TWO weeks ago, Senegal’s prime minister Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye, confirmed that Alex Segura, the outgoing president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was given a briefcase that contained almost $200,000 (about sh400m) as a ‘present’ after having a dinner with the country’s president Abdoulaye Wade last month.
This incident has sparked anger and outrage in Senegal, with ordinary civilians questioning why a poor country like theirs should use tax payers’ money to reward an international official who is already highly paid.
The only good news that came out of this incident is that Segura decided to return the money and hand it over to Senegal’s ambassador to Spain.
A lavish and profligate lifestyle has been the rule rather than the exception of post independence African leaders. The list of African leaders who have treated the national treasury as their own personal asset is endless. Mobutu Sese Seko, for instance, swindled over $6b (sh120 trillion) from his country which he safely kept in Swiss banks.
Many African presidents today spend large amounts of public funds on building luxurious palaces, acquiring state-of-the-art private jets and chauffeuring themselves around in convoys of powerful vehicles.
They own ‘fat’ accounts in foreign banks in preparation for the ‘rainy days’ when they have lost power. Keeping huge sums of money in foreign banks is the highest form of treason practised by these leaders because that money is used as capital to develop the western world at the expense of ordinary Africans who continue to dwell in sub-human conditions.
Thus, Africa is generally suffering from a leadership vacuum. Africa’s leaders have presided over rampant corruption and embezzlement of public funds, consequently derailing the continent’s development. Many African leaders do not have an iota of patriotism in them.
They will do anything that the West tells them to do even when they know it is not in the interest of Africa. Their masters are in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington. They do not want to get in the ‘wrong books’ of their masters in the West for they clearly know their wrath.
Africa has endured a leadership vacuum since the leaders who were not ready to compromise with the West in as far as Africa’s interests were concerned were assassinated, overthrown or undermined by the imperialists and their agents. Some of these fearless leaders were exterminated even before independence.
For instance, Eduardo Mondalene of FRELIMO, Herbert Chitepo of ZANU and Steve Mbiko of the Black Conscious Party of South Africa were assassinated before their countries acquired full independence. Patrice Lumumba and Amilcar Cabral were assassinated shortly after independence while Kwame Nkurumah was overthrown in a CIA-inspired coup in 1966. Africa needs a new breed of patriotic leaders to liberate the continent economically and protect it from the threat of re-colonisation.
The onus is now on the continent’s youth to stand firm and challenge the continent’s current leaders, instead of lying back while Africa continues to ‘free fall’.
It is the duty of the youth in Africa to demand accountability from their leaders because they are bigger stakeholders in the running of their countries than the ‘old guard’.
On his release from Robben Island prison, Nelson Mandela admitted that though they had fought a ‘fierce battle’, victory was not won yet.
He predicted that future revolutionaries would achieve a ‘greater peace’ than they had achieved. Only a new breed of patriotic African leaders shall decisively deal with the pertinent challenges of unity, development and sovereignty.
The writer is a mobiliser with the Pan African Movement Uganda Chapter
