Zimbabwe-born medical doctor and activist, Arikana Chihombori-Quao’s viral video which hit airwaves last week evokes the music of iconoclastic Jamaican reggae musician, Peter Tosh. The video explains the rebellion going on in the Sahel against France. In Tosh’s system-bashing, anthem-of-resistance song, a call to action against the evils of colonialism and oppression, the coup in Niger Republic and France’s decades of paternal oppression against French-speaking Africa gets graphic detailing. His Mystic album, especially the track ‘Babylon, your Queendom is falling,’ is pregnant with powerful lyricism that is unpretentious against colonial oppression.
If you call Tosh a prophet, you would not be mistaken. As the lyrics lament white oppression, wrapped in fluid-flowing and danceable tune, Tosh addresses the systematic downfall of Babylon and how Ethiopia, regarded as the promised land of Africa, is rising in rebellion, from its ashes of oppression. .
In the viral video, Chihombori-Quao had appeared on the Eye Gambia, alongside other commentators. She gave a present-day bite to the Tosh song, especially France and French-speaking Africa colonial and post-colonial relations.
“The government of France has significant control over all their former colonies, specifically fourteen of them. When they were giving them independence, they forced them to sign a document which they call the pact for the continuation of colonization. On one hand, they say we are giving you independence which comes out to be political independence but that you have to sign this document… You are going to be independent, but you have to agree to continually be colonized. Two countries said absolutely not, they are not going to sign the document. They are Mali and Guinea. What the French did was that they entered those countries, took everything that they thought they brought into those economies, poured concrete into sewage pipes and completely devastated the two economies. They did this to let other countries know that if they do not sign this document, this is the fate that awaits you.
“The impact is terrible. The pact that that those countries had to deposit 85 per cent of their bank reserves with the French Central Bank, under the control of the French Minister of Finance and should those countries wish to request some of those monies – remember they are only left with 15 per cent of their reserves – they have to submit financial statement for the country and if approved, they can only access up 20 per cent of whatever they had deposited year before as a loan at commercial interest rate. The only difference now is the 85 per cent deposits have now been lowered down to maybe 50 and 60 percent but the countries are still forced and required to deposit their bank reserves with the French Central Bank.
“Now picture this situation: you are depositing your monies with France. Should you need some of your money, you get it as a loan at commercial interest rates. Immediately you have credit with France, but you begin to owe France. This has been going on and continuous till this day. So combined the 14 countries are giving to France cash of over $500 billion every year and France takes that money and invests it in its own stock market under the French name… currently, for every 14 billion that France takes out of Africa, by the time they finish investing it in the French stock market, they realize upwards of 300 billion so you do the maths to see how much France takes out of Africa every year. And France has the audacity to then look at African countries and call them poor. Why would poor African countries give France 500 billion year in year out? But what gets me the most is, how does the world sit back and watch this carnage take place in Africa. Where is the United Nations? This is the body that is supposed to be looking for any violation of human rights. It is my humble opinion that, singularly, what France is doing to Africa is the biggest violation of human rights. Women and children are dying of starvation, youth unemployment and these same poor countries are giving $500 billion to France. It simply does not make any sense and I don’t know how the world can sit back and watch all this unfold and nobody is saying anything. It is unacceptable. It is wrong and we are simply asking France to do what is right, what is just and right with Africans,” she said.
The above Chihombori-Quao submission may sound inscrutable, horrific and frightening. Another recent viral video, in explaining the chaos and crises in Africa, said that they are all orchestrated because of the resources of Africa that are cheaply and fraudulently taken out of Africa. Former French president Jacques Chirac, had affirmed this in an interview where he said that “we have to be honest and acknowledge that the big part of the money in out banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.” In 2008, Chirac was also claimed to have said that without Africa, France would slide down in the ranks of third world powers.
This is why the Bola Tinubu-led ECOWAS’s resistance to the revolution going on in Niger and other Francophone African countries is benumbing. Some have alleged that the post-colonial planting of puppeteer governments in Africa, held by the CIA, MI6 and other intelligence services, may just be the explanation. The overwhelming voices in Africa right now are that the imperialists, Peter Tosh’s “Mystery Babylon” should get out of the continent. If ECOWAS does not listen to the voice of reason and continues to abet America and the west’s continued servitude of Africa, they will be footnotes and flotsams of history when today’s story of their people’s rebellion against puppeteers is told.
