by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Foday Sankoh died September 24. And that’s good. For those not keeping score, Sankoh was the psychotic lunatic who ran the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone. In his last few months in captivity, the once-gregarious Sankoh had been reduced to a broken shell of a man, shunning the sympathy of even those who came to commiserate with the inhumane conditions he had been subjected to.

Tellingly, even Amnesty International didn’t make a peep in his defence because this evil fuck deserved every bit of his suffering. In later years, the former corporal and wedding photographer and alleged cannibal earned the nickname of the Hitler of West Africa as his money-hungry militia romped through the countryside forcing youngsters to join his band of merry men and scarring those they crossed with rape, disfigurement and dismemberment.

Now this story might not rank up there with Ron MacLean’s hockey contract negotiations, but please bear with me.

Among Sankoh’s other hijinks, according to Human Rights Watch, was the decapitation of a father of six for trying to prevent them from kidnapping his 15-year-old daughter. Sankoh’s RUF also shot and killed a 21-year-old mother and her newborn in another raid. The RUF regularly chopped off limbs of those they met, in one documented case amputating the hand of a 12-year-old girl. In May 2000, the gang shot 22 protesters dead when they protested in front of Sankoh’s house.

Now for weather with Rosie.

Civil war is raging as we speak in the city of Bouaké, the second largest city in the Ivory Coast. In Nigeria, Amina Lawal will soon be stoned to death for committing adultery. Last year, 59 died in a coup attempt in the Central African Republic. In Burundi, 200,000 have been killed in a decade long civil war. Sudan is suffering through its 19-year civil war. And so on.

Does this sound normal to you?

The new glorious era of free trade and globalization also brings the responsibility to care about the state of our new neighbours, so there’s no justification to turning a blind eye to this human carnage running rampant. How will we explain this to the aliens when they land their spaceship here?

A wind once blew suggesting colonialism was a wicked thing, so under the hot air of angry blowhards like Frantz Fanon, Europe set sail from the continent, realizing they could make as much money without paying the costs of infrastructure and management of running colonies. The first such exercise saw the Brits put the Western-educated Kwame Nkrumah in charge of Ghana in 1961. Within months, the carefully groomed leader became a tinpot dictator, setting a trend that would endure in all the fractured states of West Africa.

Perhaps some of the instability is due to shadowy corporate manipulations of diamond cartels and arms dealers. Regardless, it’s time to ditch the anti-colonialist rationale and help save lives, as several respected observers have recently argued, or else sink to the moral depths of the murder witness who closes his blinds and pretends he saw nothing. Indeed, the logic that we should allow Africa to suffer the wrath of homicidal leaders is inherently racist, as it presumes violence to be an intrinsic element to African politics. Remember that just 60 years ago, Europe was engulfed by identical strife. Europe has since become laid back with the exception of a gang of 12 shaved Germans hanging around the Dresden train station.

Part of the problem is that very little African news makes it in our media, understandably so, considering the high number of DJs, movies and fashion we must first report on. Those interested in Africa must to actively seek out news on the subject (www.news.bbc.co.uk being a decent source). It might not be as scintillating as Mose Persico’s one-on-one with Nicolas Cage, but considering that African-based journalists regularly get beaten or killed, the least we could do is find out what they’re reporting on and consider what we can do to help. :

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca