‘’From Africa always comes something stupid’’. This is an old saying that still rings true today. The story about a statue in Uganda that has been erected in honour of late Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.
Jonathan Netanyahu was one of the bright young military officers in the Israeli army who was a member of the commando forced assemble to storm Entebbe, Uganda and rescue Israeli nationals abducted by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and taken to Uganda in the days of Idi Amin.
Amin may have been a buffoon. But he was a head of state and took an action or supported an action that he thought in his wisdom will advance the cause of his national goal.
If Netanyahu is a hero in this escapade, he is a hero of the Israeli and not that of Africa. He invaded Uganda, a sovereign nation in favour of his own country, Israel. Let us not forget this. Fifty years later he has become a hero celebrated in honour of a country he once invaded, attacked and helped destroyed some of its infrastructure. Can somebody more knowledgeable in these matters than me help explain to me why his statue now stands in Uganda and not in Israel? Is this not a plain mockery of the stupidity of Africans?
I am not skilled in diplomacy and statesmanship and cannot therefore understand how a member of a group who were recruited, trained and mobilized to go attack a country that was at war against their own country will, fifty years later be ‘herorised’ by that same country he had attacked
Some things are too difficult for some of us dull heads to understand and comprehend. There I no where else in the world in which this type of thing can take place if not in Africa only. Some nations like Uganda where a man wants to stay and die in office where he will be ceaselessly pressured, coerced, tantalised with some dollars that he will agree for his country to be rubbished. My prediction is that one day soon when Bobby Wine will be eleted president a group of nationalistic youth will mobilise themselves and go and pull down that rubbish statue. African has been abused, ridiculed and shamed well enough.
The way Uganda has started this new round of reversed abused one day one African country will raise a statue of a once no-nonsense colonial overlord as a hero of colonial rule.I will, for instance, not be worried if one day, in my beloved country Nigeria if some groups come together calling themselves Lugardians, begin to raise funds to erect a statue in honour of former colonial overlord Lord Fridrick Lugardsaying the man deserves such an honour; that looking at what he did, the man was here on a civilizing mission and was not here to exploit the resources of this land to develop Great Britain.
In his honour, they will point to how he was able to unite disparate people together to now form a modern nation; how he put an end to intercommunal clashes and did many other great things that indigenous leaders after him have not been able to achieve.
Uganda has just done a test case. If all Africans with some sense of shame do not rise up to vehemently condemn this test case we are set to see and hear more stupidity on this continent.
And when things such as the one in Uganda we are talking about here happens, you do not hear the African Union utter one word in condemnation or even politely that it is worried by the development which portrays Africans as a people who can not reason. Life just goes on here in Africa as if nothing worth the while of anyone ever takes place.
A group of mischief makers, mockers and troublemakers may sit somewhere in the comfort of ornate officers to stir trouble in African homelands such as Abuja, Accra, Kampala, Nairobi or anywhere else in the continent and we proceed here to disgrace ourselves as if we are teenage children in presidential and parliamentary offices.
When will Independence have real meaning for us Africans as our leaders take actions that show clearly that we are not yet in control of our affairs?
