Who are the enemies of the people?

The enemies of the people

26 March 1983 one of Africa’s illustrious and gallant sons Thomas Sankara spoke to thousands of people at a rally in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso and asked: “Who are the enemies of the people?”

He declared: “The enemies of the people here inside the country are all those who have illicitly taken advantage of their social position and their place in the bureaucracy to enrich themselves. By means of bribery, manoeuvres, and forged documents, they have become shareholders in different companies.”

Furthermore, “they are that group of bourgeois who enrich themselves dishonestly through fraud and bribery ,through the corruption of state officials, so that they can bring all kinds of products into Upper Volta (Burkina Faso’s colonial name),increasing the price tenfold .They are the enemies of the people.”

Thomas Sankara addressing a crowd in Burkina Faso

When history repeats itself

It’s been twenty seven years since the tragic assassination of the charismatic revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, may his soul rest in peace. Without a doubt Sankara remains one of the least remembered, but most creative and principled, of post independent African leaders.

We continue to see blatant disregard of morality and the rule of law in as far as corruption, nepotism etc are concerned. It has absolutely become normal to be corrupt in independent Africa, in fact what binds different ruling parties across Africa together is corruption and rampant looting of state resources and coffers with no impunity or shame at all. These are the enemies of the people.

The struggle has been personalised

Corruption has become the fibre and glue that binds the comrades together. 1988 in Zimbabwe there was the Willowgate scandal where top level government officials used their positions to illegally purchase and resale trucks and motor vehicles from the Willowvale Motor Industries.

What followed was the Justice Sandura commission rocked the government at the time with Maurice Nyagumbo, then senior minister of political affairs and Zanu-PF administration secretary “committing suicide” after being named for corruption and charged for perjury. Many individuals that where involved in the scandal are still serving in the current administration. These are the enemies of the people.

In 1987 there was the ZISCO Steel blast furnace scandal, Air Zimbabwe Fokker scandal (1987),NRZ Housing scandal(1986),ZRP Santana scandal(1989),War Victims Compensation scandal (1994),GMB Grain scandal(1995),VIP Housing Scheme(1996),Boka Banking scandal(1998),NOCZIM scandal(1999),GMB scandal(1999),Harare Airport scandal(2001),we have the Marange diamonds revenue scandal currently affecting the national fiscus and the list is endless . These are the enemies of the people.

Do I hear about the Obiangs running Equatorial Guinea like their personal fiefdom? Yes, I also hear that the younger playboy Obiang got his $35 million worth of assets seized by the US authorities because they were acquired with stolen money. Despite huge profits from oil and gas, more than three quarters of the population in Equatorial Guinea are impoverished, it’s a scandal.

And oh dear did the Department of Public Works in South Africa confirmed the extensive misuse of public funds within its ranks – a shocking R35 billion in wasteful expenditure with some of it going back 13 years. This is all happening in the midst of poor service delivery, low quality of education, poor and inadequate infrastructure in townships.

Embezzlement, extortion and looting have become the order of the day by the African ruling elites and their surrogates whilst the wanjiku lives in extreme poverty. These are the enemies of the people.

The Africa we want

When Sankara became president, he brought in a lot of reform in a short period. He immediately launched one of the most ambitious and radical programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent, and Burkina Faso was nearly completely self-sustaining.

He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5, the official service car of the ministers. He also reduced salaries of well-off public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1^st class airline tickets. Such was the selfless leadership of this great African lion.

An imaginative political leadership that has the interests of the people at heart is in dire need across Africa.

15 October, 1987 Africa shall always remember.

TB Joshua: When accountability evades us

“The church is not co-operating with emergency workers at all. For the first three days of the incident, the church people were very hostile and prevented rescue officials to the” said National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) spokesperson.

TB Joshua rejected the lack of cooperation claims as “inaccurate”.

“Contrary to this, we want to categorically state that the church has provided assistance when and where required and continues to do so: good Christians are good citizens” he said.

Why would NEMA lie about this and what do they stand to gain?

Searching for survivors

A guest house belonging to the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) which is led by Prophet TB Joshua of Nigeria was reduced to rubble on Friday the 12^th in Lagos.TB Joshua has a huge following in Africa and has attracted heads of state, top-level politicians and business people. He has risen to prominence mainly to his working of miracles and prophecies which includes foretelling the deaths of presidents.

In a continent where people are constantly searching for answers to life’s questions it makes sense that at the time of this disaster in Lagos they were many Africans from various nations including more than 300 South Africans who had come to seek spiritual help from TB Joshua.

Obviously, the purpose of this article is not to debate the divinity of his works, whether they are true or false I shall desist from speculation or hearsay. What touched me was the lack of leadership that was shown by the church in managing this tragedy. It took TB Joshua more than 5 days to personally issue a statement after having earlier on blamed the collapse on a “mystery plane” that had flown a number of times over the building, thereby suggesting and pointing to sabotage or terrorism. For a church that has its own robust media channel the level of media diffidence was indeed astounding.

With Boko Haram wreaking havoc in Nigeria we are all tempted to believe the “mystery plane” but there is no evidence to link the plane and the disaster thus far. On the other hand what we see is a trend that is akin to our own political leaders who seem not to want to take responsibility but rather blame everything else except themselves in a time of a crisis.

Evidence on the ground suggests structures that were built without any engineering ingenuity. Can the church provide the media or authorities with the approved building plan? It is said that work was going on to add more floors to the guesthouse, were these approved by the Lagos State government? Add this with complains of a lack of co-operation on the church’s part and failure to update affected families in time then we have a big cause for concern.

As people search for answers, taking responsibility in a time like this will go a long way in bring some confidence and trust to SCOAN, if that is not too late. Accountability and leadership are not to be separated and we really need that in this great continent of ours.

With more than 115 people having been confirmed dead our hope is that those still missing will be positively identified in the debris and their bodies returned to their families.

May their souls rest in peace.

 

 

 

 

Africa My Country

The Berlin Conference of 1884 organised by Otto von Bismarck ushered in the Scramble for Africa which saw the heightened colonial activity by European superpowers, which eliminated or overrode most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance. In 1870, only 10% of Africa was under European control; by 1914 it was 90%.

 Today Africa stands at the crossroads and it has to make hard and tough decisions if it’s going to control its destiny. It’s been more than 50 years since one of Africa’s greatest sons, Kwame Nkrumah made a clarion and passionate call for a United Africa. When Nkrumah made this passionate call many self-seeking African leaders described him as a dreamer of impossibilities. The creation of the European Union (EU) in 1992 was almost three decades after Nkrumah’s appeals for Africa to unite if it could overcome balkanisation, re-colonisation, disunity, domination and destruction.

The fundamentalists are here

Africa has grown in leaps and bounds and it is indeed rising but many challenges still beset her and one that threatens to derail the gains made in the past decades is that of religious fundamentalists. If Africa is going to enjoy the fruits of peace it has to defeat the religious fundamentalists. We have seen various religious terror groups waging wars against their citizens in different countries and this more than ever calls for a more united Africa to fight and defeat this. Al-Shabab has been wreaking havoc in the horn of Africa unabated.Al-Shabab has almost relegated the nation of Somalia to a near failed state through the control of large swaths of territory in Somalia, the continuous bombings, assassinations even of high government officials and the current wagging of war against Kenya.

In Mali we saw the emergence of an Islamist group, Ansar Dine from obscurity in early 2012 to seize control of northern part of the country. Together with the Tuareg rebel group the group set about to implementing the Sharia law in regions under its control and even go to the extent of destroying the Timbuktu shrines.

We have also seen the emergence of a terror group that goes by the name Boko Haram which has kidnapped more than 200 young school girls and continues to plant bombs in Nigeria with thousands of people having been killed thus far. A bloody fight between the Seleka and anti-balaka rebel groups continues in the Central African Republic. The list of Africa’s hotspots is continuing by the day and it’s going to take a more united Africa to overcome all this.

The strongmen amongst us

It was Barack Obama who said and I quote, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen,it needs strong institutions”. Armed conflicts have taken place in Nigeria, Liberia, Libya, Ivory Coast,Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Sudan and now South Sudan and there is one underlying factor, a strongman. Leaders that are willing to get the grip of power by all means necessary have become a threat to Africa’s peace and progress.

Elections are smoke screens because they are aimed at maintaining the big man in office. Times without number elections have been manipulated in favour of the big man in office and some that eventually come into power go on a looting spree. The situation has been made worse by the Africa Union (AU)which is aloof and has become a club and a den of dictators. A dictator can hardly ever be told to relinquish power or negotiate with opposition or rebels. The AU is yet to effectively solve a single African crisis,laughable.

Unity of purpose

The challenges or problems besetting Africa can only be conquered if Africans themselves are united, starting with their leaders. The idea of leaders being summoned to Europe to discuss issues affecting Africa is laughable and sad at the same time worse so when the nation involved is Africa’s biggest economy. It baffles the mind that Africa cannot take care of its own citizens and worse children within its borders and it has to outsource that function to foreign European countries.

There are many other African leaders today who still strongly believe that the problems of Africa can solely be solved from outside Africa although they do not say it but their reliance on former colonial masters is a pointer to the fact that they do not have an independent mind of their own.

Now is the time for a new African leadership to rise above pettiness and individualism to build the Africa of today and tomorrow for its citizens. History will judge them right for yielding and listening to the visionary Nkrumah, who though dead, lives on, proving his works are truer to the predicament of Africa today than ever before.

Africans must take the lead in charting their future because no other people will do it for us. The time is compelling now as it was when Kwame Nkrumah wrote his book Africa Must Unite.

This is the Africa we want.

Asante Sana!