Sam Amadi
On the Valentine night, a major shift took place. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, who had boasted that he would not bow down to the African National Congress’ request that he resigned from office, suddenly bowed out. President Zuma in a televised speech argued that although his party was wrong to demand his resignation, for the good of the party, he would bow out immediately. Zuma, the archetypical African big man, lost the battle. But the party won. And South Africa gained.
A few months earlier, another African strong man lost the battle against change. This time again, his party won. The iconic Robert Mugabe, despite himself, left office, not in ignominy but in expressed understanding of the superiority of the party and the “revolution”, whatever remained of it. Just as comical and disoriented Zuma was bowing down, a little known Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned from office because of the political upheaval in his country and the need to allow a new beginning.
In 1991, when many African countries were transiting from military oligarchy and one-party dictatorships, the western media celebrated what it called “Africa Rising”. Patronising western media made heavy weather of this change of fortune and predicted that Africa would be the poster child of economic development and democracy. It did not take long for the hope to be dashed as many of these half-baked and contrived democracies stumbled into authoritarian patrimonial regimes or competitive oligarchies. Africa rises turned to Africa regresses.
But the pieces of news coming out of Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia give hope of real “Africa Rising”. The leaders who stepped down may not be exemplary in probity, accountability and even effectiveness, but the responsible and deliberative ways they took a bow, in the pressing circumstances of contemporary African politics, are a story of institutional stability that needs a retelling. Africa may after all be rising, not because the borders of real democracy and economic liberalism are expanding, but because we can point to a few African countries that are resilient because of the integrity of their state institutions.
South Africa, particularly, continues to prove its superiority, not just in its peerless corporate character in Africa, but also in its deeply stable politics. No matter what critics of the ANC say about corruption in South African governance, no one should doubt that the ANC provides institutional stability to the development of the country. South Africa may be less than effectively governed under the ANC, particularly under the neopatrimonialism of Zuma, but it has stabilised politics in post-apartheid South Africa. In terms of the revolutionary and patriotic character of its ruling elites, South Africa continues to tower above Nigeria.
On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. On that day, I wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian Newspaper arguing that Mandela’s emergence as president is a message to Nigerian leaders to quit lip-service to national interest and pay life-service to the public good. Nigerian leaders celebrated Mandela but refused vehemently to emulate his humanism and patriotism. Of course, it will be difficult for Nigerian leaders to take a leaf from Mandela’s play book because they lack the history and commitments that defined Mandela. President Olusegun Obasanjo when called upon to act like Mandela and forgo running for re-election rebuffed the plea. His pretentious idealism could not tide him over the dirty swamp of patrimonial politics. He succumbed to the lure of power and contrived a tenure elongation. The Nigerian elites always celebrate the heroism of South Africans but reject their examples.
The really depressing aspect of the Nigerian-South African relationship is the endless noise about Nigerian superiority. Nigerians always go about presuming that they are somehow better than South Africans. Forget that South Africa could pass for a first world economy, Nigerians are bullish that they are the emancipator of South Africa. Somehow, we believe that our significant contribution to the apartheid struggle confers on us a moral superiority over the South Africans. We have exaggerated our population and natural resource advantages to obscure the fact that South Africa is a much more durable and institutionally stable polity.
But if there was any doubt that South Africa scores higher than Nigeria on the indicators of political stability, the orderly and firm manner that the unruly strong man, Zuma, was forced out of office clears the doubt. Could this ever happen in Nigeria? In 2010, Nigeria was thrown into a deep crisis because of a president who was dying of chronic disease in Saudi Arabia. The Executive Council of the Federation could not trigger a simple constitutional procedure to transfer power to the Vice President. The crisis almost collapsed political governance until the National Assembly overreached itself and resorted to the fig-leaf of a BBC interview to ground a constitution requirement of transfer of power to the Vice President. It was big shame that Nigeria was thrown into a deep crisis because political leaders could not exercise leadership and relieve a gravely sick man of the responsibilities of leadership.
Incidentally, the Nigerian state has carried on with a lot of exaggerated notion of its greatness. There is no doubt that we boast a great collection of extremely intelligent and resourceful people. But as someone said, ineffective genius is almost a legend. We can see all around us how dilapidated and descript it lives. Check out the profile of many of Nigeria’s blundering political leadership and you will be amazed at their educational and professional accomplishments. But they always fail to rise to leadership whenever it is entrusted on them. We are blessed with abundant natural wealth, but we have succeeded in fritting it away in corrupt enrichment and poorly conceived and executed projects.
Nigerians are unyielding in their belief that they are the giants of Africa. The mere fact that out of every four Africans there is a Nigerian naturally confers leadership on Nigeria. But the truth is that Nigeria scores very low in the indicators of political and social stability. Even seeming banana cases in Africa ironically stand better than Nigeria in many of the critical indicators of state stability.
Just the case of Zimbabwe. Its economy is in tatters. To the western minds, it is a parable of the disastrous consequences of the megalomaniac one-man rule. But Zimbabwe has a secret strength as a country. Its political elites are product of revolutionary nationalist struggle. As much as struggle for political power post-colonialism may have divided the elites and eroded social capital, there is a strong institutional resilience that ensures political stability. So, when the time came, the leadership shoved away the old dictator in a disciplined manner that restated the overriding importance of its revolutionary ideals.
The real lesson from these events in southern Africa is that unbeknownst to many Nigerians, these frontline states have developed structures that are dependable against the vagaries of competitive politics. The ANC is disciplined and focused enough to withstand the folly of a President Zuma. So, the prospect of democracy is strong in a corrupt South African polity than in any of the contrived liberal democracies in West Africa because of the inherent stability built by years of revolutionary politics. Party supremacy in South Africa does not mean the supremacy of the politicians who win the battle to the top. It is the supremacy of an ideal, an idea, no matter how battered by betrayal and corruption. Still strong enough to constitute a lodestar in the journey of statehood.
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