Donald Trump has set glittering standards for African leaders

US President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 19, 2025. [AFP] Africans rode into independence weighed down by unrealistic promise and expectations. Freedom fighters crawled out of forests bubbling with excitement. The war was over. Invitations to dine in the sprawling bungalows the colonizer had left in a huff awaited. They were eager to reclaim ancestral lands, paddle around in the white man's pool, float in his bathtub and wench in the white man's king-size bed - clean linen, fluffy pillows and all. Independence leaders, men who had fraternised with the coloniser mano a mano overseas and, therefore, knew his ways recoiled with horror. They had mastered knife, fork, and chinaware. They understood the rituals that accompany fine dining, and the intricacies of navigating indoor plumbing that follow. So, they calmly stared down the "ruffians" and told them to go to hell. It would have been a disgrace to invite folks who ate with their fingers and who had been squatting behind trees just the other day to dine with kings. It is easy to understand where they were coming from. As freshly minted leaders, custom required of them to affect the mannerisms of the African chief - aloof, mystical, wealthy and all-powerful, hence the flywhisk, robes and decorated walking sticks. But the coloniser kept glaring, and that made things a tad complicated. Whereas our leaders wanted to stand on a hill and declare the lands below their own - just as an African chieftain and the coloniser himself would have - a new-fangled thing called the law forbade it. Whereas they wanted to grab pesky dissenters by the cojones, lead them to a forest and separate their noisy heads from their necks, again just as the African chieftain and the coloniser himself did, the former coloniser now wailed about infringement of human rights. Whereas they needed to surround themselves with kinsmen and retain the choicest cuts of the cow within the bloodline, the white man railed against corruption and nepotism. What was this nonsense about spreading development in the villages of fools who didn't elect them, or respecting the separation of powers to suffer the constant whining from parliament and judiciary anyway? And so, our poor leaders grieved - forced by circumstances to employ only the qualified, to rule within the confines of the law, to share resources equitably, and bring the marginalised into the fold. They reluctantly hugged political rivals and dissenters, and cultivated a free press and independent judicial and policing systems. They firmly kept spouses and children away from state coffers, governed competently and, horror of horrors, and conducted free and fair elections. When they lost, they were compelled to hand over power to a little upstart and then sit back and watch, smarting with fury as army chiefs and traditional dancers genuflected before the new leader. All these because the white man was watching, their ambassador walking up and down, armed with a cane, like a headmaster. It was so suffocating that many an African leader resigned in protest, fled into exile or died - anything to be rid of stupid rules that required them to govern like church choir masters. Trump, bless him, has changed all that. The good chap was elected for his first term despite loudly bragging about saluting the nether regions of women with abandon. He went on to hire the most incompetent cabinet secretaries in American history, whom he fired at will and replaced with another clueless set. He lied at every turn, insulted whomever he wished, shamed his people, embarrassed global leaders and mismanaged a global pandemic that killed a million-plus of his countrymen. When his reelection bid flopped, a rowdy mob of died-hard followers chased waheshimiwa around like chickens in the American parliament before Trump rudely flew out of town without handing over to the new chief. Four years on, Americans so missed the firm manner in which he conducted affairs of state that they overwhelmingly reelected a man convicted of racketeering and sexual assault. And so, he reigns again, like a bull in a china shop. His Excellency Donald Trump is not just making America great again. He has set African leaders free.

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