African immigrants in Masrata wait to be evacuated back home


pastures have been brutalised, dehumanised and tortured; some killed while the lucky ones got deported. If Al Gathafi had shown some iota of mercy to these Africans who sneaked into Libya, maybe we would not have read [too] much [hidden] meaning into this idea being touted by him.” Ghana and Nigeria have contributed a lot, historically, to the


officials to maltreat the citizens of Ghana and Nigeria explains why protests against NATO’s bombing of Libya have been rather muted in the rest of Africa.”


Apart from the hackles he sometimes raised at the official


level in other African countries, Al Gathafi also seemed not to care when organs of the Libyan state maltreated Africans who had migrated to Libya to seek employment. On 17 December 2004, the Ghana Daily Graphic reported that 132 Ghanaians had been expelled from Libya and that altogether, a total of 6,027 Ghanaians had been “precipitately deported from Libya”. The paper said that many of the deportees “were flown out on cargo planes without any seats … and had been coming in at regular intervals of between two weeks and one month”. The paper continued: “Some of the deportees alleged that


the conditions at the camp [in Libya, where they were detained before being deported] had been dehumanising, since there were no sleeping places. ‘There were only canopies stretched across a vast area of land and we were not fed regularly. We had to stay without water for over a day or two’, the deportees said, adding that there was overcrowding at the camp.” Over in Nigeria, too, the media had a bone to pick with Al


Gathafi over how Libya treated Nigerian citizens on its soil. An article in the influential Lagos Guardian, on 13 February 2009, noted: “One wonders about this sudden enthusiasm [for a United


States of Africa] which has overtaken Al Gathafi, given the fact that his government has been involved in brutality against Africans from other countries who found themselves legally or illegally in Libya. A lot of Nigerians and other Africans in search of greener


“That Al Gathafi could allow his


idea of “African unity”, and that Al Gathafi could allow his officials to maltreat the citizens of the two nations in the way described by two of the leading papers in those countries, explains the reason why protests against NATO’s bombing of Libya have been rather muted in the rest of Africa. The irony behind all this confusion is that our current leaders


do not know their history. If they did, the idea that after colonisa- tion, Arabs and black Africans would ever be at loggerheads over colour issues would appear to them ridiculous. For whereas the slave trade did pit Arabs against Africans in some instances, once both Arabs and Africans were colonised by Europeans, the two became united in helping those less fortunate than themselves to shake off the colonial yoke. The benchmark was set in April 1958 when Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, although prime minister of a country that had only been independent for one year, called a “Conference of Independent African States” in Accra to plan how to unite Africa in economic and political action, and to plot how to secure the independence of the African countries still under colonial rule. The countries that attended were Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Sudan and Ghana. And the theme of the conference was “The Sahara unites us!” In line with the theme, it was decided at this conference to


break down all the barriers – physical and psychological – that colonialism had erected between African countries. And it was also decided that the independent African states would pool their resources, both in money and in expertise, to hasten the end of colonialism in Africa. True to their word, they held another con- ference in Accra eight months later, to confer with their brothers who were still under the colonial yoke. That conference was the “All-African People’s Conference”. It was at this conference that African liberation movements


from all corners of our continent, got together for the first time and planned the total liberation of Africa. Within two years of that conference, more than two-thirds of the countries that were under colonial rule had been freed to become full members of the United Nations. And in 1963, all the liberated African nations formed the first-ever continental organisation – the OAU (now the AU). So what is this nonsense of Arabs killing Africans (or blacks) in Libya in 2011 – a good 53 years since Africans began to get together? It is a shame.


New African | October 2011 | 89


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