tag:theconversation.com,2011:/columns/stephen-chan-114702Truth to power – The Conversation2016-10-07T14:21:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/665812016-10-07T14:21:51Z2016-10-07T14:21:51ZWhy can’t Nigeria’s president defeat Boko Haram?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140472/original/image-20161005-14246-jz24yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Buhari meets with a woman rescued from Boko Haram.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.epa.eu/war-photos/acts-of-terror-photos/amina-ali-nkeki-meets-nigerian-president-photos-52768094">EPA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Muhammadu Buhari, a disciplinarian former military leader, came to power in Nigeria with a specific mandate to improve on his inept predecessor’s inability to confront the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-boko-haram-is-the-worlds-deadliest-terror-group-54216">torn a terrifying path</a> across the country. Even after the world rallied to help Nigeria rescue the <a href="https://theconversation.com/boko-harams-latest-video-of-captured-schoolgirls-offers-hope-and-despair-63953">276 schoolgirls the group kidnapped</a> in 2014, little if any headway was made, and Goodluck Jonathan, then the president, was duly turfed out of office in a reassuringly orderly election. </p>
<p>Buhari’s victory was <a href="https://theconversation.com/buhari-wins-as-nigeria-turns-its-back-on-jonathan-39619">a chance to turn the tide</a>. But 15 months after he took the helm, Boko Haram has not been defeated – and the huge majority of the 276 kidnapped schoolgirls remain unrescued.</p>
<p>There are three main reasons for this, each of which speaks to Nigeria’s general position of decline and incapacity, of corruption and squandering. Buhari has made no real progress with society at large and scant progress with his military.</p>
<p>Goodluck Jonathan did provide large sums of money to re-equip his floundering soldiers on the frontline with Boko Haram. They had been outgunned and out-manoeuvred by an enemy with faster vehicles and greater firepower. But of the funds earmarked for the fight, plenty never reached the soldiers at the front; large sums were apparently stolen by corrupt generals who were willing to let their men die. </p>
<p>Still, even if the funds had reached the front, they wouldn’t necessarily have been used to buy the right equipment. The Nigerian army’s performance in West African mulitateral missions has earned it a reputation for being rough and indiscriminate – its strategies relying principally on heavy bombardment. In the thick forests where Boko Haram has some of its strongholds this makes little sense – especially given the army has little to no precise intelligence on where its enemy is. </p>
<p>Reconnaissance equipment and aerial heat-seeking capacity would depend on helicopters, drones and aircraft, and the military is not well supplied with those. Buying armoured cars is of no use so long as Boko Haram has lighter, faster vehicles.</p>
<p>Even with the right equipment, military strategy is critical – but there’s no evidence that Buhari’s generals are adequately schooled in modern counterinsurgency tactics. And even where there is some genuine leadership, discipline among the frontline troops can be appalling. Wiping out the villages they are sent to protect doesn’t exactly win hearts and minds.</p>
<p>Soldiers from other national armies are fighting Boko Haram along their borders with Nigeria. But their countries are generally not in meltdown and Boko Haram does not control vast swaths of their territories – nor do their local political figures need to invoke the threat of Boko Haram to leverage their positions. </p>
<h2>Things fall apart</h2>
<p>This fits into a more general malaise that is eating away at Nigerian society, and which Buhari seems equally unable to address.</p>
<p>Something is rotten in Nigeria – and something peculiarly Nigerian at that. Violence has ticked up again in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-peace-can-be-achieved-in-the-niger-delta-55881">Niger Delta</a>, the Christian-Islamic divide is as great as it was when Buhari took office, and his painstakingly chosen cabinet has no great accomplishments to its name. </p>
<p>Everyone who seeks power still seems to be serving vested interests or pursuing personal gain. There is, in many respects, no longer a Nigeria. The name describes little more than a nation-sized slush fund.</p>
<p>All the while, the catastrophic insurrection in the north goes on. The army periodically claims Boko Haram is defeated or on the verge of defeat – and Boko Haram then proves it isn’t. In many ways, it seems better organised and more resilient than the army or the government itself.</p>
<p>On all current indications, Buhari’s return to power is a sad disappointment, and those who want to give him more time find it hard to argue their case. The anguished parents of missing schoolgirls, those who’ve fled shattered villages, and those maimed in suicide bomb attacks are all still wondering why he’s taking so very long even to get started.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Muhammadu Buhari rode into power on a wave of goodwill – but Nigeria’s troubles just won’t go away.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647132016-09-02T14:00:32Z2016-09-02T14:00:32ZFrom Gabon to Zimbabwe, African presidents are under siege<p>It’s sometimes democracy as we know it – albeit with twists and turns – but there is certainly a new appetite for political pluralism developing in Africa. This sometimes leads not only to change, but to deep division.</p>
<p>In Gabon, the Bongo family’s father-and-son dynasty faced a challenge as never before. The Bongos have ruled the oil-rich country for almost 50 years, all the while distributing economic benefits grotesquely unevenly. This year’s election was hotly contested; despite all indications in the exit polls, and after a protracted count of just a few hundred thousand votes, the incumbent Ali Bongo was eventually declared the winner. </p>
<p>The aftermath has been deeply ugly, with the opposition’s headquarters in flames. Jean Ping, whom Bongo narrowly defeated, has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243309">claimed that a presidential guard helicopter bombed the building</a>, killing two people.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is a preview of what might eventually befall Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe’s autocratic, gerontocratic apparatus is apparently cemented in place. The electorate must wait till 2018 if they want to vote it out, but suddenly, street demonstrations have been ramping up, with tear gas-armed riot police doubling down on the state’s suppression. </p>
<p>Sadly, the demonstrators have no political programme to regenerate the economy, and the country’s array of 18 opposition parties has no actual fiscal plans or policies either. </p>
<p>The anti-Robert Mugabe parties boast two political titans: Morgan Tsvangirai, a longtime opposition leader and onetime prime minister, and Joice Mujuru, liberation hero, former ZANU-PF stalwart and onetime national vice-president. The two have never been enemies, but neither of them is much of a technocrat and if either or both somehow got the chance to form a reasonable government, they would still be looking for some sort of salvation from the outside world.</p>
<p>All the while, the people of Zimbabwe still have to wait until 2018 for a chance to vote even for that – unless a brooding army, possibly also about to run out of money, makes a move first. </p>
<p>If it did so, it would probably be in support not of the opposition, but of one faction or another within ZANU-PF. And depending on how much leverage the younger officers had, that could force a long-overdue generation jump in political leadership.</p>
<h2>Heading south</h2>
<p>In South Africa, meanwhile, a hotly anticipated round of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-elections-politics-shuffled-but-not-transformed-63481">municipal elections</a> was in its own way stunning, if not as stunning as opposition strategists had hoped. </p>
<p>The Democratic Alliance (DA) finally broke out of its established stronghold in the Western Cape, but could not command absolute majorities in key cities. In Johannesburg especially, the new DA mayor owes his place to the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who have chosen to vote with the DA as the lesser of two evils – the other being the ANC and its benighted president, Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>As if determined not to learn anything from his party’s hugely symbolic losses, Zuma has been going about his singularly dodgy brand of business as usual. The latest ploy is a push to undermine his minister of finance, <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-move-against-gordhan-suggests-south-africas-laws-are-under-threat-64459">Pravin Gordhan</a>. Gordhan seems destined to be hit with corruption charges, but there is a widely held view that these are only being levelled because Gordhan will not allow Zuma himself corrupt free rein.</p>
<p>The last time Zuma played with appointments to the finance portfolio, the Rand lost huge value overnight. It seems he does not learn either from electoral defeat or from economic reality. Or he may simply be working on the assumption that the DA and the EFF, hardly ideological bedfellows, will find it hard to keep up their co-operation and the ANC will continue as before – especially as it continues to command the countryside.</p>
<p>The next elections will be in 2019. Constitutionally, Zuma cannot stand again; but his former wife, African Union chairperson <a href="http://whoswho.co.za/nkosazana-dlamini-zuma-919">Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma</a>, might make a bid to succeed him – just as in Zimbabwe, where rumours persist that <a href="http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-95371.html">Grace Mugabe</a> may in some way become her husband’s successor. </p>
<p>Given that the free world may soon be led once again by the house of Clinton, this is far from sinister in itself – except that these two women’s ascent to the top would primarily function to preserve their husbands’ reputations and power bases.</p>
<h2>A bubble burst</h2>
<p>All the while, corruption has also been on the up in Zambia, where the economy has slumped after a bubble in copper prices burst. The elections of August very narrowly re-elected Edgar Lungu, but the results are now being challenged in the constitutional court. At time of writing, the country has no government.</p>
<p>The slowness of the electoral commission’s count, and the refusal to allow observers to witness the centralised verification process, have led to a huge raft of suspicions in what was always going to be an edge-of-the-seat race.</p>
<p>But whoever is finally declared the winner, Zambia is now split in two. The east and the north voted for Lungu; the south, west and north-west voted for his rival, Hakainde Hichilema. And whoever is eventually declared the official winner won’t just have to unite a divided electorate; he will have to grapple with a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/zambia-opposition-leader-signals-strong-support-for-imf-bailout">“rescue package” from the IMF</a>, hardly a harbinger of better times for ordinary Zambians.</p>
<p>Much was made of God’s will in the Zambian elections, but God is unlikely to bail the country out – just as the outside world will not bail out Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and just as the markets will lose confidence in the Rand again if Zuma gets his way with his finance minister.</p>
<p>Looking across the continent, the problem is all too familiar. In Gabon as in Zambia, the technocratic candidates were suspiciously unsuccessful. Zimbabwe has abandoned technocracy and functional government for the foreseeable future, and South Africa, once a beacon of relative affluence and good governance, has been laid low by brazen infighting and patronage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Technocrats across the African continent are battling to change the direction of corrupt, violent governmentsStephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636712016-08-09T14:15:07Z2016-08-09T14:15:07ZSouth Africa and Zambia’s anointed leaders face very different challenges<p>Watching the South African metro elections from Zambia, in the final week of its <a href="https://theconversation.com/zambias-2016-elections-democracy-hovering-on-the-precipice-63605">own national election campaign</a>, was a sobering experience. </p>
<p>Zambia’s economic indicators are pointing disastrously downwards, but the elections are entirely to do with the style of presidency and personalities of the two main contenders. In South Africa, on the other hand, this year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-elections-politics-shuffled-but-not-transformed-63481">municipal elections</a> boiled down to a referendum on the policies of the president, Jacob Zuma, and the ANC and the direction of the country. </p>
<p>The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has a young and charismatic leader, <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-black-leader-breathes-life-into-south-african-opposition-41275">Mmusi Maimane</a>, but he didn’t try to project his personality in exuberant Obama-esque style. And perhaps that was just as well, since many voters think him just a bit too young, handsome – and, above all, too privileged in a way still associated with white people.</p>
<p>This was a fight between the ANC’s tired old refrains and the DA’s technocratic exuberance. The DA campaign railed against South Africa’s <a href="http://www.oecd.org/economy/south-africa-economic-forecast-summary.htm">stagnant growth</a>, its dismal <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36367703">job market</a>, and the blight of state-sponsored <a href="http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/why-is-corruption-getting-worse-in-south-africa/">patronage and corruption</a>. They lamented the decline of probity since the first Mandela government, and the efforts at planning in the Mbeki governments. But, above all, the DA traded on its strong track record in Cape Town and the Western Cape. </p>
<p>For months, DA strategists had polled and crunched figures that showed the party could take control of Johannesburg and much of metropolitan Gauteng Province. It already ran a council in Kliptown, the poorest part of Soweto, where the ANC has done almost nothing to improve life in the birthplace of the struggle against apartheid. </p>
<p>The DA thought it had a message for the poor nationally as well as for the better-off denizens of the Western Cape. In the end, its success <a href="http://www.news24.com/elections/results/lge#election=pr&year=2016&map=live">was more qualified than it hoped for</a> – but the ANC was nonetheless humbled, winning only 53% of the vote nationwide.</p>
<h2>A monopoly broken</h2>
<p>While it outpolled the DA nationally by almost two to one, the governing party of Nelson Mandela is indisputably in decline in the great cities. For the first time, the DA broke out of the Western Cape and won a majority in Nelson Mandela Bay, meaning it will now dominate the country’s southern provinces. The party’s <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-08-00-voters-in-nelson-mandela-bay-celebrate-but-vow-to-watch-athol-trollip">Anthol Trolip</a> will become mayor; a white man who speaks fluent Xhosa, he couldn’t have been elected without huge black support.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, the DA won Tshwane (which includes Pretoria), but without a majority, meaning it’ll have to assemble a coalition to govern it. The ANC similarly scraped the largest share of the vote in Johannesburg, but fell short of a majority.</p>
<p>Coalition administrations will give smaller parties a larger role than they’ve ever enjoyed in the new South Africa. This raises the hope of some desperately needed pluralism, but also it raises the prospect of further favour-trading – potentially a disaster for a country already mired in clientalism.</p>
<p>A lot will come down the behaviour of Julius Malema and his radical left-wing party, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-julius-malemas-eff-doesnt-offer-south-africans-a-way-out-of-poverty-59267">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> (EFF), which won less than 9% of the nationwide vote but is the third-largest party in several areas. If it wants to be a player in any coalition, the party will have to stop trafficking in vitriol and defiance and instead sit down with others to try to achieve something.</p>
<h2>Blessed belligerents</h2>
<p>For it is the EFF and the intellectualised soundbites of student protest that most closely draw a parallel with politics in Zambia. </p>
<p>The multi-party democracy Zambia embraced in 1991 has led to several different parties taking control of government, but these parties are without exception the descendants from or splinters of previous ones. There is no single-party rule in Zambia, but that doesn’t mean the parties are genuinely diverse; they still reflect the country’s monolithic political past.</p>
<p>The main opposition leader in the August 11 elections, <a href="http://lusakavoice.com/2016/06/12/kasama-upnd-massive-rally-with-hakainde-hichilema-in-pictures/">Hakainde Hichelema</a>, is the first credible challenger from outside the political establishment. Like South Africa’s Maimane, he’s a technocrat who claims to have the right policies for an economically embattled country. </p>
<p>But unlike in South Africa, there’s no policy debate in Zambia; in fact, there’s hardly any debate at all. Instead, politics is poisoned with abuse and accusations. The discourse is very like Malema and the EFF’s: everyone knows what they don’t like, but the practical question of what people <em>would</em> like is overlooked in the melee.</p>
<p>And at least South Africa was spared any claims that God has blessed one party or another. Zambia is a devoutly Christian nation – imperialism’s signature export having been so deeply adopted that it’s now considered “native” – and the incumbent president, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14112922">Edgar Lungu</a>, has campaigned as if leading a Christian evangelical crusade. It is God who will fix the nation, apparently, and Lungu is His anointed agent on Earth.</p>
<p>As the ANC begins its private post-mortems on how, for the first time, it polled less than 60% of the vote, the internal plots against Zuma will gain momentum. While the challenge of the DA has not been enough to have brought down the ANC completely, God nonetheless seems to be withdrawing His blessing from the party of Mandela and its benighted president.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
While South Africa voted to chasten the ANC, Zambians endured an election campaign filled with abuse and claims to Godliness.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620152016-07-05T17:05:03Z2016-07-05T17:05:03ZZimbabwe’s finance minister makes a doomed pitch to London’s big businesses<p>As British politics descended into a post-EU referendum melee of opportunism, betrayal, resignations, and votes of no confidence, the UK was in no position to lecture others on good governance. Fitting then, perhaps, that it received a rare visit from one of the world’s more benighted regimes.</p>
<p>A delegation of senior ministers from the Zimbabwean government <a href="http://nehandaradio.com/2016/07/04/chinamasa-besieged-london/">came to London</a>. It was led by Robert Mugabe’s finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, who’s proven to be good at his job inasmuch as he’s conducting himself with decorum in an impossible situation. </p>
<p>Zimbabwe has no money, and its government has no fiscal plan. Its reserves are emptied, tax revenues are inadequate, public funds are still ransacked, and much of the country’s remaining formal employment is in an unproductive public service. Doctors, nurses and teachers are striking over unpaid wages, and their protests are turning into <a href="http://www.theafricareport.com/Southern-Africa/zimbabwe-protestors-strike-tweet-and-fight-in-bid-to-shut-down-country.html?utm_source=%5BNewsletters%5D+The+Africa+Report&utm_campaign=8e5ebd9c1a-daily-newsletter-05-07-2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7ee2458fc1-8e5ebd9c1a-338154565">violent clashes with police</a>. Foreign governments are not helping with standby budgetary support, and foreign corporations are not keen to invest in such a volatile country.</p>
<p>Part of that volatility is because of the power struggle now engulfing the ruling party. One of its wings, led by liberation war hero <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/zimbabwe-war-heroine-zpf-leader-joice-mujuru-sets-sights-robert-mugabes-presidency-1550822">Joice Mujuru</a>, has been entirely purged. The vice-president, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/robert-mugabe-succession-can-reformist-emmerson-mnangagwa-take-over-zimbabwe-presidency-1551047">Emerson Mnangagwa</a>, is under heavy fire from a pro-Mugabe faction calling itself the <a href="http://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/03/18/what-does-g40-want/">Group of 40</a> (G40) – a younger group who are not in their 70s, as is Mnangagwa, and certainly not in their 90s, as is Mugabe. Their talisman is Mugabe’s wife, Grace.</p>
<p>The G40’s members may be young enough not to have fought in the liberation war, but their announcements are still steeped in liberation rhetoric. That may or may not help it take control, but it has nothing to do with good governance. For all its influence over the party, the G40 has no plausible plan to address the problems Chinamasa and Zimbabwe face. </p>
<p>What is left of the opposition, meanwhile, is deeply divided, and its longtime leader, the charismatic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/28/zimbabwe-politician-morgan-tsvangirai-cancer">Morgan Tsvangirai</a>, has cancer. </p>
<p>And while opposition figure <a href="http://nehandaradio.com/2016/04/12/tendai-biti-state-economy/">Tendai Biti</a>, a successful finance minister during the coalition government of 2009-13, came to London with Chinamasa, he has little to offer. His plans require a political accommodation with the West, and he surely knows that investment will only be prompted by an embrace of political pragmatism – something in short supply in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.</p>
<h2>Nationalism placated</h2>
<p>Few of London’s heavyweight business figures came to listen to Chinamasa’s pitch, and for good reason. Apart from Zimbabwe’s deeply uninviting atmosphere of political and economic volatility, there is its rigid “<a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2016/04/13/mugabe-clarifies-indigenisation">indigenisation</a>” legislation, which requires that all companies operating in the country must be majority-owned by indigenous Zimbabweans. Few foreign companies will invest the billions of dollars Zimbabwe needs only to be shorn of their assets just like that.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129356/original/image-20160705-793-hgm8jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Squeezed: Patrick Chinamasa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bbcworldservice/3994526829/">BBC World Service/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>President Mugabe has assured the outside world that reasonable accommodations will be made, and that pragmatism will rule. But Chinamasa will know, as will every corporation’s legal team, that large investment is not forthcoming without legal protections, and courts of law that can be counted on to uphold them. </p>
<p>But Mugabe is simply not trusted by the rest of the world, and he dares not mandate a change to the indigenisation law – especially not now, as his health declines and as he perhaps secretly looks to secure his wife’s path to succeed him. </p>
<p>Indigenisation was meant to placate Zimbabwean nationalism, which still percolates among younger generations as well as older ones. Keeping that force in check is not just an imperative of political survival; it’s an ideological and emotional commitment, one Mugabe himself made with the land seizures that began in 2000. </p>
<p>The upshot is that national integrity is measured not in philosophical terms, nor in terms of the vibrancy of the state in all sectors, but simply in the reductive terms of the ownership of property and capital.</p>
<p>Far from a muscular, technocratic programme to protect Zimbabweans’ interests, it has become a fetish. Speaking in the City of London, Chinamasa and his colleagues were obliged to wear it round their necks like an albatross.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Robert Mugabe’s indigenisation laws demand that companies operating in Zimbabwe transfer most of their capital into local hands.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602692016-06-03T11:03:51Z2016-06-03T11:03:51ZSouth Africa’s myopic youth protesters speeding the end of an inclusive society<p>As student unrest sweeps South Africa, the debate and discourse laid out in youthful pronouncements and Twitter feeds is increasingly <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/05/08/RhodesMustFall-activists-snub-last-straw-for-waitress">racist</a>. An old enemy has been brought back from the dead, and the “vampire” of white racism is now apparently seen as the cause of the country’s myriad problems.</p>
<p>It seems that South Africa’s educated young people cannot bring themselves to trust <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-julius-malemas-eff-doesnt-offer-south-africans-a-way-out-of-poverty-59267">Julius Malema</a>’s crude leftist opposition to the ANC, and they certainly see the Democratic Alliance, even under <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-03-24-op-ed-captured-compromised-and-corrupt-the-anc-is-rotten-to-the-core/">Mmusi Maimane</a>’s leadership, as a front for white liberal interests. The still-vanishingly small number of black professors at the University of Cape Town, the old white liberal bastion, is taken as evidence of that.</p>
<p>But this new generation of articulate, well-schooled protesters seems strangely unmotivated to rail against the tired, self-serving crony politics of Jacob Zuma and the ANC – calcified, corrupt forces who no longer have anything to offer South Africa.</p>
<p>These young antagonists against all things white crib their soundbites from Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon, but few really seem to have bothered reading their writings in depth. (Try condensing Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks into a tweet.) </p>
<p>The result is that for all its nods to great post-colonial and liberation thinkers, the debate in South Africa is about as sophisticated as that in the American presidential election or the UK’s EU referendum campaign. It’s become little more than a hateful, trash-talking exchange of misapprehensions and fictions.</p>
<p>Everyone forgets, for instance, that white former DA leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-helen-zilles-departure-means-for-south-africas-main-opposition-party-40104">Helen Zille</a> was once a courageous young journalist who investigated and broke the story that Biko’s death had in fact been a police murder. Or that Biko’s lover, Professor <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-opposition-parties-in-chaos-as-2014-election-looms-22656">Mamphela Ramphele</a>, had been vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town. </p>
<p>Or that it’s a black president, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ancs-failure-to-do-the-right-thing-has-left-south-africa-at-an-impasse-57130">Jacob Zuma</a>, who has brought the country to its knees by having no technocratic capacity, or instinct, at all. His power has been sustained via the internal favour-trading and privilege structures of the ANC; history will judge him as a disaster.</p>
<h2>Forgotten history</h2>
<p>In the midst of all this, the death earlier this year, aged 66, of David “Oom Bolo” Meyers, a community activist in Kliptown, Soweto, went unnoticed. </p>
<p>Bolo was a photographer whose work documented <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/kliptown-220605.htm#.V02iP5MrJTY">Kliptown</a> as it was during the liberation struggle. Back then it was a ghetto of knifemen and gangsters, and in many ways it’s largely unchanged today. </p>
<p>While the ANC has plonked down dozens of chemical toilets, people live much as they did in the days when Mandela and the activists chose Kliptown as a hiding place from the police, and as it was in 1955, when the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=72">Freedom Charter</a> was signed by delegates who had smuggled themselves to the township from all over South Africa. </p>
<p>People who are now aged and wizened threw themselves in front of the police to stop them arresting Mandela, as well as the leaders not just of the ANC but many community organisations. They later used to gather at “Bolo’s place”, an improvised community centre, to tell stories through which they relived the exploits and sufferings of 1955 and of the 1976 <a href="http://www.pbs.org/video/2185498596/">Soweto Uprising</a>.</p>
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<p>None of the young student activists know these stories. Theirs is a simple enemy that can be fought in soundbites and by burning down parts of the universities that should propel them forwards – even as the stagnant economy leaves them with little to be propelled into.</p>
<p>I myself am mourning Bolo, who just decided to adopt me as I observed South African elections from the poorest parts of the great cities. His nickname was filched from the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon, and as he strode the dirt poor streets of Kliptown, people of all ages would sing it out in greeting. At the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-election-the-ancs-complacency-will-come-back-to-haunt-it-in-2019-26598">last elections in 2014</a> he walked me around the polling booths, shaking hands with Malema’s frontline activists in their red berets and DA supporters in their blue ones (Kliptown is DA territory, the voters having rejected the ANC). </p>
<p>He told me stories about the signing of the 1955 Freedom Charter, at which 3,000 delegates were fed by a Jewish butcher and Chinese greengrocers. There was once an inclusivity in struggle; today, young South Africans issue their anti-vampire tweets while the greedy old men in power posture as the guardians of history, rather than the political zombies they clearly are.</p>
<p>To be fair to the angry young students, if there’s one part of South African society very noticeably keeping its head down, even boorishly getting in the way, it is the white part. But the country’s youth, armed with a selective reading of history, are failing to hold the ANC accountable – or to honour the heroes of the liberation struggle as they presumably want to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A new generation of angry young South Africans seem to have forgotten what made the liberation struggle work.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/587972016-05-09T14:03:29Z2016-05-09T14:03:29ZRiots, slowdown and corruption eat away at southern Africa’s promise<p>These are dark days for southern Africa. The last month has seen xenophobic riots and killings in Zambia, once an almost immaculately peaceful country, and the reinstatement of several hundred corruption charges which could be delivered against South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>Times have changed in Zambia since its first president, Kenneth Kaunda, galvanised the country’s 72 ethnic groups (not counting European and Indian populations) into a united nation. During his decades in power, he defied the white minority regimes to his south, Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa. He hosted the exile headquarters of the ANC and sheltered the Namibian exile group SWAPO, whose country South Africa occupied in defiance of the UN.</p>
<p>Landlocked Zambia took a terrible hammering as the white regimes controlled its transport links to the sea. From time to time there were military incursions into Lusaka, the capital city – yet the Zambians took it all with a stoicism born of genuine solidarity.</p>
<p>But times have changed. Kaunda’s successors have not developed their own moral stature, and the country has been badly mismanaged. </p>
<p>After President Michael Sata died in office last year, a bitter internal party political struggle saw Edgar Lungu take the helm just in time for a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80283f0a-a2df-11e4-ac1c-00144feab7de.html">devastating drop in the price of copper</a>, Zambia’s major export, and a regional drought which <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/drought-cuts-hydropower-hits-zambias-growth-20151123">hobbled the country’s hydroelectric power plants</a>. Cities were subjected to rolling blackouts for hours every day, and the cost of basic goods soared. </p>
<p>In this environment of scarcity, foreign refugee populations – especially Rwandans, who had developed successful small businesses – became targets.</p>
<p>When the rumour was spread that the Rwandans were ritually murdering Zambians as part of their foreign “witchcraft”, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36092917">deadly riots</a> erupted in Lusaka. They were xenophobic in that there was a target group, but they were also born of deprivation and falling living standards.</p>
<h2>Mafia state</h2>
<p>All the while, South Africa’s ANC is plumbing new depths of ignominy with its murky blend of liberation politics and craven elite enrichment. Lavish <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35943941">presidential mansions</a>, rampant <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-12-anc-cadre-deployment">cronyism</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-removal-of-south-africas-finance-minister-is-bad-news-for-the-country-52170">dismissal of a finance minister</a> who put the nation’s interests first – all these things speak of an African mafia state headed by a personally corrupt godfather.</p>
<p>That picture was recently given new colour when the High Court declared it was wrong that several hundred corruption charges levelled against the president before he took office had been <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/04/29/BREAKING-Zuma-must-face-corruption-charges">wrongly dropped</a> by a frightened prosecutor. They could now become active charges again. </p>
<p>In the wake of the <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2016/03/20/zuma-gupta-affair-a-clear-corruption-case-says-cope">Gupta affair</a>, in which an immigrant family of the richest order was seen as having huge financial and political influence over Zuma, the reopening of the case must surely prompt the ANC, for all its self-interest, to think carefully about the future of the country.</p>
<h2>Out of steam</h2>
<p>Zambia and South Africa are both cracking up after years of neglect, and neither Zuma nor Lungu have come up with technocratic plans to secure the future of their countries. And in between them, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is even more directionless. Everyone is waiting for the old man’s departure so that the country can make a fresh start, but dreading the ugly political power struggle that will surely follow his death.</p>
<p>South Africa needs a new start too, and it may not get one as long as it’s led by the same old ANC. As for Zambia, Lungu faces elections later this year. He will be challenged by the avowedly technocratic opposition leader, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zambia/11354142/Africa-needs-leaders-to-run-countries-like-CEOs-Zambias-opposition-leader-says.html">Hakainde Hichilema</a>. </p>
<p>At least post-Kaunda Zambia has been led by more than one political party. In that sense, it’s way ahead of Zimbabwe and South Africa, where tired old men cling onto office and its spoils in the midst of collapsing commodity prices, sluggish growth, high unemployment, fraying infrastruture and dire public services. They know that regardless of the state of their countries, they will remain in power for some time to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Once two of the African continent’s most optimistic countries, Zambia and South Africa have sunk to new lows.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568532016-04-08T10:56:43Z2016-04-08T10:56:43ZA month of elections and referendums paints a mixed picture of African democracy<p>Africa is coming off a long run of elections and referendums that embody the good, the bad and the ugly of the continent’s democracies. In two elections, opposition candidates were either temporarily imprisoned or repeatedly arrested. In two others, electronic media blackouts prevented protests after contentious results began to seem likely. In one, a well-connected, well-educated candidate lost and conceded with grace; elsewhere, results were neither gracefully received nor gracefully won.</p>
<p>The most headline-grabbing election was in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ugandas-government-steered-another-state-controlled-election-54851">Uganda</a>, where President Museveni was (yet again) re-elected and perennial opposition candidate Kizza Besigye (yet again) defeated. While Besigye had more freedom to campaign than in previous elections, he was still arrested three times and basically saw out the election under house arrest. </p>
<p>Still, he did better than Niger’s opposition leader, Hama Amadou, who contested the first round of the presidential election from prison and the second round from hospital in France. President <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-niger-election-idUSKCN0WO0ZN">Mahamadou Issoufou</a> proceeded to win the second round by a landslide.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Congo-Brazzaville’s <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/congo-president-denis-sassou-nguesso-wins-election-160324040212900.html">Sassou Nuguesso</a>, who’s been president with one brief interruption for a total of 32 years, won a third term of five years in his current extended tenure in power. Like Uganda’s, this was essentially an orchestrated election held to burnish a dubious leader’s veneer of democratic validation – a veneer that’s lately been wearing thin.</p>
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<p>The great exception to these dismal exercises was the election in Benin, where Prime Minister Zinsou seemed at one point a sure bet to win the presidency. More French than the French, highly educated in the French system, a friend of power-brokers including former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, and a modernising technocrat, he promised much. Yet he was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35860660">roundly defeated by Patrice Talon</a>, an equally technocratic business leader with an offhand manner. </p>
<p>Some French newspapers <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/03/01/chers-opposants-beninois-n-avez-vous-pas-honte-de-reprocher-sa-couleur-de-peau-a-zinsou_4874549_3212.html">speculated</a> that perhaps Zinsou lost support because he is half white, but it was probably because he seemed like a parachute candidate dropped from the sky by French interests. The Beninese probably wanted someone who appeared more fully the candidate of Benin.</p>
<h2>Forging ahead</h2>
<p>Besides these elections, there were efforts to overhaul difficult governments via referendums. An opposition campaign in Kenya made a strong showing in its effort to call a constitutional referendum on various matters, but it <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/politics/Okoa-Kenya-referendum-bid-flops/-/1064/3129498/-/14vc54dz/-/index.html">failed</a> because many of the requied 1m signatures it had gathered to trigger a vote were irregular. </p>
<p>But there was a real referendum of note in Senegal, one prompted by the president himself. Approved with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35885465">63% of the vote</a>, it reduced presidential terms from seven years to five, limited presidential tenure to two terms, and made it illegal for people to stand for the presidency if they are over 75. That would do a lot to bring down the average age of African presidents. Uganda’s Museveni is now 71, and Nuguesso is now 72; South Africa’s beleagured <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-anc-survive-the-end-of-south-africas-heroic-epoch-57256">Jacob Zuma</a> is 73, Mauritius’s Anerood Jugnauth is 86, and Robert Mugabe is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/28/robert-mugabe-eats-giant-cake-92nd-birthday-party-in-drought-zone">still going</a> (just) at 92.</p>
<p>Most importantly, perhaps, the referendum proposed to recognise the office of the leader of the opposition in constitutional terms, and to grant him or her official benefits. That would mean an end to the sort of treatment meted out to Besigye and Amadou. </p>
<p>Whether such constitutionally accorded limits and respect will be adopted elsewhere remains to be seen. It would certainly do more to accord a measure of respect to African elections, many of which are currently mere performances – and some of which are nothing short of travesties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
African elections and referendums are still a heady mixture of the graceful and the shameless.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555202016-03-03T15:22:20Z2016-03-03T15:22:20ZBy clinging on, Uganda’s president has hollowed out his country’s politics<p>All over the world, leaders are being turfed out of office – or at least being reminded that they can’t hold on to it forever. </p>
<p>Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, recently tried to win the right to stand for a fourth term. He has been a very successful president, but the voting public have had enough of a good thing, and he narrowly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35628093">lost the referendum</a> that would have let him go on. </p>
<p>In Jamaica, a successful government has just been <a href="http://peoplesworld.org/jamaica-government-ousted-in-election-austerity-policies-blamed/">voted out</a>. Debt restructuring and economic growth was not enough for those who wanted fairer distribution of wealth. Jamaica’s relative stability owes something to changes in government: administration after administration fails, but being able to vote in a free and fair election sustains the hope of better things to come and staves off despair and cynicism.</p>
<p>There have been elections in Africa as well. Niger’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, almost won a second term outright. But even though his closest opponent, a former parliamentary speaker named Hama Amadou, was imprisoned on baby-trafficking charges, Issoufou was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35669018">forced into a run-off</a>, capturing only 48% of the vote while Amadou secured 18% from prison. </p>
<p>But elsewhere, The unpleasant theme of harassing or imprisoning opposition leaders was again a feature of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ugandas-government-steered-another-state-controlled-election-54851">Ugandan elections</a>, where President Yoweri Museveni’s long-term opponent, Kizza Besigye, was constantly harassed and repeatedly arrested, while voters were intimidated.</p>
<p>Museveni faced no real problems in his quest for a fifth term in office. His reign has benefited Uganda in various ways, and he could have stood on his record. Instead, the exploitation of fear and the circumstantial evidence of rigging suggest a need to secure not just victory but endorsement by a wide margin. </p>
<p>Though he won with 60.8% of the popular vote, there are signs of a drift of support towards the opposition. Besigye looks to have captured <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/uganda-2016-musevenis-troubled-victory-428991">almost 37% of the vote</a>, despite being arrested four times in eight days.</p>
<p>Many hope Museveni will not stand yet again next time around. And perhaps Besigye could, if given a fair run, do much better than 37%. But the question raised is not just “why the same old president?”, but also “why the same old opposition?”</p>
<h2>The never-ending story</h2>
<p>Like too many other African countries with low (or no) turnover among their leaders, Uganda shows signs of becoming a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-world-of-youthful-leaders-africas-ageing-premiers-cling-on-31749">gerontocracy</a>. Museveni is 71. Besigye is much younger at 59; should he finally win in 2021 he will be 64. As the problems facing Zambia and Zimbabwe have shown, fast-changing times make it hard for old leaders to keep up.</p>
<p>But the deeper problem of cynicism in elections is that it degrades voting to the level of a hollow ritual. It becomes an exercise in bad faith, both on the part of those who go to great lengths to ensure they’ll remain in power and those who challenge them without hope of victory.</p>
<p>Three decades have passed since Museveni <a href="http://trending.co.ug/politics/museveni-i-was-sure-nra-success">stormed Kampala in 1986</a>, leading an army whose ranks included many boy soldiers. The boys were said to have been the orphans of parents killed by Idi Amin; they were said to have been blessed by the magic light of the Ruwenzori Mountains, but they became cannon fodder as Museveni fought his way to the capital. Yet despite this violent start, his tenure has restored some stability to a country wracked and wrecked by war and ignorant dictatorship. </p>
<p>He fought against the magical insurrection of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6274313.stm">Alice Lakwena</a>’s Holy Spirit Movement, and against Joseph Kony’s <a href="http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Kony-asks-for-mercy--blames-Museveni-for-S--Sudan-woes/-/688334/2161498/-/8ivihg/-/index.html">Lord’s Resistance Army</a>. Western donors happily provided him with armaments to fight such an atrocious force, and put up with his overlong years in power to keep the likes of Kony from ever obtaining it.</p>
<p>But Kony’s campaign of murder and destruction was also testament to the deep difficulties of ethnic politics in Uganda. And as long as Museveni clings to power and allows no-one to challenge him fairly, those difficulties will remain unresolved.</p>
<p>On this occasion, Besigye was allowed to campaign more freely than in the past. But it seems that like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Museveni intends to be a fixture of his country – a beautiful land that could be truly prosperous, but in which political time has stood still. The risk is that it will start to move forward only through violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Uganda’s president has ruled for three decades – and the opposition is getting stagnant too.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/539962016-02-01T16:38:07Z2016-02-01T16:38:07ZSouth African students toppled Rhodes – but they can’t get rid of Zuma<p>In some ways, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, must be exceptionally happy about the #Rhodesmustfall campaign. After all, it takes the heat off him and puts it on a dead white man – or rather, a block of stone in the likeness of a dead white man.</p>
<p>I went to Rhodes’s grave in the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe in 1980. These are the most beautiful landscapes in Africa – and the spiritual power accorded the region by the Ndbelele people was palpable. On the grave, a flat slab at ground level, huge rainbow lizards danced. It seemed prophetic: one day, there would be a rainbow nation that would be able to make light of the tragic restrictions of the past.</p>
<p>The reality, of course, is very different. Today’s Zuma administration has carelessly and wantonly frittered away the last traces of South Africa’s rainbow of equity and its promise of economic equality. In an ideal world, #Zumamustfall would make for a more meaningful campaign than #Rhodesmustfall – but while the end of the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-governing-party-celebrates-with-eye-on-tough-year-ahead-52989">increasingly careless reign</a> should by rights be in the hands of South Africa’s students and young people, they have no policies and no programmes to replace it with. </p>
<p>They also see little in the way of an alternative to ANC rule. </p>
<p>The activists behind #Rhodesmustfall don’t trust the middle-class liberal economics of the opposition Democratic Alliance. To them, its leader, <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-black-leader-breathes-life-into-south-african-opposition-41275">Mmusi Maimane</a>, is merely a parrot for the country’s bankers and his party is still largely white. Meanwhile, Julias Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters are noisy, mischievous and make a huge show of providing robust opposition to the ANC – but the party’s radical-left redistributionist policies make little sense in a complex globalised world. And the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-12-22-eff-pay-back-the-money">whiff of corruption</a> hangs around Malema just as it does Zuma.</p>
<p>So if Zuma cannot fall because the protesters have no alternative to him, have no programme to reform a self-seeking ANC, what better substitute than a statue of the dead white man who began it all?</p>
<h2>Pure soap</h2>
<p>The absence of an alternative to Zuma is almost as disheartening as the spectacle of an impulsive president without policies. The latest farce revolved around South African Airways, which was caught without a business plan and has had to take <a href="http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/south-african-airways-cash-crunch-builds-pressure-for-change-2/">drastic fiscal measures</a>. The airline’s reckless ambition to buy its way out of trouble was refused by the minister of finance, whom Zuma then <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">fired</a> – apparently without thinking the Rand would <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5c0da8b2-9eb5-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861.html">instantly lose value</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109810/original/image-20160201-32247-18qx5ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cecil Rhodes’s grave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rhodes_grave_sunrise.jpg#/media/File:Rhodes_grave_sunrise.jpg">Seabifar via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>This resembles nothing so much as the 1960s television soap, Peyton Place, a black-and-white saga of small-town affairs and small-minded, small-scope melodramas. That’s what the ANC has become at the highest level: a self-obsessed village soap. And, at the popular level, the students also think in black and white, without proposing a single actual reform programme.</p>
<p>As for Oxford’s <a href="http://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/content/statement-oriel-college-about-issues-raised-rhodes-must-fall-oxford-petition">Oriel College</a> and its rather small statue of Rhodes, the college went through the ritual of consultation, but was always safe in the knowledge that its buildings are under a conservation order. It itself had no power to unilaterally remove the statue anyway, so the whole thing was a charade.</p>
<p>In Zimbabwe, once called Rhodesia, the colonial tyrant’s name is almost never mentioned. There, politics is a matter of real substance and dramatic treacheries, with huge consequences. The country again faces a disastrous economic downturn, presided over under an aged, tyrannical president who it seems will never die.</p>
<p>And in Zambia, the furthest north Rhodes reached, it’s an election year. Prices for the country’s principal export, copper, have <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/african-and-mideast-business/declining-copper-prices-send-zambia-into-economic-crisis/article26995466/">crashed</a> and the currency is steadily losing value. As in South Africa and Zimbabwe, the rains were so late there are crises in both agriculture and <a href="http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2015/world/zambia-electricity-shortage-highlights-africas-hydropower-shortfalls/">hydroelectric power</a>. The government holds days of prayer to plead with God to resolve the crises. </p>
<p>All the while, Cecil Rhodes’s name is never mentioned or his image defiled. Instead, he’s peacefully buried in the Matopos Hills, where the lizards dance on his grave.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53996/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
South Africa’s president is direly unpopular and his government on the ropes – but protests against him are just empty symbolism.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527122016-01-04T12:32:22Z2016-01-04T12:32:22ZIn Europe as in Africa, tired countries draft in their leaders from abroad<p>Months after an <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/4-takeaways-from-croatias-parliamentary-election-coalition-hdz-spd-most-zagreb/">inconclusive election</a>, Croatia has at last picked an almost unknown figure to be its new prime minister: <a href="http://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/1882-meet-croatia-s-new-pm-designate-tihomir-oreskovic">Tihomir Orešković</a>, chief financial officer of a Canadian generic pharmaceutical company. He has lived outside Croatia since childhood, largely in Canada, adopted “Tim” as his north American-friendly name, and reportedly speaks very poor Croatian. He also has no previous political experience – but by the same virtue, no background of political corruption either.</p>
<p>At first glance, Orešković has a high-level CV, but it flatters to deceive: he was the number four at a second-division corporation. Nonetheless, the Croats, still leaderless after an inconclusive parliamentary election months ago, and deeply disillusioned with government by either of the two major parties, voted for a new coalition of untried and untested centre-right reformers led by <a href="http://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/1429-who-are-bozo-petrov-and-drago-prgomet-leaders-of-most">Božo Petrov</a>, the young mayor of a small town. With the balance of power in his hands, he demanded that the government be headed by a non-partisan, someone untainted by the greed and incompetence of before.</p>
<p>In many ways, this move is a sign of political desperation, and Orešković’s first newspaper interview evidenced no new actual ideas. For a chief financial officer, his ambivalence about what will have to take place – the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/croatia-currency-idUSL5N0W725120150305">devaluation of the kuna</a>, the national currency – was either extreme caution or ignorance.</p>
<p>But the search for an outsider who heralds a new dawn is attractive to many countries with electorates exhausted by recycled, stagnant politics starring equally stale men and women. It is a device that has long been favoured in Africa.</p>
<h2>Search for the hero</h2>
<p>The prime example is Benin, where <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/07/lionel-zinsou-benin-africa-prime-minister">Lionel Zinsou</a> returned from France to become prime minister, and where he’ll run for the presidency this year. Unlike Orešković, Zinsou really does have a top-level CV: a graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure and the London School of Economics, he was a partner in Rothschilds Bank. An insider in French politics and friend of Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister and former prime minister, he will at least have no language problems in Francophone Benin. </p>
<p>Zinsou has already put some money where his mouth is, financing through his foundation the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/06/contemporary-art-benin-ouidah-zinsou">first museum of contemporary art on the continent outside South Africa</a>. For a country whose amazing <a href="http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/world-history/what-are-the-benin-bronzes">bronze sculptures</a> have evoked so much admiration, art is both a legacy and, Zinsou hopes, a path towards the future. Art, his thinking goes, will attract badly needed investment. It is a statement only a Frenchman could make – but at least Zinsou, unlike Orešković, has a policy.</p>
<p>Should he be elected, Zinsou will join Ghana’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1050310.stm">Jerry John Rawlings</a> and Botswana’s <a href="http://afkinsider.com/78148/12-things-didnt-know-ian-khama/">Ian Khama</a> in Africa’s pantheon of half-European presidents. The former head of the African Union, <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/president/59/office/president.html">Jean Ping</a>, was half Chinese. There is a certain cosmopolitanism at work here.</p>
<p>But is this also just another sign of desperation? This turn to an outsider? This urge to step away from or skirt around political contamination?</p>
<p>After all, no single outsider can uproot embedded cultures of corruption, cultures of technophobia – witness South Africa, where extensive cadres of civil servants and municipal officials simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/decline-and-decay-a-sobering-trip-through-southern-africa-46943">refuse to learn to use email</a> – cultures where it is assumed history stopped at independence or liberation. </p>
<p>And even if new leaders can kickstart useless civil services, it takes a lot more than technocratic capacity at the top to fire up an economy’s productivity and competitiveness.</p>
<p>Zinsou wants to use art and also help the informal sector. That’s a modern idea and an innovative one – using the informal to kickstart the formal. The big logistical problem is how to enforce accountability in an informal setting. Who will safeguard the money the government invests, and how?</p>
<p>Africa’s outsider leaders may have good ideas, but as in Croatia, the execution of those ideas is the real problem as 2016 rolls in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52712/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Months after an inconclusive election, Croatia has at last picked an almost unknown figure to be its new prime minister: Tihomir Orešković, chief financial officer of a Canadian generic pharmaceutical…Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.