Libyan war wasn’t about democracy but scramble for African resources
By Koigi wa Wamwere
Africa has lost its righteous anger. As we talk of Muammar Gaddafi as a dictator and celebrate his demise as a rat or mongrel dog, we forget how Nato, a military alliance of America and European nations mob-invaded a single African country, to kill its leader and plunder its enormous oil reserves. What a shame.
Murithi Mutiga summed it up in his criticism of BBC and other Western media for their biased coverage of the Libyan war as Nato’s fifth column.
Those of us with a sense of history remember times when Europe — a Semitic word meaning “darkness” — believed it could only end its economic woes by “discovering”, conquering, colonising and plundering the other world.
White advocates of imperialism even believed Europe had to go farther than colonise and plunder, and exterminate all so-called “inferior races” or “Niggers”.
Herbert Spencer even wrote in Social Statics (1850) that it served civilisation to “exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way….”
As for Africans, by 1897, an English newspaper minced no words regarding their extermination:
“Niggers remain niggers whatever colour they are, but the archetype is found in Africa. Oh, Africa! God must have been in a bad mood when He created that continent.
“Why otherwise fill it with people who are doomed to be replaced by other races coming from outside?
“Would it not have been better to make the niggers white, so that in all good time they could become Englishmen, instead of giving us all the trouble of exterminating them?”
After agreeing to colonise and exterminate the rest of the world, in 1885 there was a conference at Berlin for European powers to share colonies.
But when Europeans came to Africa, they didn’t say it was to enslave and exterminate natives. They claimed it was to spread Christianity, commerce and civilisation in a dark continent.
Despite their nice sounding proclamations, where colonisation and enslavement were resisted, extermination of Africans like the Herero of Namibia followed, while those who survived massacres were colonised, later half-freed and are today still struggling to free themselves from legacies of European plunder.
If once bitten, twice shy, Africans fear when American and European economies are sinking and their governments fighting wars everywhere supposedly for reforms but in reality to plunder and repatriate other countries’ oil, minerals and raw materials.
Soviet Union
Within a short time we have seen America and Nato bring down the Soviet Union, wage wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast and Libya in Africa. Kenya also seems to be in Somalia at the behest of the West, which is also itching to invade Syria to impose “a democracy that presupposes genocide”.When we complain of these wars’ ulterior motives, beneficiaries of Western imperialism welcome its globalisation because they say, without British occupation, Kenya wouldn’t have “progress that presupposes genocide” if its sham-ness is resisted.
We are hardly endeared to Western supported reforms when we see President Bhagbo’s wife on a bed with wild soldiers, Gaddafi killed like a dog and Libyan towns flattened by Nato bombardments.
They remind us of 1896 when king of Ashanti Prempeh and his mother were arrested and forced to crawl on all fours and kiss boots of British officers. Then as now, “the best of them (Africans) is not good enough to die like a pig”.
We are told Gaddafi had to die because he was in power for 42 years. But the English Queen has been in power for 60 years and Nato has not bombed England. And will Nato bomb heaven because God will be in power eternally?Today as then, European powers did not instigate Gaddafi’s murder for reforms but free access to Libyan oil, while the new Libyan rulers are butchering people merely because they are black.
Having defied the West for so long, Gaddafi had to go at the earliest possible opportunity. Economically, Gaddafi had no right to put Libya at par with Europe or give his people free electricity, good roads, adequate clean water, housing without slums, free education, free medical services, pre-employment support, a litre of petrol at Sh14, 40 loaves of bread for Sh15 and foreign reserves of $150 billion.
Rather than celebrate Gaddafi’s death, let us learn from the weaknesses and strengths of leaders like Gaddafi; a victim of an unfolding second scramble for African resources between world powers.
Koigi wa Wamwere, is the Chairman of Chama cha Mwananchi and author of “Towards Genocide In Kenya: The curse of Negative Ethnicity.”
