Gaddafi’s crusade timely, relevant

By Dominic Odipo

If you keenly perused The Standard on Sunday, you will have seen a headline which read thus: ‘See, the boy is just a chip off the old bully’.

Who was the ‘boy’ of this headline and who was the ‘old bully’? As you read the story beneath, you quickly establish that the ‘boy’ was Al Saadi Gaddafi, son of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and that the ‘old bully’ is Gaddafi himself.

Old bully? A few lines down, a verbatim quote from a speech Gaddafi recently gave in Paris, France, appeared as follows: ‘They (the French) brought us here like cattle to do hard and dirty work, and then they throw us to live on the outskirts of towns, and when we claim our rights, the police beat us.’

Gaddafi was referring to the historical experience of black people in France, especially those from North Africa.

Was this a bullying speech? You bet! But who was being bullied here? Was it the North Africans who had done so much hard and dirty work for the French and then been driven to eking a living on the peripheries of French towns and cities? Not at all!

Here, Colonel Gaddafi was bullying earlier French governments and the French people themselves. And he was doing so on French soil and there was absolutely nothing the French government could do to stop him. Was Gaddafi speaking the truth? You bet he was!

How many African leaders have the guts and sense of historical perspective to travel to France or any other former colonial power and speak in public like this? Might there be something inside the mind of the Libyan leader that so many of us might be missing?

Another headline in the weekend Press ran like this: ‘Ethiopia supports new peace initiative’, and, underneath, the brief ran: ‘Ethiopia supports African Union chairman Muammar Gaddafi’s efforts to mediate between it and border rival Eritrea and is open to peace talks, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said.’ There was nothing about the ‘old bully’; just a report how Zenawi, the Ethiopian strongman, was willing to participate in a Gaddafi-led, peace-seeking process to restore calm to the golden east of our continent.

But, for me, Gaddafi, the current AU chairman, is capturing the imagination of progressive Africans everywhere, not for bullying the French or offering to broker peace in Ethiopia and Eritrea, but for his One Grand Idea: A political and economic union of the entire African continent!

If there is one big idea in African geopolitics at the beginning of the 21st Century, it is this one. No serious student of African politics can stand up and oppose this idea from the standpoint of policy or principle. No serious student of our continental affairs can fail to recognise the powerful drive of the African historical experience towards African Union.

economic devastation

And no African political leader can claim to be a true African, a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist, if he or she does not support and champion the idea and the subsequent realisation of African political and economic union.

Think about it. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone is, geographically, bigger than Britain, Germany, France and Spain combined.

In terms of natural resources, all these four great European powers pale in comparison to what the Congo holds in its bowels. And DRC is not even the biggest or richest country in Africa.

With an effective Union government, the internecine political strife in the Congo would disappear and the full potential of that great country would be unleashed. The economic devastation now paralysing Zimbabwe would be ended within two years at most.

Sudan would quickly be sorted out and Darfur, Southern Sudan and the North would rule themselves from regional capitals subservient to the All-Africa Union government.

Political order would be restored in Somalia and the millions of petro-dollars earned from Angola, Nigeria, Libya and Sudan could be effectively mobilised to fight hunger, poverty, illiteracy and disease in Africa’s most deserving regions.

The border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which has already claimed more than 70,000 lives, would be sorted out virtually overnight.

And, in terms of population and natural resources, Africa would become a super-power overnight, earning an automatic right to sit in the highest councils of world government.

On this issue of African union, Kenya, as usual, has squarely positioned itself on the wrong side of history. For petty political and economic reasons, our government is vociferously opposing the implementation of this grand idea at this time. Our leaders have again failed to catch the direction and tempo of the political wind.

But the ‘old bully’ from Tripoli has not just caught onto this great idea but is running away with it! The more we continue to oppose him, the more we continue to make fools of ourselves!

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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