Defeating Dictators

"Most Africans would affirm that there has been a catastrophic failure of leadership on the continent. The slate of post-colonial African leaders has been a disgusting assortment of military coconut-heads, Swiss bank socialists, crocodile liberators, quack revolutionaries and briefcase bandits. For reasons of political correctness, the West couldn’t admit or say this. Instead, it naively believed it could persuade, cajole or even bribe African leaders to reform their abominable political and economic systems. But it became clear that reform is anathema to African dictators. They are stone deaf and impervious to reason. They are not interested in reform, period. Under pressure to reform, they only perform the “coconut boogie” – one swing to the left, three swings to the right, a jerk in the air and a tumble for a hard landing on a frozen Swiss bank account. Switzerland froze the bank accounts of Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Ask African leaders to develop their economies and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek foreign investment and they will seek a foreign country to invest their loot. Ask them to establish democracy and they empanel a fawning coterie of sycophants to write electoral rules, toss opposition leaders into jail and hold coconut elections to return themselves to power. Ask them to combat corruption and they will set up an anti-corruption commission with no teeth. And when the anti-corruption tsar sniffs too close to the fat cats, they shut down the commission. Ask them to shrink their bloated bureaucracies and cut government spending and they will set up a “Ministry of Less Government Spending”. The reform process in Africa has been stalled by vexatious chicanery, willful deception and vaunted acrobatics. Only 15 of the 54 African countries are democratic, only 10 have a free and independent media, and fewer than 10 can be termed economic success stories. But without genuine reform, more African countries will implode. It is clear that the current crop of dictators must be defeated and removed from power for Africa to begin to make progress. Street protests are a start, and draw attention to some social and economic problems. But by themselves, rah-rah street protests are not enough to dislodge a dictator from power. The aid of an auxiliary institution is needed. Among them are the media, the judiciary, the civil service and the security forces. Shut down the civil service and any military regime will collapse. But the media is the most powerful and effective weapon against alldictatorships, which is why it is the first institution they seize and gag. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I was one of the architects of change in Ghana , removing through the ballot box the Rawlings dictatorship in 2000. We did this without violence and Western help, by freeing the airways and corralling the divided opposition groups into one formidable electoral alliance. And if it can be done in Ghana, it can be done elsewhere in the developing world. No. The West can support the efforts the African people are making to solve their own problems, rather than seek to supplant them and impose Western solutions on them. That was the bane of the old aid paradigm. August 29, 2011. Updated: November 6, 2020 Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]"