allAfrica.com: Uganda: Gaddafi's Speech a Script From the 1960s (Page 1 of 2)

Col Muammar Gaddafi ended his four-day visit to Uganda last week prematurely, but not before revealing the generosity that explains his popularity on the continent.

The visit was also marked by his over-zealous security arrangements, which came to verge on the paranoid over the several decades the Libyan leader was a pariah in the West, and his eccentric views on politics and religion.

Officially, Gaddafi's visit - his first to Uganda in seven years - was to close an Afro-Arab Youth conference and open a mosque in the Ugandan capital whose construction was initiated almost 30 years ago during Idi Amin's regime, but which was only completed recently with money from Libya.

Gaddafi sought to drum up support for his vision of a united Africa with a central government - including a prominent place for the continent's Arab and Muslim population - and drew along Presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Omar Bongo of Gabon, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, Amani Abeid Karume of Zanzibar and Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia.

Few leaders on the continent would oppose the idea of African unity, but Gaddafi's preferred model of a government created overnight, seems, considering the problems that plague the African Union in Addis Ababa, like an accident waiting to happen. Gaddafi's proposed solutions to Africa's problems also read like a newspaper clip from the 1960s.

His call for a Pan-African renaissance last week was wrapped in anti-Western democracy rhetoric, with the Libyan leader urging his "revolutionary" comrades to abandon constitutionalism so as to extend their terms of rule.

"Integration is in the interest of Afro-Arab communities," Gaddafi said through an interpreter as he closed the youth conference. "African leadership is paralysed. If we depend on constitutions, we are losing track."

Singling out Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and host President Yoweri Museveni as the most "visionary" leaders on the continent today, Gaddafi criticised multiparty politics and presidential term limits.

Gaddafi, who has been in power for 39 years, said: "Why should a leader relinquish power when he is doing good things for his people? There are people who talk about term limits. What are they? A constitution is simply a document drafted by people. A leader should only leave power by the will of the people. For example, President Museveni came into power through revolutionary means, not the vote. How can he simply go?"

He added: "If Museveni has the will of the people, he should be re-elected. Museveni came in through revolutionary means; his programmes are revolutionary. You need revolutionary leaders. We have leaders who have a clear vision; these should stay. You are talking about political parties, but that is not the reality. We have bigger problems. We want people's authority."

This was the second time Gaddafi was urging Museveni to rule for life, after he made similar remarks at the Ugandan leader's May 2001 swearing-in ceremony.

But this time around, the comments were such a departure from political trends in Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Zimbabwe and elsewhere that the Libyan leader seemed to be speaking about a different continent alltogether.

Ugandan politicians from both the opposition and Museveni's ruling National Resistance Movement rejected Gaddafi's statements, with MP David Bahati (NRM) warning that Uganda would face isolation if it did not respect the principles of constitutionalism, a core value of the Commonwealth, which Museveni currently chairs.

Before Gaddafi's speech, it was widely believed that the fundamental difference between his view of a pan-African government and that of the camp led by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki was whether the union should be instant, as the Libyan leader suggested at last year's AU summit in Accra, Ghana, or gradual.

Now, Gaddafi's disdain for constitutionalism - one of the tenets of the New Partnership for Africa's Development driven by South Africa and Nigeria, among others - suggests a deeper chasm in political ideology.

Gaddafi hopes to see through his vision a mixture of philanthropy, a new theology that highlights the similarities between Islam and Christianity, and economics.

Philanthropy often works; the mosque is said to be the second largest on the continent and the largest Libyan donation to an African country, but theology is a hotly contested affair - as is security, after Gaddafi's guards fought with Museveni's at the mosque.

Gaddafi sparked off a religious furore when he suggested that the modern day version of the Bible is inaccurate. He said: "The Bible we have now is not the one that was revealed to Issa [Jesus] and the Old Testament is not the one that was revealed to Musa [Moses]. Muhammad is mentioned in both (original versions), but the Tora and Bible we have now, there is no mention of him."

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