I concur with Mr. Drammeh's reservations about Gaddafi's intentions
regarding African unity.

For a state which has countless African immigrants languishing in his
"kalabous" and notorious concentration camps, a state where black
sub-saharans are persistently picked up from streets and detained
incommunicado, for a state which has sponsored guerilla wars that have
wreaked havoc on countries such as Liberia, I wonder what he had to tell
African leaders, sipping "shai" under his tent in Syrte.

Attempts at creating continental union based on the US model have woefully
failed in the past. To recap: Guinea-Ghana Union 1958-1960; the
Guinea-Ghana-Mali Union 1960-1962, Mali Federation 1959-1960. Most of the
obstacles have been associated with the selfish policies of the governments
concerned, prompting the late Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere to make the
following statement to Gamel Abdul Nasser at the III OAU conference in 1966:

"What hinders the realization of African unity, it is not the action of
foreign powers, it is the African themselves".

It is only when African leaders stop treating their own people as dustbins
and cease running their countries like latifundia that maybe we can see some
serious moves towards union.  The huge response of African leaders to
Gaddafi's invitation in early September smacks of beggarliness.  If Libya
were a poor nation that could hardly stand on its feet, I doubt if the Syrte
meeting would have been such a success.




______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------