Reflections on sunday: Africans, be independent or forever perish!

While we’re grieving over our departed, there is no reason for Ivoirians to grieve over the fall of their former president, Laurent Gbagbo. His supporters should’ve seen it coming and advised him to quietly concede defeat at the elections. Then they wouldn’t have had to face the prospect of watching their dear leader rot away in prison for God-knows how long – maybe donkey years! What a retirement package!Of course, to the majority of Ivoirians it is good riddance. After all, this is a man they’d rejected at the polls who nonetheless insisted on continuing to render his unsolicited service. That he held on tenuously at the cost of many lives is enough reason for him to be severely punished.If he could not give himself the honour of showing that he was not ready to overstay his welcome, why should he deserve any honour from citizens who showed him they’d had enough of him? Still, both camps needed to be cautious. Allassan Ouattara as president may be good for Ivoirians but a man who enjoys close ties with the French is cause for worry. In Rwanda we have never had any confidence in a solution that is not home-grown. Ouattara supporters are quick to deny that the French army captured Gbagbo and handed him to them but everything points to that as a strong possibility. And I am told there is a tunnel that connects the French embassy to the Ivoirian presidential residence. If that is true, what is the significance of a sovereign country having its state-house connected to a foreign embassy? Does it mean that if Gbagbo had been on good terms with French authorities he’d have run to that embassy once given the slightest heat by his people? Comical as this bizarre state of affairs may sound, we here in Rwanda know that to be very likely in Francophone countries. Rwanda itself has ever been such a surrogate appendage of France. Habyarimana’s life in the air was entrusted with the French! The French president was such a fond father to Habyarimana that he had offered him a toy in the form of a presidential jet, with French pilots to ‘wheelbarrow’ him around. Word reaching me then was that when he showed signs of buckling under the heat of RPA (Rwandese Patriotic Army) pressure, the French did him in. On being approached by the ‘network’ (a group of relatives of Habyarimana’s wife and their associates) to get rid of Habyarimana, the French responded: “In a jiffy!” And with that, they hired their surviving ‘tool of convenience’ who came and blew the jet out of the skies faster than it takes to utter “Voilà!” ‘Les outils de convenance’ (tools of convenience) were a group of French mercenaries that the French government used to turn to whenever it wanted to depose an African leader or impose a new one. The mercenaries included shady characters like Jean-François Allard, Benoît de Boigne, Pierre Cuillier-Perron, Gérard d’Athée, Bob Denard, Dominique Borella and Captaine Paul Barril. All have passed on and only Baril still lives, so the French hired him to come and use the missiles that the then Rwandan army could not use. Barril was seen transiting through Burundi and crossing into Rwanda. He was then transported in an army vehicle to Kanombe barracks and the next thing everyone saw was a load of debris falling from the sky. In fact (tsst, tsst…!), it was whispered that among the debris items found hanging on a branch were Habyarimana’s small item of a lower undergarment and the twin ‘you-know-whats’ it was supposed to cover! So, Ivoirians, that will be your lot for as long as you choose to be an accessory of the French. For installing your president, the French will always hold him at ransom. And as long as he is hostage of the French, your president will take your country in the direction that the French choose. Suppose Ouattara ‘grows horns’ and decides he is going to send the French soldiers packing. From the embassy, a few French soldiers will amble through that tunnel and pluck him from the furthest recess of the ‘presidential bunker’ in State House! A puppet will be sought out and installed without you being the wiser, let alone the world! And as long as you are an appendage of the French, you will continue to cultivate cocoa for the French markets and nothing else for your citizens. So, you will watch as a few fat cats grow fatter as they feed on the few export earnings that the cocoa brings in. The earnings will not have been much either, having been determined by the French, and there’ll be little to trickle down. Talk about a ‘cycle of poverty’! In the end, your new president will be as good as the success of his resistance against French influence. Rwanda provides an excellent lesson to anyone who wants to know the value of cutting an umbilical cord with the French. Before it succeeded, it was mired in the balderdash of disease, hunger and abject poverty. If Gbagabo was good for anything, it was that he tried to fight this French influence. ingina2@yahoo.co.uk