BIDEN’S BLOOD-STAINED FOOTPRINTS ACROSS AFRICA

It is China-in-Africa, stupid! writes Okello Oculi

President Joe Biden is a man whose role in America’s relations with Africa is stained by a Cold War ruthlessness which responded to Africa’s wars for liberation, quest for human dignity, freedom from exploitation by Euro-American economic greed and colonial troops slaughtering villagers, burning their crops and locking them in concentration camps.

Brilliant leaders of liberation wars won hearts, souls and grit of their people and defeated colonial armies, agents of American-led NATO governments assassinated them. Samora Machel in Mozambique; Amilcar Cabral in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde; Agustinho Neto in Angola were terminated.

In Angola, an upcountry leader Jonas Savimbi, was armed to wage a struggle against ‘’local colonialism by Mulato (mixed-race) politicians. Mobutu Sese Seko in ‘’ZAIRE’’, armed Savimbi against a liberation movement he saw as allies of communist Soviet Union.

In West Africa, the assassination of Murtala Mohammed and Thomas Sankara blocked patriotic mobilisation of the imagination of post-colonial youths who rejected exploitation under what Kwame Nkrumah named as another colonialism without responsibility for the administration of a newly independent African country.

Biden as a key figure in the Senate’s Committee that reviewed and directing America’s actions in Africa, chewed words soaked with the blood of African warriors for the democratisation of colonial political and economic colonial dictatorships.

With regard to Ethiopia’s Emperor Haille Selassie, the United States was content to see a blind, brutal and exploitative aristocracy rule over with permanent terror a population paralysed by illiteracy, disease, hunger and administration. While the United States poured billions of dollars into Europe to rebuild, it prevented impoverished masses being won over by socialist political parties. Haille Selassie got silence about lack of development in exchange for an observatory over the Red Sea, oil-rich Persian Gulf countries, Russia and China.

The 1974 military coup which murdered Haile Selassie brought in Mengistu Haile Mariame who was fired by ideas of Lenin. To counter Russian influence the Americans sponsored a military coup by Siad Barre in Somalia. The notion of ‘America’s permanent interest first and Ethiopia’s development last’, has been dominant.

The same attitude has marked relations with South Africa. Under pressure from anti-Vietnam student groups and labour unions influenced by agents of the African National Congress, Senator Biden made a trenchant speech on the floor of the Senate condemning racist dictatorship; and what African diplomats got the General Assembly of the United Nations to classify as ‘’a Crime Against Humanity’’.

As Barrack Obama’s Vice-President, Biden shared the glow of symbolism which shone around Africa over a son of Kenya becoming the first African to reign over omnipotent USA. They rewarded Africa by wrecking Muamar Gaddafi, a dreamer for becoming the ‘King of Kings and Traditional Rulers’ over Africa’. Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo of South Africa and Nigeria, respectively, halted his pushing Africa’s leaders to transit from membership of the Organisation of ‘’African Unity (OAU)’’ to ‘’African Union (AU)’’. He bought compliance by paying salaries of civil servants in destitute countries.

It is likely that builders of scenarios linked the destruction of Gaddafi’s kingdom to opening the way for Al Qaeda and ISIS to reach the broad band of Moslem populations from Mauritania and Mali on the Atlantic Ocean to Ethiopia and Somalia on the Indian Ocean coast.

Guns of religion blazing along that belt would weaken Nigeria and Ethiopia with worshipers trapped in poverty and lack of power by the masses.

The current backing of secessionist war by Tigray against Ethiopia’s federal authority serves the goal of derailing the completion of Ethiopia’s ‘’Renaissance Dam’’ that would enable the country sell electricity to Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan. The Hinga Dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo would supply power to Southern Africa and Central Africa.

Ethiopia has invited China to build a road and railway to Djibouti’s port, as well as internal road networks and industries. A potential which American and other NATO countries had cynically ignored was blooming with China’s support. From Kenya to Rwanda and Uganda, China has become a source of building infrastructure mineral exploitation. Rwanda ignored President Trump order to import second-hand clothes; and built a textile factory with China’s cooperation.

South Africa joined a new economic group with Brazil, India, Russia and China (BRICS). This entity offered alternative windows to resources and roads to development outside the dictates by American-controlled World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The prompt announcement by South Africa’s scientists that they had found a new Corona Virus gave the ANTI-CHINA lobby around Biden the excuse to shoot down South Africa’s Foreign Exchange earnings from tourists flocking in to enjoy its vast natural resources and highly developed tourism infrastructure. As Bill Clinton might have argued ’It is China-in-Africa, stupid’; NOT Corona.