Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem hastens to the defence of his ten theses on the new leaders in Africa (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/39066). The power-worshippers, he says, believe only in one thing: power. And whoever is wielding it at the moment, they have only one party, which Nigerians call AGIP (Any Government In Power)
My piece last week has, predictably provoked a number of reactions from all kinds of co...read more
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem hastens to the defence of his ten theses on the new leaders in Africa (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/39066). The power-worshippers, he says, believe only in one thing: power. And whoever is wielding it at the moment, they have only one party, which Nigerians call AGIP (Any Government In Power)
My piece last week has, predictably provoked a number of reactions from all kinds of corners.
First, there were those who say ‘we told you so’ or ‘welcome to your senses’. They were cynical about the 'New leaders' from the start and were never as enthusiastic about them as I and many others were.
Secondly, there were the hardcore believers in these leaders who still believe that they are progressives caught up in the realities of holding power in a dependent state and are engaged in tactical manoeuvres rather than strategic sell out.
Thirdly, there were those who agree with all the analysis but believe that the problem is more structural than personal degeneration. That the system is amenable to the excesses that we decry and all of us can become its victims unless we are willing to take it on fundamentally.
And finally, there were those who accuse me of still being naively puritanical by expecting that people in power can behave differently.
I must concede that all of these have elements of truth in them. But they do not diminish the points I made last week. We are not judging these leaders by intention alone. It is on their record in office. And most of them have now been in power for more than a decade. There is no need to be smug about ‘we told you so’ because those who do not make mistakes are those who do nothing. The fact that history may not turn out the way we like does not mean that we stop doing things unless we are ‘sure’ we will succeed.
Political independence did not bring economic independence and liberation to our peoples in many countries, does that mean we go along with the recolonisers who argue that everything has been going wrong since colonialism ended in Africa? We can critique the anti-colonial movement and struggles without throwing away the historical and political victories it brought to us. Without those struggles many of us may never have had the opportunity to go to school or even realise that what we were having was neo-colonialism.
Similarly the ‘New Generation’ of African leaders did bring about many positive changes. Maybe their ‘historic mission’ is to stabilise neo-colonialism. Therefore it is the responsibility of other generations to transform the situation. As Achebe used to say, many critics criticised him not for the book he had written but the ones they should have written!
Those who are happy that the New Leaders turned out as bad as they feared remind me of some of the Trotskyites who were jubilant at the collapse of the old Eastern Bloc believing it proved their case against Stalinism without realising that the right wing counter revolution was directed at all socialist forces whatever their differences.
The undying band of believers in these leaders are a mix bag of the usual power worshippers, genuine patriots and faithful supporters. The power-worshippers believe only in one thing: power. And whoever is wielding it at the moment, they have only one party, which Nigerians call AGIP (Any Government In Power). You will find them in every government virtually since Independence singing the same praises of the leader as everything, omnipresent and omniscient, and if he is not in charge the “country will collapse! Initially our new leaders detested such characters and shunned them but over time you find such people are getting closer to them, as their former comrades and decent people move away from them. There are many such charlatans around president Museveni in Kampala today.
There are also many genuine patriots who think that the leaders still mean well but are constrained by circumstances both objective and subjective to become ‘moderate’ given the fact that reactionary forces are the dominant forces globally. Such patriots try to preserve some progressive nucleus within the regimes. In many countries the leaders tolerate them and used them especially in propaganda at election time, in the grassroots mobilisation and to maintain progressive contacts internationally. But often they lack real influence in government policy that is policed by pro IMF/WB technocrats. They are given direct access to the President or made advisers but no access to real policy.
In the end they become apologists for the leader blaming ‘people around him’ for misleading him. But the key question is who appoints these advisers? Is it not the President or Prime Minster himself? How come we are always ready and willing to blame ‘those around the president’ instead of the president who surrounded himself with those people in the first place?
As for my friends who take a more structuralist view of the challenges: I agree with them, but only up to a point. I have been around many corridors of power long enough to know and be very sympathetic to the pathetic demands on an African leader, not just the president. Anybody with some office, comes under extreme pressures from family, clan, friends, relatives (in the most expanded sense), in laws, cronies, fellow officials, not t talk of the corporations, foreign governments, companies, etc.
All of them seeking one favour or the other. People in power are supposed to deliver miracles, legislators are supposed to bury every constituent who died, donate generously at various Harambee in Kenya, pay school fees and even participate in the wedding of their constituents! The reason why this is so is the extreme poverty faced by majority of our peoples and also some enabling cultural norms that perpetrate this. The other reason has to do with the weaknesses of our institutions.
The challenge of leadership is to find a more institutional and collective public policy bases for dealing with these problems. Instead, what you get is a more personalised power relations that has turned the New Leaders into destroyers of institutions. If any of them were to die today there will be so much chaos because they have not allowed institutions to develop their own autonomy. They have become the system, rendering the country like an aeroplane on a long haul with only one pilot and no auto pilot mechanism! Any leader who cannot imagine life without leading or the country surviving without him is on an expensive ego trip on the backs of his or her peoples. If after 20 years of presidents in power, people in Kampala or Harare can still not imagine life without the president, then we should ask: what have these leaders being doing in all these decades?
Finally, I am too involved not to realise that power both objectively and subjectively changes those people entrusted with power, the people around them but a progressive person must show their progressive credentials in the face of all the challenges. At the end of the day the questions to be asked must include: what do you stand for? In whose interest are you governing? How do you want to be remembered? By the size of your bank account and number of cars in your garage or the fabulous mansions you own across the world? Or the honest service you gave to your country?
We adore Castro today and remember Nyerere with nostalgia as we celebrate Madiba, not because they did not make any mistakes buy because we knew where they stood and on whose side they are. The problem that most of the ‘New leaders’ face is that people just do not know on whose side they are anymore. And in some cases the painful truth is that they seem to be there only for themselves. And will do anything (including enlisting as headmen, pointsmen or foremen for imperialism) to remain in power.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN millennium, Campaign. He writes this weekly column in his personal capacity as a concermed Pan Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
