No one should dare fill Gaddafi gap

By Okech Kendo

If a gap were so huge no one would dare fill it then it is the one Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi has left in Libya particularly, and Africa generally.

Yet eulogists are not saying what observers would like to hear about the ruler of Libya who often referred to enemies as ‘rats’ and ‘dogs’. Gaddafi was killed like a rodent, trying to evade the inevitable.

But there is no denying Gaddafi transformed the economy of Libya during his 42-year reign, meeting basic needs of all citizens. But he muzzled the politics of the desert county’s life so completely Brother Leader did not know when to go. He could not figure out succession beyond his sons. The good Gaddafi did is buried in the debris of the bad. The difference became so blurred.

Libyan rich oil wells made the exit an urgent international duty. The executers, the West, through its military front, Nato, sealed the deal.

Brother Leader was an African patriot, whose tragic mistake was he could not read the signs of the times. He personalised Libya and did so for far too long, he overstretched the patience even of the most tolerant.

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The yet-to-be said in the eulogies is that Gaddafi has left a gap that won’t be filled. It is difficult to think of any African leader who would follow Gaddafi’s example. Or try to impose personal autocracy in an age that knows liberty.

African leaders, who were personal friends of the fallen Libyan, are yet to mourn their benefactor.

But Robert Mugabe, a beneficiary of Gaddafi’s benevolence, has condemned the way the West demonised, and then demolished his hero.

President Yoweri Museveni, who lives by the dictum of his fallen mentor, is yet to find his bearing.

It’s Gaddafi who told Museveni that revolutionaries, like the Ugandan National Resistance Movement leader, do not cede power through the ballot.

Museveni is probably too traumatised to understand where latter-day revolutionaries are driving Africa.

Righteous rage

Our own President Kibaki is yet to give a personal or national statement on Libya. Kenya was one of the few countries that refused to acknowledge the King of Kings had reached the end of the road.

The last top Kenyan leader to lobby Gaddafi for deferral of International Criminal Court cases is studiously silent. Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka won’t condole with bereaved Libyans. .

It’s politically risky to love the underdog, at a time top dogs are baying with righteous rage. The Big Brother is also watching to figure out which of the wannabe presidents is sympathetic to a lost cause. The other word for this is that leaders who called themselves Gaddafi’s friends have disowned the King of Kings at his moment of need. That’s how treacherous politics can get.

Gaddafi’s presidential orphans have yet to appreciate times have changed. Countries shall have to be run according to the democratic wishes of the masses.

So far, only one local elder has come near tears for Gaddafi. Former Luo Council of Elders chairman Meshack Riaga Ogalo has described Gaddafi as "a man and a half". He personally knew the other ‘half’. He says the man knew how to "thoroughly facilitate his visitors".

"He was a man of great humility who steered his country to great economic heights, who reduced poverty, and who was spreading the same values across Africa, I mourn his death," Ogalo said.

Gaddafi was reducing poverty among his visitors as well. "I was in Tripoli three times to meet him. Every time we were there, he gave us proper facilitation. He paid our air tickets, accommodation, and still gave each of us $1,000 (about Sh100, 000) pocket money. "

Ogalo is also the vice-chairman of ‘House of Traditional Elders of Kenya’. Elder Kamlesh Paul Pattni is chairman of the outfit – one of many Gaddafi dream to become the elder of elders inspired. But they killed Gaddafi before he could be the president of the ‘United States of Africa’.

House of elders

Pattni is yet to eulogise the benefactor of his transcontinental project. He has not said whether he shall be leading the House of Elders of Kenya to Gaddafi’s funeral. He should for a friend is, in life and death.

It is rats that live in drainage pipes and it’s rodents that stay in holes. The similarity of the circumstances of Gaddafi capture echoes the fate of Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Saddam was found in a hole in his home city, Tikrit, in northern Iraq, in 2003. Like Saddam, Gaddafi chose Sirte, his hometown, to hide when power ran out of his hands.

After months on the run, the ball was on the other foot, and it was clear who was master. Gaddafi’s pleas of mercy did not break a heart, even as it became clear the man had lost it.

Yet Gaddafi did not even seem to know he was being hunted down. Worse, he could not figure out why the fuss about the Malik Maluk – the King of Kings of Africa, free of Western influence.

"My brothers, what wrong have I done to warrant all this? What wrong, what wrong? In Islam this is wrong and wrong."

King of kings

When Gaddafi could not figure out what wrong he had done, and could not stop asking what seemed an obvious question, one of his captors ordered, "Shut up you dog," before the show-stopping bullet blasted.

They killed the King of Kings the wrong way and they breached the Geneva Convention on how to treat prisoners of war. It’s a coalition of wrongs. It is another lesson for African presidents on how not to behave while in public office.

—The writer is The Standard’s Managing Editor, Production and Quality.

kendo@standard media.co.ke