Geographical
Ireland has one historical legacy around which Christians
of all denominations can unite - the number and
quality of its missionaries it has sent over the
generations to Africa.
As
a people, we are never failing in our prayers and
financial giving to help the people of that disease-ridden,
famine-smitten, war-torn, political corrupt continent.
But
the time has come for the Irish Christian community
to get off its prayerful knees, take its hands out
of its generous, deep pockets, and start a campaign
of positive action that will really help the down-trodden
people of Africa.
Indeed,
the time has come for the former European empire
nations to re-colonise Africa because independence
has brought nothing but famine, civil war, genocide
and disease and political turmoil.
Ireland
should be added to the list of imperial powers to
revamp the African continent given the contribution
the island - North and South - has made in financial
aid, church missionaries and volunteer workers on
medical and humanitarian projects.
As
well as Ireland in the so-called 'Gang of Five',
Britain, France, Germany and Russia should rekindle
their respective imperial ethos and take control
of certain African nations before they become permanently
ungovernable.
Top
of this list must be Zimbabwe, the former state
of Rhodesia, which Africa's 'Black Hitler' Robert
Mugabe has turned from a once prosperous nation
under colonial rule into the continent's version
of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
The
Western nations can't simply keep pumping billions
into Africa to keep it politically afloat. Just
as Britain and America have gone into Afghanistan
and Iraq, the former European imperial nations will
have to take the bull by the horns and invade those
countries which refuse to conform to modern European
democracies.
The
global super powers have also got to come to terms
with the harsh reality that South Africa since the
fall of apartheid has not become the 'land of the
free' as portrayed by the Anti-Apartheid Movement
and the South African Communist Party.
It
has descended into a political embarrassment riddled
with the horrific plague of AIDS, tribal infighting
and famine - all the demons the end of apartheid
was supposed to cure the nation of.
Of
course, mention re-colonisation and trendy Lefties,
fanatical liberals and human rights extremists will
start screaming about the bad old days of imperialist
slavery, white power big game hunters and gold diggers
shoving the native tribes off their lands.
Those
African states which were granted independence from
the empire nations and built their fledgling democracies
on colonial political foundations have tended to
survive longest in providing some sort of quality
of life for their respective peoples.
Many,
however, have quickly nose-dived into tribal massacring.
The only thing many native tribes learned from colonialism
was how to kill their fellow Africans with guns
instead of spears.
The
former imperial powers also need to realise the
African people cannot wait until the European Union
sorts out how to govern itself. How many more millions
will have starved to death, died of disease, or
been butchered in inter-tribal rivalries while Africa
waits for the EU to evolve into the United States
of Europe?
After the colonial powers left Africa, the Christian
Churches and missionary organisations, along with
the newly-emerging aid agencies, formed the backbone
of helping many nations take their first steps in
supposedly independent democracies.
But
the Christian faith is literally being battered
on the African continent by the rise of radical
Islamic fundamentalism. The aid agencies simply
do not have the cash flow to cope with the famine
and disease epidemics.
Go
into many of the African states which still tolerate
the Christian faith, and you will find evidence
of the sterling work of Irish-based missionaries
over the generations. That's the main reason Ireland
has earned its place as a new millennium imperial
power.
Libyan
dictator Colonel Gadaffi may be quiet because he
is scared of an Iraqi-style invasion by the Western
coalition forces. How long can Egypt hold out against
the growing muslim radical threat?
Even
once Christian countries such as Togo, Ghana and
Kenya are slowly slipping into anarchy because of
Islamic radicals and traditional tribal rivalries.
Hunger threatens much of western Africa as well
as Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia in the east.
The
'Big Five' need to form their own Imperial League
of Nations and start the re-colonisation process
in Africa before the Rwandan genocide becomes the
'norm' in most states.
During
the bloody Crusades of the Middle Ages, many noble
knights left the shores of Britain to fight militant
Islam in the Holy Land. But the sad reality of these
early years of the third millennium is that moderate
muslims are rapidly losing control over their violent
fundamentalist fringes.
That
violent element is making its presence felt across
the African continent, too. The Catholic Jesuit
Order and the Rev Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian
Church have both completed missionary outreach work
in Africa.
Re-colonisation
of the African continent is the only route which
can realistically be taken if all the labours of
Irish Christian missionaries from the North and
South is not to be undone.
