By Okore Scheaffer
African
presidents are known for their allergy to the word ‘limit’ in any capacity.
Many of them don’t clearly understand this five letter word that has cost most
of them a peaceful retirement. Creating not only a breed of entitled loathed
heads of state but also those with insatiable limitations.
Burkina
Faso is just one example among an array of states where the people have grown
wary and exasperated. Even with its economic growth, Burkina Faso remains at
the very bottom of the United Nations’ Human Development Index, making it one
of the world’s poorest states. Many university graduates struggle to find work
and often blame corruption for their difficulties. How many Africans go through
this?
Ousted
President Blaise Compaoré had cast his leadership on stone for 27 years after
the assassination of Thomas Sankara by ensuring he had a presidential guard of
an elite unit comprising of 1,300 soldiers loyal to him. He set it up to ensure
his own protection in the wake of the 1987 killing of his predecessor, and
close ally, Thomas Sankara during a coup which led to Mr Compaoré taking over.
The
Bukinabes had had copious amounts of the repetitive change narrative that
wasn’t yielding fruits. It was time in 2014 to stand up for something new and
distinctive after an unchanging 27-year rule that seemingly wasn’t going to
come to an end. They had reached their limits. There’s always so much that
people can take and for how long. Most African leaders forget so spectacularly that
they are governing humans, not puppets.
African
leaders tend to be oblivious to the fact that everything has an end even a good
thing. There’s a sense of ultimate, absolute and overall entitlement that
they’re filled with once they seat at the epicenter of power. They unanimously
disregard the source of their power and impose upon themselves the title of
savior whom no one can oppose.
The
belief they religiously spread around is how their various states cannot
function without them and how they are the only one’s bequeathed with the
erudition of leadership. This is utter gibberish that by now many of them
should imbibe. No African state is immune to a coup and certainly no African
leader is irreplaceable.
It
is a sign of failure to assume that as a leader you are the only one fit to
steer forth a state. It is a lie that no one is buying anymore no matter how
cheap you’re selling. Burkina Faso represents most (if not all) African states
whose leaders ascended to the nucleus of power through gutter politics and
under table dealings.
The
people you shield yourself against have grown too loud to be shut down, too
aware to be ridiculed and too impoverished to be side lined. It’s only a matter
of time before many other states go through the breaking point that others have
reached. Our problems are similar as Africans and our solutions will eventually
follow a similar trail.
Leaders
like Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – Equatorial Guinea (35 years), José Eduardo
dos Santos – Angola (35 years), Robert Mugabe – Zimbabwe (34 years), Paul Biya
– Cameroon (32 years), Yoweri Museveni – Uganda (28 years), Omar al-Bashir –
Sudan (25 years), Idriss Déby – Chad (23 years), Isaias Afwerki – Eritrea (23
years), Yahya Jammeh – The Gambia (20 years), and Denis Sassou Nguesso – Republic
of Congo (17 years) are the longest serving in the continent.
It’s
humorous sometimes that the youngest continent has the longest/oldest serving
heads of state. But when the laughter dies down you start to see the disease
that’s eating into the fabric of leadership. That only in Africa do the leaders
believe they should only step down when death knocks their doors! It’s like
taking candy from a toddler, only this candy represents an entire continent
held hostage.
Pierre
Nkurunziza has successfully accomplished binding Burundi to his umbilical cord
while Mr. Paul Kagame is pushing for an extension of his term. I open my mouth,
raise my brows, throw my hands in the air and gasp. Clearly we aren’t learning
from history. One day all those who have been neglected by regimes will have
their say and that day, history won’t be negotiated on round tables behind
closed doors. Africans are breaking mental chains.
Originally published in SIASAPLACE.COM.
Republished here with permission.
©
Okore Scheaffer @scheafferoo
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