African leaders show there are many countries for old men

Let them eat cake. That is one of the likely headlines after an all-night birthday gala for Robert Mugabe, the autocratic president of Zimbabwe, which was due to finish in the early hours of yesterday. Mugabe, who last week turned 86 in a country where average life expectancy stands at 45, is the eldest statesman on a continent where age is seldom a barrier to power.

But events confronting both Nigerians and Nigeriens in the past week have demonstrated that the next generation of African leaders might find it somewhat harder to crush all comers.
 
President Mamadou Tandja of Niger, who had rewritten the constitution rather than quit when his term expired, paid the penalty when soldiers stormed the presidential palace and spirited him away in a military coup. Diplomats were ambivalent about whether to condemn the means or praise the ends. 
 
President Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria, who created a power vacuum when he disappeared in November for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, returned at dead of night to a country where politicians, lawyers, media and ordinary citizens have made their demands for accountability and transparency clear. Yar’Adua’s deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, remains at the helm while questions linger over the president’s health.
 
In recent times, the objections raised to the likes of Menzies Campbell and John McCain in recent British and American election campaigns rarely keep politicians awake here. Africa’s club of leaders of pensionable age includes Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, 81, Cameroon’s Paul Biya, 77, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, 73, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, believed to be 67, Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, also 67, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, thought to be 66, and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, believed to be 65. 
 
Source: African Commission

 

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