Egg on Africa’s face!

By John Nagenda

WAS there ever a bigger, more rotten, egg than lay across the African face in Egypt this week? Just maybe: as when the Trojan Wooden Horse was brought into Troy, was opened, only to disgorge an army which then sacked the city. Some egg there!

In fact what happened in Egypt was not exactly a bolt out of the blue, for it was not completely unexpected. Even less cynical people than your usually hard-bitten columnist laughed loud and long when he suggested retaining a little hope that Africa would loudly call Mugabe a Mugabe without mincing words.

This was hoping against hope; for what remains when all hope is lost? And a defence can be advanced for what actually happened.

Africans don’t want to give ammunition to outsiders who are only too eager to use it against them; so they keep their deepest counsel to themselves regarding failings each might have.

Besides, which world blocs break their ranks against condemnation of themselves? Do they do so regarding Iraq, Israel, Tibet, Chechnnya? Not much!

Why specifically expect Africa to do so? Perhaps, being African, I expect (make that, want) Africans to give a lead to the other blocks of the world!

Of course the ordinary snigger is: which African Leader is going to throw stones at another’s house when they are all made of the same material, glass?

There is something in that as well, but this is not restricted to Africa. All that said, however, such is the singular standing of President Robert Mugabe in the way that he has brought his country to its knees, in the savagery of his treatment of his own people, that our leaders in Egypt had a cast-iron case to castigate him without mercy.

Alas they did not do so, they feared to do so, and, excuses or not, they failed Zimbabwe, and the whole continent.

Only they can wipe the stuff off their face, and it is not too late, singly and severally, for them to do so with regard to this inhumane despot.
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Every war has severe casualties, but they don’t come any bigger than Clinton, in the War of Presidential Nominations, recently fought by the two Democratic Party candidates. And I am not referring to Hillary, but Big Hubby Billy.

All right we had known him as a serial sinner, but for the majority he was “Bad but Nice”. Not anymore, buddy!

This is the man who had been dubbed the first Black president of the US, so popular was he with that community, and such was the perceived fondness that he was deemed to have for it.

Little more than a decade after those heady days, a complete reversal appears to have set in within William Jefferson Clinton. Or was it ever thus? The defeat of the wife he wronged so serially seems to have wounded him to the quick and beyond.

At the beginning Clinton was paternal affability itself to the Young Pretender, Barack Obama, who in his eyes had less of a chance of winning the nominations than a snowflake in hell.

The more Obama advanced the sourer became Bill. At the final bell he was, literally, red with rage, his eyes brimming with tears.

This was a very bad loser, all the charm gone. Clinton charmless, bereft of his greatest gift? It was as if he was two people: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

He reached his nadir this week when he was reported to have said: “Obama can kiss my arse” if he wanted his help in winning over recalcitrant Democrats!

This was a baby and a bully in the same nappy! One of America’s leading commentators said, “Clinton has to remember that in Obama he has a man nominated for President by the Democratic Party, not a boy in Clinton’s household.”

Can’t say it better than that? We can guess at the trauma that hit Clinton at his wife’s defeat. Perhaps he had sworn to take his wife to the White House in her own right in a sweep to wipe away his sinful past.

In such a tumultuous triumph he would finally be forgiven. Now this would never be. He cracked. He is now looking for assumed enemies. As usual the fault is theirs; never his.

Remember the manner he betrayed the little intern before the cock crowed thrice? At last Clinton is being punished; the future is another country.
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I am off now on a grim mission to London, where my very old friend, and not young either at 95, Gerald Plumbly might be very near to the end.

A good innings, as the cricketers say, and cricket has been part of his life; currently he is Life President (echoes of Amin?) of the famous Stoics Cricket Club. I am flying off just in case.

I said to him on the phone, “Plumbly you must not do a runner before I arrive.” Quoth he: “I shall hang on by my fingertips!”

On a lighter note, BBC has asked me to appear on a programme (airing Aug 2, repeat Aug 3) called Insiders Debate. It will be about people who “looked after” Leaders, the well-known Alistair Campbell, with Premier Blair, Lynton Crosby with Australian Premier John Howard’s campaign, and your modest columnist with the Man Himself, YKM.

The programme is, according to the producer, “relaxed, dynamic discussions about all your jobs as political strategists”.

I thought I had died and ended in heaven. It is a great honour and might turn into a mirthful feast!