When will African leaders outgrow their pomp?

Jul 05, 2007

THERE is an unexplained phobia with African leaders and their handlers that refuses to go away. The African leader, from the days of the continent’s founding fathers is still obsessed with personal security and pomp even when it is obvious that these traits have gone out of fashion.

Jerry Okungu

THERE is an unexplained phobia with African leaders and their handlers that refuses to go away. The African leader, from the days of the continent’s founding fathers is still obsessed with personal security and pomp even when it is obvious that these traits have gone out of fashion.

Can this continent produce leaders who will exhibit simplicity and not pomp and glory the way our leaders carry themselves around? Is it possible for the present African presidents to scale down unnecessary expenses that go with hosting many African Union (AU) meetings and re-channel those resources for the continent’s dilapidated infrastructure?

I was in Accra last week to attend the AU Summit that also included discussions on NEPAD and APRM even if the latter two items were not the main agenda. In that one week, I observed many little things that don’t need to happen at future AU meetings if we have to earn the respect of our development partners and our media. These little things had to do with security arrangements and protocol at the Summit.

For starters, African leaders have more often than not accused the African press of ignoring development agenda and instead zeroed in on the shortcomings of their regimes. They have often blamed the bad image of the continent on local journalists who they claim had conspired with foreign forces to destabilize a number of governments in the region. For this reason, the relationship between our African leaders and local media has been one of hate-love affair; trading accusations of one type or another.

Where a regime has found itself really vexed, it has resorted to various methods of silencing the press; either through coercion, bribery, arrest or even unleashing terror on the press.

However, when one thought that things were changing for the better, the most pathetic incident took place in Accra where African Heads of State, Development Partners had gathered to talk about the political unification the continent.
Three ugly incidents occurred in Accra which almost marred an otherwise wonderful gathering.

First there was the most unimaginative decision to centralise the accreditation of all prospective delegates, observers, invited guests, support staff and security personnel under one dingy and humid corridor behind the old state house. If common sense could prevail in future AU meetings, is it possible to decentralise registration of foreign delegates in their respective hotels soon after coming from the airport?

Isn’t it illogical to lump together busy bodies, village chiefs, ambassadors, foreign cabinet ministers, permanent secretaries, the media, security staff and drivers to push, jostle and get fresh with one another in a chaotic queue? Why did we have to punish foreign visitors to an AU meeting this much?

To the best of my knowledge, all delegates to the Accra meeting were invited guests of the hosting country, Ghana. That was why Ghana gave them accreditation according to their categories in the first place. And this accreditation was given on the understanding that they had come to attend all the AU deliberations.

However, when the moment of truth came during the opening ceremony, the media was locked out! Six hundred journalists from across the globe that had gone to great pains, expenses and time were locked out of the conference hall! And the reason? That there were no seats in the hall! Yet half of that hall was full of people who one could tell had no idea of what was going on, while others fell asleep as soon as they entered the hall!

The majority of those that were let in were ordinary Ghanaians and village chiefs who mistook the occasion for a fashion parade! Yet with all this fiasco, the worst was yet to come. When Heads of State started discussing NEPAD to be followed immediately by tabling the South African and Algerian Peer Review Reports, all hell broke loose. At first President Thabo Mbeki complained that there were too many people in the hall that did not need to be there.

He was particularly uneasy that many development partners and technocrats from different countries that had signed or completed the peer review were in the hall. When he realised that Chairman Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia was not being tough enough in throwing out undesirable delegates, he sent a note to the Chair. And for five minutes, the business of the house came to a standstill as Zenawi used AU security personnel to physically remove everybody from the hall except Heads of State and their three personnel per country!

Was this draconian behavior really necessary even if South Africa was being peer- reviewed? Was it the first country to be peer-reviewed? How come such drastic measures were not in force when Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda went through the process?

It is this kind of undiplomatic behaviour that really infuriated Professor Asante of Ghana. And he was right to be livid with the whole fiasco, forcing him to pose these questions: If Africa is to travel the path of transparency and accountability, why this obsession with secrecy and security? Why invite the media and foreign dignitaries only to humiliate them this much? Will the media be faulted if they don’t take our leaders seriously?

Will they be faulted if they started speculating what actually went on inside? Your answer is as good as mine.

jerry@nepadkenya.org

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