Most African despots have built a cult of personality around themselves with an air of invincibility and infallibility. Their nation's fortunes and destiny are very much tied up with their personalities. Entire nations have turned private property. Witness their pictures on currencies and in every nook and cranny in the country. Every monument or building of some significance is named after them. They love the self-idolation.

Since accepting reform of any kind is an admission of failure or fallibility, they would put up all sorts of arcane reasons to block it. They accept reform reluctantly but do everything possible to undermine it to prove that the plan advocated by the reformers would not work. President Moi predicted that if Kenya established multiparty democracy, it would degenerate into tribal rivalry and strife. Indeed, when he bowed to external donors and instituted multiparty "democracy," more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed and 300,000 displaced in ethnic clashes. Said Nairobi lawyer Gitobu Imanyara, "We have a President who is determined to fulfil his prophecy that the country is not cohesive enough for multiparty democracy. His desire is to prove that he is right, even if it means destroying Kenya as a country."

Second, state controls allow African leaders to extract resources which are used to build personal fortunes and to dispense as patronage to buy political support. Occupying the presidency is a lucrative business. Their business empires will collapse if economic reform strips them of state controls. Economic liberalization may also undermine their ability to maintain their political support base and, thus, prove suicidal. Thus, they profit from their own mismanagement of the economy.

The third reason is fear. Many of Africa's heads of state have their hands so steeped in blood and their pockets so full of booty that they are afraid all their past gory misdeeds will be exposed if they stepped down. Consequently, they cling to power at all cost, regardless of the consequences. After so-called democratic elections in 1991, President dos Santos did away with the post of prime minister, vested the powers of a head of government in the director of his own office, created a parallel ministry of defense within the presidency and sacked a number of political figures who might have threatened his monopoly on power.

Another source of resistance comes from the sycophants and supporters drawn from the leaders' own tribes. Ethnicity adds an even more dangerous element to the democratic reform issue. One tribe, fearing that it may lose its dominant position in government, may oppose multiparty democracy, while excluded tribes may resort to violence to dislodge the ruling tribe from power. In Rwanda, Habyarimana's embrace of reform was conspicuously half-hearted, a capitulation to foreign coercion. It was universally understood that the north-westerners, who depended on his power and on whom his power increasingly depended, would not readily surrender their percentage. While Habyarimana spoke publicly of a political opening, the akazu (the inner mafia-like core) tightened its grip on the machinery of the state.

Other supporters of African regimes are simply bought: soldiers, with fat paychecks and perks; urban workers with cheap rice and sardines; students with free tuition and hefty allowances; and intellectuals, opposition leaders, and lawyers, with big government posts and Mercedes Benzes. Thus, even when the head of state does contemplate stepping down, his supporters and lackeys fiercely resist any cutbacks in government largesse or any attempt to open up the political system.

The final potent source of resistance comes from the elites: high government officials, intellectuals, lecturers, teachers, editors, and civil servants. They oppose proposed sell-offs of state enterprises for fear of loss of jobs or reduced benefits. Student activists, academics and others have condemned both the theory and practice of privatization. This class benefits immensely from government subsidies and controls. They have access to free government housing, medical care and loans for the purchase of cars, refrigerators and even their own funerals thus resisting any cutbacks of government largesse. In Guinea, progress [on reform] was slow because civil servants and others with a stake in the past sought to preserve it. Dissatisfaction produced a series of coups.

In Zambia, resistance to reform hails from President Chiluba's own circle which clamors for the continued influence of state spending and patronage. Mundia Sikatana, a Chiluba adviser and a founder of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy says that the government continues to provide vehicles and fuel to hundreds of civil servants. It cannot abandon the old habits.

Some elites oppose economic liberalization on purely ideological grounds emanating from a deep-seated aversion to capitalism or free markets. This attitude is a throwback from colonial days, when capitalism and colonialism were confused. The involvement of the World Bank, generally castigated by African intellectuals as a "neocolonial institution" does not help matters. More important, perhaps, is the fact that a shrinking state sector shatters the elites' dreams. The ambition of most educated Africans is to become the president or a minister. The state sector is where one makes his fortune. As far as the elites are concerned, there is no life outside the state sector.

To skirt elite opposition, African governments opted for politically safe budget cuts: education, health care and road maintenance.Guinea, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Senegal slashed education budgets by 18 to 25 percent during the late 1980s. The countries opted for politically safe budget cuts rather than slicing into their bureaucracies. "They cut places like education because they knew the people wouldn't howl about that," said G. K. Ikiara, an economics professor at the University of Nairobi. In Zimbabwe, for example, President Robert Mugabe slashed spending on health care and education, while spending $3 million a day on the 11,000 troops he had sent to the Congo. There is some chicanery involved here. African governments constantly lament that SAP "hurt the poor." Of course, SAP will do so when these governments exempt the elites and shift the burden of adjustment disproportionately onto the rural poor, especially women and children.

Africans deride the posturing, tricks and acrobatics as "Babangida Boogie": One step forward, three steps back, a sidekick, and a flip to land on a fat Swiss bank account. All much ado about nothing. One day Nigeria's Finance Minister, Anthony Ani, talks of mass privatization. The next day privatization is merely an option to be considered by some government committee. Lagos businessmen are appalled. `Just as we were beginning to move forward, this will set us back years,' says a merchant banker.

Then came the "Abacha cha-cha-cha." General Sani Abacha, the late head of state of Nigeria, created various committees and commissions supposedly to shepherd the country toward democratic rule. But many of them were actually working to help Abacha succeed himself as "civilian president." In the nightclubs of Kinshasa, Congo, couples now dance "the dombolo, a step created to mock the President Laurent Kabila's ponderous style."

More scandalous perhaps has been ready supply of Western dance partners. The Kenyan version of this ritual dance, the Moi massamba, was well described by The Economist (19 August 1995): "Over the past few years, Kenya has performed a curious mating ritual with its aid donors. The steps are: One, Kenya wins its yearly pledges of foreign aid. Two, the government begins to misbehave, backtracking on economic reform and behaving in an authoritarian manner. Three, a new meeting of donor countries looms with exasperated foreign governments preparing their sharp rebukes. Four, Kenya pulls a placatory rabbit out of the hat. Five, the donors are mollified and aid is pledged. The whole dance then starts again. Kenya’s government knows precisely when it can resist donors’ demands, when to use charm, when to cry `neo-colonialism’ and when to make promises of reform - promises it will break when the new loans are obtained and the donors’ backs are turned."

Similarly Angola, once a Soviet protégé, did the switch by merely changing its spots. "In the early 1990s, the MPLA regime of Angola dropped both its Workers Party subtitle and its Marxist rhetoric. But it retained its army, its East German-trained security services and its horrendous bureaucracy. What has changed is American policy. The reason is oil." Who is fooling whom? And who suffers at the end of the dance?