Charles Haba

The Sexually Transmitted African Presidency, and Why It So Rarely Shines In Africa, as in the rest of the world, children who take over power directly from their fathers have a rough time of it. They are dismissed as dim, untalented nepo babies who got the job, as Kenyans like to say, because it was “sexually transmitted”. The fathers at least sweated for it. They fought for independence, led a coup, or put in the hard graft of stealing the election that started them out. The children got it on a silver platter, and the country never lets them forget it. The received wisdom is that Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who took over when his father died in February 2005, is the best example to have escaped that straitjacket. And perhaps Joseph Kabila inherited Congo in 2001 after a bodyguard shot his father. He did slaightly better than his old man. Mahamat Déby picked up Chad in 2021, the jury is still out. Ali Bongo got Gabon in 2009 after his father. He ended bably. In Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth had the premiership handed to him by his father in 2017, he wasn’t a disaster. The less-harshly-judged sons waited for Dad’s grave to settle. Uhuru Kenyatta arrived 35 years after Jomo, Botswana’s Ian Khama 28 years after Seretse, but we will spare them because they didn’t take over the baton directly. The failures who never got to sit on the throne make a longer, sadder list. In Zaire, Mobutu’s son Ndolo Michel Mathieu Kongulu Mobutu, better known as Kongolo, was a captain in the Division spéciale présidentielle, nicknamed “Saddam Hussein”. As Laurent Kabila’s rebels reached Kinshasa in May 1997, he was accused of involvement in the assassination of army chief General Mahele. Within eighteen months he was dead. Then there is the pattern where the fathers make the play when its too late. Hosni Mubarak spent a decade fattening son Gamal for the job, then tried to serve him just as Egyptians filled Tahrir Square in 2011. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi became the face of his father’s succession only when the bombs were already falling. Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal tried to slip son Karim in through a constitutional back door in 2011, and Dakar burned. These “wazee” waited until the rope was round their necks, then called the son over to help. The waiting room is still full. In Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has parked his son Teodorín in the vice-presidency. Uganda’s First Son and army chief, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has announced he will run for president in 2031. Congo-Brazzaville has Denis-Christel Sassou Nguesso, a cabinet minister since 2021. In Cameroon, Paul Biya made his son Franck vice-president in April 2026. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, and stick to what has come to pass. But back to Ali Bongo. He lasted 14 years against his father Omar’s 41. He suffered a stroke in 2018, his wife and son were accused of minding the till, and in 2023 he “won” a third term only to be toppled by his own cousin within days. Faure has fared better largely because his father set the bar extremely low. Extremely superstititious, Eyadéma helped kill independence leader Sylvanus Olympio in 1963 and seized power in 1967. He claimed he couldn’t die because he survived a plane crash in 1974, starred in his own comic books, and ruled by fear for 38 years. Next to that, the son merely had to avoid being a monster. Still, he rewrote the constitution so that term limits no longer trouble him. The apple rarely falls far from the tree. So State House turns out to be a poor school for presidents. The children grow up among flatterers, not rivals. They learn to be applauded, not to outwit anyone. The fathers don’t intend to die so they teach their children to be loyal rather than skilled. It’s difficult to learn a new role when your teacher refuses to leave the classroom.