BY EDITOR
17th August 2013
Today, as Africa watches helplessly what is happening in Egypt, it’s quite clear that ‘what works in Western countries often regarded as civilized and democratized’ doesn’t work elsewhere.
Picture this: the death toll in Egypt stands at five hundred and twenty eight bodies within two days, and the number is expected to rise as the army continues with its crackdown, thanks to the billions of dollars in aid from the United States.
A Reuters correspondent counted two hundred and twenty-eight bodies in the mosque, where “medics pushed burning incense sticks into blocks of ice covering the bodies and sprayed air freshener to cover up the stench.” Times reporters saw the bodies of young people who appeared to be in their early teens, and noted that the ice “was melting as household fans played over the makeshift morgue.”
Some of the bodies meant to be kept cold appeared to have been badly burned before dying. When the police and soldiers moved in to break up what had been a peaceful encampment, the tents of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and other opponents of last month’s military coup caught on fire.
On Thursday, this week, President Barack Obama said: “The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians.”
On Friday, the UK’s Guardian reported that Egyptian security forces clashed with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood for a second day on Thursday as muted international condemnation led by Barack Obama failed to quell violence now said to have killed at least 638 people and wounded many thousands more.
Nearly one month since the coup d’état took place, the US is still avoiding the word “coup”; this is because using it would compromise its ability to give Egypt military aid that is tied to regional peace agreements.
The US isn’t alone; the European Union has also kept mum or puzzled by the situation to the extent that EU members severally do not know exactly what to say.
Ironically, even the African Union has also failed to speak aloud against what is happening in Egypt, perhaps for fear of biting the hands that feed it, or simply because of our neo-colonial syndrome.
The truth is very clear: What took place in Egypt is a military coup and we as Africans do not have to be told by the Western countries what to say, at least not the United States.
Egypt is in Africa, though sometime its ‘artificial’ future is fixed and determined in Washington. We call it artificial future because the real future of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptians themselves.
If Africa cannot stop what is happening in Egypt, then it should strongly condemn as well as suspend that country from the African Union. But precious little has been taken by the African Union to address the worsening situation in Egypt.
After five decades of this continent’s independence, and a billion people to boot, we still cannot speak aloud about our political and economic future. We wait for the so-called ‘masters’ to tell us what democracy is all about, what civilization means and above all, what a military coup means to our own development.
The same Western countries led by the United States were the ones that supported the so-called Arab Spring because they claimed it was the people’s power to bring democracy. We saw legally elected leaders such as President Hosni Mubarack being toppled by the so-called people’s power even as the Western countries praised the courage and brevity of the Egyptians.
After the people’s revolution, the pace for democratic election was set. Various parties competed and Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, electing Mohamed Morsi as the country’s new president.
Today, the same people who supported the entire process from the beginning to the end now bless the barrel of the gun to be used against democratically elected president. Still worse, the same masters now want us to believe that ‘sometime you can use military coup’ to remove the democratically elected government, provided there are opposition members who have demonstrated for a week in protest of the regime.
The best way to remove any government that doesn’t perform is through the ballot box. But it seems that there’s an old fashion way we thought had been buried in Africa some years ago now taking place in Egypt -- the military coup.
What the Western countries do not want to admit is that democracy cannot be imported or exported.
As Julius Nyerere once put it, democracy isn’t a bottle of Coca Cola that you can import.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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