Ivory Coast, where a general strike has been called to force incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo to cede power. Gbagbo has refused to step aside following the disputed presidential election last month, which he claims was rigged.
Professor Horace Campbell talking:
we have a situation where the person who has lost the election, Laurent Gbagbo, is refusing to step down. And in the process of refusing to step down, he and those around him, they are invoking all forms of xenophobia and hostility to people from the north in order to divide the country. Thankfully, the days when Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were places that could provide the mercenaries so that Gbagbo could develop war, thankfully, we are in the state of transition in Sierra Leone, in Liberia and Guinea so that the possibility for war will be dependent on the extent to which Gbagbo can get support from persons like Lanny Davis in the United States and the bankers and financial elements within the country that will finance his army.
Lanny Davis was a spokesperson for those who supported the coup in Honduras. It’s the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party politics. And he has been an adviser to Bill Clinton, and he remains close to the Clintons. Lanny Davis has a lobbying firm. Right now he’s employed by one of the worst dictators in Africa, the Nguema clique, that has ruled Equatorial Guinea for 30 years. This is a government that has vast wealth from oil companies, whose children own mansions in California, where banks in Washington, D.C. holds money that should be used for water supplies and health for the people of Equatorial Guinea. Now, this government, Equatorial Guinea, employed Lanny Davis, who’s a lobbyist in Washington, to present an image of these dictators in Equatorial Guinea that could be sold to the corporate elements in the United States of America.
When the coup took place in Honduras, Lanny Davis also represented the militarist elements there. It is this track record that has endeared him to the Gbagbo forces, the Gbagbo forces whose elements of millions of dollars have also used the money that should be used for the people of Ivory Coast to employ Lanny Davis. And what we should see is Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton should distance themselves from such a person, because the United States cannot in one breath say that they’re supporting transparency and accountability—that’s the words that have been used by Lanny Davis—in Africa, while they are allied with persons such as this who support dictators in Africa.
Gbagbo is trying to exploit differences between the State Department and the White House. The President of the United States called Laurent Gbagbo to urge him to step down, and he was so arrogant that he refused to take the telephone call of President Barack Obama. And he is arrogant enough to believe that he can whip up the kind of xenophobia to divide the people of the Ivory Coast to say that Alassane Ouattara is not an Ivorian, that Alassane Ouattara is from the north, he’s a Muslim, and he is using all kinds of divisiveness that we have seen in that country, so that the people of the north, the people who are of Islamic background, are being presented as non-Ivorians. I have no—I have no beef for Alassane Ouattara, but the point is, the people voted for him, and the election’s results should be observed.
African Union is taking a very clear position that Ouattara won the election. The African Union is taking a very clear position that they will use force. And the fact that the meeting of ECOWAS that took place two days ago would send a very clear signal so that there could be no manipulation within West Africa itself. we have to keep up our education to the citizens so that people like Lanny Davis and the State Department and the U.S. Africa Command cannot use incidents such as what is happening in the Ivory Coast to represent Africa as backward and divisive and barbarian.
The Ivory Coast was a jewel in the crown of French colonialism. The Ivory Coast, by its very name, was a place where colonial plunder took ivory and gold. And the Ivory Coast is located in West Africa, bordered by Liberia, bordered by Sierra Leone, and by Ghana. When Ivory Coast became independent in 1960, the president of Ivory Coast was Houphouët-Boigny. Houphouët-Boigny used the Ivory Coast as a base for counterrevolution in Africa. All of the forces of French colonialism, all of the forces of French exploitation, all of the forces of French militarism converged on the Ivory Coast. And for 30 or more years, the Ivory Coast was the base for supporting apartheid in South Africa. It was a base for supporting Jonas Savimbi. Jonas Savimbi was very close to the leader, Houphouët-Boigny. they were also complicit in the plot to assassinate Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso.
Now, the fact is, because of the intensification of the investment in the Ivory Coast in that period, in the 50-year period, millions of Africans went to work on banana and cocoa plantations, so that there were a number of people, persons from Burkina Faso, persons from Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana, who worked in that country. So the country has 20 million persons. There are 10 or a million more persons from north of the country whose ancestors came as migrant workers. Now, in the spirit of pan-Africanism, one should recognize that the borders in the Ivory Coast were artificially created at the Conference of Berlin.
Well, in 1993, after Houphouët-Boigny passed away, Alassane Ouattara was the prime minister. They wrote a Supreme Court judgment to say that those who are from the north were not Ivorian citizens, and Alassane Ouattara, whose mother supposedly was born in the Burkina Faso, could not become a candidate for the presidency. Now, between 1999 and 2000, Gbagbo himself ran in an elections, and when he won the elections, the general who was the head of the army said that Gbagbo could not come to power. Gbagbo himself organized so that he could come to power, and there was a civil war in the country between 2000 and 2004, which, again, brought about the intervention of South Africa and the African Union. In that invention, the African Union worked to overturn that judgment of the Supreme Court that said that persons from the north could not be citizens.
And this idea is a sentiment that is whipped up in the country called Ivority. Ivority is a chauvinistic notion. It is an anti-pan-African notion. It’s a notion that says only those who are Christian from the southern area of the country can be citizens. Now, this is not something that is carried by the majority of the citizens of the Ivory Coast; this is an idea that is whipped up by the elements of the Ivorian capitalist class. These are Ivorians who have made millions of dollars out of cocoa plantation, out of exploiting the workers in the Ivory Coast.
14,000 people fleeing the Ivory Coast, as the president, after an election, has refused to step down. It’s believed several hundred people have been killed, disappeared.
Discussion with Professor Horace Campbell.
Professor Horace Campbell is professor of political science and African [American] studies at Syracuse University
– from democracynow.org