Africa-Press – Uganda. In less than a year, three incumbent African rulers have died in office. All under different but disturbing circumstances. Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza died last June shortly before he was due to handover to a successor in a process that was neither free nor fair. He had controversially extended his stay in power by an extra five-year term. Speculation was rife that he may have succumbed to Covid-19.
Earlier this year, Tanzania’s John Magufuli shockingly departed on the heels of defying the virus. As with Nkurunziza, the official cause of death was something else, but the suspected and widely speculated cause was Covid-19. The latest is Chad’s Idriss Deby. His is the most troubling. Early in the week, we woke up to incredible news. A day after he was declared provisional winner in a controversial election, for the sixth time, he was announced dead officially following an encounter with rebels marching to the capital N’djamena to oust him.
This is as surreal and incredible as you can ever imagine – a head of state meeting his death on the battlefield fighting rebels. It is highly implausible that Idriss Deby, a veteran of the gun and a crowned Marshal to boot, would die in combat confronting his military challengers. It is possible he died of something else and under circumstances quite apart from the official announcement.
Predictably, his son stepped forward to claim the reins of power in the face of a rebel advance and internal disquiet if not outright division within the military. There have been recent precedents in Congo, Gabon and Togo where first sons took over from their demised fathers. It is rumoured to be the plot for a future succession scheme in Uganda too with Muhoozi Kainerugaba succeeding the father, a move bound to be a recipe for tragedy in an already fraught situation.
Whatever the actual cause, Deby’s death is yet another reminder of the perils of power. After three decades in power, uninterrupted, Idriss Deby should have been enjoying much needed retirement time instead of fighting to cling to power. He would be moving around giving lectures at African universities on the dynamics of managing modern states in the context of Africa, directing charity works and serving as a distinguished statesman involved in brokering peace in Ethiopia and Mozambique.
State power is a poisoned chalice. It is alluring, enticing and trapping. It ensnares and enslaves, makes the ruler at once powerful and powerless, seemingly invincible but also vulnerable. The more one imbibes state power, becomes sloshed with it, the more it is impossible to disentangle. Once they dig in and get ensnared, African incumbent rulers find that they cannot contemplate life outside state house as an ordinary citizen never mind that they would very likely keep a great deal of perks and privileges if they exit through a well-managed and peaceful process of departure.
Used to exercising near absolute power to issue commands and dish out resources, wielding control over life and death of citizens, an African president cannot bring himself to imagine having to live low, manage a quiet life and be without auras and airs of state power. This is the trap that afflicts our own Mr Museveni who has become patently hostage to his own thirst for power and has developed a deep feeling of indignation at the thought of becoming an ordinary citizen.
For Museveni, as with other rulers in his mould, an exaggerated sense of messianic calling and the illusion of mission just compounds matters. On the one hand, the trap of power is so unrelenting as to allow for serious consideration of options for safe and secure exit. On the other, the ruler has a captive state of mind, believing that he is doing the public a favour ostensibly because the people desperately need him even in the face of clear public disapproval, dissent and even violent rebellion. All this adds up to a precarious state of affairs and an uncertain future.
This is a great part of Uganda’s looming political crisis, never mind we actually have a bigger task of tackling enormous socioeconomic problems. As matters stand, the political question, nay presidential succession, occupies the centre stage. There appears to be no way out in sight when you have an intransigent ruler whose primary source of power is the military machine. Defying nature and the course of history though has proved difficult. There is evidence all over, historical and current.
