Machy Sall should watch it. He is trotting the wrong side of history. The Senegalese leader was quoted as warning the Ukrainian ambassador in Dakar against advertising for Senegalese mercenaries to fight against Russia in Ukraine. Assimi Goita, the putschist who declared a French ambassador persona non grata and ordered him out of his country within 72 hours is apparently influencing Sall and others like him.
For the avoidance of doubt, in the Western dictionary, African nationalistic acts are called ingratitude, insubordination and sedition – all punishable with assassination. The French are not like the British. After being ‘gifted’ parts of Africa to colonise, they introduced an assimilation policy by which francophone Africans had equal rights to wear French suits. This is one right that does not jell with Martine Marie le Pen, skinheads and European right-wing parties.
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Sall should have offered to offset the $1k processing fee for all Senegalese volunteers and allowances while they are fighting. He should have insured them heavily from Senegalese foreign reserves. France would have granted any application to spend reserves this way without charging the usual usury.
Ukraine is an African outpost. Before the Ukrainians decided to poke Russia’s nose by applying to join NATO and greater Europe, the human pecking order did not mean much in Kyiv. Ukrainians warmly accommodated African students whose leaders ruined their country’s educational system and forced their citizens to seek foreign education. Unlike European nations whose schools charge exorbitant rates and their embassies that make student visas impossible, Ukraine understood the economic gain of harbouring African students.
As long as these libidinous African studs kept their extreme organs in their pouch, they were welcome in Ukraine. Things change a little whenever they sneak into Ukrainian bedrooms, but the offspring of such relationships find homes in good orphanages.
Conflicts induce nationalism and the average Ukrainian promised to die in the defence of motherland. Things change slightly when Joe Biden, the leader of the free world and the best friend of any enemy of Russia ordered his citizens out of Ukraine and shut down his embassy.
Biden was not joking when he warned battle-inoculated Americans that his government would not spend money rescuing any American who disobeyed his order. With Zelensky’s intransigence obviously pointing to a full-fledged war, wise Ukrainians ate their words, packed their baggage and families in a bid to flee to safety except that there was one snag. Africans had taken over train and bus platforms preventing blue-eyed, blonde-haired European-looking Ukrainians from fleeing in peace, their pets in tow.
The Ukrainians know what to do. They lovingly shooed, pushed and shoved their black-skinned guests away from the platforms and discharged those who thought they were smart or human enough to shuffle and join the exodus. Apparently, these African students read their Bible upside down. They should have remembered that when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, he did not take any Egyptian convert. When Rachel stole his father’s idols, an entire nation was punished for the act. Fleeing Ukrainians knew these details and made sure that they did not provide sanctuary to any abomination on their exodus. They left the Africans stranded on the platform for winter acculturation.
It was not long before the Africans began to whimper and wail not from the winter cold but fear of dying in other people’s wars. They were not ready to volunteer as mercenaries. They came to study for a better future, not to die.
As hopes of official evacuation dimmed, the wise Africans, like the parable of the ten virgins began their exodus on feet without a Moses to part the Irpin River for them to walk on dry land. There was trouble at the other end because their transition did not transform them into Europeans. They could not cross over until their home governments negotiated safe passage. Ukrainians were still white and so, they crossed without trouble and western news anchors testified to these in racial reportorial verbiage.
Nothing of this treatment beats the optics of 400 years of slavery or skinheads confronting black skin or even the friendly American racist police. Escaped Africans should be grateful for one thing, their elevation on the European pecking order, which retains their place below European dogs and cats but above Russians.
Given this scenario, there was nothing wrong with a Ukrainian ambassador asking Africans to enlist as mercenaries in a war primed to sustain his pecking order afterward. Machy Sall should count himself lucky that these altruistic Europeans have not mandated him and other African leaders to contribute human capital to fight their proxy war. In the past, it was a mandate to be obeyed.
War mongering Europeans know more feuds than the offspring of the Kiriji, Anglo-Zulu or the Mau-Mau combats. European internecine skirmishes are not called tribal but World Wars. In history two have been fought with enough arsenal for seven more.
In those two wars, Africans were conscripted as cannon fodders. Their zeal to fight and confront death surprised their commanders who rewarded them with a monument – the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is well marked in Western nations because white people usually count the things that count – such as their own human casualties. It is not their fault if others can’t count and Africans do elaborate burials, but they don’t count war casualties without the help of algorithmic approximations.
Western history is deftly edited to preserve the envious legacy of slave masters. African contributions to everything from inventions to war exploits are deftly excised from history books except where they are heroically presented as savages, scavengers and cannibals.
African volunteers need to go to Ukraine if they must redeem this image and people like Sall should encourage, not dissuade them. In Nigeria, willing volunteers are loitering around the Ukrainian embassy waiting for the government to waive the $1k processing fee. It is sad that Buhari is too busy flying around the globe to listen to their plea.
We need to show the Russians how loyal we are to the Europeans who enslaved our forebears just to ‘civilise’ us. They have opened altruistic cemeteries for Africans tired of poverty to die in the desert in dignity or offer themselves as meat to sharks in the Strait of Gibraltar.
We will fight the crazy Russians. Their ‘intervention’ in Libya has caused unparalleled insurgency and insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. We share the European enmity of the Russians because Russian colonies here are still struggling to stand after Russia declared them independent. They were on the side of apartheid while we fought the ill.
Everywhere you go in Africa, Russian imperialism stares us in the face. The Russian bullies invaded Iraq, bombed Syria, intervened in Afghanistan and left it as a hollow nation. They stole the $7 billion money meant to feed hungry Afghan children and created a situation where Afghan women now sell one child to feed the others. These Russians sustained slavery for 400 years. They dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki yet deny systemic racism in America, Canada and Europe.
For all reasons to fight Russians, Africans should enlist in any fight against the enemies of America. We know how much America loves Africa. In Africa, we know, that the enemy of our friends is also our enemy. This quarrel, to quote Shakespeare is between our masters – and us their men.
