USA Africa Dialogue Series - MsJoe's Comments on Larry Eyong's Excellent Article on Ivory Coast Today

Hello Africans and All

 

Please go to Mr. Larry Eyong's incisive article, which castigates colonial interests. It comes after my comments.

 

Out of respect for Mr Larry Eyong's views and experience, I blind copied his mail to about 500 lists, including  members and leaders in the Ivory Coast community, diplomatic corps and congress. Last night, I went through my Mom's extensive research and history notes on  Félix Houphouët-Boigny to understanding the underpinnings. I read her explicit notations on how he connived to undermine Nkrumah and was complicit in the coup related death of Thomas Sankara. Houphouët-Boigny maintained an umbilical cord (her word) relationship with France and was hailed as Africa's Wise Man in the West. Some have been hobbling with congressional staffers and civil society bluffs on the African political trajectory. I promise to still get back to Larry.

 

Given the undiluted colonial malarkey of that era, Ivory Coast should have served as a prima facie stronghold that yearns for an African nationalist - with all the particles for an anti-colonial minefield. The question: Why, then, is this not a  Mugabe Moment with most African nations aware of Western exploits for self-interest and the general public dismissive of the Western propaganda? Could Laurent Gbagbo be a victim of his own myopia, having squandered and mismanaged this political avenue to rise to the mantle? More exactly, his attitude towards fellow Africans has been the very antithesis of what an African nationalist is made of, which fuels the regional angst to see him gone. If his last dice is crying persecution, he has been an opportunistic crucifier.

 

For example, he accused his man rival, Ouattara, of not being Ivorian but someone from Burkina Faso. In 2002, after a coup attempt,  Gbagbo accused the West African immigrant population of abating the rebellion. Government soldiers in the capital burned and bulldozed slums, displacing thousands of African immigrants barely making a living. Women and children fled with only what they had to cover their skins as clothes - with  anxious relatives rendered helpless, waiting for a sign of life.  Left unexplained was the nexus between these poor Africans and the West.  A conscientious leader would exercise the quality even when embattled.

 

Some astute observers  lacked  words to explain to Western people and their elected leaders why multitude of flag-waving youngsters, groomed by  Ivorian Coast political parties, were shouting  ''terrorists'' and ''assailants'' in accordance with Gbagbo's amplified Ivorite ideology -  a term that denotes a notion of Ivorian purity. The slogan " Ivory Coast for Ivorians," with a virulent anti African immigrant vigor, was not Western made. Gbagbo could give Jean-Marie Le Pen, the right-wing extremist leader in France, a run for his money on who is more anti-African. 

 

If the human spirit affects politics, Gbagbo defeated any goodwill in Africa. When  President Jonathan of Nigeria signed the letter on behalf of ECOWAS for Gbagbo to leave, fewer African nationalists have fewer tears to shed. Yes, Africa must stand for a self-reliant Africa that does not kowtow to whiffs and huffs from the West. Correct, we must disabuse ourselves of Western fallacies and patronage. But where African nationalism applies, Gbagbo pales as a self-made anachronism. He stands as a weak example that ruins a good case on Africa's rise above the trappings of neo imperialism.

 

MsJoe

 

 

 

In a message dated 12/21/2010 1:27:54 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, ebenezar11@yahoo.com writes:

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 voluntarist 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 Westphalian model, transcended its limitations to create the Mastrich 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-Biogny, 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 aways instructed the French Ambassador to ensure the 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 overthrowal of independent minded African leaders. As a Baole "prophet and magician" he used CIA furnish 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, Houphout 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 to 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 Ivorians 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, that is why he used Houphouet, Bongo and Macias Nguema of Equitorial Guinea to fund the Biafran rebellion . Reagan supported Johnas Savimbi and provided land mines that mained 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 Ivorians will be canono 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 demo cray 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 Sergent 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). Then 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, 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 militia's 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 has 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 Ivorians through the barrel of the gun, yet Eyadema of Togo, and Bongo of Gabon are allowed to be succeeded by their kids.

 

Larry Eyong.

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