Gaddafi’s death: The end of the beginning

gritty and mannerisms were chiselled to the floor by an alleged teenager.
His Jamahiriya model of governance was brought to its knees after eight months of fighting by the west using foot soldiers of Gaddafi’s kith and kin. The assault on Libya simply underlies the fact that African economies remain a target of Washington and Europe. Failure by the present generation to separate interests from policy matters will drag the growth of African economies.

We have a present generation of blacks who strongly believe NATO came in to help civilians in Libya because Gaddafi and his family subjected them to dictatorial methods of governance. They also believe that the Libyan leader’s method of ruling was no model to the world but at the same time it’s not a secret that the Americans, French and British massacred him.
Our economies as Africans will not develop as long as we remain foot soldiers doing the dirty work for the western capitals.
For a man who had ruled Libya for over four decades to start being accused of human rights abuses in March this year smacks of double standards and mockery to our African systems. That Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa followed by Algeria and Nigeria has definitely invited an imperialist to the land of the “Big Brother”.

Morocco, Uganda and Swaziland have leaders who had been in power for a substantive time period but their stranglehold on power has not been of relevance to the west due to the absence of oil, gold, diamonds and fertile land in those respective states.
What lesson is Africa receiving from the so-called democratic states? As long as the West remains a final destiny for brilliant undergraduates from Africa looking for opportunities to further their studies, it will remain a haven for the Chombes and Bothas to be moulded.

It calls for a high literacy rate not intellectual dexterity to appreciate how remote controls had left lounges to be applied in the politics of Africa, it is certainly upon the mother continent to remove the batteries if the remote is to become antiquated and anachronistic.
On September 1, 1969, a small group of military officers led by the then 27-year-old army officer, Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d’etat against King Idris, launching the Libyan Revolution. Never did he for once anticipate that it was the same sword, which was to be targeted at him four decades later.

His African garb might have blocked his vision and judgement of the threat, which was always to be posed by the westerners since the Lockerbie plane disaster, which led to sanctions against his regime.
Instead of fighting imperialism through bona fide means, he rather assumed the honorific title of “King of Kings” of Africa in 2008 as part of his campaign for United States of Africa. The likes of President Mugabe, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika should have opined on him that such an ambitious project would not be possible without dismantling neo-imperialism.

If SADC believes these machinations are to be limited to the Arab world, then a “political prophet” must be institutionalised for the continent to erase naivety.
Young turks such as Julius Malema are what the region demands at this juncture as the campaign to recapture Africa gathers momentum. The economy of Libya is centrally planned with about 55 percent of GDP emanating from oil and all the fiscal revenues originates from the petroleum sector.

About 80 percent of Libyan oil reserves are located in Sirte Basin, which is responsible for 90 percent of the country’s oil output.

Ironically, it was in Sirte where Gaddafi hailed from and holing himself in that small town was like inviting more trouble as imperialists had to be sure that the town was captured due to its strategic reserves of oil and petroleum products. French president Nicolas Sarkozy nicodimously connived with the rebels to form the National Transitional Council, such a WikiLeaks incident of Gaddafi’s lieutenant deceiving their former boss to head the controversial National Transitional Council.

The elevation of Mahmoud Jibril to the helm of the council is clear testimony of underhand innuendoes by the Elysee Palace and its Oval office peers.
Between 2007 and 2011, Jibril served under Gaddafi regime as head of National Economic Development Board where he promoted privatisation and liberalisation policies. Amongst the notables he met on his way to become de-facto prime minister of Libya were Sakorzy, William Hague of United Kingdom and the then USA ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz.

He has become a puppet who was hastened to lead an NTC committee has been hastened to be christened a prime minister without any legal support to the existence of such an office within Libya. In the US, there is an unwritten law that who ever wins an election in that country has to meet with the Mexican leader before any other world leader. It happened with Obama, Bush and Clinton when they paid a courtesy calls on

Fellipe Calderon of Mexico even before visiting some outlying states such as Guyana and to a certain extent Puerto Rico due to its participation in the primary elections of the richest economy on planet earth.
The NTC is said to derive its legitimacy from the decisions of local council set-up by the revolutionary people of Libya on February 17. It consists of 31 members representing the various cities of Libya. It claims its primary aim is to steer Libya during the interim period that will come after its complete liberation and destruction of Gaddafi’s regime.

That it is a creature of the West can warrant its dismissal by the African Union. Unfortunately the African body is more of a club and as such it is powerless when it comes to deciding on who is coming and leaving the Addis Ababa seats without genuinely steering the body to redefine what makes Africa unique from Europe, Americas, Asia and other continents.
However a lesson remains that a well-fed population does not only define a good ruler, they also need to be empowered, to have freedom and to have elections as and when they are due. Last year Libya attained a GDP growth averaging 10,6 percent, the average wages were US$9,52 per manhour, which translates to US$1 598 for 21 working days of 8 hours.

They produced about 24 billion kWh of electricity and were consuming 22.17 billion kWh, which is a far cry from Zimbabwe’s 1 200 MW and 2 400 MW respectively.
With arguably the lowest bread prices in the world, below Russia and the US, this could not stop the majority youths from capitulating to western chicanery.

An African leader does not necessarily have to look at macro-economic indicators to gauge his safety from the imperial vultures, the solution lies in being able to read the political radar notably signalled from western capitals. The reason why the West waged a war which toppled Tunisian and Egyptian leaders was so that they will topple Gaddafi.

He was the West’s ultimate target and a significant population of Egyptian migrants residing in Libya was to become a source of trouble since a sense of victory was dominating at the back of their minds after theCairo revolution. Following the ouster of Gaddafi, the Libyan stock exchange is expected to reopen in the first quarter of next year.
Thank You and God bless You.