the coverage (or lack thereof) of what has been going on in togo over the past few weeks is all too typical of the way that african news is covered. given how difficult it is to follow african politics, many of my readers probably have no idea what i am talking about. here's a quick recap:
on february 5th, longtime dictator of togo, gnassingbé eyadéma, died. eyadéma was really one of the last of a dying breed of african strong-men. the togo constitution provided that, in the event of the president's death, the speaker of parliament is to be appointed interim president and a national election be held within 60 days. instead, the togoese military installed faure gnassingbé, the former president's son, as president and then leaned on the parliament to amend the constitution to make their extra-constitutional move retroactively legal. the togoese people took to the streets and african union and ECOWAS (a west african economic group that togo belongs to) refused to recognize what they called a "coup."
this was really the first real test of the AU, a group modeled after the european union and replaced the toothless organization of african unity (OAU). when the AU was formed just a few years ago, the leaders of africa made lofty promises about democracy and human rights, just as the OAU had in the past even as it winked at dictators. not unreasonably, many were cynical about the AU's lofty rhetoric.
ironically, the AU treaty was signed in lomé, the capital of togo. and togo is where the AU proved itself this past month. the various african member-states quickly isolated the new togoese government and supported the togoese protesting the coup on the streets. in response to the protests, the togoese parliament first reversed itself and undid the changes that legitimized faure gnassingbé's seizure of the presidency. then faure himself offered to compromise, agreeing to hold elections after 60 days but remaining in power in the interim instead of letting the speaker of parliament step in as required by the constitution. the protesters rejected the compromise, as did the african community. the protests and isolation continued, until this week when faure resigned, giving in to all of the protester's demands.
it was an unqualified success for democracy. the story had all the trappings of another heart-warming grass roots pro-democracy success story. like in ukraine a couple of months ago, the good guys in togo won big. but given how little about togo reached the news you could easily be completely unaware of what was going on there even if you follow international events fairly closely. over the past few weeks, i was keeping up with the story mostly by doing regular "togo" searches on http://news.google.com/. my normal news sources generally didn't say much about what was going on there.
today the new york times had a fair summary of recent togo events. well, semi-fair. half way down the article, after summarizing the happy success of democracy in togo, the article transitions with the sentence: "But it often does not work that way." the second half of the article contrasts the success of togo with the failures of zimbabwe and congo/zaire. in the coverage of ukraine, i don''t remember the joy being tempered by any contrasts to bosnia or kosovo. or, for that matter, uzbekistan--another former soviet republic, which offered the perfect opportunity for contrast as its parliamentary elections took place on december 26, 2004, the very same day as the ukrainian rerun election. even the recent iraqi election, which actually did present some serious reasons for cynicism, got gushing coverage simply because the various attacks that took place that day were fewer than predicted in the worst-case scenario.
and no one gives a shit about africa. that's not completely true. and africa does get some attention, especially when it comes to AIDS and bloody ethnic conflict. for many, this is all africa is. that's all they've been told. the most significant african stories in the decade of the 1990s, in my opinion were: (1) exploding numbers of HIV positive people in southern and east africa, (2) somalia, (3) rwanda and zaire/congo, and (4) the spread of democracy to every region of subsahara africa. #4, by far, was the least covered of those major stories. but it's really remarkable to contrast the number of democracies found in africa in the late 1980s with the number today. togo fit solidly within that democratization meta-narrative. it's just not a narrative we hear much about in the american press. without a narrative to ground a story (like, for example, the narrative of the liberation of the former soviet union or freedom spreading in the middle east), it is mostly ignored.
update 3/1/05: there was an error in the last paragraph that made my point pretty confusing. it's fixed now. sorry it took me so long to notice.
