Africa and the New World Order: Voices and Ways of Liberation in Armah's Osiris Rising

Since the late 1980s, a new world order has been established with the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, the official end of Apartheid, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the insolent supremacy of Western capitalism and cultural values and the recent demonstration of Anglo-American imperialism in Afghanistan and in Iraq, just to mention a few. This modification of the international social, economic, and political arena has impacted poor and developing countries, especially those of Africa as J. Wiseman pinpoints that saying: "the end of the Cold War in the 1980s transformed the external environment in which African political systems operated. (1) Examples of these transformations are legion. The Russian politics of Perestroika and Glasnot implemented in the 1980s under President M. Gorbatchev caused the Soviet Union stopped any military and financial cooperation with pro-communists, Afro-Marxist countries such as Congo-Brazzaville, Benin, Angola, and Mozambique. At the same Western European countries, such as France redefined their African agenda, as they saw that communism and Marxism were contained. One shall remember the historical speech of former French president, at La Baule, France, in 1990, warning African leaders that financial aids to their governments would continue to flow unless they practiced political liberalism. Thus, the new international context brought tremendous shifts in the social, economic, and political bodies in almost all the African states. In fact, the ardent desire of African populations to stop mismanagement, social decay, and civil rights abuses engendered continent-wide mass movements, which started in Benin in 1989 (2). Thanks to these protests, mostly led by students, unionists, unemployed people, teachers, and a new breed of politicians, many African states experienced political changes characterized by the end of one-party rule, the dismantling of civilian and military dictatorship, the drafting of new constitutions, and the holding of multi-party elections, the privatization of state-run firms and the rhetoric of good governance. Unfortunately, the neo-liberal oriented paradigm (globalization) of development has not triggered the expected results in Africa to the point that presently, Africa lags behind other continents in terms of human developments. Africa is the poorest of the five continents of the world, as she hosts 30% of the world poor people. (3) In two decades from 1980 to 2000, African economies and social conditions moved worsened. The World Bank indicates that more than 50% of Africans live on less than $1 US a day, "with incomes averaging just $ 0.65 a day of the purchasing power in parity terms. (4) As far as world business is concerned, the whole continent shares less than 2% of the world business (5) and is overburdened with debts, hence servicing has gained preeminence over the improvement and the construction of health and educational infrastructures. The New Internationalist (6) reveals the following: In 1996, sub-Saharan Africa paid $2.5 billion more in debt service than it received in new long-term loans and credits. The external debt of the region has ballooned by 400% since the IMF and the World Bank began managing African economies through imposed "Structural Adjustment" conditions. The poor economic situation of Africa largely explains the galloping deterioration of living standards, in which the outburst and the rapid spread of the HIV-AIDS pandemic and the continual threat of malaria play an important role. Estimates show that more than 200 million people in Africa have no access to health services and that life expectancy has drastically dropped to around 51 (7). This figure is currently the lowest in the world, and is supposed to lower more in the years to come if nothing is done to counter the effects of infectious diseases, such as AIDS. Literacy rates are overall low and access to education is still limited. …