very heavy to support. So the financials were forced willy-nilly to
wonder about a spiral of the debts where, due to giving to a country about which
one knows that it has no means to pay off, one transforms real debt into virtual
debt as a big game where the actors can move only by proceeding to cancellations
repeated by terms. In the current rhythm of refunds, it would be needed 110
years to sub-Saharan Africa to pay off to the financials the total of the debt
contracted in their respect. No banker would accept such a schedule of due
dates. However, each plays to play. The lender gives himself good consciousness
by granting credits which make forget his previous misdeeds or his draining on
the economy of the country; the beneficiary demands the right in " loans
not refundable ".
To exempt any accounts those that, in forty years of independence impoverished
only their country and enriched their close relations and did not wonder about
what Africa did with the funds which were assigned to it, - equivalent of 30.000
F by family over 20 years one risks to reproduce the mechanisms which ended in
the exponential increase of the debt. Neither privatization recommended by the
financials, nor the fight against the clannishness and corruption in the name of
the good governance, nor the capital of competitions obtained within the
framework of the agreement of Lomé allowed the African economy to take off. New
oil and mining resources are already mortgaged by investments granted for their
exploitation or seized by the local potentates.
On this plan, France can legally wonder about its results and its
responsibilities. The annual help of France in Africa represents today about 32
billions, is more of 2000F by household income paying income tax, without
counting the 40 billion debts of the Third World which France undertook in 2000
to pay off, or direct and indirect aid to the Africans in France which nobody
wants to take the risk to amount. Certainly, when 100 francs are paid in Africa
in conformance with the aid to the developing countries, there are only 5
francs, which help piloted projects of development or co-piloted by Africans.
However, well informed who could determine in advance, about who it is!
Evaluations - countries or sectors made by the French cooperation and which
would have to end in the setting back of the device served only as report for a
hypothetical search of following. Worse, having noticed the perversion of a
certain number of circuits of subsidy or activities of training, it was decided,
under the pressure of political, to lead them eventually not to punish current
operations. So was established a policy of counter made by renewal of
operations, of assistantship for institutions, and assertion of preservation of
the French presence.
From this point of view, fastening and subordination of the ex-ministry of the
Cooperation with the Foreign affairs, this had to establish a visible sign of
the reorientation of the French politics, had an inverse effect at our
"African friends. When they did not obtain anything from their usual
interlocutors, they negotiate with foreign affairs and if they find door closed,
they directly address the interlocutors in charge of the African affairs in
Matignon or Elysée which, in these " scandals " times, have no
interest to see the hot files on the public square.
Cultural solution: education for all or anything
The third way lies in decisive overhangs in education, and in health. On the
first point it was necessary, to become disenchanted because real-progress-of
the elimination of illiteracy and basic education widely punctured the resources
of the African governments and the populations invited to contribute to it.
Because of the structural adaptation of plethoric public services and weakness
of productive investments, the graduates find themselves unemployed persons and
try to exchange outside acquired competence, emptying Africa of its elite. We
pay here the invoice of a strategy into which France widely put a lot, that of
an improvement of quality of the education, but which was beaten in breach by
the recommendations of world conferences and financials on the priority in the
basic education to the detriment of the training of the African executives.
From the point of view of the health, situation is outside control and most of
the experts doubt that the sexual practices of the Africans can be quickly and
durably modified. Tritherapy treatment is untraceable or extremely expensive
even though the World Bank calls himself ready to affect a part of the 19
billion francs which its has in the treatment of AIDS; and the humanitarian
gestures of firms deprived as the free supply of fluconazol by Pfizer
laboratories, for the patients of South Africa who can not buy it remain
extremely rare. Those that are affected have only the hope to find in the North
the effective remedies and a free medical aid. Even there France made a big
effort of reception and follow-up. In its almost-all big cities, even the
patients in irregular situation can today be treated free in Urgencies, a
practice, which they know very well, although it is not the object of any
journalistic exploitation.
Technological solution: virtual immigration?
Is there a system of braking even of inversion of the migratory streams? One
speculates today on the chances of the virtual immigration. So in the supplement
"Future" of the World of November, 1999, Jacques Attali augured:
" Due to new technologies, the graduates of the higher education who will
live in a country of the South where one speaks about a language of the North,
English, French or Spanish, will be able to work for a country of the North. One
will for example be able to decentralize in Morocco or in Algeria most of the
tasks which makes French administration. "
This virtual immigration does not concern the only graduates even though it
slows down first and foremost brain drain. Eventually it is all the structure of
the work that is susceptible to be modified with a redistribution of tasks
between the North and the South and so consequently a division of the
unemployment. From what is careful today in India or in the Mauritius, it is not
excluded that the European or American companies choose to work with Africa if
the labor works is there of comparable quality and especially financially
attractive. Now when one has a decent salary, and perspectives of opening on the
world one can intend to stay at home with his family and its possessions and not
to go for the El Dorado in the passage of the Parisian subway, at the dosshouse
of Seine-Saint-Denis or immigrants' foyers of the suburb of Lyons.
It supposes obviously that Africa is equipped in new technologies, that one
lowers at the same moment the cost of investments and that of communications,
and finally that the countries of the South are not only consumers of
information in the libraries of knowledge of the North but also producers not to
generate, a recolonisation of Africa. In June, 2000 an expert report called UNO
to constitute a funding of 500 million dollars to help developing countries to
finance their connection with Internet in four years to come. France which
defends French-speaking presence on the Net has here a role of foreground to be
played.
Africa is the future of Europe
In these little smiling perspectives, the migrations of the South northward
accelerate especially since the intra-African migrations which represented until
85 % of streams, are questioned by wars as that of Congo - first African world
war, national preferences and progressive lock of States which as South Africa
welcomed the African refugees in search of work. Nevertheless, they also change
direction. Formerly the English-speaking Africans left for Great Britain, French
speakers towards France, and nationals of ex-Zaire in Belgium: practices
inherited from the colonial history, favored by the community of languages and
encouraged with the Diaspora. Today those that leave Africa tend to practice a
shape of migratory shopping according to different opportunities offered by the
countries of the European Union, considered incurred risks. Those of France are
attractive: the quality of medical care, the opportunities of studies, the
importance of social allowances notably for the large families and for those
that have no work and the weak risk to be escorted back to the border
considering the mobilization of the associative movement.
For the governments of the countries of the North, conscious of the inevitable
ascent of the migratory streams, of impossible zero immigration, and the
difficulties of integration of an always more numerous African community which
demands its part of the growth but succeeds only very difficulty in fitting on
the formal market of work, challenge is major. It crystallized for a long time
in the term of co-development used by conservative leaders (Charles Pasqua) and
of left ( Sami Naïr) who put as principle that by helping the countries of
origin of the immigration one will facilitate return to the country of those
that left and one will dissuade from leaving those that stayed.
Regrettably this term used in profusion - one has still seen it in the broadcast
Serge Moati's broadcast: "riposte " on Africa of February 2001-does
not correspond to any model spread on the African continent. One can hardly
apply it to punctual experiences - shop windows in the countries of Sahel drives
by means of NGO and of humanitarian associations which do not claim at all to be
mediatized but plead on the contrary so that one lets develop these construction
sites without paralyzing them by evaluations or to corrupt them by
generalizations. As for the Africans of France which one interrogates about
their future, they do not envisage at all a return in the country and ask with
more and more force for a regularization to take advantage of conditions of the
host country incomparably superior to those of their country of origin.
Can France free itself from its interventionism, from its neocolonialism and
from its practices of banana republic? "No" those estimate, that as
François-Xavier Verschave denounce "Françafrique" and its blacks
intentions, see in practices and death throes of regimes in places, the occult
intervention of networks and constituted an impressive collection of "
black files of the African politics of France " (Harmattan).
"Yes" thinks on the contrary a part of the experts and the specialists
for whom veils gradually remove over the secrets of occult affairs announce a
return to more transparency and frankness and another era of the French -
African reports connections.
We are here in front of a double language. On one hand the Occidental countries
and particularly France would sincerely wish to contribute to the development of
emerging countries but have no more any strategy of scale to be proposed. On the
other hand the African countries do not accept any more the lessons of those
that led them in an impasse, of which they see that they continue to grow rich
without them and sometimes on their back. If the African chiefs of state do not
refuse subsidies when it is a question of financing big works, to pay the
over-dues of civil servants even to embellish the presidential places of
residence, they can not or do not want publicly to incur a pact which would
subordinate aid granted on the return to their expatriates.
France in front of the African immigration
Is this aid susceptible to invert or to slow down the migratory streams? Figures
- questionable seem to show that it is the opposite which occurred. Never Africa
received so much and never African immigration was so important. It is that as a
supplement to the aid, the politics of welcome with close arms " European
countries and strangely of France creates a draft which in civilizations where
rumor is passed very fast, incites on departure. Officially the countries of the
space of Schengen which want to retain control in their borders let know that
after the wave of regularization which touched Germany, Benelux, Italy, France*
and Spain, hour was in deportation of the immigrants In fact the European Union
looks desperately for a common politics and remains powerless in front of
migratory streams.
Illegal immigration is today more important than legal immigration. In France,
legal immigration corresponds today according to figures published in the report
of the High council in the Integration in 117. 500 entrances a year 96.500 of
which come from outside the European space, in progress of 55 % over the
previous year. Illegal immigration is scientifically indeclinable and ranges go
from 30.000 to 150.000 entrances a year on the French territory One can however
base himself on estimations international as those of the WIO. which give
between 400.000 and 500.000 immigrants penetrating every year into the space
Schengen. In France, after years of blackout of authorities and press, one
begins to admit officially that the resident number of immigrants on the
territory is at least 500.000. Recent debates on the Comorian immigration (on
2987 in Bouches-du-Rhône according to the prefecture, 40.000 - 50.000 according
to associations) or Kurdish (10.000 in France according to, official statements
130.000 according to the discounts of associations) showed not enough
credibility of the exposed figures. Censuses list only those that were able to
or wanted be listed, leaving aside according to the professor Dupâquier about
1.500.000 persons. Doubtless all the immigrants are not native of sub-Saharan
Africa. One finds there North Africans, Chinese, Haitians, Turks and Kurds,
nationals of the Eastern Europe and of the Balkans, the Afghans and the Sri
Lankans but it is the African wave which is the most important especially if one
considers those for that France is not a territory of passage but a place where
they are going to settle.
It is necessary obviously to deduct from it the number of those that go out of
the territory, voluntarily or according to procedures of deportation. The figure
of voluntary candidates exits is not known but it is probably little significant
in comparison with the stream of the Frenchmen of stock which emigrates annually
(40.000 to 50000 persons). That of deportation is weak (executed 7735 is 17,3 %
of taken decisions) and for the Africans it is derisory. At first because there
are countries where they can not be materially deported (Somalia, Sierra -
Leone) but especially because of the relinquishment of policy of charter
flights, the mobilization of the associative movement and the multiplication of
legal appeal paralyze any joint action of the State in this matter. The African
who manages to put feet on the French ground is practically today to be sure to
stay there. It is also the reason for which so many Africans tempt their chance
, aware of the fact that they will be anyway helped by their fellow countrymen
or by associations which sometimes by unrealistic humanitarianism, sometimes by
interest militate for a generous policy of regularization of all what ask for
it.
This population increases also by internal growth due to the differential of
fertility. The women native of sub-Saharan Black Africa present ratios of
fertility still little different from those of their countries of origin
(between 4 , 8 and 6, 9) and three or four times superior to the average of the
French women of all origins (1 , 7).
Finally it will indeed be necessary to reconsider the legislation on the right
of asylum and to fit out the agreement of Geneva which differentiates the
political right of asylum of the economic right of asylum and limits it to the
victims of pursuits exercised by powers. France has moreover in front of the
Algerian drama taken by measures to welcome those that said to themselves
victims of the Islamist terrorism. The explosion of applications for asylum
notices in Germany, in Great Britain, in France because it is one of only
solutions for persons who do not answer the criteria of legal immigration as the
contract of employment, the studies or the family entry and settlement and has
for limit only the saturation of residence.
In front of this situation, the government cultivates ambiguity. Officially, one
exploits that in spite of Mr. Chevènement's departure politics did not change
and the fight against illegal immigration and notably against those that take
advantage of it is always of current events. Actually several networks of
smuggler or employers, particularly Turkish or Chinese, were dismantled but they
are reconstituted fast all the more as groupings Mafioso understood that an
immigration touching nationals fortunate and susceptible to work was of a good
deal. In this pursue, the Africans are saved because African immigration is
essentially an immigration of populating and not of labor *, and because the
immigrants who have no possibility of paying the wanted rights of way (among
5000 and 20000F) prefer to get themselves on the spot false papers (among 1000
and 5000F) or be sent to them by organizations and friends who in France control
this traffic.
However, unofficially the government and the prefects undertook in a wide
operation of regularization to avoid any abscess of fixation. It is to say that
when Africans try to re-occupy in force St Bernard one expels them at once, but
what authorities agree to discuss case by case situations which are far from
being corresponding to the criteria of regularization defined in 1997-98 by
College of Mediators. Today from Lille to the squat of Aligre's street passing
by Orleans or Bobigny, most of conflicts are in process of extinction, what
explains that the illegal immigrants have difficulties to mobilize. One even saw
in May, 2000 more crowed in the demonstration against the illegal immigration of
the association " The Voice of the Frenchmen " than in the assembling
organized with hundred associations which supported the national coordination of
the illegal immigrants. However, in both cases, demonstrations (between 300 and
2000 participants according to estimations) had no more the media impact of the
big parades of 1997.
Not to end
The africanization of France is an indisputable phenomenon and with difficulty
that can not be ignored. One does not want or can not dissuade the Africans to
come in France. When they are elite that one welcomes arm opened as the
information scientists, one answers those that accuse France for "
plundering the intellectual wealth of the Third World " that if these
wealth do not come in France, they will be our British, American, Canadian or
Australian competitors who will take advantage of it. When they are the poorest
often without resources or training, one accepts them by speculating on the fact
that the children who will come with them in France or who will arise from their
union on the French territory, they, will work, and so will supply the labor
necessary for the growth of the country and will pay the contribution to pay the
pensions of those that welcomed them.
This reception provokes however different phenomena of refusal. The inquiry
realized at the request of the advisory committee of human rights and delivered
to Prime Minister in March, 2000 raised the fact that if racial discriminations
in accommodation or in hiring were widely condemned, the immigrants in France
were too numerous and it stigmatized the ascent of an anti-African feeling. In
fact public opinion hesitates between two scenarios: the scenario of glory of
multiethnic France adjusted by the triumphant assumptions of the stars of sport
or music, and catastrophic scenario of the loss of identity of a nation victim
of an opposite colonization.
We tried to analyze the crystallization of the second scenario through two
concepts. The first is that of legal fracture, the second holds in the slogan of
the three I. I as Immigration, I as Islam, I as insecurity. Three fears which
one mix in a cocktail of the life-weariness to consume without moderation.
Nevertheless, it is not impossible to dissociate the constituents of the
mixture. Islam is so different that government makes great effort to find the
representatives of it, Islamic-business remains marginal and equation crime -
immigration does not take into account Grey crime. In fact the increase of the
red crime should less be put in contact with the migratory phenomena than with
the ascent of the informal economy which represents today under its different
aspects (barter, exchanges of services, alternative economy, trafficking of
drug, weapons, animals, plants, medicines, hacking, forgery, e-business) about
25 % of the economy of the country.
Paradoxically this informal economy, which the Africans know well because it is
the rule to them, is today a mode of integration which associates in the same
solidarity of territory and interest different populations of origin. While the
traditional engines of the integration are obsolete (the Church, the army),
seized up (the school, the town, the work) or diverted from their first vocation
in industries ( sport, music) where suppurate doping, cronyism and corruption
We shall not escape from society of interbreeding arisen from the globalization
of the migratory phenomenon. That is why it is important to get ready for it The
problem of the African immigration is the major challenge of 21-th century. It
is not by rejecting it, by diabolizing it or by changing the name, that one
gives himself the means to take up the challenge. Australia gave us example in
the opening ceremony of the O.G Of what can make a country determinedly turned
to the future, where successive immigrations are associated to the construction
of the country, and which chose an aborigine, Cathy Freeman, to light the flame
of the peace among the peoples.
Notes
1 Jean-Paul Gourévitch: Africa, cash, France The meadow to the Clerks 1997
2 Diplomatic World: the financial institutions under the fire of the criticism
in September, 2000 articles of Isabelle Grunberg and Bernard Cassen
3 Young Africa Economy n°324 5-18 in February, 2001
4 quoted references: René Dumont: Black Africa badly left Threshold 1962 and
For Africa I accuse Plon 1993; Nicolas Agbohou; The CFA franc and the Euro
against Africa world Solidarity HAS S.1999; Axelle Kabou And if Africa refused
development Harmattan on 1991; Jean-François Bayart The State in Africa Fayard
on 1989; Serge Michaïlof ( dir ) France and Africa vade mecum for a new journey
Karthala on 1993; Michel Roussin Adult-Africa France - empire 1997.
5 François-Xavier Verschave: "la Françafrique". The longest scandal
of the Republic Stock 1998, and Black Silence Amphitheatre 2000
6 Officially the operation of regularization of the illegal immigrants had ended
in the acceptance of 78000 files on deposited 141.000. However, very
unofficially they are about 110. 000 who were at present settled.
7 the illegal immigrants of the squat of "Mason Des Ensembles" which I
interviewed for the Other Africa (n°104 of 23/12/99) recognized that none of
them had at this moment work. " One can not work and mobilize " ( Sly
Mousse).