Traore or Rape?

The Problem

The title Traore or Rape? may sound odd or outrageous in many senses. Well, I don’t think so looking at the subject from certain angles. First, The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe wrote is leadership. This is true of other African nations – the leaders deliberately fail their nations to gain money and power. Therefore, the system of government is not the trouble. Africa has tried many.

A power drunk and cocaine dazed president cannot be good. Neither can a venal thief nor a manic man who disrespects the separation of powers. We are talking about democracy.

The economist Hans Herman Hoppe did say that a sane encompassing king is a better head of state than a corrupt democratically elected president. He did not trust democracy. On the other hand, the Ghanaian economist George Ayittey with clarity and passion placed leadership by consensus ahead of leadership by vote counting. Leadership is the issue Africa suffers from, not systems of government.

Somehow Ibrahim Traore has achieved spectacular consensus among Africans on how society should be organised by a leader. Some are too well educated to follow that Traore trend. But their education should give them the tools to look at the Traore situation. And the conditions that produced it. Then see how useful or useless it is to the continent.

The Rape

Imagine as a man or woman, you are walking home just after sunset. In the early darkness of night, you are just one hundred meters from where you live. Be it in Rio, Riyadh, Lagos, London, Brisbane, Bali, Moscow, Monrovia, Karachi, Khartoum, Delhi, Detroit. Or any obscure town or village in the world.

You are near your house, walking alone and unarmed, you meet three fearsome looking men. They stop and tease you with words that frighten you. From their language and slurring voices, you can tell they are high on drugs and alcohol. Their eyes are like those of man-eating beasts, and they laugh like jackals at your pleas and questions. The blades they brandish are swords. The men either undress you or force you to undress yourself. Or else. They are in control.

You can see the men’s penises, a couple of them stand erect, oiled with grease or gel. It’s now certain you are several seconds or a minute from actual rape. And the rape is sure to be violent or at best rough. You are helpless.

Now, your anus or vagina or both are set for violation. Thoughts of what family, friends and the public would think about what is about to happen to you rage in your head. Are you a vaginal or anal virgin? That would make things worse. The first man to take his turn steps close enough to hold you. It does not matter if you are crying, shaking or faint. Nothing would stop them now.

Out of the darkness two vigilantes appear who shoot the three intending rapists each between the eyes. The vigilantes ask if you are okay then tell you to go home. They have saved you from a horrendous act – rape.

How would you see the vigilantes then and afterwards? As criminals? I am sure all rational people saved in those circumstances would see the vigilantes as rescuers, saviours, guardian angels, fairy godfathers, or even gods. Few will dispute this.

The vigilantes strike a few more times within days or weeks in a part of town infamous for frequent rape. Committing clinical murders against both intending and notorious rapists who thought they got away with it.  What the police consider a losing battle on their part the vigilantes sort with a spate of targeted or bait murders. The area is now safe, and several rapists even leave town for fear of their lives.

Will the good people of the town see the vigilantes as criminals or heroic? Will the people trust their police force to protect them from rape, or will they pray for more vigilantes? The people were always willing to tolerate the excesses of the police if it helped them do their job well. Now the police are failing woefully despite democracy. It’s no surprise they embrace the excesses of the effective vigilantes.

Chatter

We can trust interested intellectuals and pundits to complain that the vigilantes are criminals or even worse. They would use words like terrorists, scum, brigands and recommend the death penalty by hanging or the electric chair. They are not wrong. Murder is a serious crime but not to the people and families of the intended rape victims saved. And everyone else.

This analogy creates a justice versus survival dilemma. Not an easy one to think through or handle. But we cannot avoid it forever for the sake of democracy.

The Divide

Astonishing is the massive and enthusiastic support Burkinabe Ibrahim Traore receives from black people worldwide. Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos and others. Ranging from those who left school emptyhanded to those with postgraduate qualifications. Intelligence is not a problem here. The popular and unanimous support for Traore from anecdotal experience echoes well throughout social media.

For once, hope for Africa seems both tangible and practical to countless millions of Africans and well-wishers. For a continent fed promises for centuries hope becomes a thing of value. A thing to look to.

There are also strong pockets of resistance against the ascent of Ibrahim Traore within the African experience. Who is responsible for this virulent resistance? Interested West African, Nigerian and global elites, and those they persuade. No one else. Yes, those who obtained two PhD’s or three master’s degrees from overseas universities. Or who hold or benefit from thieving political office holders. And who work with multilateral agencies or seek to work in them. Or those who’s NGO financing and research funds come from Western institutions. And those whose offices are funded by the begging bowl politics of the World Bank and IMF. The list also includes those who fought good fights for latter-day democracy in Africa.

The national cake is a euphemism for stolen public funds. Not every Nigerian intellectual eats the cake baked in secret in the country’s invisible national bakery. Honest and conscientious ones exist in healthy numbers. Interested intellectuals are the ones in question.

The champions of latter-day democracy we can pardon for resisting Traore. Even if they are unpopular today. Many if not most of these individuals find themselves living overseas. A price for fighting hard for democracy in Nigeria. In truth, they endured arrests, detentions, jail terms, beatings, torture, arson and the uncertainties of a lonely life in exile. Some of these champions even died in custody or overseas never seeing their motherland again.  It will break the hearts of such people that Nigeria’s or Africa’s democracies have failed. Democracy has even failed worse than the military it replaced.

The military were repressive but are the democrats any better? Skipping this question fuels the problem. The brutality of the military no one denies. Still the continuity problem of governance faced during military rule remains under democracy. Rigged elections only produce false continuity that often ends in civil war.

West Africans want good leaders, that’s all. Remember the masses do not care about systems.  They care about good governance and a good quality of life. World history tells us the masses fight for republicans, monarchies, empires, theocracies, revolutionaries, democracies and more. The masses support what they think is best for them. Right now, Africans do not have good systems of governance to choose from. Its either the ballot or the bullet.

Before you mention Ghana and Botswana, exceptions are not rules. Still, for now a bird in hand is worth a thousand in the bush. If the dividends of governance are concrete and enabling, the people want it. They do not want abstract experiments which are further promises that cause only pain. Can you blame them?

Fela

Afrobeat creator, Fela, was wise when he called Nigeria’s new democracy in 1979 “Soldier Go, Soldier put,” put meaning arranged their successors. Fela also called democracy demonstration of craze, craze being mad people. Well, the Nigerian version. Was he wrong?

The interested elite who advocated change that would better Africa saw their dreams of democracy fail. The military still takes the blame for Africa’s woes. We now know better.

A question these elites always avoid is, “Has democracy delivered its promised dividends for Africa?” Their cunning answer is “Democracy takes time to deliver.”  It is tragic to hear energetic and intelligent men declare with resignation that it will take Africa another century or two or five to get Africa’s democracy where it needs to be. That is like certain West African intellectuals telling their brethren to wait thirty years to pluck fruits others harvest in season every year. Meanwhile, globalists who insist on maintaining Africa’s failed democracies are motivated purely by short-term profits. The choice between Traore or Rape should be easy to make.

I will not push this line of argument further for now. There’s no need to blow the divide between the for Traore majority and the against Traore dot so much wider than it already is yet. I may ask questions later.

Rape in Democracy

In a democracy the law rules the land. Unlawful killing is a capital crime. And the intellectual, pundit or politician will tell the public the actual sections of the law or criminal code that make the vigilantes killings premeditated murders. Yes, appeals to the supremacy of democracy will fill the airwaves. The mantra will be simple but loaded.

“Democracy But Nothing Else.”

Ha! There are those who reduce the Traore or Rape dilemma to a narrow binary. Well, by elevating democracy to monomyth.

Interested Intellectuals are often too sophisticated to listen to the common man. They preach democracy for democracy’s sake with inordinate zeal. What ever happened to democracy for progress, growth and development’s sake. Yet, for over sixty years now the common cry of the common African living in Africa is just as simple though unheard,

“We Are Tired of Talk or Grammar. We Want Action.”

The common African is not wrong in demanding action, good action. Not much good happens to the lives of people in Africa despite its democracies. The common African knows he or she is far poorer than anyone else in the world, but their resources are the richest. Democracy fails and betrays them with guarantee.

Balfour did say democracy is government by discussion. He never said it was government by liars in suits or costumes. Nor did he say it was governance by utopian promises. Is it not extreme wickedness to rape, starve and deprive a continent of its worth just so they can cast a vote? Votes mean something good elsewhere on the planet. In Nigeria it does not work well at all.

Don’t ask interested intellectuals who fail the Julien Benda criterion with disgrace. Ask the man or woman on the street in Africa or the honest intellectual. They live the African reality. They don’t get soft landing to their lives like the lying intellectual elite and politicians do by living simultaneously in western nations. The people live in real Africa, not in aid tracts.

Lies

Africans have heard the words and arguments for elections, referendums, fiscal federalism, resource control, restructuring. Or free markets, liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation, national debt. And instructions like ‘tighten your belts’, ‘you do not need three square meals’, the government cannot offer you jobs at any level. What have these words and terms delivered to common West Africans in their reverent democracies? High unemployment, starvation, low life expectancy, ethnic violence, backwardness and habitual propaganda is their lot in life.

Look at the dictum, ‘security is not a problem of the state it is a self-help project’ and ‘this or that West African nation is one of the fastest growing in the world.’ Lies trumpeted by interested intellectuals, pundits and politicians. Lies! Big Lies. Lies from world leaders who feast on Africa.

Reform, reform and more reform have taken place regularly in West Africa. What are the results? Ask the people.

Growth becomes a lie when citizens live in an economy where they have less money in their pockets and less public services offered to them. Abstract economics may persuade western or northern economies but not West African ones. Again, growth means more or increase. Just as a growing child does not get smaller but bigger, a growing economy means more money and public spending for citizens. African growth may truly mean decrease. It’s time to rewrite the dictionary definition for growth in Africa with honesty.

If talk is all you can do, then at least be honest. You cannot fool West Africans forever.  We shall see.

Traore Action

Captain Traore stands for something most African intellectuals, pundits and the education system has denied Africa. To most West Africans, democracy has become the unmasked rapist of Africa. The penis of exploitation shoved deep and hard into a land turned anus and called Africa. Colonialism was and neocolonialism is nothing but continental rape. Institutionalised rape without punishment and they want it to last for ever. Bravo! Democracy is its vestige. We are told we must forgive the West for the murderous atrocious past. Done deal. But we must not forgive the auto-colonial democrats to took over the reins of power. They are just as bad or worse than the foreign colonialists and neo-colonialists. Pepper is their future. I wish George Ayittey were still alive.

The West African cried for action for ages and Traore has given them useful action in a short time. Moral rightness carries his day not slavish foreign prescriptions. West Africans now believe in the possibility of action not the floweriness and impotence of words. The politicians, the interested intellectuals and pundits should continue talking. No one is listening anymore. Politicians who nurse the elites despite their continual catastrophic incompetence and impunity are now like witch doctors. Yes witch-doctors.

Is it Traore or Rape West Africans need? Pie in the sky when you die or pride and bread now or sooner than later?

Takeaway

A man once had a tooth ache in Udu, near Warri in Nigeria. The tooth ache lasted almost two years. When the problem began, he consulted witch doctors who told the man his toothache was the work of enemy witchcraft. He made sacrifices of several chickens and later a large nanny goat to free himself of the toothache. Bottles of goscolene, kegs of palm wine, yards of white cloth, and several expenses where constantly charged to him. When his toothache would not heal, he came under intense pressured to confess his taboo offenses. He had committed none.

A shocked visiting relative from Lagos took him to the German dentist, Mrs Obada’s excellent dental clinic in Warri. By this time a swelling an abscess had almost disfigured half of his jaw and face. His mouth smelled worse than an overused, uncleaned and unflushed toilet. She could not operate on him then. The dentist put him on a course of antibiotics and painkillers for a month and sent him home. A month later he returned to the clinic, the swelling, abscess and foul smell gone. She then removed the tooth with professional ease.

After the bad tooth’s removal, the man broke into bitter tears for over an hour. He explained that he had spent a fortune, suffered endless days of severe pain and his wife left him. All for something that would have cost thirty naira to solve in 1984 and takes less than half an hour to remove.

Between the witch doctor who are all deceitful words and the dentist who solves the problem decisively with useful action, who would you choose? Choose wisely.

Bianimikaley!