Tendai Ruben Mbofana
It is the sight of ordinary citizens bowing or kneeling before the president as if they were before their master.
To directly receive my articles please join my WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08
I always wonder if our people actually understand the relationship between a president and the citizens in a democratic republic.
Indeed, as Africans, we value offering profound honor and respect to our leaders and elders.
That is ubuntu.
That is hunhu.
It teaches us humility, courtesy, and reverence for human dignity.
However, there is something profoundly disturbing when we behave as though the president were our master.
Respect is a virtue.
Subservience is a surrender of our own dignity.
When free citizens kneel before an elected official in fear or blind awe, they forget a sacred truth.
In a democratic republic, the president is not a king.
He is not a chief who owns the land or rules by birthright.
He is a fellow citizen whom we have temporarily hired to do a job.
Let us be clear about who holds the real power.
Sovereignty belongs to the people.
A president has no inherent authority of his own.
Every ounce of power he exercises is borrowed from us.
It flows from the constitution and from the consent of the governed.
Without our mandate, he is simply an ordinary citizen like anyone else.
Think about how this relationship actually works.
We are the employers.
The president is our employee.
Through elections, we conduct a national job interview.
We review candidates, choose one, and give him a temporary contract to manage our public affairs.
If he performs well, we may renew that contract.
If he fails, abuses his office, or betrays our trust, we hold the ultimate power to fire him at the ballot box.
Even more plainly, we pay his salary.
Every cent that funds the presidency comes from the sweat of ordinary taxpayers.
The vehicles he rides in belong to the public.
The residence he sleeps in belongs to the nation.
The budget he manages is our collective money.
Because we pay the bill, he is accountable to us for every decision he makes and every dollar he spends.
Yet something goes deeply wrong when citizens forget this simple arrangement.
Slowly, we slip into the mindset of subjects.
We begin to treat elections not as a hiring process, but as a ceremony to choose our next master.
Once we adopt that posture, the entire moral order of our republic turns upside down.
We fall into the trap of patronage.
When roads are paved, clinics are built, or food aid is distributed, we thank the president as if he reached into his own pocket.
We celebrate basic public services as acts of personal generosity.
In truth, those things are our rightful return on the taxes we pay.
Good governance is not a favor from a benevolent ruler.
It is a duty owed by a hired servant.
Worse still, we begin to confuse the man with the nation.
Loyalty in a republic belongs to the constitution and to the country.
It never belongs blindly to one individual.
When we treat a president as an untouchable master, honest criticism starts to feel like treason.
Citizens grow afraid to speak.
They choose flattery over truth because pleasing the powerful feels safer than holding them to account.
Our national constitution exist precisely to prevent this distortion.
That is why the supreme law’s founding principles unambiguously state that the leadership’s authority to govern is derived from the people.
It serves as the president’s job description.
It sets strict boundaries on what he can and cannot do.
The rule of law reminds us that no office places any human being above the law.
Co-equal courts and parliaments exist to check executive overreach.
A free press and an awake citizenry exist to ask hard questions.
True ubuntu never asks us to erase ourselves before another human being.
Genuine respect honors the office while protecting the dignity of every citizen.
We can greet our leaders with grace and cultural warmth without surrendering our sovereignty.
A republic does not die only when leaders grasp for too much power.
It also withers when citizens quietly give theirs away.
Democracy demands that we stand upright.
We must honor our leaders with dignity, hold them to their oath, and never forget who signs the paycheck.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com