Simon Kasyate
7 November 2007
column
When President Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso first visited Uganda many years after the murder of Thomas Sankara, former journalist Mr Odrek Rwabwoogo challenged him to comment on that murder. His host, President Yoweri Museveni, felt embarrassed and rebuked the journalist in Luganda saying he was brought up badly and blamed his future son-in-law for embarrassing a state guest.
Twenty years later, Campaore has also suffered a similar embarrassment at the hands of another Ugandan, this time legislator Christine Abia Abako, in his own capital Ouagadougou. Only that this time, Campaore has Sankara's ghost to live but like other African leaders above the two decade mark, suffers the challenge of explaining why he is overstaying his welcome.
Youthful Arua MP Abako looked straight into the face of President Campaore at the recently concluded Africa Governance Forum and as if asking a question, stated that the problem of governance in Africa has been aggregated by leaders who have made it a preoccupation to get glued to power.
This year, Mr Campaore is celebrating 20 years in power having taken the reign in a coup that claimed the life of a charismatic president Capt. Noel Isidore Thomas Sankara (fondly known as Thomsank by admirers even posthumously) on October 15, 1987 .
Abako's question in her characteristic high pitched but sober voice landed like a sledge hammer; in fact you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium of this Ouagadougou conference hall. Delegates to this forum froze; the expression on Campaore's face was indescribable. It must have sent a flood of that hot afternoon in Kampala several years ago when President Museveni came to his rescue though too late.
Rwandese President Paul Kagame was to his right and as usual, looked on with his trademark gaze and lines on his forehead while leaning his chin on his folded left hand forefinger.
"Your excellences,....one of the main reasons why as a continent we are facing a challenge is that the presidency is almost tied to patriarchy. What can you say dear presidents regarding the overstay in the presidency vis-à-vis the problems that the continent is facing currently, particularly conflicts?" asked Abako.
There was an immediate hush and the discomfort and fear from the old folk in the room was written all over their faces. Many couldn't fathom how one could be so brutally honest with such a sensitive question.
The previous questions, it was evident, were heavily sugar-coated so as not to anger the big men at the high table, but this was a bare bullet and from the thunderous applause she got as she sat after asking this question, it was clear everyone wanted that question asked but couldn't gather the courage to ask. Baku did. And this time, it was President Kagame who came to Compaore's rescue though the damage had been done already.
This is not the first time this question has come up at such meetings with culpable presidents in attendance. Some time back in South Africa, a Nigerian woman posed this question to President Museveni, again in the presence of President Kagame. And just as we grappled to take his answer, President Kagame dropped the kicker!
"In Rwanda," he started in his characteristic soft and sly but stern tone, "We believe in building institutions that work and that outlive individuals." He insisted that a country should be able to progress because of set institutions and systems rather than because of individuals.
Like his colleague President Museveni, some years back at the South African incident, Campoare dropped what now I believe is a carefully choreographed and rehearsed answer. Only that he mixed his answer with great humour and so got everyone laughing and for a while destructed from the very reason, if any, why he is celebrating 20 years, a period viewed by many as an over stay in power.
President Kagame, though insistent on his earlier position of institutions as opposed to individuals, towed a middle line saying "those who are still in power I think are still there because of the conditions in their respective countries have allowed them or the people have made that choice, I don't think there is one size fitting all on this particular question."
"But my position is we are in power to work for our people and really form institution that outlast individuals, that is [our] primary responsibility as I know it. So if you concentrate on this responsibility to build these institutions then we shall see the situation getting better," he Kagame said. It was easy to share Kagame's optimism that the trend is getting better because of living monuments to this like Mr Nelson Mandela and new Award winner for good governance Mr Joachim Chissano.
The Mo Ibrahim could never have been a better incentive to curb life presidency on this continent, or so we thought until the other week when the usual suspect President Museveni poured cold water on it. "I don't need money to leave power," Museveni told Ugandans in the US. Granted, no such incentive as money can coax him from the presidency and yet from the look of things, I see no institutions he has created in the last 20 years that will out live him.
Not the NRM party at least! Adding that he is not one of those poor African leaders we are used to and that he has some good amount of wealth to his name, I would imagine should itself be incentive number one for him to let the space for younger blood; that is if wealth, among other things, is why people clamour to be leaders.
Museveni's contribution to Uganda as a wartime president is unprecedented but isn't high time he let those he told 20 years ago that they were 'leaders of tomorrow' to take their go? Imagine the 1993 crusade to Rwanda never happened; President Kagame, then a major in NRA would at the best be a colonel today, probably one of those on indictment facing the court marshal or on katebe.
I doubt he would have been anywhere to 'active' senior position in today's Uganda body politique. Simply put, yesterday and today's leaders just realise that its already tomorrow and time for another breed to proceed in the institutions and systems you should have created over the yesteryears.
For you the would-have-been leaders of today but are always told of the never coming tomorrow, leadership will not be ceded to you on a silver platter. Unlike my old classmate Rwot Phillip Keronega (I noticed he added more names to his profile), being a leader takes more than sitting back and waiting for your turn in the 'queue'.
More needs to be done to assert oneself to such a point where they a formidable force . Your ability to rise high against the various odds geared at keeping you under leadership carpets is what will surely make you tick!
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