Bush arrives with carrot and stick Bush requires immunity from crimes against humanity by the International Court of Justice to grant the carrot to SA 07/08/2003 17:45 - (SA) Johannesburg - President George W Bush arrives in Africa armed with his Millennium Challenge Account carrot of $10bn over three years to alleviate poverty, his $15bn pledge over five years to fight HIV/Aids and the US's Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa, which allows African exporters of garments and textiles duty-free access to US markets). Underpinning this apparent largesse, however, is his uncompromising stick to drop developing countries from his list of military beneficiaries if they do not grant immunity to US military personnel who may be called to defend themselves against crimes against humanity by the International Court of Justice in the Hague. His route takes him to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and finally Nigeria.

President Bush pledged Wednesday that the United States will "be involved" in war-torn Liberiabut said he would not overextend U.S. armed forces if he sends troops there to join a peacekeeping force. On the second day of a five-country African tour, Bush did not commit himself to deploying troops to Liberia. (click on the photo to view the video from the AP in South Africa)

According to Business Report, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin explains that his government and the Bush administration will discuss their trade relationships and problems arising from the US's continued insistence on providing agricultural subsidies to its farmers.

African safari

But Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's head of research, pointedly quotes Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure in his critique of Bush's African safari: "Rich country subsidies are killing African agriculture."

Agoa is a double-edged sword. Watkin's refers to it as an insidious instrument: "Improved market access is conditional on African governments reciprocating American generosity by opening their markets to US investors, enforcing US intellectual property claims, and lowering trade barriers for US goods. This is unequal trade at its most insidious."

While the South African government is upbeat about Bush's visit, storm clouds have been gathering over the country over the past few days. Bush just simply does not go down well with South Africa's black population. Not only were he and his father, the former US president George Bush, sanctions busters when the country was still under the jackboot of apartheid prior to 1994 - when it held its first democratic elections - but successive Republican governments have consistently supported terrorist groups like Unita, whose leader was the deceased Jonas Savimbi, in Angola and the pro-American Renamo in Mozambique.

Bush is expected to preach the values of open markets and fairness in trade when he meets the South African government and President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday in the country 's administrative capital, Pretoria.

Warmongering

Mbeki is a former member of the South African Communist Party, which will be leading, together with the Anti-War Coalition and other civil society groups, nationwide protests to demonstrate to Bush what South Africans think of his "warmongering". According to the SACP's general secretary, Blade Nzimande, Bush must be allowed to see for himself what local people think about his foreign policies, his bullying tactics and his less-than-sophisticated efforts to make the world submit to his control.

Bush knows the South Africa-Nigeria axis holds the key for effective intervention in Africa. These two countries are the economic powerhouses and the key to tip the scales in his favour. For him to engineer reforms on governance in Zimbabwe, in Liberia or in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bush administration has to cajole President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Mbeki to accept that ideology cannot drive Africa's relationship with the US. Instead, the US president is expected to stress that trade and access to US markets will be the cornerstone of that relationship.

Food chain

But therein lies the rub. While regimes like Swaziland are autocratic and despotic, or in power for too long like Libya and Zimbabwe, strong social democratic and socialist currents are contesting for the top spots in the food chain.

South Africa, with its mass democratic tradition and anti-imperialist history, leads the pack. To dislodge these currents from the political submission to market strategies may be too much to for the US to comprehend.

If Mbeki finds it challenging to mix his former communism with the dictates of the market, it stands to reason that Bush would find it just a little more challenging to know that he is actually not liked, not because of his personality, but because he has singularly failed to understand ideology. But then again, he carries the bag of dollars, and many a principled politician in Africa has fallen victim to the allure of the greenback. - Sapa-IPS