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The year 2011 was particularly bad for Africa, with the ravenous Western imperialists launching voracious military attacks on Libya and Cote d’Ivoire, plainly to secure selfish political interests.
While Africa now suffers its worst post-colonial era set back ever, all because the of the aggressive terror campaign by three UN Security Council members — the triumvirate France, Britain and the US, the converse of it is an overjoyed community of philanthropic imperialists in Western capitals — absolutely convinced that Libya and Cote d’Ivoire are a good account of the so-called Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
The architect of the R2P doctrine recently commented in “Foreign Policy,” bragging imperialistically about the goodness of the murderous US drone attacks, and the high-tech aerial bombardment of Libya by France, the US and Britain. The man is none other than Australia’s former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, credited with formulating the morally sounding R2P doctrine. Commenting about the NATO military triumph in Libya, Evans had this to say: “End of argument: how we won the debate over stopping genocide.”
When France and Britain converted UN Resolution 1973 from a “no fly zone” document to a regime change project we were all supposed to keep believing that NATO was in Libya to stop genocide — regardless the claim was so vacuous that the only people to peddle it were the discredited Western political elites and their pliant media. Gareth was absolutely right about winning the debate. Indeed French Special Forces spectacularly won the debate of who Paris was to make President of Cote d’Ivoire, bombing the Presidential Palace and bundling out President Laurent Gbagbo to replace him with Paris favourite Alassane Ouattara — all in broad day light, with the rest of Africa haplessly watching.
And who can quarrel with NATO’s massive win over the tiny city of Sirte in Libya, massacring thousands of civilians unabated, and bragging about it quite confidently, if Hillary Clinton’s gestures are any measure to respect? After all Gaddafi was the last of those to be callously killed in that small and hapless city. If the attack got Gaddafi it must have been good — so goes Western logic. We are told we must blame the people of Sirte for failing to support the Western-backed Al-Qaeda rebels.
If Gaddafi intended to carry out any atrocities in Libya, the West only took over the mission and carried them out more brazenly and precisely, taking away only 50 000 of worthless African lesser lives. We were told this was high precision bombing only taking out that deserved death. Of the more than a dozen elections to be held in Africa this year could be the Darfur Referendum, to be held either late this year or in early 2013.
The P3, as France, Britain and the US are known in the UN Security Council, have typically brushed aside the AU initiative in Darfur as led by ex-South African President Thabo Mbeki. Instead we have seen negotiations between the Government of Sudan and Western power brokers. In Somalia we may not have an election coming soon but the West is sponsoring Ethiopia and Kenya to lead a security-leaning response that relegates the political argument in that country to a distant periphery. In ravaged Libya the West has instructed its installed puppets to hold an election for the so-called Public National Conference by July, leading to preparations for a general election before the end of the year. That is a tall order given the powerlessness of the NTC and the raging lawlessness of the Western allied militias in that country. The Shura Council elections in Egypt have just been held in Egypt and as was the case with the elections for the Lower House, the West has been trying to heavily influence the outcome of these elections, more to preserve the so-called Peace Treaty and less for the good of Egyptians. Morocco’s 2012 election was brought forward to November 2011 and yet again the influence and meddling of France was more than apparent. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal was a darling of the West when he came to power in 2000, and he still enjoyed a lot of support from France when he was re-elected in 2007. Now he seeks a possible two more seven-year terms at the age of 85 and his opponents rely heavily on France to topple him. He himself relied heavily on French support to win the presidency in 2000, thereafter enjoying prodigious praises for democratic traits from his Western funders.
Obviously Wade has outlived his usefulness and his renewed political ambitions are not widely supported this time, allowing the West to experiment with yet another Senegalese puppet. Wade’s defiance and insistence on another term, if not two, will without doubt earn him names normally reserved for popular anti-imperialists — names like despot, tyrant, dictator or autocrat. The tenuous relations between Wade and his Western masters will relegate Senegal to a non-democratic state for its departure from Western diktats.
Mali is also set to hold an election in 2012 and again France has a strong say in the affairs of that country, with its journalists playing havoc with public opinion. Rebels in that country have already started pre-election violent attacks and Africa could be headed for yet another bloody election. Other countries to hold elections include Guinea Bissau, Lesotho, Togo, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Angola, Madagascar, Kenya and of course Zimbabwe. Kenya is in the Western basket already and it really matters very little for the West who wins or loses in that country.
As for Zimbabwe, it is one hell of a place where the Western charlatans have had it pretty tough with the revolutionary and uncompromising Robert Mugabe. Even then, one would be a fool not to see the determination by Western countries to ensure Morgan Tsvangirai’s ascendancy to power. Initially the means could have been a toppling of the government by violent means but the events of March 11, 2007 showed both Morgan Tsvangirai and his Western handlers that such a route was a cruise for a bruising. It was after the massive global broadcasting of a bruised Tsvangirai that the talks that finally led to a 2009 power sharing agreement began. The violent route to power has since been abandoned, and that is precisely why the West has resorted to employing philanthropists to try and win the people’s hearts for the MDC-T.
There are no less than 2 500 Western charities operating in Zimbabwe today, almost all of them politically interested  in helping to secure an MDC-T victory in every election Zimbabwe has held since 2000. Officially they call themselves the pro-democracy movement.
The director of the World Peace Foundation, Alex de Waal summarised well the meddling of the West in African political affairs. He said: “The (West’s) dominant interventionist approach to peace and security in Africa by-passes the hard work of creating domestic political consensus and instead imposes models of government favoured by Western powers.”
He also noted that the P3 will do all in their power at the UN Security Council to influence “the outcome of any crisis,” that of Zimbabwe included. Four times our tiny country has been unsuccessfully tabled for unjust economic sanctions at the UN by Britain and her two evil-inclined allies, the US and France. We owe it to Russia and China that Zimbabwe is not under global economic sanctions endorsed by the UN, much as the country has been devastated by the illegally imposed EU and US sanctions, shamelessly backed by other Western outposts like Canada, Australia and little New Zealand.
Today Western references have become the greatest challenge to African solutions that must logically be based on inclusive negotiating forums.
One would have thought that the callous murder of Gaddafi at the backdrop of a bloody and unlawful invasion of his country by NATO is a denting high water mark for the R2P doctrine, not its strengthening as a new global norm. But it is undeniable that the provocative aggression has been embraced by some Africans, not least some democracy-obsessed people who strangely believe that democracy is an exquisite product manufactured only in the West. Zimbabwe is among the cursed nations to have such blithering idiots among its citizens, and in large numbers too.
The AU Panel of presidents which was due to begin mediation for a political solution to the Libyan crisis was denied flight entry into Libya by NATO on the 20th of March, 2011. Essentially the P3 just brushed aside the African initiative to pursue their own regime change agenda, ironically on the basis of a UN Resolution unwittingly voted for by South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon — all of them naively going to the vote without reading the document they finally voted for, or at worst without understanding it.
It was similar to how Mbeki’s document on Cote d’Ivoire was brushed aside by France and her African allies to pave way for a violent installation of Ouattara, a renowned French puppet, now elevated to Ecowas chairman. In many African countries solutions cannot be complete without the input of Western diplomats. The MDC-T in Zimbabwe literally reports to the US Ambassador — usually the captain of the Western diplomatic community. A lot of West African political leaders proudly do that as well. No shame at all for as long as the West gives aid. It has emerged through WikiLeaks that even high ranking Zanu-PF politicians compete vigorously for favours from Western diplomats, confiding passionately in these superior people when in search for solutions within the powerful but troubled party. Some have even made attempts at joining Tsvangirai’s puppet organisation, while some are busy cutting deals in the event of a Tsvangirai government.
This writer will conclude this piece with yet another quote from Alex da Waal: “Western interventions are attractive partly for their firepower and partly because they come kitted out with democratic and human rights principles. For very good reasons, African citizens long for these principles to become real. But the danger is that democracy and good governance are packaged as an import, rather than something manufactured at home. The hard work of forging a lasting domestic consensus may be passed over in favour of a political beauty parade to impress the P-3. Africa’s emergent methods for promoting peace and security deserve space to succeed.”
This writer has zero respect for the Western package of human rights and democratic principles. As co-columnist Nathaniel Manheru wrote last week, the whole thing “is crap,” and “good luck to all who believe in this crap.” The West is only a good reference point for Africa when we want to talk about slavery, colonialism, racists and evil people, otherwise our solutions must come from among ourselves always. We must deal with the West as global partners hailing from less resourced parts of the world, not as superior mortals full of sophisticated solutions to our problems.
Only a fool looks for salvation from his enslaver.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.