Stinging remarks that have been attributed to garrulous and bellicose United States President-elect Donald Trump indeed stick it where it hurts. Trump, known for not pulling his punches on matters of governance, gave African leaders a piece of his mind when he harshly criticised them for turning own people into slaves and promoting corruption.
guest column: LEARNMORE ZUZE
Addressing reporters in Nebraska ahead of the tightly-contested election, Trump launched a caustic attack on African leaders for living in opulence and having an insatiable desire for power while their people live like slaves. Of course, it is always offensive to hear condemnation from alien lips, but if the truth be told, Africa is indeed a painful case. Plenty resources, brilliant minds and educated people, but is the poorest of the poor in the world. Trump may be the wrong person to say it, but surely how do African leaders justify failure to provide safe drinking water for their people? Africa certainly needs a new paradigm, not recolonisation as the unrefined Trump put it.
In African countries where basic things like electricity and clean water cannot be provided by a government, we have leaders building mansions with stolen money and even stashing some in offshore accounts. Is it that African leaders lack love for their people? Because, honestly speaking, they all seem to be reading from the same script.
Once they taste power, they won’t leave it, they thrive on intimidation, abductions and tyranny. Somehow, they get a warped sense of ownership of the people and steal what is supposed to be common wealth. Apparently, there are some deeply entrenched practices in African States that have helped perpetuate the suffering of the masses.
The most lethal practice of the African leader is the propensity to perpetually hold onto power. The fatality of an iron grip on power has been demonstrated several times in African politics. From Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Joseph Kabila to our very own Robert Mugabe.
Zimbabwe today is in an awful mess because of this perverted mentality. The Zimbabwean economy is evidence of what a continued reign by a single leader can do. While there was an emerging ray of hope in Rwanda, with Kagame being lauded for promoting democracy in the country, the man pulled a shocker when he went on to amend the Constitution to facilitate for another term against the dictates of the supreme law. The script has been hardly different in DRC, where Joseph Kabila ignited ugly protests as he sought for a constitutionally forbidden third term. Our leaders don’t even care while people die and some are displaced in the melee resulting from their continued hold onto power. Africa is in critical need of leaders who can respect constitutional processes.
For a country grappling with high levels of poverty, disease and rebellions in the eastern region, like the DRC, obstinate leaders are the last thing it wants. The unrest in the DRC actually resulted in the election being postponed to 2018 all because the African leader’s mindset is one of monarchy.
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Away from the DRC, we all saw how, in Burundi, Nkurunziza worked hard to entrench his presidency in 2015 after the expiry of the two terms, unashamedly forcing himself into power. He ran for a third term despite controversy, the opposition boycotted the election and Nkurunziza won re-election.
Africa drips with this same story everywhere you go, hence it looks the same in terms of development. One can choose to visit Gabon and still meet with the same story. One can visit Angola and still come across the same script. African leadership is squarely to blame for the stagnation, decay and backwardness in the continent. It does not call for an actuarial scientist or an Immanuel Kant to realise that the negatives that arise out of a continued grip on power far outweigh the positives.
With a continued hold on power, leaders start to get a false sense of ownership of a nation, while in reality they are just but a citizen mandated with a term to govern a country. African leaders must understand that they don’t own their nations; they have no right to cling onto power at the expense of the suffering masses. They cannot hold whole nations to ransom all in the name of power. With a continued grip on power comes arrogance; the evidence is everywhere. One only needs to hear Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni speaking to see how absolute power corrupts. These leaders hardly have the sense of serving the people. They are rulers in the tyrannical sense of the word, instilling fear in the very people who elected them into power.
It is quite unfortunate when people like Trump have to stick the knife where it hurts, but African leaders surely ought to do some serious self-introspection. Africa remains the worst of all continents; it is as if to say the continent is cursed, but there is no curse at all. It’s the stubborn leaders who have presided over all the chaos and unending wars in their quest for power.
Africa needs change, not recolonisation.
Learnmore Zuze writes in his own capacity. E-mail: [email protected]
