AFRICA: A COCONUT CONTINENT
---------------------
Africa remains an enigmatic paradox and continues to defy analysis. Its prospects improved somewhat in the mid-decades, only to be clipped by the global financial crisis. The least-developed region in the Third World while all other regions have made some, albeit difficult progress, sub-Saharan Africa is still mired in grinding poverty, crushing debt, squalor and social destitution. Economic success stories in Africa are pitifully few: Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, and arguably Rwanda.

Despite its immense wealth of mineral resources, Africa remains inexorably mired in abject, misery, deprivation, and chaos. When the World Bank adjusted its yardstick for extreme poverty from $1.00 to $1.25 a day, it found that,

"While most of the developing world has managed to reduce poverty, the rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region, has not changed in nearly 25 years, according to date using the new $1.25 a day poverty line. Half of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa were living below the poverty line in 2005, the same as in 1981. That means about 389 million lived under the poverty line in 2005, compared with 200 million in 1981" (The New York Times, Aug 27, 2008; p.A7)

Back in 2003, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) warned that at the prevailing rates it would take sub-Saharan Africa another 150 years to reach some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agreed to by UN members for 2015. (Financial Times, July 9, 2003; p.1). Former U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, declared at the African Union Summit in Abuja in January, 2005, that Africa was failing to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This was echoed by the United Nations' African Development director, Gilbert Houngbo, in Congo-Brazzaville: "The [African] continent will fail to reach the goal of slashing poverty in half by 2015" (The Washington Times, April 26, 2007; p.A14).

Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed and whole states have failed under brutal repression. The toll of despotism has been especially devastating for Africa. Africa is poor because she is not free. However, a failed state evolves through various phases. There are various stages of evolution. It begins as a vampire state, metastasizes into a coconut republic and then finally implodes (collapsed state).

Vampire States

The most remarkable aspect of despotism is the rapid deterioration of the institution of government. "Government," as it is known in the West, does not exist in countries ruled by despots. Leaving aside the democratic requirement that a government must be by the people and for the people, one expects at a minimum a "government" to care for and be responsive to the needs of the people, or at least, to perform some basic services for its people. But even this most basic requirement for "government" is often lacking in s dictatorship. "Government" as an entity is totally divorced from the people, perceived by those running it as a vehicle not to serve but to fleece the people. Dishonesty, thievery, and peculation pervade the public sector. Public servants embezzle state funds; high-ranking ministers are on the take. Government has become irrelevant to the people.

Said a tribal chief: "Here in Lesotho, we have two problems: rats and the government." Simon Agbo, a farmer in Ogbadibo, south of Makurdi, Benue state capital in Nigeria, lamented: "I heard we have a new government. It makes no difference to me. Here we have no light [electricity], we have no water. There is no road. We have no school. The government does nothing for us" (The Washington Times, Oct 21, 1999; p.A19).

What then exists is a vampire state – a "government" hijacked by a phalanx of bandits, gangsters, crooks, and scoundrels who use the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, their cronies, supporters, members of their own ethnic, racial or religious group and exclude everyone else. It is an apartheid-like system based on the politics of exclusion. One is poor if one does not belong to that charmed circled. The richest in Africa and many Third World countries are the ruling vampire elites and government ministers. And quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself. According to WikiLeaks, "Sudan's president, Omar el-Bashir, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, stole $9 billion" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12025213). Said a Sudanese trader bitterly: "They talk and talk about Islam. The Prophet Mohammad never had a big house like theirs. We the people are left on the street waiting for something to eat" (The Washington Times, 27 July 1995, A19).

They have seized and monopolized both political and economic power to advance their own selfish and criminal interests, not to develop their economies. Their over-arching obsession is to amass personal wealth, gaudily displayed in flashy automobiles, fabulous mansions and a bevy of fawning women. Helping the poor, promoting economic growth or improving the standard of living of their people is anathema to the ruling elites. "Food for the people!" "People's power!" "Houses for the masses!" are simply empty slogans that are designed to fool the people and the international community.

A Nigerian pro-democracy activist, Arthur Nwanko, wrote devastatingly about his country's rulers from jail:

"National wealth and resources have been scandalously pillaged by a band of armed booty‑seekers and their retinue of civilian collaborators. Not content with the destruction of the economy; not content with inflicting enormous social dislocations on the polity; not content with raping democracy; people and fundamental rights; not content with institutionalizing corruption as a national art form; and not content with causing the decay of the nation's agricultural, industrial, and social infrastructure, including the environment, the health and educational system through their planlessness and visionless leadership, these single‑minded despots have moved into the area of violating the nation's honor, sense of worth and dignity, and through that caused the massive debasement of the humanity of Nigerians in the eyes of the rest of civilized humanity" (Post Express Wired,. 17 June 1998).

Nigeria is the classic African example of a vampire state. Between 1970 and 2004, more than $450 billion in oil revenue flowed into Nigerian government coffers. But much of it was looted by Nigeria's kamikaze military bandits. According to David Blair of London Telegraph (June 25, 2005):

"Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused £220 billion ($412 billion). That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent. Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn. The figures were compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission.
Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply. With more people and more natural resources than any other African country, Nigeria is the key to the continent's success."

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up in 2003, said that £220 billion ($412 billion) was "squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of civilian rule in 1999. "We cannot be accurate down to the last figure but that is our projection," Osita Nwajah, a commission spokesman (Telegraph, June 25, 2005). The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.

For 18 months (Feb 1999 to August 2000), Nigeria's vampire state was paralyzed by wrangling over perks by legislator. Its 109 senators and 360 representatives passed just five pieces of legislation, including a budget that was held up for five months. Immediately upon taking office, the legislators voted for themselves hefty allowances, including a 5 billion naira ($50 million) furniture allowances for their official residences and offices. The impeached ex-chairman of the Senate from President Obasanjo's own People's Democratic Party (PDP), Chuba Okadigbo, was the most blood-thirsty:

"As Senate President, he controlled 24 official vehicles but ordered 8 more at a cost of $290,000. He was also found to have spent $225,000 on garden furniture for his government house, $340,000 on furniture for the house itself ($120,000 over the authorized budget); bought without authority a massive electricity generator whose price he had inflated to $135,000; and accepted a secret payment of $208,000 from public funds, whose purpose included the purchase of `Christmas gifts'" (New African,, Sept 2000; p.9).

And it gets better: President Obasanjo went the loot the Abachas had stashed abroad. Much public fanfare was made of the sum of about $709 million and another 144 million pounds sterling recovered from the Abachas and his henchmen. But this recovered loot itself was quickly re-looted. The Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and 2.8 million pounds sterling of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express (July 10, 2000).

In case after case, African government officials get rich by misusing their positions. Faithful only to their foreign bank accounts, these official buccaneers have no sense of morality, justice, of even patriotism. They would kill, maim and even destroy their own countries to acquire and protect their booty because, as functional illiterates, they are incapable of using the skills and knowledge they acquired from education to get rich on their own -- in the private sector. Needless to say, they are "derided by some African experts as `the extractors,' people who squandered wealth without building for the future" (The Wall Street Journal, 10 December 1996, A1).

The inviolate ethic of the vampire elites is self-aggrandizement and self-perpetuation in power. To achieve those objectives, they take over and subvert every key institution of government: the civil service, judiciary, military, media, and banking. As a result, state institutions and commissions become paralyzed. Laxity, ineptitude, indiscipline and unprofessionalism thus flourish in the public sector. Of course, the country may have a police force and judiciary system to catch and prosecute the thieves. But the police are themselves highway robbers, under orders to protect the looters in power, and many of the judges are themselves crooks.

Needless to say, there are no checks against brigandage. The worst is the military -- the most trenchantly perverted institution in Africa. In any normal, civilized society, the function of the military is to defend the territorial integrity of the nation and the people against external aggression. But under despotic regimes, the military is instead locked in combat with the very people it is supposed to defend. "Across much of Africa, a soldier's uniform and gun had long been regarded -- and are still seen -- as little more than a license to engage in banditry" (Gourevitch, 1998, 218). Wole Soyinka (1996) handed the postcolonial soldiers a blistering rebuke:

"The military dictatorships of the African continent, parasitic, unproductive, totally devoid of social commitment or vision, are an expression of this exclusionist mentality of a handful; so are those immediately postcolonial monopolies that parade themselves as single-party states. To exclude the sentient pluratity of any society from the right of decision in the structuring of their own lives is an attempt to anesthetize, turn comatose, indeed idiotize society, which of course is a supreme irony, since the proven idiots of our postcolonial experience have been, indeed still are, largely to be found among the military dictators." (139).

A simple rule of thumb on development has emerged: The index of economic well-being of a developing country is inversely related to the length of time the military has held political power. The longer it stays in power, the greater the economic devastation. Said African News Weekly in its September 1, 1995 editorial:

"No military coup in Africa has produced a vibrant economy to replace the bankrupt one it set out to redeem. In almost every case, the army boys have imbibed the ways of the corrupt politicians they pushed out of office and even taken their crookedness to a higher level" (7).

Meanwhile, the despotic regime wobbles, as it lurches from one crisis to another. The legitimacy of its vampire state is openly questioned. Some sections of the population are in open defiance and have mounted roadblocks. He barks orders which are routinely ignored. His ruling vampire elites are clueless about how to resolve the economic crisis resort to desperate measures to keep things under control. Steadily, the vampire state hardens into a coconut republic and may provoke a rebellion.

Coconut Republics

This invites a distinction. In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work – now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably. Electric supply is spasmodic and the water tap has a mind of its own. Occasionally, it might spit some water and then change its mind. Buses operate according to their own internal clock, set according to Martian time – whatever that is. By the grace of God or Allah, a bus might arrive, belching thick black smoke. Food and gasoline are generally available but expensive, if one is willing to contend with occasional long lines. The police are helpful sometimes when they are bribed and can protect the people by catching real crooks. There is petty corruption. Now and then, a million dollars here and a million there might be embezzled. Such a banana republic often slips into suspended animation or arrested development.

A coconut republic, on the other hand, is ruthlessly inefficient, lethal and eventually implodes. Instead of a banana peel, one might step on a live grenade. Here, common sense has been butchered and arrogant tomfoolery rampages with impunity. The entire notion of "governance" has been turned completely on its head by the ruling vampire elites. They wield all the power and commit crimes, as well as plunder with impunity. They are not answerable or accountable to anybody and one dares not ask. Impunity reigns supreme. It is here where one finds tyrants chanting "People's Revolution" and "Freedom!"while standing on the necks of their people. A "revolution" is a major, cataclysmic event that brings about an overthrow of the ancien regime or a complete change in the order of doing things. It makes a clean break with the existing way of doing things and establishes a new way or order. In politics, for example, a "revolution" occurs when the subjugated and exploited class rises up to overthrow the oppressors -- as occurred with the American and French revolutions. But in a coconut republic, it is the other way round. Ever noticed that those African leaders who vociferously claim they are fighting against terrorism in order to receive Western aid are themselves sponsors of state terrorism against their own people?

In a coconut republic, the rule of law is a farce; bandits are in charge, their victims in jail. The police and security forces protect the ruling vampire elites, not the people. The chief bandit is the head of state himself. They have constant supply of electricity and their water taps run all the time; the people can collect rain water. There are inexhaustible supplies of food and gasoline for them, but not for the people. And there are no buses for the people. Period. Those shiny buses that ply the road are for vampire elites. The people can walk. The republic sits atop vast reserves of oil and exports oil. Yet, there is no gasoline for the people since the country's oil refineries have broken down. Funds earmarked for repairs had been stolen and refined petroleum products must be imported. The country may also be rich in mineral deposits – such as diamonds, gold, col-tan. Yet, the mineral wealth has produced misery.

A coconut republic is where:

Uganda's Agriculture Minister, Kibirige Ssebunya, declares that: "All the poor should be arrested because they hinder us from performing our development duties. It is hard to lead the poor, and the poor cannot lead the rich. They should be eliminated" (New Vision, Kampala, Dec 15, 2004). He advised local leaders to arrest poor people in their areas of jurisdiction.
The country runs out of paper with which to print money (Zimbabwe): "Reserve Bank officials told IRIN that plans to print about Zim$60 trillion (about US$592.9 million) were briefly delayed after the government failed to secure foreign currency to buy ink and special paper for printing money."
The government tames hyperinflation by banning price increases: "In Jan 2007, the Government of Zimbabwe said it would tame the country's 1,600 percent inflation rate by making wage and price increases illegal" (The New York Times, Feb 13, 2007; p.A5).
Despots claim they are fighting "terrorists" when they themselves are the real state terrorists (Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe). Charles Taylor of Liberia once had an "anti-terrorism unit" run by his son. Even the warlords of Somalia "formed what they call an anti-terrorism coalition" (The New York Times, May 1, 2006).
President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, declares that anyone aspiring to his job needed "to wait like a vulture, patiently," because he planned to stay in office at least 30 years longer" (The New York Times, April 19, 2006; p.A6).
A former minister of finance was found hiding – where else? -- in a coconut tree: "Zambia's former finance minister, Katele Kalumba, was arrested and charged with theft after the police found him hiding in a tree near his rural home. Mr. Kalumba, who had been on the run for four months, is being charged in connection with some $33 million that vanished while he was in office (The New York Times, Jan 16, 2003; p.A8).
The late president, General Samuel Doe of Liberia summoned his finance minister – "only to be reminded by aides that he had already executed him" (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2003; p.A4).

The Washington Post (Sep 9, 2003) offered this assessment of Liberia, under former dictator, Charles Taylor:

"Wheel barrows serve as ambulances for the people. The public schools do not function; more than 70 percent of the population is illiterate. Yet, all government ministers have Ph.D.s – some even three or four – all purchased. At the University of Liberia, Charles Taylor offered 11,000 scholarships to his friends in 1997 but did not pay their tuition bills. Nor did his government pay the salaries of university professors and public school teacher . . . Liberia had a judicial system but Taylor named his friends who could not read or write to be judges and attorneys, and sentences were handed down on his orders . . . The capital has a fire building, painted bright red but its only fire truck has no tires, headlamps, or even a hose. Wires dangle from the engine. With no running water in the city, firefighters must jog or hitchhike to a creek three miles away to fetch water in buckets to put out a fire" (p.A18).

If there is no food in the country, Zimbabwe's ruling bandits fly into South Africa and return, laden with huge bags of groceries. And the people? They can eat grass. Meanwhile, construction workers have feverishly put finishing touches to the retirement home of President Robert Mugabe at an exclusive area, 18 miles north of Harare. The mansion has been estimated to cost about £3.75 million ($5.25 million) - a colossal sum in a country where factory workers barely earned £6 a month. After adding landscaping, security and interior decoration, the final cost is expected to exceed £6 million ($8.4 million). The mansion is being put up at a time when vast numbers of Zimbabweans – some 5.5 million or about half of the population – face starvation and need hunger relief. Starving Zimbabweans would not only foot the construction bill but also the cost of protecting the property by 4 uniformed police officers 24 hours a day! And there is nothing the people can do about that!! To the ruling elite, "development" means developing their pockets and seeking "foreign investment" means looking for a foreign country to invest the loot!

Whereas in a banana republic a million here and there might be stolen, in a coconut republic it is the entire treasury that is carted away. In pre-dawn raids, the late General Sani Abacha of Nigeria sent heavily armed trucks into the basement of the Central Bank of Nigeria and carted away billions of dollars, which were spirited out of the country by his henchmen in suitcases. "A Nigerian man and a banker accompanying him were arrested at the Lagos airport after trying to board a London-bound jet with $800 million in cash. Customs officials said the seizure was the biggest recorded in Nigeria. The banker accompanied the other man apparently so that customs officials would not ask questions. The money has since been deposited in the Central Bank of Nigeria" (The Washington Times, 29 July 1995, A7).

The late General Sani Abacha's family thought they were smart. They hired Usman Mohammed Bello – a Sudanese from Karsala -- to look after their three children attending school in Amman, Jordan. Usman became a close confidante of Abacha with access to several coded foreign accounts opened by the late General. The family so trusted him that Abacha gave him diplomatic status in the Nigerian foreign office in Amman. He was also issued with both diplomatic passport number F317567 and a standard passport number A104786. Subsequently, Abacha was poisoned or died in 1998 from exhaustion after a Viagra-fueled sex orgy – depending on upon which version one believes. A short transitional government led to the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in March 1999, who vowed to recover Abacha's loot from abroad.

On October 1, 1999, Usman Bello vanished. A hysterical Abacha family appealed to Nigeria's police and government for help in catching him! "Nigeria's State Security Service (SSS) established that the Sudanese might have salted away millions of dollars entrusted to him by the Abacha family and may also be privy to other financial transactions of the family overseas, especially in the Arab world" (Weekly Insight, July 19-25, 2000; p.1). Only in a coconut republic would thieves appeal to the police to apprehend a thief!

Even then, part of the Abacha loot that was recovered, was quickly re-looted! About $709 million and another ₤144 million were recovered from the loot the Abachas and his henchmen stashed abroad. But the Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and ₤2.8 million of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express (July 10, 2000).

Coconut Security Forces

The police are highway robbers and judges, crooks. Tell a police officer that you saw a minister stealing the people's money and it is you he will arrest! Asked to investigate the brutal murders of Robert Ouko and British tourist, Julie Ward, Kenya police issued this report:

"Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was presumed to have broken his own leg, shot himself in the head and set himself afire. Two years earlier, Kenyan officials suggested that a British tourist, Julie Ward, lopped off her own head and one of her legs before setting herself aflame" (The Washington Post, April 20, 2001; p. A19).

The security forces can unleash the full force of their fury on unarmed civilians with batons, tear gas, water canons and rubber bullets. But how really brave are the security forces?

On 16 December 1998, Corporal C. Darko and Constable K. A. Boateng at a Police Station in Accra, Ghana, were instructed to go and arrest Samuel Quartey, who was reported to police for being involved in a theft case. "When the suspect came out brandishing a cutlass (a machete), the police officers did what most people would have done -- took to their heels with the speed of lightning that could have made an enviable record had they been timed" (The Mirror, 2 Jan 1999, 1).

On July 23, 1998, Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, strutted pompously to deliver a speech at a state function at Osogbo in the southwestern part of Lagos, Nigeria. As the Daily Champion (24 July 1998) reported:

"Panic‑stricken Nigerian officials ran for safety when first a rat and then a python, apparently drawn by the smell of the rat, made a sudden appearance. The officials leapt up from their seats when the rat, described as having a "long snout and offensive smell," appeared from beneath the carpet by the high table. Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, and his entourage nervously returned after security agents intervened and killed the beast. (p.1)

Ambushed by bunch of rag-tag cattle rustlers, Kenya's elite presidential guards quickly surrendered. Johann Wandetto, a reporter for the People Daily, a newspaper in Kitale, Rift Valley province, submitted a story in the March 6, 1999 edition with the title: "Militia men rout 8 crack unit officers: Shock as Moi's men surrender meekly." Wandetto was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison on what the court described as an "alarmist report" (Index on Censorship, 3/2000; p.99).

Nor can the security forces shoot straight. When civil broke out in the DR Congo in 1997, Chad sent in troops to help the regime of Laurent Kabila stave off rebel attacks. What happened? "Congo rebels said 93 Chadian soldiers were killed in an ambush by Kabila government troops who mistook their identities. Chad, one of the nations allied with the Kabila regime, insisted the toll was lower" (The Wall Street Journal, 12 November 1998, A1).

And the mother of all security forces? When the African Union (AU) peacekeepers' base on the edge of Haskanita, a small town in southern Darfur, came under sustained rebel assault on Sept 29, 2007, they fled into the bush. "Ten were killed; at least 40 fled into the bush. The attackers looted the compound before Sudanese troops arrived to rescue the surviving peacekeepers" (The Economist, Oct 11, 2007; p.48)

Coconut Elections

They are, essentially, farcical elections in which the incumbent writes the rules, and then serves as a player, the referee, and the goalkeeper. The deck is hideously stacked against the opposition candidates, who are starved of funds, denied access to the state-controlled media, and are brutalized by government-hired thugs, as the police watch. Opposition parties are banned too.

By contrast, the incumbent enjoys access to enormous state resources: state media, vehicles, the police, the military and civil servants -- are all commandeered to ensure his re-election. Further, the entire electoral process itself is rigged: Voter rolls are padded with ruling party supporters and phantom voters, while opposition supporters are purged. The Electoral Commissioner is in the pocket of the ruling party, as are the judges who might settle any election disputes. During the election campaign, posters of the incumbent are everywhere, while pro-government thugs terrorize the populace and anyone perceived to be a supporter of the opposition parties. Innocent civilians are force-marched to attend incumbent party's rallies, while opposition rallies are violently disrupted and opposition supporters brutalized and even killed, as the police look on.

On election day, the ruling party resorts to various tricks to steal the election. Ballot papers do not arrive on time, inducing frustrated opposition supporters to leave polling stations. Ballot boxes arrive but already stuffed with votes for the incumbent. And if during the vote count the opposition appears to be winning, the process is halted and the ballot boxes transported to a secret location where the votes are counted in camera. Rigging is so contumacious that posted election results do not reflect actual voting. This was the case in Ghana's 1996 elections, where a challenger, Major Erskine, to the brutal regime of Fte./Lte. Jerry Rawlings, did not even get one single vote in his own constituency!! That is, he did not even vote for himself!!

Coconut election is akin to playing a political soccer match on a playing field that is so hideously un-level that even the blind could see so. The rules of the game are written by the ruling party and their goalposts, 2 feet by 3 feet, sit on top of a hill, which is 40 miles away from the center line. And that center line is just 10 yards away from the opposition goalposts, which are 70 feet by 80 feet and placed in a valley.

The team of the ruling elites sport shiny brand new red uniforms, whereas the opposition team don tattered yellow jerseys. Half the players on the opposition team have been disqualified and languish in jail, with no possibility of replacement. In addition, the referee (umpire), the linesmen and other judges are all clad in red uniforms, wildly cheering the team of the ruling elites!! If, in spite of the tremendous odds, the opposition team appears to be winning, the match is immediately stopped and the rest of the opposition team arrested and jailed.

A coconut election is where:

Lt. General Emmanuel Erskine, leader of the People's Heritage Party (PHP) did not win a single vote in his own constituency. In other words, he did not vote for himself; neither did his wife and four children. It was also a marriage-wrecker election. He was livid. After complaining vehemently, the Electoral Commission tossed 6 votes his way to save his marriage.
General Gnassingbe Eyadema, former and late president of Togo, stopped the vote count when it appeared that he was losing. The ballot boxes were transported to a secret location, counted in secret with Eyadema declared the winner in 1993. General Samuel Doe of Liberia did the same in 1985 and General Ibrahim Mainassara of Niger also did the same in 1993.
The opposition candidates were tossed into jail, a day before the elections (Rwanda, Aug 2003). On August 25, 2003, Paul Kagame, leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), won 95.05 percent of the vote. His challenger, Faustin Twagiramungu, found his campaign stymied at every turn by government security forces. His rallies were canceled, his workers arrested and his brochures seized. On the eve of the voting, "police arrested 12 of Twagiramungu's provincial organizers, saying they were preparing election day violence" (The Washington Times, Aug 28, 2003; p.A19). "In Twagiramungu's home town, soldiers reportedly looked at ballot papers and ordered those who voted the wrong way to try again" (The Economist, Aug 30, 2003; p.32). Faustin Twagiramungu, won 3.62 percent and a third candidate, Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira, had 1.33 percent (The New York Times, Aug 26, 2003; p.A6).
President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and his ruling party won 99.6 percent of the vote (May 2010).
The Muslim Brotherhood does not win a single seat in their own stronghold (Egypt, Nov, 2010).
The electoral equipment for coconut elections, the results of which are stolen anyway, is itself stolen! (Nigeria, Nov 2010).
The losing candidate, Cellou Diallo, vehemently challenges Guinea's election results and vowed to take the electoral commissioner to The Hague for crimes against humanity. Then, all of a sudden, he was as quiet as a Church mouse. Alas, he was promised something.
Both candidates – Gbagbo and Ouattara – claim victory and install themselves as presidents (Ivory Coast).
Political parties can campaign and hold political rallies. But a rally of more than 6 people is illegal (Uganda and Burma). In the March 2001 election in President Yoweri Museveni and his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) won a landslide. Back in 1986, he had declared that no African state of state should be in power for more than 10 years. Of course, he was exempt.

Coconut Reform

It is clear that the vampire state or the coconut republic must be reformed and replaced with a well-functioning state. The World Bank (2000b) outlined the characteristics of such a state:

"The first is the capacity to maintain nationwide peace, law and order, without which other government functions are compromised or impossible. Second, states must secure individual liberty and equality before the law, a process still working itself out in the West and elsewhere. This has been a major institutional inadequacy in many African states. Secure property rights and transparent adjudication of disputes arising thereof are critical in shaping investment decisions. Third, the state needs workable checks and balances on the arbitrary exercise of power. Public decision-making must be transparent and predictable. Oversight mechanisms should guard against arbitrariness and ensure accountability in the use of public resources, but need not eliminate flexibility and delegation needed to respond quickly to changing circumstances" (p.51).

To establish a well-functioning state, reform is needed in many areas -- in the political system, the economic system, the judiciary system, the educational system and the electoral system, to mention a few. But reform is anathema to the ruling vampire elites and coconut-heads.

Ask them to privatize inefficient state enterprises and they would sell the companies to themselves and their cronies at fire-sale prices. In 1992, in accordance with loan conditionalities, the Government of Uganda began a privatization effort to sell-off 142 of its state-owned enterprises. However, in 1998, the process was halted twice by Uganda's own parliament because, according to the chair of a parliamentary select committee, Tom Omongole, it had been "derailed by corruption," implicating three senior ministers who had "political responsibility" (The East African, June 14, 1999). The sale of these 142 enterprises was initially projected to generate 900 billion Ugandan shillings or $500 million. However, by the autumn of 1999 the revenue balance was only 3.7 billion Ushs.
According to Muhammad Al Ghanam, the former director of Legal Research in Egypt's Ministry of Interior, corruption in Egypt has reached unprecedented heights in Mr. Mubarak's government in the name of privatization and the change to a market economy. He noted:
"The government has sold the greater part of public-sector companies for less than a quarter of their worth to businessmen working for either Mr. Mubarak's sons or foreign companies in return for huge commissions for the Mubaraks and top government officials.
To obtain a high position in the Interior Ministry and the Intelligence Ministry, it is necessary to be involved in corruption, and being condemned by courts for corruption is an asset. Through corruption, Mr. Mubarak secures the loyalty of heads of the security departments, making sure they will execute his policies and oppress his political adversaries.
Mr. Mubarak has encouraged those ministries to loot public money by forming companies that offer construction services and, contrary to the law, are given deals by the state for huge sums, in some cases 20 times the amount offered to competing companies. These funds are then distributed among the top people at those ministries.
The Mubarak era will be known in the history of Egypt as the era of thievery (The Washington Times, June 9, 2002; p.B2).
Ask them to develop their economies and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek foreign investment and they will seek a foreign country to invest the loot.
Ask them to enforce the rule of law and they would force the law to respect their whims. In January 2000, the ruling party's (KANU's) gang of thugs known as Jeshi la Mzee ("the old man's army"), attacked a group of opposition leaders outside parliament who were protesting against the resumption of IMF assistance. "It was the protesters, not the thugs, who were arrested" (The Economist, Feb 5, 2000; p.42). Said The Economist (March 16, 2002): "In Zimbabwe, the thieves are in charge and their victims face prosecution" (p.18). In 2000, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ruled that invasions of white commercial farmlands by "war veterans" did not constitute a workable form of land redistribution -- a position, which was affirmed by a Commonwealth agreement struck in Abuja, Nigeria in September, 2001. But President Robert Mugabe tossed the agreement aside, reconstituted the Supreme Court by packing it with pliant judges who then ruled on Dec 6 2001 that the barbaric and violent land invasions were legal (The Economist, Dec 8, 2001; p.45).
Ask them to trim their bloated bureaucracies and cut government spending and they will establish a "Ministry of Less Government Spending." Ask them to establish a market-based economy and place more emphasis on the private sector and they will create a "Ministry of Private Enterprise," as Ghana did in 2002. Aided by a gaggle of vampire elites, they resist any attempt at reform. Said Osasu Obayiuwaa, a Nigerian reporter, "Many high profile figures in the current dispensation colluded with previous military regimes and civilian regimes in plundering economic resources. Not surprisingly, they have no interest in altering the status quo that gave them the ill-gotten wealth" (New African, Dec 2001; p.26.)
Ask them to reform their abominable political and economic systems and they will perform the "coconut boogie." Ask them to establish democratic pluralism and they will create surrogate parties, appoint their own Electoral Commissioners, empanel a gang of lackeys to write the constitution, inflate the voter's register, manipulate the electoral rules and hold coconut elections to return themselves to power. Even African children could see through this chicanery and fraud. Said Adam Maiga, from Mali: "We must put an end to this demagoguery. You have parliaments, but they are used as democratic decoration" (BBC News website, May 10, 2002).

The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. In 2010, only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic, fewer than 8 are "economic success stories," only 8 have a free and independent media.

The modern leadership is a far cry from the traditional leadership Africa has known for centuries. The Free Africa Foundation believes that the wholesale rejection of Africa's own native institutions and heritage by modern African leaders lies at the root of Africa's woes. The Foundation seeks to restore to Africans their native freedoms: Their freedom to express their thoughts without harassment, their freedom of worship, their freedom to participate in the decision-making process; and their freedom to engage in what economic activities they choose.

The Free Africa Foundation also believes it is the systematic stripping away of these native freedoms that is largely responsible for the post colonial ruination of Africa. The continent is in a mess mainly because the economic, political and ideological systems imposed upon Africa by its nationalist leaders are alien to Africa's own indigenous systems. The result is a continent littered with the carcasses of borrowed or imported systems.

Over the years, the positions taken by the Free Africa Foundation have thoroughly been vindicated (The Vindication). For example, the Foundation coined the expression, "African solutions for African problems," back in 1994 following the Somali debacle. Since then, the expression has gained currency. Furthermore, the Foundation has consistently argued that Africa's salvation lies in returning to roots and building upon its own indigenous institutions. It is noteworthy that the essence of this dictum has not only been captured by the expression, African Renaissance, but it also underscored the ethos of the democratization movement in the early 1990s. The "sovereign national conference" was a vehicle that was used to make a peaceful democratic transition in Benin, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia. That vehicle was a modernization of the indigenous African institution of "village meeting."

We at the Free Africa Foundation do not expect everyone to agree with our viewpoints and positions. Those who disagree are free to do so but owe it as a duty to Africa to table better proposals and point Africa in the right direction. We believe strongly in freedom of expression. And the West did not invent that either.

(Updated: December. 2010)