NATO's Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa

France and Libya

58 Africa Institute of South Africa France and Libya At the moment of the Libyan intervention, the French society was glued to a long-running soap opera scandal about the history of the corrupt practices and the financing of elections in France by African leaders. For years there had been trials in France on the role of the French oil company ELF in Africa. ELF managers had been found guilty in one of France’s biggest corporate crime trials. Former Elf Aquitaine executives were sentenced to five years in prison for using company money as bribes. In the 45 000 pages of documents for the trial there were reams of information on the role of ELF in Africa and how this oil company was an arm of the French foreign ministry. Libya had kept ELF at arm’s length, but in the era of the ‘conversion’ of the Libyan leadership, Libya became part of the international oil producing countries that assisted in the financing of the French presidential elections. Thus Libya joined the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon as supporter of the conservatives in France. At the outbreak of the NATO intervention, news came out of the millions of dollars spent by the Libyan leadership to finance the election of Nicholas Sarkozy. Days after Sarkozy became the foremost advocate of the rebellion in Benghazi, Saif al-Islam, the son of the Libyan leader said, Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it. We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given the assistance so he could help them, but he has disappointed us. Give us back our money.134 This allegation against the then French President was only one of the many scandals that had come to light about illicit funds, bribes and kickbacks. French imperial activities in Africa had been the most pronounced among the former colonial European powers, and this imperial outreach transcended ideological divisions between left and right in France. Without Africa’s wealth, France would be a minor power with as much influence as Austria. 59 France and Libya Horace Campbell There were six major ways for the projections of the exploitative relationships between France and Africa. Firstly, and most importantly, there was the cultural and psychological posture based on the supremacy of Europe and the role of France as the base of enlightenment and civilisation, including the revolutionary traditions of liberty, equality and fraternity. Through cultural institutions of imperialism (especially through formations such as la Francafrique), the leading capitalists in France were able to entrench the politico-diplomatic, strategic and economic interests of the top one per cent of French society. The second major form of domination, which reproduced the first, were the financial and commercial ties that protected French commercial operations in Africa. Thirdly, there was the political alliance between the comprador elements in Africa and the French bourgeoisie. Through cultural institutions such as the French schools and universities, the leaders of Francophone Africa looked to Paris in the same way as they disregarded the social needs of their own societies. Whether in dress, diet, speech or marriage ties, the African leaders from former French colonies were known to be especially servile to the interests of France. This alliance reinforced the fourth mode, which was to ensure a steady supply of cheap and coerced labour from Africa at the bottom of the French economy. The largest numbers of such workers were from the North African states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and from Mauritania and the border societies of West Africa. The fifth form of domination was the supply of cheap raw materials, minerals and food for France. All of these five forms of domination were sealed by the sixth, and possibly the most consistent: French military occupation and interventions in Africa. From the period of the war against the people of Algeria up to the military intervention in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire, France stood out as the state that has intervened and been involved militarily in Africa more often than any other outside power. More than thirty years ago, Robin Luckham documented the multiple layers of ‘French Militarism in Africa’.135 This interventionist policy to support dictators such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire had been covered up by discourses on ‘security agreements’, ‘military...