Fig-leaf Rules.

Theoretically, I think, we (Africans, that is) don't traditionally exterminate those we disagree with politically or on any other ground. We allow them to come up with counter-arguments that try to persuade us they they are right, or that a particular road should be traveled for the well-being of all. This is an admirable quality that was exported to Africa (previously known as the Dark Continent, where the Enlightenment brought civilised illumination) by European missionaries out to bring God, King and Country to the savages wondering the savannas, jungles and deserts of the continent in their loin clothes, wielding their spears, and engaging in casual bestial savagery for sport. Theoretically.

I have no idea if it is true. I don't care. The Twentieth and, so far the first two decades of the Twenty-first, Century have witnessed a degree of casual western barbarism that, if it was not for the constant distraction of New Media and Hollywood, we would quite literally be up in arms. The hypocrisy of the western system is such that it can speak out of both sides of its mouth without suffering a psychotic break. On the one hand you have the cabal of western governments, the military-industrial complexes and their giant multinational corporations conniving to wage war. On the other hand you have their do-gooding civil society organisations bringing solace, and some brand of justice, to shell-shocked populations bombed by the aforementioned cabal. One bombs you to smithereens; the other offers succour, solace and an ersatz justice as compensation.

This has a familiar feel to it. When European powers met in Berlin to "partition" Africa among themselves, words like "justice" and "government" were not meant to be terms of general application in relation to the subject peoples of the Dark Continent. We are still coming to terms with the casual barbarism and brutality of the Belgian sovereigns in the Congo  and the German settlers in Namibia, in which Africans were a sub-human species for whom extermination made perfect sense, in the same way a family at home will exterminate rats and cockroaches without a second thought.

So why can't Africans apply the same Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian hypocrisy in relation to international crimes and crimes against humanity? Why should we frown mightily in despair when the African Union seriously considers the establishment of an African Court along the same lines of the International Criminal Court? Look at the ICC and tell me what is so strange about Africa looking for the same elegant solution that the United States and its permanent pals on the Security Council have found for their barbaric warring, murdering and exterminating in the name of "international law."

In the wake of the bloodshed of the Second World War, and the establishment of the United Nations Organisation, the hypocritical words were that the world would not witness another world war because the UN was there to keep the peace. What it did instead was to privatise war among the P5, excluding the wayward savages of the world. And so the French attempted, and failed, to exterminate the Indo-Chinese, leaving that job to the United States, which duly called it quits when its own death toll claimed above 500,000 servicemen. (The true number of Indo-Chinese killed remains unknown to date.) 

The British had their adventures in Arabia while the Russians, their tight grip on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics unwavering, had the whole Eastern portion of Europe to try their hand at it, culminating in the wanton technology-driven slaughter in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan, before they too admitted defeat and slunk out of there. The International Criminal Court is the fig leaf that the West uses to hide its shame at what its true nature is. It shouldn't feel shy about admitting Africa to the Dark Side; the lessons Africa has learned from the West have been learned well by Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia, the Ali Bongos of Gabon,  Faure Gnassingbé of Togo and Teodero Nguema Obiang Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. We shall apply the same fig-leaf rules that the USA, the Russian Federation and, lately, the People's Republic of China have applied at the international Criminal Court, we promise.