Comment by bpodgursky
7 months ago
African voters, to the extent that they have any vote at all [1], have vastly more important things to care about than a tiny island in the Indian ocean. I would in fact bet a lot of money that vastly fewer than 1% of African voters, in any country, know about the Chagos Islands at all.
[1] Mostly, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Africa#/media/Fil...
But this is a red herring. Their leaders know all about the issue (which infinitely broader than the matter of those specific islands of course; the supposition that it's just about "a tiny island" being a straw man in itself), of course; and have made their position very clear:
Yeah but when $dictator shows up on tv and talks about figthing $bloodyColonialists at the UN, it's uncontroversial (regardless of the issue being fought) and takes time from talking about his embezzlement/corruption/etc.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they can go cap in hand to $bloodyColonialists and ask "do you want me to shut up? Give me $something".
This requires no shadowy influence from this or that supposed Great Power.
This all just speaks in favor of decolonialization, does it not? When decolonialisation is complete the $dictator won't be able to use it as a distraction, nor can it be a source of corruption. And apart from that it's a noble and objectively good goal in itself.
No, because they will always find some phantom menace of colonization to complain about.
Look at the Chagos Islands themselves — they were literally not inhabited until Europeans settled them. There's no "decolonization" narrative here, because there's no native population.
Once the UK leaves the Chagos islands, it will be about foreign aid with strings attached, or IMF loans, or foreign investment in farmland, or whatever. It's not a solvable problem.
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Absolutely.