The sentencing of President Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, for financial fraud did not really register in Africa’s news media, but it should have. For decades Manafort played the role of kingmaker for some of the most brutal figures on the continent. As part of the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, he was an intermediary between the US and violent states and actors in Kenya, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia and Angola. For these regimes, Manafort was a secret weapon; for the African people, Manafort was death and disaster.
Consider his involvement with the Angolan rebel, Jonas Savimbi. Following Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975, Savimbi led a brutal campaign in the countryside that sought not only to control the country’s agricultural lands and diamond mines, but the population that resided there as well. His soldiers were notorious for decapitating anyone – including children – who refused to work in the mines and for conscripting thousands of women into sexual slavery. Only after his death in 2002 was the country able to move meaningfully towards peace.
