MOROCCO AND PAN-AFRICANISM AGAINST AFRICA
Morocco is struggling to build into human civilisation, writes Okello Oculi
The Kingdom of Morocco has a legacy of over four hundred of rule by Ottoman Turks that primarily slaughtered and exploited local Berbers, Arabs and others; blocking their development and welfare. As a territorially African country it controls a tip of the African landmass that almost kisses the Iberian Peninsula at Tangier with deep historic burdens. Being of Africa and proximate with affairs of Europe flows in her diplomacy. In 1961 a group of ‘’radical’’ African leaders met at Casablanca and declared a vision of Africa united under one government with a commitment to ending colonialism and racial politics in Africa. Her anti-colonialism targeted France’s war in Algeria under the ill-conceived conviction that the territory was a part of France and must remain so. It was also silently against Spanish rule in Western Sahara. She, however, turned around to seize rule over Western Sahara, presumably with the promise to NATO countries to deny access to its rich phosphate deposits by communist Soviet Union and China.
Morocco argued that she was merely re-uniting with her portion in the Roman empire yanked away by Spain. Somalia had made similar claims for her diaspora populations in Ogaden in Ethiopia and north-eastern Kenya. Ethiopia made claims on Eritrea. Historians, including the late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman, warned that Morocco’s case if endorse by the OAU would lead to her amassing troops at gates of Sokoto and Kano with claims that Moroccan travellers once visited there. Moreover, her possession of overwhelming military force over opposition by Polisario, would encourage South Africa to sit tight over Namibia which she ruled as a trust territory for the United Nations.
Morocco sought to legitimise her militarism by posing as a brother heeding calls for help by a fellow African country being invaded from another African country. In 1977, President Mobutu asked for help from the OAU to repel invasion by former police units that fled to Angola from Congo after Moise Tshombe’s secession was crushed in 1963. Mobutu had soiled his fate with the blood of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo following elections for independence on June 30, 1960. The Americans, Britain and France feared that he would allow the Soviet Union to mine the rich uranium deposits in Kolwezi. Cheik Anta Diop, a nuclear physicist, who conducted research in a French nuclear research institute, claimed that the United States dug out uranium from one known site and carried it away in fear that the departing Belgian officials could no longer guarantee Soviet scientists being kept off the site. It was a lesson that Morocco learnt well and would use to win NATO’s support for his annexation of Western Sahara in 1975.
Mobutu has kept Congo away from Lumumba and his communist allies. Between 1965 and 1977 he exerted enormous effort in uniting a vast country. His tours every six weeks hosted eloquent speeches he made to huge rallies as he whipped up a sense of Congolese nationalism. Surrounded by echoes of ‘’socialism’’ and ‘’humanism’’ from Nyerere (in Tanzania) and Kenneth Kaunda (in Zambia), he announced the nationalisation of foreign-owned businesses, huge farms and mines. The IMF and the World Bank were deeply angered; but not enough for NATO to abandon Mobutu. France and the United States sent military aircraft to
ON JUNE 4, 2017, A HUGE MAJORITY OF 12 OUT OF 15 MEMBER STATES GLADLY WELCOMED MOROCCO’S COMING FROM UNDER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN TO SHOUT INTO CAPITALS LOCATED ON COASTS. SHE HAS SPAT ON AFRICAN UNION’S CONTINUING TO BALKANISE AFRICA INTO REGIONAL BLOCS BASED ON GEOGRAPHICAL PROXIMITY
fly Moroccan troops to fight for Mobutu and dramatise their country’s pan-African credentials.
Following his burst of economic nationalism, Mobutu, not surprisingly, earned hostile coverage by Euro-American media despite his collaboration with NATO against the socialist MPLA liberation fighters in Angola. From Addis Ababa, Nigeria’s General Murtala Muhammed grabbed praises across Africa by rejecting President Gerald Ford’ wishes; and winning OAU support for Neto’s socialist government in Angola. Morocco had invested badly in supporting Mobutu. Nigeria’s successful diplomatic momentum would roll into the admission of Western Sahara into the OAU as a member state-in-waiting. Morocco folded her wings and left the organisation; while heeding to Bob Marley’s advice to run away and return to fight another day.
It is clear that she heard out of Addis Ababa the notion that, with the end of colonialism and apartheid, Africa must focus on economic diplomacy, notably: intra-African trade among member states. By 2015, Morocco had signed 1,000 agreements and treaties with other African states. Her banks were operating in 20 African states. Her direct investments in Tanzania, Botswana, Chad, and Ethiopia were higher, in each case, than those in her neighbours Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. Botswana received the highest (outside North Africa), at 600 million dollars; while Egypt led her region with 125 million dollars. Morocco’s pan-Africanism is rattling in pockets and handbags across Africa.
Her pan-Africanism has returned to Casablanca Group’s waving Kwame Nkrumah’s flag with bold letters of ‘’AFRICA MUST UNITE !’’. Within the member countries of ECOWAS, Morocco exported three million tonnes of goods in 2016. Landlocked countries of Mali and Burkina Faso are also getting the Moroccan hug. That might explain why Morocco, with solid knocks of arrogance and rudeness, applied to be a member of ECOWAS - a regional organisation where she is NOT geographically located. On June 4, 2017, a huge majority of 12 out of 15 member states gladly welcomed Morocco’s coming from under the Atlantic Ocean to shout into capitals located on coasts. She has spat on African Union’s continuing to balkanise Africa into regional blocs based on geographical proximity.
It is not clear that Morocco is the new shining pan-Africanist. The vigorous push by a French shipping company to carry goods from Moroccan ports, including Tangiers across from Europe, suggests that goods from Europe are being labelled as Moroccan. If in 1977 she could send her troops to bleed in Mobutu’s Zaire (now D.R. Congo) in defence – according to The New York Times - of ‘’the stake of French multinationals such as Alsthom and Ttiomson, and concessions for prospecting the mineral riches’’, she can, in 2017, be a courier state for the European Union. That form of pan-Africanism is economic colonialism passing for the ‘’intra-African trade’’ preached by the AU.
Yet Morocco’s trade and investment as ‘’propaganda of the deed’’ must alarm those in Nigeria or Ghana or Kenya or Uganda who hide funds in Dubai or Panama while Morocco pours her funds into member economies of ECOWAS and beyond.