Al-Qalam 
A media expose, dubbed the ‘Pandora Papers’, has revealed how corrupt leaders, including from Africa, have been draining their country’s wealth for their own benefit, writes Dr. Mustafa Mheta of the Media Review Network.
A massive global investigation has exposed the ties between world leaders to the hidden world of offshore wealth collectively worth trillions of dollars.
Dubbed the Pandora Papers, the landmark probe, published recently, was conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – an ensemble of 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.
The Pandora Papers, are based on documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) and exposed the offshore dealings of kings, presidents, and prime ministers, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The fact that among these thieves are African leaders, government ministers, and the elites of our societies, just boggles the mind. The African is being betrayed by our own leaders whom we vote for to lead us, and mainly on promises of restoring our dignity, fighting corruption, and promises of development in our respective countries.
Perhaps to understand this problem, we must try to find answers to these questions. Why are African leaders so greedy? Who can we trust in Africa to lead us out of this quagmire that we find ourselves in? Why are our leaders always betraying us?
To answer the question why African leaders are so greedy, one must first understand the concept of leadership on the continent. In Africa a leader is above everyone, and everything including wealth found in those areas under their jurisdiction, belongs to them. The gold, diamonds, fertile lands, the cattle, the beautiful women etc. all belongs to them. By virtue of being a leader, they consider it their God-given right over them.
That is why you see them when they are dishing out disaster relief to their citizens, it is done in such a way that the citizens are made to believe that whatever they are being given is coming from the president and first lady. They don’t tell the citizens that this is coming from the state coffers and that it is rightfully their right to get whatever they are getting.
You see our people ululating and heaping praise on the leader and his family instead. Furthermore, this system begets the system of political patronage. For one to get favors from the ruling elites, one must be close to them and buy favors to act in their name. Some of these people end up doing all the dirty work for these leaders which is a dangerous development.
To most of our leadership on the continent, servant leadership is not known. If it is known, it just remains on paper. Yes, we see them on pictures with the poor or disabled, but that is just a publicity stunt. Sometimes, you will see them holding babies that they randomly pick when they hold their rallies to drum up support so that they are voted back into power and continue to plunder the wealth of the people.
They do so without any speck of guilt in them just because they believe they are doing no one a favor. It’s their God-given right. A very good example of this is what was said by the royal palace of Jordan in a statement on Monday that “the king’s ownership of private properties in the UK and the US was not a secret, adding that privacy and security reasons were behind not disclosing it”. Do you just take without getting permission from the citizens who are in fact owners of the wealth? In other words, the Royal family of Jordan thinks that its their God given right to take the people’s wealth and buy personal properties for the King without telling Jordanians.
Criminals
The complicity of African leaders can be seen when they host war criminals like Tony Blair and roll out red carpets for him. Some of them have appointed him their political and economic advisor. Tony Blair is one of those former leaders who is implicated in the Pandora Papers.
Implicated as well, are the Arab despots of the gulf countries. These Zionist lackeys have a similar belief that all the God given oil wealth is their private property. They give or refuse to give whomsoever they want. All the citizens are at their mercy.
The new Zambian president Hakainde Hichilema recently hosted Tony Blair in Lusaka. I wonder what came out of that meeting. Entertaining such a war criminal and murderer by an African leader who has pledged to fight corruption tooth and nail, makes a mockery of the same that he intends to fight.
The promises of leading people out of poverty in Africa remain a figment of these leaders’ imagination. We have heard many things from “Vision 2063, Vision 2020, Vision 2025, and now Vision 2030”, many of these goals have come and gone, without anything of substance coming out of these, they have remained mere political slogans to get thieves in power.
Despite all what African leaders and the elites are doing to their own people, our continental body remains quiet, with nothing to say. Our continental judiciary is powerless to institute investigations on these leaders and the elites on the continent with a view to bringing them to court and recovering the ill-gotten stolen wealth.
