Butcher of Darfur he might be, but Bashir is a clever thief
It’s time to take a new look at Sudan's President Omar al Bashir.
Anyone who thought he is nothing more than the Butcher of Darfur who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, and a strongman from a by-gone age who wields a stick (I wonder why strongmen like sticks and songs about sticks), and whose government canes women for wearing trousers, should think again.
Those Wikileaked US diplomatic cables claim that good old Bashir has, in his years in power, stolen and stashed away (in Europe, no less) a mind-boggling $9 billion! Say what you will, to steal that kind of money you need to be smart and accomplished at working the international banking system!
By the time former Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire) Mobutu Sese Seko died, he had more money in his banks than his long-suffering country. He accumulated it the old-fashioned way - by looting it from his mineral-rich country’s treasury.
Nigeria’s terrible tyrant Gen. Sani Abacha, who famously died in a Viagra-fuelled orgy with imported Russian prostitutes, swindled billions of oil revenue.
Even Uganda’s once-reformist President Yoweri Museveni, or at least the First Family, has been reported to be among the top 20 richest in the world! None of that wealth could possibly come from the known combined salaries of the Museveni household.
I have always felt that if Africans were at smart at leading their countries as they are at robbing them, our nations would be the richest in the world today. Now many of the old rich families in the USA, the Rockefellers and Fords, did not start out as angels. But subsequent generations ennobled the wealth the family grandees made through criminal or morally questionable ways. Maybe Africa will take that route too one day. Some hope!
Anyone who thought he is nothing more than the Butcher of Darfur who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, and a strongman from a by-gone age who wields a stick (I wonder why strongmen like sticks and songs about sticks), and whose government canes women for wearing trousers, should think again.
Those Wikileaked US diplomatic cables claim that good old Bashir has, in his years in power, stolen and stashed away (in Europe, no less) a mind-boggling $9 billion! Say what you will, to steal that kind of money you need to be smart and accomplished at working the international banking system!
By the time former Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire) Mobutu Sese Seko died, he had more money in his banks than his long-suffering country. He accumulated it the old-fashioned way - by looting it from his mineral-rich country’s treasury.
Nigeria’s terrible tyrant Gen. Sani Abacha, who famously died in a Viagra-fuelled orgy with imported Russian prostitutes, swindled billions of oil revenue.
Even Uganda’s once-reformist President Yoweri Museveni, or at least the First Family, has been reported to be among the top 20 richest in the world! None of that wealth could possibly come from the known combined salaries of the Museveni household.
I have always felt that if Africans were at smart at leading their countries as they are at robbing them, our nations would be the richest in the world today. Now many of the old rich families in the USA, the Rockefellers and Fords, did not start out as angels. But subsequent generations ennobled the wealth the family grandees made through criminal or morally questionable ways. Maybe Africa will take that route too one day. Some hope!
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