Fifty years after independence, good leadership still eludes sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 209 heads of state since the various countries in the region obtained independence in the 1960s, probably fewer than 15 could be called “good leaders.” The vast majority have been utter failures, and their legacy has left a garish stain on a continent trying to escape often invidious and repressive colonial rule. The fact that Africans today are hard pressed to continue blaming colonialists for their woes makes the pill of disappointment much harder to swallow. As most sub-Saharan Africans tell the tale, theirs is a story of one elite betrayal after another. Indeed, as Africans are wont to say: “We struggle to remove one cockroach from power, and then another comes in and does the same thing. Haba (‘darn’)!”
To some extent, the depths of disappointment match the heights of the hopes Africans have been led to entertain. Though failures as leaders, Africa’s political class, it must be said, has a knack for political theater. Nearly all of Africa’s post-colonial leadership started out well, chanting slogans of freedom, declaring war on corruption, promising to clean up government house—and people believed them because they cheered their mega-plans to develop country, region and continent. An avalanche of lofty ideals, pious statements and pet projects rained down. Then, after a few years in power, these plans fell apart, and the leaders began amending constitutions, manipulating parliaments, abolishing term limits and establishing family dynasties by handing over power to a son—or, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, grimly determining to die at their desks.
Some examples of this desultory pattern seem almost too obvious and outlandish to be believed. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, for instance, declared ebulliently to resounding applause across Africa in 1986, “No African leader should be in power for more than ten years.” He is still in power today, 14 years past his sell-by date. But surely the winner of the Most Disappointing African Leader contest is President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal.
Trained as an economist in Senegal and at the Sorbonne, Wade broke the mold of Africa’s post-independence leaders in that he came to office as a rabidly anti-socialist free market politician. After suffering imprisonment and struggling in the opposition for 26 years, he was elected to the Presidency by a grand coalition of opposition parties in 2000, ending forty years of socialist rule after independence from France.
In the beginning, the force of Wade’s ideas and personality quickly made him one of sub-Saharan Africa’s three leading spokesmen, together with Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. The trio crafted the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), an ambitious economic plan to attract Western investment to Africa that emphasized privatization and business. “I’ve never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit”, said Wade.
Countries that have developed—in Europe, America, Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore—have all believed in free markets. There is no mystery there. Africa took the wrong road after independence.
Wade also broke a long-standing taboo by criticizing Robert Mugabe for stealing Zimbabwe’s March 2002 elections. Domestically, Wade envisioned educational centers for toddlers, a cyber village to enhance Senegal’s commitment to high technology and a virtual university. In the capital, Dakar, a flurry of construction projects started on four-lane highways, luxury hotels, conference centers and the like. For a while, at least, it seemed as though Africa had finally found a genuine democratic capitalist beacon.
By 2008, however, the Senegalese economic miracle had failed to materialize, and a deep sense of malaise had descended on the country. Despite the talk of privatization and free markets, little changed, and Senegal’s economy performed abysmally. In 2006, it registered a miserly 2 percent growth rate compared to Africa’s robust 5 percent overall. Food and fuel prices soared, while unemployed youth grew restless and frustrated. In a 2007 Gallup survey, 56 percent of respondents said they would leave Senegal permanently if they could. Tens of thousands of Senegalese have boarded rickety wooden fishing boats to try to sneak into Europe, and of these, thousands have perished in these perilous crossings.
International donors, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are upset with Wade. They first backed him with millions of dollars in aid to build schools and clinics, pay off debts, and plan infrastructure projects. Now they’re faulting him for public spending excesses and generally dysfunctional policies. A 2007 USAID study was scathing: “A lack of transparency in public affairs and financial transactions, as well as chronic corruption, plagues Senegal today.”
Economic stagnation and political megalomania apparently go hand-in-hand. Wade’s drift toward authoritarianism and his dynastic pretensions have enraged the political class in Senegal. The grand coalition of opposition parties that brought him to office in 2000 has deserted him. “After years of sunshine, we have so many clouds gathering over us in Senegal”, said Abdoulaye Bathily, secretary general of Senegal’s Movement for the Labor Party, a former coalition member which has broken with Wade. “We are lost, adrift. And if we can’t make it, what country can?”
Between 2000 and 2008, Wade orchestrated multiple constitutional changes to prolong his tenure and groom his son, Karim, to succeed him. In July 2008, a National Assembly packed with his allies passed an amendment reinstating the seven-year presidential term, which had been cut to five years only a few years earlier. Since then, the political situation has continued to deteriorate.
The unofficial mascot of this deterioration and of Wade’s grandiosity is extreme even by African standards: He has commissioned a gigantic, $27 million bronze statue, built on the Senegalese shore near Dakar (by North Koreans, no less). Once it is finished, it will dwarf the Statue of Liberty. It is a truly grotesque edifice in a country whose youth flee to Europe in rickety boats.
Wade calls the statue “African Renaissance.” It is intended, he says, to represent the aspirations of younger generations. It is supposed to become a money-making tourist attraction, as well, but Wade’s conception of the project clearly reveals the extent of his madness. As he was quoted in a November 16, 2009 BBC News report,
The land is state property and the fees to build the statue have been paid by the state. . . . but I am the designer, the one who conceived it. So we should see how we share the benefits. . . . The state will go with 65 percent and I shall take 35 percent for myself.
Only 35 percent. How generous. Meanwhile, under the shadow of this growing monumental monstrosity, one can almost hear the people of Dakar mumbling something about cockroaches.
Fifty years after independence, good leadership still eludes sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 209 heads of state since the various countries in the region obtained independence in the 1960s, probably fewer than 15 could be called “good leaders.” The vast majority have been utter failures, and their legacy has left a garish stain on a continent trying to escape often invidious and repressive colonial rule. The fact that Africans today are hard pressed to continue blaming colonialists for their woes makes the pill of disappointment much harder to swallow. As most sub-Saharan Africans tell the tale, theirs is a story of one elite betrayal after another. Indeed, as Africans are wont to say: “We struggle to remove one cockroach from power, and then another comes in and does the same thing. Haba (‘darn’)!”
To some extent, the depths of disappointment match the heights of the hopes Africans have been led to entertain. Though failures as leaders, Africa’s political class, it must be said, has a knack for political theater. Nearly all of Africa’s post-colonial leadership started out well, chanting slogans of freedom, declaring war on corruption, promising to clean up government house—and people believed them because they cheered their mega-plans to develop country, region and continent. An avalanche of lofty ideals, pious statements and pet projects rained down. Then, after a few years in power, these plans fell apart, and the leaders began amending constitutions, manipulating parliaments, abolishing term limits and establishing family dynasties by handing over power to a son—or, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, grimly determining to die at their desks.