Former president Thabo Mbeki was on Thursday evening due to deliver a stinging attack on “contemporary foreign armed interventions in Africa”.

The prepared text of his Dullah Omar Memorial lecture at the University of the Western Cape frames Nato action in Libya, and the toppling Côte d’Ivoire’s Laurent Gbagbo as products of persistent racism, describing them as the outcome of the 20th century’s failure to solve what WEB du Bois in 1900 called ” the question of the colour bar”.

In a speech with all the classic Mbeki features, including quotes from Yeats and Chinua Achebe, the former president is unsparing of a divided African Union, and asks whether the ANC is living up to the legacy of Dullah Omar.

Read the full speech here.