Fellow Africans:
Let's disabuse ourselves of the time -honored fallacies that the West has been perpetuating about Africa. It is against the vital national interests of Western nations for African countries to accede to genuine democracy.
Genuine independence presupposes the adoption of voluntarism and sovereign national policies, that on the short run, could be hostile to foreign interests, for the ultimate purpose of building a self sufficient national economy with machine tool factories, research and development initiatives (including industrial espionage) to acquire the industrialization capacity to build magnetic levitation trains, build shipyards, armament and airplane factories, and create a continental currency that would sustain long term self reliant development.
So far, none of the 53 nonviable micro-nation-states of Africa has this magnitude of capacity building, to sustain itself in a world of continental nations. Perhaps that is why the nations of Europe which crystallized the idea of the nation-state on the Westphalia model, transcended its limitations to create the Maastricht model, where Europe could now compete with America. In a relatively short time, the Euro, caught up and surpassed the Dollar in value and is not threatening to be the world's reserve currency for countries who abhor the jingoism of American foreign policy.
Kwame Nkrumah had this same vision in the late 1950, and attempted to adopt it in Africa, but was countered by Houphouet-Boigny, Tubman of Liberia, Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone; Haile Selassie of Ethiopia among others who spearheaded the French idea of "French-Africa" where the former colonies would become oversees France.
That is why Abidjan was made to become the Paris of West Africa, and Houphouet-Boigny served as De Gaulle's overseer of the French plantation in West Africa. Houphouet assisted the CIA and the French secret service to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. Though a series of coup d’etats conducted by De Gaulle's Africa point man -Jacques Foccart from Togo, to Benin (Dahomey) to Mali, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) Niger, Mali, Congo-Brazzaville, Mauritania, it became clear that any African leader who wanted to remain in power must walk in lockstep with French policy. That is why all African countries in the United Nations had to vote according to the dictates of French foreign policy, else suffer removal from
France. (Foccard says De Gaulle always instructed the French Ambassador to ensure the ousted President is not killed, so that ethnic cleansing would not occur. That is why the game play is to offer Gbagbo an attractive exile in his friend Mbeki's country. In terms of a cost benefit analysis that would be cheaper than the cost of maintaining a United Nations force of 10.000 troops in Ivory Coast for the next six months. Of course, Gbagbo has to be frightened and rendered desperate enough to accept the deal).Houphouet, who for thirty years sowed the seeds of discord in Ivory Coast, was responsible for organizing the overthrow of independent minded African leaders. As a Baole "prophet and magician" he used CIA furnished helicopters, to ferry cocoa and coffee from the hinterland of Ghana and paid the Ashanti kings to rebel against Kwame Nkrumah and deprive him of foreign currency so as to spark the popular uprising that finally took him out of office. Half of the cab drivers in Accra were on the payroll of the CIA (After all the US simply had to print the currency since Nixon had reneged on the Gold standard)
Intriguingly, when rebels threatened any African country, Houphouet offered his good offices as a negotiator and brought the belligerents to Abidjan for peace talks. While in Abidjan, the hotels were regularly bugged and his French masters eavesdropped on the conversations and the strategies of the opponents. The French puppets always carried the day. If it became too difficult the United States were called in to bring in their lapdog-the United Nations. This is an organization whose leader is merely handpicked unilaterally by the United States, even to the opposition of all the other states of the world. Yet, they deridingly claim that they have even a scintilla of impartiality.
Long time observers of the politics of Africa are shaking their heads at how the law of Karma is being applied to Cote d'Ivoire. They say the chickens of vengeance are coming home to roost. Let the Ivoirians have a taste of their own medicine -they claim. So say for thirty years Ivory Coast has sown the wild wind, now it must reap the tempest.
Today, Gbabgo has become the new scapegoat of the West. Like Patrice Lumumba whom President Lyndon Johnson said was better off being eaten by crocodiles in the Congo River, than waiting for UN troops, like
Kwame Nkrumah, Hamani Diori -Barre Mainserra or Mamadou Tanja of Niger who would not cede their country's uranium exclusively to France in return for virtually nothing, like Mohammed Farrah Aideed who helped overthrow America's puppet Mohammed Siad Barre in Somalia,
The West does not want a strong African nation. The United States attempted to dismember the Congo by supporting the Katangese rebellion so as to decapitate the nationalist Lumumba. De Gaulle supported Moise Tschombe the rebel Katangese leader who was the darling of the United States.
De Gaulle was unequivocal that the dismemberment of Nigeria was a good thing for the French in Africa, which is why he used Houphouet, Bongo and Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea to fund the Biafran rebellion. Reagan supported Johnas Savimbi and provided land mines that maimed one million Angolan to fight Edwardo Dos Santos who was seen as a Soviet puppet.
In Mozambique the United States used PW Botha to support Alfonso Dal Clama the leader of the RENAMO rebels to destroy Mozambique and eventually kill Samora Machel. So that Gbagbo would be decapitated is a certainty, but the issue is how many Ivoirians will be cannon fodder. When that is done, will it be the end of the African revolution ...no.
Of course, the subterfuge is democracy, -allowing the will of the people to prevail. Well, that is material for college courses on Africa in American college campuses. The reality of the application of American democracy in the jungles of Africa is nightmarish. In Liberia, when William Tolbert came in to end the 99 year lease that
America's Firestone had on large swaths of Liberian rubber, William Swing of the CIA was sent in to decapitate him.
The hatchet man's job was done so fast that there was no time to groom a credible leader. Samuel Doe (whom Reagan was later to erroneously introduce as "Chairman Moi" on his maiden visit to the White House) a high-school drop out, who was a Sergeant in the Executive Mansion, was handpicked to become President. (Of course, the Western press was on hand to extol his new found leadership qualities, until he became an embarrassment to the US).
Charles Taylor was whisked out of a Massachusetts jail through the intervention and funding of Ted Kennedy and the facilitation of Helen Johnson Sirleaf to go to Monrovia and reclaim the American rubber plantation. Of course we all know what happened, rivers of blood flowed, and refugees were ferried through Ivory Coast to the United States to become a new army of nursing home workers.
At the end of the day, it is the fragility and the non viability of the African nation-state that is highlighted. Gbagbo's Bete tribe is recruiting militias from their Liberian cousins called the Gio, to chase away the marauding Diola who are being armed by their Burkina Faso brothers. Their justification is that the French purposely allowed asked Blaise Compare whom Foccard paid to behead his trusted friend Thomas Sankara) to arm the rebels and hold the Northern part of Ivory Coast so as to trigger an eventual ouster of the unyielding Gbagbo who would not bow to the French president.
In 1994 the French used Sassou Nguesso to oust the democratically elected President of Congo Brazzaville -Pascal Lissouba because he refused to continue the financing of French political parties with the proceeds of Congolese oil. (Those who think colonialism in French Africa has ended are living in Alice in wonderland's world).
The regimes that have remained stable in French Africa like Cameroon, and Gabon take their marching orders from Paris without argument. Paul Biya of Cameroon shamelessly tells the press that he is the best student of the French president. The United Nations is ready to push democracy down the throats of Ivoirians through the barrel of the gun, yet Eyadema of Togo and Bongo of Gabon are allowed to be succeeded by their kids.
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