I REFER to Wangija-Omugila’s letter (GC 25/03) trying to do a cover-up for the terrible crimes of the Libyan dictator, Col. Gaddafi. In this attempt, Wangija makes a number of incorrect statements and half-truths but I shall expose only five of them:
(i) Wangija claims that Gaddafi funds the African Union (AU) to as much as 40 per cent per annum. Actually, Gadaffi’s contribution is 15 per cent and for the last three years he has paid nothing, suspending payment expecting to pressure the Africans into obeying him.
(ii) Wangija bemoans the fact that the West was involved in the African slave trade. Western slave-trade existed only in West Africa and only for two to three hundred years. The descendants of the Western slave-trade now control countries and hold many of the highest offices in most of the countries of the Americas.

As President Museveni of Wangija’s homeland said, “it was the African Chiefs who sold the Africans to the European slave-traders and they are far more blamable than the Europeans’. The Arabs sent regular slaving expeditions into Black Africa for many centuries before the Europeans, especially into East Africa, the homeland of Wangija, and sold their slaves in the Middle East and India. Today, the descendants of these African slaves sold by the Arabs are all suppressed, marginalised and discriminated against. Indeed, Black slavery still exists in Mauritania and Saudi Arabia. Libyans were very much involved in this Arab slave trade.
(iii) Wangija bemoans that France and the West did not intervene to stop the massacres carried out in Rwanda by Rwandans themselves. Now that France and the West are intervening to stop the massacres of Libyans by Gaddafi and his mercenaries, Wangija sees this as wrong. Wangija’s illogic is stark.
(iv) Wangija claims that kings were a unifying force in Africa but that the British dismantled such African kingdoms destroying a unifying force. Yet Wangija praises Gadaffi for overthrowing King Idris of Libya and seizing the country for himself. How could the British be wrong and Gadaffi be right?
(v) Wangija talks of Western countries pillaging Africa and preventing their growth.
That was a century ago and not today. Today, China has taken the role of the pillager and exploiter of Africa. Africa’s resources, including its oil, coal, iron, gold and even its animals like the elephants killed for their ivory, go to fund the 13 per cent economic growth of China.

In addition, several million Chinese, backed by their government, have infiltrated into Africa, taking over ordinary businesses from the Africans, displacing them from their livelihoods. China has  also been fuelling African civil wars, as for example, Sudan where they have been supporting the Arab north against the Black south so as to grab African oil. Wangija needs to be more informed about modern Africa.