IN part one we pointed out how the election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency generated some frenzied excitement in Africa which, with hindsight, is now turning out to have been misplaced.
The capitalist gods who control and run the US behind the scenes have been more shrewd and cynical than all of us.
These gods identified and supported Obama for the presidency in the full knowledge that he would not change the social and economic structures of the US for the benefit of those who have always been marginalised in the US system itself, the so-called ‘people of colour’!
They calculated the Obama presidency was a first class public relations coup bound to perform wonders in promoting US imperialism abroad!
It appeared the moral injustices perpetrated on blacks by the US for centuries were cleansed overnight.
The ascendancy of Obama to the topmost position of US politics appeared like a miracle, a masterstroke of the kind which, in terms of public relations, was aimed at wiping off the shame associated with five centuries of African enslavement and discrimination in the US!
It turns out that the sincere-looking black face of Obama, has done more damage in Africa for the US and its Western-allies than the George Bushes.
And below is how and why!
Because of Obama, the US found it easy to cajole and persuade both South Africa and Nigeria to support NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 and that intervention marks a watershed in the new scramble for Africa by the West that is already underway.
The US and its allies murdered Muammar Gaddafi, toppled his government and started looting Libyan oil 24 hours, seven days a week non-stop! Libya’s resource nationalism which the West had found hard to crack all along died with Gaddafi!
It is also evident that the political and social chaos which engulfs Libya today is a Western sponsored kind of madness, but there is a method to it which reads as follows: while the Libyan nation is distracted by its own fratricidal wars, the looting goes on unchecked since there is no strong central government to speak of.
The same reasons and strategies were used in Iraq by the US and its allies in order to go on accessing its crude oil for a song while the Shiites and the Sunnis remain at each other’s throats!
Therefore, the consequences of the fall of Libya were well calculated and are diabolical to the future of Africa in many ways.
Apart from the looting narrative of the West cited above, there is the fact that almost the whole of North Africa and some parts of West Africa are now engulfed in some chronic instability in one way or other.
Why one may ask?
The collapse of the Libyan state made it possible for various factions, religious and political, racial and/or cultural to loot vast quantities of arms from Libyan armouries.
The result of all this is the proliferation of arms and the exacerbation of the instability and chaos already prevailing in Mali, the Central African Republic, and currently threatening Chad, Niger, Tunisia, Algeria and the north eastern parts of Nigeria itself!
In turn, the prevailing instability itself is relied upon by the US and its allies to justify their military presence in Africa under the pretext of assisting affected countries.
Already the French have exploited such instability to legitimise their military presence in Mali and the Central African Republic while the Americans have not wasted time in exploiting the Boko Haram menace in Nigeria to insert their military intelligence operatives not only in Nigeria of all places but all over West Africa!
In other words, the re-colonisation of Africa which is already underway has been given impetus by the collapse of the Libyan state.
The instability that has arisen in parts of North and West Africa constitute ideal conditions for the US-led West which has vast experience fishing in troubled waters!
Parallel to the Western destabilisation of Africa is the gradual step by step approach to the re-location of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) on African soil so as to consolidate the return of permanent Western military presence on our continent!
And it is no accident that the name of special military divisions of the US currently stationed in Germany, (the same Germany which played host to the infamous 1884 Berlin Conference) and now scheduled to be re-located and stationed in Africa, preferably with African consent, is deliberately designed to echo and blend with the name of our beloved continent so as to camouflage its foreign character and objectives!
It is in light of the context outlined above that we need to view the recent Africa-US Summit during which Obama waxed lyrical about equal partnership between Africa and the US!
How can there be equal partnership when the US is fully determined to station its military on our African soil under the pretext of countering the so called Chinese presence in Africa?
How can there be equal partnership when Obama and his Western allies destroyed Libya, and then be able and willing to fund substantially the establishment of an Independent African Bank, an African Monetary Fund, an African Rapid Reaction Force?
It is critical that African people and their leaders remain vigilant, especially during the next two years during which Obama will try hard to reclaim the rest of Africa before he steps down!
Notwithstanding the platitudes and colourful rhetoric Obama welcomed African leaders at the Whitehouse recently, he remains a salesman of US imperialism, a man with no ideas of his own, seemingly powerful but powerless to change anything.
He remains a Trojan horse whose seductive style and colour is meant to woo our continent back into the imperial fold of the West!
The Western-driven re-colonisation project in Africa is already underway; where persuasion, seductive promises and high level deceptions fail to secure good results for the US, they use brute force.
And the fate of Libya says it all!