Africa sliding back into anarchy

Afrika is fast sliding back to her dark days of war, civil strife, atrocities and large scale human rights abuses. From the east, west, north and south - Afrika is bleeding.

Incidentally and ironically all these happen at a time when the continental pan Afrikan body - Afrikan Union (AU) – has declared 2020 the year of ‘silencing the guns!’

Well, look at Ethiopia, where federal government troops are locked in a full-blown war in the northern Tigray region, which has also drawn neighbouring Eritrea into the fray and driven thousands to seek refuge in Sudan.

While popular opinion holds that this is an ethno nationalist conflict between the regions of Tigray, Oromia and Amhara over the control of Africa’s second most populous nation - I have a nagging feeling the deadly war has everything to do with Ethiopia’s audacious Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a project, which has elicited tensions between Ethiopia and the states along the Nile River- Egypt and Sudan.

I see apartheid Israel’s meddling using its proxy, Egypt, to fan the flames of ethnic tensions to scupper the reforms initiated by Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed using that time tested trick, ‘divide and rule’.

Well, that’s my take on the war in Ethiopia. We can only hope that the African Union, which sits in the capital, Addis Ababa, will kick its Peace and Security Architecture into operation so that we may see an immediate solution since a protracted war is not in anybody’s interest in Africa’s bastion of self-rule.

In North Africa, one of Africa’s celebrated liberation movements – Polisario Front – has declared a resumption of war with the France-backed Occupying Power, Morocco, after the latter violated the 1991 OAU-UN brokered Ceasefire and before then never respected its terms.

This has led to Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic or Western Sahara, decreeing an end to the 30-year truce, which truce has sadly in the eyes of the Saharawis, served only to delay the Desert People’s right to self determination through Morocco’s continued intransigence by frustrating the holding of a Referendum that would grant Saharawis full independence. Morocco’s unabashed attack on civilian protesters along the Military Wall of ‘shame’ in Guerguerat this past Saturday morning was the last straw that broke the camel’s back!

Now, the Saharawi women are happily sending their children to war whilst old men cry desperately because they can’t go to war to defend their homeland!

The nomadic desert people are a proud people that will defend their homeland by any means necessary. Once again, I see a long drawn conflict, in the mould of that daring adventure that drove the Spanish colonial power out of Western Sahara in 1975 and the subsequent 16year war with Morocco that culminated in the UN-brokered ceasefire and the establishment of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) on 29th April 1991 to supervise the ceasefire and conduct the Referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara, the next year (1992). Once again, the AU and the UN, especially the UN Security Council is complicit by omission in this conflict!

France, and by extension, her peers in the European Union (EU) hell-bent on plundering the marine resources and mineral resources of SADR, is the principal culprit who uses her veto powers to frustrate the implementation of international legality intended to free the people of Western Sahara.

Well here at home some unscrupulous elements are fanning the flames of war between Botswana and Namibia following the unfortunate incident in which four presumed fishermen were shot and killed by Botswana Defense Force soldiers whilst fishing at night in a protected wildlife area in the Chobe River. Presidents of both countries, Mokgweetsi Masisi and Hage Geingob are currently seized with the matter and have instituted an investigatory team to establish the truth behind the circumstances that led to the fatal shooting. Both countries have come close to fighting before over the disputed Sedudu (Kasikili island), but thanks to the maturity, vision and uprightness of the leaders of the time - the late Sir Ketumile Masire and Namibia’s Sam Nujoma – the conflict was amicably settled through the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose verdict both countries committed to respect and thankfully, have done so to this day!

The current impasse sadly evokes sad memories of those days but if handled with a magnanimous spirit of diplomacy and deferrence to that enduring diplomatic principle which counsels that, “You can choose your friends, but not your neighbours,” we can certainly avoid escalating our emotions and tempers into open warfare!

In fact, this sensitive incident is something of a baptism of fire for President Masisi, who is now called to show his mettle as Chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defense and Security in the way he will handle this issue. Masisi already has his hands full with the ongoing conflicts in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These flashpoints cannot be wished away, they require concerted efforts to stem their tide.

But, as these conflicts rage on, they only serve to prolong Africa’s second wave of liberation – the economic liberation promised by the Afrikan Continental Free Trade Area (AcFTA), whose implementation was postponed early this year to early next year, ostensibly on account of Covid-19.

If Afrika is to enjoy real freedom, she must have full ownership and control of her God-given natural resources; she must resist and reject Eurocentric models of development, which are nothing else, but ploys to divide us through instigation of conflicts so that they can steal our resources with our acquiescence.

What a sad day for Afrika!