Is Presidency Seat hot or warm?

By Nyasigo Kornel

Presidency is not a ‘hot seat’ as most leaders claim, to discourage aspirants. For a variety of reasons, African despots, especially the patriarchal, charismatic, and military populist types, are loath to relinquish control or power. They would rather destroy their economies and countries than give up power.

The ambition of most educated Tanzanians is to become the president or a minister. The state sector is where one makes his fortune. As far as the elites are concerned, there is no life outside the state sector.

Most African despots have built a cult of personality around themselves with an air of invincibility and infallibility. Their nation’s fortunes and destiny are very much tied up with their personalities. Entire nations have turned private property. Witness their pictures on currencies and in every nook and cranny in the country. Every monument or building of some significance is named after them. They love the self-isolation.

The late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere once rebuked opposition leaders in general election held in 1995 alleging that he saw no reason to why did Augustino Mrema struggle much to State house ‘Ikulu’ for there is no business that is going on there except mental stuck on national issues.

Since accepting reform of any kind is an admission of failure or fallibility, African leaders would put up all sorts of arcane reasons to block it. They accept reform reluctantly but do everything possible to undermine it to prove that the plan advocated by the reformers would not work.

Second, state controls allow leaders to extract resources which are used to build personal fortunes and to dispense as patronage to buy political support. Occupying the presidency is a lucrative business.

Their business empires will collapse if economic reform strips them of state controls. Economic liberalization may also undermine their ability to maintain their political support base and, thus, prove suicidal. Thus, they profit from their own mismanagement of the economy.

You wonder of a president who is sure of being supported by the national for the rest of his life, yet plunder wealth that may equal that of the national budget!

The third reason is fear. Many of Africa’s heads of state have their hands so steeped in blood and their pockets so full of booty that they are afraid all their past gory misdeeds will be exposed if they stepped down.

President Yoweri Kaguta Mseveni would like to rule the country to death just to blind-face the wrong deeds that may scintillate behind his power.

Consequently, they cling to power at all cost, regardless of the consequences. After so-called democratic elections in 1991, President Dos Santos did away with the post of prime minister, vested the powers of a head of government in the director of his own office, created a parallel ministry of defense within the presidency and sacked a number of political figures who might have threatened his monopoly on power.

Another source of resistance comes from the sycophants and supporters drawn from the leaders’ own tribes. Ethnicity adds an even more dangerous element to the democratic reform issue.

One tribe, fearing that it may lose its dominant position in government, may oppose multiparty democracy, while excluded tribes may resort to violence to dislodge the ruling tribe from power, fortunately in Tanzania this is not so rampant like to our neighborhood Rwanda.

In Rwanda, Habyarimana's embrace of reform was conspicuously half-hearted, a capitulation to foreign coercion. It was universally understood that the north-westerners, who depended on his power and on whom his power increasingly depended, would not readily surrender their percentage. While Habyarimana spoke publicly of a political opening, the akazu (the inner mafia-like core) tightened its grip on the machinery of the state.

Other supporters of African regimes are simply bought: soldiers, with fat paychecks and perks; urban workers with cheap rice and sardines; students with free tuition and hefty allowances; and intellectuals, opposition leaders, and lawyers, with big government posts and Mercedes Benzes.
Thus, even when the head of state does contemplate stepping down, his supporters and lackeys fiercely resist any cutbacks in government largesse or any attempt to open up the political system.

In Tanzania such a cacophony has confused former President Ali Hassa Mwinyi who wanted to change the constitution to favor his third session on the seat. How could they say that the seat is hot? It is just warm to keep you stay comfortable.

The Zanzibar President Abeid Karume is of no exception, he was quoted as saying that ‘wazee’ (old people) told him that he is still needed for the seat, unfortunately the trek is now known to may, he was silenced by the spectators.

The final potent source of resistance comes from the elites: high government officials, intellectuals, lecturers, teachers, editors, and civil servants. They oppose proposed sell-offs of state enterprises for fear of loss of jobs or reduced benefits. Student activists, academics and others have condemned both the theory and practice of privatization.

This class benefits immensely from government subsidies and controls. They have access to free government housing, medical care and loans for the purchase of cars, refrigerators and even their own funerals thus resisting any cutbacks of government largesse.

Our neighbor Zambia, resistance to reform hails from President Chiluba’s own circle which clamors for the continued influence of state spending and patronage. Mundia Sikatana, a Chiluba adviser and a founder of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy says that the government continues to provide vehicles and fuel to hundreds of civil servants. It cannot abandon the old habits.

Some elites oppose economic liberalization on purely ideological grounds emanating from a deep-seated aversion to capitalism or free markets. This attitude is a throwback from colonial days, when capitalism and colonialism were confused. The involvement of the World Bank, generally castigated by our intellectuals as a ‘neocolonial institution’ does not help matters.

More important, perhaps, is the fact that a shrinking state sector shatters the elites’ dreams.
The ambition of most educated people is to become the president or a minister. The state sector is where one makes his fortune. As far as the elites are concerned, there is no life outside the state sector.

To skirt elite opposition, our governments opted for politically safe budget cuts: education, health care and road maintenance.

Tanzania, Guinea, Malawi, Zambia, and Senegal slashed education budgets by 18 to 25 percent during the late 1980s. The countries opted for politically safe budget cuts rather than slicing into their bureaucracies, now it is even much more worrying.

“They cut places like education because they knew the people wouldn’t howl about that,” said Dr. Hassan Mwiyingu, an expert in Africa political affairs working with EDP as consultant.

He says that in Zimbabwe, for example, President Robert Mugabe slashed spending on health care and education, while spending USD3 million a day on the 11,000 troops he had sent to the Congo. There is some chicanery involved here. African governments constantly lament that SAP ‘hurt the poor’.

Of course, SAP will do so when these governments exempt the elites and shift the burden of adjustment disproportionately onto the rural poor, especially women and children.
Africans deride the posturing, tricks and acrobatics as ‘Babangida’: One step forward, three steps back, a sidekick, and a flip to land on a fat Swiss bank account. All much ado about nothing.
Then came the ‘Abacha cha-cha,’ as we Kurya or Luo could call it. General Sani Abacha, the late head of state of Nigeria, created various committees and commissions supposedly to shepherd the country toward democratic rule.

But many of them were actually working to help Abacha succeed himself as ‘civilian president.’ In the nightclubs of Kinshasa, Congo, couples now dance ‘the dombolo ya solo, a step created to mock the President Laurent Kabila’s ponderous style.’

Over the past few years, with Moi being in power for years has created economical and social cancer to international image of that neighbor country. Kenya has performed a curious mating ritual with its aid donors.

The steps are: One, Kenya wins its yearly pledges of foreign aid. Two, the government begins to misbehave, backtracking on economic reform and behaving in an authoritarian manner. Three, a new meeting of donor countries looms with exasperated foreign governments preparing their sharp rebukes. Four, Kenya pulls a placatory rabbit out of the hat.

Five, the donors are mollified and aid is pledged. The whole dance then starts again. Kenya’s government knows precisely when it can resist donors’ demands, when to use charm, when to cry ‘neo-colonialism’ and when to make promises of reform - promises it will break when the new loans are obtained and the donors’ backs are turned.

Presidency is not a ‘hot seat’ as most leaders claim, to discourage aspirants. For a variety of reasons, African despots, especially the patriarchal, charismatic, and military populist types, are loath to relinquish control or power. They would rather destroy their economies and countries than give up power.