Of Prime Ministers dying unhappy

On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela died at a great and revered age of 95. His death marked the end of a great mixed chapter of history; I doubt someone will equal that in this lifetime. At the time, I was a student at some university within Africa. Among my classmates was one from the Republic of South Africa. In Malawi, and I should believe it to be the case elsewhere in Africa, a colleague bereaved deserves some comfort, sometimes we go beyond mere words to show we care. So, I decided to offer that classmate some word of comfort.

“I hear Nelson Mandela is dead,” I said. “He is, yes,” she replied. “It’s sad for South Africa,” I added. “Of course, but the man has done his part,” she said, her eyes as dry. This was a case typical of Achebe’s description of a stranger who mourned louder than the bereaved themselves.

I learnt something from her response, namely that a person who dies after accomplishing for his people leaves behind a huge life to be celebrated, and celebrated it is in measures unprecedented. No one forgets the contributions of a great man or woman, and Lord Rosebery (British Liberal Statesman and Prime Minister 1847-1929) put the reasons succinctly when he said: “There are two supreme pleasures in life. One is ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of office from his Sovereign. The real pleasure comes when he hands them back.” Put simply, the real pleasure of politics does not lie when you assume power; it lies when you leave that tower of power, i.e. the legacy you leave for your people to celebrate the achievement and sacrifices you made for them. This is where true leadership satisfaction comes from.

Frantz Fanon—1925-61—said of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) way back before her independence—“The shape of Africa resembles a revolver, and Zaire is the trigger.” Well, I have a documentary showing part of the negotiations between the then Zairian President, Late Mobuto Sese Seko and the then rebel leader, Late Laurent Kabila inside the Outeniqua (ship) with Mandela among the peace brokers. Mobuto was frail then, and at the end of that meeting, Mandela held Mobuto by his hand, helping him stand and walk. I could sense extraordinary love in the man. I do not mean Mandela was not without flaws; as a human being there’s no way he could be without some. However, his flaws are almost negligible in the context of the huge sacrifices he made for his country and for the people of Africa and the world.

The good-naturedness of Mandela as a human being shows a man who got the real pleasure of politics in our age, a man good in all fronts of politics.

In 1997, Lord Hailsham, a British Conservative politician (1907-2001), said of Prime Ministers in Britain: “I’ve known every Prime Minister to a greater or lesser extent since Balfour, and most of them have died unhappy.”

First, one could wonder how that someone would say of another as dying unhappy, because for one to say that, one must have the opportunity to pierce into the inner world of that dying man’s last second. But I think Lord Hailsham was looking at the legacy these people leave behind for their people. Does the legacy you leave behind bring pride in your institutions or in the people you had once represented? I wonder how many of us and our leaders would reply to this with a bold yes.

This year, Malawi lost one of her great politicians in the name of Gwanda Chakuamba. Upon hearing of his death, many people said so much about him being a great politician, a good man, et cetera et cetera. The President, Peter Mutharika, described him as Malawi’s national legend, and ordered that he be sent off with full military honours.

But within this flood of sympathy for the man, some went history, unpacking his role in the darkest chapter of Malawi’s history at the hands of the Malawi Congress Party especially through a Nkrumah-model youth brigade the Malawi Young Pioneers, an organization formed to defend and protect the interests of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, an organization for which, he, Chakumba, was commander.

I do not mean to say Chakuamba died an unhappy man; I am looking at the contradictions that we leave behind upon our deaths. I can say the same of great people like Aleke Banda and his role in the Cabinet Crisis and after It, in the 1966 Constitution, that document the one party regime was to use to justify its long stay in power, at times turning on very people who had given birth to it. Aleke was Chairman of the Committee that constructed that instrument.

Leadership is not about looking for the next vote; it is about weeping with the poor and living a life that demonstrates you believe in the poor and have a heart to help them change their fate. Leadership is about listening to the voice of the poor, comforting them through word and deed. A fulfilled life of a politician can only be made when he has truly served his people without looking at where they come from and what they can give him or her in return.

I believe the most important reason most politicians leave behind a bad legacy is that they often forget that serving humanity is a great national honour that requires an equally high level of giving back in humility. Serving your people is an opportunity to exercise the highest level of good, because democracy allows only one person at a time on this opportunity. To have that opportunity and botch it through self-serving, greed and corruption is the worst one can do to this great honour of trust. And the worst is to have that heart but to lose it because those around you have their eyes set on wrong things.

Often when we talk of leadership our eyes are set on the sovereign, i.e. those ruling us. In a democracy, it is important to look at the opposition too, because they are a government-in-waiting. And of them I say, “By their works shall ye know them.”

I had a lot of hope in the MCP as a national party and a government-in-waiting, but reading seriously into them, I am beginning to have my doubts though I should be quick to say but they still have time to change things. One problem I have noticed with MCP is that, as far as I am concerned, it has never demonstrated that it shall be an improvement upon what we have. The MCP has been to courts many times and they justify this by saying it is democracy at work. The MCP is still a Central Region machinery despite the fact that Kamuzu when dying had demonstrated he wanted it turn into a national party once again. Towards the end of his life, Kamuzu had demonstrated he wanted it truly national so its leader would come from any region. The MCP that came after Kamuzu dumped all that move for change and it remains a Central Region facility.

The best way to measure sobriety in political parties is to measure the reactions and manner of response when a status quo is threatened. As far as I’m concerned MCP is failing to use divisions as an opportunity to strike a fine chord. The question I have is that if they can do all these things while in the opposition, if they can refuse to forgive within themselves, if they can refuse to listen to dissenting voices amongst themselves, how then would we expect them to listen to voices outside their fold?

When we look at leadership, we do not only refer to that in political parties or the sovereign (country’s leadership); we also talk of leadership in the institutions or organisations we serve. Are we there as part of the grand solution, or problem?

A few weeks ago at a political rally by the ruling party in Lilongwe, men and women formed a long queue to announce they had defected from various opposition parties and were now joining the ruling party. It was said this was a demonstration the ruling party was answering to the people’s needs. Usually, the trend is these men and women are brought to the podium one by one. There, the President or a top party official drapes each in a party cloth of the colour of the ruling party, before they are given some opportunity to address the ruling party supporters, the majority of whom women. Interestingly, most such men and women were previously from this same ruling party, the DPP, but when it found itself in the opposition and they could not swallow being in the opposition, they defected to the People’s Party (PP), a ruling party in power at the time. Now that the PP have found themselves in the opposition, the defectors have abandoned it to the DPP. It’s little wonder that many have described it all as kind of political pollution.

Leaders ought to be reminded that politics is much more than this, that politics is the greatest trust a people can freely endow on one on trust, and that one can never get peace until one gives back in equally honourable measures. Once a leader fails to execute the trust with such great sense of sacrifice and openness, the result becomes growing fear, fear because absence of a great legacy is synonymous with failure. Citizens in Africa must never feel happy when things do not work in their countries, and this regardless of the party they support. Health debate can help in redirecting ourselves to things that matter, and by debate, I am looking at what William Joseph Brennan Jr (an American Judge said), that “Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that . . . may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

As a nation we must feel proud to enjoy in discussing issues affecting us in an attempt to create a model of democracy on the Continent. However, people should distinguish debate from insults. Currently, there is a growing tendency in the country to mistake debate for provocation or ridicule.

Africa must learn to negotiate with its leaders, to assure them that true democracy will bring more good than harm to those they serve and thus to them as leaders eventually. Leaders have to be encouraged to respect and do the best in the time they serve the people, because it is an opportunity that does not avail itself more than twice; one must do the best in that opportunity.

A few days ago, Africa was given some false sense of hope when on December 2, 2016, President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia congratulated the winner in the country’s general elections, Adama Barrow, wishing him well as President-elect. Days later Jammeh repudiated the congratulatory message and, in fact, the whole process, stating he now totally rejects the result. I tried to make sense of this change of heart on the part of His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Doctor Yahya Jammeh Babili Mansa, “the force that can even stop a flowing river.” I believe that one reason could be that the man is looking back and feels scared of his own exploits during the days the people of the Gambia had allowed him to be their leader. This makes sense especially in the context that other voices are insisting that he must face trial for his role in alleged human rights violations in the country. The United Nations have since requested him to hand over power to Mr Barrow. Earlier the African Union had described his renunciation of the results as “null and void” having “publicly and gracefully recognised that the victory of President-elect Adama Barrow is the true expression of the will of the Gambian people.” On its part, the European Union has described Mr Jammeh’s u-turn as “unacceptable”. Let us hope that GOD will help that all will end well in the Gambia.

Africa lacks a mechanism to shape its own leaders. Most of our leaders found themselves in leadership positions through blood link, war, patronage, et cetera. What is important is that the people must try as much as possible to reason with them, to help them develop leadership skills that will leave behind a long-lasting legacy. Presenting our leaders as caricatures only helps to alienate them, and this forces them to make more and more mistakes. The opposition must also learn to respect those in power by making genuine and realistic assessments and contributions. We must remind our leaders that as they lead us today, they have a future in which history will demand room on facts of legacy to pass its brutal verdict. Above all, let us, as much as possible, learn to solve our own problems without waiting for someone from Europe to show us the negotiation table, for most of the times, those who come to help do so to gather the spoils of our feuds.

Those leaders who will serve their people with everything in them will stand to live in history because their names will forever be etched in the rubric of the people’s conscience and memory. We need that in Malawi. We can achieve that in Malawi both at national level and institutional level. Let us on our retirement or death or defeat look back with pride for the contributions we made to our institutions or to our country. In this way, we shall avoid dying like most British Prime Ministers—unhappy. At the same time, let us remember that as we do this, we must avoid commotion, or, to use Frank Ezra Adcock’s words, we must avoid a situation where the country turns into a bus with half the passengers trying to drive, and the rest trying to collect the fare.