Category Archives: Southern Africa

African Institute of Science and Technology to open in Abuja

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Those of you that regularly read my blog know that I have this fixation with the idea of an African hegemon in the form of either Nigeria or South Africa that would provide visionary leadership for the rest of the continent. I was therefore delighted when I learned that the first African Institute of Science and Technology campus will open in Abuja, Nigeria, this coming July. The university will be part of a pan-African alliance of similar institutions that will be bastions of knowledge and research. The AIST will be modeled in a similar way to India’s legendary IIT and will consist of four campuses in the East, West, North and South of the African continent.

The initiative is the brain child of the Nelson Mandela Institution and will focus on the creation of scientific solutions to Africa-specific problems. The core courses offered by AIST will be in science and engineering although I see expansion into the social sciences once the demand builds up; after all, Africa needs all kinds of solutions, not just scientific ones. These are really exciting times……..

It is commendable that Nigeria provided the seed money for the project and that it will be the first host of such a high profile institution. Other potential candidates are South Africa or Botswana for the Southern campus, Kenya (once they get their house in order, if not Rwanda would be the next best thing) in the East and possibly Libya or Tunisia in the North. AIST, on top of being in itself a centre of excellence, will provide competition to other African universities that have been wallowing in mediocrity due to lack of competition and political meddling in the universities.

chadian rebels finally routed

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Chad, like most of central Africa, is a sad story. After days of fighting, reports indicate that the government of Idriss Deby – possibly with some help from the French – has managed to to repel rebels from the capital and gain “total control.” The question is, for how long? This was the second time in a few years that the rebels had marched into the capital and threatened to topple Deby. This was also a confirmation that the government of Chad remains weak and unable to provide security, let alone development programmes, for its own people.

The story of Chad is a story that is repeated many times on the continent of Africa. You always have very weak governments that are unable to provide the most basic of public goods to their people but that are propped up by the West- the French being the number one culprits here. The French were friends with Bokassa and Mobutu, among other francophone-African dictators who brought much suffering to their own people while maintaining strong ties to Paris and having frequent state visits to the Elysee. The opposition to these weak governments is also just as weak. The many rebels movements fighting silly wars of greed devoid of any ideological significance are too weak to win. Instead they put their countrymen through wars of attrition that keep them forever stagnant in pre-modern subsistence existence. The same applies for Political opposition parties. Think of Zimbabwe. Everyone wants Mugabe out, except Tsvangirai and Mutambara – the two men who have refused to join forces within the MDC in order to unseat Bob.

More than two decades after Achebe wrote about it in Nigeria, the trouble with Africa still remains simply and squarely a problem of leadership. There is nothing inherently wrong with Africa or the African people. The only strange thing about Africa is its ability to keep churning out more Mobutus, Bokassas and Amins and very few Mandelas.

Going back to Chad…… may be it is a good thing that Deby is still president. However, deep down I think that that Africans should think hard about their many weak and unviable states. The DRC, Somalia and many states in the Sahel some to mind. If these countries cannot get their act together they should be left to the mercy of “evolution of states” so that in the end we can have states that are viable and able to provide for their people and not kleptocracies that only benefit their leaders’ kinsmen and a few multinational corporations.

zimbabwe opposition a let down

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You would imagine that with a president like one Robert Mugabe the Zimabwean opposition would do anything in their capacity to have him out of power. But you would be wrong. This power hungry lot (yes, this is what I think of them) has refused to come up with a coalition against Mugabe. Their leaders, Tsvangirai and Mutambara, have confirmed that talks between their rival MDC factions have “broken down irretrievably” – according to the BBC.

A divided MDC almost certainly guarantees the aging Mugabe a win in the March polls. Meanwhile, ordinary Zimbabweans continue to live their lives under the yoke of the wayward economic practices that the world has come to know the Mugabe administration for. Mugabe’s bad economics has also been served with a touch of human rights abuses and lack of respect for the rule of law. It is really shocking to imagine how he manages to get re-elected.

Tsvangirai and Mutambara owe it to their countrymen and women to form a united front if they really want to unseat Mugabe. They have no business running separate campaigns in March because this will guarantee the presidency to Mugabe. Knowing African leaders (yes, I think after all that has happened on the continent from Senegal to Somalia and Chad to South Africa I can make this generalization, but I digress) I don’t think these two power hungry men will let their egos and quest for personal aggrandizement take the back seat and let the plight of their countrymen and women take the front seat.

Sadly, this is yet another case of African leaders lacking true leadership. It also paints a bad picture of both Tsvangirai and Mutambara and makes one doubt whether these two really want to end the bad governance that we’ve come to associate with Bob or whether they just want to perpetuate the same old practices of rent-seeking, cronyism and over-the-roof inflations rates – but may be with less human rights abuses and the jailing of opposition supporters. Even this is questionable, after seeing what Kenya has turned into following the “bad” years of Moi rule. African leaders just have a way of making you look back and shock yourself by wishing you had the likes of Moi in power.

If Tsvangirai and Mutambara care about their international reputation thy ought to unite. Otherwise many reasonable people will question their vision for Zimbabwe and indeed their commitment to ousting Mugabe and bettering the lives of millions of hungry, sick and illiterate Zimbabweans.

when will africa get it right?

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A few months ago, after the Nigerian election, I read a piece in a leading international newspaper that said that Africa had yet again failed at democracy. The article infuriated me because it was a blanket write off of the entire continent as being undemocratic. I thought about Kenya, Senegal and Botswana as viable democracies that were capable of holding free and fair elections and which had freedom of the press.

But then Kenya happened. A country that was largely peaceful and with prospects of becoming a middle income country in the next decade and a half suddenly imploded and descended into never-before seen chaos. An election was stolen by a man who was viewed as one of the better behaved presidents on a continent infested with autocrats and dictators.

How, after all this, can we convince the world that Nigeria, Zimbabwe, the CAF, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Somalia, Chad, the DCR and all the others are isolated incidents? How are we going to convince ourselves that we are capable of running peaceful and prosperous countries when all that exist around us are chaos and murderous wars? Total failure?

It is true that countries like Botswana and Senegal still remain stable and democratic and also headed towards economic prosperity. South Africa is also doing quite well, although I am holding my breath to see what a Zuma presidency has in store for us. But the rest of the countries either have wars, or some form of instability and those that are peaceful have poverty rates that are utterly inhuman, to put it mildly.

It is extremely vital for the continent not to let a working model like Kenya sink into the same pit that has the Somalias of the continent. This is because many countries in East Africa depend on Kenya for their own economic success. A failed Kenya would mean no hope for Somalia and serious problems for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Southern Sudan, Eastern DCR and Northern Tanzania. A failed Kenya will also mean a serious blow to the spread of democracy on the continent and especially East Africa. Besides Tanzania, Kenya was the only other democracy in the region. Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi all have autocrats who would happily use Kenya as an excuse for them to stay in power.

anc endorses zuma for president

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Jacob Zuma, the recently elected president of the ANC, is certain to become South Africa’s next president after the party officially announced that it would back him for the presidency in next year’s election. This despite the fact that Zuma is scheduled to appear in court on charges of corruption.

The ANC executive committee said that it was fully behind the former vice president and hinted that it would support his court battle against the corruption charges which many of Zuma’s supporters see as politically motivated.

Zuma has lately been on a charm offensive in his efforts to try and reassure South African businesses that he will not drastically deviate from Mbeki’s economic policies. Many hope that Zuma will not live up to his populist ideals that appear to be anti private business.

zuma victory a loss for africa

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Even Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Price laureate dubbed as South Africa’s conscience during the apartheid years, could not persuade the delegates at the ANC Congress in Polokwane not to elect Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma as their party’s next president. The eminent Nelson Mandela opted to stay above the fray on this one, citing impartiality but may be also because he saw it as a foregone conclusion. The mistake that was Zuma’s election is the full responsibility of Thabo Mbeki. This is a man who throughout his presidency has remained aloof and insensitive to South African street and village talk. Even at the congress he found it proper to bore the crowd with a more than two hour long speech on policy issues instead of pandering to their populist instincts. This was a vote against Mbeki in the same vein that many reasonable people had hoped that it be a vote against Zuma.

The implication of a Zuma presidency for South Africa is an issue that South Africans will have to deal with themselves. It may even be (hopefully) the era that finally corrects the injustices of the apartheid period. What worries me is how his presidency will pan out in the wider region. Mbeki, like the Ghanaian Nkrumah, was a lousy president at home but a great pan-Africanist. He was a key architect of the African Union and the NEPAD initiative. Mbeki was also an ideologue – of the tempered kind that Africa woefully lacks – who took time to seriously think of solutions to Africa’s problems. Mbeki had the courage to dream of an African Renaissance even as poverty and underdevelopment still plague the continent.

Of course the wishes of the South African people should supersede those of other Africans when they choose their leaders. I am also glad that Zuma’s election happened in a democratic manner. Institutionalization of democracy within the ANC, as I have pointed out before, is important since it is this party that will be electing South Africa’s president for many years to come – barring any major break-up. This said, I think it is important to acknowledge that South Africa, being the regional hegemon, has considerable influence in Africa. Because of this, people in Harare, Dakar or Nairobi have a reason to care and think of how outcomes in South African politics affect them.

Zuma, a man without much formal education, lacks the intellectual abilities that Mbeki has exhibited ever since his heydays as an ANC exile. He has proven to be a populist and to the best of my knowledge has not shown much interest on the region as a whole. If he chooses to be a domestic leader, like he seems he will, his election will indeed end up being a loss to the African people who desperately need visionary continental leadership to correct the evils of poverty, disease, ignorance and bad leadership.  

the anc, has the movement outlived its purpose?

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There is no question that the ANC, Nelson Mandela’s party, will rule South Africa for many years to come. Like most independence parties on the African continent, the ANC has immense political capital because it claims almost all credit, and rightfully so, for the success of the liberation struggle against apartheid and its evils.

But does South Africa still need the movement-style organization of the ANC? Movement parties are populist, unpredictable and are not suitable for a stable country on the path to economic development. Post-apartheid South Africa needs not a movement party but a party driven by issue oriented democratic ideals. If the country is to realize economic growth and social stability the ANC has to put its house in order and embrace institutionalized internal democracy and transparency.

South Africans should be watchful of the populist politics that is driving the upcoming ANC elections – which will effectively choose their next president. Jacob Zuma, a man who has appeared in court on corruption and sexual offense charges and who has no formal education is poised to clinch the party chairmanship from the embattled Thabo Mbeki. Zuma’s only credentials are that he feels the mood of the crowd and panders to their dissatisfaction with Mbeki’s rather lackluster performance on issues of wealth redistribution and tackling of the aids disaster.

To some extent this is all Mbeki’s fault. His presidency has not met the needs of the largely poor party masses and their vote for Zuma will be nothing but a protest vote against him (Mbeki). Zuma does not represent change. He has no concrete plans for wealth redistribution to the black majority or to tackle social evils like high crime and the country’s astonishing HIV infection rate. He is a man who is on record to have said that his only form of protection after he had had sex with an HIV positive woman was to take a quick shower.

Hopefully the ANC delegates at the upcoming congress will see the light and settle for a compromise candidate that is not as polarizing as either Mbeki or Zuma. But if the party chooses to continue wallowing in mindless populism, the main casualties will be the South African people.