Omar Bongo: Africa's democrats, and despots, dead or alive

By: Charles Onyango-Obbo

[ Posted On: 2009-06-11 ]

Africa's longest ruling president, Omar Bongo of Gabon, has gone to meet his maker. The fact that Bongo was in power for a record 42 years means it is not enough for us to say we are rid of another corrupt strongman.

It is time to try and explain why people like him can survive for so long; why our leaders keep stealing our taxes and messing up our lives; and how come Comrade Bob Mugabe in Zimbabwe can run a once-great country into the grave, and yet some are still in office.

The short of it is that these rulers survive because they actually enjoy support. It could be from their tribe, the army, or like Bongo, they can buy loyalty with petrodollars, but that support is often more than what the democratic opposition can muster.

Even Uganda's disastrous 'Field Marshal' Idi Amin had the undying loyalty of the rich class that grabbed the vast Asian "abandoned properties" after he expelled them in 1972. We tend to blame disorganised oppositions for the survival of wicked politicians like Togo's Gnassingbe Eyadema. But wwhat else explains it equally is a cowardly, greedy, or ethnically–driven population.

Bongo, let's be fair, was not your typically abominable African strongman. His prisons were not full of journalists and opposition politicians. Though most Gabonese still live in poverty, he managed to keep very many others happy by spreading the oil money around.

As The Guardian put it, Bongo "quickly realised that money could be more effective than bullets in keeping power." Bongo's case also suggests that instead of lumping the continent's leaders together, we need to develop categories for classifying them. The list of African leaders here is by no means exhaustive.

1. The Predatory Dictators: These mostly rob, kill, and ruin everything. Here put several former presidents: DRC's Mobutu Sese Seko, Liberia's Charles Taylor, Uganda's Idi Amin.

2. The Progressive Despots: These don't democratise fully and fill their prisons with critics and independent journalists, but they still build roads, railways (Bongo spent $4bn on a railway network). Here I can think of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, Ghana's Gerry Rawlings, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and, from an earlier period, Cote d'Ivoire's Felix Houphuet-Boigny. Bongo belongs here.

3. The Enlightened Strongmen: These are men who shake up their countries with bold reformists initiatives, and make them distinctly leaders in Africa in some areas, but they still keep a tight lid on political life: Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Mozambique's former President Joachim Chissano, and throw in Djibouti's Omar Guelleh.

4. The Heartbreaker Backsliders: These started out well, held a lot of promise, and even had remarkable records in their first years, but then they went into reverse gear. Either they became two-penny despots, changed constitutions to perpetuate themselves in power, or went to the far extreme to impose a regime of terror – as Eritrea's Issaias Afeworki. The least bad of the lot is someone like President Museveni. Robert Mugabe belongs here (can't dismiss his early good works).

5. The Miscast Democrats: These are decent men and women, who came to power with huge majorities, but when they are in office, they don't convert that mandate into good or enduring works. Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki typify this group.

6. The 8am-5pm Regulars: Here, think of the more technocratic African presidents who came to power as freedom fighters or were elected in free elections. They govern without any drama. Are in office by 8 am and leave shortly after 5 pm, balance the national budgets, keep inflation down, and leave a healthy country that made normal progress during their rule.

Botswana's leaders – Sir Seretse Khama, Ketumile Masire (he used to walk to the newsstand opposite his office to buy newspapers and pick coffee at a corner cafe), Festus Mogae, and now Seretse Khama Ian Khama.

But, perhaps, even better examples are Mauritius' Sir Anerood Jugnauth, and Rwanda's Paul Kagame (Rwanda, typically, just became the first country in the Third World to introduce a national immunisation programme against pneumococcal disease, one of the leading killers of children in the world).

7. The Charmed Ones: These are leaders who are nation healers, inspirational, and we have to fight with the rest of an adoring world (where they assume a saintly status) to claim them as Africa's own. We also like to gloss over their failings. Count Tanzania's Julius Nyerere and the great Nelson Mandela, here.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Charles Onyango-Obbo is Uganda's leading political commentator. He is Nation Media Group’s managing editor for convergence and new products. Charles writes for The Monitor, Uganda's only independent daily and most influential newspaper and The East African, a NationMedia publication. Be sure to check out his Article Archive featuring hundreds of Charles's greatest publications

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