African tribe leader mentality

In political science, Big man syndrome, also bigmanism, refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person, particularly in Africa. Uganda's Idi Amin and Zaïre's Mobutu Sésé Seko are examples of leaders to whom this description has been applied. The Monitor newspaper uses this phrase in the context of the succession of Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi:

This change of guard has so much resonance with all of us in Africa. First of all, we have so many leaders (including President Moi) who simply hang onto power for too long. From Guinea to Malawi, Libya to Namibia, the Big Man syndrome is alive and well. Once a man has been in power, either by force or through the ballot, he thinks he must stay there forever.[1]

In anthropology, a big man refers to the most influential man in a tribe. His power is achieved through recognition (by skill, wisdom, or material possessions) and not inherited. He lacks coercive authority and his position is informal and unstable. This is commonly found in Melanesia.

The American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in particular has been a proponent of the big-man phenomenon. In his "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia" (1963) Sahlins uses analytically constructed ideal-types of hierarchy and equality to compare a larger-scale Polynesian-type hierarchical society of chiefs and sub-chiefs with a Melanesian-type big-man system.

The latter consists of segmented lineage groups, locally held together by faction-leaders who compete for power in the social structure of horisontally arranged and principally equal groupings (factions). Here, leadership is not ascribed, but rather gained through action and competition "with other ambitious men".

A big-man's position is never secured in an inherited position at the top of a hierarchy, but is always challenged by the different big-men who compete each other in an on-going process of reciprocity and (re-)distribution of material and political resources. As such the big-man is subject to a transactional order based on his ability to balance the simultaneously opposing pulls of securing his own reknown through distributing resources to other big-man groups (thereby spreading the word of his power and abilities) and redistributing resources to the people of his own faction (thereby keeping them content followers of his able leadership).

Although now a largely discredited idea,[1] a "new generation" or "new breed" of African leaders was a buzzword widely used in the mid-late 1990s to express optimism in a new generation of African leadership.

In the 1980s and 1990s, increasingly many Sub-Saharan African countries were holding multiparty elections. The cold war, the proxy wars of the US and Soviet Union as well as Apartheid in South Africa had come to an end. A new generation of African leaders had been anointed who promised to transform their continent. That dream was dubbed the African Renaissance. This concept is often defined in contrast to the big man syndrome - the autocratic rule by the "big men" of African politics during the first two decades after independence.

When former US president Bill Clinton made his African journey in March 1998, he helped popularize this notion when he said he placed hope in a new generation of African leaders devoted to democracy and economic reforms. Although Bill Clinton did not identify the African leaders by name, it is generally assumed that he was referring to, among others, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea.[2] Other leaders have since been added that list, including Ghana's Jerry Rawlings, Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano and South Africa's Thabo Mbeki.

In contrast, the champions of African independence in the 1960's, eg. Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Robert Mugabe, and occasionally the diasporan Pan-Africanists W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey - are sometimes called "the old generation of African leaders" (in the 1960's they were also called "new generation of nationalist leaders" and "new generation of Pan-Africanists", and paradoxically - "new generation of African leaders").

With the outbreak of the Second Congo War and the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, in which many of the 'new generation of African leaders' warred against each other, optimism was lost. Furthermore, many of the new generation of African leaders have failed to deliver democracy, peace and development, and they have shown an inclination to cling to power.

Observers have accused the contemporary US foreign policy of a naive and irrational exuberance towards those leaders.

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