If President Carter’s April Fool’s Day speech in Nigeria achieves its purpose, it won’t be any joke. It will cause the tragedy of turning over Africa to Communist control. The calamity of Communist control over key African areas will exceed even the hypocrisy of Carter’s message.
Speaking in Nigeria on April 1, President @arter called for an immediate acceptance of black rule in Rhodesia and South West Africa, and for United Nations peacekeeping forces to “help bring a peaceful transition to majority rule in both countries.”
There is no majority rule in the country where President Carter spoke. Nigeria has not had an election for more than 10 years. Elections were promised for 1976, then canceled. All power is held by a military dictatorship, now headed by General Obasanjo.
In Rhodesia and in the Union of South Africa, elections are regularly held, although everyone is not eligible to vote. However, it ill becomes a U.S. President to get too sanctimonious about that, when the historical fact is that universal suffrage is a relatively recent accomplishment even in our free and democratic United States.
It is strange that our President would select Nigeria as the platform for his speech criticizing white governments in Africa. Nigeria committed one of the worst crimes of genocide in the 20th century.
In 1967, Nigeria massacred thousands of Igbos who were largely Christian. Then followed a three-year civil war with the seceding Republic of Biafra in which an estimated one million people died. Nothing that has occurred in Rhodesia, South West Africa or South Africa, involved even a tiny fraction of the immense bloodshed and property losses inflicted by Nigeria on its black Biafran population.
Nigeria backed the Communists in Angola in 1975-76 and even cancelled a scheduled visit by Henry A. Kissinger, then U.S. Secretary of State. Unlike Nigeria, other African countries such as Liberia, Morocco, Egypt, Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa are longtime friends of the United States and supporters of our policies.
The biggest threat to Africa today is the Soviet and Soviet-backed Cuban invasions of Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti at the mouth of the Red Sea, and Somalia. Communist control of these key countries will give the Soviets control of very important land areas plus control of the vital Red Sea oil exit.
In a joint statement issued with unelected dictator Obasanjo of Nigeria, President Carter denounced the “illegal character of the Rhodesian government.” They ignored the agreement to change from white rule to black rule in Rhodesia recently worked out by the Smith government with all the black leaders living in Rhodesia.
Instead dictator Obasanjo and President Carter impertinently ordered Rhodesia to meet with Joshua Nkomo, whose guerrilla invaders are trained and armed in Communist Angola and Zambia by Russian and Cuban military instructors, and with other guerrilla invaders trained in Communist Mozambique by Cuban personnel using Soviet arms. The Carter-Obasanjo statement did not criticize the Soviet-Cuban invaders in Ethiopia and other important African nations.
Nobody should expect a pro-Communist dictator, such as Obasanjo, to support the anti-Communist black and white leaders of Rhodesia. The question is why did President Carter turn against the anti-Communist leaders of Africa and instead back the pro-Communist guerrillas now invading Rhodesia from Communist-controlled Angola and Mozambique? And did the Soviet Union or the United States furnish the $5 million used to train the invaders of Rhodesia?
