Mandela, Wade and Mugabe: Different strokes

In the week in February in which the respected former South African president, Nelson Mandela, 93, was taken ill and admitted at the hospital for a reported hernia surgery, the discredited 85-year-old Abdoulaye Wade contested the Senegalese presidential elections for a third term against widespread public anger while the loathed Robert Mugabe feasted on cake to mark his 88^th birthday with pomp in a stadium in Mutare.

Mugabe plans to run for the presidency later this year, after 32 years in office, first as prime minister and from 1987 as president. 

Mandela

Mandela retired after a single four-year term in office in 1999 to make way for fresh blood. His immediate successor, Thambo Mbeki has since served his term and left office. Wade came to power in an exceptionally well organised election in 2000. 

He rightly led a campaign to amend the constitution in 2001 to limit the number of terms per president to two five-year terms. But then when it came to applying the new law to himself, he took cover in a loophole.

Another constitutional amendment in 2008 reversed the 2001 amendment limiting the length of the presidential term to five years. This new extension apparently doesn’t apply to the president’s second term in office which expires this year. Thus, Wade has argued, he is entitled to run for yet another term.

Eccentricities

Wade has indeed improved the road network particularly in the capital and some social services. But his administration has been rocked by charges of corruption. In 2009, Wade handed a US$200,000 'farewell present' to a departing International Monetary Fund official after dinner.

He has also wasted the country’s resources on a long list of dubious projects. Electricity supply remains heavily unreliable and public transport is awful.

In 2010, President Wade commissioned a pet project, a monstrous monument towering over the capital city, Dakar. I paid a visit to the site of the statue a month after it was commissioned in 2010. The statue’s construction cost the Senegalese tax payer US$27 million. The statue is much bigger than the statue of Liberty in New York and presumed to be the tallest in the world outside the former Soviet Union and Asia. 

Referred to as the African Renaissance Monument (Le Monument de la Renaissance africaine), the 49-metre tall bronze statue of a child, woman and man stands on a hill, Collines des Mamelles, and overlooks breezy Dakar and the Atlantic Ocean. 

President Wade's $27 million pet project

Wade

Oddly, Wade has staked claim to the intellectual property rights of the statue he conceived not as a private citizen but as a function of his public office – as president of the republic. Wade says he is entitled to 35 per cent of profits from monument. Absurdity!

Grandiose projects, outright sleaze and many other eccentricities of the once popular president have driven most ordinary Senegalese from hope to the point of despair in a decade. But seriously, at 85 what more can Wade offer the country that he hasn’t delivered in the 12-years he has been in charge? Unlike many other West African countries, Senegal has never been through a coup d'tat, be it military or non-military. Senegal is such a beautiful country and its 13 million people are amazingly comely.

It came as no surprise Wade even lost in his own constituency, Point E, a middle-class suburb of Dakar in the February 26^th poll. Contrary to his own prognosis, Wade is set for a runoff. He failed to gain the outright majority. It remains to be seen whether he can hang on to power. The opposition is fired up to kick him out of office.

Wade first came to power in 2000 in a keenly contested presidential election run-off against the then incumbent, Abdou Diouf. Wade came from behind in the first round to pip Diouf in the runoff.

Wade is not alone. Mugabe having ruled since independence in 1980 is planning to contest the Zimbabwean presidential elections later this year too. In fact, his choice of Mutare for the celebration of his 88^th birthday last weekend was political. The ruling ZANU-PF lost badly in Mutare, capital of the eastern province of Manicaland in the last general elections. 

Breadbasket

Mugabe

Mugabe in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980 has reduced the once breadbasket of Southern Africa to a basket case following his poor management of the economy and land issues. 

Africa indeed has some of the oldest leaders in the world. Some are also the longest ruling presidents. The Arab spring swept three away in the north – Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (in power for 31years), Ben Ali (ruled for 23 years) and Libya’s Muammar Qaddaffi (whose reign ended after 42 years). 

There are still many more of such leaders around including Cameroon’s Paul Biya, 79, who has been president since 1982; Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, 70, president since 1979 and Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos, 70, president since 1979.

Across the continent, Africans generally hold in high regard the elderly, both male and female. But surely this does not fully explain the large number of old men in power (a subject for another blog) who seemingly cannot imagine life out of the presidency.