From Ivory Coast to South Sudan

January 8, 2011
By Rebecca Tickle

At last, the voice of the people of Ivory Coast has made itself loud enough to be heard for the moment by the “international community”. The Ivorians, as well as the other African communities living peacefully in Ivory Coast, have expressed their refusal of blood-shed. Also, as we now all know, the battle for the presidential seat is very far from being just one between two political opponents.

President of Ghana has now said that he will not take part in any military intervention in Ivory Coast. He says that it is not for Ghana to choose the Ivorian president (...).

Ghana, like so of often, is an example in Africa and for Africans.

Africans will surely remember Kwame N'Krumah by this time, the successful African promoter of the escape from colonial trade, even though Ghana today is again increasingly endangered with its recent discoveries of oil reserves. Getting rid of colonial patterns of trade, that is what Africa today is so weak at, and it is what Africans all together must concentrate on. By promoting trade by its own conditions, Africa can only be more respected in terms of sovereignty. Who would then dare to go and dictate who is to do what in Ivory Coast, or elsewhere in Africa.

We should also thoroughly look at what is going on in South Sudan. Because there again, whatever the prospective rulers of South Sudan wish for their people, if anything, the western nations “supporting” them have no slightest intention to get themselves interested by South Sudanese sovereignty. Everybody already knows it will be a weak state, with no governing experience, and the West is just intending to loot the country’s oil, and will not mind transforming the country into a lawless new “Niger delta”. Those Western nations that are ensuring us on the media that everything is well prepared for tomorrow’s referendum don’t care about human rights issues. To their only knowledge, they will be relying on the usual unequal bargains over the available resources, in exchange of weapons and coverage of bad governance.

The Westerners are just wanting to rip off South Sudan and its oil from El-Bechir, with the excuse that the populations there have been suffering from decades of civil war and misery because of his murderous and disastrous governance. Nobody should be so naïve to think that they are supporting the parting of Sudan to protect and develop those populations, or to promote their emancipation. Emancipation, as the Ivory Coast crisis is just showing us, is the last thing the “international community” wants. Also the zeal that is being spent on getting El-Bachir before the International Court of Justice should not either be a surprise to anybody. Other mass-murderers have been condemned as well, and have not been brought before the ICJ although they are just sitting and waiting. And other mass-murderers have not even been convicted at all.

To conclude, the parting of Sudan will just be a further source of suffering for the South Sudanese people, about which, once again, nobody is going to care about, as long as the successfully deliver the oil they have. The local populations are absolutely not going to benefit from the procedure, except for a weak ruling class that will have been attracted into profound corruption by greedy Western powers. What about the sovereignty of South Sudan? It will just be a second class type like everywhere else in Africa. And what about emancipation of Africa? The Western world does obviously not want it, because it would be a very great loss to western economies.

African resources, that is the only thing in Africa that interests the developed world. Then to what extent has Western economic growth been to the expenses of Africa’s development…?

Food for thought anyway….!