Hama Tuma
All the outcry on what is happening in Ivory Coast brings to my mind the 2005 election in Ethiopia and how the incumbent regime lost the general election but imposed martial law, shot dead more than 200 peaceful demonstrators, jailed close to 50,000 and imprisoned more than 120 opposition leaders. There was little said by Washington or London save for a few hardy souls from the EU. The double standard and hypocrisy is nauseating. Ivory Coast sprinkles salt in our still open wound.
I remember it was a coup maker called Guei who jailed the national football team of Ivory Coast because it had failed to win. This was how the story was presented and brought Ivory Coast to mind and to the ridicule that has been the lot of other African countries:
9 August 2010 (by Selay Marius Kouass)
Football promotes the honour of Ivory Coast like most African countries. A win or lose brings pride or frustration to the Head of State. In 2000, at the African Cup of Nations hosted jointly by Ghana and Nigeria, Bonaventure Kalou – older brother to Chelsea’s Salomon Kalou – and his team mates experienced the wrath of the ruling military junta led by late General Robert Guei.
On 24 December 1999, the military junta seized power after a coup. At the Galieni military barrack in central Abidjan, Robert Guei summoned players and the technical staff of the FA and warned them that they were not heading for the tournament to fight for themselves, but for the honour of the whole country like soldiers in a battle.
“Remember that you are soldiers on duty, soldiers on the battlefront. […] You should bring the trophy back home,” said the General in an order that was broadcast on state-run television and radio.
The success of The Elephants could have helped the military junta to gain the trust of the population who had been resenting some of the military leaders following repetitive human rights abuses and a rough governing system.
At the 2000 African Cup of Nations, things went wrong and Ivory Coast were soon eliminated in their group and ranked 16 out of 16 representatives.
On the evening of January 31, 2000, at Novotel Hotel in Accra, Ghana, the players had just eaten and were about to go to bed before their back home flight the following day. That same night, the Ivorian presidential plane landed at Kwame N’krumah International Airport and the Ivorian contingent was ordered to leave the country for Abidjan. Players and staff hurriedly packed up and embarked.
After a one-hour flight, the plane destined for Abidjan – the economic and political hub of the country – landed at the Yamoussoukro Airport, 300 km north of Abidjan. Thereafter, soldiers drove the national football team to Zambakro military barrack, about 30 km from Yamoussoukro.
“You are a disgrace for the whole nation. We paid your bonuses before the beginning of the African Cup of Nations and you showed no commitment to win this cup. You need to be taught some lessons about patriotism in this barrack […] the next time, instead of a jersey, you will wear soldier uniform and you will spend 18 months in a military barrack,” the General threatened.
The event made us chuckle. After all, the Ivoirians were boasting impressive economic growth, an old benevolent despot who built his own bigger replica of the Vatican (at Yamoussoukro, the former president’s birthplace and with a stained glass window painting depicting president Houphet Boigny as one of the three Majis visiting the baby Jesus!) and no big scale civil strife. However, ever since I learnt from one American expert on Africa that jealousy originated in Africa I had been stubbornly insisting that that Ivoirians are jealous of the Horn of Africa and would imitate us sooner than later. Jealousy having originated in Africa, if we believe the white expert, it has proved to be deadly and, as they accuse us often, cannibalistic. It eats us up, good or bad the reason. The war torn Horn of Africa has been viewed with envy by many Africans, especially by the attention seeking tyrants. Open any newspaper any morning and you will see Somalia being among the top news, South Sudan and Darfur being the target of crises of protest this way or that, Ethiopia hogging the pages with massacres or famines (or even cooked up news of economic growth despite the starvation of at least 14 million people) and be an Ivorian and suffer this humiliation. It did not take long for the Ivoirians to have their own civil war, to have a war engendering crisis on identity (who is Ivoirian? Who is Burkinable?), and to engage in civil war. Of course not being experts on the matter they made peace in a short period but the virus was already in their blood. Identity crisis is a bug of devastating results. Somalis who imagine they are Afghans, Ethiopians who think they are foreigners (some of them just because they prefer spaghetti to the local staple called Injera), South Sudanese who refuse to be Arabs, a Djibouti tyrant who has concluded half the people in the country are his enemies, etc…), a deadly cocktail promising eternal conflict. Who would not be jealous? Many people fear to say the obvious: so called peace, especially in the absence of democracy, gets to be boring. The old tyrant of Ivory Coast was dull and predictable, an ego maniac but not as repressive and interesting as an Amin, a Mengistu, or an Nguema. Second rate really.
Rigging an election is not new. The Ethiopian tyrant has even become nostalgic and re imposed the defunct one party system that was favored by Sekou Toure amongst others but Guinea has now passed through a troubled election and put in place a new president. Ethiopia, Kenya, etc all have had their fake elections and subsequent murders. Kenya has even given a chance to the so called International Court to once again rile against Africa (forget Western officials who should be sought for war crimes and genocide). Argentina has put on trial and condemned the junta leaders who were responsible for the murder of some 30,000 people while the regime in Addis Abeba is going to release criminals who waged terror on the people and liquidated more than 250,000 citizens. Bizarre? The least we can say. Gbagbo is just trying to adapt, to put to rest his genuine African jealousy as concerns the Horn of Africa. What is so wrong with that? Anyways, Ivory Coast promises more trouble and bloodshed as does South Sudan in my opinion. Darfur is at war, the Ogaden is burning, Djibouti is convulsed by armed struggle of the FRUD. Somalia’s hardliners have merged and are promising more bloodshed—so what else is new? The West is crying foul at Laurent Gbagbo. It did not do so with Meles Zenawi. Double standards? Yes. Meles Zenawi is a puppet who takes any order emanating from Washington. Consider his disastrous invasion of Somalia. That is why he is backed by the World Bank, the IMF and the West in general. Gbagbo has done well to be jealous but if he wants to be the Meles Zenawi of the West in that part of Africa he has to copy the Ethiopian tyrant. Not to let Alassane Ouattara play the part like Alpha Conde is doing in Guinea. By itself, jealousy is not enough. It takes a serious effort to destroy one’s country with the help of the Westerners. I am not sure Gbagbo has learnt the lesson.
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