RARELY do African presidents die at 59. There have been exceptions. Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso died very young, before he had attained his 50s.

But he was killed by a bullet.

So, when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, died last week, most people had good reason to mourn his passing.

Here was a relatively young person, a late bloomer in politics, dying of natural causes just when he had distinguished himself as an honest-to-goodness, straight-shooting swashbuckling hero of the underdog.

In a very short period, he had not only ruffled feathers, but had certain people’s hearts thumping with unusual noise, as he signalled a campaign to demystify the myth of the African leader’s fallibility.

Mwanawasa was on the verge of writing his own piece of political history at the African Union summit in Egypt when he was felled by a stroke. He was rushed to a Paris hospital, where he remained until his death.

Meanwhile, the only leader to even approximate what he had planned to do was Kenya’s Raila Odinga, another young man who had defied African political convention by unseating a veteran politician and challenging him, successfully, to impose his leadership on the people.

Mwanawasa was accused of doing the West’s bidding, allegedly in exchange for massive development aid and the writing off of debts. He campaigned vigorously against corruption and was even criticised for that, as if it was an anti-people drive.

He had been written off as "Cabbage", after sustaining injuries in a horrific accident. His critics hoped he had lost most of his marbles and would be easy meat for them.

One of the first people to discover how wrong that diagnosis was turned out to be his predecessor, Frederick Chiluba, who had hand-picked Mwanawasa to succeed him, apparently in the belief he could no longer distinguish between black and white, or right and wrong.

Chiluba ended up ruing the day he picked Mwanawasa as his successor. The lawyer pursued him, if not to the ends of the earth, then most certainly into an intensive care unit, with the hypertension of worrying about his freedom from prison.

hiluba would probably have evaded justice if he had selected one of the many Zambians who envied his lifestyle and the manner in which he had attained it. There are as many of them in Zambia as there are in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, the DRC or any other African country you care to name.

But Mwanawasa’s piece de resistance was his bare knuckles combat with Robert Mugabe, who had apparently cowed every other leader into silence over the impunity with which he was denying the people their right to choose their own leader.

His stance emboldened others to stand up to the bullying tactics of the Zimbabwean dictator. Seretse Khama Ian Khama signalled his intention not to be a pushover where Mugabe is concerned.

What remains to be proved is whether Mwanawasa’s legacy to the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) will be a hardening of attitudes to the kind of political dereliction Mugabe has been accused of, not only by foreign blocs such as the West, but by the people of Zimbabwe as well.

Five million people in Zimbabwe are reported to be facing hunger as a result of the Mugabe government’s curbs on the activities of the non-governmental organisations which sourced and distributed donor food to the rural areas.

There may have been deaths from starvation already, caused by the rising price of food and the shortage of food, cash, water, electricity and jobs. Nobody in their right senses can believe all this is being caused by the West — they said so on March 29 and even on June 27, when they let Mugabe run against himself — and win by a thumping majority.

In many other respects, Mugabe has set an incredible example for African leadership. At the summit in Egypt, he and his media person engaged in such rowdy exchanges with the journalists, there ought to be a law against it — in Zimbabwe. The two of them deserved to be impeached for conduct likely to bring the nation into disrepute.

By the way, it is not necessarily true that only the good die young. Einstein and Schweitzer died at a very ripe old age. Both men could not have been described as "bad" in any culture — perhaps because they were not in politics.

Seriously, we all hope the people Zambia learnt valuable lessons during the presidency of Mwanawasa.

One lesson could be that when someone rumoured to be a "Cabbage" becomes president, and turns out to be the best the country has had since independence in 1964, then in future the voters might decide the candidate with "cleverest" spiel and promises them he moon, is the one to be avoided like the plague.

By Bill Saidi 

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