The counter revolution of Muammar Gadhafi’s Green Revolution that begun in February 2011 has almost finally come to a close.
As the new leaders of the transitional government are saying, there is a lot of post-conflict work to be done. Loathe them or like them, this is the truth, Libya has a monumental task. We are talking about Gadhafi’s removal from global politics and what Africans think about it.
Already the debate about the Colonel is raging and pitting brother against brother, sister against sister and friend against friend. African people are being divided more now at this defining juncture of the death of Gadhafi than ever before.
It might be a short-lived quarrel or insignificant in some circles but the consequences will be felt for many years to come. Gadhafi, by his demise has also redefined global politics, there is certainly a new global order, practically so especially in revolutionary intervention.
In Africa, the former Libyan Head of State gave many African leaders sleepless nights especially in the 1980s and particularly those who were seen as leaning to the western geopolitical hemisphere. This Was the peak of the capitalism-communism spheres of influence – Gadhafi worshipped neither side.
He radicalised opinion and funded even the most urgent liberation struggles, South Africa. At 29 years of age, in 1972 he was Libya’s answer to Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, tutored by the former’s entrenched hatred for western imperialism.
Gadhafi shut down the British and American military bases, nationalised the economy including the oil industry and firmly instituted so-called Arab socialism. But these experiments went to his head instead of being massaged into the economy without offending the people’s rights and aspirations.
He banned prostitution, discos, alcohol and all other moral comparatives that his Sharia type theocracy did not entertain. Which brings this point to the fore, would the scores of Africans now eulogising Gadhafi as a saint, a martyr have lived in his early years and indeed closing chapter of autocracy?
The Western and communist bloc proxy wars that Gadhafi hated are the same methodologies he preferred for Africa, enjoying the chancellorship of proxy violence across the board from North to South Africa, the Horn of Africa to Mauritania, Libya’s oil revenue played a key role in deciding which way internal subversion would work, in most but not all cases.
The perfect example was his issuing of Libyan identity cards to Chad citizens as part of territorial subversion. This worked and Libya in 1973 quickly occupied the Aozou Strip of Chad and declared it Tripoli’s new territory, giving it a new airbase under his control.
His anti-apartheid war against former South African President Pieter W Botha and white minority rule is well documented. In East Africa Gadhafi’s influence was packaged under the proxy of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni who was schooled in armed insurrection in Libya.
Former Kenya President Daniel Arap Moi’s disdain and fear of Gadhafi was not a secret, given the latter’s close links with Museveni of neighbouring Uganda who was now seen as attempting to grab the sophisticated regional politics.
It was through fear that these leaders ruled, in essence citing national security. Those African leaders who feared should have had sleepless nights because he was winning the competition of development in his own country while they were in some deep slumber.
So what are Africans saying now of Gadhafi’s murder? From the blogosphere, there is a near consensus that Africa has been robbed of one of the strongest voices for Pan-Africanism, economic and political solidarity and sense of sovereignty.
The debate is quite historical and spiced with numerous anecdotes of Gadhafi’s visit around the continent. But people have been blinded too. Some glorify Gadhafi’s almost Scandinavian egalitarian social and economic models. He is glorified for his state subsidy of domestic oil consumption.
They say he lived in a tent, like a poor man in the dessert. Commentators are splashing stories often inflated narratives that make Gadhafi look like a latter day saint.
Of course he did some good social and economic programs that worked relatively well in Libya. But Libya was still not in the premier leagues of egalitarianism, political freedoms were curtailed and one had to seriously watch what was coming behind them.
That said, Africa is now not in the mood of headhunting for a strongman, a hegemon for Africa, a glorified man-God. Africa is not a single entity; 2,500 languages are enough to make this rationale.
Just like the Cold War east-west blocs, Africa generated through Gadhafi’s influence pro and anti- Gadhafi international relations, which made the continent to be often perceived as a playground for any rich country. If Libya was not that rich, the many southern Sahara African countries would not have taken these unofficial proxy roles of pro or anti- Gadhafi. Others saw him as a liberator, to some he was a belligerent warmonger.
For now, the immediate consequences that will come with Gadhafi’s murder can really not be foreseen. Libya is divided, her neighbours are not stable and reconstruction has sucked in predominantly western companies through the old military-industrial humanitarian complex and the old story continues.
The only person with the true knowledge of Gadhafi’s eulogy is Muammar Gadhafi, because he has taken to the grave secrets we might prefer not to know. Still, RIP Gadhafi as no man deserves to die the way you did.
