Tragedy in Guinea
The tragic events in Conakry demonstrate how anarchic the country is, and how nearly eight months after seizing power Dadis Camara is not fully in control of the situation.
Guinea, like many similar African states, shows the truth of Mao Zedong’s belief that power comes from the barrel of a gun. When you give the power that a loaded automatic weapon confers, to illiterate or semi-literate soldiers who may have very short-term but pressing grievances over things like pay, the results can be disastrous.
No one can excuse what happened in Conakry. I am not going to seek to defend Camara, but the image that is painted of him by the western media, including the BBC, is slightly inaccurate. One recent biographical profile told how he was born in a very remote village but was lure by the bright lights (never that bright considering the omnipresent power-cuts), but far from finding riches, he encountered a different form of poverty, which he sought to allay by selling kola nuts on the street. This attempts to place him in the historical mould of pat leaders like Idi Amin and Samuel Doe, who found that they were able to grab and hold onto power, even though they were barely literate.
But there’s one big difference. Camara studied law at Conakry’s university, which may not be Oxford or Cambridge does impose certain standards – higher, it must be said, than some institutions calling themselves universities in Nigeria.
Then we hear about Camara’s quirks of personality and his short temper. This may be true, but such peculiarities are certainly better than the habits of many African leaders, such as lounging in air-conditioned luxury in antique chairs and doing no more than putting out their hands to grasp the most expensive vintage champagnes served in Baccarat goblets – all paid for by their desperately poor compatriots.
