| Punishing The Prostitutes
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One poignant lesson that can be drawn from Africa's disastrous postcolonial record is the fact that sycophancy and collaboration seldom pay. The sycophants often delude themselves into thinking that, should their country blow, they would always escape to the West to enjoy their booty. But angry Africans have vowed to punish the traitors, sycophants, leeches and intellectual collaborators. During the 11 May 1995 "Kume Preko" demonstrations in Ghana, the tires of some deputy ministers were deflated. "Escape now," the angry mob seemed to be saying. Kabena Kofi of Tema warned: "I would like to remind Messrs E.T. Mensah, Prof Awoonor, Obed Asamoah, Harry Sawyerr and others, that if the unexpected happens as a result of their sycophancy, they and their families would be the first to bear the anger of Ghanaians" (Free Press, 10-16 April 1996, 2). Another irate Ghanaian student, Anthony Mensah, wrote this about Vincent Assiseh, the campaign manager of the ruling NDC party:
"I wish to draw Mr. Assiseh’s attention to the fact that there were millions of Ghanaians like him who were not part or did not share in the so-called “national euphoria” that greeted the second coming (coup) of Mr. Rawlings. You are doing and saying all these because of stomach politics. SIMPLE!
Mr. Assiseh cast your mind back:
31st December, 1981: Mr. Rawings announces his coup.
First Decree: To travel outside Ghana, one needed to obtain an Exit Permit.
2nd January, 1982, Morning: You (Mr. Assiseh) were one of the thousands who gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior looking for an Exit Permit.
Same day. Afternoon: You (Mr. Assiseh) were at the Boundary Road, Adabraka branch of Ghana Airways, booking a flight to Nigeria.
3rd January, 1982, Early Morning: You (Mr. Assiseh) were on a flight to Nigeria, arriving around 11:00 am, thus leaving the “madness” of those days behind you.
I do not know when you (Mr. Assiseh) returned to Ghana, but being an “integrity man,” I am sure you will tell Ghanaians. To conclude, I want to put it to you (Mr. Assiseh) that deep down your heart, you (Mr. Assiseh) have never felt part of the so-called revolution, so reconciliation or not, you (Mr. Assiseh) will talk your way out on the day of reckoning” (The Guide, May 2-8, 2000; p.4)
In Nigeria, Zaire, and several African countries, the houses and cars of intellectual collaborators were burned down. In Senegal, after President Diouf's ruling Socialist Party "won" a huge majority in parliamentary elections in February 1993, violence broke out amid charges of vote rigging and Babacar Seye, the vice-president of Senegal's Constitutional Council, was killed. African News Weekly (4 June 1993) reported that: "Seye was found dead in his car, apparently the victim of an ambush . . . investigators said. According to the independent, Sud Quotidien a group calling itself the "People's Army" claimed responsibility for Seye's murder, the first political assassination in Senegal's history . . . This is a warning for the other judges in the Constitutional Council, so they really respect the people's will, it quoted the anonymous caller as saying." (13). Seye's killer was never found.
In Sierra Leone, a judge condemned 16 civilians, including five journalists, to death by hanging for collaborating with Sierra Leone's ousted military regime of Capt. Paul Koroma. "Justice Edmond Cowan allowed the defendants 21 days to appeal the sentences, which he handed down after attorneys for the condemned made last-ditch appeals for leniency" (The Washington Times, 26 August 1998, A13).
Nigerian writer, Adebayo Willams, has warned: "Depending on how General Abacha leaves, all those who have contributed to the economic and political adversity of the country in the past twenty years must be ready to face some retribution as a way of laying a firm foundation for the future. In the case of those who have looted the treasury, all efforts must be made to trace and repatriate the ill-gotten wealth" (Tell, 1 June 1998, 33).
In fact, the Secretary for Commerce in the defunct Interim National Government, Mrs. Bola Kuforiji-Olubi, was forced to apologise to student activists who kept vigil at the Ikeja home of Chief M.K.O. Abiola when he died on July 7, 1998. "She was accosted by the angry students to explain her role in the Interim National Government of Chief Ernest Shonekan. Sensing trouble, she responded by apologising to all Nigerian students but her apologies were largely unheeded" (The Vanguard, 16 July 1998, 5).
Elsewhere in Africa, civic groups and the private press are playing a key role in bringing these scoundrels to book. In August 1994 The Campaign for Democracy, an alliance of 52 human rights and political groups, urged the European Union to repatriate the men who annulled Nigeria's 1993 president election. Former military president Ibrahim Babangida and his deputy Augustus Aikhomu were both believed to be in Europe. "The popular opinion in Nigeria is that these elements must be tried for the untold hardship inflicted on the nation," the group said in a letter to the European Union. "We therefore, with a high sense of responsibility, request their expulsion from Europe where they are currently domiciled" (African News Weekly, 26 August 1994, 29).
"Over 80 percent of Rwanda's 700 judges and magistrates, many of them guilty themselves of the genocide, died or fled in the 1994 fighting" (The Economist, 23 March 1996, 37). Colonel Theoneste Bagosora of Habyarimana's presidential guard, Marc Rugenera, former minister of finance, and many others fled into exile. The information minister, Eliezer Niyitegeka, who incited Hutus to kill Tutsis, fled to a refugee camp in Goma, Zaire. According to The Washington Post (19 February 1995), "Eliezer said in an interview in Zaire that he was so depressed that he was asking France for political asylum" (A46). Now he was depressed? At another squalid camp in Bukavu, Zaire, the former president, prime minister and cabinet ministers were holed up. Some settled in Cameroon which refused political asylum to several Rwandan Hutu officials accused of having played a significant role in the genocide there in 1994. One of them was Ferdinand Nahimana, former director of the state information office and a founder of Radio Mille Collines, the Kigali radio station whose inflammatory broadcasts egged on Hutu soldiers and ethnic militia to kill Tutsis. The others were Justin Mugenzi, president of the Liberal Party and former trade and industry ministry, Joseph Nzirorera, former interim president of the National Assembly and head of late president Juvenal Habyarimana's National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) party, and Pasteur Musabe, former director of Rwanda's National Bank. The decision to refuse them political asylum followed an intensive campaign by Cameroon's private press.
On April 1, 1996, Cameroon went further, rounding up eleven of the masterminds of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and throwing them into jail. And on June 11, 1998, Mathieu N'Garoupatse, a former Rwandan justice minister suspected of taking part in the 1994 genocide in his country, was arrested and repatriated to Rwanda (The Washington Times, 11 June 1998, A17).
Outside Africa, various groups of African exiles also have vowed to work tirelessly to bring the collaborators to justice and block the granting of political asylum to these "useless idiots." After the Momoh regime was overthrown by Captain Strasser, the vice president, Dr. Abudulai Conteh, fled to Britain. Did he really escape? According to West Africa (31 August - 6 September 1992): "Dr. Abudulai Conteh has been deported from Britain, following a failed attempt by his lawyers to convince the UK authorities that Conteh was a genuine refugee. The British High Court Judge, Mr. Simon Brown, agreed with the Home Office that Conteh should bear some responsibility for the corruption of the Momoh government which played a major role in bankrupting Sierra Leone" (1496).
U.S. courts now allow foreign victims of atrocities to sue the perpetrators. Ethiopian exiles in the United States have been taking Mengistu's henchmen who fled to the United States to court to claim damages. In New York, Bawol Cabiri, a former Ghanaian diplomat, sued Baffour Assasie-Gyimah. As African Observer (25 April-8 May 1996) wrote: "In a stunning decision, a U.S. judge has ruled that President Rawlings should surrender one of his henchmen to face trial in New York for atrocities he committed against humanity. U.S. Judge Allen G. Schwartz ruled April 18, 1996 that there is overwhelming evidence that Baffour Assasie-Gyimah, who is described in court papers as Deputy Chief of National Security, has committed outrageous human rights abuses and therefore should be brought to the U.S. immediately and tried under the Torture Victim Protection Act and Alien Tort Claim Act. (3)
Then there was Elsaphane Ntakirutimana, a Rwandan Hutu priest, who in April 1994 fled to take refuge in Mugonero Hospital and then participated in a daylong attack on 16 April, in which hundreds of men, women, and children were killed. After Rwanda blew up, he fled to the United States. But Rwandese exiles here in the United States were waiting for him. They fingered him to the FBI and on 27 September 1996, he was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border which he was trying to cross.
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George Ayittey, |
