Mose,

Thanks for another lucid obeservation; the other being the piece about
lessons to learn from the crisis in the Ivory Coast.

Having established that the West, though having flourishing democracies and
media if I may add that, do not necessarily have a well-
informed/politically aware electorate. Despite this shortcoming however,
they still manage to have government changes without much rancour. In
countries like the USA, there are term limits whilst in others like the UK,
France, Germany etc, do not. I, myself, do not know for certain why this is
not so in most of Africa. Instead what we have are self-perpetuating
leaders whose only motive in staying in power is to protect their loot and
to avoid be investigated for bad governance and abuse of office.

On the other hand, we do not, in most cases have an honest following. This
reminds me of a song by the Senegalese music superstar Assan Mboob. In one
of his songs he says "Mbotai bu gainn moy Ngeet gu jupp and mbolloh mu
gorreh". Meaning, what's best in an organisation/state is a straight/honest
leadership and an honest following. This unfortunately is very much lacking
in most African countries. Instead what we have a bunch of well-educated
individuals who have perfected the art of thievery, corruption and a total
dis-regard for their own people. How else can one explain our endless
suffering? It seems that at the heart of any bad leadership there are a
bunch of well educated people who would rather guide our leaders in
fleecing us of all that is worth living for and how to silence us should we
complain. This, they would do by harassment, deptivation and elimination.
This group of leaders and their advisers would never accept that the rest
of the population can think and make the right choices/decisions when
consulted.

Have a good day, Gassa


--
There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve (Mike Leavitt)

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