Monkey meat is highly desirable in many parts of Africa. Catching a monkey, however, can be difficult because monkeys are fast, agile, and have very good eyesight. They can thus see a predator/hunter coming and easily escape. To catch a monkey, the hunter uses guile and employs the monkey’s craving for nuts against him to destroy the monkey’s destiny. Peanuts are roasted and put in a gourd with a narrow neck and left in the forest for the monkey to see and smell it.
The aroma of the roasted peanuts attracts the monkey, who slips its slender hand into the gourd. The neck of the gourd is wide enough for the monkey to be able to slip its hand in, but once it has grabbed the nuts, the hand becomes too big to pull out. The monkey is unwilling to let go of the nuts in his hand, and thus his hand is trapped in the gourd. The gourd is too heavy for the monkey to run away with and so the hunter is able to overtake the monkey simply because the monkey’s craving for peanuts debilitates its ability to let go and run for safety.
Eskimos in Russia and Alaska employ a similar strategy for catching wolves. Wolf fur is highly desirable among Eskimos because it makes for warm and comfortable coats, a necessity for survival in the frigid Arctic Circle. Like monkeys, wolves are fast and agile and have highly developed senses of sight and smell and are therefore not easy to catch. However, they cannot resist their craving for blood.
So the Eskimo hunter takes a knife, sharpens it, and then dips it in the blood of a seal or any other animal that the wolf likes. The blood is then allowed to freeze on the knife and then the hunter sticks the handle of the knife in the snow leaving the blood covered knife standing up and visible. The wolf is attracted to the scent of the blood and quickly starts licking the blood off the knife.
Over and over he licks the knife and soon his tongue is so cold he cannot feel it any longer. It’s numb. But his taste for blood is growing and he is not getting as much as he wants. Finally his licking exposes the razor sharp edge of the knife. It cuts into his tongue again and again but he does not even notice for his tongue can no longer feel anything. The wolf’s own blood now flows from his cut tongue.
The wolf is thrilled; with the blood now more plentiful and warm, he continues to lick more and more. Eventually, the wolf may notice he is getting weaker and not stronger but cannot resist the craving for blood and eventually the wolf collapses from loss of his own blood next to the fully exposed knife.
Like the wolf and the monkey, leaders in Africa are being hunted by predators. The predators know that leaders in Africa are agile and fast, with keen senses of smell and sight, and won’t be easily hunted by conventional methods and frontal attacks. So the predators use the cravings of African leaders against them. These cravings are the lust for women, money or power. Our lust for these “roasted peanuts” leaves us vulnerable to hunters who prey on us for our time, talents and treasure to harness them for the good of the hunter and not the good of the forest.
Like the wolves, our cravings are used against us so that we even become willing accomplices in our own destruction. The predators do not need to strike a blow to fell us; we administer the poison ourselves, impoverishing our communities and countries and empowering those whose interests are not aligned with ours.
In the Gambia, Yahya Jammeh’s passion for young girls led him to believe that he was a god, and he became easy to manipulate through his mistresses. Like Samson in the Old Testament, his mistresses distracted him from critical cracks in his defenses and he was lulled into a false sense of security about an upcoming election whose results surprised him and led to his ouster. Today, Jammeh is a fugitive living in exile in Equatorial Guinea.
In Gabon, Omar Bongo, former President of Gabon, was manipulated into providing contracts to suppliers through the provision of young girls as sex objects for the President. By employing prostitutes, local and international businessmen succeeded in influencing Mr. Bongo to loot his own country and destroy his legacy. His son, Ali, craved fame and fortune; and after not achieving it as a failed musician, acquired it by colluding with global oil companies to defraud the state. Recently, Ali Bongo was pleading to the people to “make noise” when his ouster was met with widespread joy among Gabonese.
In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s craving for adulation and revenge led him to blindly repudiate the efforts of white Zimbabweans and exile the breadwinners of the economy; and later on, it led him to ignore the warning signs from intelligence agencies and his own army about the impending coup d’état that was to overthrow him from power. He died, knowing that his legacy as an impactful African leader was forever tarnished by his dismal record as described by his successor, Emerson Mnangagwa.
In Uganda, Idi Amin’s craving for power and adulation led him to pursue laughable associations with Scotland and the UK, ignore economic realities in Uganda, purge thousands of his own people, and eventually invade Tanzania in a bid to distract the Ugandan people from their domestic challenges. This last action eventually led to his overthrow at the hands of Tanzanian forces.
Fleeing to Saudi Arabia, Amin was denied access to the Scotland that he adored, and eventually even to return to his home country of Uganda. He fell sick, died and was buried in relative solitude, with few people in attendance…a far cry from the attention and adulation that he craved.
In Angola, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos’ craving for wealth led to him impoverishing the country’s citizens by agreeing to sweetheart deals that gave him and foreign companies immense profits at the expense of the country. When Angola’s Parliament finally voted to make it illegal for the President to participate in shareholding of formerly privatised state-owned corporations, Dos Santos placed ownership of the country’s privatised assets in the name of his daughter, Isabel. Angola, despite a wealth of natural resources, remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Isabel Dos Santos’ assets, meanwhile, have been frozen in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands, and she is reportedly in debt to many creditors.
In South Africa, Jacob Zuma’s craving for wealth and women led him to sell out the enormous economic gains achieved by the Botha, de Klerk, Mandela and Mbeki administrations during and after apartheid by colluding with corrupt businessmen and women in and outside of South Africa (including the Gupta family) to defraud the nation of valuable assets in exchange for generous benefits to Zuma and his family.
South Africa’s economy declined precipitously, with the GDP per capita falling by 25 percent, unemployment skyrocketing to 29 percent and the S&P Global Ratings and Fitch reducing SA’s credit rating to junk status. Today, Zuma is a disgraced former President, hiding in Russia for “medical reasons” to avoid a return to jail for a contempt of court violation that occurred during an ongoing corruption case.
Dear African leader, resist the urge to gratify your own selfish desires. There are non-Africans and Africans seeking to destroy your destiny by getting you to give into these impulses. Learn from those who have preceded you; giving into these impulses will eventually lead to your own demise, your country’s destruction, and your legacy’s dissolution.
>>>The writer is a scholar and practitioner of organisational development and leadership and a leadership Coach and Facilitator. Over the past three decades, he has successfully coached and trained leaders in Africa, North America and Europe. His passion for leadership enhancement was born out of his experiences as a cadet in the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and as a military officer serving in combat in the Sierra Leone Civil War where he was shot twice. As the only Sierra Leonean with a Ph.D. in Leadership, Modupe was the founding Dean of the African Leadership University School of Business, an institution providing a Pan-African MBA degree to Africa’s mid-career professionals. He is the Co-founder and CEO of BCA Leadership (www.bcaleadership.com), an organisation that has impacted over 4000 African leaders with coaching and knowledge-sharing services. He leads a team of forty-two Coaches across Africa and he is the curator of The Made in Africa Leadership Conference.
Contact Modupe through email at [email protected]
