Francois Hollande…President of France and of all Africa?
Where are Africa’s leaders today?
Three years ago, NATO defied the will of Africa and launched an invasion of Libya that destroyed the country and reduced it to a patchwork of militia-controlled enclaves today.
The NATO intervention proved, as Kwame Nkrumah had long-ago predicted, that the independence of African countries would remain meaningless unless all African countries united to form a continental power that would be able to protect its sovereignty and resources.
Then after the collapse of Muammar al-Quathafi’s regime, many of the fundamentalist forces allied with al-Qaeda who had been supported by NATO in Libya turned their attention on Mali. The fundamentalists advanced from the northern part of Mali threatening to seize the entire country. This prompted France to send an intervention army to reverse the tide.
Where were the leading African countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana?
Meanwhile, the armies of Rwanda and Uganda were instead pillaging Congo while sowing death and destruction through their proxy army M23.
Now mineral-rich Central African Republic is on fire.
A weak Central Africa Republic government was overthrown earlier this year by bandits. There is no functional government. There are numerous bandit militias that report to no authority. They brutalize, terrorize and rob the population.
Again, enter France.
The former colonial power did not build schools, hospitals or roads by the time the Central African Republic won its independence.
Now France is supposed to send an intervention force of a few thousand men as it did in Mali to stabilize the country.
Again African countries are missing in this equation, even though this year there was a 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) which was succeeded by the African Union (AU).
Can you imagine the European Union (EU) allowing an African country to send a military force to stabilize a war-torn European country?
What do major countries such as South Africa and Nigeria have to say about this? What is the African Union’s position on this?
Is it that no African country has a military capable of launching a successful intervention and stabilization operation? Is it because many African countries, instead of building professional armies, have been focusing on creating militaries whose primary function is terrorizing citizens in order to sustain illegitimate or brutal regimes?
How is it that 50 years after most African countries won their independence that a European country still gets to intervene in an African country to do policing? How is it that the 54-member countries African Union is so easily neutralized?
Would a Nkrumah, or Sekou Toure, have remained mute and impotent in the face of such a neo-colonial intervention?
There is no better evidence of failure of leadership in Africa then the continent’s inability to police itself and to prevent mass atrocities against innocent civilians as we now see in Central African Republic and as we’ve seen for years in the Congo.
President Hollande today has more power over the continent’s affairs than any individual African president.
