The Cosmetology of Electoral Democracy in Africa
9 min readThe North Wind and the Sun were arguing over who was the stronger when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveller take his cloak off would be considered stronger than the other.
The North Wind proceeded to blow as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely the traveller folded his cloak around himself; the North Wind gave up the attempt.
Then the Sun shone out quietly, warmly and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
Through the ages
This ancient Aesopian fable has had varied influence through the ages. Victorian versions give the moral as “persuasion is better than force”.
In the Barlow edition of 1667, Aphra Behn teaches the stoic lesson of moderation in everything: “in every passion, moderation choose, for all extremes do bad effects produce”.
La Fontaine’s conclusion is that “gentleness does more than violence”.
In the 18th century, Herder comes to the theological conclusion that “superior force leaves us cold, warm Christian love dispels that”, and the Walter Crane limerick edition of 1887 gives a psychological interpretation: “true strength is not bluster”.
Most of these examples draw a moral lesson, but La Fontaine hints also at political application that is present too in Avianus’ conclusion: “they cannot win who start with threats”.
There is evidence that this reading has had explicit influence on modern-time diplomacy – in South Korea’s Sunshine Policy, for instance.
Soon we will be hitting the homestretch to the 2012 battle royale.
And if experience from the recent past is anything to go by, we should be bracing ourselves for a riveting duel of mammoth proportions.
This is a succession election, and with the stakes so high, the contest is bound to be bruising, the tension palpable.
It is a virtual tinderbox setting, one that would need little to trigger implosion on a scary scale, reminiscent of pogroms whose ghosts still roam in our midst, chilling our very souls.
Anyone who cares to reflect even at the most rudimentary level will realise that the ugly aftermaths that have frequently stained electoral contests in this country have never been acts of God, really.
From the fatal scenes of the 1969 “little General Election” to the deadly spectacles of ethnic cleansing that bloodied the 1992 and 1997 elections to that 2007 grandmother of national insanity, we have pretty much been the authors of our own misfortune, wittingly or unwittingly so.
Sickening prejudice
We have often thrown caution to the wind, hurtling into the abyss as though there were no tomorrow.
We have been quick to engage the tongue into overdrive with the mind forgotten in parking mode.
Peddling sickening prejudice-laden cliches against whole communities, we have woken terrifying animal ferocity in otherwise normal humans, setting neighbour against neighbour, even ripping asunder mixed-ethnic unions.
With reckless talk such as “wapende wasipende … lie low like an envelope … us versus them… my people under siege”, we have beaten tribal war drums, branded, ostracised, dehumanised and disenfranchised fellow Kenyans in their own motherland. All in the name of gaining advantage in the vain pursuit of power.
And it is so very sad that we just never seem to learn. Like a doomed moth condemned to the lost cause of circling a bright light round and round unto death, we repeatedly walk the same fatal path every election cycle. Indeed, signs that 2012 is likely to be no different are already manifest.
Little tribal chieftains have cropped up all over the place, declaring themselves “custodians” and shamelessly laying claim to ethnic fiefdoms as if their communities were some merchandise to be packed, hoarded, peddled around and offered to the highest bidder for selfish individual gain.
In the run-up to The Hague hearings, we witnessed a callous attempt by some suspects to blame their woes on a political rival.
Fully aware that their story was pure fiction, they nonetheless went forth to brazenly claim that this rival was sacrificing them to gain political advantage.
Stomping around the country with alarming fury, they stoked tribal embers that would certainly explode into flames in the charged atmosphere of elections.
This country has already paid heavily for this kind of thoughtless recklessness.
But those so inclined seem determined to continue, mutating from generation to another, contaminating community after community.
This leaves Kenya’s salvation in the hearts and minds of the ordinary citizen.
Albert Einstein warns us that “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”.
ababumtumwa@yahoo.com
Africa dictators: They live lavishly but die ingloriously
By JUMA KWAYERA
The grainy footage of the bloodied face of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi being pulled out of a storm-water pipe summed up the now familiar and harrowing tragic ends of dictators.
It was a complete picture of the youthful soldier who ascended to power radiating hope and promise for his country after deposing an absolute monarchy in 1969.
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| Deposed Libya leader Muammar Gadaffi with his female bodyguards. [PICTURE: COURTESY] |
The spectre brought back memories of the capture of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein who, after many months on the run from the US and Allied forces firepower, could only find safe haven in a foxhole.
It was pretty the same story in 1945 when Italian autocrat Benito Mussolini and his mistress were hanged facedown in public. To many world leaders, Gadaffi’s death was a significant step towards eliminating the lingering vestiges of political dinosaurs.
In the same breadth, cynics are apprehensive the West is paving the way for re-colonisation of the world through a blurred concept of democracy. However, the post-death humiliation of dictators is a subject of intense debate internationally.
Personality cult
Writing in India Today KG Kumar says: “The office of dictator once had a very different meaning from how we think of it today… Many of these dictators foster personality cults, a form of hero worship in which the masses are fed propaganda declaring their leader to be flawless and in some cases, divine or divinely appointed.”
When the going is good, dictators run their countries unchallenged as if they were their private property, thanks to the absolute power they wield. But their exit from power has acquired something of a predictable refrain: They bow out in utter disgrace and hatred, partly because of the near utopian they live in and cavernous appetite for material riches that exposes the ruled to abject poverty.
In Libya, for instance, Gadaffi who came to power promising equality and equity in distribution of resources had amassed a personal fortune estimated to be billions of dollars.
He trampled upon people, who out of fear treated them like a demigod. The governed are forever at the mercy of the despots. This is the lingering legacy of the world’s most famous dictator – Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
Hitler led Germany during the Third Reich and was the instigator of the Second World War in Europe. He rebuilt the German army and encouraged women to breed more and bringing in laws to secure racial purity. He killed more than six million people – most of them Jews.
Accounts in various publications say when he was about to die, he prepared to marry Eva Braun just two days before his end. His bed was in a bunker in the heart of Berlin.
Avowed exterminator
From the accounts, the Nazi avowed exterminator wrote the script for modern day dictators, who rule without regard to law.
“In Gaddafi’s Libya, there was only freedom to breath. Even at international conference, Libyans began their speeches by praising Gadaffi. This happens only in closed societies, but in a globalised neo-liberalism politics, the pent up anger among the governed explodes sooner than later,” says Egara Kabaji, a communications professor at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology.
Prof Kabaji, who during his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had an opportunity to interact with Gadaffi up close, tells of how the fallen ‘Brother Leader’ of Libya ruled with an iron fist that instilled fear in his people. As resistance to his regime grew, Gadaffi deluded himself that he could crush the ‘rats’ under his feet!
Kabaji says the uprisings in North Africa are a rerun of how past dictators met their tragic deaths and humiliating end at the hands of the people they governed with such bestial brutality or fell victim of their own eccentricities. The fall of dictators, he says, is often marked with massive sacrifices with the suppressed putting their lives on the line.
The dictators’ eccentricities make the tragic end to their lives more horrifying and awesome in equal measure.
Insatiable lust
Uganda’s Idi Amin who died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2003 was a bloodhound that revelled in killing his citizens. It is estimated that at the time of his ouster in 1979, he was responsible for the death of more than 300,000 people. More intriguing about the former Ugandan ruler was a peculiarity common with his ilk: insatiable lust for women.
Although he had four wives, Amin often boasted publicly that he possessed inexhaustible libido! He maintained a retinue of mistresses and call girls, even dating several of them in one room. He raped women and cuckolded his ministers and senior civil servants. He died miserable – worse than the proverbial church mouse.
Former Subukia MP, Koigi wa Wamwere, blames tyrannical leadership in Third World on Western powers. Amin was assisted by Britain to overthrow Milton Obote, while in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko was propelled and maintained in power by the US, after Central Intelligence Agency assassinated Patrice Lumumba. Like Amin, Mobutu died miserably in exile in Morocco.
The West is blamed for creating dictators in developing countries.
“If you are a friend of the US, you will be respected. In the US, when their leaders die, they are honoured. When you die in circumstances of conquest, victors in Western hemisphere are never magnanimous in victory. They use the opportunity to humiliate the dictators,” says Mr Wamwere, pointing out the display of Gadaffi’s bloodied corpse and subsequent refrigeration was designed to instil fear in leaders who dare challenge Western interests.
Kabaji says despots have an uncanny knack to set up circumstances that precipitate their own tragic fall from power.
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who was installed by France in Central African Republic (CAR) to fight corruption, ended up entrenching the vice. As it thrived and members of close family pillage the country, he proclaimed himself emperor. Bokassa is said to have relished human flesh, like Idi Amin, he killed and fed on the flesh of his subjects, literally.
He rose through the French army to crown himself emperor of Central Africa Republic (CAR) before affixing ‘apostle’ to his name that reminds the world of some of the more bizarre cravings of dictators.
Bloody massacres
He was tried after his ouster and CAR judges twice condemned him to death for the bloody massacres of primary school children in 1979 during which he was also charged with cannibalism. Bokassa died of a heart attack after he returned from exile in France, where he fled after he was granted amnesty that ended a life prison sentence. He had 55 children born of 17 wives. He was the creation of France President ValÈry Giscard d’Estaing.
An editorial in Zimbabwe’s Standard sums up the fate of dictators – whether in Africa or elsewhere:
“Many Zimbabweans will remember Muammar Gadaffi as the Libyan leader who made a grand entry into Zimbabwe, driving from Zambia in the company of hordes of female Nubian bodyguards in 2001.
This is the same so-called larger-than-life ‘King of Kings’ who was pulled out of a drainpipe on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte in inglorious circumstances. Shortly thereafter, he was shot dead by citizens-turned-rebels he had once dismissed as ‘rats’.
http://standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000047383&cid=4&
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