The Libyan leader's decision time draws nearer and it could provide the key for a new direction in African affairs, predicates Gamal Nkrumah A decisive moment is close. Africa is embracing a healing process in Libya while the West insists that a deeper engagement with Libya should be coupled with enhanced help to the opposition forces in Libya -- to both their civilians and military wings. So is it a question of the old imperial order or the new African one? After all the uncertainty surrounding the vexing question of whether and when the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will surrender the reins of power, NATO is adamant in determining Libya's future, emphatic that the "days of Gaddafi are numbered". The rhetoric of Western leaders has toughened recently. "Gaddafi's reign of terror is coming to an end. He is increasingly isolated at home and abroad," declared NATO Secretary-General Andres Fogh Rasmussen this week. Libyan defectors concurred. "These are from among the 120 officers who have left Gaddafi. We hope more will desert this despot and criminal," commented Libya's former ambassador to the United Nations Abdel-Rahman Shalgam, who was also Gaddafi's foreign minister, but who defected two months ago. He was referring to the surprise defection this week of key Libyan army officers who fled the country revealing valuable security information and military intelligence secrets to NATO. Standing against the Gaddafi avatar is a cabal of questionable characters. Most of the defectors had long served the regime of Gaddafi and are now deserting the sinking ship in droves, suddenly cleansed of their past sins. They hope that post-Gaddafi elections will deliver them the legitimacy they have long craved. The anti-Gaddafi forces, many of whom are drawn from the poorer and less-developed parts of Libya, especially the northeast -- the traditional stronghold of the old monarchists -- and the Jabal Nefusa area to the immediate south of Tripoli and inhabited by the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) people, have legitimate gripes. Far more clear-headedness will be needed in the days ahead. The African Union (AU) is stepping up efforts to end the Libyan political impasse peaceably. The opposition forces under the umbrella National Transitional Council (NTC) have repeatedly rejected AU peace initiatives. They are suspicious of the motives of Gaddafi's African friends and cohorts. They insist that they have long been excluded from the political process in Gaddafi's Libya and do not welcome African overtures. Emboldened by their Western benefactors, the NTC leaders are now determined to take critical political decisions without being clouded by tribal jealousies or ideological considerations. In short, the NTC do not care whether or not Libyans, Arabs or Africans think that they are imperialist lackeys. They simply couldn't care less what the non-Western world thinks about them. The Libyan opposition's decision to reject the initiative proposed by South African President Jacob Zuma has practically ended all hopes of negotiating a face-saving exit for the embattled Libyan leader. The NTC wants Gaddafi out, dead or alive, with enthusiastic NATO support. And, if he is caught alive he will meet an ignoble and dishonorable end. They will probably stage a kangaroo court and summarily execute him, no doubt dumping him from a NATO bomber into the Mediterranean. The NTC will never permit a Gaddafi proxy to assume the mantle of Libyan leadership. That is a tall order on several counts. Gaddafi still has a following. He recently discharged several high-ranking officers for incompetence and has promoted lower-ranking officers to carry out the fight against the NTC forces. If Libya is to avoid political paralysis in the post-Gaddafi period it needs, so argues the NTC leadership, to get beyond the cult of personality that the charismatic Gaddafi so brilliantly represented. Libyan politics in the past few months is accelerating towards a train wreck. NATO has intensified its bombardment of the Tripoli compound of Gaddafi and his close associates in Bab Al-Aziziya Barracks. Be that as it may, there are those in the West who have voiced concern about the cravenly manner in which NATO and their NTC stable boys have taken advantage of the double standards of Western powers and their fierce opposition to Gaddafi's grip on power. Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas has come to Gaddafi's rescue. After a fact-finding mission to Libya, Dumas announced in Tripoli that he is preparing a legal case on behalf of the innocent civilians who lost life, limbs and property because of the indiscriminate NATO bombings. "NATO was supposed to defend civilians; instead, NATO is lambasting Libyan civilians who happen to reside in areas controlled by Gaddafi's forces," Dumas told reporters in Tripoli. Dumas also declared his willingness to defend Gaddafi in any future international trial and added that NATO must be brought to book. If Gaddafi does enough to fend off disaster, he still has an outside chance of survival given the growing goodwill and backing of Western sympathisers such as Dumas. Indeed, should Gaddafi tide it over a while longer, he could get the last laugh against "the aggressors" in a replay of the British-French invasion of Suez in 1956, where the US pulled the plug on its fading fellow imperialists. Most Arab pro-democracy activists and revolutionaries are leaning morally on Libyan anti-Gaddafi forces to give them enough momentum to carry the tide of "revolution" through to Yemen and Syria. Alas, they lack the oil to tempt Western powers to intervene. A remarkable development this week is the launching of the "Libya Al-Hurra" or Free Libya homegrown satellite television station on Monday. Gaddafi's state television has dismissed the new venture as an imperialist plot to undermine his credibility. Co-founder of Libya Al-Hurra told reporters in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city where the NTC is headquartered, that the anti- Gaddafi forces and democracy activists do not approve of censorship, not even "Gaddafi's propaganda" instruments. "We don't don't want to forbid Gaddafi's channels, only have the same freedom to voice our views freely," Zuhair Al-Barasi, the co-founder of Free Libya explained. "I know what kind of monster Gaddafi is and his Internal Security was watching and filming us. We are not afraid of him. The fear barrier has been broken," Al-Barasi said in Benghazi. It is in this context that the mediation efforts of the AU must be taken seriously into consideration. AU Chairperson Jean Ping met with NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen to discuss the peace mission of South Africa's President Zuma. South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane was quoted this week as saying that the international community must give the AU peace mission a chance. "We reiterate our call for immediate ceasefire that is verifiable to encourage the warring parties to begin a dialogue to a democratic transition," the South African foreign minister pleaded. Now, Africans believe, it is time for healing. A historic reconciliation is possible and the AU is prepared to give it a go. So far the South African mediators have been greeted by a deaf ear in Brussels and Benghazi.
