Alas, Anderson Cooper is just presenting 360° reports on Africa... -The iPINIONS Journal

This week, CNN is featuring a series on Africa entitled Killing Fields: Africa’s Misery, The World’s Shame. The host of this chronicling of Africa’s persistent woes is Anderson Cooper who has been promoting it with the following indignant charge:

…this humanitarian crisis has received virtually no attention from the media over the past few years.

But, with all due respect to Cooper and CNN, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything left to report out of Africa about starvation, civil wars, pestilences, diseases and congenital corruption. Besides, the real humanitarian crisis is not the ravages of war and HIV/AIDS now raging in Africa. Rather, it’s the salutary neglect by humans with the power and resources to do anything to stop these crises.

Nonetheless, apropos his charge, I doubt it will come as news to anyone with even a quizzical interest in Africa that the DR Congo is in the waning throes of civil strife that makes the genocide in Rwanda look like a drive by shooting. Because after reading numerous reports on this crisis over a year ago, I wrote an article, here, dated April 2005 and entitled Genocide in the DR Congo: Rwanda with a Vengeance, in which I lamented:

…I am compelled to sound the alarm about another genocide that is now taking place in the DR Congo on a scale that threatens to surpass the horror of Rwanda. Details about human cruelty, suffering and neglect of this magnitude are usually gratuitous. But for those who care to read the background information on this tragedy, click here.

Moreover, I pleaded (rather prophetically it now seems)

Please act now! We do not need another American President traveling to the DR Congo in a few years to apologize for failing to act; nor should we wait for the movie Hotel DR Congo to incite outrage about this crisis only after another 1 million Africans have been massacred.

It is unconscionable therefore that more than a year has passed and those who can have done virtually nothing about the killing fields of the DR Congo (or Darfur, Niger etc). But instead of recycling (360°) old stories about it, Cooper would do more to help the people of the DR Congo by challenging western leaders to act urgently and more comprehensively on their behalf, or be exposed as the morally bankrupt and inhumane cowards they are in this respect.

In fact, he could start by seeking a farewell interview with outgoing UN General-Secretary Kofi Annan and asking why he did not use his power more aggressively to prevent the unfolding genocide in Darfur; especially given his mea culpa over his failure to sound the alarm to prevent the genocide in Rwanda.

I realised after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support….I was guilty of sins of omission. [Kofi Annan]

NOTE: For the record, I do not hold Africans blameless for cultivating their own killing fields. In fact, I consider them most to blame and primarily responsible for getting themselves out of their cycle of civil strife. Indeed, I’ve written numerous articles, including here and here, in which I indict African leaders for exploiting and preying upon their own people more than any colonial master ever did.

For those of us who have been chronicling Africa’s misery – forlorn of almost all hope – any good news out of Africa has been cause to celebrate. Therefore, I feel obliged to put Cooper’s report into perspective by citing this recent article, here, entitled Historic vote in DR Congo springs hope for Africa.

ENDNOTE: Cooper’s reporting on blood diamonds was also noteworthy. But here too he has added his voice to a chorus I joined years ago and wrote about, here, in an article dated October 2005 and entitled Diamonds: The crack of the jet-set and wanna be fools looking to part with their money, which I began as follows: