Idang Alibi
13 March 2008
opinion
The capacity of us Africans to capitulate to evil in the name of peace, unity and tranquility is simply amazing. We are too ready to compromise with wrong doers and jettison the principle of right action.
We call this the African way of resolving problems and we seem to be proud of this 'heritage'. I am not very proud of this so-called African way of doing things.
There is certainly nothing wrong in trying to resolve a violent dispute in a way to avoid further loss of lives and to quickly restore peace to a bleeding society. But when we do so to the neglect of principle, I find it difficult to do support it.
Last week, the former Secretary- General of the UN, Ghanaian Kofi Anan brokered peace in the two-month Kenyan-post election dispute. The world is singing the praises of Anan. But I am not. I see him as a man who ought to have used his considerable weight to rally the whole world to ask Mwai Kibaki to quit an office he stole in broad daylight. If Anan had done that a good precedent would have been set that the world is no longer ready to tolerate any one who steals the mandate of the people and by so doing precipitate violence in any society. Instead, in the name of diplomacy and peace, Anan pressured Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement to concede their mandate and accept to share power with Kibaki.
This is incredible. It is only in backward Africa that such a deal can be cut and accepted by any one. How can any self-respecting person accept to share his property with a thief who was cut red-handed with that property? And what is even more unbelievable is that the rightful owner of that property is made to have a lesser share! That is my own disagreement with Raila Odinga. He ought to have insisted on his undiluted mandate.
When people like Odinga meekly accept the kind of deal he accepted it creates the impression that we Africans do not place a high premium on principle. I think that the fight championed by Odinga was not just to have power but that he and his party have won an election and that they ought to be given their mandate. They way they easily gave in shows that they are more concerned about possessing power and the spoils of office that go with it than about the fact that the right things be done.
I am disappointed not only with Odinga but with the whole of Africa. We seem to have come to an acceptance that no one should expect high standards from us after all we are Africans. If it were not so why did we look on in embarrassed silence at what was going on in Kenya without rising up to insist that the right thing be done? Why on earth do we agree to negotiate with a thief instead of snatching his loot and prosecuting him for his crime against the state?
Some will tell me that the wisdom which informed the kind of settlement reached between Kibaki and Odinga is that many people were dying and Kenyan progress was being hindered. That sounds reasonable. But Odinga and the Orange democratic Movement were not responsible for the violence. It was Kibaki who provoked the violence by stealing the collective will of the people of Kenya.
My thinking is that when next somebody steals election in Africa and everybody knows the thief, we should collectively insist that the thief gives up his loot. We should not stop at that. If his act provokes the kind of killing and carnage that Kibaki's action did in Kenya, we should insist that the man be prosecuted at the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague for crimes against humanity. Over 1000 innocent Kenyans were killed and over 300, 000 displayed by the political thievery of Kibaki.
The only way we can stop election stealing in Africa is to show real anger and contempt for election thieves. The way we go about negotiating with mandate stealers in our continent for "power-sharing" is absurd. Such act of bestowing honour on a thief gives incentive to potential election thieves. I guess that the deference which the negotiators showed to Kibaki is because he is an incumbent president. It is also because he is an old man. In Africa we respect elders and office holders even if such people do not deserve respect.
If this continent is to move forward, we must resolve to call on our men and women of authority to account for their deeds. All we achieve by the excessive concession we grant to authority is that we embolden them to do wrong. When an incumbent president steals election and we go negotiating with him to cede a little bit of it to the person who rightly won it, what we are saying is that all you need to do is to be smart and get yourself entrenched in power by all means and that no matter what happens, at the end of the day you may be required to concede only a little of your powers to others.
Peace is certainly a most desirable ingredient the absence of which no society can make any meaningful progress. But to pursue peace at all costs without a consideration for justice is wrong. We in Africa are too ready to paper over deep-seated problems just to achieve temporary peace. This is wrong. The remedy some problems require is direct and undiplomatic confrontation. When next an African president rigs himself into office and precipitates a crisis for his country, we should not go looking for a Kofi Anan.
Rather, hot heads from all over the continent should mobilize using all weapons to chase the potential trouble maker out of power. Kofi Anan is a diplomat and not a revolutionary. A diplomat will go and speak nicely to even the most horrible of persons. Some of these people who claim to be leaders in Africa cause us enormous shame and pain by the many foolish things they do. Like stealing election without any bother about the social and political repercussions. Such people do not deserve to be talked to nicely by diplomats in pin stripe suits. They need hard and possibly uncouth people to tell them the evil of their ways and to ask them to give up what they have unjustly taken. Every African should become a revolutionary for the enthronement of principles in our governance.
The wood that is the source of any undesirable smoke should be removed from the fire. We should not compromise with a thief for the sake of peace. That is peace at all cost which is not good peace at all. Mwai Kibaki stole that election in Kenya. It is right and proper for us to keep insisting that he vacate the position of president of Kenya. Let us insist on principle, please.
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