M7 AU CONTRADICTIONS; IS President Museveni Agitating For An African Federation Different From That Of Col Muamar Ghadafi?

If there is any African Leader who is good at delivering theoretical lectures about African unity without meaning it in practical terms then it is none other than President Yoweri Museveni.

During his swearing in ceremony held on 12^th May 2021, lamented that Africa was suffering because it lacked a center of gravity on which to gravitate whenever it’s faced with insurmountable challenges.

The Ugandan president revealed that Henry Kissinger, the then powerful US secretary of state in the 70s, once rebuked Africa by asserting that even if Africans are annoyed they had no capacity to actualize their frustrations by practical means/war. In other words the world leaders had freewill to implement any policy which oppressed Africans without fear because the Africans couldn’t react in any way.

One would suspect that these are the sentiments the western powers had when they supported the apartheid regime in South Africa for many years despite the lamentations and outcries from the whole world.

 The Ugandan president who has been in power for the last 35 years then lamented that nobody cares about Africans to the extent that they are being persecuted in America, Europe Asia and in Africa itself because it lacked a center of gravity.

 

He then explained that ‘’when Europeans get in trouble, they run to the United States of America for help, when North Korea feels persecuted they run to Russia, when some Asian countries get persecuted, they run to china.

Who is there to protect Africa? Where does Africa go when faced with problems? Museveni lamented.

All that time, some of us thought that he was delivering one of the best speeches of his time, but just wait a minute.

Let’s re-examine m7’s sentiments

In many respects it’s true that Africa and Africans in general don’t seem to have fallback position when faced with attacks from the rest of the world.

It is therefore fair to say that Gen Museveni was making a very strong point which no other African leader has ever endeavored to make.

The only African other than Museveni to make such a strong case for a united Africa was the former Ghanaian president the late Kwame Nkrumah and the fallen Libyan leader the late Col Muamar Ghadafi.

Although Nkrumah came close to uniting Africa in the 60s, he was faced with the challenges of uniting an African continent which had many of its countries still under colonialism.

 Nkrumah’s other undoing was due to the fact that he was not domestically strong enough to lead Ghana itself (and was eventually overthrown in a coup by his own Ghanaian army) and thereof lacked the capacity –logistical and otherwise, to enforce it.

But Ghadafi was better placed because he had a relatively sound economic and military base (domestically) to enforce the African federation.

Ghadafi was so passionate about the African federation to extent that he physically financed the African parliament and contributed funds ranging from 15% to 25% of the budget for the African union.

Yet when he came close to convincing the African leaders to embrace the federation, he was faced with resistance from two leaders; South African president Thabo Mbeki and –would you believe it-our own president Yoweri Museveni!

Well, well, well.

It’s fair to listen to Museveni’s arguments for opposing Ghadafi’s project.

I the author (together with a group of youths) got the opportunity to meet president Museveni at state house Entebbe in 2015. And he curtly told us that the reason why he never felt comfortable and openly opposed Ghadafi’s idea of an African federation was because he is hard pressed to believe that people with different cultures, morals and values can unite together.

He then convinced us that since Ghadafi was an Arab, there was no way the Arab north could effectively unite with a black Africans of the south.

He then suggested that he was of a strong view that it was better for Africa to unite and integrate through regional federations like the ECOWAS, EAC, SADC, COMMESA ETC.

He explained that it was, for instance, easier to integrate as East Africa because those societies have a lot in common.  He clarified that when you go to the surrounding  countries of Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Southern Sudan, Rwanda , Burundi you hear the dialect of some tribes very similar to those of Uganda. So it’s easier for them to integrate with us.

He fortified his argument by saying that even when some people think that the Luo and the bantu are different, they share a lot in terms of history.

He explained that when you go to Toro and Bunyoro , you will find luo names like Oyo( which is name shared by Toro’s king Oyo Nyimba).

He went on to explain that when Omukama Kabalega of Bunyoro was faced with a confrontation from the British, he ran to Lango, where he was actually captured.

In his own estimation Museveni therefore, doesn’t believe that we (sub Saharan Africa) have much in common with the Arab north. Phew!

Could that be the reason why there was no invited leader from the Arab north on his swearing in ceremony? That is matter of complete conjecture.

We agree that president Museveni is entitled to all those views as his own.

But the problem is for Museveni to go on and contradict himself and speak exactly what Ghadafi was agitating for, the unity of Africa.

Can we say that he is trying to agitate for a different Africa from that of Col Ghadafi?

If he (president Museveni )has failed to unite East Africa,(the chairman of the EAC Rwandan president Paul Kagame did not attend his swearing in ceremony) how does he (president Museveni)expect to unite the whole African continent?

If Gen Museveni professes NOT to be either pro-east or pro-west , and at the same time opposed Ghadafi’s idea of Uniting Africa , where does he expect Africa’s center of gravity?

Perhaps president Museveni might be agitating for an African federation different from that proposed by the late Col Muamar Ghadafi. You never know!

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a journalist and a blogger.

kamwadafred@gmail.com

 

Gen Museveni’s Suggestion Of fighting Man-To-Man Against The NATO Forces To Save Libya’s Col Muamar Ghadafi was Laughably Unfeasible

 

Gen Museveni’s Suggestion Of fighting Man-To-Man Against The NATO Forces To Save Libya’s Col Muamar Ghadafi was Laughably Unfeasible  And Would Have Ended In Tears

During his swearing-in speech at Kololo airstrip, President Yoweri Museveni revealed that when the western powers started attacking Libya’s Col Muamar Ghadafi, he called South African president Jacob Zuma with suggestions of defending the Libyan leader.

The Ugandan president who was in absolute jovial mood said that he felt that it was easier to fight back against the western powers by countering them man-to-man on the battle field

The controversial Libyan leader was pushed out of power by combined western powers under the command of NATO forces which used the air-force to bomb Tripoli to pieces until Ghadafi capitulated and fled to his other town of Sitre where he was eventually captured by rebel forces and killed.

But president Museveni ‘let the cat out of the bag’ when he said that he had nursed the idea of fighting back man-to-man with the NATO forces  but was let down by Col Ghadafi who hurriedly fled Tripoli without putting up a more formidable fight against the western powers.

Although president Museveni’s suggestions were appealing to the ears of the pan African audience-who clapped endlessly, they were militarily infeasible.

In fact his, was more of rhetoric than a realistic possibility. It was more of a chest thumping speech than a military revelation.

Those of us who listened knew that he was merely exaggerating his own military capacity. Deep inside he knows what would result from that course of action.

The reality  

For starters, the African union under the aegis of Jean Ping tried its best to engage the western powers to spare Col Ghadafi to no avail. He engaged the principal protagonists of the war against Ghadafi that were mostly led by the then American secretary of state Hilary Clinton , French president Nicolas Sarkozy , Italian prime minister Silvio Burluscroni, with American president barrack Obama as the cheer leader watching enthusiastically about the proceedings.

To cover up their evil intentions , the western powers decided to hide under the NATO command on the pretext of ‘stopping Ghadafi from killing his own people’ who had risen up to protest against his regime.

The Libyan people, mostly from the eastern town of Benghazi had sprung up when a Tunisian graduate called Bouaziz set himself on fire when the city authorities seized the goods he was selling in Tunis.

The Tunisians then rose to protest which culminated into the much-talked-about Arab spring that had resulted into the fall of several regimes in northern Africa including the 33 year reign of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, 24 year old reign of Tunisian president Ben Ali, amongst others.

The revolutions also spread to Yemen and Syria where President Bashar Assad has since fought on to maintain his grip on power while the Yemen conflict is even getting more worse.

Actually, initially, the western powers were badly interested in the immediate fall of the Syrian leader Bashar Assad, as postulated by American secretary of state Hilary Clinton who lambasted Assad at every opportunity. But Russia intervened and managed to maintain Assad in power to-date.

 

American president Barrack Obama personally stepped on the presidential podium and told Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down while the Tunisian leader Ben Ali fled to exile.

When the western powers refused to relent on the regime change project, Jean Ping travelled to almost all the African capitals to seek guidance from the African leaders on how to save the Libyan leader.

It’s on record that Ghadafi sponsored the African union with around100 million Euros per year.

It was therefore in the direct interest of the African union to save Ghadafi from collapsing.  As war was dragging on Ghadafi tried to put his case to the world through constant broadcasts where he spoke for hours sometimes bragging , using threats and at other times lamenting.

It was at that time that South African president Jacob Zuma travelled to Libya and met Ghadafi, possibly the last African leader to meet Ghadafi before his death, and beseeched him to leave the country.

But the relentless Libyan leader insisted that ‘’he was born in Libya, has lived in Libya all his life, and will therefore die in Libya” 

He stubbornly chose to die fighting and he indeed died on the frontline of his motherland in the cave of his own mother town of Sitre, a town where he was born and had loved so much during his lifetime.

How realistic was Gen M7’s idea?

Meanwhile, getting back to president Museveni’s suggestion of digging in the fight back at NATO, one might be tempted to ask , where was Museveni all that time?

If he had indeed considered an African military intervention why did he have to wait all that long for Ghadafi to flee from Tripoli?

Gen Museveni suggests that Ghadafi quit Tripoli so soon and let them down but the period during which Ghadafi was at siege was long enough for him to deploy and save his friend.

Secondly, and most importantly, even if Museveni and the African union had deployed and countered the NATO forces, its highly unlikely that they would have coped with the NATO fire power.

Why?

Because if the NATO forces were using aerial bombardment to strike Tripoli how does Museveni’s idea of fighting man-to-man arise or even survive?.

The NATO jet fighters and drones would have bombed Gen Museveni and his group out of the open caves of Tripoli.

Another thing that puts Museveni’s man-to-man idea to the dust bin is about the Libyan terrain. Was the Libyan terrain feasible for man-to-man warfare?

 

Flat and desertic as it is in Libya, how do you fight man to man against forces that are using drones and planes to carpet bomb you out of position?

You may presume that Gen Museveni was perhaps suggesting that the AU forces would dig in and fight urban warfare.

But Gen Museveni must be told that Saddam Hussein employed that urban warfare strategy against the Americans but was badly destroyed. You all recall how Sadam Hussein’s two sons Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed in the buildings by the US forces.

Therefore and in conclusion, Gen Museveni’s suggestion of fighting the western forces in defense of Col Ghadafi Was just for laughs and only generated applause from sycophants who have low appreciation of military strategy.

Tomorrow we shall delve into president Museveni’s lamentations about Africa’s lack of locus or gravitational force

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a journalist, a blogger and an enthusiast of military science.

kamwadafred@gmail.com

kamwadafred@gmail.com