Because of the accidents of History, many African countries have been Colonies of France. In the past. Not without significant resistance here and there across the continent before this being put under the yoke. Whether we like it or not, the result has been a very special relationship between the former colonies and France. Somehow, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, in short the main great powers of the time, had this same type of complex relationship without it being a kind of complex with the States they had submitted and dominated formerly.
The former colonies of France may have problems with France, but they need the cooperation of France as well as other developed countries in their near march towards their emancipation. The reverse is also true. This is the b.a.-ba of Diplomacy. It is not Russia, and even less that of President Vladimir Putin - of which we have seen nowhere in the world a single example where it supported a people -, which will come to save French-speaking Africa. Quite the contrary. To the people, it has always favored leaders over power. Worse dictators. Syria is the most obvious example: a disgrace for all Humanity - including for each of us individually in the depths of Africa -, because our responsibility is collective in abandoning the Syrians into the hands of Vladimir Putin and of the "Butcher of Damascus" that he supports, President Bashar el-Assad. Africans do not live apart from the wails of the world and are just as accountable for what happens there. And while Syria is annihilated, bloodless and its people are suffering martyrdom, we have averted our eyes from the fate of the Syrians as if nothing had happened.
In Africa, although the insecurity that prevailed in the Central African Republic was pointed out to justify the intervention of Wagner's Russian mercenaries, it only allowed President Faustin-Ange Touadera to remain in power for a second term. By taking the place of mercenaries too who were African mercenaries by the way, and precisely from South Africa. But in exchange for what?... Since secrecy takes precedence over transparency, we don't know much or very little about it. The fact remains that the Central African Republic has just decided to teach Russian from the start of the 2022-2023 school year as a compulsory subject at the University up to the Masters, and this to replace Spanish. The objective is to consolidate the links between the Central African Republic and Russia.
On Russian mercenaries, a 2021 UN report bluntly stated that Wagner "harass and intimidate" civilians and are implicated in the torture and murder of civilians in the Central African Republic. Not to mention that no one knows the underside of the contract that binds them to the regime in place, except that it operates a number of gold mines in the country in exchange. And the UN to invite the Central African Republic to end its relations with Russian mercenaries. “According to the European External Action Service report, Russia is playing an “ambiguous and non-transparent” role. First, there is the presence of around 2,600 mercenaries from the Wagner group who have also taken charge of the training of certain Central African military units. There is also the intensification of the Russian presence “in almost all areas of government”, the conduct of disinformation campaigns and finally its economic involvement in customs, mining and more generally “the exploitation of natural resources”.
Moreover, we now know that Russia is indirectly responsible for the death of President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad. Some would say he was a Dictator. And Vladimir Putin then?... In his desire to establish himself at all costs in French-speaking Africa, Vladimir Putin does not skimp on any means. With manipulation of African youth by intermediaries who no longer hide it. We could have laughed at it, if only we did not play Africa and the future of its youth like this.
Do all these young Africans who are dangled with the arrival of mercenaries from Russia to save Africa and who are made to wave Russian flags here and there really know what they are doing by blindly obeying their handlers? Merchants of illusions or wind who have only the anti-French discourse in their business. Vladimir Putin's Russia is not the bearer of any socio-political model to which the peoples of Black Africa aspire, or at least those of French-speaking Black Africa. And that's just an understatement! Those who demonstrated in Kaya in Burkina Faso or in Téra in Niger against the French army or elsewhere could never have done so if it was in Russia. It is enough for the pro-Russian Powers to take root in West Africa and for them to give birth to "Little Poutines" for them to realize this through a reversal of the situation of which they will not even have time to be surprised. And it would be far too late. Alas!...
“You often say that a dangerous virus threatens our freedoms all over the world…the virus of lies and misinformation. Whose fault is it ? To social networks? Yes ! These technologies make the bed of all that is wrong in the world. Our information ecosystem is driven by decision makers who no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. They favor lies, because lies that stir up anger and hatred circulate faster and easier on social media. This must change. I have been saying it for a long time, we need to regulate all this. Frankly, it has to come from the United States. The European Union is at the forefront of this fight, with “digital services legislation” looking at how information is amplified by the power of algorithms. The United Kingdom is also preparing a law on information disseminated online. I think technology evolved even before governments and citizens realized that it can be used to insidiously manipulate us. And it has to stop." It is in these terms that Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize 2021 whom she shares with the Russian journalist Dmitri Muratov answered bluntly the question posed to her by Heïke Schmidt, on December 10, 2021.
Before taking Vladimir Putin as the Messiah of French-speaking Black Africa, young Africans should find out who is the journalist Dmitri Muratov, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, a staunch defender of press freedom and freedom of expression in Russia.
It is not a question here of not criticizing French policy in Africa. It is rather a question of criticizing all the actions of the leaders of France but with proven facts and proofs opposable to France and not Fake News to use this very trendy anglicism now. If, following the Cheikh Anta Diop, Théophile Obenga and many others, Black Africa has the duty to fight against the long maintained falsification of its History, it cannot on the other hand take pleasure in what it does not has ceased to denounce itself. It is, consequently, inadmissible to support any falsification of contemporary history or the history of the moment which would be, this time, the fact of Africans, even to accuse France of the evils for which it is neither entirely nor clearly responsible. Above all, what's worse, when it comes to putting in the saddle not a country called Russia but the policy of its leader named Vladimir Putin.
It is not because one is African that one should support Africans even when what they say is not right or true. Under the guise of supposedly Pan-Africanist speeches, social networks have now become a dumping ground for lies and manipulation of young people, particularly in French-speaking Black Africa, which should be raised to the highest level in this regard. It is true that in France too, the speeches of people like the political journalist and polemicist Eric Zemmour to name only one of many others will only further stir up the anti-French campaign in Africa. By his primary racism and his temptation to pass for more French than native French, the racist, anti-Semite and revisionist and all the champions of his species will thus only gradually “destroy” the centuries-old relations between France and its former colonies. By effectively helping to loosen, or even permanently cut, these precious ties. Because the discourse of Eric Zemmour and all the cantors of his kind is the exact counterpart or counterpart of that of the Anti-French in French-speaking Africa.
What Black Africa risks losing, if it is not careful by fantasizing about Russia or even China, are its different forms of organization and social management as well as its spaces of freedom which constitute intrinsic bases of its African Democracy. Admittedly, Western colonization has already largely replaced it with its own Western forms of governance, without ever renouncing its fundamental aspirations to the freedom of individuals and the freedom of choice of their communities. Worse, Black Africa must be careful not to fall into the infernal trap of regimes where dictatorship is the only watchword of governance. And countries like China or Russia have nothing else to offer the African peoples than to reinforce the already authoritarian powers for most of the Princes who govern them, while these peoples will be applauding against the West, will see their freedoms dwindle little by little until they literally wither away to leave room only for a leaden screed. On the grounds that the West has done this and that or so-so. And it would be far too late to backtrack in order to regain the lost freedoms when these peoples wake up to the realization that the promise of Development through Dictatorship is only smoke and mirrors. In short, the opium of the people, so to speak.
We can have some resentment vis-à-vis France, sometimes with good reason, without distilling false information for the sole purpose of harming the image of France in Africa. Out of pure hatred or revenge. Let those who have personal problems with France go and settle them with France. That those who want to work with or for France, work with or for France. That those who want to work with or for China, work with or for China. Let those who want to work with or for Russia, work with or for Russia. No leader, whoever he is, is the owner of his country, let alone eternal. In each country, the citizens will be able to recognize their own, those who really work in the superior interest of their country and not those who misinform or intoxicate for the benefit of other foreign powers of which they would be nothing other than licensed agents. But Africans do not have to complain about their own failures by blaming others...Every African, young or not, should first start by working for his own country, and not by lending it as a breeding ground game to any foreign power whatsoever. No offense to Africans who have other unacknowledged objectives, to make believe that Russia will save French-speaking Black Africa is an intellectual imposture and a low-level political scam.
Vladimir Putin is not the best champion of democracy in the world, that we know. Quite the contrary. And that, too, is a pure understatement. Africans cannot therefore contemplate the horrors unfolding in Ukraine as one of many other horrors in the world that does not watch them and then go to sleep without shuddering, simply because they are unfolding in Ukraine. On the contrary, Africans should not only be indignant at the actions following his invasion of Ukraine but also and above all at his actions in Africa wherever the Russian Army or its auxiliaries are and operate. If Russia is eternal, Vladimir Putin is just a mere mortal. Whatever the size of his ego or his claim to dominate the world, at least to crush those who resist him. And we must also pity many Russians who are only victims of the internal and external policies of the current master of the Kremlin. Of which act!
By Serge-Félix N’Piénikoua
