No Champagne, please... We're Africans

I’ve just been on safari in Africa, that large cashew-nut shaped mass that sprawls from the Mediterranean down to where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet.  I left the continent just before the 92^nd birthday celebrations for Mr Robert Mugabe were held in Harare and was, therefore, not able to join the adoring throngs congratulating the obviously infirm gentleman on attainment of such a great age. But, as this Black History Month ends, I cannot help but recall Martin Luther King’s deprecation of pointless longevity. Longevity is all well and good. However it most certainly has limits when it comes to ruling a country.  Sure, among a venerable's family gathered around his feet receiving the pearls of wisdom acquired over a long life, the pleasures may be manifold. But equally likely, there may be some maverick skulking in the fringe who might beg to differ, remarking under his breath, eyes rolling, that granddad always has something to say, relevant or not. But, by and large, the respect and affection deriving from great age will be his.

          While thinking about Mugabe’s birthday bash (who knows how much that cost?). I thought we should take a look at the league table of long-term African leaders who have gone beyond their sell-by date. The list is a long one but for this piece, let us restrict ourselves to the five with the longest period in office who, together, have served for a total of 169 years. They are, in order of length of service:

1.   José Eduardo dos Santos – Angola (36 years)

2.   Robert Mugabe – Zimbabwe (36 years)

3.   Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – Equatorial Guinea (35 years)

4.   Paul Biya – Cameroon (34 years)

5.   Yoweri Museveni – Uganda (28 years)

And when we add the years imposed by the next five long-termers, we reach a staggering two and three-quarter centuries, a duration that rivals that of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

          How do they do it? Some of these superannuated gentlemen (note that they are all men) get into this forever-mode by blatantly manipulating their country’s constitution. Others use the blunter instrument of the military to grab and retain power indefinitely.   

There is no doubt that being granddad is a lifelong gig, but being the ruler of a country is not. Barring unexpected death while in office, governing a country must have a time limit, beyond which a leader becomes burdensome. He may be excellent, but too much of a good thing can be good for nothing. Fancy having nothing but champagne and caviar every day for just one week. The mere thought induces gaging. After a few days one begins to hanker for more ordinary fare like rice and palaver sauce which, some among one's children and grandchildren’s generation might be a great hand at cooking up. But, so what if they are not such great cooks? One can always go elsewhere and defer indulgence in champers and caviar for special occasions. Anyway, we all know that the African champagne and caviar of the last 50 years has mostly been sour and rancid. By all measures, Africa’s fifty-three countries remain firmly rooted in the bottom of all indices of development that you care to invoke.

Something to think about as we hold our breath and wait for Mr Mugabe’s one hundredth birthday.

 

Tell Fren Tru

Something Rotten

Some 20 years ago, an article in the Economist newspaper posited that the greatest threat to world order in the late 20^th and early 21^st century was migration. It is true that by 2015 we still have not seen the apocalypse that the article predicted, but it is clear that we seem destined for a day when millions or even billions would be on the move from areas of the world where life is intolerable to other less blighted places. Yes, we are no way near an apocalypse. But we are getting pretty close to a human disaster that we seem unable or unwilling to stop. This horror is unfolding right in front of our eyes in the region where Africa meets with a Europe that is in no mood to accept anyone’s "...tired, poor or huddled masses, yearning to breathe free".   

Refugees at Lampedusa

The urge to migrate to better conditions is an almost irresistible impulse in human beings, ever since the first humans trudged out of the continent of Africa. 

And that urge to leave continues to this day maybe for less romantic reasons than we like to fancy. True, those early humans who blazed the emigration trail almost certainly had no idea where they were going. They just followed their nose and, presumably climate trends and food opportunities, which eventually led to their populating the entire planet and the survival of our species. And that was good.

          That same instinctual drive may be as difficult to resist in today’s Africa as it was in the Africa of two million years ago. How else can you explain the madness of embarking across the vastness of the Mediterranean in unseaworthy craft, without navigation aids, safety equipment or competent mariners? 

          As I write this blog, European Union leaders are being dragged kicking an screaming to a summit to consider ways of alleviating the plight of these thousands of migrants willing to risk their lives and those of their children to cross a sea notorious for swallowing up the unprepared. So far this year, thousands have drowned, and in the latest casualty figures, some 800 would-be immigrants have died in the attempt to cross the sea.

        Quite coincidentally, the issue of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers has become part of the general debate involving immigration that is dominating the election campaign currently underway in Britain. One party in particular, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is really rocking the electoral boat with its anti-immigration stance. Its leader, Nigel Farage is a highly articulate and, for some,

charismatic figure but who, himself, is also of immigrant stock. On a recent visit to the Gambia while, looking up a number in the Gambian phone directory, I was forced to do a double take at a half page of “Farages” living in the Greater Banjul Area. Admittedly, there were no “Nigels”, the closest thing being something like “Nabil”. Could our Nigel himself have been African after all?

          So, here on the northern pole of the continent a tragedy, most horrible is in the process of being enacted whilst on the continent's opposite pole  another of similar horror, though not yet of the same magnitude plays out in the rainbow Republic of South Africa, celebrated for its accommodation of different folks with different strokes. The republic`s current imbroglio arose after the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini demanded that foreign workers go home, provoking his 'subjects' (irony no doubt unappreciated in the 'republic') to take the law into their own hands. Now, after several deaths and a short reign of terror against fellow 'other' Africans, the king is backpedalling, claiming that his words had been taken out of context. 

          What these polarities are telling us is that there is something rotten somewhere in the middle of the continent. As if we didn’t know that already. Not only do we know what sickens the continent, we know also what to do about it. We just don’t have the will.

That’s all.

Tell Fren Tru

         

Bad Luck

We live in an age of anxiety. In the west what causes sleepless nights the most is whether the next generation will be able to enjoy a richer lifestyle than their parents’. There is near-universal worry that the young will not be able to land a job that pays a living wage or even land one at all. And, as if in mockery of the plight of the struggling poor, the gap between them and the really wealthy 1% is widening by the day.

But the difference between someone in the west who pockets a million dollars, for example, and another who gets only twenty or thirty thousand is not the same as the difference between the minimally employed in a poor African country earning just one dollar a day and their more ruthless brethren who plunder a billion or two from the system.

And the poor in Africa are not only just poor. They lack security of life as well. (Among numerous other deficits).This lack of security may be just local, mediated through the actions of neighbourhood thugs. Dangerous enough. But, too often, the actions of their governments at the centre lead to a more wholesale threat to security. Anyway, however you look at it the governments are culpable for the shocking quality of life that people in these countries have to endure. Governments fail to deliver on promises, misgovern and oppress, and when called to account, over-react and do more mischief to those who dare to protest. Some governments even refuse to go even when they have gone well beyond their use-by date. And wherever they are in the election cycle, if that has not already been rubbished, the people may withdraw their consent to be governed by such incompetent, self-serving kleptocrats.

In the circumstances, all sorts of groups emerge from all quarters of the society, demanding their own slice. Fair enough. But when among them, the very worst emerge with their dubious theologies, the threat to the society becomes elemental. This is what is happening in Nigeria right now. A government, in what is arguably the most corrupt nation on earth and where the gulf between the rich and the poor is one of the deepest, presided over by a man whose performance belies his name, has exposed its people to unspeakable threats. Young men and women, old men and children are being terrorized and captured. Schools, churches and other places of worship and instruction are being targeted, set on fire, their occupants immolated. And now, captured schoolgirls are being threatened with being sold in an ironic replay of the wars that fuelled the transatlantic Slave Trade.

And up to recently, there has been dead silence from Nigeria’s Mr President. The only action of note seems to have been one from a member of the kitchen cabinet, “Her Excellency” Madam President herself, whose quota of testosterone seems to be more ample than that of her husband’s. Too bad that she elected to demonstrate her power by ordering the arrest of those protesting against her husband’s incompetence. Amazing.

Nigeria needs better luck than the measure that Jonathan seems capable of delivering.

Tell Fren Tru