End of Cold War and Its Effects on Africa

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of the Cold War resulted in varying consequences for Africa. Some could be viewed as success, while others where viewed as disasters. Within South Africa, the end of the vicious rivalry between the two superpowers resulted in a change for a better future and the end of a long racial supremacy, whilst within the Democratic Republic of Congo, tensions increased, causing a disastrous future to a prosperous nation, of which the effects can still be seen today without prevail. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a chain of events within these two countries as well as their neighbours, leading to complete change as well as sparking the beginning for both new adversity and a new future for the country and its people.

The collapse of the USSR gave rise to a new era of the fight and struggle for democracy and the end to military regimes as well as ethnic and cultural dominance within the African continent. Within Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), general Mobutu Sese Seko had been receiving both military and financial aid from the U.S.A, knowing how corrupt and undemocratic his regime was, in order to indirectly fight the opposing world superpower. Yet, with the end to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, Zaire no longer played a significant role in world power, and thus fell at the hands of Hutu militia as well as refugees from the brutal genocide in Rwanda. Within South Africa however, the fight and long-lived struggle for racial equality and the end of the Apartheid regime, became extremely significant due to the fall of the Soviet Union. Opposing powers, previously in support of the opposing world superpowers, now had to reinvent the country’s policies and liberation struggles in order to adapt to the new world order and a change for the future of a unified and equal democracy. Thus these successes and disasters can be seen as the effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the...