This discourse was greatly influenced by the man who led the first black African country to independence  Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. He himself was a charismatic leader with considerable personal magnetism. I first met him in New York in 1960 and fell under his spell. Nnamdi Azikiwe was also a charismatic personality, but his magnetism waned after the civil war in Nigeria.
I happen to think that Idi Amin Dada of Uganda also had a lot of charisma, which enabled him to survive in power for eight years until a foreign army (Tanzanian) forced him out. Idi Amin (whom I knew well) was a brutal ruler who nevertheless captivated a substantial following, both at home and abroad.
A mobilisation leader is another category. Nkrumah tried to use his charisma for mobilisation, but in reality Nkrumah was not a particularly successful mobilisation leader in Ghana after independence. On the other hand, Julius K. Nyerere in Tanzania was both charismatic and mobilisational. He succeeded in arousing the masses to many of his causes. Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt was also both charismatic and mobilisational from the Suez crisis in 1956 until his death in 1970.
A reconciliation leader seeks areas of compromise and consensus from among disparate points of views. Nigeria is a difficult country to govern. So far, mobilisation has not worked for long. Reconciliation as a style of leadership is often essential. Both General Yakubu Gowon (who led the Federal side during the civil war in the 1960s) and General Abdulsalami Abubakar (who provided a transition between tyranny and redemocratisation in the 1990s) were reconciliation leaders. They attempted to find areas of compromise in widely divergent Nigerian points of view.
A housekeeping style of political power is minimalist in sense of purpose. There is more governance and less genuine leadership, more verbosity and less vision. The Kenyan political elite since the late 1980s has been at best a housekeeping elite  governing without leading, maintenance without movement.
An African military head of state, Murtala Muhammed, was the best approximation to a disciplinarian leader that Nigeria has had. He was assassinated within months of capturing power from Gowon in the mid 1970s. Muhammad Buhari was also a disciplinarian Nigerian head of state. However, it is not certain that a disciplinarian style is what Nigeria’s ethnic and sectarian realities can really sustain for very long. But this option should at least be carefully considered.
A patriarchal system is one in which a father figure emerges, using the symbolism of the elder and the patriarch. Jomo Kenyatta was already about 60 years old when he emerged from a colonial prison in Kenya to assume the reins of power. He carried the title of Mzee, meaning both the Elder and the Old Man. He ruled Kenya from 1963 until he died in 1978. Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Côte d’Ivoire was also a patriarchal leader who presided over the destiny of independent Côte d’Ivoire from 1960 until his death in 1993.
Nelson Mandela was both a reconciliation leader and a patriarchal figure. His long martyrdom in prison (1964-90) and his advancing years gave him the credentials of the patriarch. His moral style in his old age was a search for legitimate compromises. The latter was a style of reconciliation. Was Nelson Mandela also a charismatic figure? Or was he only a hero in history? That is a more open question. Ibrahim Babangida played a patriarchal role in his transition programme, but he was too young for such a role.
Babangida’s constitutional transition could have made him Nigeria’s Charles de Gaulle, but the experiment collapsed when Moshood Abiola’s election as president was not acknowledged by the military.
Has Africa ever really produced technocratic political leadership? The answer is yes  but rarely at the level of the presidency. Some vice-presidents have been technocrats or potential technocrats. Kenya has had a series of quasi-technocratic vice-presidents, some of whom got debased in office. They include vice-presidents Mwai Kibaki (distinguished economist, now president), Josephat Karanja (former university vice-chancellor) and George Saitoti (former professor). Are Thabo Mbeki and Yoweri Museveni essentially technocratic leaders? Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings was part disciplinarian and part technocratic.
Personalistic political style in Africa is sometimes indistinguishable from monarchical political style in our sense. Both entail the personification of power. But the monarchical tendency, which can thus be categorised as a ninth style, goes further and sacralises authority while simultaneously seeking to create an aristocratic impact.
Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was definitely a personalistic political leader, demanding unquestioning political allegiance. But was he also a pseudo-monarch, seeking to give his authority a semblance of sacredness?
More literally, Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic tried to create a new monarchical and imperial dynasty, with himself as the first emperor. He even renamed his country the Central African Empire. He held an astonishingly lavish coronation that was supposed to be paradoxically Napoleonic.
A new aspect of the monarchical tendency that is emerging is the dynastic trend in succession. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila has been succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila. In Zanzibar, Abeid Karume has produced a successor in his son. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak may be grooming his son to succeed him. In Kenya, Raila Odinga is trying to follow the nyayo (footsteps) of his famous father, Oginga Odinga.
In addition to these types and styles of leadership there have been a number of pre-colonial cultural traditions that affected those types and styles. The most obvious was the elder tradition in pre-colonial African culture, which has probably conditioned the patriarchal style since independence. The reverence of Jomo Kenyatta as Mzee in Kenya was substantially the outcome of the pre-colonial elder tradition, still alive and well. Nelson Mandela by the time of his release was also a heroic mzee.
Also obvious as a continuing tradition from pre-colonial times was an older version of the monarchical tendency. Even African societies that were not themselves monarchical were influenced by the royal paradigm. Kwame Nkrumah attempted to create a monarchical tradition in independent Ghana by declaring himself life-president, by sacralising his authority with the title of Osagyefo (Redeemer), by surrounding himself with a class of ostentatious consumers passing themselves off as Ghana’s new political aristocracy, and by increasingly regarding political opposition to the president as the equivalent of treason (a monarchical version of intolerance).
Less obvious as a pre-colonial conditional factor was the sage tradition. This involved respect for wisdom and expertise. In the modern period the sage tradition was rapidly modernised to include the new products of Western-style high schools, and later Western-style colleges and universities. The sage tradition from the post-colonial period has sometimes resulted in promoting an ostentatious display of Western learning among Africans.
Tapping into modernised versions of the sage tradition a number of founding fathers of independent Africa tried to become philosopher-kings. They attempted to philosophise about man and society and about Africa’s place in the global scheme of things. Kwame Nkrumah wrote books and became the most prolific head of state anywhere in the world. Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal was a more original political philosopher and poet.
Some leaders attempted to establish whole new ideologies. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania inaugurated ujamaa, intended to be indigenously authentic African socialism. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia initiated what was called humanism. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had previously written The Philosophy of the Revolution and subsequently attempted the implementation of Arab socialism. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya produced the Green Book championing the third way.
The modernised version of the Western tradition also popularised the use of honorary doctorates as regular titles of heads of state. Thus the president of Uganda became Dr Milton Obote, the president of Zambia became Dr Kenneth Kaunda  just as the president of Ghana before them had become Dr Kwame Nkrumah. These had been conferred as honorary doctorates, but they became regular titles used in referring to these heads of state. The sage tradition was attempting to realise itself in a modern veneer. African presidents were trying to become philosopher-kings. After his presidency, Yakubu Gowon took the more difficult route and studied for his PhD at Warwick University in England.
Finally, there was the pre-colonial warrior tradition, emphasising skills of combat, self-defence and manhood. Did this survive into the colonial period and onwards into independence? The Mau Mau fighters in colonial Kenya in the 1950s were greatly influenced by traditional warrior virtues, especially those of the Kikuyu. Even liberation fighters in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe two decades later, who were using much more modern weapons, were recruited mainly from the countryside and were deeply influenced by traditional concepts of the warrior.
But were African soldiers in regular African state armies part of the continuities of the warrior tradition? Were the Abdulsalami Abubakars fundamentally still old warriors? It largely depends upon how much of the old African cultural values are still part of their attitudes to combat, self-defence and manhood. General Abubakar himself maintained high standards of integrity.
But sometimes those old warrior values go awry in a modern military ruler. The warrior tradition went wrong when personified in Idi Amin Dada of Uganda. Idi Amin was a warrior-soldier who was miscast as head of state in the modern world. He fluctuated between brute, buffoon and genuinely heroic figure. He courageously took on some of the most powerful forces in the world  and yet pitilessly victimised some of the most powerless individuals in his own country from 1971 to 1979. In Idi Amin, the warrior tradition had gone temporarily mad.
Nine types of political leadership and four pre-colonial traditions of political culture have helped to shape post-colonial leadership in the 20th century. The question now arises whether the 21st century will reveal totally new styles of leadership or create new combinations of the old styles and traditions and produce better results than Africa has accomplished so far.
HERE WE MUST TURN from styles of leadership to goals of leadership. We know that the 20th century produced effective leaders of liberation. Nationalists like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sékou Touré of Guinea fought against great odds to gain us independence. There were many other brilliant liberation fighters all over the continent who helped Africa end its colonial bondage.
But leaders of liberation were not necessarily leaders of development. One African leader after another let Africa down in the struggle to improve the material wellbeing of the African people. Only a few African leaders since independence have demonstrated skills of development on the ground.
Considering what a terribly damaged country he had inherited, Yoweri Museveni deserves some credit for raising Uganda from the depths of despair to one of the main regional actors in the Great Lakes region. It is to be hoped that the coming African renaissance will produce more and more leaders skilled in the arts of development.
In addition to leaders of liberation (like Mugabe, Sékou Touré, Samora Machel and Nkrumah), and leaders of development (like Yoweri Museveni and Habib Bourguiba), has Africa produced leaders of democracy? This is a much tougher agenda. South Africa has the most liberal constitution in the world, and has ended political apartheid. But the wealth of the society is still maldistributed along racial lines. The mines, the best jobs, the best businesses, are still disproportionately held by non-black people. Leaders like Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki have presided over substantial political democratisation, but they have also had to tolerate substantial economic injustice.
WHAT ABOUT LEADERS of pan-Africanism and wider transnational solidarity? Clearly this is a fourth goal, beside liberation, development and democracy.
But let us now turn to other dimensions of African leadership  heroes and martyrs.
Africa’s struggle for independence from 1945 onwards produced many great heroes. Africa’s exercise of independence from 1960 onwards produced an impressive array of martyrs.
 In our present context, what is the difference between a hero and a martyr? A hero is judged by his or her own performance and by the positive results achieved. A martyr is judged not just by performance and results, but also by the suffering or death that he or she has sustained. The ultimate price a martyr pays is, of course, life itself.
The struggle for independence in Africa produced probably as many martyrs as heroes. On the other hand, as already stated, the post-colonial period has seen some of the former anti-colonial heroes deteriorate into dictators, corrupt leaders, or political weaklings.
Africa’s post-colonial conditions have produced fewer great leaders than were produced by the anti-colonial struggle. On the other hand, the same unstable post-colonial conditions have produced more numerous martyrs than had emerged in earlier years.
The ultimate form of martyrdom is to be killed for one’s beliefs, or one’s values, or one’s heroic actions, or one’s honour. Here are some of Africa’s political martyrs at the pinnacle of power  ranging from Tom Mboya and Murtala Muhammed to Anwar Sadat and Thomas Sankara, from Olympio to Patrice Lumumba. Edward Mondlane and Steve Biko fell short of ultimate power. Let us first examine the three most significant quasi-presidential assassinations of Africa’s post-colonial era  the deaths of Lumumba, Sadat and Murtala Muhammed.
THE THREE MOST SIGNIFICANT quasi-presidential assassinations in post-colonial Africa occurred in three of the largest countries on the continent  Nigeria, Egypt and the former Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo). As it happens, the three countries are also linguistically different  anglophone Nigeria, Arabic-speaking Egypt, and francophone Congo.
But why are these three assassinations particularly significant? Partly because of the ideals for which the martyrs were sacrificed. Patrice Lumumba died in defence of the sovereign integrity of his country. The Congo had just become independent of Belgian rule. Two events threatened this newly won independence. The army of the new state mutinied and threatened to plunge the country into chaos.
The army mutiny was soon followed by a secessionist declaration from one of the richest parts of the country  the Katanga province. The Western powers were soon scrambling to fish in these troubled waters and fragment the country. Patrice Lumumba was Prime Minister (head of government) and Josef Kasavubu was President (head of state). Belgium, the former colonial master, led the way in trying to consolidate Katanga’s secession.
When Lumumba sought the assistance of the Soviet Union, the United States acted quickly to prevent a potential Soviet takeover of the Congo. The US engineered a situation under which the United Nations could then take the leadership in reconciliation. Very briefly, the Congo became a United Nations trusteeship.
Patrice Lumumba fought hard to prevent both the fragmentation of the Congo and the great dilution of the Congo’s independence. Unfortunately, the United Nations did little to help him. He was captured by his Congolese enemies in front of the United Nations troops  and taken to separatist Katanga to be murdered by Katangese with Belgium’s complicity.
There are different reasons why the larger Congo has remained one country until today. But a crucial factor in saving the Congo’s territorial integrity was Lumumba’s internationalisation of the Katanga crisis from the outset. It forced both the United Nations and the United States to commit themselves to the territorial integrity of the Congo.
If Lumumba was a martyr to the sovereign integrity of his country, Anwar Sadat was a martyr to the principle of peace in Arab-Israeli relations. Sadat made the spectacular visit to Jerusalem to be received by the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. It was one of the most sensational events of the 20th century. Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem subsequently led to the Camp David negotiations between Egypt, Israel and the United States  culminating in the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt.
With those accords, Anwar Sadat signed his death warrant. He was assassinated in 1982 by militant Egyptian nationalists and Islamists opposed to the peace treaty with Israel. Sadat died for peace; his assassins died for justice. Sadat had negotiated peace without justice.
If Lumumba was a martyr to the sovereign integrity of the Congo, and Sadat was a martyr to regional peace in the Middle East, Murtala Muhammed was a martyr to the cause of disciplining Africa’s largest national population  the Nigerians. The most persistent of all social and political pathologies of Africa as a whole is corruption.
Some African countries suffer from law and order problems, seeking a more effective system of law enforcement. Other African countries suffer from acute proneness to militarisation  with the armed forces repeatedly intervening in civilian politics. A third category of African countries suffers from a form of leadership without a sense of direction. But the most persistent of all post-colonial maladies in governance has been corruption. Unfortunately, Nigeria has often been ranked among the most corrupt of all countries in the world.
Murtala Muhammed entered this stage of history as a warrior against corruption. In the war against Biafra, he had been a man of action, but not necessarily a man of vision. But in Nigeria’s war against corruption and indiscipline, Murtala Muhammed was a man of vision as well as action.
In this second war against indiscipline, Murtala Muhammed was not always committed to due process or to procedural fairness. It has been estimated that more than 10,000 public officials and public employees were sacked without benefits. Some were dismissed because of age or health, accused of being deadwood. But more were dismissed for corruption, malpractice or incompetence. The axe was not limited to the civil service. There were purges in the armed forces, the police, the judiciary and the diplomatic service.
There were trials on charges of corruption, and at least one state governor was executed for gross misconduct while in office.
Murtala Muhammed sought to rescue the Nigerian currency from the consequences of massive government expenditure on public works. He initiated the process of reducing the money supply, partly in order to keep inflation in check and partly to monitor money laundering.
Murtala Muhammed also recognised the fact that the public sector of the economy was a great source of corruption. One solution was to make the Nigerian economy more competitive in the hope of promoting efficiency and cost-effectiveness. He started encouraging the expansion of the private sector, both in new areas and in areas previously monopolised by public corporations.
Last, but not least, Murtala initiated the process of building a new capital for Nigeria: Abuja. Some may regard Abuja as his greatest monument. And then, on 13 February 1976, Murtala Muhammed was assassinated while sitting in his car on a Lagos street. A prophet of discipline was silenced forever. The controversial hero entered the gates of martyrdom.
Since then, an airport has been named after Murtala, schools have been named after him, an annual lecture was established, and even in the neighbouring Republic of Niger songs and poems were composed in the sacred memory of Murtala Muhammed. His face and name adorn the 20 naira note of the Nigerian currency.
But what is the significance of such heroic deeds and violent martyrdom in Africa’s experience? How do these fluctuating fortunes affect the evolution of codes of conduct in post-colonial Africa? Let us now compare three heroes and martyrs, Mandela, Lumumba and Biko, in a narrow perspective, with a particular focus on Steve Biko.
SINCE INDEPENDENCE, WHERE have all the superheroes gone? Great liberation fighters were not necessarily great nation-builders. The lustre has often faded from our superheroes for two main reasons  first, most of the leaders, with honourable exceptions, were not as impressive in dealing with problems of independence as they had been in fighting for that independence.
After independence, Africa produced a whole generation of young people deprived of superheroes in the political domain. Africa has had heroes, but fewer and fewer superheroes since the last years of colonial struggle  figures much larger than life were more common then than now.
The one single towering political superhero of the last years of the 20th century was Nelson Mandela, who has been in a class almost by himself. What Africa produced instead of superheroes in the last few decades of the 20th century was super-martyrs. Heroes are symbols of achievement  martyrs are symbols of sacrifice.
Heroes are ultimate victors; martyrs are ultimate victims. Steve Biko and JM Kariuki were victims; Nelson Mandela survived to be a victor. Biko was a symbol of anguish; Mandela became a symbol of achievement.
What is different about Steve Biko in the annals of political martyrdom in Africa was that he was not a head of government like Patrice Lumumba or head of state like Sadat and Murtala, or even a high-ranking minister like Tom Mboya in Kenya. Steve Biko was just a liberation fighter in the vortex of racial politics.
But in his martyrdom Steve Biko can still be compared with a head of government like Patrice Lumumba or a head of state like Nelson Mandela
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