The crisis that underpins Africa’s underdevelopment is the crisis of governance or, more specifically, the crisis of leadership. We have divorced the factor of leadership from the development matrix.
Divorced from its developmental function, a leadership position becomes a means to amass wealth and assuage the leader’s megalomania.
Elections, the means which our constitutions provide for getting better leadership, have proved incapable of ushering in a new philosophy of governance that would re-situate leadership at the heart of the development matrix.
An election either brings new or extends governance of megalomaniacal thieves. As a result, a few years after an election, development prospects worsen or remain the same.
I am not throwing a tantrum. Look at recent elections in Africa. In Mozambique, Daniel Chapo took over from Filipe Nyusi. During Nyusi’s tenure, Jihadists turned some provinces into killing fields.
At the same time, the country continued to suffer from poverty and dysfunction, just as it had during the regimes of Armando Guebuza and Joachim Chissano.
In Ghana, they elected John Mahama who achieved little during his first term in office. He has replaced a regime that came to power with a lot of hope, but which achieved nothing.
In Nigeria, the elections brought in Bola Tinubu. Since coming into office, tens of Nigerians protesting corruption and high cost of living have been massacred.
Kidnappings continue apace. Boko Haram still inflicts death and destruction on impoverished villages. Meanwhile, Tinubu indulges his love of endless motorcades and foreign travel. He took over from the incompetent and corrupt regime of Muhammadu Buhari.
In 2022, William Ruto took power in Kenya. In just two years, the regime has outdone its predecessors in brutality and corruption. The Auditor-General’s reports show theft or misuse of billions of shillings by officials.
It has been an orgy of plunder. In June last year, youths took to the streets to decry this plunder, and punitive taxation. The regime deployed snipers on rooftops and called out the army. Sixty-one youth were massacred.
Tens of others were abducted by secret police units and tortured. But while the Ruto regime is particularly corrupt and brutal, it’s just the latest in a line of brutal and corrupt regimes in Kenya.
Elections in Africa are social calendar events. They don’t bring transformation or a period of leap-frogging growth. In every election cycle, we dance in the streets, wearing party colours, singing praises of our candidates.
If someone were to ask many in these election carnivals why/how they thought their candidate and party would transform the country, he would be met by bewilderment.
The relationship between elections and socio-economic transformation has been lost. The leaders and electorate participate joyously in the carnival.
After the election, only one section of the carnival participants remains joyous. They laugh and dance all the way to the bank. The rest of us are left gnashing our teeth, bitterly regretting our choices, and trying to ignore rumbling stomachs. Well, until the next carnival.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.
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