The Mystery of Africa\u2019s Disappearing Presidents<\/a>.\u201d Her take-off point is Malawi\u2019s President Peter Mutharika, who went to New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in mid-September and returned home only on October 16. His entourage refused to provide any itinerary. She cites other African leaders who take long \u2018vacations\u2019 or otherwise disappear from their countries for long periods of time: Cameroon\u2019s President Paul Biya once spent three weeks in La Baule, France, at a cost of $40,000 per day and later spent two months at the Hotel Intercontinental in Geneva. With respect to the La Baule stay, his spokesman said, \u201cLike any other worker, President Paul Biya has a right to his vacations.\u201d<\/p>\nOther African heads of state disappear for \u201cmedical reasons.\u201d Because of the general lack of transparency, absence for medical reasons leads to speculation that the president in question has died. Zimbabwe\u2019s Robert Mugabe\u2019s regular trips to Southeast Asia routinely set off such rumors. Sometimes, as in the case with Gabon\u2019s former President Omar Bongo, they do die, even as their spokesmen assure the public that they are in good health. Chutel summarizes: \u201cit\u2019s an all too familiar story for many Africans: leaders\u2019 whose aides swear they\u2019re fit as a fiddle, dying in office under a cloud of mixed messages. A politician admitting to ill health the way Hillary Clinton did during her campaign\u2026is almost unheard of on the continent\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Poor political leadership informs the bad governance that is Africa\u2019s greatest barrier to social and economic development. Chutel makes an important point: the refusal of some African leaders \u201cto be open and honest with the public further shows a disregard for the people who put them in power, and in turn erodes public trust in the leaders themselves.\u201d She raises the hope that as Africa\u2019s population becomes younger, better educated, and part of the information age, the leaders\u2019 behavior that she chronicles will become politically unacceptable: \u201cAfrican presidents have to learn to talk to\u2014and account\u2014to their people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blog Post\u00a0by\u00a0John Campbell Quartz Africa published a thought-provoking article by Lynsey Chutel titled \u201cThe Mystery of Africa\u2019s Disappearing Presidents.\u201d Her take-off point is Malawi\u2019s President Peter Mutharika, who went to New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in mid-September and returned home only on October 16. His entourage refused to provide any itinerary. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3488,"featured_media":3502,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jf_save_progress":"","is_featured":"","footnotes":""},"article-tags":[87],"topics":[11],"class_list":["post-4457","articles","type-articles","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-tags-nosection","topics-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/4457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3488"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/4457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article-tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-tags?post=4457"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudypos.com\/nbosi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=4457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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