Lessons from baboon politics

Animals are interesting creatures. For them, love is restricted between a mother and her young, seduction merely a prelude to baby making, nothing more.

As a result, there are no coffee dates in the wild and animals don’t mate for fun like humans, but strictly to make babies. They also ensure they give birth at the onset of the rains, when food is plenty.

Thus, female animals don’t waste time getting seduced. Instead, they leave a trail of hormonal evidence suggesting they are ready to make a baby. So when a female baboon is in season, its bottom puffs up and becomes red. This is what is happening with our politics as the election – whose date no one truly knows – nears.

Every political bottom is flaming red, advertising to all and sundry that they are available and ready to be taken by the alpha male, which in this case is any party leader, briefcase or otherwise.

It’s a reflection of how closely our politics and politicians mirror the lifestyle of an average baboon.

For starters, a baboon can’t decide whether it is an omnivore, a carnivore, a scavenger or a plain thief. Baboons eat fruits, leaves, snakes and lizards – even goat meat. And so is the average party leader.

Give them a snake that has done time for rape and murder and the politician will devour it for political gain. Equally, baboons are shamelessly promiscuous. The alpha male – in our case the party leader – has priority mating rights and once he’s done, the riffraff can join the party. In the same manner, a Kenyan politician will redden his or her bottom and defect from the leading party to outfits no one has ever heard of.

But just like politicians, baboons don’t respect women. They will see a man and tremble with fear but they ignore women, even those armed with machetes.

The most they do is scratch their sexual organs in much the same way a male politician says, "This woman is a harlot because she has no husband. How can she challenge me?

Baboons also have enemies, foremost being the leopard. And they scamper up the nearest tree, squealing with fear, at the faintest whiff of leopard urine. That’s also what happens when a plan – real or imagined – to assassinate a politician is unearthed. Drama!

Unfortunately, the most vital lesson that baboons should have taught our politicians was ignored. Baboons attack enemies in a "V" formation, like the infantry. That sort of formation allows the enemy to tactically retreat, as opposed to encircling and cornering them, which makes the enemy extremely dangerous because they have no choice but to fight bitterly to the last man.

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