As of the time of writing this, Mali’s interim President Dioncounda Traore was headed to Paris for medical checks after he was beaten unconscious by protesters at the start of the week.
Traore was appointed when army officers who seized power in March agreed to return power to civilian politicians. The coup leaders subsequently wanted him to step down, but agreed to demands by the West African regional body ECOWAS for him to stay on for a year.
The demonstrators who broke into Traore’s office and beat him up were angered by the deal between Capt Amadou Sanogo and Ecowas that permitted him to remain in office.
On Thursday, I was discussing Traore’s misfortune with a veteran Africa observer, and we agreed that the attack on him was outrageous.
Inevitably, the discussion veered to the question of why it is that when citizens corner African presidents when they don’t have their bodyguards, they resort to violence. Last year we saw what happened when the rebels in Libya caught up with that country’s long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
They butchered him in horrific ways. There are reports that a new video of the actual moment when Gaddafi was killed has now emerged, and it is not family viewing.
Traore has been in power for barely three months, not enough time to make too many enemies. However, he was supposed to step down on Monday when a last minute deal between Capt Sanogo and ECOWAS gave him a year.
However necessary that extension, it has become an annoying feature of African politics. Commitments are either ignored, or treated as things that can always be negotiated away or around.
And of course, like African presidents do – Traore has to go to Paris to have his head looked at. These things vex the people. African presidents have a responsibility to fix their medical systems. They don’t, either because they give the task to incompetent party members or relatives, or because they are corrupt.
They then use the taxpayers’ money to fly themselves and their families to expensive hospitals abroad for treatment, while the taxpayers are doomed to a shoddy service at home.
If Traore had been in power for a year, he wouldn’t have survived the mob. The anger against him would have been too much for him to get away with just a beating.
Scandalous as the attack on Traore was, the veteran observer said there was a “strange therapeutic element to it”, a kind of “direct democracy” and “instant justice” from the people. Only that there are many other African presidents who deserved it more than Traore.
One reason for that is that most African presidents deal the same way with ordinary citizens and critics. A hapless motorist unwittingly blocks the presidential motorcade, and he is either shot, beaten, or imprisoned.
A citizen cannot produce his ID at the roadblock because he has forgotten it at home, he is humiliated or jailed. You disagree with the president, and you are imprisoned or exiled if you are lucky. Otherwise, he will order your murder.
It is not surprising therefore that when the people corner an African president, their first instinct is to sort him out. http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/
