For Africa, 1989 was a watershed year. The promise of democracy heralded by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War was only comparable with the euphoria of the independence movements in Africa in the 1960s and Nelson Mandela’s release from incarceration in 1990.
People everywhere on the continent started to believe again in democracy as a synonym for human rights, an end to dictatorships, a rebirth of civil societies and a multi-party system.
Once again, as was the case in the heyday of the independence movement in the 1960s, Africans thought they were in control of their own destiny and at the brink of a new beginning in their history.
But 1989 was also seen by Africa as a mark of the triumph of neoliberalism, of unregulated capitalism and of the breakdown and privatisation of national healthcare and educational institutions. No wonder that popular culture named the post-1989 democratic movements in Africa “demo-crazies”.
On the one hand, 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, which had forced the world to close its eyes to the brutality of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the crimes committed against humanity elsewhere in Africa.
What has since become clear, however, is that 1989 was one of several factors that led to the legalisation of the ANC in South Africa, the independence of Namibia, the departure of the Cubans from Angola and the weakening of one-party systems.
It also led to the decline and expulsion from office of some of the continent’s strongmen: Mobutu Sese Seko, Mengistu Haile Mariam and Moussa Traoré, to name a few.
After 1989, “civil societies, modernisation and democratisation”, “multiparty systems” and “national conferences and reconciliations” emerged as the new buzzwords in Africa.
On the other hand, 1989 also opened the floodgates for a revival of “primitive” tribal customs and religious fundamentalism (both Islamic and Christian). The “new world order” brought civil wars, child soldiers and blood diamonds all over Africa.
Against this background, the events of 1989 therefore represented at least three types of epistemological break. First, 1989 marked a new beginning for African political self-determination, respect for human rights and serious social investment in modernity and democracy.
Second, 1989 sent a signal to Europeans and Americans that they could forget Africa as a serious geo-political region of the world, requiring major infrastructural investment.
And, third, 1989 heralded the return to a long-repressed form of racism from the 19th century. The hallmark of the “new” racism is the depiction of Africa as a hopelessly rigid entity devoid of any reform, whose only value lies in its natural resources such as oil, coltan, gold, diamonds and cocoa.
This text is available in an extended version in a book published in September 2009 by Susanne Stemmler, Valerie Smith and Bernd M Scherer (eds.), 1989: Globale Geschichten (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2009, 304 pages). Manthia Diawara is an author, filmmaker, art historian and film and literary critic who lives in the United States. He is the director of the Africana studies department at New York University