Africa’s political dinosaurs need a survival insurance plan

What you need to know:

Filled with concern. This Sunday, just as President Museveni loves our dear continent and cannot contemplate retirement until he has sorted out all Africa’s problems, I am also filled with concern for Africa’s political dinosaurs and would like to see them take measures to ensure for themselves happier endings.

It is the economy, stupid!”
You remember that eureka moment when no less than an American president was rudely awoken that the condition in their pockets contributed greatly to the way Americans voted.

This January, I have been all kindness. I want President Museveni to sing something beautiful instead of gagging Bobi Wine. I want all Uganda’s powerful thieves to be turned into philanthropists instead of locking them up or embarrassing them by calling them ‘corrupt’. I want Pentecostals and witchdoctors to have an open mutual relationship because they all believe in weird spirits and sometimes reveal their intriguing mental state in the gibberish of ‘tongues’.

This Sunday, just as President Museveni loves our dear continent and cannot contemplate retirement until he has sorted out all Africa’s problems, I am also filled with concern for Africa’s political dinosaurs and would like to see them take measures to ensure for themselves happier endings.

To begin with, there should be a general consensus that an African ruler begins to evolve into a political dinosaur after they have been in power for 10 years and are still counting. Add or subtract a year or two in exceptional cases.

Now, we Africans sometimes speak with malice about dinosaurs. We forget all too quickly that people get the rulers they deserve.

If archaeologists in 5000AD excavated any buried roadside rainwater drainage trench on the continent, they would find piles of empty bottles, thick ridged layers of polythene bags, some containing 2000AD excreta, empty cans and other trash.

The archaeologists would analyse the items and reconstruct the kind of society that dumped this garbage in its roadside trenches, and they would relate their model to the rulers of the day as described in any surviving historical accounts.
So, our rulers may be even better than we deserve; be they normal hominids, baby dinosaurs, or fully fledged crocodile-skinned reptiles more clearly of the Mesozoic era.

But these rulers sometimes encounter great difficulties in a world where citizens are becoming more ungovernable, even in Europe.

Dinosaurs can usually beat challenges to their rule by conducting elections as only dinosaurs can; where need be, by unleashing waves of armed force onto the streets.

Exploding a barrage of special cans whose contents convert breathable air into a blanket of tear gas, sending a few dozen rioters to the graveyard and locking up the more stubborn opposition figures will quell most forms of resistance.

However, in this increasingly ungovernable world, that economy thing can become a real nightmare for dinosaurs.

Look at poor Bashir in Sudan. Bread prices, fuel. Just bread; as if there are no cakes. And seemingly educated people like doctors are rallying the riffraff to blackmail this great African leader!

Look at Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe. Although not strictly a dinosaur by our 10-year scale, Mnangagwa kind of qualifies because he had already got a crocodile skin (and nickname) before Robert Mugabe was kicked out. But the poor man is being humiliated because his people cannot afford the basics of life.

When Mnangagwa appealed to South Africa for a loan of just over $1 billion, South Africa said she did not have that sort money. How can a true friend not have that sort of money? Zimbabweans are now in a rebellious mood!

Solution: Africa’s qualified dinosaurs should start an insurance scheme into which they pay substantial monthly premiums. When there is an economic crisis, any of them should get instant and adequate resources from the scheme to address their domestic emergency.