In many African countries, increasingly, elections have become costly misadventures implemented to arrest choice and putting democracy in reverse. Citizens, driven to despondency by the malevolent refusal of incumbent politicians to afford them credible choice at the ballot box or to respect the will of the people disclosed in elections, are now in one country after another tempted to transfer their allegiance to wannabe messiahs in military fatigues.
Towards the end of 2022, as his country began preparations for the general elections scheduled to take place in the penultimate week of August 2023, Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, contracted an unusual bout of generosity denominated in United States dollars. First, he disbursed $500,000 to his ministers, comprising twenty cabinet ministers, thirteen deputy ministers, and nine provincial ministers, supposedly as housing loans. Next, he doled out $350,000 to directors of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence…