Père Noël Macron
Notre Père Noël Macron est en voyage en Afrique, sans doute pour retrouver un peu de la chaleur qu’il a perdu dans l’opinion nationale. Et c’est bien sûr la distribution des cadeaux, le dernier venant d’être annoncé à Dakar pour une somme digne d’un Euromillions mirifique : 200 millions d’euros, soit environ 13 euros par habitant. Somme énorme et pourtant ridicule en tant que telle.
Mais somme qui ne coûte rien au Santa Klaus pédestre puisque de toute façon elle ne sort pas de sa poche, mais de la nôtre, environ 3 euros par Français, soit 11,7 par ménage fiscal. Pour faire simple, disons que chaque Français donne chacun une belle pizza à chaque Sénégalais. Pardon, pas exactement : Macron prétend avoir le droit d’offrir une pizza à chaque Sénégalais sur le dos des Français.
Et pour faire quoi, et pourquoi un tel chiffre ? Mystère. Mais qui s’en préoccupe ? Deux choses importent et suffisent pour le Marcheur : pouvoir dire qu’il agit, qu’il donne, qu’il est généreux, qu’il vient en aide aux nécessiteux. Et faire plaisir aux malandrins d’en face qui auront tôt fait de confondre l’intérêt général du Sénégalais moyen avec l’intérêt particulier de leurs poches et proches.
Macron mendie ?
Ghana rien à faire
Or notre Père Noël (et les journalistes au moins autant) semble avoir la mémoire courte, c’est presque de l’amnésie. Il y a à peine quelques semaines, en décembre 2017, le Marcheur alors en visite au Ghana se faisait très élégamment remettre à sa place, ainsi que tous ses parasites continentaux, par le président local, lequel se révélait à cette occasion un homme d’une vision, d’un franc parler et d’une qualité trop rare dans cette région du monde.
Même si je me méfie toujours du baratin des politiciens, certains disent parfois des choses dont il me semble intéressant de prendre acte, surtout s’agissant d’un continent qui m’est cher. Et ce jour-là, le président Nana Akufo-Addo donnait une leçon d’indépendance à ses homologues et de leadership à ce freluquet venu lui faire l’aumône, le mettant ainsi en position d’être redevable.
Je doute de l’impact réel du discours qu’il fit, mais sait-on jamais ? Rien que l’espoir qu’il exprimait mérite largement qu’on lui laisse le bénéfice du doute. Pour être complet, j’ai retranscrit son intervention ci-dessous – la vidéo se trouve facilement, ici.
Que dit-il en substance ? Eh bien, que l’aide aux pays africains n’a jamais rien donné et ne donnera rien, que depuis 60 ans qu’ils sont indépendants ils n’ont pas su faire même 10% de ce que les pays asiatiques ex-colonies ont su faire, que l’immigration en est un indice fort et que celle-ci comme tous les problèmes africains ne se réglera que si les africains cessent de tendre la main et les pays occidentaux cessent de leur faire l’aumône. Ils sont adultes et doivent enfin agir en adultes. Et nous aussi.
Sénégal du Ghana ?
Alors, dans une telle optique, le Sénégal n’est-il pas au moins l’égal du Ghana ? Le message ghanéen a-t-il seulement été entendu ? Les 200 briques sont-elles le signe que Dakar n’est pas encore sorti de l’adolescence ? Ou est-ce le signe que surtout personne n’a envie d’en sortir, le pouvoir sénégalais comme ses voisins et avec la bureaucratie française en première ligne ?
Certains disent Macron libéral. Ils feraient bien de lire ou écouter le discours du président ghanéen pour prendre du recul sur leur analyse.
Voilà un Noir qui donne une leçon d’Occident à un Blanc.
Euclide
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A Fundamental Misstatement
“I hope that the comments I’m to about to make will not offend the questioner too much and some people around here.
“I think there is a fundamental misstatement of the issue in the question. We can no longer continue to make policy, for ourselves, and our country, in our region, in our continent, on the basis of whatever support the Western world or France or the European Union, can give us. It will not work, it has not worked and it will not work.
Our responsibility it to charter a path which is about how we can develop our nation ourselves. It is not right, for a country like Ghana, sixty years after independence, to still have its health and education budgets being financed on the basis of the generosity and charity of European taxpayers. By now, we should be able to finance our basic needs ourselves.
And if we are going to look at the next sixty years as a period of transition, a period whereby we can stand on our own feet, our perspective has not to be what the French taxpayers decides to do with whatever surplus that they have in France – they’re welcome, they’re appreciated, whatever interventions that the French taxpayers through their governments make to us, are appreciated, we are not going to let a gift a horse in the mouth.
Energy & Dynamism
“But this continent, with all that has happened, is still today the repository of at least 30% of the most important mill-grows in the world. It is a continent of vast arable and fertile lands. It has the youngest population of any of the continents in the world.
So that it has the energy, and the dynamism, we have seen it, these young men who were showing so much resilience and ingenuity in crossing the Sahara, finding ways to go across with wrecked/recreative (?) boots, across the Mediterranean to…
Those energies, we want to have those energies working inside our countries. And we’re going to have those energies working in our countries if we begin to build systems that tell the young people of our country that their hopes, their opportunity are right here with us.
Migration and the movement of people is being presented in a manner which suggested somehow it’s a new phenomenon. There’s nothing new about it, it’s as old as Man, the movement of people. And it has always been linked to the same thing: the failure of where you are to provide you with an opportunity, so you move somewhere else.
Remember Europe
“Those of you who are familiar with 19th century European history would know that the biggest wave of immigration in 19th century Europe, the later part of it, came form Ireland and from Italy. Waves upon waves generations of Italians and Irish people left their country to see the American paradise. Largely because Ireland was not working, Italy was not working. Today you don’t hear it. Italian young people are in Italy. Irish young people are in Ireland.
We want young Africans to stay in Africa. And it means that we have to get away from this mindset of dependence. This mindset about ‘what can France do for us’? France will do whatever it needs to for it’s own sake. And when those coincide with ours, ‘tant mieux’, as the French people say.
But our main responsibility as leaders, as citizens, is what we need to do to grow our own countries. Whereas the institutions have worked, that would allow us to have good governance. To have accountable governance. To make sure that the moneys that are placed at the disposal of leaders are used for the interest of the state and not for those of the leaders. To have systems that allow for accountability. That allow for diversity. That allow for people to be able to express themselves. And contribute. To fashioning the public will and the public interest.
Our concern should be with what do we need to do in this 21st century to move Africa away from being cap in hand and begging. For aid, for charity, for handouts.
African Continent
“The African continent, when you look at its resources, should be giving moneys to all the places. We have huge wealth on this continent. And in our own country of Ghana. And we need to have a mindset that says: we can do it, others have done it, we can also do it. And once we have that mindset, we will see it as a liberating factor for ourselves.
We keep talking about how it was that Koreans, Malaysians, Singaporeans, who got their independence at the same time as us. We’re told of, that at the time, of Ghanean independence, per-capita Ghanean income was higher than that of Korea. Today, Korea is part of the first world. So is Malaysia. So is Singapore.
What happened? Why did they made that transition and sixty years after independence, we are where we are. Those are the matters that should concern all of us as Africans, as Ghaneans.
Francophile
“And not – and I say so with the greatest of respect to the French President, the cooperation of France is something that – I am as you know a strong friend of France, I am a ‘francophile’, so I don’t have any difficulty with that – But I’m talking about our own propulsion, what we need to do to get our countries to work, so that we can create the conditions that will allow our young people to forego this hazardous effort to get to Europe.
They’re not going there because they want to, they’re going there because they don’t believe they have any opportunities in our countries, so that should be our focus. And I believe that if we change that mindset, that mindset of dependence, that mindset which is contingent on aid and charity, we will see that in the decades ahead of us, a full flowering of the African peoples will take place we will see and that new African personality, that was talked about at the time of our independence, will become real and imminent in our times.
Ghana Beyond Aid
“That’s why I said that I hope that I’m not upsetting the questioner, or even some of my friends who are here. But these are my strongly held believes. And this is the reason why I have adopted as the slogan of my presidency, of my period at the supreme office of Ghana, that we want to build a ‘Ghana beyond Aid’. A Ghana which is independent. Which is self-sufficient, that is capable of standing on its own feet and building its own life. We can do it if we have the correct mindset to do so.
“Mr President, that was my contribution.”
