A sitting president who dies can be constitutionally alive

For as long as most living Africans can remember, they have been fed on some kind of rhetoric extolling the spirit of pan-Africanism.
The late Ghanaian leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was something of a thug, but because his mouth was weaving all this high stuff about African aspirations and unity, he is more often remembered as a hero than a despot. The adoration tends to increase as one gets further away from direct experience under his rule, both in time and place.

But if there is any substance in this project called Africa, if to be an African should be a source of pride rather than an identity of shame, then Africans – especially African leaders – are duty-bound to shape a society, or a conglomerate of societies, which promotes praiseworthy values and aspirations.
We already have a rough idea what sort of conduct will earn us respect, and what sort will bring shame. We just fail to deliver.
If we allow those in or around leadership to distract us, we will talk about short skirts, hair colour, prayer breakfasts and all kinds of frivolous things.

Otherwise, for the big job of African integrity, we already know that respect will not come through stealing public funds with impunity, or from rigging elections, or from brute militarism, or from waiting for non-African donors to address the big healthcare, education and economic challenges our people face.
Respect will not come by tiny minorities constructing Hollywood-styled mansions when millions live like rats in wretched slums.
Respect will not come when we conduct public affairs with the shabbiness of spoilt children. We must grow up.

To that end, since everybody is talking about the matter, if the ruling NRM wants to make changes to Uganda’s Constitution, it should do so in a way showing that Africans can anticipate some of tomorrow’s developments.
If the proudest thought we have about our Constitution is that it can always be changed because of current needs, then we should also accept the thought that we were daft or strategically dishonest last time.

In 2005, we removed the two-term limit on the presidency: because we had been thick-headed or dishonest and put it there in 1995.
Now we want to remove the age-75 limit on presidential candidates: because our lousy brains had thought it was good not to touch the age limit in 2005. We could not anticipate our need today, or we were dishonest.
When these changes around one office are too frequent, the African looks childish or even idiotic. So, if foreigners sometimes infantilise the African, we have invited that treatment.

But we can restore some respect this time round by looking ahead, by making changes that would last at least 30 or 40 years. How?
Since any president is likely to remain mortal throughout his or her rule, the calamity of death can conceivably visit them before their elective term ends. We should not wait for such an event to happen, then panic and hurry through an amendment that technically leaves the departed ruler in power.
I suggest that in the impending wave of amendments, it should be written in the revised Constitution, that a president who passes on before his or her term expires will be deemed to be alive until their five-year term expires.

The constitutional suspension of death would not only give a sitting president an opportunity to complete his or her term, but it should ensure stability by removing any panicky fumbling during mourning, and it would prevent an unelected vice president from automatically climbing into the driving seat of the nation.
A panel of, say, three witchdoctors and three Pentecostal prophets, plus one other spiritualist, can be established to ‘read’ for us what the departed leader is saying in the undead state.

Above all, making the amendment today will enhance the broader image of the African as a thoughtful and far-sighted primate, a move to be emulated by other nations.
Harare would literally lift the page and put it in Zimbabwe’s constitution. Kinshasa, Kigali, Khartoum, and so on... It would be Uganda’s greatest contribution to pan-Africanism.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.

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