I hate to claim that this column, after all, always gets things right. But on the other hand, no one else is acknowledging that fact as a fact. Someone has to do it. So, as Percy Sledge once said, let it be me.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after a few days in the unexplainable limbo of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic (once “Empire”), has indeed been flown back to the Caribbean — ostensibly to be with his children exiled in Jamaica.
South Africa, in this election year, has rejected him as an exile — for the moment. Maybe once all the razzmatazz and euphoria of automatic re-election for the ruling party has been put aside, and Tony Leon has been put in his place, the doors will be opened, and Aristide will be pulled to the bosom of this brave new icon of liberation and sanctuary that we call our homeland.
The rights and wrongs are still being hammered out by our elders and betters, and the outcome is yet to be seen.
(Maybe Saddam Hussein also tried that gambit, after so many visits in the run-up to the war against Iraq from the urbane and charming Aziz Pahad, our deputy foreign minister. Maybe he also felt himself shnaied at the last minute, and had to settle for a hole in the ground in his motherland instead.)
The bottom line is that, for now, after a long trip across the world to Bangui, where nothing much is happening, politically or otherwise, Aristide has been flown back to where he came from, and where he belongs — that is, the Caribbean. Johannesburg, Sandton, Camps Bay, and the good life associated with them, are for the moment still on hold.
Jean-Bertrand has landed in Jamaica. He is about to have his brains battered with reggae and passively inhaled weed for the perceivable future — or at least the 10 weeks that the Jamaican government (who they?) are prepared to bankroll his stay.
Which raises the question: Who pays for exiled presidents to fly back and forth like this? Who decides to put them up when they land, say, in Bangui or Lagos, and who pays for them to be flown back across half the globe to from whence they came in the first place?
Coming from poverty-stricken countries, such as Haiti, to other poverty-stricken places, like the Central African Republic, and then being flown back, without a by-your-leave to the poor from which they have sprung, to yet another poverty-stricken island in the sun — who pays for the gas?
Who, in short, is flying the hapless Aristide around the globe, and why? What is the final end? And is there a final destination?
Maybe these are impertinent questions, given that it’s election year in the most important centres across the globe — Russia, Spain, the United States, France, and not forgetting South Africa.
Somebody is taking the decisions, and talking to someone else in high office about them. But who are we, the Wretched of the Earth, to ask? It is left to the helpless Aristide to fly around, fight his corner, or get stuck. And to the rest of us to stop asking questions.
One has to add that it is weird to see images on the television of US marines patrolling the streets of Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, in their outer-space flack jackets, in the aftermath of the outing of Aristide, toting their outer space guns, wearing their high-tech helmets, as if they were patrolling the streets of Baghdad. (With as little effect on what is really going on inside the minds of the people on the streets down which they are walking, one might add.)
Star Wars has hit town all over the world. What are we doing about it?
Talking about getting stuck flying around: what’s the real story about those supposed mercenaries who landed in an old-fashioned Boeing 727 at Harare airport, and are now being threatened with the death penalty by the Zimbabwean government? They are, to a man, not necessarily nice guys, given their collective history as members of Koevoet and the 32nd Battalion of the then South African army and Executive Outcomes et cetera. But where were they really headed to? And to do what?
Could have been anywhere.
Denials are flying round the globe like shrapnel. Maybe they really were just going to put up border fences in Burundi, with their wire cutters and hand grenades and land mines and RPGs and all that stuff. Maybe they really were going to protect a mine in the DRC.
Maybe, on the other hand, they really had been put up to it by a faction of the ruling family elite in Equatorial Guinea, and were just involved in engaging in straightforward, well-paid work to overthrow the government of the day.
Life is, and will always be, like that — another day’s work for another day’s pay. Politics immaterial.
But what were they, like Aristide, doing flying round the globe, burning up aircraft fuel like the world owed them a living? The world we live in owes nobody nothing. Or so we’re told.
I try to pull this all together in my head. Both Haiti and the tropical African island of Malabo, oil-rich jewel of Equatorial Guinea, have the potential to be paradise. Both, for some reason, have failed dismally in their post-colonial politics and have crumbled into post-colonial decay.
But there is something else going on. The colonial world doesn’t want to let them go, would rather die than release them from the stranglehold it has around their throats.
Get on a plane. Go to Equatorial Guinea — or Gabon or Cameroon or Nigeria or Angola, for that matter. See Africa’s oil wealth spewing in spectacular fireballs into the sky and disappearing into the insatiable colonial maw. Where is all this money going to?
At the same time, on the streets of Malabo and Douala and Libreville and Lagos and Luanda, see people dying from poverty, disease and hunger in the streets.
And then ask yourself some questions.
Something else is going on.
And we are not being told.