Out of power, Gaddafi leaves mixed legacy in Africa

Recently, a friend asked me whether, as an African, I thought the ongoing revolution in Libya was good or bad for the continent. In my attempt to answer, I realized that, like many Africans outside of Libya, I harbored a little bit of sympathy for Muammar Gaddafi—not for his deposed regime or his domestic policies, but for his contributions to the development of the African continent as a whole, a part of his legacy that is largely overlooked in the West.

Gaddafi’s ouster has been met with fervent celebrations in Libya and the West. Domestically, Gaddafi was a tyrannical leader who repressed all forms of insubordination and would stop at no limits to ensure he got what he wanted, crushing political opposition and significantly increasing the role of the Libyan military throughout his reign. His Libya was brutally Machiavellian; he had to survive numerous assassination attempts and a bid by the French and British to reinstall the puppet regime of King Idrisu, whom Gaddafi ousted in 1969.

Though wildly unpopular at home, Gaddafi managed to stabilize his political situation with his North African neighbors with money from Libya’s enormous oil revenues. This policy has spread Libyan oil money into countless infrastructure and development projects across Africa. Through state-controlled investment companies, Gaddafi has invested in telecommunications, real estate, textiles, food processing, and hospitals in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, South Sudan, and many other countries.

Many of these ventures have been halted by the United Nations resolution that condemned Gaddafi and froze his assets, leaving Africans with mixed reactions to the entire affair. Kenya refused to seize any of Gaddafi’s assets in the country, while South Africa has frozen everything Gaddafi-related.

Gaddafi was a big proponent of African unity, granting special protection and asylum to non-Libyan minorities from all over the continent. He was also one of the largest contributors to the African Union, and he invested about $370 million in the African Development Bank, which funds projects all over the continent. Huge question marks now surround the future of the bank’s investments and many of the African Union’s Gaddafi-funded undertakings.

Although NATO nominally joined the Libyan liberation efforts in order to prevent a possible genocidal war in Libya, many have questioned the real motives of its members in this campaign. Major members China, India, and Russia abstained from the incursion, leaving the U.S., U.K. and France to lead. Some critics cite the presence of oil, and specifically Britain’s desire to protect its oil interest, as the main reason for the American and British militarization of the area.

The rebel forces supported by NATO have also been questioned, with a London Telegraph article in March reporting that Al-Qaeda provided the Libyan rebels with financial assistance. Many of these same rebels spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan together fighting against U.S. troops. Although there have been many ex-Gaddafi military and political actors joining the rebel cause, there is unease about how representative the new regime will be of the people, and in what way it  will manage to balance the conflicting interest in the country.

The hope that this revolution will bring true democracy to the people of Libya, especially after years of suppression, is one that is celebrated all over the continent. There is the hope that the new leaders of Libya and all the North African countries will allow for a new era of basic freedoms and liberties, taking into consideration the foreign immigrants in Libya as well.

However, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss toward the downfall of one of the few remaining world leaders with a commitment to Pan-Africanism and a financial commitment to African development in all corners of the continent.
Gaddafi represented a dying breed of leaders who had the courage to stand up for the interest of Africa against the West. Democracy or no, that courage and commitment is what Africans all over the continent will miss when Gaddafi is finally gone for good.