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President invited for dinner
Marko Phiri
August 24, 2005

"I am sure the problems are not serious in the President’s mansion. Perhaps the President would like to come and have dinner with us here?" these words were attributed to a Niger chief after claims by the country’s President Mamadou Tandja early August that reports about mass starvation in Niger were part of vicious "foreign propaganda."

Niger has been hard hit by famine, and reports of mass starvation have been widely reported in the international media. In Britain for example as response to these same media reports, over £200,000 was raised in August alone as part of food relief efforts, and stampedes have been reported as hungry men, women and children jostle for food.

The heart-rending scenes of young and old people fighting over food have still not been enough for the Niger president to admit "his" people need food aid. Informed by those asinine claims that the famine exists only in "foreign propaganda" he has delayed food relief efforts, and as Abadi Kokari, the chief of the village of Guidamonju attested, the president insists there is no famine. A story of an African despot using food as a political tool? Has not that story been told before?

When African leaders are accused of not empathising with their supposed electorate, they quickly jump to the tired defence that this is the work of political stooges and imperialist propaganda. And how do these regimes deal with the crisis? Confiscate passports of crusading activists "in the national interest"! But as the world watches dumbfounded by the callousness of these "propagandist" proclamations, children starve to death. Thus reports about people succumbing to the pangs of hunger almost always get the "peddler" of that "falsehood" into deep trouble with the authorities. African newsmen and women surely have seen the worst of African dictatorship.

One thing however always emerges as the truth out of this insistence about claims that no food aid is needed in a country already known to be recording hunger casualties. Ever since the whole talk of donor democracy came into the picture of international relations and politics, poor countries whose rule has been epitomised by intolerance, bad governance, bad economics, neurotic legislation et cetera, have refused donor aid claiming their have full stocks to last them a whole generation. But because donor democracy ties stringent conditions to receiving countries, and which have always been bitter pills to swallow, it has thus been reluctantly expected that these regimes will not take the conditions lying down – literally.

Political and economic reforms have been some of the conditionalities tied to aid, and these African strong men have forfeited the lives of the people to the their ideologies. And these are the same populations the same presidents will claim elected them to office. Never mind then that their ideologies are bereft of any contact with the reality as lived by the people on the ground, thus the invitation of the Niger president by the chief to have dinner with the hungry villagers. And what will you have Mr. President? An air pie and water perhaps? Some will recall another world-renowned African strongman actually quipping to reporters during a media briefing that if there were any hungry people out there why not bring here so he can see them. Read – see them, not feed them!

From the mansions – as the Niger chief aptly put it – these men have built for themselves it has though aid would be there for the taking – even it is certified to be GMO-free – they will still rebuff those humanitarian efforts. Is it then not tragic to find this trait in many an African president? One would be condemned perhaps, but it is alarming if this appears to be a contagion of the strong men. Who then will twist the ears of their peers tell other brother presidents to have mercy on the hungry souls and allow aid to come in? All this African solidarity claptrap has bred nothing but misery for the general African populations.

If the Niger president can say no to food aid and claim foreign propaganda is responsible for reports about famine, you can bet your ass this will find resonance in Southern Africa. And you will see grown men with wizened faces patting each other’s backs for defying the white man and the imperialist behemoth. And while the populations starve with the governments having no clue about how to deal with the humanitarian crisis, come next election, these same men will still claim victory. Surprised? Not really, ‘tis the order of this here. What is wrong with this continent? Is it the continent or the continent’s rulers? So import a good man from Mars and he will soon rule from the sewer as well? Perhaps one should accept the inscrutable ways of human nature as have been seen some pretenders to good governance emerge from the continent. But still these ostensibly few good men decide brother presidents can starve political opponents. Why? It is a domestic affair!

*Marko Phiri is a Zimbabwean writer.

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