Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa by Howard W. French Read Free Book Online

slaves themselves.
    Among the most pathetic diplomatic exchanges ever between a sub-Saharan African and a European happen to be the oldest surviving documents written by an African in a European language. In a series of letters written in his own hand in 1526, Affonso appealed to the Christian virtue of his Portuguese counterpart, King João III: “Each day the traders are kidnapping our people—children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. . . . Corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. . . . We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. . . . It is our wish that this kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves.”
    Later that year, Affonso wrote João III again to deplore the destabilizing influence of the accelerating Portuguese barter trade of European merchandise for human beings. “These goods exert such a great attraction over simple and ignorant people that they believe in them and forget their belief in God. . . . My Lord, a monstrous greed pushes our subjects, even Christians, to seize members of their own families, and of ours, to do business by selling them as captives.”
    The king of Portugal’s reply was brutal in its simplicity and resounded like a death knell for Affonso’s kingdom. Kongo, he said, had nothing else to sell.

CHAPTER TWO
    Leviathan
    Having already done a five-year stint in West Africa as a freelance reporter a decade earlier, in 1994 I accepted a posting to Abidjan as the
New York Times
West Africa bureau chief. West Africa had received hardly any press attention in the United States for years, but I accepted the job as a personal challenge. My marriage to Avouka, whose family is from both Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana, had given me some extra perspective on the region. So had the many friendships I had developed in Africa and the countless trips around the continent that I had taken during my first six years living in Abidjan, in the early 1980s, when I had worked as a translator, university professor and then as a journalist.
    We had barely arrived in Abidjan in August, with our two children in tow, when a big story beckoned from Nigeria. The country had been in an open state of crisis since June, when the true winner of annulled presidential elections, the millionaire-turned-politician Moshood K.O. Abiola, had been jailed. In the hardball world of Nigerian politics, the logic behind the treason charge against him was as simple to understand as it was outrageous: Abiola had had the gall to try to prevent the military from hanging on to power by asserting his legitimate right to the presidency.
    My predecessor, Kenneth Noble, had generously left me a list of important contacts. He had also warned me about the airport, stressing that unless a driver or greeter whom you can trust meets you there, you risk being kidnapped, robbed or even killed. Lagos had been plenty dangerous a decade earlier, when I had visited the city often, so I took the warning seriously. I sent a telex to the Eko Hotel where Ken’s driver, David, worked, gave him my flight number and arrival time, and asked him to be sure to meet me.
    I had far less luck, though, in placing calls to Nigeria to set up interviews with people during the week that I planned to stay. Africa’s giant, it was often said, had feet of clay, and one obvious sign of this was a telephone system that barely functioned. What good was it, I wondered, to have the most energetic and self-confident population on the continent, not to mention one of the most generous endowments of natural resources anywhere, if something so basic as the telephone system was allowed to fall into permanent disrepair?
    My flight from Abidjan landed at Lagos in the middle of a blazing afternoon, and I began to note the decay even as we deplaned. It had not been so long ago that Murtala Muhammed airport