The mystery of Africa’s disappearing presidents-Case of Cameroon

African Union Heads of State 

The political Agenda in Cameroon and most African countries has always cantered on its all-powerful presidents. These are the people who will decide for there to be electricity, decides when justice should be served, where a road should pass, when to have a drop of water, let alone which clinic or hospital should have aspirin and drip set etc.  Cameroonians have resigned their thinking and actions to when and how it pleases the head of state. If he uses a word in his speeches, it becomes a national slogan-National Integration-Grand Ambition, Greater Achievement, Emergence by 2035, Android Generation, Digital Economy etc. It makes us wonder whether our intellectuals and politician don’t have an idea on how to run their respective Universities, Ministries or Municipalities, if it were not for the all-knowing, all generous, peace crusader, number one sports man, number one peace lover, the God given messiah etc, Cameroon would still be in the doldrums of poverty.  One would have expected that, with all this authority and power given to an individual, he would be able to transform Cameroon like Gadhafi did in Lybia. But the reality on the field is gruesomely contradictory.

Questions to be answered

 As we speak today the 20/10/2016, it is reported that president Biya has been out of the country for 106 days in the course of 2016. He was last seen in Cameroon on September 16 when he left for the UN submit. Since then, there hasn’t been any communication whatsoever about his where about. These are not innuendos that he might be in some difficulty, but Cameroonians are so accustomed to their interminable leader who has made himself indispensable such that his absence is a logical foundation of concern. In this sphere of obscurity, there are many a question on every tongue and no one to answer them.

1. Has he gone for his usual rest, considering the workload in Cameroon?
2. Has he gone to accomplish family problems with his incommodious daughter?
3. Has his wife taken a step backward in a bit to make herself more heard like Aicha        Buhari?
4. Is he disturbed with the recurrent memoranda coming in everyday?
5. Could the change in some key diplomatic missions in Cameroon be a worrisome          thing for him?
6. By any means, are Anglophones any nightmare to him?
7. Has the “alive-death-alive” life of A. Shekau of Boko Haram give him something to        worry about?
8. Is he sick?
9. Is he ok and just Chilin out and ready to come and change his government?

This doesn’t change much to the debate, as sooner or later the bipolar communication minister, will call the national and international press to tell them the Head of state is doing great, strong and very healthy. There is nothing to worry about. He will be right when he does so, given that once the president was framed dead, but when he came back, he gave Cameroonians a rendezvous for 20 years. We are less than 5 years away from the 20 years. But come to think of it, even the sycophants, zealots and self-proclaimed Biyayist of the regime are worried about his state. At 83 he’s not getting younger and nature has time for everything.

Not as though anybody wishes somebody dead, but it is also judicious and rational to know that no human being is eternal. No matter how we love him and how lovable and adorable he is, we are all mortals. And in a country as complex as Cameroon, it is important, he traces his transition to avoid an event of power tussle in Cameroon. Today, if we read the political game in Cameroon we can see how almost every segment of the people of Cameroon are trying to have an advantageous position. The most talked about petition from the Beti people of Mfoundi is just a yardstick that shows the conflicts between the Bulus and people of Nanga Eboko in their interest to take power should there be a vaccum. The assertion in the Memo that the CPDM is headed by a Bamilike (Jean Kuete) and the second in state protocol (Senate-Marcel Niate) again is Bamilike has no justification in a republic, but an attempt of positioning. Albert Dzongangs response was just in line with the same politics. The meeting of the 44 families that make up the “Mfoundi People” on October 19^th 2014 as a riposte to the Memo is a further and eloquent testimony of the same strategy. The controversial political Scientist, Dr. Mathias Eric Nguini Owona has also taken his position close to power after accepting to throw flowers on the first ladies actions. Today he claims to be a chntal biyayist. What a world!

Continental Precedence

Only that, in most African countries, we have always heard the president’s entourage say their President is safe and sound. Only for things to turn around sour in a couple of months or years. President Peter Mutharika returned to Malawi on Sunday Oct. 16, just as he’d promised. Mutharika left to attend the United Nations General Assembly mid-September and just didn’t come back. His cagey communications team would not divulge the leader’s itinerary, sparking rumours that he’d died, and the hilarious hashtag #BringBackMutharika.

Mutharika is the latest African president to disappear without a word to his people. Communication between leaders and their constituents often grow quieter after elections. Poor public relations are a signal of the lack of accountability and transparency displayed by many African leaders. Mutharika’s jaunt in New York had nothing on Cameroonian’s president Paul Biya’s spontaneous stays at European hotels. In 2009, his three-week holiday in La Baule, southern France cost $40,000 a day (26Million CFA XAF). This time, he was intercontinental hotel and chit-chats have it that he has left the hotel. But where on earth is he? “Like any other worker, president Paul Biya has a right to his vacations,” information minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said at the time. Biya has been in power since 1982. But this time, one Cameroonian won’t let Biya catch a break while his country suffers. In a video that is going viral on social media, an unidentified man stands outside the Intercontinental in Geneva, condemning Biya and his entourage for living in a hotel for two months while Cameroonian’s struggled to make a living back home.

“I’ve come back again to the Intercontinental to make a fuss, to ask what are you still doing here? What do you do everyday?” the man shouted, continuing to berate Biya until hotel staff shooed him away. He staged the same protest earlier this year and vowed to return until Biya went home.

The physical absence of leaders further exposes poor leadership. In many instances a president’s illness—or death—has given way to a power vacuum. The offices these disappearing presidents occupy (when they’re around) center around personalities and their allies, rather than creating strong institutions that serve the people.

Malawians in particular have every right to be suspicious of a disappearing leader: In 2013 an already dead president Bingu wa Mutharika was still connected to life support and flown to South Africa for medical treatment, according to a report by the Global Post. An inquest into his death showed that his allies tried to keep up the lie to avoid swearing in then deputy president Joyce Banda in order to clear the way the way for his brother, Peter Mutharika (the younger Mutharika eventually had to win an election to gain power).

Across the border, death rumors that proved to be true plagued Zambia’s last two presidents. President Michael Sata disappeared from public view in 2014, missing an address to the United Nations and Zambia’s 50th independence celebrations. He joked in parliament, “I am not dead,” when he resurfaced, but died a few months later in October 2014 of an undisclosed illness.

Sata’s predecessor, Levy Mwanawasa, had a stroke at an African Union summit in Ethiopia and was whisked away to France where he was declared dead at age 58 in 2008. Mwanawasa’s office spent some energy during his term dismissing rumors of the late president’s ill health. In Guinea-Bissau, president Malam Bacai Sanha died of an undisclosed illness at age 64 in a Paris hospital in 2012. The president was also in and out of hospital during his term. Rumor had it that he was suffering from diabetes, but his office was never open with the public. Diplomats told the press he’d been in a coma before his death. Togo was the first in this form of “democrazy”. The then president Gnassingbé Eyadema was in power for 39 years until his death in 2005. But before that, there had been gossips about his death on several occasions. Even when he died, his entourage did everything possible to keep the news behind in a bit to get his son to power (Faure Eyadema). His son was then a minister, he was made an MP, made speaker of the assembly all within 48 hours before declaring his father’s death.

It’s an all too familiar story for many Africans: Leaders’ whose aides swear they’re fit as a fiddle, dying in office under a cloud of mixed messages. A politician admitting to ill health the way Hillary Clinton did during her campaign, expressing vulnerability and displaying openness, is almost unheard of on the continent, even for leaders who have been firmly ensconced in office for years.

Africa’s longest serving ruler, Omar Bongo died of cancer in a Spanish hospital in 2009. Just hours before his death was publicly announced, officials angrily denied reports of his death and banned Gabon’s media from discussing the president’s health. Ethiopia’s longtime ruler Meles Zenawi’s illness was described as “minor” just weeks before he died in a Brussels hospital in 2012, aged 57.

In Next door Nigeria, in 2010, president Umaru Yar’Adua’s death caused a constitutional crisis. The severity of Yar’Adua’s illness was hidden from the public and some politicians, as Yar’Adua failed to formally transfer his powers to his deputy president Goodluck Jonathan before being airlifted to Saudi Arabia. The latest gaffe by current president Muhammadu Buhari shows that Nigeria still hasn’t learned how to control the message.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is the president who always resurrects from death rumors. President Mugabe’s regular trips to Asia for medical treatment often spark rumors that the president has died. The 92-year-old’s trips are often unscheduled, or change abruptly, leaving citizens in the dark. The international and local press and opposition parties monitor every stumble, but his office swears he’s healthy. Exasperated Zimbabweans have taken to tracking Mugabe’s plane for news on the president’s whereabouts. The last time death rumors swirled, Mugabe played along.

Watching Mugabe’s every step and stumble.

“Yes it’s true I was dead and I resurrected as I always do,” he told journalists waiting on tarmac where his plane touched down. When reporters joked with him, asking if they were speaking to a ghost, he said “once I get back to my country I am real.”

Lessons

African leaders leaving their countries to receive medical treatment shows what little faith they have in their own public healthcare system. In Recent weeks, Cameroons most caped and emblematic Captain Rigobert Song was medially airlifted to Europe, just like the Centre Region Governor-Otto Wilson. Most Government officials in Yaoundé and Cameroon are quick to rush to France for medical care. Even the wanted former Minister of Finance Essimi Menye, used it as his alibi to leave Cameroon. The regime in Yaoundé’s refusal to be open and honest with the public further shows a disregard for the people who put them in power, and in turn erodes public trust in the leaders themselves. As Africa’s population becomes younger, citizens in the information age are unlikely to accept miscommunication from much older leaders. The age of the impenetrable strongman leader is will soon be over, African presidents have to learn to talk to—and account—to their people. This is the information age and there are millions of ways to get information across today. The African youth are more conscious, engaging and knowledgeable.