Mutumwa Mawere

How should the African story be depicted?  After 55 years of independence, Africa has come of age.  Each day that passes tells a story of choices made and opportunities squandered.

The post-colonial African story should be a story of sovereign people determined to make tomorrow a brighter and better day for all.

We have no choice but to add our voices and faces to the African narrative.

When the story of Libya is told, the leader, Muammar Gaddafi, will feature prominently and his political hegemony for 42 years of the nation's experience will no doubt be a subject of debate and speculation.

What we do know is that Libya, a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa with a population of 6.4 million people, has the 10^th largest proven oil reserves of any country and was the 17^th highest petroleum producer.

We also know that Africans were enslaved, colonized, and subjected to inhuman treatment by visitors from other nations.

The post-colonial experience has regrettably not been able to produce better outcomes.

The people of Libya truly own the history that can be written about their experiences.

Whether the future of Libya should have been left to the Libyan people let alone the African Union is a separate matter.

What is clear is that the status quo ante imposed its own costs on the Libyan people.

We have been told that the African condition in post-colonial Africa is largely a consequence of the actions and choices made by non-Africans and yet the Libyan narrative exposes a different story that must be told.

Libya was a proud member of the African family and its leader was a strong advocate for a strong union of African states.

However, at the recent Friends of Libya (FOL) meeting held in Paris it was striking that most of the assets of Libya were under the control of non-Africans.

In fact, the agenda of the meeting exposes the African dilemma and hypocrisy.

It cannot be denied that the reserves of Libya were placed under the control of non-Africans by a state that has for a long time represented itself as anti-imperialist.

It may have escaped the attention of Africans that Libya with an estimated reserve of 60 billion barrels, holder through the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) of assets worth US$70 billion rising to more than US$150 billion if foreign investments of the Central Bank and other state bodies are included, was naturally a target of any interested party seeking to lift itself from the impact of the world economic crisis.

To the extent that Gaddafi and his family were the custodians of these funds, it became critical that a final solution be found to allow for easy access by non-Africans to these funds.

Why did the Libyan state choose to invest its liquid funds in non-African state against a backdrop of African poverty and limited access to capital?

Is it not ironic that LIA's main investments were in Europe and these included UniCredit Bank (of which LIA and the Central Bank hold 7.5%), Finmeccanica (2%), ENI (1%), Juventus Football Club - 7.5%, and is also a shareholder in Pearson, owner of the Financial Times?

Immediately after Washington had removed Libya in 2004 from the blacklist of "rogue states", the big oil companies from outside African returned to the country and it must have been clear to them that their security was inversely related to Gaddafi's continued hold to power.  How could they trust him?

Notwithstanding, Gaddafi chose to align Libya's cause with the West.  In so doing, he chose his friends.  Libya deposited in case US$32 billion in US institutions only to find the case five weeks later frozen by the US Treasury.

Imagine if Libya had confidence in any one African state and had deposited such funds.  I have no doubt that Libya would have found many African volunteers to defend the revolution.

Africa is in need of capital infusion and yet its leaders have consistently behaved in a confused and counter intuitive manner.

Europe was a beneficiary of around 45 billion Euros of Libyan funds.

The Libyan Arab African Investment Company has investments in over 25 countries of which 22 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It is of concern that Libya under Gaddafi was a good friend of the world's top financial institutions and oil companies.

The Libyan case has shown that leaders and their families can hijack the agenda and revolution leaving the masses with no choice but to depend on outsiders to effect the kind of changes that need to take place in the national interests.

The picture that is emerging about how the lifestyle and morality of the Gaddafi family has shocked many but when the story is told about post-colonial Africa, the narrative may not be any different in the 54 states.

The appetites of the rich and powerful are the same.  The friends typically are foreigners.  Their cash is safely invested in non-African states.

How long can Africans be hypocritical?  Yes, the intervention in Libya raises more questions than answers.  However, how else could Libya be changed from within after 42 years of hypocrisy?

The real friends of Gaddafi are now known.  They met in Paris while Africans were left guessing about how to respond to a new challenge posed by African state actors exposing their wealth to the very people they purport to despise for public consumption.