What now, Libya?

The triumphalism with which the death of Muammar Gaddafi has been greeted by his opponents does not inspire confidence that the serious task of remoulding Libyan society to meet the challenges of the future, will be successfully met.

By summarily executing Gaddafi and reportedly, those of his supporters they could lay hands on, the new people in power have told the world that they are no better than the Gaddafi regime. Yet distancing themselves from Gaddafi-type practices would have been reassuring precisely because when Gaddafi threatened to overrun Benghazi and other towns and kill the ‘rats’ in them, a lot of people were disgusted by his threats.

Of course, when a man has been in power for 42 years, no one can blame people if they rejoice at his overthrow. But a nation is more important than the emotions of any of its constituent communities. In the end, all the communities will have to work together to prevent the nation from disintegrating or being recolonised. That is why it is important that triumphalism should be curbed. There can be no reconciliation otherwise, and if that happens, the Libyan nation is doomed. We have seen what sectarianism and ethnic antagonisms have done to Iraqi society. If the Libyans don’t learn from that, worse could befall them.

I advocate reconciliation in all seriousness because I witnessed emotional outpourings, akin to what is going on in Libya today, when President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was overthrown in February 1966. Like Gaddafi, Nkrumah had held Ghana in a firm grip, empowered to detain citizens without trial, and allowed by law to push his ideas down the throats of his people through the machinery of a ‘one-party state’.

As a result, the emotional release felt by his successors when they overthrew him, blinded them to many of the good ideas Nkrumah had propounded for taking Ghana out of economic under-development. For instance, at the time of his overthrow, Nkrumah was building huge silos at Tema port with which he hoped to store cocoa – Ghana’s principal export – when its international price fell too low.

Everyone with any common sense – not to say a modicum of knowledge about supply and demand – could have appreciated that the fluctuation of Ghana’s earnings from cocoa made this a priority project. Yet overseas cocoa interests used their governments – Western, of course – to ride on the crest of the emotions released against Nkrumahism – to stop the construction of the cocoa silos. Today, they stand in ugly formation on the skyline of Tema port, as an eloquent testimony to how a nation can be deceived to act against its own interests.

Well, Ghana is today as subject to the fluctuation of prices on the international cocoa market as it was 45 years ago. It’s as if time had stood still, as far as Ghana’s biggest export industry is concerned. Many other projects with which Nkrumah sought to achieve import-substitution, were similarly scrapped, instead of improvements being made to them, where the planning showed elements of potential dysfunction. Closing them down was a clear act of throwing the baby away with the bathwater. Due to the overflow of emotion prevalent at the time, the received wisdom was: ‘if it doesn’t work, it was because the Nkrumah government was corrupt. Throw it out.’

What one hopes the Libyans can realise is that the past cannot be rolled back. Whatever Gaddafi’s shortcomings, he is gone. His mistakes can, however, provide the means of building a new, stronger Libya, better placed to achieve its national objectives, because it has learnt lessons from its past. The most vital of these lessons is to resist the temptation to suppress the views of those in Libyan society who are opposed to the National Transitional Council (NTC). This body should always remember that the NATO countries whose support led to its own victory against Gaddafi’s forces, are made up of regimes that recognise opposition parties and accommodate the views of the opposition.

The NATO countries also allow freedom of speech, of assembly, and of religion. The new Libya can show its respect for the NATO countries by making sure that these rights are respected within its own territory. But at the same time, it should keep a wary eye on the NATO countries, some of which have hurriedly called upon their business communities to ‘pack their bags’ and go to Libya to look for huge profits because the new Libyan economy is open to them. For if the NTC allows the dismantling of Libyan companies, for the benefit of Western fortune-hunters, it will be sowing the seeds of a conflict that will dog the footsteps of future Libyan government, for many years to come.

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* Cameron Duodu is a writer and commentator.
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