A Monumentally Bad Idea

A fringe ally of the African National Congress, the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco), has started making noise about pushing for a third term for Thabo Mbeki. This is a colossally, monumentally, stupidly bad idea. To be fair to Mbeki and the ANC, this is not an idea that comes from them, but I do hope this is not Mbeki's way of floating a trial balloon. If it is, I hope that it bursts instantly. One of post-colonial Africa's curses has been Big Man Syndrome, whereby leaders, almost always from the independence era, believe that they are indispensible and thus refuse to yield power or else engage in chicanery and heavy-handedness to change or manipulate the Constitution and thus make their naked grab for power "legal" in the narrowest sense.

In 1940 a Republican slogan was "Washington wouldn't, Grant couldn't, Roosevelt shouldn't" in opposing a third term for FDR. Whatever the merits of re-opening the discussion of the two-term limit in American presidency -- and, speaking as a historian, I am an ardent supporter of all of FDR's terms -- given the circumstances in Sub-Saharan Africa, let us get a new slogan going: "Mandela wouldn't, Mbeki shouldn't."