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Why Do Things Always Fall Apart in Africa?

By Alemayehu G. Mariam

Copycat Dictators and Cartoon Democracies in Africa

Ivory Coast, December 2010. Laurent Gbagbo says he won the presidential election. The Independent Ivorian Election Commission (CEI) said former prime minister Alassane Ouattara is the winner by a nine-point margin. The African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the United Nations, the United States, the European Union all say Ouattara is the winner. Gbagbo is only the latest African dictator to steal an election in broad daylight, flip his middle finger at his people, thumb his nose at the international community and cling to power like a barnacle to a sunken ship.

Ethiopia, May 2010. Meles Zenawi said he won the parliamentary election by 99.6 percent. The European Union Election Observer Team said the election “lacked a level playing field” and “failed to meet international standards”. Translation from diplomatic language: The election was stolen. Ditto for the May 2005 elections.

The Sudan, April 2010. Omar al-Bashir claimed victory by winning nearly 70 percent of the vote. The EU EOM declared the “deficiencies in the legal and electoral framework in the campaign environment led the overall process to fall short of a number of international standards for genuine democratic elections.” Translation: al-Bashir stole the election.

Niger, February 2010. Calling itself the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD), a group of army officers stormed Niger’s presidential palace and snatched president Mamadou Tandja and his ministers. In 2009, Tandja had dissolved the National Assembly and set up a “Constitutional Court” to pave the way for him to become president-for-life. Presidential elections are scheduled for early January, 2011.

Zimbabwe, March 2008. In the first round of votes, Morgan Tsvangirai won 48 percent of the vote to Mugabe’s 43 percent. Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff in June after Mugabe cracked down on Tsvangirai’s supporters. Mugabe declared victory. The African Union called for a “government of national unity”. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki mediated and Tsvangirai agreed to serve as prime minister. A stolen election made to look like a not-stolen-election.

Kenya, December 2007. Mwai Kibaki declared himself winner of the presidential election. After 1500 Kenyans were killed in post-election violence and some six hundred thousand displaced, intense international pressure was applied on Kibaki, who agreed to have Raila Odinga serve as prime minster in a coalition government. Another stolen election in Africa.

Massive election fraud, voting irregularities, vote buying, voter and opposition party intimidation, bogus voter registration, rigged polling stations, corrupt election commissioners and so on were common elsewhere in Africa including Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria and Egypt. In 2011, “elections” will be held in Chad, the Central African Republic, Malagasy, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and other countries. Will there be more stolen elections? One thing is for sure: In January, the Southern Sudanese independence referendum will be held with little doubt about its outcome.

Ivory Coast Headed for Civil War?

The tragedy about Gbagbo is that the one-time university professor was one of the courageous Ivorian leaders who had struggled against civilian and military dictatorships. He was the chief opponent of Ivorian president-for-life Félix Houphouet-Boigny. Today Gbagbo wants to become Félix Houphouet-Boigny reincarnate. After a decade in power, Gbagbo has become addicted to the sweet life (la dolce vita) of dictatorship. He is said to have the support of the country’s military. He controls the south, and “rebels” are said to control much of the north where Ouattara has his support. To complicate matters, there are reports that rogue remnants of Charles Taylor’s bloodthirsty Liberian army are being recruited by both sides of the crises as a perfect storm of civil war gathers over the Ivorian horizon. Is Ivory Coast headed for a replay of the two-year civil war that began in 2002? Unless Gbagbo peacefully leaves power, it seems inevitable that violence and conflict will again reign in the Ivory Coast destroying thousands of lives and the economy of one of the more prosperous African countries.

The international community led by the U.S and France appears to be orchestrating diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions and a cutoff of access to funds at the regional West African bank to force Gbagbo to step aside. ECOWAS (a group of some dozen West African countries) is said to be considering military action; but there is little evidence that it has an offensive military capability to rout Gbagbo’s troops. Gbagbo has intimated that he will retaliate against immigrants from ECOWAS countries in Ivory Coast should military action be initiated to dislodge him. He remains steadfastly defiant and has escalated the crackdown on opponents. He continues to round up opposition supporters; and street killings, abductions and detentions by the military and armed youth thugs are said to be widespread. Gbagbo has repeatedly claimed that the “international community has declared war” on Ivory Coast and he has a constitutional duty to defend the country against such aggression.

The Lesson of Ivory Coast

Informed analysts suggest that Ivory Coast will prove to be a global test case of whether the international community could develop consensus to uphold the outcomes of democratic elections against a defiant African dictator who refuses to leave power peacefully. I disagree for two reasons. First, dictatorships in Africa have always been tolerated by the international community. As in the past, the West will cackle, bray, neigh and yelp about Gbagbo, but at the end of the day they will yawn and walk away shaking their heads and repeating the words of former French President Jacques Chirac, “Africa is not ready for democracy!” Second, the AU and ECOWAS will make sure that nothing is done that will set a precedent for an African dictator being removed from power through international action. These are the same crooks who are today coddling and shielding al-Bashir from prosecution in the International Criminal Court. Today it is Gbagbo; tomorrow it could be any one of them. Africa’s dictators will never, ever allow such a precedent to be established.

Things Keep Falling Apart After One-Half Century of African Independence

Things keep falling apart in Africa because over the past one-half century of independence it has been nearly impossible to hold Africa’s so-called leaders accountable. For fifty years, African “leaders” have been telling Africans and the world that Africa’s problems are all externally caused. Africa is what it is (or is not) because of its colonial legacy. It is the white man. It is imperialism. It is capitalism. It is the International Monetary Fund. It is the World Bank. The continent’s underdevelopment, poverty, backwardness, mismanagement are all caused by evil powers outside the continent. The latest re-invention of the old African Boogeyman is “globalization” and “neoliberalism”, which Zenawi claims has “created three consecutive lost decades for Africa”.

There are indisputable reasons why things keep falling apart in Africa. The major one is the lack of competent leadership with vision, purpose and integrity. Indeed the common thread that sews the vast majority of post-independence African leaders is not steadfast commitment to good governance and democratic practices, but their incredible sense of entitlement to rule forever and ever and ever. In 1964, Kwame Nkrumah invented the whole idea of president-for-life becoming the first certified post-independence African dictator. Many others followed. In 1970, H. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi declared himself ‘President-for-Life”. Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the military ruler of the Central African Republic, kicked it up a notch in the mid-1970s. He coronated himself “Emperor”. Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory Coast, Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Albert Bernard Bongo of Gabon, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Ismail Omar Guellah of tiny Djbouti, and countless others have clung or continue to cling to power as rulers-for-life. It boggles the mind to call these individuals “leaders”; they are, as the great Afrobeat legend and human rights activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti described them, “animals in human skin”. I would call them hyenas in designer suits or uniforms.

These “animals in human skin” have stoked ethnic and tribal hatred, caused fragmentation and sectarian tensions and have unleashed unspeakable violence on their populations to cling to power in much the same way as the old colonial masters. In Ivory Coast and Nigeria today violent confrontations are being orchestrated by “leaders” along ethnic and religious lines. Just in the past few days, there has been a surge in violence in Nigeria, a country said to be evenly split between Christian and Muslims, with the firebombing of churches. Various scholars have expressed concern over the “heightening of the resurgence of ethnic identity politics in Nigeria” and the rise of armed ethnic militias which not only challenge the legitimacy of the Nigerian state but are also spearheading separatist movements to dismember the Nigerian nation. Given these tensions, more and more “marginalized” Nigerians are said to choose their ethnic identities over loyalty to the Nigerian nation. No doubt echoes of the Biafran War of 1967 reverberate in the minds of concerned Nigerians. Ethnicity and sectarianism are also a core element of the current Ivorian crises. Gbagbo accuses Muslims, who are in the majority in the north, of aiding and supporting the “rebels” who control the region. They have been subjected to attacks and persecution.

As Africa burns in ethnic, political and sectarian fires, the unctuous, hypocritical and self-righteous Western governments frolic in bed with the corrupt dictators in power. They jibber-jabber about democracy, human rights, the rule of law, accountability, transparency and the rest of it, but will gladly hold hands with bloodthirsty African dictators and walk down the primrose path to maintain their oil, mineral and military strategic interests. No Western government involved in Africa will openly admit it, but each and every one of them shares wholeheartedly Chirac’s view that “Africa is not ready for democracy” and that “multi-partyism” is a “kind of luxury,” that is unaffordable by a country like the Ivory Coast (or any other African country for that matter).

Chinua Achebe and Why Things are in Free Fall in Africa

In Things Fall Apart (1959), the great African novelist Chinua Achebe tells the story of the initial encounters in the 1890s between Ibo villagers in Nigeria and white European missionaries and colonial officials. That was the time when things really began to “fall apart” in Africa. The white man “put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” But his depiction could apply to the “falling apart” of many other African societies as a result of contact with colonialism and Christianity. But over the last one-half century, colonialism has become extinct and the white man has “left” Africa. The African leaders who replaced the colonial masters have not hearkened back to pre-colonial Africa and used traditional values and methods to hold the center and keep things from falling apart. Rather, they have followed in the colonial footsteps and lorded over vampiric states which have attenuated and frayed the fabric of the post-independent African societies to ensure their hold on power.

Robert Guest, Africa editor for The Economist, in his book The Shackled Continent (2004), argues that “Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades” while other developing countries and regions have grown. Africa was better off at the end of colonialism than it is today. According to the U.N., life expectancy in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Mozambique and Swaziland for the period 2005-2010 is less than 44 years, the worst in the world. The average annual income in Zimbabwe at independence in 1980 was USD $950. In 2009, 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars (with a “T”) was worth about USD $300. In the same year, a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe cost 300 billion Zimbabwean dollars (with a “B”). The tens of billions in foreign aid money has done very little to improve the lives of Africans. The reason for things falling apart in Africa is statism (the state as the principal change agent) and central planning, according to Guest. The bottom line is that the masses of Africans today are denied basic political and economic freedoms while the privileged few live the sweet life of luxury, not entirely unlike the “good old” colonial times.

Guest concludes that “Africans are poor because they are poorly governed.” The answer to Africa’s problems lies in upholding the rule of law, enforcing contracts, safeguarding property rights and putting more stock in freedom than in force. Much of Africa today is under the control of “Vampire states”. As the noted African economist George Ayittey explains, the “vampire African states” are “governments which have been hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and crooks who would use the instruments of the state machinery to enrich themselves and their cronies and their tribesmen and exclude everybody else.” (“Hyena States” would be a fitting alternative in the African landscape.) Africa is ruled by thugs in designer suits who buy votes and loyalties with cash handouts.

Things have fallen apart in Africa for a long time because of colonialism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, communism, tribalism, ethnic chauvinism… neoliberalism, globalism and what have you. Things are in total free fall in Africa today because Africa has become a collection of vampiric states ruled by kleptocrats who have sucked it dry of its natural and human resources. It is easy to blame the white man and his colonialism, capitalism and all the other “isms” for Africa’s ailments, but as Cassius said to Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” The fault is not in the African people, the African landscape or skyscape. Africa is rich and blessed with natural and human resources. The fault is in the African brutes and their vampiric regimes.

Achebe took the title for his book Things Fall Apart from William Butler Yeats’s classic poem, which in partial rendition reads:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, (substitute Africa)
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

For what it is worth, my humble view is that the African center cannot hold and things always fall apart because the best and the brightest of Africans lack all conviction to do what is right, while the worst are full of passionate intensity to divide the people ethnically, tribally, racially, ideologically, religiously, regionally, geographically, linguistically, culturally, economically, socially, constitutionally, systematically… and rule them with an iron fist. “Ces’t la vie en Afrique!” as the French might say; but to gainsay Jacques Chirac, “Africa is ready for democracy!” (L’Afrique est prêt pour la démocratie!).

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA.

17 thoughts on “Why Do Things Always Fall Apart in Africa?

  1. Foreign-aid is the main culprit, the primary cause for things falling apart in Africa. If the western world keeps giving aid money to the rulers of Africa, it is by definition interfering in their domestic policies. For every one dollar in aid that goes into Africa…. $1000 comes out in natural resources. If African population are not benefiting from the aid money, stopping the foreign-aid altogether won’t have any negative effect on the population; in fact, it will help eliminate the aid-addict dictators.

    However you slice it, dice it or chop it up, the main problem in Africa is foreign-aid. The Zenawi regime wouldn’t have stayed in power for no more than 2 weeks had it not been for the billions of dollars in U.S. aid given to prop up the regime.

    African policy analyst, Patrick Mutahi wrote:
    “Due to bad governance and human rights violations, African governments have sought to enhance their tattered images abroad since it can make the difference between more and less foreign Aid. In the process, they have paid millions of dollars to lobby groups at the expense of development and democracy instead pursuing the most cost-effective way— putting their houses in order….”

    Without the foreign-aid, African “animals with human skin” would not be able to afford to lobby western governments to give them a face lift. Stop the aid !

  2. Secrets To Winning The Lottery Have Some Players Cracked The Code?

    Wendy Saltzman, CBS Atlanta Investigates POSTED: 2:56 pm EST November 10, 2010

    You’ve heard the phrase you can’t win if you don’t play, but is there a secret to winning millions? Imagine winning the lottery 128, 130 or more times, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from scratch-off and quick-draw games. Are these winners just the luckiest people alive or is there something more sinister going on? CBS Atlanta News is looking into how Georgia’s largest lottery winners have cracked the lottery code. Is there a technique to help you win fast cash? Or are some winners gaming the system and stealing from the lottery? James Jabaley is a small-town lottery winner with a penchant for winning big. “I think a lot of it is luck, but a lot of it is skill too,” he said. He is the second most winning lottery player, according to Georgia Records. His game of choice is Keno, where you pick one to 10 numbers from a board of 80 choices. Those numbers change every 4 minutes. “When the top row is running, I play the whole row. And when the bottom numbers are running, I play the whole bottom row,” he said. Jabaley admits he has spent $80,000 to $90,000 to take home $151,000 in winnings. His advice: “Leave it alone. It’s a bad habit.” The Georgia Lottery Corporation says there is no way to cheat at Keno. But the corporation does investigate other allegations of cheating. The Shell gas station in the otherwise quiet city of Conyers is the store of choice for customer to pay to play and take their chances at millions. This store that has been struck by the luck of the lottery more than once. “You got 100 dollars,” the clerk shouts at a customer. Store owner Muddessar Ahmad claims he’s never won before. “Never anything big before,” he told reporter Wendy Saltzman. Yet amazingly his wife, Quidisa, is one of Georgia’s top scratch-off lottery winners. She has hit several $5,000 and $10,000 jackpots. “Your wife has won 115 times, amounts in excess of $500,” Saltzman said. “Right,” Ahmad responded. “To some people, that does not sound possible,” Saltzman questioned. “But do you know how many times she has played?” Ahmad asked. So we turned to Mastermind’s Dan Dodson to calculate how may times Ahmad would’ve needed to play to win. “That would raise a red flag and say we need to look into that,” he told us. Dodson has developed instant win games for companies like Coca Cola and Chick-fil-A and he knows the odds. “Statistically she would have had to buy 10,000 tickets just to win those two times,” he said. To win 115 times, totaling more than $220,000, Dodson estimates Ahmad would’ve had to play more than 1 million scratch-off games. That’s right, the odds say she had to buy more than 1,095,000 tickets. Each ticket costs $1 to $20 a piece. “That is a high probability that they would not win that many times,” Dodson said. So we asked Ahmad his secret. “I grab 10 packs of tickets and we take it home. And if we win, we win. If we lose, we lose,” Ahmad said. He says they scratch off entire packs of tickets at a time. And he says he buys those packs of tickets from his own store. “I take the whole pack,” he explained. But Georgia Lottery records tell a different story. Ahmad’s wins are from a ticket here and a ticket there purchased at stores across the Conyer’s area. So we asked if Ahmad is collecting his winnings by cashing in on other people’s tickets. “Is there any kind of racket going on here?” Saltzman asked. “There is no way, you can ask any of our customers,” Ahmad said. As a result of our investigation, Lottery Corporation Margaret DeFrancisco says the Georgia Lottery is reviewing Ahmad’s winnings. “We sent them a letter and we sent our district manager to talk with them,” DeFrancisco said. And Ahmad is not the only repeat lottery winner beating the odds. State records show several people have won more than 100 hard-to-win high stakes jackpots. Nearly one in four of the top lottery winners is a store owner or an owner’s relative. “How do you explain the large number of vendors who are repeat winners?” Saltzman asked. “I think it is also probably because they are some of our best lottery customers,” DeFrancisco responded. Does the lottery have enough safeguards in place to prevent vendors from stealing the winnings of unsuspecting players? “I don’t see a lot of safeguards in place to prevent vendors from cheating,” Saltzman said. “There are though. Because you don’t see them,” said DeFrancisco. The Georgia Lottery does not conduct stings. And they couldn’t point CBS Atlanta News to a single vendor they had suspended for theft or fraud. The President & CEO of the Georgia Lottery Corporation said there is one way players can protect themselves. She says you should always sign the back of your ticket before you scratch it off.

    The Case of the Vanishing Blonde

  3. The KEY to Africa’s success and
    well being is Ethiopia’s Throne
    of David. The enemies of Africa,
    namely, the Arabs and Europeans,
    inadvertently and indirectly ruin
    Africa by sabotaging and under-
    mining the THRONE through their
    local agents. Ethiopians themselves
    play the cursed role of abusing and
    extinguishing the lights i.e, saints:
    Abunes TekleHaimanot and Gebre Menfes-
    Kedus and Del Adragi Neguses through
    out history much like the Tanzanians
    abuse the Albinos.

    Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

  4. PM Meles’s stepping down at the end of this term shows Ethiopia is in a progressive, democratic, and revolutionary path very different from most African leaders and should not be named with the rule-for-life dictators: isayas afewerki, Robert Mugabe, albeshir etc.

  5. There are only two reasons why things fall apart in Africa.
    1.People are not well organized to take down their dictators. Dictators should not be given any chance to make it the next day. They should not be jailed. They should simply be hanged publicly period.
    2. People are not well organized to tear down their dictators network. The point is that if those wings working for the dictators at the local levels hanged one by one, those at the next level will not extend their hands for the dictators. In a poor country like Ethiopia, whether we like it or not, that is the only feasible option to root up dictators.

  6. When H.I.M Haile-Sellasie was occupying the Throne of David, Africa, likewise, used to be ruled by wise, gentle and fatherly figures such as Jomo Kenyata, Julius Neyrere, Egypt’s Naser, Kawunda and others. When Mengistu usurped power, things turned for the worse and, like him, the Charles Taylors and Idi-Amins defined the era with blood. When Meles invaded the city and trashed not only the throne but the flag, the bottom fell out, and Africa found itself worse than its colonial days. Democracy and Freedom & Rights are hardly the magic pills or bullets. America is losing its precious Christianity and Demography thanks to its democracy and freedom of rights principles, which obviously isn’t working. So, please let us not sing jazzy tunes when the proven traditional ways never failed us.

    First Footsteps in East Africa

  7. Oh my..
    I wonder when this dude will be liberated from his exaggerated worship of all western values, I mean all!

    In this article, he has succeeded in putting his own worth into question!

  8. የሀገር የመዝሙር ቅኔ

    ሰላምታ ይገባሻል ኢትዮጵያ ሀገሬ
    አንቺ ነሽ የነጻነት ክብሬ ለዘሬ
    ኢትዮጵያ ሀገሬ የነጻነት ክብሬ
    በክብር እኖራለሁ ጠላት አሳፍሬ
    ጠላቶችሽ አፈሩ አይዞሽ ሀገሬ
    በእዝቦችሽ ኩሪ አይዞሽ ሀገሬ
    ድህነት ይጥፋልሽ በስራችን ፍሬ
    ኢትዮጵያ ተነሽ ለሰላሙ ፍሬ
    ይበቃናል ረሀብና ወሬ ለዛሬ
    ወሬና ረሀብ ይወገዱ ከሀገሬ
    ይበቃናል መሞት በወሬ
    በዙ ማህድን አለ በኢትዮጵያ ሀገሬ
    እንስራ ተባብረን በአንድነት ለሀገሬ
    የህ ነው ለኢትዮጵያ የነጻነት ፍሬ
    ዘር በዘር መቆጣጠር ይቅር በወሬ
    ዘውዱ ይቀባ የነጻነት ክብሬ
    ጠቅላይ ሚነስትሩም ይመረጥ ለስራ ፍሬ
    የአንድነት ፓርቲ ይኑር ለገበሬ
    የአንድነት ፓርቲ ይመስረት ለወዛደሮች ዛሬ
    ልጆችሽን አድሽ ኢትዮጵያ ሀገሬ
    የሀብታሞች ፓርቲ ይኑር በፍቅር ለዛሬ
    በፍቅር በአንድነት እንኑር ልስራ ፍሬ
    እግዚሃብኤርን አክብሩ በስራ ፍሬ
    ለማኝነት አይኑር በሀገሬ ልክብሬ
    እግዚሃብኤር ይወዳል ይፍቅርና ይስራ ፍሬ
    ቸሩ አምላካችን አልተለየም እስካዛሬ
    ለዘላለም ኑሪ ኢትዮጵያ ሀገሬ:: –ልሳነ ኢትዮጵያ

  9. Africa was not the only continent to be colonized, but it is the only one the keeps regressing to a primitive state.

    This means there is something wrong with Africans, the problem is not external, it is internal. There is a flaw in the way the African mind works.

  10. Africa fails not only because of African leader but because of us, as well, we are as much culprit as our leaders. Suffice to see some of the comments above for why ?
    There is no point of singing Mama Ethiopia if we keep locking ourselves in this narrow minded, ethnically, religiously … divided people.
    Actually, the people are the ones that empower African leaders to become a nasty dictators…. Mengistu did not do everything by himself? did he? Meles is not doing it by himself? is he?

  11. Continuation from Guest # 2.
    Those who support as well as those who do not support the dictators are as guilty as the leaders themselves. Because these two groups can not reason out and understand each other and come out with solutions, they are both at each extreme shouting at each other, hence, the dictators take advantage of these gaps to stay in power for as long as possible.

  12. “Why things fall apart?” politics aside things fall apart from natures laws and a close observation of nature when they luck a central holding force .A core that attracts and binds what is in the periphery and outside of the boundary of the core to the core. When and if the core lucks the binding force that it should and fails to be the dynamic force that drives, aspires and inspires as progenitor of the creation and promulgation of yet a better diverse and cohesive entity, when the core itself is a decadent no self renewing and non evolving, as nature had it, things simply decay and fall apart. As it is nature’s general rule that a natural entity to engender a better potent decent in the face of its own demise; how did this aberration grew and seemed to be the norm than what it really is, the aberrant? There are undeniable African phenomenons that are unique and are out of the ordinary looking at the history of Global humanity that could have been the causes of the uniquely African plague of absent this potent dynamic core that I had reiterated earlier. Colonialism, neo colonialism and most of the isms the author had referred to could have been shared experiences among many global compatriots, yet the phenomenon of slavery and the stigma attached to it is one among some of the other unique experiences that had eroded and corroded the core cohesive force. It would be rather naïve and may be even dishonest to think that all those were colonies of the European colonialists went through the same type of treatments during and after their liberations yet it would be rather a weakness of unparalleled proportion to have these as excuses to be the laughing stock of humanity that Africans have become than be double triply stronger and more potent as some have demonstrated it to be possible. The core of the African governance and African institutions are institutions inherited from the colonial masters as most countries that had suffered the colonial yoke of the Europeans. While in some of the colonies the Europeans completely or partially annihilated the indigenous and replaced the indigenous population prior to liberation so as the institutions they formed served them right at other times they simply assimilated enough to make not much of a difference. In Africa the situation was somewhat different for the African was considered or treated the least in the status of human stratification due to the heritage of slavery and thus is suffering the most of that heritage. Due to the same facts assimilation was the least and survived the genocide for reasons I have not explored don’t know why. With this background the African stated that come free of colonialism a military institution that did not arise out of the need of the indigenous socio economic relations, but to keep the economic interests of their colonial masters and the” new free masters of their the free people” The new Free masters got these huge consuming and non productive military and security apparatus at their disposal and this parasitic force that depended on these free masters for its survival which had nothing to do whatsoever with the national security and socio economic relationship of the relative societies, yet suck the overwhelming economic output of the society they so rule. This is the corroded, decadent core that is instrumental in things falling apart. These intertwined forces are marriages formed by the euro masters post colonial and pre colonial Africa for various reasons yet still the blame goes to the Africans themselves and not the Europeans despite their being instrumental in forging the marriages for it would have been the African’s duty to foresee what is coming and seek the remedy and preemptive measures. I fail to see to date where these African military and security institution guarantying and securing the freedom and security of any of its people than the traditional Army of Minilick at Adwa which emerged out of the national need and organized on national know how to defend a truly national security interests. It is suffice it to mention how effectively to what extent Teferi’s Machew army did in securing the enemy and securing the national interest to that of Menilik”s Adwa to show these degenerate force systematic fallacy of formation purpose and use. Africans will forever suffer as long as they are unable to decouple these twin parasitic forces they have carried on their backs apparently for no viable protection of their national security interests rather to the determent of their liberty and their national security because of the hostilities the same forces sowed time and again. It is these marriages of the unlikely forces at the core African states that make things fall apart. No need to mention them again by name the degenerates that are around that the Author had done so well, but there is something that comes to mind that every opposing party and anyone who had to run for office in any of these countries and may be others that ought to consider of vital importance. The transferee of at least the control of the military and the security forces to a non partisan forces constituted of all the opposing forces in the nation on condition that upon the confirmation of the results of the election control be turned over to the new legitimate government if at all it is believed that there really is such a need for such a force in the first place as it had demonstrated to be a negative presence everywhere and anywhere in Africa to date. I am afraid I will be accused of being an anarchist otherwise I see no need for a force that had time and again proved to be an instrument of enslavement the people and empowerment of despots and dictators and fail to see the rational for such a force and constitution of such a force as we see it today . Bagbo is among collogues and not foes as long as the two evils remain the realities of the African and will continue to be despite all the diplomatic and international opinion background noise which he would isolate by simply refusing to hear it as many have done before and as many will do after.
    Ayele Teklemariam

  13. thing fall apart in africa. beacuse you have a agazzi/tigrain leader like meles who bleech himself white & want to be white working for is master white race. that is why.

    long live ethiopian-eritrean cooperation.
    we have to get this people, weyane/tplf thugs one-one

  14. This is broad and open ended question.I am going to limit my self to the issue of Ethiopian politcs.It may be,most people are not interested to labor for something where there is no promise to reap a fruit for their labor.The current politics of Ethiopia seem to eptomize such a mood among the cross section of our socity. May be such powerful forces as despostional maladies,unknowen to us, yet native to our own hearts are at a play here why things continue to go wrong in Africa.
    Remember, we don’t seem to permit situations to go out of hand in our personal life,but boys & gals when it coms to the problem of Ethiopia we really have different standards.Even when I fail to take notice of the nature that is in me, we may all agree that GOD knows about all of it.

  15. isn’t this a clear and classic example of favorism or what poleticians call double standard? ‘cuz that’s what meles did; stealing election. twice! no wonder, african dictators are the master of singing & dancing the western way or else…the rest is history!

    one more to add, i think mr. elias stated in your previous commentary that the goe doesn’t allow military operation in tgray. one of the reason is an obvios one: unlike woyaye who enjoys the companys of thinkers, spoon feeders and bailers, shaebias got to factor out the pros & cons before any actions they takes. otherwise, they’re on thier own.
    unity & peace everywhere!

  16. It is impossible for people to take away four hundred billion dollars annually out of Africa without us falling apart. Before independence it was direct robbery now we have to be the reasons and the agents of robbery. Gold, oil, diamond, cocoa, uranium and other raw materials from Africa provide international markets. That is the only place where the owners, the African people do not get the benefits that come from their respective countries.

    A high school drop out young man from a military base becomes a president, how come we do not expect not things to fall apart. When our good leaders hold offices, most of the time they get murdered or disposed from power. Nigeria, Congo and Ghana are great examples. Since it began in 1880 Scramble for Africa has never stopped. We have to stop it. Take for example Congo the great resources of minerals. Few years ago when Kabila was to become a president; he was mugged by corporate leaders and bribing agents before he touched down in his capital city. Or the first prime minister of Nigeria was taken out of power before he realized his dreams for Africa and Nigeria. He was a well educated man who get educated at Howard and John Hopkins Universities in Washington DC in early fifties.

    African countries are lacking in national securities and uncorrupted leadership.

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