{UAH} Pojim/WBK: #UncleBobSatOnaWall: Why, oh why can’t our leaders take a joke? Or even crack one? - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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#UncleBobSatOnaWall: Why, oh why can't our leaders take a joke? Or even crack one? - Comment
Ah, the rise and fall of Robert Mugabe. Recently enthroned at the head of the African Union, he was brutally cast down in public by a wobbly old knee and a treacherously "missing step."
If he were anyone else, this wouldn't have been a story. Old man trips on stairs? Agh, shame. Help him up and get him a cane or a strong young arm to lean on, for pity's sake.
But it was Robert Mugabe and so he got teased about it on the Internet. Surprisingly, the #MugabeFalls meme was much gentler on him than the usual Internet carnage that occurs when a public figure "disgraces" themselves.
I was hoping that he would take it in his stride, so to speak. Instead, Uncle Bob has thrown an epic tantrum worthy of a Roman emperor, the official casualties consisting of some security detail peons.
There was something a little sad about watching the old man completely miss an opportunity for fun, but it wasn't unexpected. I wonder if there is an unwritten AU resolution that African leaders will not exercise a sense of humour for fear of its power to thin the barrier between them and their subjects.
Though to be honest, this isn't restricted to the continent; almost all powerful leaders are ill-equipped to deal with this new media environment.
There was a more innocent time when the potential of the Internet to change the world for good was rendered very optimistically. Where we would be moved by the power of social media to Arab Spring us into a brave new world of peaceful revolutions and apps for solving every social ill. It all sounded so clean, so youth-driven, so pacific, and nobody talked about the Deep Web.
Instead the reality has turned out to be Edward Snowden and Wikileaks, a face-off between an American movie studio and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, YouTube comments sections where human decency goes to die a torturous death… Internet-mediated activism consists mostly of hitting a Like button for a thought crafted by someone you will never meet, rooting through discussion boards and passing around pictures of badly photocopied confidential documents.
Still, the ways in which we have settled on using the Internet to mobilise people against power may be messy and not terribly physical, but are nonetheless effective. And, all this has its payoffs.
While researching #MugabeFalls I stumbled across a playful video shot by Barack Obama in partnership with Buzzfeed, a humour website, to persuade people to sign up for health insurance.
Does anyone else get slightly annoyed at how incredibly on point this American president can be about turning trends to his advantage? After a few chuckles, I was just about ready to sign up for his health insurance plan too, only to be reminded that cyberspace hasn't yet transcended real-life geopolitics. It wasn't possible to go back to reading about Uncle Bob without thinking of horse-drawn carriages and telegrams and, just, sadness.
Time and time again the question arises in media circles about how to engage with youth. Politicians probably expend as much energy obsessing about the issue as the media industry does.
I don't think that the question is being asked right. The question is really: How to engage at all? Whereas before it was the formal media's job to tell us what was going on in the world, social media has usurped that role and now we get to watch the formal media report on the social media's doings.
The answer to the youth-appeal question doesn't seem all that hard. We want our politicians to entertain us, in the best sense of the word — by accommodating our thirst for someone who can crack a joke or even better, take one. I don't think that this is limited to youth, it is just a feature of a new political dimension, a sign of the times we live in.
Being an online kinda politician with a sense of humour and an easy way with the cameras is not just a distinct advantage; the way things are going, it is a necessity. It sounds shallow, and there is a little more fairy dust and wishful thinking to this than there should be, but let that not distract us from what is important.
Mugabe is easy to pick on because he is so reliably old school. He is that guy we all know doesn't have a Twitter account, who wouldn't even know where to begin. When it comes to handling the increasingly important realm of social media, he is textbook how-not-to.
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: elsieeyakuze@gmail.com
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