There are so many African dictators in part because of America. Today is America’s Presidents’ Day Holiday. It celebrates the office as much as the individuals who held it. It celebrates the closest thing a democracy can be to remaining a monarchy.
Category: Democracy
RaRaRa Boom
Do you wonder – as I do all the time – what happens after Trump? Wonder no longer. What’s happening right this instant in South Africa tells us, and it’s exactly what you’d expect when your mind finally overcomes your emotions: Trump won’t just disappear.
#3 Patience Pays
2018 was a sobering year in Africa: Human rights and democratic freedoms declined. It was hard to find much hope.
There were a few places, though, and South Africa especially may be showing us and the rest of the world the way out of this darkness. It’s very African: patience pays.
Christmas in The Congo
Another major war begins soon in Africa. It will begin shortly after the democratic mockery scheduled for December 23, when the powers in Kinshasa are “re-elected” and the heavily armed militias particularly in Kivu in the east try to secede.
Who cares? Well I know it’s been difficult to muster your attention for Yemen, but let me put it this way. Use a smartphone? Have an xBox? Then you’re directly responsible for this looming human calamity.
Magufuli Goes Nuts
Tanzania’s “bulldozer” dictator plowed into the agricultural arena yesterday slaying down corrupt officials and increasing and strengthening his partnership with China.
John Magufuli’s dictatorial actions should immediately benefit most Tanzanians: Agricultural production should rise, prices for commodities should rise and additional supply should keep consumer prices steady. There’s no way all this “good news” could have been created in such a short time democratically, and there is also no certainty that in the mid- or long-term it’s the right thing to do.
Congo Cover
There are other reasons than “the threat of terror” that prompted America to close its embassy in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) yesterday.
I know really good, young people who have recently left the African service of the State Department as the Trump administration systematically hammers down our foreign service. There’s always been terror in the DRC. There’s just now fewer, lower paid, less capable Americans to deal with it.
Refugee To Congress
The election to Congress of the first refugee, a Somali woman from Minneapolis has caused furor in Kenya as prominent politicians congratulated her in spite of aggressively having demanded the closure of the refugee camp she grew up in.
Ilhan Omar was the successful Democrat candidate to replace Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) who stepped down earlier this year after sexual abuse allegations which he vigorously denied, and he just won Tuesday’s Minnesota Attorney General’s race.
There’s more: Trump vehemently warned voters against supporting her, claiming that Minnesota “had suffered enough from Somali immigrants.”
Does Voting Matter?
Rebecca Davis writes in South Africa’s Daily Maverick that “fervent supporters of the Republican and Democratic parties are no longer inhabiting the same moral universe.”
The South African woman is in the United States for our election. Trump’s gruesome retrenchment from the globe into his own ego impoverished much of it, especially Africa. Why? Because the America that I knew and loved before Trump helped the world. Trump doesn’t even help America, Davis concludes. All he tries to help is himself and his tiny family.
Will it or Won’t it?
Will Richard Quest get home? Quest is in Kenya for the inaugural flight of Kenya Airways from Nairobi to New York, Sunday. This fireworks affair for the Kenyan nation is now immolated by airline workers threatening to strike.
For the third year straight Kenya Airways edged out all other African airlines – including headliner South African Airways – for top awards for its economy and business classes, as well as overall airline. But until now, its stellar service hasn’t included flights to the U.S.
Women Or Efficiency
Tanzania’s crash to the right has been phenomenal. Why do so many Tanzanians support it? That question goes a long way to explaining a lot of the world, not just Tanzania.
Tanzanians who had been roughed over by police, bureaucrats and corrupt politicians now see some relief under President John Magufuli. He couldn’t do this through the democracy that existed in Tanzania, because it was corrupt. Magufuli has become what we used to call a “benevolent dictator,” and it’s what the whole wide world craves today.
Kenya Corruption
Kenya tries too hard to be western. It even started to reign in widespread corruption, trying to achieve that fine line that western countries manage between corruption and lobbying.
But the last two years have been seen the most enormous setbacks. Kenya has slipped to 143 of 180 countries ranked by clean government by Transparency International. I think I know why: You can try to be western but if you don’t know all the tricks you’ll get hoisted by your own petard.
Faceless Facebook
Is Facebook now a Faceless demagogue enforcing inconsistent morality on the world, or when it throttled Liberia’s most popular site was it reigning in web prostition and child trafikking?
Is it time that government of the people become the mediator rather than a board of billionaires?
No New Zim
“Worse than under Mugabe,” the principle opposition spokesman told London’s Guardian newspaper this morning.
Four days after a hopeful election that inspired the world, Zimbabwe has returned to its dark cave. Masked groups move through the country abducting known opposition supporters.
Persons on the streets are tortured and beaten. There’s not much more to report. Zimbabwe has retreated from the outside world. Outsiders dare not visit.
Democracy Sucks
Crocodile Mnangagwa was declared president of Zimbabwe with 50.8% to his nearest challenger, charismatic Chamisa’s 44.3%.
Slightly fewer votes for Mnangagwa putting him below 50% would have triggered a run-off with Chamisa. There were 23 candidates in the race; Chamisa’s chances in a run-off were very good, and that had been his party’s strategy from the beginning. With grave concerns expressed by international observers on the election’s authenticity, Mnangagwa’s presidency is now as legitimate as Donald Trump’s.
And that’s my point. These days’ democracy sucks.
Zimbabwe Dirge
Real hopes that I had yesterday of bringing visitors back to Zimbabwe are now exactly like the three innocent, unarmed young people shot by soldiers on the streets of Harare yesterday afternoon: dead.
Final election results have yet to be announced at the time of this writing, but they don’t matter. How someone becomes a Zimbabwean soldier, I don’t know, but that is the only hope to power left to any Zimbabwean.