The Rule of One

The Heir

Show me the One, then. All of its faces. I want to be able to see it in my own country tomorrow morning.

Africa

Then I will give you seven, and a test for each.

One history. In most of my countries, the history taught in school was written in London or Paris, in their language, about their kings, with my peoples appearing as tribes to be governed. A people that does not know what it built cannot imagine building. The test: ask a fifteen-year-old to name three African achievements before 1900. If she cannot, the first One is still standing.

One man. A president nobody can stop, correct or replace. Not only the dictator with the sunglasses; also the democrat who has changed the constitution twice to stay. The test is not whether elections are held. It is whether the man has ever lost one and gone home. Until a country has done that once, the One is only sleeping.

One party, one newspaper, one radio station. In 1994 Rwanda had one radio station worth the name, and it was used to organise the killing, hour by hour, with names and addresses. A country with twenty radio stations cannot be given one instruction. The test: can you name a newspaper that has made the president angry and still prints?

One company. In most of my countries there is a man, usually with the president's blood or the president's blessing, who owns the cement, or the sugar, or the fuel, and sets the price. When the price rises, the whole country pays him. I will be honest about my own heroes here: a refinery that supplies more than half a country's fuel is also one company, however proud I am of it. The test is not whether a big company exists; countries need big companies. It is whether a second one is allowed to exist and undercut it. Competition is the only law a monopolist obeys.

One crop, one mine, one buyer. Zambia is copper. Nigeria is oil. Côte d'Ivoire is cocoa. One price, set on an exchange in London or Chicago, decides whether the schools stay open. The test: what share of your country's export money comes from one thing? If it is more than half, the country is a shareholder in someone else's weather.

One port, one road, one capital. Everything passes through one city, so whoever holds the city holds the country, and every coup in history has been a race to the same five buildings. The test: can a trader in the second city get her goods out without the capital's permission?

One story. The story the world tells about me, and that my own newspapers reprint: poverty, war, disease, corruption, the four horsemen. One third of what Africans read about other Africans is written by foreign agencies. A people told one story about itself believes it, and a people that believes it does not try. The test: when was the last time you read good news about a neighbouring country, written by someone who lives there?

The Heir

Seven. My country fails six of them.

Africa

Most do. Now see what the seven have in common, because this is the part that matters. Every one of them is a door with a single key. And every one of them was cured, where it was cured, the same way: not by finding a better keeper, but by cutting a second key.

One history is cured by a second history, your own, taught beside the first. One man is cured by a second man who can replace him, and a court that can tell him so. One radio station is cured by a second. One company by a second company. One crop by a second crop. One port by a second road. One story by a second story, told by you.

The Heir

You make it sound mechanical.

Africa

It is mechanical. That is the good news. Character cannot be legislated; architecture can. You cannot make a president honest. You can make it impossible for him to be dishonest alone. The whole art of the fourth generation is the art of the second key.

The Heir

Then why did nobody cut them before?

Africa

Because cutting a second key is a surrender of power, and no one surrenders power while they hold it, unless they are forced or unless they are wise. The first generation were not forced and only a few were wise. The second generation were thieves and were forced only by their own collapse. The third generation, the one in power now, were forced by the 1990s: by the end of the Cold War, when the foreign money stopped, by the debt, by their own people in the streets, from Benin in 1990 to Malawi in 1994. They cut some second keys, under pressure. Which is why some of them are now trying to melt them down again.

The Heir

So the keys that exist today were made under pressure, and can be unmade when the pressure lifts.

Africa

Exactly. A key made under pressure is held by the pressure. The day the people go home, the man begins to file it down. That is why Uganda, Rwanda, Chad, Cameroon and a dozen others have removed the term limits they accepted in the 1990s. The keys were never in the people's hands. They were in the constitution, and the constitution was in his.

The Heir

Then what kind of key cannot be melted?

Africa

One that is held by too many hands. A constitution that a market woman can quote is harder to amend than one only lawyers have read. A press with two hundred owners cannot be bought. A country where every province has its own road to the sea cannot be held by taking the capital. A generation that knows its own history cannot be told it was nothing. The unmeltable key is the one that lives in people, not in paper.

The Heir

And the fourth generation is that key.

Africa

The fourth generation is the only thing on my soil large enough to be that key. Four hundred million people under twenty-five. No army can arrest them. No treasury can buy them. No radio station can reach them all. For the first time in my history, the people are the majority of the people. The One cannot survive that, unless they never learn what they are.

The Heir

Which is why the One prefers that we do not learn our own history.

Africa

Which is why the first door is the first door. Everything else follows from it. Now let us look at the people who hold the keys today, the third generation, honestly, with the numbers, because you will have to take the keys from their hands one day, and you should know what they did with them.