{UAH} There are no republics in Africa, just oligarchies and personal fiefdoms - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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There are no republics in Africa, just oligarchies and personal fiefdoms - Comment
Let me open this one with something everyone should know but very few dare say. There is no republic in Africa, although we call our pieces of territory by that style. Republic comes from the Latin "res publica," which came to be known in French as republique. The public thing, the public good.
For Plato's Republic, the book many scholars turn to for enlightenment, what was under most intense consideration was not so much the form of government, how the different arms of government were constituted and how they operated. Rather it was about education, ethics, public morality and religion.
While these retain their relevance today as we grapple with the phenomenon of all-round decadence, our practical meaning of "republic" has come to mean how we organise our governments to make as much as possible a public good.
That must in turn mean that we fashion our government in a way that precludes personal rule or rule by oligarchs.
Personal rule, of course, as we know, speaks to a situation where one person, his wife, sons and daughters and a few cronies hold power and do pretty much what they please with it. In our day, it is dubbed "BMW" (Baba, Mama na Watoto).
Look around you and you will see what I mean. Oligarchy is where there is a nexus between wealth and power. For Plato, of course, the world would be safe only when a properly educated philosopher ran it. Neither family nor wealth came into the picture.
By these outline standards, then, I incline toward the view that there is no republic in Africa. What we have are arrangements ranging from BMW to oligarchy, very often in a symbiotic embrace where one feeds off the other. As for philosophers ruling our countries, whose leg are you pulling?
Of course, we can look at the rest of the world and ask if there is any country out there where philosopher-kings rule, where money and personal and family influences are banished from government. We may never identify such a country, not even in Scandinavia.
But all is relative. When the Swedish king commits a minor infraction he apologises to his people, and he is not even head of a republic. When the South African president is told to reimburse public money he used improperly on his home his cronies see the hand of the agents of apartheid, and this is a "republic."
Even Nigeria and Congo call themselves republics. One "federal," the other "democratic." Both are shams. Both may be failing, alongside South Africa, precisely because they are beset by oligarchy, BMW, egregious levels of corruption, and a scandalous deficit of philosopher-kings.
The signs of this rot are everywhere. When the African National Congress deposed Thabo Mbeki at Polokhwane a few years ago and put Jacob Zuma in his place, they were, in effect, preferring a populist trickster to a sober if slightly arrogant philosopher-king. So, when soldiers shoot and kill scores of striking mine workers, whom are they serving but the blackly empowered oligarchs?
Joseph Kabila, the man sitting pretty in Kinshasa, got his job from his father and his writ does not even reach the outskirts of the capital. The rest of the country is left to its own devices, and oligarchs have a field day.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram is a demented gang born of a demented governance system, where nothing makes sense. Goodluck Jonathan has had the rotten luck of finding himself floating on oil and fire.
The thugs who kill because they believe Western education is evil are obeying a twisted logic produced by their twisted situation: How can there be so much poverty amid so much wealth, with so many "educated" people in government? Evil.
And when poor little girls are abducted by these thugs, the government organises for a group of other girls to be paraded as the ones rescued. Adding insult to injury.
I'm not TB Joshua, and I do not make predictions, but if you think these are the only failing "republics" in Africa, and other "republics" are okay, including yours, look at the symptoms again.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/There-are-no-republics-in-Africa--just-oligarchies/-/434750/2302284/-/fq025xz/-/index.html
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