Expect more Kibakis and fewer Mubaraks as Africa rejects dictators

 

By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted  Saturday, August 6  2011 at  18:09

In Summary

• New era: The momentum is swinging towards an era of greater openness and less tolerance to dictatorship

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One of the things that unites North Africa with the rest of the continent is language. The Arab merchants who traded with the coastal islands of Lamu, Zanzibar and Mombasa hundreds of years before the arrival of European colonialists sowed the seeds of Kiswahili, the most widely spoken language in sub-Saharan Africa.

So while North and South are divided by many things, the people in both places can still recognise a number of the most important words in their respective languages. Take “rais”.

The Kiswahili word for president stems from the Arabic “al rais”. It means something close to a dictator; a strong man who rules over his people with an iron fist.

That is why across the Arab world and in most of sub-Saharan Africa where generations have grown up revering a strongman president – mtukufu Rais – the images of the trial of Hosni Mubarak caught the imagination so much.

Here was a man who had become as synonymous with Egypt as the pyramids of Giza, caged in by wire mesh and answering to charges that could see him face execution. Many in Egypt and abroad welcomed the prospect of justice. Not all were pleased. Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo lambasted the trial as a disgrace.

He said it was wrong to hold Mr Mubarak “like a chicken” and added that the trial would make other presidents less likely to relinquish power voluntarily. That reasoning singles out Mr Obasanjo as a man who is living in the past.

The notion of the presidency as an individual’s divine right to hold until he feels like giving it up without taking heed of the wishes of the people is one of the characteristics of the African presidency that have been challenged by the ouster of Mubarak and the continuing unrest in the Middle East.

The Arab Spring exploded the myth that al Rais, described by the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore as a “dictator who is regularly mocked by the young for his Goth-black dyed hair and surgically enhanced cheekbones, and whose entourage features as many nurses as generals,” can opt to stay in power for as long as he wishes with little say granted to his suffering subjects.

Thankfully, the wave of discontent seems to be travelling down to sub-Saharan Africa.

In Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, the 85-year-old strongman, is facing stiff opposition to his efforts to prolong his stay in office or to hand over power to his son, Karim.

As in Egypt, the youth in Senegal are taking the lead. Rappers Omar Toure “Thiat” and Mbessane Seck “Kilifeu” and journalist Fadel Barro have issued a call to action that will be familiar to the masses across Africa.

“We want to break fatalism and the laxity of the Senegalese people who always wait for things to happen by saying that God is great,” said the leaders of the protest movement.

Thiat told the BBC. “We need better health care, education and jobs. But we also need people to stop throwing garbage or peeing in the streets and to be on time when they have a meeting.”

The story is the same in Malawi where Bingu wa Mutharika is confronting an uprising similar to the one President Moi faced in Kenya in the early 1990s.

In all these cases, there can be no doubt that the momentum is swinging towards an era of greater openness and less tolerance to dictatorship.

On this score, Kenya is perhaps a model of how politics will look in tomorrow’s Africa. In Kibaki, the country has a leader who has been extremely tolerant of criticism and has allowed the flourishing of a culture of openness that makes it exceedingly unlikely that the nation will know another dictator in the foreseeable future.

More importantly, it also has a Constitution that guarantees the rights of its citizenry in unambiguous terms that will be hard to roll back any time soon.

Obasanjo may rail all he wishes, but the era of “al Rais” belongs firmly in Africa’s past.

mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com