[Comment] Leaders Realise They Can't End Poverty, So They Build Palaces

from All Africa

The East African (Nairobi)

By Charles Onyango-Obbo
Nairobi

Last week, it looked like President Yoweri Museveni was about to be given the refurbished domestic terminal at Entebbe Airport for his exclusive use.

The outrage at the idea was widespread, but the surprise is not the excess of the presidential perk, but that so many people should be shocked at it.

This is part of a pattern of what we might call the 20-year itch that afflicts African leaders who have been in power for more than two decades. Or better still, call it the Yamoussoukro Effect/Gbadolite Syndrome.

The early years of the leadership of many African leaders, tends to be the idealistic phase. There are promises and hopes, as evidenced by Museveni's assertion that the country would "modernise" and be "transformed into an economic tiger."

AND CHANGE USUALLY DOES happen. Roads are built or reconstructed. Dispensaries are erected around the countryside. There are some economic and legal reforms, and thus you have a sometimes independent central bank and judiciary. Exploration is speeded up and oil or diamonds are found.

Almost invariably, as in Uganda, there will be plans for the modernisation of agriculture. And, lately, universal, free primary education has also been a constant part of the mix.

But after all is said and done, the overall economic status of these countries doesn't change and the conditions of the majority of their citizens improve only modestly. Usually, after 20 years, it finally dawns on the leaders that they cannot transform their countries into mid-level world economies.

At that point, a series of substitute activities go into high gear to confer on the leaders the greatness and personal grandeur that they have failed to gain through using their power intelligently to change their societies. It is the political equivalent of Viagra.

Thus, in Cote d'Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny built the world's biggest cathedral at his village home of Yamoussoukro. In the then Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko built himself a lavish palace in the remoteness of the jungle in Gbadolite, adorned with diamonds and marble, complete with its own runway.

In Zimbabwe, as his country crumbles around him, President Robert Mugabe has spent a fortune on a similar palace.

The Big Men don't use these sumptuous structures much. Because they are also by now in a paranoid state of mind, they sense that when they are out in their lonely palaces, or are the only users of a terminal, it becomes easier, not more difficult, for their enemies to target them.

It should not go unnoticed that this is actually a step back from the ethos of the early post-independence years on the continent. The leaders of that time liked to name things after themselves and put their busts on national currency notes, but unlike their successors of today who prefer private projects, they were enamoured of grand public projects.

Hence the Akosombo dam, once vilified but today venerated.

THEY WOULD BE OVER FLYING A VAST plain and declare that a new capital be built there. They constructed giant factories and airports in the wilderness. These usually turned into white elephants, but at least they were informed by a nobler public spirit than what one sees today.

By contrast, I remember an article I read some years ago about Menachem Begin, one of the founders of modern Israeli and a decorated general in the country's many wars.

While he was prime minister, and after he left office, he continued to live in a modest apartment that he shared with his daughter.

People like Begin didn't need exclusive airport terminals to confer status upon them.

Hate or like Israel, the country's status today is more than sufficient testimony that they changed their world.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products.