OnIslam & Newspapers
Sunday, 23 October 2011 14:05
Many Africans mourn Gaddafi as a hero who has helped many poor African countries
CAIRO – While thousands of Libyans celebrate the death of ‘dictator’ Muammar Gaddafi and an end to four decades of tyranny and despotism, Sub-Saharan Africans are mourning the death of a man seen as a hero for helping many poor African countries.
“We are the 1 percent who are not celebrating,” Salim Abdul, who helps run a major mosque in Uganda’s capital named after the former Libyan leader who provided the money to build it, told The New York Times on Sunday, October 23.
“He loved Uganda,” Abdul added in an interview at the mosque in Kampala.
Gaddafi was killed Thursday, October 19, shortly after he was captured by opposition fighters in his hometown of Sirte.
His body now lays in an old meat store in Misrata as National Transitional Council officials are still divided on where he should be buried.
Coming to power in 1969, Gaddafi tried to model himself on President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, focusing his energy on leading a pan-Arab renaissance.
Feeling spurned by his fellow Arabs, the Libyan leader turned his focus to sub-Saharan Africa where he built mosques, hospitals and telecommunication companies.
Even more, he used his own money to sustain many mosques and hospitals he built in these countries.
In Kampla’s mosque, for example, Gaddafi had committed himself to paying the salaries for the staff of 20 for the next 20 years.
“His death means everything comes to an end,” Abdul said.
Over time, Gaddafi's efforts won him many African allies, and when the uprising against his 42-year rule began this year, the African Union took months to recognize the NTC as the country’s governing authority.
One of the many pompous titles Gaddafi embraced for himself was “the king of kings of Africa.”
Mourning his death, around 30,000 people packed the Kampala mosque to pay tribute to the slain leader, according to local news media in Uganda.
At the memorial service, Sheikh Amir Mutyaba, a former ambassador to Libya, wept as he told followers that Colonel Gaddafi had “died as a hero,”.
Mutyaba added that while “Allah will bless him,” foreign “oil diggers will be punished.”
‘Hero’ Gaddafi
Reflecting a wide paradox, the Libyans narrative of ‘Gaddafi the dictator’ was the opposite of Africa’s ‘Gaddafi the hero’ who meddled in dozens of coups in the black continent.
In Zimbabwe, Gaddafi supported President Robert Mugabe liberation struggle against a white-minority regime that ended in 1980.
“The government cannot accept drawing blood as a model for changing political systems on the continent,” George Charamba, a presidential spokesman, said.
“Moreso when that blood is drawn at the instigation of foreign countries.”
Such support would be always remembered as supporting their independence fight against foreign interference in Africa’s affairs, Charamba said.
“As a matter of principle,” Charamba said, “Zimbabwe does not believe it is the duty of the West to tell us who our friends are and who our enemies are, who the beautiful ones are and who the ugly ones are.”
Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by opposition forces on Aug. 23 after 42 years of one-man rule over the oil-producing North African state.
His death, the most dramatic development since the Arab Spring, concluded a nine-month revolution in which thousands of Libyans were killed.
Even for some Africans who did not support Gaddafi’s rule, the bloody videos taken before and after his death touched many of them.
“I had never been really a fan of Gaddafi, but now I am touched by how he died,” said Manny Ansar, the director of a popular annual music festival in Mali.
“Love him or not, we must recognize that this is one of the greatest African leaders who influenced several generations, including mine, and found in the constancy and courage of his positions what we research in a hero. In a word: pride.”
Related Links:
UN Urges Investigation into Gaddafi DeathGaddafi's Burial Sparks Libya Row
Libya’s Gaddafi Killed
World Hails End of Gaddafi’s Tyranny
Muammar Gaddafi (Profile)
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