Needless to say that the three of us had divergent views (that's the whole purpose of a multi sided discussion, isn't it?). But our disagreements were not principally due to the obvious: That because the other two were Europeans and myself an African, one belonging to victims and the other a descendant of perpetrators, there were objective and subjective contradictions. No. We were all opposed to colonialism and agreed too that the consequences were generally bad for the victims regardless of who the colonizer was. But that's where the agreement stopped.

The Situation in Togo since the death of its long-term dictator, Gnassingbe Eyadema, has not shown any sign of being resolved. The sub-regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed by the African Union and supported by the United Nations and the EU, has led global opinion in rejecting the succession of Baby Eyadema. All the right noises have been made and in an unprecedented consensus, Faure Eyadema has been told that this time around the answer is Non!

However strengthened by Togo's army, which is nothing but a personal militia of his father, Baby Eyadema and the ancient forces of reaction built by his father have continued to ignore the wishes of their people and advise of neighbours and the rest of the international community. Their tactics are very simple. They intend to sit it out hoping that with time their unconstitutional change may become a fait accompli and all concerned will shut up so that even if he is not accepted by de jeur he will remain leader by de facto. After all his father, even when democratisation through the Movement for Sovereign National Conferences in many former French colonies in the 1990s swept aside fellow dictators, managed to weather the storm. A divided opposition and a ruthless capacity to intimidate, co-opt or eliminate the opposition helped him to maintain an iron grip on power for almost four decades. He also relied on liberal exploitation of ethnic and regional fault lines to divide his opponents and the country in addition to presenting himself as the only 'strong leader who can hold the country together'.

It is almost two weeks since the Boxing Day tragedy of theTsunami Earth Quake that devastated countries of South Asia and to a lesser extent the two African countries of Kenya and Somalia. We are used to and have become more cynical of the media and humanitarian agencies describing every natural and unnatural disaster as 'the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen' or 'a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions', suspecting they are hyping it up in order to raise the bank balances of the agencies' accounts and extort compassion from an increasingly compassion-fatigued world.

But the huge scale of the Tsumani tragedy has blown away all cynicism and suspicions about humanitarian publicists and compassion entrepreneurs. Words can neither describe nor express the full impact of this disaster that immediately became a tragedy right in front of our eyes and most of us powerless to do anything about it once it started. Despite all the available technology, information and knowledge, nature still struck in a most menacing way humbling human beings and our historical and evolutionary arrogance that we are supreme in the universe and all that abounds in it.