Can I stay with you? Gaddafi asks Blair

[Gary Severson]

Gadaffi: Africa's Hero?

I strongly disagree with those African commentators who have swallowed western propaganda and are only dwelling on Col. Gadaffi's real and perceived dirty deeds, completely ignoring his pivotal role in the liberation in South Africa in particular and the rest of Africa in general.
Just as British and other western ruling classes (not ordinary citizens) did with Saddam Hussein in 2003, they have unilaterally decided that Col Muammar Gadaffi and his family must go now, through the gallows!
The decision has been made without any reference to Africa although Libya is a member state of the African Union. Africa must speak out not only because a western-engineered regime change in Libya will almost certainly create another Iraq and Afghanistan on the African continent. It would also set a precedent for a similar regime change in other AU member states, sooner rather than later.
Africans must also speak out because western ruling classes (not ordinary citizens) have already dragged the continent into the crisis in Libya, peddling the extraordinary claims that African economic immigrants have somehow become mercenaries that are keeping Col. Gadaffi in power!
No one is asking or expecting African leaders and commentators to speak in defense of Col Gadaffi' s indefensible decision to cling to power for forty-two years without preparing his oil-reach desert country for a peaceful transition from one leader to another.
That is precisely why we have been campaigning for almost ten years that African countries develop independent institution of state (not a big man); fight corruption; protect basic human rights and enable free and fair elections leading to a peaceful change from one leader to another.
But no one expects African leaders and peoples to forget Col. Gadaffi's pivotal role in Africa's liberation struggle against the diabolical supremacist white minority rule in Angola, Mozambique, South West Africa (Namibia) and the Republic of South Africa.
While the upper class, ruling class in United States, Great Britain and their western allies (not their ordinary citizens) were baying for Mandela's blood, calling him an international terrorist and urging the Apartheid regime to keep him in Robben Island until he died; it was col. Gadaffi who provided the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) with necessary financial and material support that eventually bled the Apartheid system to death in 1994.
Save for the slave trade, there is nothing else in history that has been more degrading and humiliating to African peoples than the dehumanising apartheid regime that was supported by the west.
It was in recognition of Gadaffi' s contribution to the liberation of South Africa that Nelson Mandela breached the UN travel ban on Libya and travelled by road to Tripoli on 22nd October 1997. In Uganda, it is clear from talking to former bush war fighters or reading about bush war stories that many of the leading personalities in president Museveni's government were trained in Libya.
It is therefore safe to conclude that, had it not been for Gadaffi, General Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) might never have come to power in Uganda in 1986, and South African boers would still be in power in South Africa.
If Col Gadaffi listens to anyone in this world, it is Nelson Madiba Nelson. It was Mandela who successfully persuaded Gadaffi to hand over Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah,two Libyan agents accused of planting the bombs in the Pan Am flight that killed almost 300 people in Lockerbee, Scotland on 21st December 1998
The African Union owes a political and moral debt to Gadaffi in particular and the whole world in general to bring about an end to the escalating crisis in Libya.
As a mater of urgency, African Union should advise South African president Jacob Zuma to fly to Tripoli and come back with Col. Gadaffi and his family. And they should act now because tomorrow Gadaffi and his family will be dead. Just as Saddam Hussein's death did not bring peace to Iraq; Gadaffi's violent departure would put open the gate to hell for Libyans.
By Sam Akaki
Director, Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa (DIPRA)
London.