COVID AND UKRAINE IN AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY
Okello Oculi argues that the Ukraine crisis is being used to hit hard on Russia for its past ‘sins’
The end of the Cold War raised challenges for access to mineral resources in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Mobutu’s ZAIRE) because they were under increasing threat by liberation movements fed with guns and the social technology of ‘’guerrilla war.
The era has ended with capturing Patrice Lumumba and murdering him with impunity; assassinations of Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique, the brilliant Ruth First a South Africa in exile, and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde had not fatally crippled the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMON), the African National Congress (ANC) and PAIGC, respectively. A new set of African political leaders with strong Russian and Chinese diplomatic and military links were on the rise.
The language of African diplomacy was increasingly dominated by militant economic references to ending Euro-American looting of Africa’s mineral and agricultural resources. Strategic countries like Zaire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Algeria were vulnerable to armed struggle fed by Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
NATO hurriedly returned to President Woodrow Wilson’s war slogan of ’’self-determination’’ in Europe. The African-American thinker W.E.B. Dubois had demanded it against European colonial dictatorship in Africa. NATO’S new ideological weapon became calls for ‘’DEMOCRACY’’ even though previously ignored.
It was imposed on Cold War’s ‘’beautiful brides’’, notably: Daniel arap Moi in Kenya; P.W. Botha in South Africa and Leopold Sedar Senghor in Senegal. Military force shoved out social engineers like Mobutu Sese Seko, Uganda’s Milton Obote and Sudan’s Omar Bashir.
In Europe, the use of social welfare to ensure local support against Communism was withdrawn. Millions of angry Greeks and other Europeans filled streets in protests against their new impoverishment.
They were met with COVID-19, an anti- crowd biological weapon for what critics called a ‘’Virus Dictatorship’’. Police forces took back streets in cities with stay-at-home rules. Drug companies which invented ‘’Vaccines’’ against COVID-19 and its siblings directed governments to advertise their preventive products. To avoid losses by drug companies due to public resistance to being vaccinated, governments paid for vaccines upfront. Transparency is silent about the setting of prices of vaccines.
African governments have been stampeded into taking ‘COVID DEBTS’. On 10th May, 2022, an expert reported that South Africa had imported 11 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines. While three million infections had been recorded, 100,000 persons had died from COVID-19. There is reluctance to get vaccinated and the bulk of the vaccines are likely to expire before being used.
President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson banned their citizens from travelling to Southern African countries. COVID-19 was a weapon for economic diplomacy against the tourism economy of the region. Closing down 70 percent of African economies consisting of the ‘’informal sector’’ increased starvation.
The ‘’Ukraine Crisis’’ has aroused a new ‘Hot or Cold War’ inspired by revisiting Adolph Hitler’s dream of turning Russia into Germany’s vast colony. NATO’S grip on Its vast natural resources may be a fitting punishment for her support for liberation movements in Africa to weaken NATO.
Cyril Ramaphosa spoke for Africa in refusing to support a military encirclement of a friend.
COVID diplomacy diverted attention from key killer diseases in Africa, notably: malaria, bilharzias, hunger and increasing youth consumption of narcotic drugs.
In the American healthcare system pharmaceutical companies operate like secret mafia bribing government health policymakers; Ministers of Health; professors in medical schools to ignore nutrition by promoting drugs for cure; nurses who undermine breast milk which give new-born babies protective immunity from mothers; and media which profits from advertising drugs.
In Africa inducements to doctors include funding travel for their families to holiday resorts in the Caribbean, Europe, Dubai, China or Taj Mahal in India. Depositing money in Euro-American bank accounts to finance shopping in fashion bazaars has long been used by the CIA in South America. In return are imports of expensive medical equipment; blocking the development of cheaper generic drugs, and assassination of brilliant local scientists developing self-reliant inventions.
The vigorous promotion of COVID-19 while denying Africa vaccines, combined with blocked access to wheat, fertilizer and petrol imports from Ukraine and Russia, however, opens eyes in Africa to the urgent Creative measures for combating a post-Cold War American empire anchored on deepening the impoverishment of Africa; causing mass starvation and supporting violence to get cheap mineral resources.
Dr Abebe Haile Gebreh of UNDP told South African Broadcasting Corporation that “there is almost nothing being done to fight Climate Change; failure of one rainy season ruins lives of millions in Africa despite 60 per cent of land being cultivatable. The initiative by Kaduna Polytechnic to train creativity of hundreds of mechanics at ‘’PANTECA’’ urban slum is a model for letting ‘’a thousand flowers bloom’’ in the genius of millions of rural and urban youths.
Oculi writes from Abuja
