Does Meles think he’s Africa’s George Bush?

Where did the New Leaders go wrong?

It is a new year but excuse me if I do not begin with the customary seasonal platitude. Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, playing the role of a Bush clone in Africa presented us with a Christmas present of bombs in Mogadishu. LIke Israel in Lebanon he claimed to be supporting the 'legitimate' government by offloading bombs on the Airport! For a country that cannot feed its own peoples Ethiopia seem to be overfeeding its defence (or is it offensive?) establishment.

In the Middle East, while Muslims were preparing for the Eid. American Cretins, otherwise called Iraqi government, presented Saddam's head to their Patron-Saint in Washington on Eid Day. Ironically the Eid El Kabir, was institutionalised as Ram slaughter in place of human slaughter but Bagdad and Washington reverted back to the barbaric practice.

I am not sure how many of us can say Happy New Year in these circumstances?

Prime Minister Melees Zenawi of Ethiopia is one of the most intellectually engaging leaders on the African continent today. He is one of the small groups of younger and supposedly dynamic leaders that burst on to the political scene in the 1990s for whom President Yoweri Museveni (who had come to power earlier in 19856) became a titular head. They were generally referred to as ‘New generation of African Leaders’. I was, along with many colleagues inside and outside the Pan African Movement, a great proponent for these leaders. They represented a fresh approach to leadership, seemed to be clear ideologically and politically. They spoke with confidence and inspired many Africans and friends of Africa that indeed ‘African Solution to African problems’ was indeed a reality.

But did we celebrate too early? Were our hopes and enthusiasm misplaced? By the mid-1990s, many of these leaders began to show personal, political and ideological strands that made people to wonder whether these are not ‘old wines in new bottles’. To some of their opponents these leaders are even worse than the former dictators they replaced.

I am not one of these perpetual pessimists who always seem to see an unending bad news that imprison the present and moors us permanently to our inglorious and the more unsavoury parts of our history. A lot of positive changes did take place and are still taking place in many countries. And we did learn to dream again but more importantly renewed our hopes.

Whatever one thinks of Museveni now he is not an Idi Amin. And Meles is no Mengistu. Whatever may have happened in the DRC, we did well to remove Mobutu. Whatever anyone thinks of the RPF or Kagame in Rwanda we should never feel or be made to feel guilty for ending genocide and putting the country on a path of normalcy.

We can explain what has happened to these leaders and what they may have become without forcing the parallels that they are not different from past dictators. Such blanket criticism negates many of the positive things that have happened and continue to happen, albeit, unevenly across the continent.

Like other enthusiasts, I am still asking why and what happened to some of those I got to know fairly well. For now I would like to share 10 reasons why the ‘New Leaders’ seem to have extinguished or are extinguishing the hopes they had inspired. It may not wholly apply to all of them but the pattern is generic.

One: They come as liberators but the longer they stay in power the more they become oppressors, intolerant of dissension or even discussions within their own political and military formations, among original leaders and in the wider society. Check in all these countries where the original leadership has remained intact even five to ten years after assumption of office.

Two: The vanguard of the masses slowly become vanguard of the ruling party / clique and soon degenerates into vanguard of the leader. Take the example of Eritrea‘s Issias Afwerki, who has managed to turn a country we all thought was going to be a shining example of a ‘future that works’ into a large garrison. They wrote a beautiful constitution that was ‘people-driven’ but became ‘Leader jammed’ and remains gathering dust. The people had their say but the leader had his way!

Three: They usually come in with big dreams and enormous commitment to the masses but the paraphernalia of power, the glitz, pomp and pageantry and all the trappings begin to take over. The ascetic ones amongst them begin to enjoy the good life and could not have enough of it. Add to that the institutionalized culture of sycophancy, jungle fatigues soon give way to the best of Savoy row suits, Gucci shoes, Rolex watches, etc. The comrade has now ‘arrived’ and will not be in a hurry to vacate he State House which he once detested. Some of them made a point of not occupying huge palaces vacated by their predecessors but soon moved into them or build even more imposing ones ‘on national security grounds’.

Four: A ruling group that had been held together for many years (from rebel groupings until they capture power) by shared ideology and perspectives become more and more built around the personality of the leader, his family, in-laws, freelance opportunists and other cronies recruited for ‘loyalty’ rather than any commitment to the country or people.

Five: The interest of the party, the government and the people become indistinguishable from the whims and caprices of the Leader. To oppose him was to oppose the people.

Six: The progressive changes they have brought about in the country become ‘gifts’ from a benevolent leader to his hapless citizens. Again here we should not throw away the baby with the birth water. Generally these leaders did turn around the economy and political arrangements in their countries. Things did improve even if in most of the cases, they were growth without development anchored on neo liberal policies beloved and imposed by the IMF / World Bank.

Seven: The one failing that many people -- especially their former comrades --find unpardonable in these leaders are their ideological somersaults. Most of them were revolutionaries who began their political carriers and rebel lives as firebrand anti imperialists but soon became converts to the free market and new best friends with the imperialist countries especially the USA and other Western powers. What angers many is the way in which some of them even use their new approval by Washington as a badge of honour replacing their former revolutionary icons!

Eight: These former revolutionaries, who previously espoused Pan Africanism, resigned themselves to ‘better managing’ the neocolonial state and soon became engrossed in competition rather than cooperation with their former comrades. Instead of more Pan Africanism, they engaged in less as they reduced relationship with other states to one of bilateral economic and political arrangements. The consequence of this is a tragedy like the DRC where we built a Pan Africanist Alliance to get rid of Mobutu, but could not sustain it after victory because every state wanted to have a pliant regime in Kinshasa instead of a Pan Afrianist regime in the interests of the people of DRC people and those of the region. Liberators become looters and occupiers...

I have saved the last two reasons deliberately to the end because they help explain the folly of Meles in Somalia.

Nine: This is the twin evil of these leaders becoming both victims of their militaristic means of getting and retaining power and wallowing in external validation by the same Western powers that not too long ago were praising our dictators as ‘moderate’.

Most of these leaders do not know how to negotiate without having their AK47s corked. They are used to conquering. Therefore, even when they profess democratic reforms, they are being tactical rather than strategic. They expect their peoples to be forever grateful and to accept incremental changes as decried by the leader. The only institution they trust is the armed forces. That’s why Ethiopia could fight Eritrea and Uganda and Rwanda can do the same in a third country despite assumptions of solidarity and affinity between the leaders.

Ten: My last reason -- and probably more decisive -- is the flattery and endorsement by the West. It makes these leaders feel that they are doing their peoples a favour. But more than that, it gives them illusions of becoming global players and they instinctively ally themselves behind geo-political and economic strategic interests of the West. But in these days it means lining up behind the USA and bush for all kinds of Bush wars.

Meles’ Ethiopia is the current worst practice of this. I am not one of those who think that Meles is just doing what Washington wants. What he has done is to use Bush’s doctrine to affirm his alliance but also justify his narrow national and sub-regional security concerns.

In invading and occupying Somalia, Ethiopia even has the legitimacy of the IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) and AU backed process that led to the formation of the TFG (Transitional Federal Government).

But as intelligent as he is, why can he not learn from his Washington friends that, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, it is easier to occupy a country than govern it in peace. Are they not talking to Rwanda and Uganda about their experience in the DRC? Why does Meles think that Somalia will forever remain weak militarily? If a country with almost 100 % Muslims want to be governed Islamically how undemocratic is this? Does Meles not realize that the TFG will remain what we call in Hausa ‘GWANATIN JEKA NA YIKA” (i.e. a puppet regime)? Sooner than later, its allies will turn against it the way Kabila senior turned on his Kigali and Kampala allies.

It was Prime Minister Meles who famously insinuated that African leaders may be having psychiatric problems because ‘they repeat the same things but expect different outcomes’. Since he was a medical student before leaving for the Bush, it is perhaps about time he turned his diagnosis to himself.

* 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.
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