The last leader of the Soviet Union died Tuesday, August 30 at the age of 91 in Russia. Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he had worked for a reform of the Soviet system in the 1980s and for the thawing of international relations, ending the Cold War which divided the world between 1945 and 1991. This radical change in the international situation had important effects for the African continent.
The disappearance of the USSR from the African chessboard forced the regimes allied to the Eastern bloc to reform or fall.
In the first category, Angola and Mozambique were forced to enter into democratization processes that ended civil wars, first in Maputo, then later in Luanda. In the second category, Ethiopia: in 1991, Mengitsu, nicknamed the “red negus”, was ousted from power.
The United States’ interest in Africa is also changing accordingly: less geopolitical, more economic.
Their great ally in Central Africa, Mobutu, must let go and open up the political system. But without the subsidies in dollars, and the sick Marshal, Zaire will crumble in a few years.
South Africa was also forced to reform: it was in the context of the end of the Cold War that apartheid fell, leading to the first multiracial elections in 1994, and Namibia gained independence.
In the French-speaking world, a wind of freedom is blowing. It was the time of the national conferences: Benin was a precursor in 1990, the Marxist Mathieu Kerekou was defeated at the polls and faded away. Congo, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Togo are also embarking on the exercise, willy-nilly, with more mixed results. For some, African perestroika will have fizzled out.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 had therefore worked to put an end to the bipolar world in which Africa was at the mercy of the strategic stakes of Washington and Moscow.
For Vladimir Fedorovski, a former diplomat under Gorbachev and Russian writer, it is above all his message in favor of a balanced world that African countries will miss.
He had great respect for the African continent which he considered to be the continent of the future. […] Gorbachev said that it is necessary to take into account the interests of the various nations and to find balances, including and perhaps in the first place of the African countries. We are going to waste staggering sums on war, forgetting that Africa is threatened with famine.