JOHANNESBURG--Ageing African presidents who try to cling to power by manipulating constitutions and judiciaries risk the same popular rebellions that toppled rulers in last year's Arab Spring, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka said on Wednesday.
Citing as examples Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who are both well in their eighties, Soyinka criticised "sit-tight rulers" who sought to hang on in office despite being "obviously beyond their prime".
"What is wrong with them? Why do they think that the world will not continue to turn after they've left office, I don't understand," the prolific playright and author, who in 1986 became the first sub-Saharan African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, told Reuters in an interview in Pretoria.
Soyinka, 77, who sports a distinctive white Afro hairstyle, and is one of Africa's leading intellectuals, has been an outspoken critic of dictatorships and autocratic rulers in his native Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent and in the world. While he saw differences between the Arab world and Africa, he predicted African rulers who abused their powers to stay on for years could face their own "African Spring".
"In the end, those who refuse to bow to popular will, who continue to treat, describe and regard their own peoples as inferior to themselves or their petty clans, I'm afraid will confront the same nature of violence as we witnessed in the Arab world," he added.
Soyinka said presidents in Africa who manipulated hand-picked constitutional courts and pliant judiciaries to extend their periods of rule often displayed the same arrogant, condescending paternalism as former colonial powers. Mugabe, 87, has governed Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and has defied critics at home and abroad who accuse him of using violence against rivals to stay in power.
Senegal's Wade, 85, faces violent protests after the West African country's Constitutional Council confirmed that he could stand for re-election for a third term, despite complaints that this breached rules setting a two-term limit. "What is Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal wanting to do continuing with another term in office? By now he should be an elder statesman whom we could come and visit in retirement to discuss the future of Africa," said Soyinka.
Turning to Nigeria, where he was imprisoned in 1967 for attempting to broker peace in the civil war over secessionist Biafra, Soyinka said both religious and political forces were driving the insurgency by the Islamist sect Boko Haram that has killed hundreds of people in Africa's top oil producer. He accused power-hungry politicians from Nigeria's Muslim north of using indoctrinated young militants, drawn from the ranks of the poor unemployed and educated in Islamic schools, as "foot soldiers" in a battle over who should control the country.
"Those who unleashed Boko Haram on the nation are politicians. These are the ones behind Boko Haram ... unfortunately one has to point to what section they come from, and that is the north," Soyinka said. "This minority is very focused, very powerful, very rich, they used to be in government, they've accumulated billions."
