Why Africans are forever needy

To borrow the cheesy sentiments from the cheesy ’80s movie Ghostbusters, when there’s something strange in the neighbourhood, many African governments prefer to call on South African military veterans to bust their spectral rebel movements.

With experience in the Angolan conflict in the ’80s, as well as in hotspots like Iraq and Afghanistan, these South African military experts are highly prized in other parts of our continent, because they get the job done for legitimate governments. Apart from the fact they get paid to ply their trade, these private military operators don’t come with strings attached.

The same cannot be said for other “training” and “advisory” groups deployed by the major powers to “assist” African armies.

Legendary private military operator Eeben Barlow, founder of the famous Executive Outcomes group, believes African soldiers are being trained to fail. Why? Because this suits the nefarious agendas of the big powers, who continue to exploit this continent’s resources as they did in colonial times.

Barlow believes in African solutions for African problems, but our own government doesn’t like what he does. Yet, as long as we continue to allow foreign “big brothers” to lead us by the hand, we Africans will forever be needy children.

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