The mask behind African leaders’ allegiance
By: Romanus Mungamba
In our contemporary society, genuine love and support for our leaders during election time is hard to come by and when it comes from citizens, their needs, and their votes, are unappreciated and sidelined during service provision. However, the uncanny support assured by the men in the masks is most beneficial to the leader in power. Their wants are served on a silver platter and so we are left with a grievance and bad taste in our mouths. Then it is back to the drawing board with questions as to why this is so, and the answer should not be hard to see. In fact if you are incisive enough to pay attention to any news report, you often come across that it’s rather a farfetched situation of reality we live in and experience around us.
Media reports claim we have so much resources and mineral deposits and lay out figures of our country’s grading, in terms of what our living standards should be but the reality is that the leaders manifest their visions to citizens during campaigns. It becomes a contest for who can sell better dreams and the best vision construction wins the administration. The power vested into them from that point onwards is not used for the people. They turn a blind eye on the average man/woman or better yet on the voting men and women that empowered them, and instead they call upon their cronies that financially rallied behind them (through enormous sponsorships) and new friends (capitalists and vassals).
The reason is in Africa the campaigning leaders do not have to understand their respective political and economic environments of their countries and have no protocols on standards and procedures for candidates. As long as they can gather enough support and financial cronies during campaigns to manipulate the citizens to vote, you are almost guaranteed to be in charge, which places them in a vulnerable position to these externalities. This in addition forces their hands to serve and satisfy their cronies’ wants first, which highly compromise our systems and our values and credibility, for due to the lack of capacity (knowledge) to understand their positions they embrace the gifts and manipulations that come from their cronies and new friends. A is leader supposed to uphold and protect the interests of his or her citizens, by making drastic pragmatic decision, even if it goes beyond a conventional agreement. To illustrate an example of a representative leader, I use the current USA administration, which in my opinion should not just be taken for a laughing stock, but rather other national leaders should draw some valuable lessons from it.
Whilst coming up with their own international motives that look at best ways to maximise their national interests. Namibia who claims to be enemy to none and friends everyone should wake up, before every foreign friend of ours determines our national interests, in the disguise of the capitalist vassals and mercenaries that only serve the interests of his or her personal needs or home countries. The mainstream scholars denounce the world and say it is first and foremost an anarchic state. Dornan, (2011) quotes Adem that “the major theories of international relations embrace the view that the international system is anarchic” and it is no exception to Namibia, a country who has self-proclaimed to be friends with all, because we are having friends (the man in the mask) shaping up our foreign policy for us, and this results in citizens, or rather voters, being continually marginalised in their living conditions.
Certain scenarios such as the USA (a friend) pulling out of the Paris (climate) treaty, risking the subsequent global warming that hampers most developing (in the southern hemisphere) countries’ weather conditions, whilst also eloquently being one of the biggest contributors to climate change, was surely not a empathetic move toward other countries, but rather that country’s President’s move to cater for the interests of his national citizens. Whether it’s a wrong move or not, at least the voters can have a sense of pride, in that their interests (through job creation) are being represented, which is something that we Africans have long craved for, but never experienced. African leaders should understand that being a leader means making bold decisions in your nation’s interest, to be acknowledged by the world and to avoid becoming a puppet of everyone else. To ensure local citizens are not being exploited and marginalised from what they should be rightfully entitled to. Surely the people that elect you into power deserve to have full catering of their basic needs, opposed to the “men in the masks” whose only motive is making a dollar for themselves on all accounts and at all costs.
*Romanus Mangamba is a student studying towards a degree in Public Management at the University of Namibia
In our contemporary society, genuine love and support for our leaders during election time is hard to come by and when it comes from citizens, their needs, and their votes, are unappreciated and sidelined during service provision. However, the uncanny support assured by the men in the masks is most beneficial to the leader in power. Their wants are served on a silver platter and so we are left with a grievance and bad taste in our mouths. Then it is back to the drawing board with questions as to why this is so, and the answer should not be hard to see. In fact if you are incisive enough to pay attention to any news report, you often come across that it’s rather a farfetched situation of reality we live in and experience around us.
Media reports claim we have so much resources and mineral deposits and lay out figures of our country’s grading, in terms of what our living standards should be but the reality is that the leaders manifest their visions to citizens during campaigns. It becomes a contest for who can sell better dreams and the best vision construction wins the administration. The power vested into them from that point onwards is not used for the people. They turn a blind eye on the average man/woman or better yet on the voting men and women that empowered them, and instead they call upon their cronies that financially rallied behind them (through enormous sponsorships) and new friends (capitalists and vassals).
The reason is in Africa the campaigning leaders do not have to understand their respective political and economic environments of their countries and have no protocols on standards and procedures for candidates. As long as they can gather enough support and financial cronies during campaigns to manipulate the citizens to vote, you are almost guaranteed to be in charge, which places them in a vulnerable position to these externalities. This in addition forces their hands to serve and satisfy their cronies’ wants first, which highly compromise our systems and our values and credibility, for due to the lack of capacity (knowledge) to understand their positions they embrace the gifts and manipulations that come from their cronies and new friends. A is leader supposed to uphold and protect the interests of his or her citizens, by making drastic pragmatic decision, even if it goes beyond a conventional agreement. To illustrate an example of a representative leader, I use the current USA administration, which in my opinion should not just be taken for a laughing stock, but rather other national leaders should draw some valuable lessons from it.
Whilst coming up with their own international motives that look at best ways to maximise their national interests. Namibia who claims to be enemy to none and friends everyone should wake up, before every foreign friend of ours determines our national interests, in the disguise of the capitalist vassals and mercenaries that only serve the interests of his or her personal needs or home countries. The mainstream scholars denounce the world and say it is first and foremost an anarchic state. Dornan, (2011) quotes Adem that “the major theories of international relations embrace the view that the international system is anarchic” and it is no exception to Namibia, a country who has self-proclaimed to be friends with all, because we are having friends (the man in the mask) shaping up our foreign policy for us, and this results in citizens, or rather voters, being continually marginalised in their living conditions.
Certain scenarios such as the USA (a friend) pulling out of the Paris (climate) treaty, risking the subsequent global warming that hampers most developing (in the southern hemisphere) countries’ weather conditions, whilst also eloquently being one of the biggest contributors to climate change, was surely not a empathetic move toward other countries, but rather that country’s President’s move to cater for the interests of his national citizens. Whether it’s a wrong move or not, at least the voters can have a sense of pride, in that their interests (through job creation) are being represented, which is something that we Africans have long craved for, but never experienced. African leaders should understand that being a leader means making bold decisions in your nation’s interest, to be acknowledged by the world and to avoid becoming a puppet of everyone else. To ensure local citizens are not being exploited and marginalised from what they should be rightfully entitled to. Surely the people that elect you into power deserve to have full catering of their basic needs, opposed to the “men in the masks” whose only motive is making a dollar for themselves on all accounts and at all costs.
*Romanus Mangamba is a student studying towards a degree in Public Management at the University of Namibia
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