Like many others, I felt embarrassed by the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. I was in a banking hall when I saw live pictures of insurgents jubilating on various streets in Tripoli, Banghazi and Misrata.
My initial attitude was, �this is propaganda again from the West. � And I brushed it off.
I wore that means because I was quickly reminded of the earlier news months ago that two of the late colonel�s sons had been apprehended by the rebel forces. This, later turned out to be false. I proceeded from the bank to a barbering shop where an old friendly barber, Pat, had his radio on a channel filing live reports from Libya.
About the same time, I had a message on my phone informing me about the strong man�s arrest. Old Pat was somewhat happy Gaddafi had been arrested and wounded (news of his death hadn�t filtered in yet).
Though old Pat was mostly indifferent about the development, he had very acerbic views about the ex-Libyan and African leader.
I also had views but did not engage him.
My repugnance about the whole caboodle is the �world�s� new found phrase: Regime Change. We saw it in Iraq, Cote D�Ivoire (though this one was triggered differently) and now Libya.
In the case of Libya, I partly blame the debilitating continental leadership.
The African Union�s inaction and inability to step into the situation, spoke volumes about its own weakness and lack of resolve.
The Union has only been reduced to making audacious comments with no action. Let me attempt to diagnose why the West was so opposed to Gaddafi and did everything possible to get him killed.
Only a novice will think the West wants to see Africa prosper and attain real independence. The odium for Africa from the other side is buttressed by the apparent persecution of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and now Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi epitomized the very essence of a liberation fighter. He fought for and achieved the transformation of the OAU to AU.
He most importantly was solely responsible for Africa�s telecommunication revolution.
Today, ironically though, the NATO-member countries have been beneficiaries of Libya�s investments.
The Libyan Investment Authority has $150 billion dollars in investments in those countries; USA holding about 34 billion, UK-19. 2 billion and France about 10. 6 billion.
It was Gaddafi�s Libya that offered all of Africa its first revolution in modern times � connecting the entire continent by telephone, television, radio broadcasting and several other technological applications such as telemedicine and distance teaching.
The Rights Monitoring platform concisely captures it this way;
It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent.
This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country. �
Gaddafi�s leadership and quest to see a prosperous Africa, equipped to compete on the world stage once again came to light:
�An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of US$400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual lease. Which banker wouldn�t finance such a project?
But the problem remained � how can slaves, seeking to free themselves from their master�s exploitation ask the master�s help to achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the USA, Europe only made vague promises for 14 years.
Gaddafi put an end to these futile pleas to the western �benefactors� with their exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put US$300 million on the table; the African Development Bank added US$50 million more and the West African Development Bank a further US$27 million � and that�s how Africa got its first communications satellite on 26 December 2007. �
China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010.
The first totally indigenously built satellite and manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at ten times less the cost, a real challenge.
This is how a US$300 million generous act from a man changed Africa. Gaddafi�s Libya cost the West, �not just depriving it of US$500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent,� said Jean Po.
Libya�s assets in several parts of the world were frozen. The US$30 billion frozen by my political light, Barack Obama is for the Libyan Central Bank and had been allocated as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would conclude plans for Nkrumah�s dream of a continental union � the African Investment Bank in Libya, the establishment this year of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Cameroun with a US$42 billion capital fund.
And this is where France and Sarkozy�s rage at Gaddafi is explained; the Abuja-based African Central Bank in Nigeria which when in operation and printing African money could be the coup de grace for the CFA franc through which France has been able to maintain its hold on some African countries for the last fifty years.
These are the real issues inspiring the NATO onslaught on Gaddafi.
They used issues of aggression and long stay in power as substrate to achieving their vicious ends.
The Western trio David Cameron, Nicholas Sarkozy and Barack Obama are now happy and why not? Their aim of thwarting Africa�s renaissance has been accomplished.
Current AU Chairman, Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, recently at the Geneva �Gateway to Africa International conference� said that Africa was capable of solving its own problems and once again called on African nations to take the lead in resolving African issues.
Sounded to me like a rehearsed line.
If we are to take our chairman seriously, where was the AU when UN Security Council resolution 1973 was being passed?
I so miss the Africa Thabo Mbeki, Olusegun Obasanjo, JJ Rawlings, John Kufuor and even Sani Abacha.
Leaders who could stand to their Western contemporaries and had the temerity to articulate what they felt was good for their various countries (and continent) and who did not only have the vision of how they hoped to see Africa but understood how to make it work. The feats of ECOMOG in Sierra Leone and Liberia are clear.
I am sometimes tempted to believe that leaders like President Mbasogo could not be strong in speaking against the Western invasion of Libya because they have had their own share of the same thing Brother Gaddafi was accused of.
Brutality, disrespect for his people�s human rights and long stay in power.
Mbasogo is in his 32nd year as President. Perhaps his open aversion at the NATO-backed invasion could make him the next victim of a western-sponsored incursion.
I have and still remain very skeptical that a post-Gaddafi Libya, in the manner the ousting of the Colonel has been done, will see stability.
Iraq was more peaceful under Saddam Hussein than it is today under US apologists.
Tribal strife and acrimony will rather increase in Libya, the Libyan economy will for the first time in several years see a nosedive.
An economy with its GDP (PPP) at $16,502 (Ghana�s was $2930 or so (2010)).
Social systems which were buoyant under Gaddafi have now been left to conjecture. Gaddafi provided to his people what even the UK and US have not been able to deliver to their �enlightened� citizens.
But the country now has been set on auto ruination.
I pulled this from somewhere on the internet: �whatever one�s views regarding Muammar Gaddafi, the post-colonial Libyan government played a key role in eliminating poverty and developing the country�s health and educational infrastructure.
According to Italian Journalist Yvonne de Vito, �Differently from other countries that went through a revolution � Libya is considered to be the Switzerland of the African continent and is very rich and schools are free for the people. Hospitals are free for the people.
And the conditions for women are much better than in other Arab countries. � (Russia Today, August 25, 2011)
These developments are in sharp contrast to what most Third World countries were able to �achieve� under Western style �democracy� and �governance� in the context of a standard IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment program (SAP).
Public Health Care in Libya prior to NATO�s �Humanitarian Intervention� was the best in Africa. '
Health care is [was] available to all citizens free of charge by the public sector. The country boasts the highest literacy and educational enrolment rates in North Africa. The Government is [was] substantially increasing the development budget for health services� (WHO Libya Country Brief )
Confirmed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), undernourishment was less than 5 %, with a daily per capita calorie availability of 3144 calories.
The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya provided to its citizens what is denied to many Americans: Free public health care, free education, as confirmed by WHO and UNESCO data. �
In hero-worshipping Col Gaddafi, I take cognizance of the fact that his 42 year old regime like any other in the world had excesses.
Torturing of opponents, imposition of his religious beliefs on the entire nation, attempts to convert the country into his family�s, amongst others.
While condemning the attack on him, I tend to side sometimes with those who opine that he brought the humiliation upon himself.
The arrogance of power.
It�s just like how Ivory Coast�s Laurent Gbagbo also brought disgrace and ridicule upon himself.
In both cases and many others dotted in history, once it was clear that the �powers that be� wanted him out and his might could not face the concerted power of the �aggressors� he could have smartly negotiated his way out and sought asylum somewhere.
His execution or murder � however you decide to call it- should lesson to other leaders on the continent who have clasped so firmly to power.
The likes of Zimbabwe�s Robert Mugabe, who has been ruling since 1980 and AU Chairman, Teodoro Mbasogo who has been head of state for 32 years now.
For Mugabe, any little reported violence followed by some street protests during or after his country�s next election could conglobate and form enough justification for the already hungry western �friends� to launch.
For Libya, the revolution has given a taste of freedom and the citizens desperately want that seductive flavor on tap for good.
But the fear is that the current scramble for power event among the top echelons of the several rebel groups could further plunge Libya into the gulf.
Gaddafi himself predicted his detractors had little in common and would soon fight among themselves.
When the men in uniforms with guns and not the politicians in suits start to argue, people get afraid. That is what some Libyans have started feeling.
Sad for Africa, I think. At least I have a friend who calls himself Gaddafi, because he claims he is the Head of State of radio. Just wondering if he'll consider changing that name.
Sorry to you, Gaddafi, achievements well documented, but you could have done better. Your legacies will speak for you one day.
Author: Selorm Adonoo
Coventry University
<<Print>>