If Idi Amin had wanted to time his death in order to give an erect finger to what we are assured is a looming African renaissance, he couldn’t have done it better.
There are some who say such a renaissance is already upon us, but in a cruelly mutated anatomy. Certainly there seems no end to the homicidal rivalry under way somewhere on our continent. It’s clearly the way we are. Without its quotidian frenzy of wars, uprisings, rebellious insurrections, coups d’état and the starvation, raping and privation that goes along with all that, Africa just wouldn’t be Africa.
Among all the blood and terror, the massacres and the burnings some almost supernatural ironies blossom. A day or three before Amin died, a collection of African presidential brethren gathered to salute the pre-eminent political monster, Charles Taylor, sending him into what the same brethren clearly believe is a well-earned retirement.
Taylor is now in loving care, an honoured ward of Nigeria’s president. He will live out his years in luxury, given country villas, serviced by hosts of servants, protected by the goon squads he took with him. What he doesn’t get on the house from President Olusegun Obasanjo, he will have to pay for himself from the riches he has accumulated in his years of ”democratic” rule. In that obscene tranche there’s at least half-a-million US dollars for every child’s arm or hand his excellent struggle-mates in the Revolutionary United Front cut off on his behalf.
Maiming aside, even greater rewards will have accrued for the two or so hundred thousand people killed while God-fearing Charles Taylor held power. And then there’s the cherry, because in African realpolitik you don’t invade, destabilise, rape and pillage three countries without gaining the eternal regard of your continental colleagues, on top of all the loot.
If Idi Amin Dada had a dying vision, it might have been the sight of a solemn row of spiffily turned out African presidents lined up in Liberia and smiling beatifically as Mr Taylor made his lunatic exit speech before boarding the Nigerian aircraft sent to take him to a safe haven.
Receiving that vision as he teetered on the edge of hell’s waiting pit, Idi Amin would have been infuriated. When, in 1979, he realised it was time for him to give up on destroying Uganda, no one honoured him in this fashion. In his time as a beast, Idi was responsible for about twice as much mayhem, genocide, rape and pillage as Taylor ever even dreamed of. Yet not a solitary African president pitched up in his smart presidential airliner to pat Idi on the back, make a few speeches about what a fine chap he’d been, wish him Godspeed and cheer him on his way to opulent retirement.
When the chips went down for Idi, he had to flee in terror from a country he’d brought to its knees far more efficiently than Taylor ever could. In those days sheer revulsion still played a part, and a neighbouring African force sent Idi Amin packing.
Nowadays, under the patronage of today’s African leaders, Charles Taylor is deemed immune from retribution. All the lofty undertakings about delivering up political monstrosities to international justice have been ignored. Thus may the general conception of an African renaissance and its practical itinerary, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, both take another bold lurch forward.
While Mr Mbeki is in a forgiving mood, we can only hope he’ll excuse those of us who felt cynical when we saw him and his cohorts exhibit the amazing flexibility of African political morality as they smilingly listened to the brute Taylor name God as his aide.
And while he’s still in charity mode, let Mr Mbeki also forgive those of us who believe that he and other African leaders have dragged their feet, looked the other way on what was happening to Liberia under Taylor, allowed him to ravage the countries around him without doing much more than pontificate. As indeed they continue to do with the horror that is Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
There’s something that our president shares with Mr Taylor: an overarching political vanity. Mbeki’s speeches, writings and sometimes utopian designs reveal that he’s keeping one eye firmly fixed on how history will depict him. Someone among his advisers should put his or her job on the line and whisper to Mr M that if he doesn’t radically adjust his fashion he’s not going to be the sure bet for the Pantheon so naturally occupied by the likes of Mr Mandela. Thabo Mbeki could well end up drying on the same rack as a host of others who don’t even have to be named.
Eventually all history tends towards the objective and it will not be kind and forgiving to the extent presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo and friends like to be. Future books and treatises about Africa, documentaries and films, will record with dismay how often the opportunities were squandered, how Africa’s leaders stood around, as they did last week, patting a political brute on the back and smugly congratulating each other on another triumph of expediency over morality.