A throne of one’s own

Accordingly, a 2009 Kampala summit of “traditional leaders” from all over the continent that Gaddafi provocatively funded was cancelled at the last minute, accompanied by threats to arrest the local fixers.

One well-made justification was the fact that such interference could lead to inter-state “complications.”

They should know. Libya’s sustained assistance to the government of Idi Amin, culminating in troops to help counter the 1979 Tanzanian counter-invasion is well known.

Less well-known perhaps is Gadaffi’s assistance in the form of weapons, cash and training to the many armed groups that took on the second Obote 1980-1985 regime.

The now ruling NRM was one such group.

The focus on traditional leaders however comes as a new twist to his idiosyncratic diplomacy.

Many modern African leaders turn to them seeking short-term electoral support at national or continental level, while seeking to minimise what many of these traditional leaders actually represent.

Much of Africa’s land is held in trust by communities of elders, a capacity they retain in the face of rapacious state and commercial interests, as well as against outright land grabbing by well-connected individuals.

This capacity to hold on to land, and therefore for that land to hold on to its people, has prevented a more full-scale mass migration that would overwhelm Africa’s already beleaguered cities.

These communities have continued after a fashion to bridge the gap between the modern state’s promises of health, education and social security, and the reality of scarcity and exclusion.

It is for this reason that even today, most Africans receive support for their health and education costs through support networks within their extended family system, and not the efforts of the modern state.

To interfere with this arrangement, imperfect as it manifestly is, is to clearly interfere with something much more complex than the presumed penury of an individual chief.

Indigenous governance systems remain one of the last best hopes for the continued survival and possible development of African communities, the modern states having collectively failed to address four-decade old problems of endemic poverty and related conflict.

The challenge for the African Union (and East African Community) is to decide whether they are seeking to integrate the various Western economies planted here through the modern states, or the informal native ones built around common property such as land?

Unfortunately, their entrenched cultures of patronage and subornation deprive them of the ability to have a meaningful engagement with these chiefs and kings.