With former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano as its first winner, it could hardly have kick-started on a better note. He enters the pantheon of African role models such as Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere, the latter incidentally being considered for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.
The award comes with £2.5m in prize money, making it the world’s largest individual prize and notably more than three times the prestigious Nobel prize. It is spread annually for 10 years with an annual pension of £100,000 for life thereafter. However, this probably would pale into insignificance in comparison with the funds corruptly salted away by some African dictators.
After winning the Mozambique’s elections in relatively free and fair elections in 1994 and 1999, Chissano could have run again in 2004 and virtually assured of victory but he decided to stand aside to let someone else take the reins. Contrast would be made with Omar Bongo, who has been president of Gabon for over 40 years. Of course we could take the contrast much nearer home, where after 27 years in power President Mugabe rejected recent overtures by former South African president Nelson Mandela and other international statesmen for him to retire ahead of next year’s elections to avoid further deterioration of the economy.
In spite of a bitter civil with Renamo, Chissano had a healthy respect for the opposition. Although the opposition won 40% in one of the elections against him, no violence was unleashed – more than can be said for the Zimbabwean body politic.
It is significant that the prize was conceived and actioned by an African - Sudanese Telecom billionaire Mohammed Ibrahim – thereby warding off potential criticism that it was an imposition from the outside. What is more, the panel of judges is predominantly African.
I would like to raise two issues of concern:
One of the winning criteria as ‘someone who left office when the national constitution demanded’ is a red herring as it assumes that every constitution is sacrosanct which is obviously not the case. How many of Africa’s political Methuselahs, like Omar Bongo or Robert Mugabe, would claim that their longevity is backed by the national constitution? Not to mention those who conveniently move the goal posts at the end of their term by changing the constitution to stay longer in power – but who still technically meet that constitutional criteria.
The other concern is having the award issued every year, which assumes that there is a worthy winner every year. The pool of contenders is relatively small. The use of relative terms poses the danger of devaluing the prize by having less worthy winners overall although they may have been the best possible choice in their year.
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