Bush's Visit To Africa Is A Bad Idea

Someone in the White House has proved to be as incompetent as the writer of Nicolas Sarkozy’s disastrous speech of July last year. He or she advised Bush to redeem his image by visiting Africa, a continent believed by many Euro-Americans to be politically insignificant but powerfully cathartic. Instead, the US president has confirmed how impotent and transparent the United States has become.

Unfortunately for Bush, his visit to the continent has been preceded by the humiliating visits of Hollywood stars and the statements issued with confident ignorance by incompetent Euro-American diplomats in the continent. The botched attempt of the French charity organization Zoe’s Arch to traffic 103 children from Chad has left Africans reeling from humiliation and the brutal recognition that Western aid and charity leave more wounds that they proclaim to heal. The insanity – otherwise dubbed “charity” – displayed by Bono, Madonna and Angelina Jolie has made us acutely aware of the mercy industrial complex, which is the modern mutation of Christianity, education and anthropology that seeks to prepare African hearts and minds for colonialism under the guise of “helping” Africa.

Whoever advises President Bush about his African policy should have informed him that the terrain of Africa has changed. Within the last few years, increasing numbers of Africans have accepted that nothing, but a mother’s love, comes for free. In the past week, France has done us the great favor of confirming what we always suspected: that Africans pay a huge moral, economic and human cost for Western “charity” and “humanitarianism.” As the website dabio.net has noted, France gave military support to Chadian dictator Idriss Deby in exchange for presidential pardon for the six criminals of Zoe’s Arch that attempted to baptize slavery as charity, but at the cost of thousands of Chadian lives and of the displacement of thousand others. With “charity” and “humanitarism” having suffered a poor reputation in recent months, the naivety of the White House in Africa’s gullibility is rather audacious.

Moreover, with the White House having informed us a year in advance of its plans to send military forces – otherwise known as AFRICOM – to the continent, we are savvy enough to know that Bush’s visit to five African countries is not about aid or AIDS but about setting up military bases in the continent. With good reason, we therefore conclude that Bush’s trip does not flow from the goodness of his heart but from his desire to make political capital and protect his business interests. The American president is not different from our Kenyan MPs, for there is no way he would leave the White House without having ascertained that he and his business cronies – many of whom are behind AFRICOM – have secured for themselves a hefty retirement package. With the 8-year debacle of his presidency coming to an end, he needs to redeem his image as a war-monger by visiting the continent that Euro-America considers the very embodiment of war.

Contrary to Sarkozy who deceived himself that Africa is weakened by being stuck in the past, Africa is strong because we know that our enemies of the past do not miraculously change into angels of the present. That is why we know that Condi Rice’s mission in Kenya  is not to find a peaceful solution to Kenya’s crisis, but to determine which of the two main protagonists – Kibaki or Odinga – would be more favorable to US pursuing its agenda in Africa.

If the experience of Congo-Brazzaville is anything to go by, we can predict that “Condi” Rice – and how on earth did an accomplished black American woman get to be referred to in such a familiar manner on international television? – bears the same message to both of the Kenyan politicians, which is that the US supports its interlocutor and not the interlocutor’s adversary. The goal would be to keep each side naively confident in US support for its political goals while remaining blind to the reality that the US would be more favorable to endurance of Kenya’s political stalemate, since an unstable country will distract the ordinary Kenyan’s attention from the pursuit of US military and cultural interests in their country. This outcome would mirror the events of the civil war of the 1990’s in Congo-Brazzaville, during which the French government lent financial and military support to both warring sides so that the Elf petroleum company could continue to siphon the country’s petroleum resources while the citizens were preoccupied with saving their lives threatened and even claimed by militias. The profit that Euro-America continues to derive from Africa’s instability and disunity explains why Rice is more interested in Kenya reaching a “power-sharing” agreement rather than in Kenyans writing a new constitution that requires politicians to form coalitions over the table rather than in secret as they have been doing over the last forty odd years.

Perhaps the advisors in the White House should do more research on how much Africans know about the US and Europe rather than on whether Africa is courting China. For while Americans may believe that their country is sophisticated enough to worry about ties with China or access to our petrol, we Africans know that in reality, the United States is really engaged in a white-supremacist and ritualistic battle to keep Africa poor and weak. For without Africa’s misery, how would humanitarians and churches prove that they are morally superior and holy – and earn their living off it? Without chaotic African states, how would Euro-America continue to convince its lethargic citizens to remain content with their moral stagnation in the fear that their lives could be worse, like those of Africans? How else could Euro-American leaders pacify their citizens on the horror of slavery, unless they portray Africa as a continent so hopeless, that enduring slavery and racism is the next step on the road to freedom? Without Angelina Jolie inserting herself in the midst of a crowd of black African men, how would Americans continue to dismiss the reality that wealth, fame and technological achievements on their own are not morally satisfying?

The White House staff would be well advised to know that for 500 years, we Africans have known that Euro-America needs a weak and chaotic Africa to make sense of itself. France abandoned the humanity about which it has sang itself hoarse and participated in the genocide of Tutsis because it is pathologically steeped in the illusion that 100% of Africans in former Belgian and French colonies speak French, although the reality is that Africans still speak their languages and that the actual French speakers are roughly 20% at best. Similarly, the main worry of Britain and the United States about Kenya has little to do with concern for our lives but more to do with maintaining the illusion that there was a time the sun altered its age-old routine out of awe for the British empire. If Kenya collapses, the myth of capitalism and Western democracy as the pillars of success of any nation would be forced to reckon with a premature burial in Africa.

I say premature, because the death of capitalism and Western democracy is inevitable. Bush, McCain and Obama may maintain the system on life support, but like all other human endeavors, this system must meet its tragic end. We may not live to see it, but the convulsions experienced in African states are the last kicks of the dying horse of Western capitalism and democracy.

But maybe the anonymous White House advisors that I am deriding are actually more cunning than I give them credit for. In reality, Bush may be in Africa not to promote US military and economic interests as many observers are flattered to believe. He may be in Africa to show his heavenly white face like a magic wand to soothe African hearts that still lack the courage to recognize the brutal reality that stares them in the face. So the real battle is for the African mind and soul.

But if we are to give credit where credit is due, we would accept that Euro-America knows where the money in Africa really is: in the African mind. As long as Africans believe the Euro-America is the paragon of good governance, justice and civilization, they will buy rickety and fuel-guzzling Land Rovers, import Euro-American films and music and sell its resources to Western companies for a pittance, while intellectuals will stubbornly tout Western democracy as antidotes to corruption, mercenaries and misrule despite the abundant evidence to the contrary provided by racism, slavery, as well as US and British corruption scandals. With our minds latched onto the West, we would believe that AFRICOM is made up of the US military funded and watched by American taxpayers, when in reality, the force is largely composed of mercenaries, otherwise dubbed security companies, who have corruptly obtained lucrative contracts from the US government. And we would continue to read distressing articles such as those that appeared in Kenya’s Sunday Nation of February 17, 2008, in which writers proposed that Britain is a “respected” country that should intervene in Kenya or that Kenya may be better off as a colony because it would enjoy the status of Australia and Canada that still retain Elizabeth II as the Head of State.  

So maybe Bush’s visit to Africa is a good idea when one considers the short-term interests. But like many other Africans, and even some Americans, I am convinced that history will not suddenly redeem George W. Bush and the United States from its deserved reputation as the godfather of the mercy industrial complex that mercilessly exploits Africa. Bush’s staff may therefore do well to heed the words of Bob Marley: “you may fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Then they would realize that Africans see the light, and we’re standing up for our rights.