The curse of the African president strikes again. This time, its victim was Ghana’s John Atta Mills, who complained of pains on Monday last week and was dead by Tuesday afternoon. Mills was the latest in a disturbingly long line of African presidents to be unexpectedly and unceremoniously despatched to the Great Presidential Palace in Sky while still firmly ensconced in a real one.
Mills is the third this year alone. Before him was Malawi’s Bingu wa Mutharika, who had a heart attack in April after over-exerting himself in an illicit sexual encounter with a female MP (according to this scandalous report, which, as much as I want it to be true, does strain the definition of credibility).
And in January, Guinea-Bissau’s Malam Bacai Sanha succumbed in Paris after spending most of his two years in office in hospitals. Not Guinea Bissau hospitals, of course. As a rule, African presidents don’t leave themselves at the mercy of their own health systems, not even in Guinea Bissau, which has the continent’s best drug supplies (a fringe benefit of being a narco-state).
Go back just a little bit further and the list of dead sitting African presidents gets alarmingly longer. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi last year, although his circumstances were rather unusual (as, of course, was he). In 2010, it was Nigeria’s Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. In 2009, Omar Bongo of Gabon. In 2008, Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa and Guinea’s Lansana Conté.
Maybe it’s a presidential thing. It’s a stressful job. But other continents aren’t affected in the same way. Since 2008, Africa has lost eight heads of state. There are only 54 states. That’s a presidential mortality rate of nearly 15%; slightly higher than the infant mortality rate of Sierra Leone, which is the second highest in the world. In other words, a baby in Sierra Leone has more chance of surviving its first five years than African presidents do of getting through a few terms in office.
Contrast this with other continents. In the same time period, there was just the one presidential fatality each from Asia (the Dear Leader from North Korea), Europe (Poland’s Lech Kaczy?ski, in a plane crash), and North America (David Thomson of Barbados, from cancer). South America’s leaders all somehow managed to keep themselves alive, an impressive feat especially considering Hugo Chavez’s increasingly shaky public appearances. Same for Australasia.
So what’s happening in Africa – why do our presidents keep dying on us?
In a letter that reveals a shocking level of government corruption, South Sudan President Salva Kiir has asked more than 75 former and current senior government officials to return an estimated $4bn in stolen funds to the country.
Corruption has plagued South Sudan’s government since the 2005 peace deal that ended more than 20 years of civil war with Sudan.
In January, South Sudan’s auditor general reported that nearly $1.5bn in government funds were unaccounted for from the 2005-06 fiscal year.
“We fought for freedom, justice and equality,” the president’s letter reads.
“Yet, once we got to power, we forgot what we fought for and began to enrich ourselves at the expense of our people.”
The letter was dated May 3 and was obtained by the Associated Press news agency over the weekend.
Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the country’s information minister confirmed its authenticity on Monday.
The president wrote that South Sudan’s citizens and the international community were “alarmed” by the levels of corruption and that “the credibility of our government is on the line”.
He promised amnesty for officials who return stolen funds and to keep the identities of those officials confidential.
According to the statement, Kiir has reached out to heads of state in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the United States to ask for help fighting South Sudan’s corruption.
Benjamin said that Kenya, South Sudan’s southern neighbour, is playing an active role in South Sudan’s fight against corruption.
South Sudan has opened a bank account in Kenya where anyone who has taken government funds can
return them.“If anybody again is found taking government funds in an inappropriate manner, there will be laws in place that will definitely punish such individuals,” he said.
Earlier this year Kiir issued a decree ordering all public officials to declare their assets to the South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission.
The call was supported by Vice President Riak Machar, who declared his assets to the commission in February. But the decree was initially ignored by many other officials.
The office of the president now says around 5,000 former and current public officials have declared their assets to the commission.
