By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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The rulers of the countries on this continent are a schizophrenic lot. They want to be one thing, but then they want to be another. They can’t make up their minds and are for ever standing at a junction when they are required to make up their minds, mired in chronic indecision.

For six decades, our rulers have been going through the motions of learning how to govern us, and yet we realise they have learnt precious little, if anything. They keep making the same mistakes and are imprisoned in the mould of the now proverbial madman who keeps doing the same thing the same way expecting different outcomes.

This past week the governments of West Africa met in Accra to say exactly what I am saying here without articulating it.

After yet another military disposed of another ramshackle “civilian” government — the one in Wagadugu — the West Africa heads of state met to once again decry the phenomenon of the coup d’état, telling us that the tendency of the armed forces taking over power from civilian administrations was a “matter of grave concern,” as it challenges the “democratic way of life we have chosen,” according to the chair of Ecowas, President Nana Akuffo Ado of Ghana.

Nana, (whose country admittedly comes off much better than others in terms of what could be termed proper governance) calls on his colleagues to “address this dangerous trend collectively and decisively before it devastates the whole region.”

I noted immediately that, as usual with our governors, President Nana was addressing a symptom rather than a disease.

The military takeovers are in themselves an indication that the so-called “civilian” governments are pretences hiding combat uniforms behind Pierre Cardin suits, and whose legitimacy was eroded a long time ago, making them unable to rule except via orders barked by their uniformed stand-ins.

There are hardly any governments whose legitimacy can be sustained except by the muzzle of the gun.

So, what was Nana saying? He was reporting a temperature, a skin rash, a boil or a running stomach, which are all symptoms of something gone awry but are not by themselves the essence of the problem.

The problem lies in the fact that Africans are governed badly by the military camouflaged in civilian clothes.

I believe that if one wants to keep the military out of government one has only to run a government that is based on political conversation and the search for solutions agreed among the entire body politic, striving as much as possible to be fair and just to one’s people without trying to pull a fast one over them and robbing them blind.

For that is what our governments have been since we acceded to what we called independence: everybody coming to power since then has been preoccupied with making as much money and amassing as much wealth as they can, to the extent that it is hard to name one African government that is not made up of thieves (I challenge anyone who argues against this to raise their hands).

To effect that theft and robbery, the military and police are utilised by thieving politicians who are the principals calling the shots.

But soon the uniformed boys realise they could do better if they barked the orders themselves and reaped all the benefits instead of allowing people who cannot even give proper orders do, and that is when the relevance of the fake “civilians” disappears.

If, however, one really wants the military out of politics, stick to the politics of suasion and consultation; that is the one thing the military cannot do.

The call made by Nana the other day is therefore without a future if it is not proceeded by Africans exercising a little tough love on themselves, if they do not tell their brothers and sisters in all our chancelleries that they are uglies doing ugly things. Being polite with ogres will not get us anywhere.

But it is not as if Africans do not know this; it is only that Africans have the memory of certain mammals that I fear to mention here because it would open up a furore against me, seeing as we are given to shooting the messenger when the message is nasty.

Think that some 20 years ago, the African Union launched a beautiful programme called the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), in which the states submitted themselves to be examined by their colleagues under a thoroughgoing scrutiny, which drilled each state under study to expose all the warts and flaws. It worked quite well, until it started turning into a beauty contest, each government seeking to doctor its national report to appear prettier than the next.

Even the initiators of the Mechanism — Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo — realised that this is probably too much for the Africans of this generation.

We might have to wait for the next cohort of Africans before we can hope to believe that our actions and choices will produce logical responses and consequences, and that we cannot disown our chickens when they come home to roost.

Those coups are of our own making, dear Nana!

Jenerali Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]