One does not need to be a dictator to do the right thing

Prof Makau Mutua’s Sunday Standard column titled “Love him or hate him, Kagame could be Africa’s Lew Kwan (sic) Yew,” is revealing. For one thing, it’s perplexing that Prof Mutua doesn’t believe he can make his point without throwing his friend under the bus, “I don’t give a flying fig about so-called benevolent dictators, although my dear friend Donald Kipkorir, the estimable lawyer, seems to love them.”  It is an amoral point of departure that implicitly calls into question Mr Kipkorir’s intellect as someone who is at once an “estimable lawyer” but unable to measure up to Makau’s intellectual prowess because the former “seems to love” dictators. This is someone he patronisingly refers to as “my dear friend.”

What’s even more bizarre is how Mutua, a university professor, takes a serious subject and treats it casually in the hope that his reference to Harvard University is a sufficient substitute for credibility and rigour. What’s clear is that Mutua is part of that African “intellectual breed” that doesn’t believe in Africa. He doesn’t believe an African country can craft democracy and development outside a foreign yardstick, the reference point to his analysis.