No matter where they are, the children of African heads-of-state live lives comically far-removed from those of the average citizen in their home countries.
Image via Teodoro Nguema on Instagram (Fair Use)
This year has been an extraordinary year for politics in Africa.
In less than nine months, the continent has witnessed a lifetime’s worth of drama and tumult, largely driven by a youth population waking to its power and rejecting the empty promises of the old guard. In Senegal and South Africa, young people showed up to the polls eager to overthrow the APR and ANC, respectively, following spectacularly unsuccessful tenures defined by precipitous declines in economic output, rising unemployment, and wanton corruption. In Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Tunisia, a revolutionary charge of young people stormed the streets demanding the fall of a massively unpopular tax bill, accountability for government corruption, the fall of bad governance, and death to the dictatorship, respectively. In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, a majority of young people have rubber-stamped the military juntas that have promised an end to a political order that was defined by domestic corruption and capture by foreign entities.
After years of being serially failed and disillusioned by the government, Africa’s young people are slowly turning their backs on the political establishment and looking up and out for better.
A consequence of this has been the creation of a vacuum in leadership. Where the tools of democracy have been available this vacuum has been filled by a young and vibrant crop of politicians, a la Sankara, who promise to revolutionize the landscape of politics, from Senegal’s Diomaye to South Africa’s Malema. Ibrahim Traore and other military leaders have filled this gap where democracy hasn’t fulfilled its promise to the people.
A third source young people have looked to for leadership and inspiration is the children of the establishment. This elite band of influencers-cum-politicians has for years evaded the scrutiny afforded to their parents, and has not begun to sell themselves as symbols of a brighter, better future for all, eschewing recognition as evidence of a massive crisis:
Africa has a first-children problem.
No matter where they are found, the children of African heads-of-state are comically far removed from the lives of the average citizen in their home countries, attracting the glimmer and sparkle of paparazzi cameras. The most problematic amongst them occupy themselves with the affairs of mommy and daddy’s offices, securing ministerial positions, military and diplomatic appointments, and advisory roles at high levels of government. They rake in thousands of taxpayer dollars in salaries and gratuities and use their platforms to secure political futures as torch-bearers of their parents’ legacies.
Until the overthrowal of his father, Ali Bongo Ondimba, in a military coup, Noureddin Bongo Valentin was one such king-in-waiting, serving as the General Coordinator of Political Affairs in the Gabonese government, a title whose opacity mirrors that of its occupant’s mandate. Valentin was tasked with assisting his father “in the conduct of all affairs of the State”—effectively, co-president of the Republic. In nearby Equatorial Guinea, the situation is vastly more scandalous: Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue serves as vice president to his father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a position that in addition to placing him as next in line to the presidency, has secured him a criminal conviction in a French court, asset seizures in Switzerland and the US, and sanctions in the UK for his unusual obsession with sports cars and celebrity paraphernalia, funded through fraud and embezzlement.
On the other hand, there are those with powerful last names, who enjoy resplendent lives as socialites, lionized for their fierce appetite for a party. Robert and Grace Mugabe’s sons Chatunga Bellarmine and Robert Junior lead the pack. This duo was frequently featured in news publications for offenses ranging from mere faux pas to borderline criminal activities. Most notorious among their escapades was a wild night spent in a nightclub in upscale Sandton, South Africa, where video evidence emerged of Chatunga Mugabe pouring champagne over a $60 000 dollar wristwatch.
First children sometimes appear to break the first wall, briefly presenting themselves as one of us. Their motives in doing so are often deeply political: In 2021, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma stepped away from her fabulously pampered lifestyle to claim her status as a “fan of the people.” Her objective? Calling on the South African public to take to the streets in defense of her father, who had been hauled out of his taxpayer-funded Nkandla residence to a nearby prison. As a member of her father’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Party, she has continued to assert “revolutionary” capital as a defender of the people, despite having sat by and benefited from her father’s corruption. Charlene Ruto, daughter of Kenyan President William Ruto was also quick to reintroduce herself as a “youth champion” in a prelude to her defense of her father’s record amidst mass protests by Kenyan youth over Finance Bill 2024,
Brenda Biya, the daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, belongs to this class. In 2016, she set tongues wagging after raging on social media about the allegedly racist driver of the $400 taxi she hired. Nearly half of Cameroon’s population is classified as multidimensionally poor, and could only dream of such sums of money. Brenda Biya was raised in the presidential palace that her father has occupied since 1982. She completed her early education in a primary school designed for presidential staff, before attending boarding school in Geneva. She currently lives in a massive complex in Beverly Hills, valued at over US$10 million.
Early last month, Brenda trended after posing with her partner Layyons Valenca in what has since been confirmed to be a coming-out post. Homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon, and amidst the expected cacophony of homophobic voices accusing her of violating the laws of her homeland, the voice of LGBTQ+ rights activists hailed her as a potential advocate for change in the country, and on the continent. Shakiro, a transgender Cameroonian activist based in Belgium called Brenda “a voice for change” in Cameroon, celebrating her coming out as a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ rights in the region.
Absent the fact that Brenda lives in California, free from the watchful eye of the Cameroonian police, Brenda’s coming out and reactions to it display far more than the pervasiveness of homophobia in Africa. It points to the readiness with which media agencies will platform the voices of the wealthy and well-connected, at the expense of those grassroots advocates working to make Cameroon a safer, more dignified environment for LGBTQ+ people. Major news outlets including the BBC, Reuters, and CNN, were quick to platform celebrations of Brenda’s coming out, but ignored the disproportionate impact that anti-LGBTQ+ laws have on the poor in Cameroon who have neither the finances nor the connections to freely come out, let alone do so from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. For many of them, coming out bears with it threats ranging from corrective rape to wanton arrest and brutalization by the police force. This is in addition to a lack of support from families and communities who often disown and persecute their LGBTQ+ members.
Brenda’s coming out deserves to be celebrated as an individual’s affirmation of their right to love as they please. The act of coming out represents defiance of a norm that sidelines the rights of people to be different. Brenda has taken the first step to combat that norm.
But Brenda is not our heroine. Brenda alone will not save us. And nor are the children of the leaders who placed many African countries in crisis our revolutionaries. They, too, will not save us.
In our fight for a better future for all, we must not platform the voices of the rich and well-connected over those of the community advocates. These groups and individuals are doing important work to track violence against queer people, litigating in defense of LGBTQ+ individuals, and trade expertise on how best to serve this deeply vulnerable population. This is in addition to the day-to-day work of deconstructing stereotypes and narratives about LGBTQ+ identities, carried out by ordinary people in households, communities, schools, and religious institutions.
There is no doubt that reform by the children of the establishment is possible. There is space for them and for everyone else, in the struggle against injustice and oppression. We are all victims of the present moment, and of the establishments that brought us into it. Our pursuit of inclusivity should, however, never come at the expense of us divesting our media, cultural, economic, and attentive capital from others.
In the game of reclaiming our agency, whether in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tunisia, Comoros, or elsewhere, only solidarity in community will save us.
