Rwanda’s Supreme Court two days ago affirmed that President Paul Kagame can run for a third seven-year term. In nearby Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Ngueso who has been in power for decades is scheming to amend the constitution this month so as to continue in power. Pierre Nkurunziza’s run for a third term is destabilizing Burundi. These men are all plotting to give some semblance of legitimacy to their affront on popular will. This is another sad commentary on leadership in the continent.
When Lord Acton observed that absolute power corrupts absolutely, he probably had successive African regimes in mind. Ruled by dictators who do not differentiate between the national treasury and their personal purse, African nations are impoverished and consistently occupy the lower rungs of the Human Development Index on poverty, life expectancy, literacy, GDP per capita, maternal mortality e.t.c. The landscape of African history is littered with carcases of repressive regimes – Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Omar Bongo of Gabon, Marcias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Jean Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic, Mobutu Sese Seko of then Zaire, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Sani Abacha of Nigeria and their ilk.
Today’s African leadership has adopted this tradition of constitution violation and circumvention of the electoral process as defined in Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Republic of the Congo, Faure Gnassingbe of Togo, Joseph Kabila of DRC, Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan and now, Paul Kagame of Rwanda. These men employ deceit and brute force to manipulate the process and perpetuate their grip on power albeit till death do them part.
Prodded by the salient acquiescence, nay ‘onlooker status’ of the African Union, mortals arrogate ‘’Sovereignty’’ unto themselves and, as absolute Emperors, set on a prowl to rape and plunder their ‘‘fiefdoms’’. Despots not only brutalize the conscience and commonwealth of their subjects but also impede the collective destiny of their people, plunging peaceful developing nations into penury and despondency. Did Chukwu Okike – the God of Creation – imbue African leadership with genes that are in constant negation to the advancement and aspiration of their people?
Nothing would be possible without thr crucial and tacit apporpval of the electorate. We all refuse to nstick our necks out for fear of dying despite the fact that we are already dying. It is ALL of our legacies. So we must own it iuntil we decide to act.
Repressive regimes is a curse to Africa. My comment is more a "where do we go from here ?" question …