Leaders guilty of stifling Africa's hope
Former US president Bill Clinton is one of the most famous faces around the world. He is recognisable by many people who may not even be able to identify the location of the US on a map. But it was not always scripted like that from the beginning.
When he announced his intention to contest for the US presidency in 1989/1990, many Americans did not even know where he came from and much less, whom he was. Yet he had been governor of a small southern state of Arkansas, of which many Americans asked: Arkan...what? This bewilderment was the reverse of what happened to a previous Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, of whom it was asked: Jimmy Who?
Clinton’s handicap was not just because of his relatively unknown and unprepossessing state, he also did not come from a rich family. His surname did not ring any bell like say a Kennedy or a Bush, Rockefeller or Ford.
In Arkansas itself, Clinton comes from a place called Hope. And what he had in abundance in addition to his charisma and confidence was great hope that he could achieve his ambition to be president of the most powerful country in the world against all odds!
One of the events that inspired him was an earlier encounter with an icon of American politics and probably the most revered US president, John F Kennedy. As a school kid, Clinton shook hands with the great Camelot and that fired him. And by sheer determination, luck and personality, Clinton became president and probably only second to his icon on the popularity stakes.
In spite of his many foibles, he remains a hugely popular former US president both within and beyond the country. His was a genuine triumph of hope over adversity. No wonder he remains the ‘Mr Feel Good’ and a loveable rogue by many.
The Clinton/Kennedy encounter came to my mind as I ruminated over the last AU Summit in Nigeria’s soulless federal capital city of Abuja at the end of January. The government in a country where ‘more money than sense’ is the official public spending policy, spared no expenses. No expenses were spared in making sure that the executive tourists to the city are impressed by Africa’s slumbering super power.
As it is customary on these occasions, head of state after head state who rose to speak, including the AU Commission chairperson and the UN Secretary-General, thanked ‘the people and government of Nigeria for their... generous hospitality...bla bla bla’!
What was not in doubt was the presence of the government of Nigeria, whose security and intelligence and other operatives were crawling all over the International Conference Centre. As for the people of Nigeria, perhaps they followed on their televisions, that is if the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) or (is it Never Expect Power Always by long suffering Nigerians) stood to honour its role. I was not sure if any of those leaders thanking ‘the people’ bothered to look up at the huge public gallery of the conference centre as they spoke.
That is where most of ‘the people’ would have been if they had been given access to the function. Unfortunately, the place was largely empty. One would have thought that for the sake of PR, they would not have filled up the place only with the countless security operatives. If they did not want ‘the people,’ why could they not trust their under-employed security operatives? Or why could they not have packed the place with school children from the countless public and private schools in and around Abuja. Imagine the impact on young kids of being in the public gallery and seeing all these movers and shakers of Africa at work. Who knows how many little Clintons could have been inspired? Then the answer came to me like a revelation. It is not just that many of our leaders hate and have contempt for the people they rule, they also do not want us to have hope for a better tomorrow and that we may dream of a future without them. That is why they do not want little boys and girls to dream like that poor boy from Arkansas, that one day, they could be presidents.
To the extent that some of them contemplate succession, they think of it only in monarchical terms, that is even after they have long passed their sell-by-date. This murdering of hope by deliberate marginalisation of the youth and killing of their aspirations is a far worse crime by some of the leaders than their misrule. It is like someone slapping you and also denying you the right to cry or shed tears. So whether they like it or not we must ‘KEEP HOPE ALIVE’.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
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