A Nigerian daily compared Muammar Gaddafi's address to the 2009 UN General Assembly to ex-President Trump's recent CPAC address and concluded: 'The megalomania gene is not race peculiar, after all.'

Africa has heard calls for a United States of Africa under, of course, the leadership of the people calling for it. And one can understand the political culture that people base their thinking on. After all, traditional tribal leadership was based on a monarchical basis, although I can bore interested parties with the checks and balances that went into tribal rule before colonization. And colonial powers were mostly monarchies. Then there were ocicials to rule Africa, not often on a very democratic basis, with the result that decolonization meant a return, more or less, to traditional patterns, but now within vastly disturbed borders. 

African leaders sought to reconcile tradition with modern democracy, but in many cases, elections were just a means to satisfy donors that the leadership was, indeed, in power. Yet it is known to Africans that these strong-man regimes were seldom successful and often fell to internal factions fighting to get their hands on the dwindling reserves. Exceptions, like Mobuto in Zaire, survived by distributing minerals to buy support. The modern 'Hema King', President Museveni of Uganda, promised to retire to farming at age 56. Now, approaching 80, he rules over new-found oil wealth, and his cattle do not know him. 

In Tanzania, Nyerere fondly remembered as the "'eacher' surrendered his mantle of power to go farming, and abstained from interference in the dynamic, often chaotic democracy that followed. And his legacy perhgaps warned his successors that strong man rule leads to economic stagnation. 

A Marxist President in a backwater country where people live in the bush while the elite export oil once cautiously contemplated a 'pacified' democracy, one where people would express their opinions in a respectful and constructive way, to the dismay of the then newly democratized South African leadership. Yet now, almost 30 years after the advent of democracy, with the economic base of the State crumbling under ideological baggage and political leadership groaning under fighting factions that seek access to the gravy train. critics of the undecided President Ramaphosa are calling for decisive, strong decision-makers to step up. 

Hannah Arendt, analyzing Stalin and Hitler, explained and almost apologised for the way ordinary people get dragged into support for populists. Mass leaders must use fear and propaganda to control the population. 'Total domination does not allow for the free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable.' And therein lies its downfall because only the chaos, confusion, initiative and creativity of a free economy and a democratic state can create the intellectual agility needed for growth, renewal, and creativity.

Charlie Chaplin was right. 

The emperor has no clothes.