Africa's Sudden Splash of Good News

I was there for that election, too. The stories of the former child soldiers in Liberia echoed those of Sierra Leone. "We were used, fooled and forced" by the former warlords, a 14-year-old named David told me; now he wanted to get a little land and some capital and start to farm. Other former comrades of his planned to go to school or get job training. The last thing they wanted was to be dragged back to a world where the rule of law is abandoned and the gun speaks loudest of all.

The evidence of transformation goes far beyond Sierra Leone and Liberia. The best-known story of all is South Africa, which up until the early 1990s was ruled by white supremacists. Today, still bathed in the spirit of Nelson Mandela, South Africa is preparing for its fourth democratic election since the fall of apartheid.

In 1994, Hutu radicals armed with machetes committed a terrifyingly swift genocide in Rwanda, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in just 100 days. Today, the country has a significant economic growth rate, and the likelihood of a return to conflict diminishes with each passing year. Neighboring Burundi and southern Sudan -- also ripped apart by genocide and conflicts that have killed millions -- have forged peace deals, laying the ground for development and security.

What I have found in my travels is a new African story, an assertion of rights and responsibilities by people from all walks of life, especially young people. Africans are demanding that their voices be heard -- through the ballot box, through civil society organizations, new media, revitalized political parties, and reformed institutions to provide accountability.

All this provides some key lessons for the newest and biggest crisis on the continent: Darfur and its regional spillovers. First, don't lose hope. (The cases above demonstrate that seemingly intractable problems have solutions.) Second, promote democracy in all its forms. Third, step up peace efforts. (In all the above cases except Rwanda, negotiations played a key role in ending the suffering.) Fourth, protect civilians. The African Union and U.N. troops being deployed in Darfur should fulfill their mandate to protect civilians and support humanitarian operations, or the death rates will continue to mount.

The difference between Darfur and all these other cases is that this time, Americans are not looking away. With the exception of the smaller but still effective anti-apartheid movement to free South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, the outpouring of American activism urging a more robust U.S. response to Darfur has been unparalleled: the first truly mass-based political movement to confront genocide or civil war in Africa.

Failure in Darfur would probably mean that Americans would once again turn away from a continent trying to shake off its legacies of slavery, colonialism and conflict. But success in Darfur could ensure that a whole generation of newly politically active Americans would redouble their efforts to guarantee that the world's most powerful nation will not stand by during a genocide or deadly war. Darfur, too, will turn around, but how quickly will be determined, in part, by how successful this activist movement becomes, both in the United States and in

other countries that hold the keys to a peaceful future.

jp@enoughproject.org

John Prendergast is co-chair of the

Enough Project, an initiative aimed at crimes against humanity, and the co-author, with actor Don Cheadle, of "Not on Our Watch."