AFRICAN LEADERS AGAIN? By: Abena Osegu Boateng

Read Time: 2 minutes

By: Abena Osegu Boateng

African leaders never fail to amuse and to annoy. Not one of them can be said to have the slightest interest in the preservation of the dignity of their people. They are all lying prostrate before the very forces which have been responsible for our underdevelopment and racist abuse.

Who could have imagined that these leaders would grant observer status to Israel at the African Union? What is the purpose of this move and how does this promote the interest of African people?

I have not been able to rap my head around the import of this move because it is impossible to understand why Israel of all countries should be given a seat at a forum created to find solutions to the problems of the African people.

Have those African leaders so soon forgotten that Israel was one of the foremost collaborators of the apartheid regime in South Africa and did all it could to subvert the national liberation movement in Africa? Have they so soon forgotten the testimony of Nelson Mandela who spoke eloquently about the assistance that the African National Congress (ANC) received from the Palestinian people in the heroic effort to defeat apartheid?

In any case what is the difference between the apartheid regime which once ruled South Africa and Israel, when they both promulgated laws to enforce so called separate development based on ethnicity?

The decision of African leaders to grant observer status to Israel, stinks to the high heavens not only because it is a betrayal of our allies in the national liberation struggle but also because it shows in clear relief that these leaders have completely lost their sense of justice.

They have abandoned the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israeli jails to their fate and they have refused to sympathize with the hundreds of Palestinian families who have been thrown out of their homes to make way for the construction of illegal Jewish settlements.

By this act of betrayal, African leaders have proclaimed that they stand with the oppressor who has denied hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees, their right to return to their homeland and they have endorsed the aggressive expansionism of the Zionist state.

These spineless African leaders have betrayed the people of Palestine just like they have betrayed their own people struggling for improved access to social services and against poverty and the peoples of Africa have a duty to punish their leaders for this betrayal. We have to organize as never before to get rid of these leaders who cannot see beyond their stomachs and appear determined to destroy what others built with their brains with their feet.

We will be victorious!