Tag: rape

The famous Roman author Pliny, had this to say about Africa: ‘ex Africa semper aliquid novi’ (Something new is always coming out of Africa). To me, something new came out of Africa again last week with the news that President Pierre Nkrurunziza of Burundi changed his country’s constitution to see him rule till 2034. His government adopted a plan in October to revise the constitution to enable him run for another two terms from 2020. To make a plan to rule for another 14 years when one has not completed the current term is novel to me. It will be recalled that the same Nkurunziza plunged Burundi into crisis in 2015 when he ran for a controversial third term that he went to win. The crisis generated by this tenure elongation claimed the lives of 2000 people in his country.

Nkurunziza came to power in 2005 and if allowed to rule till 2034, he would then have ruled his small landlocked country for 29 years. To many observers, this should not raise an eyebrow in Africa where we had sit-tight African dictators like Mobutu, Eyadema, Omar Bongo, De Santos and Mugabe who between them spent 187 years in power. The trend is still being continued by rulers like the longest serving Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who has already spent more than 38 years in power, Museveni of Uganda, Kigame of Rwanda, Kabila of DR Congo and Ngueso of Congo ( Brazzaville) who continue to extend their grip on power through dubious tenure elongation.

All these African leaders and others who rule their countries as personal fiefdoms are not monarchs with divine right to rule, as they are supposed to derive their power through participatory democracy which they rape with impunity. There is no doubt that after almost six decades of independence in Africa, democratic practices are unfortunately still wobbling in most part of Africa. This piece is therefore an attempt to chronicle the unedifying travail of democracy in Africa.

Immediately after the colonizing powers left the shores of Africa in the sixties, the political leaders who took over from them wasted no time in dismantling the democratic contraption left behind by the departing colonialists. The new African leaders introduced what they termed one party system of governance in which the state recognized only one political party. This system of governance had main apostles in Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Omar Bongo of Gabon, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, and the leaders of Francophone African countries in West Africa exemplified by Houphouet Boigny of Ivory Coast who was the favorite of De Gaulle, the then French leader. These post-independence African leaders felt for selfish reasons that African countries at their formative stages could not afford the luxury of multi-party system as practiced in Europe and that there was no room for opposition in traditional African society. The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo countered them that by this view, they were portraying Africans as having no mental capacity to practice democracy. However, in countries where one party system of government was not practiced like Nigeria and Kenya at that time, elections were chaotic and opposition parties were harassed and emasculated. Our chaotic federal elections of 1964 and the rigging that characterized the Western Regional elections of 1965 buttressed this assertion.

The above phase in governance in Africa gave way to governance by the military through series of coup d’état. The military in Africa from mid-sixties added to their expected role of defending the people against external aggression, the difficult task of political governance. In sub -Sahara Africa, the trend started in Togo in 1963 when the then President Slyvannus Olympio was overthrown and assassinated in a military coup. Before long, Africa took over from South America as a continent of the Generals. It was at this period that Africa had fiendish military dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko of DR Congo, Idi Amin of Uganda, Eyadema of Togo, Kerekou of Republic of Benin, clownish Bokassa of Central African Republic, Rawlings of Ghana and others.

Nigeria also had his own heavy dose of military rule which covered almost 30 years of its existence as a sovereign nation. The military rule in Africa was so pervasive and appeared so entrenched that many leading political lights in Africa felt that military rule had come to stay in Africa. In Nigeria, one of the founding fathers of Nigerian independence, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in frustration suggested that Africans should adopt what he called ‘Diarchy form of governance’ in which the military would rule with the civilians. The reason usually given by these military despots for taking over the governance of their countries was that they were in government to save the people from anarchy and civilian dictatorship, but all of them usually ended up compounding the problems of their countries. During this period some countries in Africa such as Kenya, Senegal, Ivory Coast and some countries in Southern part of Africa escaped military rule but that did not mean that these countries enjoyed good governance.

With its customary excesses and unsuitability for governance, the military of overstayed its welcome in the governance in Africa towards the end of 20th century. The outside world, especially Europe and USA used their leverages to call for an end to military rule in Africa. These countries outside Africa condemned military rule and threatened to cut off aids to any military regime in Africa. The African Union was forced to take a stern stand against military coups and military regimes were ostracized. African countries were encouraged to adopt democratic form of governance. This new era in governance in Africa brought joy and hope to millions of Africans and their well-wishers all over the world. Unfortunately, this joy and hope were short lived. Some African leaders in their characteristic despotic manners now devise means of truncating the new democratic dispensations. After getting to power through democratic means, they manipulate the constitutions of their countries to elongate their stay in power as it is currently been done by President Nkrurunziza of Burundi. Tenure elongations through dubious means, had been carried out in Uganda, Togo, DR Congo, Congo (Brazzaville ), Rwanda, and there was a failed one in Gambia by the illiterate upstart called Yahya Jammeh. A subtle attempt at tenure elongation in Nigeria was thwarted in 2003 by the National Assembly.

There is no doubt that that we have bright spots in Africa where democracy seems to be thriving and such bright spots can be found in Ghana, Republic of Benin, Senegal, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia, but it is not yet ‘Uhuru’ for democracy in black Africa as a sizeable portion of the continent is still under the grip of malevolent dictators masquerading as democrats. As Tatalo Alamu wrote in his column last Sunday, we may hope for the ’emergence of new generation of African leaders who will drag the laggard continents screaming and kicking from the hell-hole of millennial suffering to the threshold of compulsory modernity’. I do not think that this hope will be realized soon, when we have people like Pierre Nkrurunziza of Burundi and others with the same mindset in charge of this misused continent.

• Professor Lucas writes from Old Bodija, Ibadan.