The wonderful and insightful Horace Campbell knows his stuff Karim. Perhaps
now the giddy and clueless Africans who think they love Africa and African
Unity more than the more thoughtful, sober, and intelligent sons and
daughters of Africa, can learn something finally, now that Horace digests it for
them.
Thanx for sharing. I would only add to Horace's expose this little but
potent nugget from Gaddafi that African Ethnic domains ought to supercede
National unity ambitions. This was not too long ago. I'm sure the tardive
diskenetic can remmember it. Haruna.
In a message dated 3/26/2010 1:05:51 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Muammar al-Gaddafi: Obstacle to African unity
Horace Campbell
2010-03-25, Issue _475_ (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/475)
_http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/63299_
(http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/63299)
(http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=fahamutech)
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Following Muammar al-Gaddafi's suggestion of a break-up of Nigeria in the
wake of the crisis around Jos, Horace Campbell unpacks the Libyan leader's
claims to operate in the interests of African unity.
Muammar al-Gaddafi has established himself as an enemy of the unification
of the peoples of Africa for over 40 years. Last week, Gaddafi exceeded his
conservative instincts when he stated before a group of young students
that Nigeria should be split in two. Instead of motivating the students to
work for the transformation and unification of the peoples of Nigeria as one
prerequisite for the unification of Africa, Gaddafi called for the country
to be divided on religious grounds. He exposed his ignorance of African
religious and spiritual traditions because there was no room for followers of
African religious beliefs in his call for the division of this society. This
call for the division of Nigeria is one more effort to break up Nigerian
society so that this society is weakened and its people subjected to more
exploitation and manipulation. For 40 years Gaddafi had supported the
butchers and dictators in Africa. Starting with his military support for Idi Amin
of Uganda and other murderers such as Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor, this
militarist in Libya was an obstacle to African liberation. For a short
while after Nelson Mandela rescued him from obscurity, Gaddafi had sought to
use his wealth to buy the leadership of the African Union (AU). He was made
to understand that the unity of Africa was more profound than the meeting
of leaders of states. The statements of Gadafi on Nigeria must be condemned
in the strongest terms and it is time to strip away the fallacy that
Gaddafi stood in the ranks of African revolutionary leadership.
Gaddafi is energetically seeking to replace the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah.
Although he cannot point to a text as powerful as Nkrumah's book, 'Africa
Must Unite', Gaddafi has used his oil wealth to suborn a group of sycophantic
African leaders who have heaped praise on his leadership. For the past 10
years, the image of Gaddafi as the leader of the African Union has been
promoted by a fawning group of leaders in Africa, and the international media
was only too willing to oblige in order to obliterate the traditions of
Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral, Cheikh Anta Diop,
Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba and Samora Machel, who were strong advocates
of African unity. Gaddafi himself used the oil resources of Libya to
harness the support of servile self-seekers who refused to pay their dues to the
OAU (Organisation of African Unity) and AU while salting away billions in
foreign banks.
Progressive Pan-Africanists supported the project of the unification of
the peoples of Africa in order to transcend the Berlinist state in Africa. By
the 'Berlinist state', we mean those states that were carved out at the
Berlin Conference in 1885. In reality, the progressive Pan-African project
seeks to build on the ideas of Cheikh Anta Diop in relation to the
psychological, linguistic and cultural unity of Africa. The people have always been
for unity because they do not respect the colonial borders. One does not
have to ask the Maasai whether they respect the borders between Kenya and
Tanzania, or ask the Makonde whether they respect the false division of their
communities. Anthony Asiwaju has written on the full impact of partitioned
Africa, and the task of Pan-Africanists at home and abroad is to now build on
the work of those who will work to end the divisions of the peoples.
African women at the grassroots are opposed to the borders and the traders show
that no colonial borders can restrain them.
It is the present leaders who are maintaining the borders in order to
maintain themselves in power. There are many questions in Africa that urgently
require cooperation across the false borders. Environmental degradation,
tsetse fly infestation, HIV/AIDS and malaria know no border. Confronting
these challenges requires new thinking and new leadership. The project of
African unity is one which in the short run will require the replacement of most
of the leaders in Africa, and the building of a new leadership from the
grassroots.
It is time to draw a line between those so-called leaders and the people
of Africa. Gaddafi himself has drawn the line by exposing the fact that he
is opposed to the unity of the peoples of Africa. From the time he came to
power in 1969, Gaddafi has wittingly and unwittingly served the interest of
the enemies of Africa. He has also served as an enemy of the Palestinian
people.
SUPPORTING BUTCHERS
When Gaddafi seized power in September 1969, there were divisions among
Western political circles about the meaning of his assumption of power. After
Gaddafi nationalised foreign oil companies, the US identified him as a
dangerous radical, but the European imperial forces saw his assumption of
power as a force to support anti-communism. Gaddafi in the early 1970s
presented himself as a follower of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Libya used the oil
resources to increase the standard of living of the ordinary Libyan people
and Gaddafi declared Libya to be the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya. However, very soon the revolutionary rhetoric, when stripped
away, revealed a megalomaniac person who interfered in the internal affairs of
genuine liberation movements. Gaddafi soon alienated the Egyptian people,
as well as the Palestinian people, by seeking to meddle in the internal
affairs of the resistance forces in Palestine.
On the African continent, Gaddafi became the friend of the worst
dictators. His relationship with Idi Amin, who regime murdered more than 300,000,
stands out in this regard. The Libyan Arab Bank financed the ventures of Idi
Amin’s henchmen and the Libyan army fought alongside Idi Amin’s army when
Amin invaded Tanzania in 1978. This attack on Tanzania was an effort by
Amin to divert attention from the struggle against apartheid and colonialism
in Rhodesia and South Africa. Tanzania had been the frontline state bearing
the brunt of the fight against the white racist apartheid government. In
the midst of this war against apartheid, Amin attacked Tanzania. Algeria
supported Tanzania and Mozambique who were clear on the reasons for the Ugandan
attack. The Libyan and Ugandan army were roundly defeated by the Tanzanian
forces. When Libyan soldiers were captured, Gaddafi attempted to buy them
back from Tanzania. But Nyerere returned these prisoners of war, and said
that there should not be a price on human beings.
DISAPPEARANCE OF MUSA AL-SADR
In the same period when Gaddafi was supporting Idi Amin, Sayyid Mūsá al-Ṣ
adr, a well-known Islamic cleric from Lebanon, disappeared when he was on a
visit to Libya in 1978. Musa al-Sadr had acted as a unifier and reconciler
within Lebanon. His patient work among the Shia and Sunni communities had
ensured that war did not break out between these two communities. Musa
al-Sadr was invited to Libya in 1978 and has since disappeared. Since his
absence from the Lebanese scene, the society has plunged into conflicts and wars
for 30 years. Once divided and weakened, the Israelis and the Falangists
took advantage of the absence of Musa al-Sadr to perpetuate war. The Israeli
army has also been a direct beneficiary of the disappearance of Musa
al-Sadr. Gaddafi has a lot to answer for in the context of the wars in Lebanon.
It is with the knowledge of the disappearance of Musa al-Sadr that Africans
have to denounce in the strongest terms the call by Gaddafi for the
break-up of Nigeria.
GADDAFI’S TEMPORARY REHABILITATION
During the anti-apartheid struggle, most leaders in Africa had to support
liberation, and Gaddafi did give moral, material and military support to
freedom fighters in southern Africa. But this support for African freedom
fighters did not end the mischief-making and interference of Gaddafi. In the
early 1980s, Gaddafi was supporting butchers in Sudan, Chad and other parts
of Africa. Despite this mischief, Gaddafi was able to get the support of
freedom fighters because the US government under Ronald Reagan bombed Libya
in 1986. This imperial bombing garnered more support for Gaddafi and gave
him credibility as an 'anti-imperialist' leader. Because of the ambiguous
nature of his leadership, Libya was caught in the middle of the Lockerbie
disaster when the Pan Am 103 plane was blown over Scotland. After the Lockerbie
incident, Libya was placed on the list of states sponsoring terrorism.
MANDELA’S INTERVENTION IN 1997
Nelson Mandela had been branded a terrorist by the West, so he worked hard
to clear the matter of the Lockerbie bombing. He successfully negotiated
with the G7 so that the impasse between the West and Libya was significantly
watered down. This intervention by Mandela to bring clarity to the
question did not clear the cloud over exactly what happened in Lockerbie. Although
two Libyans were later tried in a neutral country where one of them was
convicted, their lawyer continued to claim their innocence. This issue
remained murky because at the time of the bombing in 1988, the Western media had
blamed Syria and Iran, among others, as culprits.
GADDAFI AND THE AFRICAN UNION
As a result of Mandela’s intervention, Gaddafi, who previously had been
parading himself as a leader of the Arab world, now presented himself as a
great leader of Africa, and convened an extraordinary summit of the OAU in
Sirte in 1999. The fact that between 1999 and 2002 the Constitutive Act of
the African Union was written and ratified is now history, and Gaddafi
deserves credit for his leadership on this. But at the same time, while he was
working for the unity of Africa, Gaddafi was financing butchers such as
Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh. Other dictators such as Yoweri Museveni of
Uganda and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe were supported by Gaddafi. In fact, when
democratic forces in Uganda and Zimbabwe were involved in a prolonged
struggle to end dictatorship, Gaddafi said a revolutionary should never retire.
The contradictory utterances of Gaddafi must be analysed against the real
actions of the Libyan state in relation to African peoples. Many
Pan-Africanists cheered when Libya successfully pressured the Italians to consider
the reparative claims of Libya and to return Libyan cultural artefacts. Libya
was also promised US$5 billion by Italy. However, this reparative claim
was overshadowed by the realisation that the Libyans had made an agreement
with the Italians to act as the police for the Italians to control the
movements of African immigrants. These agreements between Libya and Italy
reinforced in the minds of the African youth the fact that Libya was a hostile
place for Africans who believed in Africa for the Africans. Hostile relations
between African immigrants and Libyans resulted in the deaths of hundreds
of African immigrants in Libya. As a leader who claimed the mantle of
Pan-African leadership, Gaddafi needed to give clearer leadership to his people
on the question of xenophobia. Some of our Pan-African brothers and sisters
condemned Gaddafi as an Arab, but one must see his actions as similar to
the leadership of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki spoke and wrote on African renaissance
but refused to give leadership when xenophobic violence broke out against
African immigrants. Gaddafi is like many African leaders who speak publicly
about African unity but persecute Africans who seek to work and live in
other parts of Africa.
While serving as chairman of the African Union, Gaddafi contravened the
African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. There was the execution of
African migrants in Libya, and putting many on death row in Libya. Indeed,
Gaddafi’s tenure as chair of the AU represented a low period for African
progressives. His rambling and undisciplined presentation at the United
Nations in 2009 was a poor reflection on Africa. But his presence in the USA was
a result of a new alliance between the oil barons in the USA and the Libyan
government. After the French government mooted the establishment of the
Mediterranean Union to counter the United States in Africa, sections of the
US ruling circles started to court Gaddafi. Since the visit of Condoleezza
Rice to Tripoli, Gaddafi has been silent in his opposition to AFRICOM. In
May 2006 Time Magazine said that George W. Bush and Gaddafi see ‘eye to eye'.
Last week, Gaddafi exposed himself very clearly when he called for the
division of Nigeria along religious lines. Progressive Pan-Africanists
condemned this statement and joined with the Nigerian people who reject this call
for division. Nigerian youths and progressives will work to end religious,
regional and ethnic manipulations. Religion, ethnicity and regional
ideologies are not in themselves political factors. They become so in
circumstances where the people’s forces are weakened. The call by Gaddafi is for the
weakening of the people’s forces in Nigeria at precisely a moment when
Nigeria should be building unity, peace and reconstruction. Gaddafi is an
obstacle to the unification of African peoples. African unity is not for sale.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Horace Campbell is a peace activist who is working to realise the dream
of the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem of building African unity by 2015.
* Please send comments to [log in to unmask]
(mailto:[log in to unmask]) or comment online at _Pambazuka News_ (http://www.pambazuka.org/) .
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