The travels and activities of Minister Farrakhan in the aftermath of the march have raised a lot of questions about his intentions in the minds of even the most well-meaning persons. Take his just-concluded African tour. The billion-dollar deal with Colonel Muamar Ghadaffi is indeed historic. Wonders shall never end! Ghadaffi has undergone a sea change. The man has become a philanthropist whose sole intention is to help the suffering and oppressed minorities of America. If you believe that, meet me in Cairo, Illinois. I have two beautiful rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi, that I’d like to sell you.

Though the Ghadaffi-Farrakhan deal is not the first of its kind, I trust the minister knows that Colonel Ghadaffi is a slippery customer. His fingerprints – not to speak of his weapons – are in virtually all military conflicts of the world. By making Colonel Muamar Ghadaffi his political bed-fellow and moral soul mate, Minister Farrakhan has made common cause with a man who has nothing but utter contempt for African peoples every where. Ask the thousands of Africans who were made the scapegoats of Libya’s economic down turn and thrown out of the country with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Even as we speak thousands of stateless Palestinians who have been expelled by Ghadaffi are languishing in the Libyan desert. His military misadventures in Africa have helped swell the refugee population on the continent. Ask the Chadians, Sudanese, Kenyans, Ugandans…the list goes on. The fact is that in his nearly thirty years in power, Colonel Ghadaffi has transformed himself from the resident mad man of the Middle Eastern Bazaar to the rabid dog of the global village. Take the money and run!

By massaging the ego of Nigeria’s military dictator, General Sani Abacha, Minister Farrakhan has given his seal of approval to the law and disorder, corruption and poverty that the Nigerian military has visited on its own country for almost thirty years. In the light of the beautiful declarations of the million man march, the main issue is whether the message can be separated from the messenger. In other words, can a river rise higher that its source? I think not.

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The Minister has all along been insensitive towards a section of Africans – African Jews, both black and white. Take the Ethiopian Jews. They stubbornly cling to both their Africanness and their Jewishness. They have never been amused by Minister Farrakhan’s anti-semitic tirades. In the light of Minister Farrakhan’s just completed African tour, questions are being raised about the spirited rhetoric of the million man march. Only time will tell whether what we heard in Washington was nothing but the same old thing – the stale dish of hatred, warmed over, made presentable by a thin veneer of rhetorical spices, and served as a new, improved cuisine of tolerance.