Africa: Notable quotes in 2015

Robert Mugabe
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe at the SADC meeting.

“It’s not just one for South Africa to resolve, but one for us, we the neighbouring countries to resolve. Our people should not have the instinct to rush into South Africa.”

John Githongo

John Githongo, a famous Kenyan journalist and an anti-corruption activist said that corruption in East Africa is the worst enemy to the economy of East Africa region:
“This is the most corrupt Kenya has been since we began measuring corruption in the 90’s, and I have been involved in this area for almost 20 years, this is the worst it has ever been. Before we had corruption, serious corruption, kleptocracy. We used to call Moi ‘Moibutu’. But that time we realize now that corruption was centralized, it was organized, it was managed. Now it is a free for all, everything is being eaten, everyone is eating.”

lawyer Kweku Ansah

In Ghana, a scandal involving 34 judges hit the country’s headlines. To lawyer Kweku Ansah from Accra, judicial is always in a compromising position:

“It is giving the misleading impression that there is no corruption in the court of appeal, there’s no corruption in the supreme court; there is. There are some court of appeal judges who are corrupt in their marrow, corruption is in their marrow. There are some supreme court judges who are corrupt, it is in their marrow.”

Doc Vikela

In Zimbabwe, comedian Doc Vikela attributed his work with the current situation in his country:

“Comedy has the power to heal, comedy has power to relieve stress, so what we are saying is we are removing the attention from the politics saying come on stop thinking about politics let’s just laugh for a moment but what are we laughing about, we are laughing about the things that politicians do, we are laughing at the things that happen because of politics, we are laughing because of our political landscape.”

Nuruddin Farah
An author in Ethiopia, Nuruddin Farah expressed his thoughts towards terrorism attacks that have claimed lives of many in Somali and Kenya:

“What happens with groups like Shabaab and others is that they have reversed the usual, known phenomenon which is older people are now burying so many young people. In the same way as AIDS, in the same way as catastrophes.”

Barack Obama

In the first speech by the American president to the 54 African Union nations, Barack Obama described leaders who cling to power by amending the country’s constitution:

“When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to try and stay in office, it risks instability and strife as we have seen in Burundi and this is often just a first step down a perilous path, and sometimes you will hear a leader say ‘well I am the only person who can hold this nation together’. If that is true then that leader has failed to truly build their nation.”