The pattern is always the same for dictators. They love power, keep grabbing more, get drunk with it, accumulate even more – and fool themselves they are invincible. And behind each of the dictator is a powerful partner that is equally hungry for power – the wife.
The results are also depressingly predictable. The dictators leave the same way they got into power – violently.
Then glory turns into disaster – for (a) the dictator, (b) wife, (c) family and “their” nations. Destruction, dislocation, collapse, and death of innocent lives, institutions and property.
Featured are some of Africa’s dictator couples that have plunged their nations to the deep end of misery:
* Juvenal Habyarimana shot his way into power in 1973, killed off the Kayibanda cabinet, and together with his powerful wife, Agathe, ruled Rwanda for 21 years. Habyarimana ended the way he came – violently. And Rwanda went up in flames. Agathe lives a miserable life in exile.
* Laurent and Simone Gbagbo were spared from the violence they mercilessly inflicted on millions of their compatriots – both are facing justice.
* In power for 36, and aged 93, Robert Mugabe ruined the once prosperous nation of Zimbabwe. Beautiful Zimbabwe is an economy on the death bed. Factions of the ruling party ZANU-PF are fighting to grab what is left of Zimbabwe. Grace Mugabe is governing behind the shadows.
* Then we have Paul Kagame, the new Kinani, and Madam Nyiramongi – now in their 22nd year of power, and hoping to rule Rwanda until at least 2034. In other words this dictator couple is dreaming of ruling for at least 40. The violence unleashed by this couple is most spectacular in DR Congo, where, at least 5 million people perished due to Kagame militarism of direct and proxy invasions.
Power is useful when institutionalized to build and hold leaders accountable. When power is hijacked by dictators couples, it is bound to lead to calamity.
But here is the sad thing. Each dictator couple somehow believes they different from dictator couples that caused chaos. The dictator couples do not learn. The dictator couple slowly walk to the cliff – and plunge into the deep end, together with their hijacked nations.
By David Himbara
