Col. Muammar Al-Qathafi Passed Through Kumasi

Accra - Col. Muammar al-Qathafi came in a convoy of over three hundred (300) cross-country 4-wheel drives, with a large retinue of over a thousand and two hundred (1,200) people. He carried his own food; he brought in his own water and tents. He had his generating plants with him and a host of bodyguards.

For, in Kumasi he slept in a tent, and preferred his own bodyguards to Ghanaian soldiers sent on sentry duties to guard him. And there was a place to sleep in comfort and in safety in ever-hospitable Ghana. But never mind, that could be his dream of Africa of 'One people, One Culture.... One Defence.... and no Borders'.

Well, only a few of his men slept in hotel rooms reserved for them, and on his journey to Accra, only a few of his retinue reached Accra by plane, which was provided him, obviously by the Government of Ghana. Col. Qathafi for all we know did not carry any plane in the caravan of cars that coursed their way along with him through our rain soaked forest roads and routes.

Some of us who were caught helpless in the traffic as our eminent guest left the Manhyia Palace stood dumb-founded and forgot to cheer and wave him on. We were counting the cost of moving almost all Libya to Ghana through Chad, Mali and Burkina. Again, we were simply enthralled by his resolve, sheer display of riches and power. His confidence was quite disarming. But his seeming distrust of his own safety in the hands of his host was intriguing to us. No doubt, life is precious, none should toy with one's life or the other person's life.

Revolution

And he was in the heart of Africa "without borders" which could be his. At least, he counts on friends like Ghana whose takeover in a so- called revolution was supported to the hilt by him with arms and drugs and food. Col. Qathafi, who also wishes to be known as Brother, has been a brother, indeed.

He quickly thereafter descended to Ghana to sit at Bibiani to mine gold for as long as it was convenient to him. But he still holds the Continental Hotel in Accra, which he bought, refurbished and re-named Golden Tulip. Libya permanently sits in Ghana.

That could be in the cause of African Unity, which he has grown in recent times to love, and cherish. He has not said that it is a re- colonisation of Africa to which he has come close to re-stage in more countries than one in Africa. Fortunately, de-colonisation has won us our independence, thanks to our sense of freedom which Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana championed for the most part, and obtained an Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and not a Continental Union like the example of the United States of America. That met Nkrumah's dreams half way.

Force

But it settled wholly with the anxiety of the West, which could not imagine another great political force in a Union Government in Africa.

Can Brother Qathafi move the OAU forward to realise a union which has remained distant from us since the OAU was born? And can the West suffer him realise it by that new democratic ideology.? He must be a strong man so to dare.

Already the Free World is back to its free self and none can stop its steady forward march. It is intact with its known features of Free Market and Private Enterprise which have meant nothing to Africa but borrowing to exist, and to exist in fact to service its debt burden time without end. It could hardly be the Africa Unbound we know to think of such a delicacy as a Continental Union.

Africa does not have such fanciful ideological direction at the present moment Its hard-won self determination does not go any further than the rigged ballot, and the dictatorship of the political leadership that breed an informal one party state, which is quite formal in many countries in Africa, including Brother Qathafi's Libya. The OAU hardly has any direction out of that mess.

Indeed, it hardly has any agenda for Union, neither has it an answer to the craze of stealing by Africa's political leaders whose one pre- occupation has been stealing to impoverish their respective countries. Who calls whom to order when political leadership becomes deviant as thieves, for example, Col. Qathafi, who himself is a rebel of the institution of government that used to be in his own country?

So there is hardly some unity of purpose to make a Continental Union a goal to reach. Our goal for democracy is yet to mature. It has no issues of importance to address, let alone a great issue of African Unity, which Brother Qathafi is calling for, possibly not by his rather long march by road from Tripoli to Lome via Accra.

Bloodshed

Africa, country by country, is fighting to settle with issues of political ambition with tribal leanings and religious flavour all over us. The bloodshed,, devastation of the countryside, and the deprivation of our people caught by disease, hunger, and helplessness are better forgotten than to essay here.

What should unite Africa are not issues of war but of peace, which is what Brother Qathafi is championing, when he himself is at war with his own people in his own country.

We cannot tell what is in his Green Book, which maps out the course in achieving Unity, while his own immigration laws throw fellow African immigrants out of his country unto the desert to cross to their homes or die in their tracks in the desert heat. His Africa without borders (?) remains mere platidutes on the political platform.

No wonder, his own political opponents are treated that way, where their political and human rights are much abused. They live in exile in other countries outside Africa, whose complex question of Unity Brother Qathafi wants to answer. His known credentials as an advocate of a union cannot be credible, nor creditable. We do not know yet, his brand of democracy which he wants to sell to Africa, on whose basis African unity should be founded. His home is known to be the training grounds for many a rebel and revolutionary leaders in Africa, whose governance has been a disaster to themselves and to their own people. And Africa is to unite by revolutionary recklessness.

SWORD AND GUN

Definitely, that cannot be the basis for unity, except where he has the strength to take all Africa by storm and bound it in a chain of the Sword and the Gun; but de-colonised Africa, in the meantime, wants the peace of its free self to enjoy what little facility its little money can buy of the ends of scientific and technological advancements of our time.

The current OAU meeting in Lome may wish to forge some union of sort by due Declaration or Resolution, which would be fine on paper. In practice, it would compound Africa's problems. For no union worth its name can be achieved with the level of our political immaturity and economic stagnation.

But a union to come will enhance the political image of Brother Qathafi, who had resurrected the idea in recent times. He is a strong man, rich and hard. He can hit and be hit the hardest. He has the nerve to stand tension of American bombardment, and UN sanctions, and survived them all.

One such display of his tension-packed life is his trooping across the desert to Accra via Kumasi. No other African leader had ever dared such a journey by road where a journey by plane would do. It cannot be coinci?dental of an OAU leader's meeting in Lome, Togo, his destination. No. It is coming home to Ghana to his friend whom he had helped to grow.

PRESSURE

If President Rawlings has to leave the scene by the force of his own Constitution and amid the row of pressure to submit himself to probe into some of the atrocities of his revolution, it is only deserving that he comes in person to say goodbye to his dear friend. They both love tension, and love their lives dearly. He may have some venison of food and arms and cars as usual to give for his upkeep in retirement. There are plenty of these to spare.

He, in the meantime, takes away a medal of honour, being the Companion of the Order of the Star of Ghana, the highest Ghana has to give. It is a virtual gift from a friend to a friend who sees Africa as one nation, one people, one culture, one economy, one defence, and no borders. It is the same politics. The unreal reality of the usual rhetoric by our politicians that wins them the fleeting applause and nothing more, and nothing less.