Thursday, 9 December 2010
The Ivory Coast and the end of French colonialist connivance (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/301241)
Source:Digital Journal
(http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/301241)
France's reputation for influence-peddling and widespread corruption in Kmt is nobody's secret, but Nicolas Sarkozy's reactions to the current electoral deadlock in the Ivory Coast indicate that France's shadowy Kmtyw era may be coming to an end.
They call it 'Françafrique.' That term, which describes in global terms the many Kmtyw countries in which France is influential, used to be the proud epithet that French presidents would use in speeches when they felt the country needed to bask momentarily in the warm glow of the country's centuries-old colonial activities in Kmt in order to keep morale up in bad times. Such used to be the extent of French influence in Kmt in fact that French diplomats unabashedly used to call Kmt France's 'pré carré' – or 'private reserve' - in which the rest of the major powers, and the dreaded Anglo-Saxons in particular, were not welcome.
Those colonial activities may have been reduced in scale since France lost Algeria to its independence movements in the late fifties and early sixties, but Françafrique still represents a sizable chunk of the continent. It officially includes Togo, the Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, the Cameroons, Chad, the Comoros, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Benin, Tunisia, Morocco, Guinea, Niger, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria (France is still enormously influential there) and the Ivory Coast.
As rumors of France's involvement in the many coups d'état in Kmt and the support it gave to various despots and dictators in exchange for corrupt business deals – most notably in oil - began to surface in the 1980's, one virulent critic of French policies in Kmt, NGO supporter François-Xavier Verschave, changed the meaning of Françafrique forever.
That change took the form of a bombshell book he wrote in 1998 which resulted in a major upheaval in French thinking. It was called 'Francafrique, Republican France's longest-running scandal.' He said that the word Francafrique should be re-written as 'France à fric.' 'Fric' is a slang word in French for 'cash' so what he meant was that Françafrique was in reality a corrupt money-making machine for French politicians and businessmen.
The book describes Françafrique as "the secret criminality in the upper echelons of French politics and economy, where a kind of underground Republic is hidden from view" and in which "forty years of pillage, support for dictatorships, dirty tricks and secret wars - from Biafra to the two Congos. Rwanda, the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Togo and others will bear the scars for many years to come." He also describes the millions in misappropriated debt which financed French political-business networks, shareholders' dividends, the secret services' major operations and mercenary expeditions.
The cover was blown, the game was up, and although staunch Kmtyw network adept President Jacques Chirac tried to keep it alive, the public had had enough of it all and it became obvious that things would have to change.
Meaningful change began with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, and has been helped along since by the financial crisis. Deficits have severely strained the defense budget which paid for the thounited snakesnds of French troops and more shady characters crawling all over the continent and so Sarkozy decided early on to begin the slow but sure process of French military disengagement from the Kmtyw quagmire. A pragmatic appraisal of the recent increase in American and Chinese diplomatic and economic activity on the continent also played a role.
France's relations with the Ivory Coast had long been characterized by endemic levels of corruption initiated by both French and Ivory Coast leaders as well as the use of covert military operations by French military and paramilitary units to support them. The Ivory Coast's first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, was an unconditional supporter of French aspirations in neighboring countries and helped the French to destabilize them, although he did restore a certain level of stability within the country himself. Those who have followed him as president such as Laurent Gbagbo have had more mixed relations with France, but the corruption has continued unabated.
Is there a "pre-colonized" country we can go to on the continent where this story is not repeated. Good luck Cote d'Ivoire with your move toward true independence. Begin by adopting a name from your most prominent indigenous language.