Who Takes the African Union Seriously?

The African Union has just suspended Egypt from the body because of the recent removal of former president Mohammed Morsi from power. According to the African Union, it is unacceptable to remove a democratically elected president from office. Well, newsflash to the African Union - the rules of the game have just changed! Perhaps we should say that the rules of the game have been elevated - democratic elections are not the sole basis of democracy.

Most African leaders have been ruling under the pretext that conducting a so-called democratic elections is all that is needed for a country to be called a democracy. Thus, but for the fact that regular sham elections are being organized, most African presidents are dictators. They have engineered constitutions to circumvent every democratic means of living in a country. In a country like Cameroon, for example, the government appoints what is called government delegates to supervise mayors of big cities, even though the mayors are elected by the people. Elections for the senate were just held in Cameroon. However, the president has the authority to appoint a number of members to the senate. That is, a senate that is supposed to be made up of democratically elected members will have many members appointed by the president. These are just the few means by which African leaders circumvent democracy while conducting elections as a cover. President Morsi was well on his way to making himself the same kind of democracy. The Muslim Brother Constitution that he engineered and his desire to put himself above the law - in fact, most presidents in Africa are above the laws of their countries - were just a few signs of how he intended to create his own version of democracy in Egypt.

The main difference with the Egyptian situation is that Egypt has a very vocal and restless populace as opposed to the rest of Africa. After having successfully removed Mubarak from office, they came to see that people power can remove dictators from office. With the help of the army, the people have removed a dictator from office. And that is how it should be. One other difference in much of Africa is that the army often supports the dictators so that many of the governments are military dictatorships passing for civilian administrations. This is the case with countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Congo, the Gambia, etc. These countries are military dictatorships in disguise.

Thus, no one can take seriously an organization made up of dictators such as Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, etc., when they suspend a country for the removal of a dictator in the making like Morsi. That is why no one takes the African Union seriously when it suspends Egypt from that unremarkable body. The Egyptian authorities should lose no sleep over this.

Where Football is Not Everything: Brazil vs. Cameroon

Growing up, I had the impression that football (soccer) was greatly cherished in Brazil. Whenever I heard people talk about Brazil, it was often in connection to football and the name of Pele was often mentioned. I was told how everyone, well, almost everyone in Brazil grows up playing football. That was why they were so good in that sport. Perhaps this was just stereotypical but this stereotype colored my imagination. I had come to think that if Brazilians were to choose between football and anything else, they would choose football.

However, this whole view of Brazil was shattered during the current Confederations Cup taking place in that country (the tournament ends today and Brazil are playing Spain in the final). During this game, many, many Brazilians have been demonstrating even at the same time their national team is playing. And the demonstrations were not based on their losing a game in the tournament - in fact, they have not lost a game in the tournament. Rather, they were demonstrating because they felt that the leaders of their country were spending more money on football than on health care and education, which they apparently thought deserved more attention than football.

In Cameroon, however, we have been taught that football is everything, especially when we are winning. In fact, during important international tournaments nothing else happens in the country as people become enthralled with what is going on. If the current Confederations Cup were happening in Cameroon, no one would even think of demonstrating about anything. It would be more so if Cameroon were winning. Cameroon's reputation has in large part been built around football and Roger Milla is the most popular Cameroonian around the world because of his footballing antics. When Cameroon is in a tournament, everything in the country stops. And we are not even half as good as Brazil!

Paul Biya and his people have milked every ounce of Cameroon's successful participation in football tournaments in the past thirty years he has exhausted in power. Drawing on the victories of Cameroon's national football team, Paul Biya has even said that he cannot leave office because there is no need to change a team that is winning. That was when Cameroon's team was winning. Right now, however, the team has been losing and losing big. Even with that, the great fight in the country is around football not health care or education. Brazilians may a thing or two to teach Cameroonians both about how to play football and how to set our priorities straight.

President Obama's Vacation to Africa

When you are president, you can make a vacation look like a state visit. A stop here and a stop there, a speech here and a speech there, and - voila! - we have a state visit instead of a vacation. In order to know that this is a vacation rather than a state visit, we just need to ask a couple of questions: what is Obama in Africa for? What interest of America's or Africa's does this visit serve? He made a speech in Senegal about great strides which Africa has made - perhaps he has been reading the numbers of the GDP which economists have been publishing - and another one in South Africa about Nelson Mandela. In both places, the highlights have come from the sites he visited than from the speeches he made. Perhaps he would say something substantive in Tanzania so as to make this whole thing more a vacation. Perhaps I spoke too soon; I would love to be proved wrong.

Fixing Transportation in Kinshasa, DRC

Making Music Among the Baka of Cameroon/Congo: C'est Magnifique!

Everyone is a musician. You may buy this breathtaking music here.

 

Being Gay in Africa: A Debate

After Nelson Mandela: Thoughts From My Father

When my father was alive, he used to say, sarcastically of course, that when he would be about to die, he would cut off his head and leave it with me so that his head may be giving me advice on how to conduct my life. He would say this to register his disappointment when he saw that I did not do well what he thought, based on what he had taught me, I should have done really well. Saying that he would leave his head with me when he was gone was a way of saying that I should not think he would always be around to be telling me what to do. He wanted me to grow up and learn to take initiative rather than waiting for him to tell me what to do and how to do it. He wanted me to pay attention to what he was teaching me so that when he was gone to the land of our ancestors, I would know how to conduct myself. Thus, my father imprinted in me the idea that he was not always going to be around and that I ought to know how to conduct my life in his absence.

The story of Mandela's eventual passing to the land of our ancestors and the mournfulness surrounding the whole process has led me to think of what my father used to say to me. He was intent on impressing on me that he would not live for ever. My dad passed away when he was about seventy years old and even though I was not ready to see him go, I knew that he had taught me how to be a human being. In short, he had prepared me for life after him.

Surely, Mr. Mandela has prepared South Africa for life after him. Looking at the life of Mr. Mandela, one can hardly doubt that as a leader, he has taught South Africans how to live and how to go on living after him. The whole question about what would happen to South Africa after his death brings sadness in me because the question implies that he has not taught South Africans what to do in his absence. Like me when I was growing up, South Africans seem to think that he would be around for ever to be telling them what to do. If South Africans fail to live up to the high ideals which Mr. Mandela had for had for them, that would not be because Mr. Mandela did not prepare them well. They saw  his sacrifice, his tenacity, his kindness, and his struggle for the downtrodden. One of the best ways South Africa can honor the memory of Madiba is to make sure that his vision for the country is fostered. Surely, South Africans do not want Madiba to cut off his head and live it with them as he is about to pass on to the land of our ancestors.