Photo: YouTube
When Joe Biden was tussling with Donald Trump for presidency, I proudly supported the former though I was not a voter nor a citizen of the US. In my opinion, Donald Trump, apart from the diatribes against Africans and other American immigrants, did not do enough to close funding taps for African dictators.
When he was in power, I thought Joe Biden would be different, but he has proved me—and a majority of the oppressed Africans—wrong.
Innumerable protests in the US, augmented by innumerable civil society reports, have pinned African dictators on abuse of rule of law, democracy and human rights but the US foreign policy of being “committed to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated, and those who commit human rights abuses are held accountable” is just rhetoric.
Owing to the recent concluded US-African Leaders summit and the invitation of more than 50 serial abusers of what America stands for—rule of law, human rights and democracy—the US government seems to be now shifting goal posts and by the look of things, enjoying exploitative relationship of convenience with African dictators minus any regard to human life.
However much these African medieval cavemen like Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni torture, kill, abuse the laws, disappear and or exile their citizens, the US government will keep coddling and open more support to them. Our struggles for freedom, democracy and rule of law in Africa are being undermined and foiled by the hypocritic American government.
Americans, among other freedoms, have freedom to use elections to democratically get rid of leaders that they do not want yet their government keeps supporting terrorists who are masquerading as presidents like Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to be in power forever. None of the elections organized by Gen. Yoweri Museveni was free and fair. Since 1996, six elections and all marred with gun violence and indescribable rigging but somehow the American government keeps legitimizing such a leader who has been in power for nearly 40-years using violence.
It is the billions of dollars in form of donations and military support from the American government which despot Museveni rely on to consolidate himself in power and yet the aid keeps flowing in and the giver, the US government, keeps preaching human rights, rule of law and democracy when it is dining with the very criminals who have made life hell for Ugandans!
At the 2014 summit when Obama was still president, he proposed $130 billion investments, government financing to encourage US exports and investments in Africa, and to help African countries develop peacekeeping forces, of which Uganda is the largest contributor in Somalia and several other countries. This summit, Joe Biden again announced financial and military support to the African despots and it is that support which shall be used to oppress the people of Africa.
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is like an incurable disease and has affected the country and destroyed everything from the national economy, infrastructure, education, rule of law among others while the citizens are trying to rescue their country from more collapse, sadly the American government is supporting the person who has impoverished the country to that despicable extent.
I watched the vice president, Kamara Harris, during the summit, say that “We are guided not by what we can do for Africa, but by what we can do with Africa ”. Practically and in a sense of the values America stands for, the Biden administration should be guided by what they can do for African oppressed people not what they do with our oppressors!
The only way to help Africans get rid of despots is by cutting off funding completely whether in cash, weapons or military training. Augmented by severe sanctions against perpetrators, surely the despots shall no longer have wings.
Lawyer, Award winning Novelist and Scholar of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.
Whatsap/Signal/Telegram: +447958104814
Books: 1) The Greedy Barbarian.
2) Banana Republic Where Writing Is Treasonous.
3) The Log Cabin.
4) The Savage Avenger
Full profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakwenza_Rukirabashaija
