Here’s the President that’s our advert!

I refuse to admit Africans are being embarrassed at the moment. But we’ll do well to cover our faces. We’ll all uncover later although it may take long. That’s because our sit-tight leaders across the African continent have a say in this. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, for instance, will leave office in the next five years. He has expended 30 already. President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi will leave in five years from now, if he chooses to leave at all. He’s already exhausted the constitutionally-permissible ten. Joseph Kabila of Congo Democratic Republic should leave this December. He has spent 16 years already, and the constitution forbids him from staying. But Kabila’s security forces have been shooting Congolese for insisting he leaves as the law stipulates. President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been in office since 1982. He was in Abuja the other day, looking youngish, making me wonder if he would ever allow himself to be tagged “ex-president”.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has spent the two terms constitution allows. But he’s pushed the court to say he can continue in office. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has achieved the status of a maestro, keeping everyone guessing if he would ever leave office. He has been around since 1980. Add President Jacob Zuma of South Africa to the lot, and we get confounded as Africans. It’s not as if Zuma wants to remain in office beyond the legally-acceptable two terms. The second term will end in three years from now, and he definitely must leave. But he’ll advertise this continent for that length of time. My concern is that there’s an issue with his moral standing, and his kind of advert is what we don’t need at this time. For what’s happening in South Africa at the moment isn’t a matter of concern for South Africans alone, it’s for all of us that have the tag, “African”.

This isn’t the first time I call attention to what nations such as Nigeria and South Africa mean to our continent. Out there, when sub-Saharan Africa is mentioned, Nigeria and South Africa generally appear among the first five countries for all manner of reasons – positive or negative. I wonder if the reader has noticed that how the leader of a country is perceived rubs off on the image of the country. The leader tends to be the sum total of the image of his nation. The other time, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, informed Queen Elizabeth II that the leaders of the two most “fantastically corrupt” countries in the world were coming to London to discuss corruption. The Archbishop of Canterbury was present and TV footages showed how he had stepped closer to the two personages, adding quickly that the current Nigerian leader wasn’t corrupt. This same point is being made on the other side of the Atlantic in more than one way. The Americans had kept their funds and hi-tec military equipment away from a past administration here. Now, American leadership talk glowingly about the personality of the current Nigerian leader, and lately the US says it wants to sell some fighter helicopters to Nigeria to aid in the war on terror. Image. Perception. It goes a long way for any nation.

I had followed the comments of some foreign analysts about South Africa’s leader. Some of them say with the weight of evidence in corruption cases against him he has lost the moral compass to lead his nation. They should know the evidence because their system provides freer access to information about the dealings of any leader. I won’t enter into a debate about this, but I present a few of the facts as they are known. I use them to point out to us what we do to hurt our own image on this continent, in addition to whatever outsiders in their stereotypical manner attribute to us.

Zuma’s political career should have been out and over in 2005. That time, President Thabo Mbeki sacked him from his office as Vice-President. The allegation was that Zuma benefitted from bribery in an arms’ deal. This was the largest-ever post-apartheid arms’ deal in which blacks called the shots. But, and I’m reluctant to put it this way, they typically made a mess of it. The deal totalled $5bn, meant to modernise South Africa’s national defence force. Companies in Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, France and South Africa were involved. One outcome was that Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted for trying to solicit bribes from the local subsidiary of a French arms firm on behalf of Zuma who was then the deputy president. There were allegations against Zuma too, but the Prosecution Authority, the equivalent of Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, decided to drop them in 2009.

The head of the Authority at the time had based his decision on what he called “spy tapes”. He said the tapes – recordings of phone conversations among some officials discussing the timing of the case against Zuma – indicated that there was political interference in the investigation. For that reason, he said the case was dropped, not minding that a judge had pronounced Zuma linked to the transfer of huge funds as bribes in the arms’ deal. But an opposition party kept digging into the matter, convinced that the prosecutor deliberately gave Zuma the opportunity to escape a court conviction. Such a conviction would have disqualified Zuma as a presidential candidate in 2009. In May, a judge ruled that the prosecutor erred and that his decision was irrational, one that could not be explained under the law. The verdict was that the prosecution could bring the case back to court.

As president, a government commission had equally accused Zuma of expending government funds in rehabilitating his personal country home, and that he benefitted from the funds. The commission recommended a refund. Zuma refused. Opposition party went to court. Their Lordships ruled that Zuma broke the law by failing to make a refund. I had watched Zuma in parliament thereafter, struggling to justify that public funds expended on his personal home never benefitted him in any way.  Not long ago, a prominent member of South Africa’s ruling party publicly alleged that an Indian family residing in South Africa, and known for its fabulous wealth, offered him a ministerial post in Zuma’s cabinet. Zuma’s family members are known to hold offices in the business empire of the Indian family.

As for the arms’ deal saga that wouldn’t disappear since 2005, opposition parties had rejoiced that Zuma would face trial after the court verdict. They waited for the prosecutor to dust files and bring Zuma to court. But less than 24 hours after the judgment, the current boss of the prosecution authority said rather than sue Zuma, the body would appeal the ruling. I had watched Shaun Abrahams struggling to give answers to penetrating questions from journalists about this decision. He flopped. It was shameful. As if this decision wasn’t laughable enough, Zuma announced in another 24 hours that he too would be appealing the judgment.

In those moments, I had nothing more on my mind than how we embarrassed ourselves on this continent. Zuma may appeal, but what business does a public authority established to prosecute have in appealing an order to prosecute? The implication of this is more. I was amused when Nigeria’s Senate spoke the other time about its leader who was in court, saying it stood by its leader until court processes had been exhausted as it was the case in Brazil and in South Africa. The Senate forgets that in Brazil, the system compels an accused president to step aside as prosecution continues. As for Zuma, allegations brought against him had never been allowed to go through the entire court process. How a president isn’t prosecuted for just one out of the almost 800 corruption charges against him over a 12-year period beats me. With his approach in the current case, Zuma has joined our sit-tight leaders to drag this continent’s reputation in the mud until he leaves office. Africans bear the brunt with respect to how we are perceived. For now, we can only wait and watch, until we learn to select leaders whose conduct won’t make us want to hide our faces.