The result of this fight of the elephants is that Angola, one of Africa's wealthiest countries, has become a wasteland, a corrupt state relying on Western food aid although it exports more oil than many Arab states. Somalia's Siad Barre and Ethiopia's Mongistu were the chosen ones for the Soviet Union even if they were leading their nations towards disaster. Nigeria, a significant exporter of oil, is in economic and social ruins, with thousands of its citizens fleeing every year for illusive greener pastures around the globe. Liberia is left with the indelible imprints of the Reagan legacy in which con artists like Taylor became notable politicians by aligning themselves with a ruthless junta seen as agent against Communism. Tasting the fruits of mass theft, politics became as an inducement for theft on a grand scale, requiring a vicious war to seize the entire pile.
Truth is preferable to deception.
Governor Bush is warning Africa and other black nations that in his worldview, they could go to hell. With such knowledge, the challenge for Africans is to ensure that they do not go to hell and that they are determined to fit in the current global power configuration with all the respect. How to fulfill such a task with thieves and gangsters plundering the Continent in league with American and European freelance criminals is daunting. In Liberia, for example, Charles Taylor has brought in South African neo-Nazis, Ukrainians mercenaries, etc., to sustain his criminal enclave now taking roots within West Africa. The result is the death of socioeconomic development, spread of instability in the region, inept dependence on Washington to rebuild the destroyed state even as he transforms it into a Libyan backyard, continued killings to maintain his criminal grip on the country, and the more fleeing refugees with no where to run.