Because on the continent, a so-called strong man is in reality not supported by/and subject to strong institutions as in the case of regimes that we tend to identify with leaders. In Africa, the strong man subverts democratic republican institutions to submit them to his will. In doing so, it weakens and discredits the very institutions which should be the guarantors of its popular legitimacy. Such a situation allows him to temporarily annihilate any form of republican opposition to find himself and his regime all alone, facing angry populations, because they are impoverished, hungry and humiliated by having to beg while sitting on piles of riches. The illusion of the strong man explains why African leaders only last in power long enough to see their poor economic, social and security governance produce more poverty, raise their populations against themselves and thus offer the military , the opportunity and the pretext to overthrow them.
These strong men being in reality giants with feet of clay, this explains the prevalence of unconstitutional regime changes through the dialectic of alternative control of the means of violence. Take turns at the hairdresser!
Some then wonder why there would not be, in Africa, strong men who last in power, like those who played decisive roles in the transformation of their countries. They often cite leaders from China, the Soviet Union, Russia, Malaysia or Singapore.
But these leaders are not strong men in the African sense of the term. Rather, they are men whom strong institutions have chosen and made “strong”, to be their guardians and guarantors of their proper functioning, by virtue of respecting the paradigmatic orientations of their nations. Can we really believe that a single Deng Xiaoping could be strong enough to impose his views and his will on more than 1 billion 400 million Chinese?
The same question can be asked regarding Vladimir Putin in Russia, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, or Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in the United Arab Emirates, to name just a few.
It is true that all these leaders have in common their patriotic and nationalist commitment to serve the economic and social construction of their countries, starting with building the foundations of a strong State which is built on inviolable institutions and which embody as much, the aspirations of their nations.
Precisely, everything starts from building a nation. Because a nation is built on a community of destiny of individuals who constitute peoples through history, geography and culture. Nationhood transforms the individuals of a people into fellow citizens and gives them a common vision of their aspirations in terms of economic and social development. These assumed aspirations allow them to project themselves into the future and build coherent, relevant and congruent institutions that they appropriate individually and collectively and protect.
The “Negro Nations” did indeed exist, as Cheikh Anta Diop clearly demonstrated. They embodied cultures that were defined by symbiotic pluralities of values ??of their civilizations. But they were brutally destroyed by slavery and colonization, by predatory foreign powers who all considered that their development would be a zero-sum game in which there must be winners and losers.
After political independence, always in line with their policy of not allowing the constitution of united African nations, whose development objectives would be pursued by strong States supported by strong institutions, ex-colonial powers promoted types of tropical democracies with misguided institutions which allow the emergence of strong men who have the power to eliminate the republican separation of powers in practice, to establish pseudo-republican monarchies in the service of their interests. Because these ex-colonial powers are aware that they can control people, but not republican institutions which owe their existence to the regular pursuit of well-understood national development objectives. It is therefore not by chance that the decree of the pseudo-democratization of African regimes was the product of the 16th conference of heads of state of Africa and France which took place in La Baule from June 19 to 21, 1990 !
What followed were political psychoanalysis sessions pompously called sovereign national conferences. With political actors who were not necessarily representative of their people.
This explains the emergence of certain current facade democracies, with their rigged elections on all links in the chain of control of their operations, through unfair and illegitimate laws which are insidiously designed to exclude candidates and not to include as many candidates as possible for elective functions. As is the case in real democracies.
I even read an African government recently introducing the need to change their country’s Constitution by writing: “[…] As economic development is the new paradigm […]” Could this cerebrum lapsus (cerebral lapse) be a confession official public which notes the fact that neither the government author of this change in the Constitution of its country, nor those which preceded it since its political independence, have really worked for the development of their country?
How then can we be surprised that elsewhere, under the same constitutional conditions, young soldiers take up the popular frustrations resulting from a fatal factory of structural poverty politically assumed, by misguided institutions, to begin by declaring that they want to rebuild the same institutions of theirs? country to finally enslave them, to the economic and social development of their populations?
In view of the above, in Africa, rebuilding republican institutions seems to me a requirement for most countries, to support the cohesion of their nations. Because a nation can only be an understood and accepted community of destiny. Because a true nation does not exclude part of its citizens from its economic and social development.
Otherwise, the same causes producing the same effects, governments which animate errant institutions would always risk being overthrown. It’s a question of factory cycles of poverty and popular frustrations.
It is therefore in the interest of African leaders still in a “constitutional order” to bring about changes in mentalities and social conditions and, themselves, organize the construction of truly democratic republican institutions, in the service of models of social economic development which must first be designed by building it on the potential strengths of their economies.
It is also in the interest of Africa’s partner economic powers to change their models of thought (paradigms) and to seek now to establish strategic partnerships for shared prosperity, if they do not want to disappear from the Africa.
Simply, because nothing can be the same again.
* Specialist in the development of value chains, entrepreneur, Papa Demba Thiam was a project director for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in liaison with the European Union, UNIDO and the Club du Sahel of the OECD and the World Bank.
