By Neba-Fuh
Egypt's resort town of Sharm El Sheikh is host to the world's most dreaded dictators meeting under the banner of the African Union Summit.
Amongst them is Zimbabwe's junta leader Robert Mugabe, who recently hijacked people's power by performing a one-man -show, after intimidating his challenger-Morgan Tshangarai and his supporters resulting to deaths, in a run-off 'election' that was a clear slaughter of democracy.
A once respected African liberation hero, Mugabe is now defecating on the platform that projected him to the apex of the list of African liberation fighters. An octogenarian like Robert Mugabe should be enjoying a well-deserved rest just like his contemporary-living legend and ace freedom fighter- Madiba Nelson Mandela is doing.
Mugabe is exhibiting a severe case of senility that is not only disgracing his family, the Zimbabwean people, but Africa as a whole.His argument of indispensability, by purporting that the British and Americans will re-colonise Zimbabwe if he leaves power, is a tragic symptom of wisdom's cramp.
We know the unmistakable treachery that these two western powers have plunged the world into, but for an 84-year- old dictator to present the above as an excuse to rig elections in order to rule a nation already suffering a more than 355 percent inflation rate is the first major joke of the 21st century.
Africa's sufferings have been exacerbated by the continual clinging to power by people like Mugabe. He is just one of the many oligarchs that have plundered Africa's riches, leaving the masses miserably helpless. That's why he had the guts to threaten fellow African dictators after his flawed run-off 'election' just before the summit, by saying that he was waiting to see that finger that will point at him-that dirty finger from an African leader that thinks it is clean. Mugabe could never have been wrong! Which finger could really point at Mugabe?
Is it
the host Hosni Mubarak's 27 years in-power- finger or Gabon's Bongo's
41years-in-power-finger? Is it Libya's Qadhafi's 38years-in-power
finger? Just to name these few.
On the eve of this summit, celebrations marking Nelson Mandela's 90th
birthday kick-started in London's Hyde Park with a star- studded
concert. Political and entertainment gurus rallied to pay homage to
what real African leadership is suppose to mean.
A man whose choices and decisions are guided by service and sacrifice. A man whose vision of Africa is not enshrined in the vice of greed. A man who would rather perish in prison than live in a society where freedom was a privilege, not a right. A man whose captors would assemble to applaud his bravery. A man who demystified the notion that all African leaders cling to power until power kicks them off.
This is Mandela - the anti apartheid prisoner who became President! He represents a whole lot of African visionaries who did not have the opportunity to clock 90 like him: Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Um Nyobe, etc.
They craved for a united Africa out of love, not out of greed like the 'dregs' we have today.
Egypt's summit is another rendez-vous for dim-witted cronies, some of
whom are constantly worried about changing their diapers because of old
age than concentrating on the issues they have plunged Africa into.
Instead of them worried on how to push the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), they might be caught up with the Zimbabwe saga-election rigging and manipulation-something most of them are guilty of. Who could point that finger? Young African rulers, who could have been the innovative think tank of those old recalcitrant guards, are nothing more than monarchical derivatives -The Kabilas and the Eyademas, still troubled by Dads' poisoned genes.
The dregs of African leadership deserve their place in the dustbin! Even though some of these rulers have embezzled the peoples' money equivalent to multiple budgets of their nations, we still plead that they recognize that they cannot form any valuable solution to the numerous problems they have plunged this great continent into.
Africa - the richest continent in the universe - has become an economic eyesore. A peoples' destiny held hostage by a greedy few. Their rule is nothing more than a movie shot without a director. They will be strangled by their own web!
NEBA FUH ,OH YOU FORGOT KUVA LIKENYE,
THATS OUR SOUTHERN CAMEROONS HERO, HE THE BAKWERI CHIEF AND WARRIOR WHO FOUGHT THE GERMANS. YOU MAY BE FROM SOUTHERN CAMEROONS ,BUT DONT EVEN KNOW YOUR OWN HISTORY, MOST TIME YOU GUY MISTAKE FRENCHCAMEROUNS HISTORY, TO INCLUDE OURS TOO, THATS FLASEHOOD.
Posted by: red flag | Friday, 04 July 2008 at 09:06 PM
Very good article. Fair and balanced, researched, pragmatic and astute.
"Egypt's summit is another rendez-vous for dim-witted cronies, some of whom are constantly worried about changing their diapers because of old age than concentrating on the issues they have plunged Africa into."
- Best line
You took the words out of my word and said it more articulately.
Posted by: UnitedstatesofAfrica | Friday, 04 July 2008 at 09:44 PM