By Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana
THE president died laughing. Even as the angry young soldier broke from the parade shouting profanities and pumping bullets into his heart, he warned: "Don't do anything silly my son!" And then he was dead: a pile of broken bones and a porridge of bloody flesh. Bleeding evidence of a vengeful assassination.
Until that fateful morning in October 1981 when he was killed, Anwar Sadat, the third President of Egypt, believed what his loyal supporters told him, that he was "The last Pharaoh." As the last of the Pharaohs, he believed he was "a brother to the Moon and a cousin to the Sun." He lived in the neighbourhood of the gods as a fierce cosmic force and did not have to fear death.
He dismissed intelligence warnings of his impending Kamikaze killing by unhappy Al-Jihadist militants with the flap of the left hand and the words: "Egyptians are my children; they will not harm their father."
How angry the Al-Jihadist militants were for his making peace with Israel
So blind to danger, deaf to advice and impervious to common wisdom was Sadat, he believed that he was above humanity and occupied the realm of the gods. That's until he was dead, killed by messengers of the radical leader of Al-Jihad – the medical doctor and current leader of Alqaeda, Ayman Al Zawahiri.
Sadat's tragic story of blind confidence might sound like another chapter from Egyptian folklore, but in actuality it is a tale that is cinematic of how in Africa we have the political bad habit of elevating our political leaders to the status of saints, living legends and gods.
With sycophantic flattery and hyperbolic praises, we transform otherwise promising leaders into human political deities who are so insulated from reality that they quickly forget that they are fallible beings who have to account to the electorate and their fellow citizens.
Idi Amin, the late Ugandan despot, faithfully believed that he was "the last king of Scotland" when in reality he was just busy at work, dragging a promising African country down to the proverbial dogs, and dancing and laughing as he did the sad work. Among Amin's flatterers were university professors and journalists who confirmed to him his hallucinations of being indefatigable.
In fear of condemnation, Winnie Mandela, herself lionised in South Africa as "The Mother of the Nation" had to take a humiliating retreat from frank remarks she made about her former husband in an off-the-record interview with a journalist who later published the juicy words.
"Mandela went to prison as a revolutionary, but look what came out!" she said, describing how the former President came out of prison softened and compromised to the extent that she claimed "he let down the black people badly."
Mandela has been so effectively turned into a saint that his very sad role in letting apartheid criminals against humanity go scot-free and allowing only political apartheid to go while economic apartheid remained intact has remained an unspoken of subject in South African public discourse. How Mandela was moved from Robben Island in 1986 and taken to Pollsmoor Prison where he lived in comfort and was allowed luxuries and niceties while he had clandestine negotiations with the apartheid regime, and made what are politely referred to as "historic compromises" is a well known subject, but one that has not been surrendered to objective analysis and fair commentary.
In publishing a revealing book, 'The Young Mandela', in which Mandela the womaniser and wife beater who did not only work with political legends like Lillian Ngoyi but also frequently took them to bed stands up, brave journalist David Smith had to justify his courageous narrative as an attempt "to rescue Mandela from the dry pages of history" and present him as a flesh, blood and bone human being and not a saint.
It is largely because of the saintification of Mandela that the ANC is embarrassed and angered by Julius Malema's proposal for the urgent nationalisation of mines and redistribution of wealth in South Africa
South African political debate suffers from self censorship in that the subject of Mandela having done a poor job at best or having sold out at worst remains a political hard hat area where even the brave amongst thought leaders and thinkers fear to venture.
For all his crimes against humanity and dark record of violence, plunder and pillage in Zimbabwe
Sadly, Mugabe himself seems to believe the exaggerations to a point of mistaking himself for a larger than life figure. Believing in his super-human qualities, he has trampled on the lives and political rights of Zimbabweans with impunity.
Other commentators have called this habit of Africans to turn their leaders into gods "the dear leader mentality" or "dear father syndrome." It is such a bad habit which has severally led to political tragedies and disasters.
Even as his Ujamaa economic and social policies were sinking Tanzania
While it is true that Nyerere was teaching something, it is blatantly false that there was any wisdom in it. Up to now Tanzania
Clearly, in Africa we mould our leaders into human gods through hyperbolic praise singing and sycophantic flattery. The weak minded among them tend to believe the exaggerated praises and turn out to be unlistening, untouchable and impossible tyrants and holy cows that are answerable only to themselves.
The truth dies every time a leader's mistakes and weaknesses are not openly discussed and criticised.
Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana is a Zimbabwean writer who is based in Lesotho