From my Diary: Africa’s succession theories

A group of Professors of the University of Zimbabwe have put the heat on Grace Mugabe, wife of President Mugabe, demanding that she returns the Honorary Doctorate degree she received from the university recently. Their preliminary argument is that the University’s Doctorate Degree is not for political rewards.

But while this remains the argument of the University Dons, there is the other argument that, the award has been influenced by Mugabe himself to pave the way for Grace to succeed him as President.

While there have been evident cases of successions to the high office of president by proxy, or to be precise, by sons of the incumbents, the case of President Mugabe’s wife still remains an unsolved riddle because, as most Zimbabweans argue, the award of an honorary degree is not a necessary prerequisite for succession to the presidency of any country. But the guess is indeed strong and wild in Zimbabwe, that President Mugabe is grooming his wife as successor.

In Togo, Etienne Eyadema succeeded his father through the manipulation of that country’s constitution. The simple trick here was that Eyadema’s son was already in government and for a country with a population of less than five million, such manipulations work well.

In nearby Gabon, Omar Bongo’s son succeeded his father taking the same course as Eyadema. Both Gabon and Togo have some similarities that can determine certain circumstances in identical form.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo DRC, Kabila’s son succeeded Kabila the father. But the circumstances that led to this succession are indeed tragic to the point that many analysts have been reluctant to make this a subject open to public discussion.

Back here in Cameroon, certain rumours had been spreading that President Biya is clearing the way for his son and most people have heard only about Frank Biya, to succeed his father. Such still remains within the realm of mere speculations, if not an unsolved riddle.

But a lead story on The Sun Newspaper of last Monday 29, took me and many by surprise, which carried the story titled Biya’s son declares for president. However what surprised me most was the way the word son was given special treatment. It was printed with inverted commas.

The name of this son of Mr. Biya turned out to be Georges Gilbert Baongla, What I could not understand very easily is while presenting himself to journalists, insisted that he was the legitimate son of President Biya. And without explaining himself further, he went ahead and put his case across why he wants to stand for president to replace his father.

He said his party, the Republican Party, was registered on April 15, 2013 and that he was rearing his head in politics because the CPDM, which his father founded, has been engulfed in corruption and that his party has a mission to realise the New Deal philosophy propounded by his father. In other words, the only difference is that he will close the doors to the kind of people who succeeded so well in rocking his father’s boat.

One thing George should be advised is that those people come like saints and their appearances will hoodwink even him who now poses as the real saint.

One thing my colleague journalists who attended his press briefing in Kumba failed to ask him was whether as his father he did make any attempts to persuade him all along, that he can help him, with his new and bright ideas to bring back to focus his New Deal philosophy?

Honestly, I would like to share his regret that his father had the misfortune of working with persons who have only helped to see his vision thrown into the dust bin.

All I remember that he too came like a saint and I was one of his fans until those same hawks rented the skies.