The End of Gbabo - Notice to other despots

Thomas Sankara, 1987

Tis the season of freedom. Freedom across Africa. 2011 will go down as the beginning of a new African dawn, just like the 1960s was the year of the first modern dawn for the continent and its people. In one single year, two despots have been forced from office and another is on his way out. Western nations, lead by US Barack Obama are pitting their lot with more freedom for the people of the continent, in favor of the usual complicity and duplicity.

For generations, US and Western relationship with African countries was defined solely within the parameters of anti-communism and access to resources. The West either encourage coups or turned a blind eye to coup after coup that brought in despots, entrenching corruption and political abuse, all in the name of stability. The bogey man then was communism, not like countries like Nigeria had any chance of becoming a communist state or that leaders like Thomas Sankara was ever going to turn Burkina Faso into a Soviet-lite, yet Western colonial powers treated the people of those nations like enemies and their thieving leaders as allies.

Since January, that trend seems to have taken a different turn. President Sarkozy of France began to indicate this shift in view earlier in his Presidency as he announced that the days of France gendarmerie's run amok in Africa, particularly in Francophone Africa where they helped keep thieving thugs in power across West Africa (Paul Biya of Cameroon, Houphouet Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire) while turning a blind eye to genocide (Rwanda) and encouraging strife in the continent. Those policies worked then, as they helped keep the people of the continent poor while fostering the massive looting of their natural and human resources. Today, 50 years after the dawn of African independence (post slave trade and colonialism), the continent boasts little or no manufacturing, dwindling farming revenue and a continued flight of human capital. African countries lag far behind others in all key indicators of modern life from health statistics to energy capacity to investment resources, literacy, intellectual property etc. Indeed, rather than advancing, Africa has become the new playground for resource hungry China whose only interest is to protects its hegemonious ambitions, even at the expense of unsuspecting African people and in concert with greedy tribe of locust (or self styled leaders) whose only interest is their own personal enrichment.

Tunisia, Egypt, and now it seems like the ballot will prevail in Ivory Coast. Nigerians of all works of life still imagine how different their country would have been today, if Moshood Abiola has been allowed to exercise his 1992 mandate. It was an election that held so much promise of national renewal and hope. But the self styled evil-genius, Ibrahim Babangida and his minions were able to annul that election and put its winner (the elected president of the country) behind bars - effectively robbing the people of sovereignty.  Bill Clinton's young presidency was put to the test; and he failed the continent and its people royally. Clinton refused to consider any real sanction against Babangida or the successive set of stooges that replaced him.

Today, almost two decades later, Laurent Gbagbo is trying to steal the people's mandate - but Obama is vocally not having any of it, and the Libyan strikes by NATO seems to be emboldening multi-lateral institutions to take a harder stance against despots and tribes of locusts across the continent. France seems to have found its mojo as a Western power and is increasingly playing a role - which for now seems productive.

The rest of the continent is paying attention, from Niger to Nigeria and even Uganda (where another Western supported despots continues to make mockery of democracy). Of course there are many more factors than the fear of Western rejection fueling the come-to-Jesus moment for would be despots across the continent, but the handwriting on the wall seems legible enough.

As UN forces and France pummel Gbagbo's forces in support of the winner of the last elections, Alassane Ouattara. Gbagbo is said to be looking for a way out and is talking about relinquishing power. But it must not stop there. African thugs, posing as leaders must never again be allowed to rape a continent and its people and get away with it. Ibrahim Babangida looted Nigeria dry and still enjoys a comfortable sleep in his kingly bed at his Mina palace - when he should be cooling his heels in a Kirikiri 10 x 10. Abacha's wife and Children are still enjoying most of the loot their father took in his nearly six year plunder, and Muhammed Abacha is in the running for the Governor of a Nigerian State despite his complicity in murder and theft. Of course, Obasanjo another thief even returned to power!

The future seems bright, but taking the advice of Reverend Tutu (regarding Libyan Qaddaffi) is not a way to make a continent whole. These despots must be made to face the music like all other criminals, and this will send the message to their ilks that their crime of nation-raping could be consequential, and also put their kin on notice that collaborating with their criminal patriarchs will not make them heir apparent to  thrones but cell-mates, perhaps.