It is like now a habit for African dictators to position their sons and close family members to replace them after their death.  In Black Africa, Equatorial Guinea’s President is also grooming his son to succeed him at the helm of this tiny but oil-ric African country.

The repression is very brutal in Equatorial Guinea and the son of Teodoro Obiang has all the characteristics of his father. The foreign oil companies that operate inEquatorial Guinea are all too happy to give full backing to Tedoro Obiand, and even the American authorities in Washington, D.C. play alloying, probably with the oil company lobbyists holding their elbow.

In North Africa, we had the examples of Mubarak in Egypt, who was also grooming his son Gamal, and late Col. Muammar Gadaffi in Libya, who was grooming his son Saif-alIslam. Indeed not elaborate; the facts are very well known.

In other cases where sons are not overtly being groomed by dictators who have been in power for decades, a brother might be the one who is being groomed (that was the case with Bingu Wa Mutharika of Malawi until he suddenly died recently), or explicit or covert tactics are being used to anoint the sitting dictator as President for life. This is the case in Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon andUganda where president Museveni is positioning his son Muhoozi to takeover from him.

As in the case of Equatorial Guinea, White predators from developed countries capitalize on the abominable practice to carryout private or State-sponsored “humantarian interventions”, one notable example being the coup in Equatorial Guinea that Margaret Thatcher’s son mark and a handful of mercenaries attempted to seize the country’s oil resources. The rationale was that, Teodoro Obiang being an ‘oppressor’ of his people, the Whites were performing their “civilizational duty”, by substituting themselves for Teodoro Boinag.

In Uganda itself, foreign oil companies have been trying to twist Museveni’s arm. Don’t be surprised if, when protests at the grooming of his son erupts, Museveni tells his people that his son is the one best-suited to fend off foreign designs, and the people should choose whether they want foreign oppressors to seize their oil resources, or have his son rule with a firm hand but “in the “interest of the country”.

By Doreen Nanyanzi