By: Dr. Mustafa Mheta
News that Ukraine has posted adverts across the African continent trying to recruit Africans to fight as mercenaries should be dismissed with the contempt that it deserves. Ukraine must be told by the African Union that in no uncertain terms will that be allowed on the continent. A warning should also be issued by the AU to all member countries that they should desist from sending Africans to be used as cannon fodder in Neo-Nazi Ukraine.
This comes at a time when the Senegalese President Mack Sall who happens to be current chairperson of the AU has descended really hard on these nefarious activities being conducted by Ukraine on Senegalese soil. The Foreign Ministry of Senegal has since summoned the Ukrainian Ambassador to Senegal and read the riot act that it is against the law of the country to do so.
Admittedly so, Ukraine is going about in many African countries trying to recruit people willing to fight as mercenaries. Why should African people die fighting for Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? These people have so blatantly shown us their racist arrogance immediately when the war broke out. They openly refused to allow African students who are fighting in Ukraine to evacuate. Why are they now courting them to lay down their lives for Ukraine?
African should be made aware by the AU and their respective countries that fighting for Ukraine is like fighting on the devils side. Africans should value their lives and know that it’s not worth it fighting for a country that aspires to team up with the imperial western countries who are in the first place in the forefront trying to rape, pillage, and disposes our continent of our God given natural resources that they are after.
Similar incidents happened during the first and second world wars when they conscripted our forefathers to fight in a war that they didn’t know or understand why they were fighting in the first place. After the war ended, they were completely sidelined and were never compensated for their efforts. They were honoured with cheap medals and told to go home. However, their white counterparts were honoured by being given land in the very colonies where these blacks soldiers came from.
*Senior researcher/Head of Africa Desk Media Review Network SA and Dean at the School of Languages in Somali at National University (SNU) Mogadishu Federal Republic of Somalia