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Uganda: Gadaffi Advice is Cheap Populism
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The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
19 March 2008
Posted to the web 18 March 2008
Tajudeen Abdul Raheem
Colonel Muamar Gadaffi, the spiritual guide and first citizen of the Libyan Arab People's Socialist Jamahiriya, is in Uganda on a four-day official visit. No sooner than he landed in Uganda did he start saying things that delighted his adulatory supporters and lullaby to his host, but make his critics cry wolf.
In closing a 10-day meeting of African-Arab Youth he repeated his controversial thesis about revolutionaries not retiring and not needing term limits. He described democracy as an imposition from the west and a surprise! Surprise!
The revolutionary leader (in power for 39 years) declared his host, Museveni (in power only for 22 years but still counting!) and uncle Bob of Zimbabwe (in power for 28 years and soon getting himself 're-elected' whether Zimbabweans like it or not!), as the genuine articles among Africa's state house bound revolutionaries!
I do not subscribe to a lot of the Gaddafi-phobia that we have been fed with over the years by reactionary African leaders and western ideological warriors who are now falling over themselves to do business with Gaddafi. I am and will always consider myself a friend of the Jamahiriya.
However, Gaddafi is a difficult friend to have. The political system he has developed in Libya is highly personalised and leader-centric with the inner core vulnerable to instability based on who is in and who is out based on his whims.
While he may enjoy popular support, there is no strong evidence that the popular masses have really internalised the ideals of the revolution, four decades after.
That is why you have periodic conflicts between Libyans and other Africans often with racial overtones while Gaddafi is busy promoting stronger unity, solidarity and Pan Africanism. Unfortunately, most of the supporters and the so-called friends of the Jamahiriya do not tell the leader the truth.
This makes him vulnerable to flatterers, charlatans and opportunists both in interstate relations and in popular diplomacy. And he seems to enjoy and even crave the fake adulation. A consequence of this cheap populism is the tendency for him to say anything, make unguarded declarations and sometimes espouse half-baked ideas that should embarrass any genuine comrade. But no one will tell the emperor that he is naked.
Sometimes when he really has original ideas and is willing to put his money where his mouth is, the penchant for showmanship becomes fertile ground for his enemies and critics to kill the ideas and even some of his so-called friends to play games with him. One of such is his support for an accelerated integration of Africa which he has been championing since the Sirte extraordinary summit in September 1999.
It was not just reactionary African leaders that led the onslaught in Accra. His 'revolutionary' friends, including Presidents Museveni, Mbeki, and Prime Minister Meles were among those who torpedoed the Union Government proposal in favour of tortoise speed.
Yet Libya continues to spend disproportionate resources on leaders believing that once they say yes, we will achieve unity by fiat. If Libya had spent a tiny proportion of what it spends on these leaders in building strategic partnership with democratic forces and raising popular consciousness in many countries in Africa, there would have been greater success because the masses will be driving and pushing the leaders.
In spite of his rhetoric against imperialism Libya is in reality now aligned to the west. For instance it is cooperating with the EU on immigration to stop Africans using Libya to cross into Italy or Spain. I am no advocate of Africans going to wash plates and do all kinds of dirty jobs in Europe, but no genuine Pan Africanist state should act as gate keepers for the west. Instead of deporting these Africans, why can't Libya show its seriousness about freedom of movement for Africans by giving them the right to settle and work in Libya?
We have indulged Gaddafi for too long.
While revolutionaries may not retire from the revolution, they should not imprison the revolution in the state house by insisting they have to remain there for life. What kind of revolution is Gaddafi talking about that depends on only one leader after so many decades?
Let history judge whether those who speak uncompromising truth to power are the real revolutionaries or those who flatter leaders as irreplaceable.
Even if the citizens cannot remove these permanent leaders, death will eventually retire them. The graveyards of history are full of many leaders who thought themselves immortal.
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The writer is a Pan Africanist
I honestly hope they deport all those marauding criminals. How dare Amnesty International intervene, when Libyans are tottering on the brink of extinction? How dare Gaddafi the Schizophrenic allow two million sub-saharan Black criminals to enter a country of only 4-5 million people? It is unthinkable and a state of emergency. The southern Mediterranean region ought to focus on this terrible problem and demand that these criminals be deported at once. I worry about this problem every single day and it is gnawing at me. I am so sick of these pathetic worthless human beings who refuse to embrace their... [Read Full Text]
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