Libya Falls While Africa Watches

As the people of Lybia wake up to a new dawn in which a new dispensation is in place one thing will not be lost in history. Africa was relegated to mere spectators as Europe determined the next president of another African country.

After the events surrounding the fall of Laurent Gbagbo you would have thought that our leaders would have learnt but it seems as if that was far from reality.

South African President Jacob Zuma has been under fire for a while for having rubber-stamped a resolution to take out Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power with the approval of the controversial UN Resolution 1973 on Lybia that has culminated in the NATO-led Transitional National Council taking over the state.

It is a definite statement by the west that they will decide how Africa will be defined. It shows that the majority of African states are unwilling to do anything if western powers are involved.

Of course, Lybia couldn’t carry on the way it was. We are not going to sit here and say Col Gaddafi was necessarily the right man to take the country forward. Our gripe is that Africa sat by and watched as NATO air-strikes happened and simply urged the bloc to stop attacks on the country. Urged? I wouldn’t be surprised if they said pretty-please-with-the-cherry-on-top.

The few countries that spoke out in a more emphatic way were not backed by the rest of the continent. They were isolated and called madmen. Meanwhile, imperialism is taking centre-stage and Africa is losing any grip on power it might have gained through the efforts of the liberation movements.

A sad day for Africa indeed.