Despite the loss of life that accompanies such an upheaval, a revolution is sweet.
A revolution is sweet because it is a triumph against heavy odds, when a nation declares that enough is enough and demands its emancipation from dictators or other abusive leadership.
I see no difference between so-called monarchs and dictators. I cannot understand, for the life of me, why millions of Britons are overawed by what they refer to as their ‘royalty’.
By accident of birth, a whole family and its extended families of hangers on do not hold any jobs but are millionaires, simply because they are royalty.
They should dress up those little kids they call princes in overalls, along with their father and uncle, and let them work for an honest wage like everybody else.
There is no bigger and more painful abuse of a suffering citizen than to watch his money being doled out to hundreds of can’t works because they are royalty.
Nearer to home, a look at Swaziland, a so-called absolute monarch in Africa, would be laughable were it not for the fact that the so-called king is humiliating and abusing his people while at the same time denying them basic human rights.
Mswati has even the audacity to say he is not to be challenged and went on to ban political parties.
How many wives would Mswati have were he earning an honest day’s wage?
But monarchs, who perpetrate inequality by just being there, are not the only connoisseurs of abuse and oppression of the citizens.
There is another breed that takes short cuts, probably from Mao Ze Dong’s zinger about power growing from the barrel of a gun.
The world is littered with army generals who went straight from the barracks into presidential palaces.
These include a disaster called Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, Muammar Gaddafi and a host of others too numerous to mention.
But they all have one thing in common: they by-passed the ballot box and, instead, used bullets to install themselves into the presidency.
After decades of suffering under one Ben Ali, Tunisians decided enough was enough and they poured into the streets. In a few short weeks, their long serving dictator fled the country.
Egypt was next and the revolution is still in progress. And there was nothing anyone could do. People had had enough and all they wanted was to see Mubarak’s back.
After 32 years of Mubarak oppressing his people, the revolution was the more sweeter because the people did it themselves. No one dictated to them from outside their borders; no one picked up guns and bazookas.
It was just loud voices and the Egyptian flags that toppled the dictator.
It was the people’s will, harnessed for results, that did it.
The Egyptian revolution is still in progress and is the more sweeter because it was by the Egyptians and for the Egyptians.
Other countries, notably Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and others, also caught the bug and poured onto the streets to chase their devils out of palaces.
People in Libya, who had endured decades and decades of abuse, oppression, torture, imprisonment and disappearances, cast their fears aside and marched into the streets to give Muammar Gaddafi his marching orders.
I admired the Libyans’ courage and the sheer audacity of their guts.
The Libyans are fighting a demon and those rag tag units who seized guns and started firing back at Gaddafi’s soldiers knew what the odds were against them.
But they were powered by conviction as what happens when a person decides to mortgage their life to get their way.
Give me Liberty or give me death!
The revolution to oust Gaddafi slowly took shape with the crazed madman not too fazed by the street scenes he started seeing on his television stations.
Even his son was seen on TV almost daily, insulting and threatening Libyans who were saying their president had to go.
Town after town “fell” to the “rebels” and undiplomatic defections became a trend from New York and Washington to India and France.
There was every indication that Gaddafi was in serious trouble.
The battles raged on.
One day the rebels would grab a city, the next day, Gaddafi’s military would yank it back and it would again be taken back by the rebels.
Clearly, the rebels and the people were slowly getting confident and more daring.
Then Gaddafi went into his hangar and brought out the jets.
No one expected this even from Gaddafi yet the jets were directed to fire on the people and they did.
I applaud the people of Libya who, with jets overhead, still maintained their resolve and fought back.
The jets pounded positions held by the rebels.
As the tide slowly started to turn against the rebels, they cried out for help.
The United States, using its usual ploy of hiding behind the United Nations, responded, albeit slowly and somewhat reluctantly.
As the UN was supposedly debating the adopt of a resolution imposing a no-flying zone over Libya, cruise missiles were already in position.
Within minutes of the UN resolution being passed, Libya was under heavy bombardment.
And that, to me, was the end of the Libyan people’s revolution.
It was no longer their revolution; it was someone else’s war, purportedly being fought in their defense.
America, France, Italy, the European Union and a scattering of token Arab countries were flying sorties into Libya while warships rigged every inch of Libyan coastline.
The Libyan people, who had started the revolution, were now hiding from bombs just like Gaddafi was doing with his people.
The flavour of a true revolution was lost and now the whole thing stinks and is a big setback to the good intentions started by peoples in other countries.
The west’s intervention, justified as it might be, also took away the very heart of the struggle, transferring it into the hands of people who had other concerns other than the freedom of the Libyan people.
And now look what is happening in Yemen and Syria.
Even Saudi Arabia has sent troops into Bahrain and Yemen has also invited military assistance to subdue the people.
Gaddafi has to be caught alive and face punishment for all the crimes he has committed against innocent people. If any of those cruise missiles should meet with him in his living room, so be it. He deserves it.
I fear that even if the Libyan revolution succeeds, it has been tainted by the presence of foreigners who have their own agendas.
Now the Americans are going to supply weapons to the rebels. The intention is not for them to protect themselves while pushing Gaddafi out.
Chaos is always to America’s advantage and that is what I fear.
The Libyan people have suffered for a long time, forty-two years to be exact, where was America, France and the United Kingdom while Gaddafi committed these atrocities?
Today because the people have tried to throw off the shackles, these western countries come in chanting freedom for the people.
I mourn the day the first missile was fired into Libya because it is the day Libyans lost their revolution; it is the day that changed the thrust of all other revolutions in progress.
It is the day all forthcoming revolutions were contaminated.
My only wish and hope is that Gaddafi does not live long enough to thumb his big nose at us and say, “I told you so!”
I am in mourning for Libya’s hijacked and stolen revolution.
