Power and Fragile Peace

One of the deputy leaders stood up at the peace rally today and berated the previous speakers for not thanking the President first and before all other actors for the successes we were celebrating. It was because of his bravery as a warrior that we have peace in the country, we were told, and he has spread peace and continues to spread peace throughout the land.

Outside of East Africa our leaders are not given a great time in the press. Self-proclaimed “mature democracies” are full of scorn for countries where votes are bought, not cast based on policy, and often miscounted. They assume that because the current regime is corrupt the elections must have been rigged, because there is no way over 50% of the adult population would have chosen to keep a despot in power.

But they don’t see the drip-drip effect of propaganda that the majority of voters are fed. If they did, they would see that most people have been made to love the status quo, and, I believe, vote it back in with a legitimate majority, even taking into account the impact of blatant election rigging.

Everything today was framed into a hierarchical prism, and there was a constant feeling that this was all happening under the watchful and encouraging eye of the President. The minister for development in this province was the ‘guest of honour’ and left to speak last, but when he spoke he mainly deferred to the President and brought things back to how great things are because of him. In his light, we sang the national anthem twice (once at the beginning and once at the end), and presents were even donated to the minister, to take back to the President and his wife in the capital – as a thank you.

This may sound like it was contrived, but it was supported by various underlying layers of hierarchy, which acted as a prop to this ultimate Presidential hierarchy, and as such were no less significant. For example, the three hours of speeches, although made in the presence of the children and reformed warriors who should surely have been the audience, were made in English and literally addressed to the minister. When I say literally, I mean most speakers paused mid-sentence nearly every minute to say “guest of honour Mr Minister”. Naturally, the minister was given a special chair, right in the middle of the top table and was always served everything first. When he spoke, a solder stood behind him holding an umbrella to guard him from the sun – a privilege that was exclusively available to the minister, despite the soldier standing idle for most of the day.

The minister had to leave early, so the deputy I referred to at the beginning moved into the big chair and motioned everyone to his right to move on chair closer towards him- they had all just received a hierarchical promotion.

It is this worship of hierarchy, enacted without a hint of irony, that the hundreds of children present today witness on a daily basis. Of course, they very rarely if ever see the President, but if his representatives are treated this way, think what kind of a god he himself must be. He is important and as they are always told, it is because of him that there is peace and because of him that the road was tarmacked and the hospital built. It would take a lot to see through all that and question his ability to rule, or care about the rumours of cleptocracy – even if they ever hear them in the first place.

This is why they all vote for him. The question would be- who out of the officials believe this propaganda and who is acting out some self-preserving and self-promoting game? It’s hard to tell because in this tightly centralised power structure you have no choice but to play the tune if you want to stay in your coveted position of power.  However, after seeing it for myself I believe it is genuine here and this is something foreigners also don’t understand. This region has seen a lot of unrest in recent generations, and the strong leader has brought peace [did he arguably fuel or even cause the war in the first place? Topic for another day]. Looking at neighbouring countries it is too easy to see what can happen when the state is weak, and even in the model(ish) democracy next door, the state is too weak to control rampant crime, tribal conflict and land invasions. Development can only happen if there is peace, and it is only after realising how fragile peace is across the whole of East Africa and how horrific the opposite can be, that you appreciate it when it is there, however (un)democratically it may have been achieved.