Emma Okocha
3 July 2008
opinion
"Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe is the most glum." -University of Michigan, Political Science Survey."
Ignorance of democratic governance has assisted unscrupulous leaders to deceive the population and to carry out their evil and selfish designs on the citizens and the country.
Because of ignorance, Africans have been notoriously patient in their sufferings and oppression. Such endurance has been founded on fatalism.
Many have silently accepted their fate and passively hoped for a liberator from elsewhere."- Dr.J. M. Walliggo, Secretary, Ugandan Constitutional Commission.
Robert Mugabe's desperation and the final rigging of the Zimbabwean elections was expected.
In our treatise, Zimbabwe: 'Behold the Son of the Carpenter', we argued that the corps of International Observers and monitoring Journalists would not deter the ugly dictator in his determined move to disfranchise his people.
On the other hand, his welcome to Egypt and ready acceptance into the African Union Heads State conference, only a few hours after he murdered democracy in Zimbabwe, reveals that the theater is far from over.
We cannot, but decry the infantile diplomacy as championed by South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki.
In many ways his surrender and marked unwillingness, to question Mugabe's misrule which, has led to the current Zimbabwean irreversible slide, and in turn forced thousands of refugees into South Africa, beats the imagination.
South Africa, which should by now, be flexing its muscles against the dictator, as a matter of course, is by its policies of appeasement, derailing the Zimbabwean peoples' will to resist the charade. This puerile stance, was the sad outcome at the United Nations recent voting for a more sustained sanctions against Zimbawean leaders and their relations.
South Africa and China were part of the unholy alliance that struggled to block that resolution. Meanwhile Mugabe is sworn in for the sixth term and the starving electorate would go to purchase a loaf of bread at the cost of over six million shillings!
What is so important about elections when the electorate have no bread, no milk and no clean water to drink!?
The Zimbabwean impasse and the lack of the African initiative on this matter, is as a result of the African states shared colonial discredited histories, and corruption contaminated post colonial governance.
Majority of most of the African heads of government rigged their way to power. Some killed off their predecessors and a couple of them detest elections the way Obama is carrying on and running it in the US. They would rather prefer the Robert Mugabe methodology.
The present impasse in Zimbabwe is a carry over of the political upheavals that enveloped the African continent when the colonial masters abandoned boat. Soon after independence, tensions erupted in one African state after the other.
Africans of different backgrounds and professions began to ask why should a few Africans simply replace the whites without making any significant improvement in the life of the majority?
According to the Secretary, Ugandan Constitutional Commission, Dr.J. M. Waliggo, these vocal Africans demanded immediate reasons why these Western educated Africans would employ the instruments of coercion and usurp power after rigging elections?
There were more demands. Why continue with the imposed foreign constitution on the people? These constitutions were not written to accomodate the local realities and interest of the people.
Rather, the constitutions went far to protect the local chiefs and kept the privilages of the departing foreigners.
The same demand for something new and fair forced these Africans to seek new friends beyond the East-West ideological groupings.
The problems degenerated to more conflicts as many more international actors rushed into the continent seeking bridge heads, doling out the foreign exchange to build the Aswan dam in Egypt and to providing the same for the exploitation of gold in the Ghanaian Volta region.
When the West suspected Kwame Nkhrumah's involvement with Socialism, he stampeded more to the East. At the same time argued Walligo, Sekou - Toure of Guinea defied the continued French neo-colonialism and went on his own way to consolidate internal dictatorship which was only overthrown on the day of his presidential funeral.
Evidently, the pioneer African governments which had assumed power through the outright rigging of elections soon abolished any peaceful alternative to their rule.
This naturally brought in the military and according to the Secretary of the Ugandan Constitutional Commission, ' Once the first coup succeeded in Nigeria in 1966, more than101 ways of successfully carrying out a coup were devised which could bring to the headship of an African government even a mere sergeant, provided he had access to the central armory and to the national radio to announce his redemptive action on behalf of the people.Futhermore, the constitutional expert believes that, the first enemy to democratic governance is ignorance .
An ignorant citizenry is living in an oppressed polity. The ignorance implied is not so much the lack of formal education as the blindness to evaluate what is happening around a person.
Political ignorance has made many Africans underestimate their ability to contribute to the good leadership of their countries and to effectively say no to dictatorship and all its accompanying ill-effects.
This ignorance comes from failure to get proper information and fully know the rights and freedom to which everyone is entitled by the very fact of being a person and a citizen.
An ignorant person does not know the laws to protect him or where to go for redress.Ignorance of democratic governance has assisted unscrupulous leaders to deceive the population and to carry out their evil and selfish designs on the citizens and the country. Because of ignorance, Africans have been notoriously patient in their sufferings and oppression .
Such endurance has been founded on fatalism. Many have accepted their fate and passively hoped for a liberator from elsewhere.
Another factor that was cancerous to the growth of democracy in Africa that is very evident in the Zimbabwe struggle at this point, is the peoples' abject poverty and engulfing corruption amongst the military top brass .
Elsewhere in Africa, the peoples' poverty have been used to buy their votes at elections . Promise of economic reward has brought numerous supporters to oppressive regimes . A poor Zimbabwean can rarely be completely free in his or her options, with a loaf of bread costing over six million shillings.
For any change to materialize from the inside, democratic governance should be part and parcel of economic development. Elimination of injustices and corruption indeed, should be part of the deal.
When the evil Mugabe regime sacked the white farmers who had fed the region and helped stabilize the country's foreign exchange, we knew he was up to something. Unlike Nelson Madela that retained his productive and technologically advanced white working force the tyrant forced the breadwinners away from their farms and ranches .
Some are with us now in Kwara state.In the absence of any organized internal resistance, the AU should despite its contaminated leadership suspend the undemocratic Mugabe regime.
South Africa, under Mbeki should by now realize that its appointed leadership of that region has been scandalized and Africa is praying that the Mbeki chapter is overtaken in a hurry.
His leadership after the legend has been dug by crass lethargy and multiple missteps.As for China we understand its desperation to gain a foot hold, anywhere in Africa.
As a late actor, in the super power game it needs every raw material it could garner to feed its industries and billion population.
That is why China is opposite humanity in Dafur, Sudan. Its decision to arm Mugabe against his starving people and its angling with South Africa to block sanctions against Mugabe, proclaims its racist foreign policy.
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