Brilliant Mhlanga
GIVEN the opportunity to traverse and write about Africa and her dictators, I therefore, am forced to go ballistic. The opportunity to traverse the troubled continent and possibly with another opportunity to ponder and compare Africa’s diversity in cultures and people’s values on the one hand and rich human resource on the other hand one is forced to ask: where do we get it wrong?
This question and conclusion is reached even before one gets to take stock of the human resource, talent and mineral wealth in a potentially rich continent; a continent wallowing in a mixture of both poverty, on one side of the ordinary masses and extreme wealth on the side of the ruling elite. The latter have been referred to as state captors in Africa. Some of them have had histories that spun decades in office, as they refuse to relinquish power. It is these characters I will focus on in my deliberations on the future of Africa and her possible travails.
A cross sectional analysis of Africa’s travails, past and present, tells a deep and often sad story. I often sit around Pan-Africanists and listen to their fantasies and glean the direction Africa would have taken if all government practices had been reverted back to mere fantasies. At least this is the state of affairs for most Pan-Africanists who have found themselves being led by leaders whose geriatric state has become too dangerous not only to themselves and the coterie of people around them, but to their respective nations.
I wish to deliberate on those recently departed and alive. Imagine leaders like; Togo’s late president General Gnassingbé Eyadéma, formerly Étienne Eyadéma who managed to remain in power for 38 years and finally went wild before his death. Those who knew him closely even confess high levels of mental incapacitation; they say he had become so fuzzy to the extent that he even tended to forget some of his ministers after a cabinet reshuffle.
But he still managed to cling to power and even died in office. At least one common feature he shared with Robert Mugabe is the tendency to talk to himself at old age. Some social psychologists have referred to that condition as a return to the self; a dangerous state of mental warping capable only of producing a self-serving individual without a tinge of selflessness.
This is a child like state of mind. In such a state the nation and the people are positioned last. That state is bad and is a feature of most African leaders, surprisingly, when they are still in office.
Another beautiful country, Guinea, is led to this day by General Lasana Conte. I remember vividly, while in West Africa, an exuberantly happy Conte telling the masses in Guinea that their voices and wisdom have finally triumphed by refusing Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan an opportunity to take the African Union chairmanship. Yet in the wisdom of all this exuberance, General Conte was said to have personally driven to a maximum prison to free a big thief convicted of corruption. The grapevine has it that the freed criminal was his personal financier.
Conte has been in power for 23 years. He has enjoyed what the western media terms "the steady economic growth and gradual return to democracy", now typified by a drastic decline into a state of anarchy. On ascending to power he won all the elections with reasonably wide margins, springled with charges of electoral fraud and enjoyed some modicum of peace. At the beginning of 2007, the country erupted in strikes and riots once more. Unions claimed that he was now too old and erratic to govern. He was given an ultimatum by his people, and in turn declared a state of emergency. Once again, the army retaliated by killing people in the streets. Again another sad story, the chapter is still not yet closed!
Not much has been said about Cameroon, a country with clearly pronounced cleavages based on their colonial heritage; French and English speakers. President Paul Biya, a christian and French speaker runs this divided state with a heavy hand; of course, with the tacit approval of France. Biya was initially tossed into office by Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982. Since then he has not relented. Instead he forced Ahidjo into exile in France, and then in November 1983, he called for an early presidential election.
The presidential election was then held in January 1984. Surprisingly; he was the sole candidate and won 99.98%. He has been in power since then and turned seventy-four in February this year. He presents another interesting character of a leader in Africa; vigorously ruthless to the opposition and against any form of free speech. Those who have known him closely even claim that his entry into office can be allegorised to the story of the giraffe and the owner of the house in the cold desert.
When he first got into power, he is said to have sweet talked everyone and showed positive shifts towards democracy, examples include his early call for a presidential election in which he stood as the sole candidate, and even called for relaxation of media laws. He challenged the media to work with him in order to address the challenges facing Cameroon. It was only at the end that the media woke up to discover they had been taken for a serious political joy ride, and it was no longer feasible to turn back. Now that he belongs to the geriatric ambit, he has even become more ruthless.
Then a quick glimpse at Ghana’s previous 50th Birthday celebrations, when personified would show how Ghana has come of age. She can be likened to an old doddering African who is getting older with "Mother Nature" not being kind to her and with nothing to show for all the years spent on earth. Imagine being in such a country with a few questions jostling in your mind unanswered. On asking the Ghanaians they all seem to curse and end their curses by saying, "My Brother Kwame Nkrumah is turning in his grave".
The mention of his grave sends a volley of questions again in my mind. I am not sure which grave, really, considering that he died in exile and was buried in Guinea, and later re-buried in Accra. Well, that is how people tend to romanticise their past. On engaging a Professor from the University of Ghana, he retorts by saying, "but the people celebrated Kwame Nkrumah’s removal from office and subsequent demise. They even demonstrated it by honouring General Kotoka for staging a successful coup. Hence the name Kotoka Airport being given to their International airport".
However, the truth is that Ghana is in a very serious poor state, maybe now that they recently discovered oil it will manage to spring up the economy. Hopefully this new discovery will not see Ghana developing kidnapping gangs in the fashion of Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
At the beginning of 2007, the media was awash with campaigns enlightening the masses on the need to revise the currency. At least Zimbabwe is not the only one although all the zeros have finally caught up with us. In Zimbabwe our major problem is political intransigence displayed by our leaders whose vision for the future has become so fuzzy to the extent that they even do not know where they are heading.
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