Contents Chapter 1 Leadership in Postcolonial Africa: An Introduction 1
Yüklə 242,5 Kb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
L E A D E R S H I P I N P O S T C O L O N I A L A F R I C A 17 Lamb was the character of African leaders, who, caught in the dizzying vortex of power and the cold war, lacked the cognitive capacity to adapt, adjust, and keep their peoples enlightened, free, and empowered to carry the national project forward. Rather, they oppressed them and ordered them about, a spec- tacle that amazed Lamb and many other observers of African history. One of the most intriguing questions facing African leader- ship studies is why the majority of Africans continue cheering and glorifying leaders who exploited and kept them so poor and who oppressed them so badly and treated them like subjects to a king? If Africans detested colonial oppression and overthrew it, why do they generally put up with postcolonial oppression? Lamb wondered at the spectacle in Mobutu’s Zaire: “He has caused his people great suffering, but at his command, they turn out by the tens of thousands to line the parade routes and fill the stadiums and sing his praises” (1983, 43). Obviously, if the people were convinced that Mobutu was causing their great suffering, they would not have so enthusiastically turned out to sing and dance for him the way they did. The same could be said of almost every other African dictator. The problem is that people do not generally attribute their poverty and suffering to the leader or his government. They attribute it to their God or Gods as the case might be, just like their ancestors did in the days of colonial rulers and the African kings and chiefs before colonial rule. What urgently needs to change is Africa’s political culture. Africa’s postcolonial leaders have so far failed, deliberately or otherwise, to bring about political culture transformations befitting the new conditions of constitutionality and indepen- dent nation-statehood. Twenty-first-century African beliefs about suffering and leadership largely mirror precolonial beliefs about these social phenomena. What is needed is a cultural “reframing” (Bolman and Deal 2003) that would bring into line the peoples’ understanding of leadership and government with the current realities and limitations of constitutional power and authority inherent in the nation-state model. Any source of this much-needed political enlightenment is, however, promptly nipped in the bud by African leaders. Radio stations Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 B A B A G . J A L L O W 18 are closed down and journalists and opponents persecuted and killed in a bid to prevent the spread of political knowledge and civic enlightenment in African societies. While in Western soci- eties leaders cannot wish the “empirical spotlight” out of their heads, in Africa leaders insist there are no problems in their heads requiring any kind of spotlight, empirical or otherwise. The spotlight must be on their “excellent” leadership quali- ties and the “great sacrifices” they make for their impoverished people. African leaders’ allergy to enlightened scrutiny started at independence and continues in the majority of African coun- tries in 2014. And the majority of people tolerate it because they believe in the legitimate power of the “king,” even if unjust, to do as he likes and because they do not make the crucial connec- tion between their suffering and bad leadership. The “dark side” of postcolonial African leadership is exam- ined in the first few chapters of this volume. In chapter 2 , Paul Chiudza Banda (no relative of the president’s) explores the fas- cinating leadership style of Dr Banda, another first-generation postcolonial African ruler. Even as Nkrumah’s single-party state was being toppled in Ghana in 1966, in Malawi, Banda “oversaw the constitutional change which outlawed all other political parties in the country, except his own MCP. In 1971, he also oversaw the constitutional amendment which declared him ‘President for life’” (Banda, this volume). In the ideological warfare between communism and capitalism, Dr Banda vehe- mently supported capitalism and argued for the exclusion of the People’s Republic of China from membership of the United Nations. Dr Banda was the only independent African leader who actively and very visibly maintained and promoted the ties that colonial Malawi (Nyashaland) had with the Portuguese colonial state in Mozambique and Angola, and with Apartheid South Africa. Under Dr Banda, Malawi established diplomatic relations with Apartheid South Africa in 1968, and he became the first independent African leader to address South Africa’s all-white parliament in 1971, the year he had himself declared life president. At the same time, and like his other contempo- raries, Dr Banda assumed and played the role of a precolonial ruler; he was called Messiah, Ngwazi (the conqueror), and chief of chiefs (Banda, this volume; Lamb 1983). Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 L E A D E R S H I P I N P O S T C O L O N I A L A F R I C A 19 Banda reports in his chapter that “special songs,” like the one quoted below, “were composed as evidence of Dr. Banda’s popu- larity” and “were played frequently during political party rallies and on the country’s sole radio station, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).” In songs like these, some precolonial African rulers were declared to own everything, even the lakes and all the cattle of the land, because they were believed to pos- sess certain spiritual powers, including the power to make rain. Dr Banda in Malawi was just one among many postcolonial African rulers for whom such songs were sang and who were believed to possess spiritual powers, even if not the particular power like their precolonial predecessors to make rain. One of Dr Banda’s songs went: Zonse zimene, nz’a Kamuzu Banda. Everything else belongs to Kamuzu Banda Zonse zimene, nz’a Kamuzu Banda. Everything else belongs to Kamuzu Banda Nyanja zones, Nz’a Kamuzu Banda. All the lakes, for Kamuzu Banda
Ng’ombe Zonse, Nz’a Kamuzu Banda. All the cattle, for Kamuzu Banda Ife tonse, Ndi a Kamuzu Banda. All of us, for Kamuzu Banda In chapter 3 , Muhammed Kamil examines the career and lead- ership style of the single French-African nationalist leader who voted no to De Gaulle’s 1958 referendum for a Franco-African Community in which French colonies would enjoy limited self- government (Jallow 2011). The zeal with which Touré con- demned colonialism, neocolonialism, and what he considered the agents of imperialism was unrivaled in the history of the single- party state in Africa. Claiming that the leader was, ultimately, the representative of the culture of the newly decolonized peo- ples, Touré insisted that “decolonization does not consist merely in liberating oneself from the presence of the colonizers: it must necessarily be completed by total liberation from the spirit of the colonized . . . from the evil consequences—moral, intellec- tual and cultural—of the colonial system” (Langley 1979, 603). Like other first-generation African leaders, Touré assumed Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 Copyrighted material – 9781137478115 Yüklə 242,5 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|