Africa's Big Men Are Reverting to Type
- Constitutional amendments help entrench long-standing leaders
- Changing rules mid-game places stability at risk, Obama warns
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When then-President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he praised “a new generation of leaders” as champions of a dawning “African Renaissance.” Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni was one of them: Two years before, he’d been elected president after a decade as a military ruler.
Museveni is again running for president -- at the age of 71, after abolishing constitutional limits on presidential terms. He refers to the East African nation’s oil reserves as his own, holds a public holiday to mark when he seized power in a coup 30 years ago and is expected to easily win a fifth term in the Feb. 18 elections.