Diplomats and political scientists re-examined the state of politics, policy-making and diplomacy on the continent when Dr Adekeye Adebajo, Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, presented his book, Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s Philosopher-King at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos.
If Nigeria is to take its place at its leading place in the continent’s advancement, political scientists say, active the development of the human capital should be in front-burner of this administration. While urging leaders to borrow from the Mbeki’s example, the experts called for an enabling political, social and business environment, along with a better policy implementation.
Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora, who chaired the event, decried the challenge posed by bad leadership on the continent. He, however, noted that African political scientists are too critical about the political class, observing that the problem facing the continent is complex.
“The problem in Africa is leadership. However, the problems facing African leaders are enormous. Where are our leaders coming from? How do we train and mature our leaders? The leaders are not connecting with the people. They leaders are very impatient and want to grab what the whites had in a century. These are issues we must address if we are to resolve the socio-political crisis, we are faced with. When a transition is too rapid, it can lead to chaos,” he said.
While praising the author’s effort at writing a biography on South Africa’s Thambo Mbeki, Fafowora lamented that it is unfortunate that “most of the well-trained political scientists have gone into politics, working for politicians”. He said: “I urge you to come home and partner with like minds to solve the socio-political crisis in the country. My only regret is that instead of coming home to Nigeria where his expertise is needed, Adebajo is in South Africa where there are better facilities, better pay and motivation for scholars than what they’d get in Nigeria. South Africa is our great rival. They have better structure, higher per capital income and they take leadership seriously.”
Adebajo has served on United Nations missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq. He was formerly the director of the Africa Programme of the New York-based International Peace Institute when he was also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Along with the biography on Mbeki, the author has written five books: Building Peace in West Africa; Liberia’s Civil War; The Curse of Berlin: Africa After the Cold Warand UN Peacekeeping in Africa.
At the book presentation were ambassador-turned-monarch, Oba Christopher Ariyo; the book reviewer, Prof Adele Jinadu; President, Oxford and Cambridge Club in Nigeria Mr Akinfela Akoni and Chief Information Officer Roland Kayange.
Although he did not have an interview with Mbeki, the author, Adebajo, who is a political-economist, said he was inspired by his leadership strength and foreign policy. He bemoaned the country lacks maintenance culture, while citing Nigeria’s political and economic structure as reason for his choice of working in South Africa.
“No prophet is honoured in his own land. That is the story of Mbeki.He will be remembered as a Pan-African. His foreign policy is his most successful legacy. He was the most prominent philosopher king of his generation. Though Nkrumah and Mbeki held international conference but Nkrumah had a federalist vision, while Mbeki sole self-confidence and sense of African identity into the black South Africans.
“South Africa may have white dominated economy but they have infrastructure. Ajaokuta was commissioned in 1971 yet we have not been able to produce steel till today: we cannot generate electricity either. If you want me to come home, you’d have to fix most of this these things. It is important we have leaders that rule by examples, not allow reckless politicians to mess the country,”Adebajo said.
The book reviewer observed that the mutual relationship between South Africa and Nigeria should be re-examined. “However, given the size of Nigeria’s economy and its population, the potential “Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s Philosopher-King, the book under review, is a pocket-sized but thoughtful and closely argued political biography of Thabo Mbeki, the former President of the Republic of South Africa, whose presidency of his country served more or less as the denouement of his apprenticeship and later frontline role in the anti-apartheid and the broader liberation movement in Southern Africa. A major objective of the book, we are told, is ‘to rescue Mbeki from the parochialism of South African perspectives and restore him to his rightful stature as an important pan-African political figure.’
“But ‘rescuing Mbeki from the parochialism of South African perspectives,’ by painting him ‘as an important pan-African political figure,’ and casting him in the role of ‘Africa’s philosopher king,’ sets this political biography in the broader canvass of the recent intellectual and political history of Africa in its engagement with democracy, development, globalisation and resurgent, if subtle racism as a global phenomenon…
Briefly put, we need to theorise Pan-Africanism or the African Renaissance as a social and political field of action, distinguishing between it as an idea or theory and as practice or movement,” Jinadu said.
