{UAH} Why African leaders are scared of their people

Why African leaders are scared of their people

Written by DR JIMMY SPIRE SSENTONGO

 Created: 25 May 2016

 

One of the most conspicuous things about African leaders is that most of them are very keen on their personal security, and visibly insecure before their people.

Do you ever ask yourself why some move with close to full battalions of soldiers and guns mounted on top of pick-up trucks, or why they prefer being guarded by their children? Doesn't it puzzle you why they always have to move at such terrific speeds on road, and that we always have to give them way at all costs?

If you ever make a 'mistake' of staggering onto the road before their convoy, you will be lucky if you live to tell what happened after. We may sometimes want to invite them to our events, but we fear the inconvenience. Ahead of their arrival, they scan and search us as though we are guilty until proven innocent.  

And now some speak to us through bullet-proof glass enclosures! But why are we treated with such suspicion and cynicism?  Why are they scared of us, their presumed voters? To the extent that, to swear in as our leaders, they have to first put us at gunpoint!

The biggest part of the answer is in the psychology of guilt! You see, leaders tend to be as free with their people in proportion to their imagination of how happy those people are with their leadership. We may use a simple analogy of a home to understand this.

Where the father is a bully, he may start developing fears/paranoia that the wife is planning something sinister against him. He could even start eating outside or coming back with his own food. Indeed, a guilty conscience needs no accuser.

Our leaders are not stupid. Even when their consciences die, like they often do, they remain with a sense of detection of what annoys their people. So, they can measure how angry we are for being overtaxed without good services in return.

They know how we feel about them spending our money on luxuries as we languish with poor schools, high electricity tariffs, unemployment, deplorable health services, poor roads, and so on. They clearly understand how it feels for another to eat on one's behalf. 

They know how our communities treat powerless thieves, be it of property or elections. This way, they fear what we are capable of doing to them if they left their guns home.

They live under perpetual suspicion that, given how much they let us suffer, we harbour ill feelings against them and could harm them at any slight opportunity. It is known to them that we see many of our miseries being fed by their greed. French writer François Voltaire tells us that every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Why else would they be insecure in countries where they 'brought peace'? We are not a uniquely-belligerent people to cause such fear. It is more about the guilt inside our leaders.

It reminds me of Rosamund Lupton's agony: "I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself". Suspicion always haunts the guilty party. And a guilty dog won't hesitate to bark at you if it feels threatened by your anger, even when your meat is still in its mouth. 

Anything scares them. That is why a genuine, unarmed protester is treated like a monster. They have this feeling that everyone on social media is inciting others against them.

Talking about their wrongs is to incite violence, because they know how much anger their behaviour would attract from any sane person. A good person is either one who is praising them or one that shuts up. But even shutting up could be questioned: 'What is he meditating to do?'

Paranoia is one of the major reasons why leaders develop dictatorial tendencies. Feeling or knowing that you are hated is very dangerous. If it is a common person with such a feeling, one probable reaction is to withdraw from society. But since a leader won't withdraw, paranoia often leads to persecution of real and perceived enemies.

Henry Kyemba's book, State of Blood, shows that one of the key reasons Amin killed many people was his own fear – a fear that fed itself.  The more he feared, the more he persecuted/killed. And the more he persecuted/killed, the more he feared that people were plotting against him for his misdeeds.

Frederick Douglass, a former black slave, rightly observed that "no man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck". Guilt haunts them like an incensed ghost. And, as Shakespeare puts it, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

jsssentongo@gmail.com

The author works with the Center for African Studies, Uganda Martyrs University – Nkozi.

 

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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