WASHINGTON – Jacob Zuma is finally gone. It was a painful process. It took years; but he is now out of power. At last, he was forced to resign as South Africa’s president. That said, the very fact that he was elected and that he managed to stay there so long is a disgrace.
Zuma is bad governance
Zuma is glaring, if sad, illustration of Africa’s widespread bad governance record. He rose to power through backroom deals. He had no clue about governing. He relied on nepotism and cronies to stay on top. He was stupendously corrupt. Now that he has been forced out, his legacy is an exhausted and impoverished South Africa
Water crisis in Cape Town
Cape Town, jewel of South Africa, is literally running out of water. An awful combination of a historic drought and an almost criminal lack of planning by local and national administrators led to this impending urban catastrophe. Lacking water in reservoirs on account of an unprecedented lack of rain, nobody thought that there should be a “Plan B”. There are no alternatives, other than praying for substantial rain. No new aqueducts have been planned. No nothing.
There you have it. By all accounts, South Africa is still in the lead when it comes to economic development and higher standards of living in the African Continent. And yet this is a country in which chronic mismanagement, combined with endemic corruption and incompetence, dashed even modest most hopes and expectations for a better future. Sadly, Nelson Mandela, himself a truly exceptional human being, left no legacy.
No end to Congo’s violence
“No conflict since the 1940s has been bloodier, yet few have been more completely ignored. Estimates of the death toll in Congo between 1998 and 2003 range from roughly 1m to more than 5m—no one counted the corpses. Taking the midpoint, the cost in lives was higher than that in Syria, Iraq, Vietnam or Korea. Yet scarcely any outsider has a clue what the fighting was about or who was killing whom. Which is a tragedy, because the great war at the heart of Africa might be about to start again.” —The Economist
Well, it seems that the Congo is once again reaching a boiling point. A vast, unmanageable country, with large mineral resources, is becoming a failed state. More violence and more deaths to be expected.
Major troubles in Ethiopia
“On Thursday, Hailemariam Desalegn abruptly announced he would step down as Prime Minister and head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition. He cited ongoing “unrest and a political crisis” in the country as major factors in his resignation, which he described as “vital in the bid to carry out reforms that would lead to sustainable peace and democracy”.
“Hailemariam, who has sat at the helm of the Ethiopian government since 2012, said he will stay on as prime minister in a caretaker capacity until the EPRDF and the parliament accept his resignation and appoint his successor. This is the second state of emergency to be declared in Ethiopia in the last two years.”
“In August 2017, Ethiopia lifted a 10-month state of emergency imposed after hundreds of people were killed in anti-government protests demanding wider political freedoms.”
“The country’s Oromo and Amhara people – who make up about 61 percent of the population – have staged mass demonstrations since 2015 demanding greater political inclusion and an end to human rights abuses. The protests have continued this month, with many people expressing frustration over a perceived slow government release of political prisoners.” —Aljazeera
Ethiopia’s leaders liked the Chinese model. They believed that they could be both total autocrats and smart technocrats capable of delivering economic development and higher standards of living. Instead their way of governing generated wide unrest. Can they retain control? If so, at what price?
Bad governance
What am I driving at with these stories? very simple. These snapshots unfortunately illustrate that Africa is not yet delivering on its promise to be the next bright chapter in human development.
The common thread here is that bad to awful governance, treating political power as a personal or factional perk to be abused to the extreme, is the cause of most of Africa’s problems.