Postscript 1994: Africa
1. French Empire
2. Islamic Republic of Libya
3. Islamic Republic of Egypt
4. Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
5. Tuareg Republic
6. Chad
7. Kingdom of Sudan
8. Ethiopian Empire
9. Arab Republic of Mauritania
10. Republic of Senegal
11. Bamanankan Republic
12. Federated Volta
13. Nokkaland
14. Republic of Guinea
15. Republic of Salone
16. Republic of Liberia
17. Elfenbeinküste
18. Goldküste Republic
19. Kingdom of Dagbon
20. Togolese Republic
21. Republic of Benin
22. Republic of Lagos
23. Republic of Biafra
24. Democratic People’s Republic of Kameroon
25. Central African People’s Syndicate
26. United African Workers’ Republic
27. Kongolese Democratic Farmers and Workers Republic
28. Kingdom of Buganda
29. Republic of Turkana
30. Kingdom of Rwanda
31. Kingdom of Burundi
32. Freistaat Göringia
33. Maravi
34. Republic of Katanga
35. Kingdom of Balozi
36. Kingdom of Baherero
37. Khwean Republic
38. Republic of Zambezia
39. Freistaat Namibia
40. Cabo Verde
41. South African Federation
42. Mosambik
43. Madagaskar
In 1994, Africa is a troubled continent, where the legacy of the Mittelafrikan War is still playing out and the initial hopes of decolonization and democratization have been stifled by historical baggage, foreign exploitation, and internal dysfunction.
In central and east Africa, what was once Mittelafrika has been replaced by a patchwork of nominally independent tribal kingdoms, dictatorships, and fragile republics, stuck in varying degrees of neo-colonial dependence and dysfunction. Insecurity is rampant and poverty widespread. Pervasive and persistent violence between and within states has confounded efforts to improve economic capacity and good governance in the region. Political instability and foreign interference is the norm, with green shoots of democracy and good governance the rare exception. In Central Africa, the legacy of the CASS and African Syndicalism lives on in an array of ‘people’s republics’ and Afro-Totalist personality cults, all of which regularly top the rankings of the world’s most benighted countries.
Freistaat Göringia and Freistaat Namibia stand as the last redoubts of the once-mighty Mittealfrikan Empire, refuges for white settlers driven out of other parts of the continent. The Mittelafrikan War burned out in a series of low-intensity bush conflicts and managed retreats in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the 1981 Ethiopian Intervention in Kenya forcing Göringia to accept its current borders. The Freistaats’ segregation of their black populations remains a point of international controversy, with the Anglosphere joining the international embargo campaign in 1981. In 1984, under pressure from their activist base, the Left-SPD government of German Chancellor Marcel Liebig expelled the Freistaats from the Reichspakt and cut off the last of their German aid, devastating their economies. In 1991, Japan too finally succumbed to Ethiopian pressure and imposed trade restrictions. Strangled by international sanctions and a punishing brain drain, the settler states are shabby, authoritarian. and stagnant. Turing machines, telephones, and other signs of modernity are rare. Humane Immundefizienz-Virus/Afrikanisch Immundefektsyndrom affects almost 30% of the population, exacerbated by miscegenation laws and a lack-of-access to foreign pharmaceuticals. Only disproportionate military might and a backdoor trade in raw resources keeps the Freistaats afloat, but for how long remains an open question.
To the south, the South African Federation is the continent’s preeminent economic and military power. Like the rest of the Anglosphere, it attempts to stand aloof, but the reality of its African location presents a paradoxical challenge. South Africa guards its quasi-Western status carefully, perpetually sensitive to the accusations from the rest of the Anglosphere that it represents the ‘backdoor’ into the bloc. Much of its regional foreign policy is aimed at stopping the flow of economic migrants over its borders. Most end up detained in the vast ‘reception centers’ the South African government funds in neighboring nations. Those who do reach South Africa find it a deeply bifurcated land. Integration with the Anglosphere has fueled economic success, but its fruits have not been equally shared. Inequality is rampant, and the good feeling generated by democratization and the successful transition to majority rule is challenged by the dawning realization that privilege remains concentrated in the hands of the black political class and their allies in the white economic elite.
Francophone Africa is a fragmented and fractious region. From the late 1920s onwards, the Imperial French policy of ‘Dédommagement’ soothed the Francization of the North African coast by encouraging Arab migration south of the Sahel. Arabs, whom the French authorities regarded as both more ‘civilizable’ and reliable than the local Africans, received generous state support and land allocations for settling in West Africa, where they served as a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration. In addition, tens of thousands Arab laborers were brought to West Africa to work on the construction of infrastructure projects such as the West African Coastal Railroad (CFCAO) in the late 1930s and 1940s. Many subsequently remained and settled in the region following the completion of their indentured contracts.
Unlike the Metropolitan French, who never grew to a significant population in West Africa, the so-called ‘South Arabs’ quickly became a significant minority, accelerated not only by their own high birth-rate but also waves of immigration from the Levant during the Turko-Arab War and as a result of the massive displacements arising from the Treaty of Knossos. Incoming Arabs also hybridized with existing Muslim populations. By the early 1970s, South Arabs formed as much as ten percent of the population in some regions of French West Africa. Arab 'évolués' were treated as an elite, privileged group by the colonial administrators, and the authorities in Tunis invested in the education and support of the Arab minority in preference to that of indigenous Africans, spurring inequality and resentment. This only grew after the death of De Gaulle in November 1970 brought an end to the era of ‘L'approche maximale’. De Gaulle’s successor as guide de l'état, General Jacques Massu, favored a policy of increased delegated power to the colonies, seeking to retrench in the face of the threat of anti-colonial contagion spreading from the ongoing war in Mittelafrika. The South Arabs were staunchly anti-Syndicalist, making them useful post-colonial partners for a French Empire declining in the face of the economic and political problems caused by De Gaulle’s death, shifting global power structures, and the end of the Anglo-French alliance. Massu’s policies of delegated power disproportionately benefited the South Arab administrator and landowner class, who subsequently granted themselves even further privileges. While not all South Arabs were wealthy, they were on average far richer than indigenous communities, representing 10% of the population but receiving half of colonial income. As the French withdrew north of the Sahara they left behind a patchwork of minority-ruled states in Western Africa, most of which immediately fell into vicious repression and cyclical civil wars. International observers termed this policy ‘divide and retreat’. France intervenes in these conflicts as it pleases, supporting whatever faction or would-be strongman is most likely to maintain its pervasive commercial interests.
