One of America’s leading newspapers, The Chicago Tribune on July 22 run a front page story about a continent that is burdened with “big men” who just won’t leave power.
The story started on a hopeful note about how Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi is coping with life after State House.
But that is almost as far as the good news got.
Many of Africa’s big men, the paper noted, just do not want to retire, stubbornly clinging to power even after their popularity has waned.
Some fear prosecution. Moi may, for instance, face questions about the disappearance of $14 million in public funds.
Others, perhaps agreeing with former President Godfrey Binaisa’s insightful revelation that “the chair is sweet” just cannot imagine life without the red carpet.
As the Tribune points out, one of the incentives being considered to persuade the Big Men to leave power is creating university chairs for retiring African presidents.
Initiated by Boston University, the African Presidents in Residence Fellowship entitles past leaders to an ample stipend, airfare and security. The fellows are in turn required to give lectures to various audiences in America.
Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s president of 27 years has only recently finished the inaugural year at Boston University. Our own Museveni has a standing offer for fellowship upon stepping down.
It appears, however that the thousands of dollars and the prospect of giving lectures to Westerners is not compelling enough for Mr Museveni. He wants to remove the second tool meant to put an end to the Big Man culture in African politics – term limits.
The first East African Conference on Political Succession, which took place in Kampala earlier this month, resolved that term limits must be upheld in the interest of smooth transition from one leader to another.
According to the Tribune story there is widespread agreement on the importance of term limits for Africa’s presidents.
“The idea is to prevent them from getting too deep into the power game, too hungry with power,” said Gichira Kibara, head of the Kenyan Center for Democracy and Governance.
So who are these Africa’s Big Men who want to cling on even as their countries are devoured by evils of poverty, corruption and conflict?
The Tribune listed Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Charles Taylor of Liberia and then hear this: “Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, a key African reform leader of a decade ago, famously declared he would spend no more than 10 years in office; he is in his 16th.”
New-age apostle
After 36 years in power, Togo’s Gnassingbe Eyadema is Africa’s longest serving ruler who shows no signs of bowing out.
Eyadema’s peers, who included the likes of Zaire’s Mobutu, Gabon’s Omar Bongo and Senegal’s Abdou Diouf retained close ties with former colonial power France. According to the BBC, these ties earned the leaders almost unconditional political support, and generous economic aid to their countries.
Eyadema captured power in 1967, five years after he engineered a coup that killed founding president Sylvanus Olympio.
Eyadema ruled unchallenged for 26 years before the west forced him into the discredited 1993 multi-party elections, getting 95 percent of the votes, with a voter turn up of 40 percent. The European Union suspended aid in 1993 over vote rigging and human rights violations.
Eyadema was accused of supporting Angola’s now fallen rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, in contravention of UN sanctions.
Despite his tyrannical record, Eyadema has always been eager to portray himself as a model leader, describing himself as an “apostle of peace”. He hosted the 1999 Sierra Leonean peace negotiations. Incidentally the resulting “Lome Accord” would collapse months later.
He also called an extraordinary OAU summit to push for a cease-fire in Zaire in 1997, as well as mediating in the dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon over the Bakassi Peninsula
Eyadema told the 2000 OAU Summit that “in Africa democracy moves along at its own pace and in its own way”.
Hero to tyrant
Robert Mugabe’s ascendance to power brought hope to a Zimbabwe smarting from white colonial rule and a bitter civil war.
Twenty-three years later Mugabe continues to rule an almost hopeless bitter people.
He promised reconciliation and democracy but he is offering none: Youths from his party youths vandalise white-owned farms and he won’t stop them.
Mugabe has grown into a desperately paranoid, authoritarian ruler and brought the one-time granary of southern Africa face to face with famine.
Born in 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe received the first of his seven degrees from South Africa’s Fort Hare University.
Having broken away from Joshua Nkomo, he formed Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) and was jailed by the colonialists for 10 years.
He fled to Mozambique in 1974 and fought a guerrilla war against the Smith government, before concluding a peace deal at Lancaster House.
He initially built a coalition government with Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) but Nkomo would later be dismissed, followed by a crackdown on Zapu supporters.
Mugabe has in recent years attacked the 3,000 white farmers, owners of up to 1/3 of the country’s most productive land.
But critics say he is using the land issue to hoodwink the impoverished black Zimbabweans into supporting him to stay in power longer. They point out that even where land has been confiscated from whites, government officials and their families have helped themselves to it.
Mugabe all but ignored criticism for sending troops to Congo four years ago, where government officials were said to be enriching themselves from Congo’s vast mineral wealth.
Following the rejection by Zimbabweans of Mugabe’s land reforms at a referendum, he has clamped down harder on the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai is facing treason charges.
Mugabe won last year’s elections, marred by allegations of rigging and intimidation. He is therefore due to rule his country — at least — until the age of 84.
Meanwhile his country plunges deeper into an economic crisis, with soaring unemployment, inflation and hunger; a crisis that Mugabe refuses to acknowledge.
“Resign? Why should I resign? You only resign when things have got so bad you feel you can’t go on...it would be a sadistic way to behave,” Mugabe replied BBC’s Jeremy Vine in 1998.
Showman’s paradise
Charles Ghankay Taylor has been described as the showman of Africa. However, a United Nations travel ban on him and an indictment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone have left him a frustrated man.
So cynical is world opinion of Mr Taylor that when in 1999 a rebel group emerged to fight him, some suggested that Taylor made it up to attract sympathy and bring down the sanctions regime.
Four years later, the showman is clinging onto the stage with his nails, under fire from the Liberia United for democracy (LURD) rebels.
Like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Taylor has faced increasing pressure to step down despite being what he calls a democratically elected president. He will not leave, he says, unless an American-led force has arrived to take charge of the capital Monrovia. Short of that, Taylor will fight on.
It appears, though, Taylor has always been fighting on.
Returning to Liberia from the US in the early 80s Taylor ran Samuel Doe’s General Services Agency, controlling much of Liberia’s budget.
Taylor later fled to America, accused by Doe of stealing $1 million. He would end up in a Massachusetts prison under a Liberian extradition warrant.
Still he fought on.
Some reports say he sawed through the bars and fled from jail while others say the Americans conspired to release him so he could oust dictator Samuel Doe.
Taylor courted the support of Libya’s Col. Muammar Gaddafi, Ivory Coast’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny (RIP), and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore.
After a six-year civil war that ended with a peace deal in Nigeria, Taylor would also win the 1997 elections.
His critics say that Liberians voted him out of fear; fear that Taylor would be more dangerous out of power than as president.
Taylor’s credibility problems relate to the war in Sierra Leone, where RUF rebels butchered and maimed civilians for years. Taylor, the UN alleges, armed the RUF and traded in diamonds from that country – in contravention of UN sanctions.
Not to be outdone in theatrics, Taylor reacted to the accusations of gunrunning and diamond smuggling by addressing a Monrovia prayer meeting all dressed in angelic white. While denying the UN accusations, Taylor prostrated on the ground and begged God for forgiveness.
When he was once told by BBC icon Robin White that some people thought of him as a murderer, Taylor replied even “Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time.”
- With additional information from The Chicago Tribune & BBC.
