[ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
The Haitian government recently confirmed that the death toll from the earthquake just over two weeks ago was 150,000. This figure, however, is set to climb.

If Haiti were China, tragic as it is, that number would still be peanuts because the country’s population is 1.3 billion. For Haiti, though, with 9,780,064 people, the death toll so far is 1.5 per cent of the population.

A better way to understand this is that if 1.5 per cent of Kenya’s population had been killed in the 2008 post-election violence, we would have had 585,000 deaths, not the official figure of 1,360.

Where there is death, there is sorrow and, almost inevitably, controversy too: For example, who or what was the real killer? In the case of Haiti, there is the right-wing American preacher, the Rev Pat Robertson, who has stirred the hornet’s nest.

Robertson blamed the Haitian earthquake on what, he alleged, is the country’s “pact to the devil”. Voodoo is big in Haiti, and even in regular church services, voodoo practices often intrude in the proceedings.

The Haitians “were under the heel of the French…,” Robertson said on his “700 Club” broadcast the other week.

“And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’

“You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other,” Robertson claimed.

Robertson’s “true story“: Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” to get “free from the French” and “ever since, they have been cursed“

The Haitians defeated French colonists in 1804 and became the first colonised black nation to become independent, but its last 50 years have been among the worst a country can suffer.

It was governed by some of the most incompetent, corrupt and cruel rulers in the world, the Duvaliers, father and son.

Robertson has got a lot of stick since then. I, too, think he was wrong, but not because of his claim that the earthquake was Haiti’s punishment for its devil worship.

Rather, because he didn’t appreciate that the destruction of a country often presents it with its best chance to rebuild as a modern society.

Take the example of Sudan, after the Nairobi peace agreement between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement rebels ended the war there and established a semi-autonomous administration in the south.

Southern Sudan had fallen back into the Dark Ages, and didn’t have an economy, a school system, or a phone system.

Experts who came in to advise with building a phone system thought southern Sudan had an opportunity to build a whole new digital system, unencumbered by the old regime with its poles, copper wires, transformers and giant exchanges. That would be cheaper, and could be built very quickly.

The SPLA’S former commander, who was in-charge of infrastructure was suspicious, thinking they were con men.

Having spent all the years fighting in the bush, he didn’t understand much about things like mobile mobiles, and he wanted something that people could see and touch ? telephone poles and lines. In the end, common sense prevailed.

After the 1979 war in Uganda that ousted military dictator Idi Amin, the capital, Kampala, and many towns in the west lay in ruins. It seemed impossible then that the country would rebuild all that had been lost.

Eventually it did, providing an opportunity to replace unworkable 70-year-old houses that would have taken another 50 years to tear down, and build new ones in their places.

Rwanda was the same. After the war and genocide in 1994, travelling around the country, you were left with a Robertson-like impression that it had been punished by God for some past transgressions. Everything had been wasted.

Rather than recreate the old telephone system, Rwanda became the second country after South Africa to have a mobile phone system on the continent.

That, in many ways, eventually led to the decision by Rwanda to become East Africa’s digital technology capital. In another two years, for example, the whole country will be a hotspot.

It also allowed Rwanda to become probably the first country in Africa, to rationalise the way peasants built their homes and used land in the villages.

The earthquake offers Haiti an opportunity to get rid of slums no politicians could touch because it would lose them votes; and to build something almost no Third World has been able to do ? a new sewer system.

This is no comfort to the Haitians who are suffering today, but their grandchildren might inherit a better country and a modern Port-au-Prince, because of the tragedy of the earthquake. The earthquake might well have been God’s work.

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   [ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
The Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who attempted to blow up an American aeroplane with a bomb built into his underwear, was somewhat unAfrican.

Though so-called Sub-Saharan Africa has its fair share of terrorists, AbdulMutallab is one of the very few who has offered himself up as a suicide bomber. From the days of the slave trade, life has been so grim in Africa that we seem to have developed a strong keep-alive ethos that makes suicide unfashionable.

So how do we explain AbdulMutallab? One of the best attempts to shed light on why this young Nigerian, born into a rich middle class family and having received a very good education, became a would-be suicide bomber can be found on the Zeleza Post. The Zeleza Post is a high-minded blog on African affairs founded by Malawian historian, Dr Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, who is touted as the next big African intellectual.

A December 28 posting on the blog by Nigerian Pius Adesanni blames the AbdulMutallab phenomenon the lazy and parasitic “Feudo-Caliphal establishment in northern Nigeria,” which mass produces poverty and stokes radical Islam in order to maintain power.

However, it is not only Islamic extremism that is being pushed in Nigeria. Nigeria is also the epicentre of Christian extremism in Africa.

My favourite is the “Ministry of Sacrifice” led by Prophetess Felicia Okafor, which is dedicated to finishing the work that Adam and Eve left undone in the Garden of Eden. Members of the Ministry prayed naked, and husbands and wives were barred from having sex with one another. Instead, the church appointed a “brother” or “sister” for them. A female member of the Ministry found to be having sexual relations with her legitimate husband was considered to have committed adultery! By any standard of religious extremism, that was going way too far. Prophetess Okafor was busted after her flock couldn’t take it any more and squealed to the police.

What is happening in Nigeria is taking place all over Africa. Not only are Islamic and Christian fundamentalism on the rise, but also traditionalist extremism. In Uganda, for example, child sacrifice has hit an alarming high. Ironically, it is fuelled not by poverty, but by development and prosperity. A security official told the BBC that as Ugandans grow wealthier, they resort more and more to witchcraft to secure their wealth and to build on it…

In common, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism are growing because there is no competing secular cause. Public policy debate is dying in Africa, and what we have is homophobic fury in many countries. Political discourse has been replaced by ethnic hate rants.

We don’t need a great secular idea. Even an Africa-wide youth rebellion, demanding the right for young people to love, get high on marijuana, and party all night will unite the older folks to set them on the right path.

In the past, we united against imperialism, then against the IMF and World Bank. The biggest of them all was HIV-Aids. These issues were always much bigger than religion and superstition. Now the HIV-Aids has receded somewhat.

We need a new enemy; maybe a disease as fiery as HIV-Aids that will marginalise the merchants of religious extremism. If not, we should prepare for more AbdulMutallabs and child sacrifices.

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   [ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
Africa’s longest ruling president, Omar Bongo of Gabon, has gone to meet his maker. The fact that Bongo was in power for a record 42 years means it is not enough for us to say we are rid of another corrupt strongman.

It is time to try and explain why people like him can survive for so long; why our leaders keep stealing our taxes and messing up our lives; and how come Comrade Bob Mugabe in Zimbabwe can run a once-great country into the grave, and yet some are still in office.

The short of it is that these rulers survive because they actually enjoy support. It could be from their tribe, the army, or like Bongo, they can buy loyalty with petrodollars, but that support is often more than what the democratic opposition can muster.

Even Uganda’s disastrous ‘Field Marshal’ Idi Amin had the undying loyalty of the rich class that grabbed the vast Asian “abandoned properties” after he expelled them in 1972. We tend to blame disorganised oppositions for the survival of wicked politicians like Togo’s Gnassingbe Eyadema. But wwhat else explains it equally is a cowardly, greedy, or ethnically-driven population.

Bongo, let’s be fair, was not your typically abominable African strongman. His prisons were not full of journalists and opposition politicians. Though most Gabonese still live in poverty, he managed to keep very many others happy by spreading the oil money around.

As The Guardian put it, Bongo “quickly realised that money could be more effective than bullets in keeping power.” Bongo’s case also suggests that instead of lumping the continent’s leaders together, we need to develop categories for classifying them. The list of African leaders here is by no means exhaustive.

1. The Predatory Dictators: These mostly rob, kill, and ruin everything. Here put several former presidents: DRC’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Uganda’s Idi Amin.

2. The Progressive Despots: These don’t democratise fully and fill their prisons with critics and independent journalists, but they still build roads, railways (Bongo spent $4bn on a railway network). Here I can think of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, Ghana’s Gerry Rawlings, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and, from an earlier period, Cote d’Ivoire’s Felix Houphuet-Boigny. Bongo belongs here.

3. The Enlightened Strongmen: These are men who shake up their countries with bold reformists initiatives, and make them distinctly leaders in Africa in some areas, but they still keep a tight lid on political life: Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Mozambique’s former President Joachim Chissano, and throw in Djibouti’s Omar Guelleh.

4. The Heartbreaker Backsliders: These started out well, held a lot of promise, and even had remarkable records in their first years, but then they went into reverse gear. Either they became two-penny despots, changed constitutions to perpetuate themselves in power, or went to the far extreme to impose a regime of terror ? as Eritrea’s Issaias Afeworki. The least bad of the lot is someone like President Museveni. Robert Mugabe belongs here (can’t dismiss his early good works).

5. The Miscast Democrats: These are decent men and women, who came to power with huge majorities, but when they are in office, they don’t convert that mandate into good or enduring works. Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki typify this group.

6. The 8am-5pm Regulars: Here, think of the more technocratic African presidents who came to power as freedom fighters or were elected in free elections. They govern without any drama. Are in office by 8 am and leave shortly after 5 pm, balance the national budgets, keep inflation down, and leave a healthy country that made normal progress during their rule.

Botswana’s leaders – Sir Seretse Khama, Ketumile Masire (he used to walk to the newsstand opposite his office to buy newspapers and pick coffee at a corner cafe), Festus Mogae, and now Seretse Khama Ian Khama.

But, perhaps, even better examples are Mauritius’ Sir Anerood Jugnauth, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame (Rwanda, typically, just became the first country in the Third World to introduce a national immunisation programme against pneumococcal disease, one of the leading killers of children in the world).

7. The Charmed Ones: These are leaders who are nation healers, inspirational, and we have to fight with the rest of an adoring world (where they assume a saintly status) to claim them as Africa’s own. We also like to gloss over their failings. Count Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and the great Nelson Mandela, here.

Reference: Libya’s Gaddafi takes the mantle from Bongo