Should perennial fools be hanged?

HAMA TUMA

A controversial man himself, Kenyan Mutula Kilonzo, has blasted at corruption the hangman’s way.  The corrupt should be hanged, he has recently suggested.

This was the only way the vice could be fought successfully, Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Mutula Kilonzo said.

“Let us have a law that will deal effectively with the question of bribery and kickbacks. In countries like China, they punish (offenders) with death. I am not afraid to propose this too, if at all we want to rid ourselves of the vice,” he said.

The way things usually happen in Kenya the proposal will be bribed away unto the archives and Bwana corruption will continue with vigor. That aside, what about the suggestion that obdurate fools should be punished with vigor and determination to rid our continent of fools that sell their sovereignty for thirty pieces of second hand silver? As we all know, foolishness or stupidity is not painful and half of the time the victim does not even know it. Hence, a reminder should be supplied. This whole thing was made pertinent recently when we were forced to listen to Hilary Clinton (the same woman who years ago went to Asmara, Eritrea and hailed the ruler there as a democrat) warning Africans to be wary of neocolonialism (no, not the American one but that of the Chinese) and preaching the need for democracy in the capital city of one of the most vicious tyrants bankrolled and fully supported by Hilary’s America. Clinton’s holier than thou hypocritical preaching was (you guessed it!) hailed by many Africans from various quarters including Ethiopia where American backing for a dictatorship has wrecked the country for more than twenty years now.

In the beginning there was the Word but overtime the cost of living has risen beyond tolerance while words have become cheap. Meles Zenawi vowed to assure Ethiopians three decent meals per day but deprived them of even one and ended up preaching dieting to a people that has been starving for centuries.  Clinton’s speech in Addis Abeba weaved cheap words and sanctimonious preaching often associated with a sinful and decadent priest. If dictatorship is evil and Africans should rise against their oppressors how come America allies itself with the enemies of the people and smashes the revolt of downtrodden people? How come America backs the killer Meles, the savage Nguema, the Bahrain Butchers, the Saudi retrogrades?  These are not new queries and wonder but age old ones and African has for long been on the receiving side of the hypocrisy. The savage and fury against Gaddafi (who was good friend with Berlusconi, Blair and Sarkozy) does not accord, as the French would say talking of grammar, with the kid glove treatment of Assad, Bahrain and even Yemen for that matter. Clinton talking about the dangers of neocolonialism in Africa is like a rapist condemning the pedophile. The new kid on the block is China and America is only wailing against the competition. Here also some Africans miss the point and like old times they take the Bible from the Clinton woman and bow to pray while she takes away the proverbial land, Africa’s wealth. Did anyone hear her or her big eared Boss crying against the Western sponsored mayhem, rape and murder in Eastern Congo?  The Mr. Ocampo of the International Criminal Court is a sad caricature of a man seeking justice, inclined to attack Africans and Third world targets, oblivious of the real war criminals  from the Balkans to Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Syria. If Kaddafi is a war criminal what about Saleh and Assad, the massacre man in Ethiopia, America and other pro American butchers all over the world?

Trees in a big forest held an assembly, says an Ethiopian fable, and wanted to identify their main enemy. The axe said many; others declared it is the man wielding the axe. A wise old tree counseled all of them in the following words: brothers and sisters, will the axe cut us if it had no handle? Will man wield the axe if it had no handle? That is why you must know that we are our own enemy; we are the handles of the axe, enabling the axe and man to chop us down. “Yerasachin temama” said the old tree in Amharic. Our own crooked piece of wood! Clinton is Clinton, she represents an America we know so well as victimized Africans. Our problem is with our own crooked brothers and sisters, the perennial victims of stupidity, the gullible and foolish ones who believe time and again the same old lie in new garbs. Time and again, the West supplies us with devils and the Satan we are supposed to condemn and hate and time and again we cry curse on the donkey along with them. We say thank you Hilary Clinton the same time she and her government embrace the dictators who are destroying our peoples and continent. Check any African predator and monster and you will find the West standing behind him. Beshir is no saint by any standard but the hue and cry against the Sudan smells partial and foul. Mugabe is not worse than Meles but who is reviled and who is praised?  France continues to play pathetically as an imperial power but it is responsible for the malaise in many so called Francophone African countries and just as it continued to rile against Kaddafi and bomb Tripoli it donated US $600 million dollar of aid to Meles Zenawi. If corruption be the issue (and if we say as the Kenyan minister “hang them all!”) then we have to denounce that America’s friend Meles Zenawi, who has whisked off no less than 8 billion dollars from the country, has substantial stolen money in American banks just as the stolen billions of Sani Abacha are also in British banks.

 Hilary Clinton said: “In several nations, the institutions of democracy are becoming stronger. There are freer medias, justice systems that administer justice equally, and impartially, honest legislatures, and vibrant civil societies. Earlier I mentioned the Arab Spring, a name that suggests the blossoming of something new. And what is now blooming across the Arab states has already taken root in many African nations, commitment to democracy, recognition of human rights, investment in economic health and education programs, and an emphasis on meeting the needs of our young people” .

Was she talking of Africa? Of the Africa we know? And to add insult to injury (or goiter over an ears ailment as we say in Ethiopia) saying all this in Addis Abeba where a brutal regime holds more than 35,000 political prisoners, has banned the free media, controls the judicial system and mocks at justice and the rule of law? Years ago, I went to a book signing event in Paris and heard the late Paul Henze praise the Meles regime to the skies as he presented the French translation of his book called Layers of Time. As questions were not allowed I went to him in the end and asked him if his presentation was about an East European country. This, of course, did not amuse the man who did so much damage to Ethiopia and her sovereignty and history. It was a tumultuous evening he passed in a heated argument with me and most of the Ethiopians present. Reading Clinton’s speech, this was what or who I was reminded of. Reread what she said and wonder of wonders try to find an African country that fulfills her irresponsible and demagogic utterance. Her very host Meles is anathema to what she said or proposed. Those Africans who said thank you Hilary are dangerous fools (is there another kind actually?), candidates for vicious neocolonial plunder from various quarters. The woods that help the axe chop of the trees, as it were.

As Hilary Clinton danced with the Eritrean strongman Isaias and his wife and hailed him as a democrat (her husband added Meles, Kagame and Museveini to the list), a few kilometers away in Sembel prison dozens of political prisoners were suffering. In Addis Abeba, the AU headquarter is not far from the old notorious Kerchiele prison. Meles Zenawi’s secret or ghost prisons are not also far from where Hilary spoke and uttered empty praises. The infamous Kaliti prison is not also in another region. She was out there in her own surrealist world and she was not attempting some absurd humor, no. And that is what makes the whole proceeding a tragedy. The foolish Africans heaping praise on Hilary for her absurd speech push one to demand a punishment for stupidity. Have your say Mr. Mutula Kilonzo!

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