Qadafi As The Desert Fox

The surge of the spirit of Pan-African nationalism among African leaders is not a new phenomenon in continental politics. The late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, campaigned so vigorously for a union government, that the effect was to return OAU members to the square one of their original camps. One side of the divide represented realistic conservatives. The other regrouped the radicals into the Casablanca camp. That practical division in thought, programme and ideology, subsists till this day. Colonel Muammer Ghadaffi's proposal for an African authority is the same union that Nkrumah canvassed for in 1964. OAU members even pressed for a force to be sent in, to stand by Amin in Uganda, against pressures from apartheid South Africa. But, the OAU lacked the strength and the cohesion, as it does now, to be involved in mad ventures, as Dr. Hastings Banda described the proposal, at the time.

The Lome summit adopted the Libyan leader's initiative. Yet, it is most significant that key members, including Nigeria, refrained from signing the unworthy protocol. There was no unity in a continent tortured by wars and divisions among members, when Dr. Nkrumah proposed his union government, "now." The Ghanaian leader himself was at the same time, undermining the government of Maurice Yameogo in today's Burkina Faso, by instigating foment and rebellion against the authority in Ouagadougou. In retaliation, the government banned the export of cattle and hides to Ghana, which had shoe factors at Tema. The country has only short horn cows. Its only source of hides for its shoe factory was Burkina Faso. Besides, Dr. Nkrumah also locked horns in quarrel with other neighbouring governments in Monrovia and Abidjan. To conceal its weakness, and make belief, the OAU accepted a proposal it should have sent to the scrap heap, to save face as usual. It did not want to repeat the frank posture and the straightforward game, it played with Morocco over the recognition of the Polisario Front that angered the country out of the OAU.

It is a matter of history that a union government, though forcefully pursued, did not materialize during the time of Nkrumah. It has now been revived, thirty-five years after his death. I wish as a Pan-Africanist myself, that Ghadaffi's initiative will succeed this time. But, having taken a second look at his proposals, and read Edem Kodjo, Vanguard, August 7, I am in a better position to submit that all the Libyan leader wanted was to draw attention to himself. I am conscious, I must say, that the much vaunted, but, hurried union between Ghana-Guinea-Mali broke up within three years.

Ghadaffi did not propose anything that is not already on the ground and breathing or, which does not exist, or has not been mapped out in regional treaties and protocols.

In this light, his initiative is a mere distraction. He knows that though some ground levelling has been done towards the goal, enabling conditions have not changed much from what it was, 35 years ago, when Nkrumah promoted his vision. Ghadaffi wanted to force it on the world that he is a reformed leader. His antecedents make his general image poor, though his self-esteem is high. In the past five years, he has been engaged in a serious image repair promotion, and indeed, battle. No one forgets Lockerbie, or the consequent UN sanctions. He used the OAU Lome summit as cannon fodder. Yet, only continual good deeds can change that image of him as a marauding matador who charges left and right, in search of blood.

Africa is a country torn apart by conflicts, big and small. There are no less than fourteen wars, as wide and far apart as, Liberia; Sierra Leone, Senegal, Western Sahara, Sudan, Eritrea, Algeria and Congo. The OAU, by itself, has proved incapable so far of sorting out these wars to bring peace, and unity, where it is needed most. But, that is not the point. This is that all the pranks of Ghaddafi's protocol are on the ground, and in various stages of maturity. A union government as conceived, like the emerging United Europe, is a step-by-step programme. Conditions must be ideal for every forward movement. Union is something one achieves with one bounce, as propagated by the Libyan leader; and Dr. Nkrumah before him. Apart from the wars that plague Africa which further divides us in ideology and goodwill, towards one another, there is the issue of adjusting inherited colonial boundaries which is still burning. Charity begins at home. The Balundo tribe is split between Nigeria and Cameroun. Half of the Ewe tribe is in Ghana, and the other half is in Togo. Virtually every country in Africa has problems of kith and kin spread across borders. These problems have to be solved before we can march forward confidently to true and enduring continental union.

There is so much indiscipline and disunity in Africa that in this matter of a union government, the best way to proceed is to go by measured steps as the OAU is doing. Seven countries are currently involved on both sides, in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is naive to talk of a union authority when sovereignty still rests with individual states; and the High Command of African Armies is only so in empty name. It is important to note that Ghadaffi has made this leap to the centre stage of efforts to forge unity and union, without first tilling and watering his own soil.

Had he secured a union of states in his Maghre bright and left doors, which will include Western Sahara, he would have been the idol of Africa; instead of the odd man in the ointment as he is seen, by most of black Africa.

The Libyan leader can not be the man of peace and unity because he is the same desert fox who was twice jumped over, for the seat of chairman of the OAU for his unenviable reputation, as paymaster of foment on the continent. He is the armourer of General Omar Beshir whose war planes bomb and kills starving civilians in southern Sudan. The brutal war is about the Islamic colonization of the oil rich Christian and Animist, Negroid south of the country. And, he is the same person that propped up Idi Amin's reign of terror, with troops.

His name gives most people the itch. His misdeeds, make it hard for his colleagues to believe that any programme he puts up is without an ill motivated catch. Several times, Ghadaffi committed the grave sin of calling on what he termed popular forces, to rise up, and over throw Arab monarchies in the Orient, including Saudi Arabia, Oman and Jordan. He once also sent an assassination squad to Cairo to eliminate President Mubarak of Egypt.

Oil money has bloated his sense of importance, but this does not seem to have practically or beneficially, enhanced in commitment to the cause of African Unity, in real terms. He is the same person who expelled thousands of unemployed black Africans who sought succour in his domain, three years ago. Libya claimed then, that blacks, including Nigerians, were purveyors of the HIV virus. And I know that without the active aid of Libya, in money, training and guns, there would have been no Taylor problem in West Africa today. In splendour and grandeur, no camel train to Mecca, in the days of the Ottoman Sultans, could have matched the road show of Ghadaffi. The motorized desert caravan of three hundred vehicles, said to include French made Ferrets, crawled through half a dozen economic vassal states, drumming up support for the protocol for a United States of Africa. It was all an ego trip, and a comedy of sorts. The USA is not just yet!