In his excellent commentary published in the May 15 edition of Business and Financial Times, an Accra newspaper, Edward Boateng spoke a painful truth about our failure to maintain and grow functional institutions, organisations, and services that Africa inherited from its colonial rulers.
Titled “The tale of two cities: A mirror to black African governance,” Boateng’s commentary summarised his observations when he visited Cape Town and Johannesburg after a ten-year, and seven-year absence from the two South African cities, respectively. He summed it up thus: “Cape Town breathes. Cape Town works. Cape Town thrives.”
Not so Johannesburg. Boateng wrote: “Johannesburg crumbles.” And to him, it was not mere decline of the city he had called home for years. “It was governance failure. It was the slow, painful unraveling of a city full of promise.”
Like a good doctor, Boateng, a Ghanaian diplomat and businessman, explained the cause of the problem. “Let’s speak plainly,” he wrote. “Cape Town is run by the Democratic Alliance (DA), a party largely led by white South Africans. Johannesburg is governed by the African National Congress (ANC), a Black-led party. They share a national budget, an economy, and a history. But they do not share outcomes”
Then he zeroed in on the heart of the problem. “This isn’t merely about political parties—it’s about us. About Black leadership. About how we govern. Why does failure so often accompany us in office? Why is delivering the basics—water, lights, roads—a herculean task?”
Boateng’s diagnosis was so painfully true. Our great continent is stuck in poverty amidst its wealth, and in reverse drive despite its extraordinarily bright professionals and entrepreneurs. Why? With few exceptions, we have failed to govern ourselves. This failure has been a joint effort by the rulers and the subjects. Continuing to blame the colonialists, neo-colonialists and our past will not save us from the hard truth of our self-destruction.
As I read Boateng’s words, my thoughts drifted to the political events in Uganda during the last two weeks. The ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) had its internal exercise to choose its candidates for next year’s general elections for various offices. These are people that the ruling party is offering us as our leaders and “representatives” in our journey towards a promised land that has become a permanent mirage. And given the NRM’s total control of the state, most of its candidates will be declared the winners of next year’s general “election.”
But how were these people chosen? In many parts of the country, the NRM outdid its past record of shameful anti-democratic behaviour. They offered us the most grotesque display of contempt for the citizens, for the law, for democracy, and for the blood of those who have been killed or injured in the political violence that began in 1964.
First, forcing citizens to line up behind their preferred candidates is as undemocratic as it gets. Coercion, fear, and lack of privacy have no place in democracy. None.
Second, many of the so-called polling stations were nothing but commodity markets where candidates bought votes from the poor and gullible citizens that did not value their rights and power of citizenship. In a reversal of the rules of the market, the buyers (politicians) set the price they paid the sellers (voters). And so, the voters were paid peanuts for their precious votes. Some were given Waragi, a high potency gin that served to damage the recipients’ brains and livers. Most were given small amounts of cash, with some of the transactions done in broad daylight, captured on video records that ought to have prompted immediate nullification of the so-called election “results.”
Third, as though cash-and-waragi-for-votes was not enough insult to the citizens, some politicians had armed state agents who fired bullets or whipped citizens to terrorize them into supporting them or abandoning their opponents. The violence was enough to make one silently apologize to past regimes in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa that one once viewed with contempt. Not that those regimes were right in their misrule. They were no worse than us despite our claim to be more enlightened than they were.
The 2025 NRM “elections” were not an exercise in promoting meritocracy. It was a competition to see who the better conjuror was; who the better fraudster was; who the more corrupt candidate was. This is not my verdict. It is the judgement of the NRM leaders themselves. The number of claims of election fraud, complete with credible evidence, are a self-indictment that the NRM has eloquently presented to the world. In the words of an NRM District chairperson who called me over the weekend, “there is no democracy in my party.”
Now, should we expect leaders and representatives who obtain power by force or fraud to suddenly change and become servants of the people? Do they miraculously suffer an attack of real patriotism, humility, accountability and transparency in the execution of their brief.
And what is their brief? Why do they seek to go to parliament or to hold other posts for which they have paid cash or Waragi? Is it to serve the citizens, or to advance their personal financial and social status interests? Do they have a clear, well considered local or national development agenda, or is theirs just a focus on personal acquisition of titles, large salaries and benefits that their voters cannot even comprehend?
We find clues in the hot-air-promises that many have made to their people. When a parliamentary candidate promises to deliver services that are the functions of the local or national executive, you know they are lying just to get “votes.” When they give material things to individuals, schools, churches and newlyweds, they engage in deception that, once elected to parliament, they will bring a flood of similar goodies from the state.
Clearly, we need honest and focused representatives who will seek real development for their constituencies, and the whole country, not those who engage in tokenism and distribution of crumbs to their chronically impoverished voters. We need parliamentarians who have the courage to hold the executive, including the president, accountable for their actions and distribution of national resources, not court dancers who are eager to sing songs of praise to the ruler. We need men and women who are committed to well-planned and integrated development of the whole country, not the narrowminded ones who think that parliament and other positions are their families’ private avenues towards personal wealth creation.
Boateng ended his commentary with a clarion call to Africa. “Let us rise to meet history—not as victims of our own failures, but as authors of Africa’s renaissance. Let us choose leadership that builds, serves, and inspires. Let us do better. And let us begin—today.”
I agree entirely. I share Boateng’s dream. The question is: how do we turn this dream to reality, bearing in mind that the states, districts and cities of Africa have been captured by men and women who know how to do one thing very well: Get and retain power by any means necessary? How do we promote meritocracy in a land that celebrates mediocrity and sycophancy?
The grotesque display by Uganda’s NRM in the last two weeks leaves one lost for a hopeful answer. For now, Boateng’s dream must remain just that. A dream.
© Muniini K. Mulera