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Tierno Monénembo – The Hereditary Republics

 

In Africa, to speak of tribalism is a misnomer. It would have been wonderful if our leaders practiced true tribalism: they would at least have solved the problems of a part of the population. In truth, politics with us is not a tribal affair, it is a family affair. The death of Marshal Idriss Déby, and his almost automatic replacement by his son, is undeniable revealing. Idriss Déby is not an isolated case, even if we learned with amazement that his clan alone held all the economic and political levers of the country.

The misdeeds of kinship

With one or two exceptions, all of our leaders are vulnerable to the terrible harms of kinship. The family is a strong thing, an irrational thing over which we are all powerless. Especially in Africa where, numerous and imperative, it gets involved in everything, decides everything. Houphouët-Boigny knew what he was doing when, at the start of Côte d’Ivoire’s independence, he kicked his children out of the political playing field. Conversely, it was the misdeeds of the family clan that got the better of Sékou Touré. It was his brothers and sisters, his cousins ​​and his nephews who reduced him to the vile rank of bloodthirsty dictator, he who was the charismatic figure of the “No” to de Gaulle.

More and more contested both within the people and within his own party, he thought he was doing well, from 1967 to replace both his party and his government by his family with the disastrous consequences that we know.

It’s not over yet

If, in 1984, the Touré clan collapsed following the death of what was called “the Grand Syli”, elsewhere, republican dynasties had the opportunity to germinate and grow stronger. And it is not at all sure that others will not come after the Bongo and the Eyadema. In Brazzaville, if all goes well, a Sassou Nguesso will replace another. In Cameroon, the candidacy (necessarily eligible!) Of Franck Biya, his father’s son is no longer a taboo. In Equatorial Guinea, we see no one else to succeed Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbassogo Macias than his son, the very scandalous Teodorin. And the public rumor, which is rarely wrong, gives a lot of luck to the son Alpha Mohamed Condé in Guinea and to the brother Téné Birahima Ouattara in Ivory Coast, or Aliou Sall in Senegal. If IBK had not fallen, his son Karim, who was already the chairman of the Defense committee in the National Assembly, would surely have been put into orbit.

Beware of generalizations

Normal, you will tell me: in Africa, we inherit everything, even lice from the ancestor. However, let us beware of reverse segregation. To be called Bongo or Eyadema does not make you a scoundrel, a priori. Moreover, it has happened that members of the same family have succeeded each other in power under the most honorable conditions. In Kenya, decades after his father’s death, Uhuru succeeded Jomo Kenyatta in the most democratic way. Otherwise, we are delighted to note that, in Niger, the son of President Mahamadou Issoufou has been appointed Minister of Oil and Energy in the government of President Mohamed Bazoum. That the son of a great president, like Issoufou, put his foot in the political stirrup in such reassuring conditions is rather a pledge of the future, both for Niger and for democracy in Africa.


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