ALLAN PATON, BIDEN AND AFRICA
Okello Oculi writes that the United States President is making up for some of his country’s past misdeeds
The angry shout by South Africa’s novelist, Allan Paton, would in 2023 probably be: “Ukraine, Cry the Beloved Country’’. Paton would, perhaps, rebuke President Biden for leading a pack of leaders of the European Union with angry teeth snarling at Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine is blessed with scores of precious minerals. Although Euro-American media claim that her grain is primarily for export to starving countries in Africa, notably drought ravaged Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the real consumers are in Europe. Most African peoples are not addicted to eating wheat. Ukraine does not grow yam, cassava, sweet potatoes. The elites devoted to bread and European immigrants across Southern Africa do not constitute majority population.
More importantly, Ukraine has become a bazaar for military weapons. The more Russia bombs these weapons the more vibrant the market becomes. The media announces billions of American Dollars voted by Congress for Uraine. AID watchers in Africa know that such funds do not cross the Atlantic Ocean. They rush into bank accounts of American manufacturers of such weapons. That trip is valuable for Members of Congress in whose constituencies the weapons are manufactured.
As African Ministers of Finance know, it is they who earn the wrath of their country folk for ‘’accumulating debts’’. By the time the conflict ends, there is ritual of migration to the United States, Britain, France and Germany of its most talented educated human resources. These were gained from being in Communist Soviet Union.
There is a lot of media noise about the so-called ‘’RUSSIAN MERCENARIES’’. It came as a shock when the expulsion of French troops from Mali was accompanied by troops from Denmark whose presence had been hidden. In Djibouti there are German troops under the umbrella of French and American forces. They are not seen as mercenaries.
When an Italian government Minister lambasted France for a policy in its former colonies which produces poverty and block internal development in those countries, it became clear that these military units were mercenaries, protecting official loot.
A representative of the African Union at the United Nation has blamed her dismissal by Addis Ababa following pressure by the government of France. She claims in a video that since 1960, France annually seizes 500 billion American Dollars from 14 former colonies which signed a treaty to deposit their foreign earnings in France’s Central Bank. While France lends these funds to its companies, the owners must apply for the funds as loans over which they pat interests for approved funds.
Successive American, British, German and other NATO countries were aware of this economic crime and blessed it with salivating silence. Their rage is aroused when young military officers rise up with fury and seek Russian support.
Russia is a deserving choice. It is their founder Vladimir Lenin who advocated for the end of European colonialism in Africa and Asia as a strategy for cutting off the legs of European capitalism. In the post-Cold War era Russia has fought against Islamist militants in Chechnya and Syria. Moreover France is fighting Russia in Ukraine.
President Biden announced publicly that African-American voters “had his back’ i.e. voted for him, he would pay back by ‘’having their back’’. At the level of ‘’symbolism’’, he broke tradition by appointing dark-skinned Linda Thomas-Greenfield as the country’s Ambassador to the United Nations. The equally highly visible Press Secretary of the President is also a dark-skinned. Haitian-American.
Fela Kuti must have suspected the Biden had liked his song against the epidemic of ‘’YELLOW FEVER’’, or what Brazilians call ‘’PRARDO’’.
Biden has also been on ‘’taking America back’’ to the country’s middle class. He is combating the accumulated loans weighing down students, and forcing many to abandon dreams of getting university degrees..
Huge sums of funds are also available to rehabilitate decaying airports, bridges, roads and educational facilities. That would give jobs to millions of unemployed people. Low quality classrooms for children of poor African-Americans, Indigenous and Hispanic families are likely to benefit. Michelle Obama noted in her autobiography the thrill and benefit to her ambition of her parents saving enough money to send her on a school trip to France.
What is good for dredging the swamps of poverty, decay and racism in his America must also be good for Africa. When Biden was a young politician his older leaders indulged racist appetites in a nasty pandemic of promoting military coup against, and assassination of, Africa’s most brilliant and patriotic political leaders.
Instead of financing destructive protest; sabotage of sewage; electricity supply; distributing Ebola virus, and demoralizing population through violence – to discourage seeking support from China and Russia – it would be more productive to ‘’love your neighbor as you love thyself’’.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
