I tweeted the other day about Libyan crackpot Muammar Qaddafi, whose general zaniness, I thought, made him a worthy candidate for his own reality TV show. And then I thought to myself: what if we took not just Qaddafi, but all of our favorite African tyrants-in-chief, put them up in some posh beach villa on the outskirts of Mombasa, and waited for wacky hijinx and madcap hilarity to ensue? You mean this wouldn’t be the biggest ratings bonanza in African reality TV history? Really?
You think these strongmen couldn’t outmuscle even the toughest Jersey Shore juicehead?
Mugabe: 28 years and counting.
Dos Santos: 30 years and still going strong
Wade: only 10 years...but already tinkering with plans to change Senegal's constitution to allow for a third term
Kagame: bitch-slapping the opposition since 2000
Qaddafi: 40-plus years as Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which I couldn't even make up if I tried
Museveni: 23 years and still spry as a spring despot
Kibaki: stuffing ballot boxes since 2002
Zuma: play on, playa
Yar'Adua: ...
Wouldn’t the assembled egos be more combustible and fraught with tension than election night in Harare? Can’t you just picture Kibaki and Museveni getting into a shoving match over some underage whore at Forty Thieves?
So I got to thinking…
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[Cue opening credits. Papa Wemba music blares. Sun rising on African savannah, old women baring breasts, etc.]
VOICEOVER: This is the true story.
[Slow, tracking shot. Exotic wildlife prancing, loping, migrating across screen. Baobabs. ]
VO: Of eight democratically elected African strongmen.
[Ultra-extreme close-up of grinning African man, democratic foot-soldier, etc., casting his ballot in a free and fair election.]
VO: No, seriously. Democratically elected.
[Pan out. Ruling party youth league goons swinging sticks and truncheons at voters’ backs.]
VO: Who decide to take a break from governing.
VO: And move into an IMF-subsidized time-share.
[Fussy white men in suits making nervous faces as they hand over a rent check.]
VO: After evicting local tenant farmers.
[Slow, solemn procession of African peasantry heading toward bleak, distant horizon.]
VO: And receiving a generous UN per diem.
[Fussy white men w/ checks, etc.]
VO: To get real.
[Extreme close-up of baby with bloated stomach, blinking distantly at camera.]
VO: Real crooked.
[African leaders gleefully throwing piles of World Bank cash at each other.]
VO: On The Real World: African Autocrats.
****************
Enter Rwandan President Paul KAGAME, Ugandan President Yoweri MUSEVENI, and Libyan President Muammar QADDAFI. A corpulent Kenyan President Mwai KIBAKI sits on the sofa, stuffing his face with sausage rolls and scanning hot celebrity pics in The Star. Angolan President Jose Eduardo DOS SANTOS sits under a pile of cobwebs in the corner, an oil drip connected to his arm. Nigerian President Umaru Musa YAR’ADUA is nowhere to be seen.
MUSEVENI: You fat Kikuyu, always hungry!
KIBAKI: It is my turn to eat, bwana.
MUSEVENI: If you only eat a little – slowly, slowly – no one will notice. I fleeced the West for years before they realized I was no better than all the other tyrants. Some still think I am an example of the New African Leader. Haha.
KAGAME: Haha.
MUSEVENI: Haha.
YAR’ADUA: …
KIBAKI: Ndiyo, you are right. If I am not careful, Ban Ki-Moon will tell me that I should be tried at a special tribunal in the Hague. Hahaha.
MUSEVENI: Hahaha.
KAGAME: Hahaha.
ALL: Hahaha.
[Cut to Ban KI-MOON, wearing a pink tutu and blushing in the corner.]
KIBAKI: We Kikuyu have a saying: grmphluggerblursplatughrump [words drowned out by digestive noises].
KAGAME: In the bush we survived on canniness and wiles. For three years I ate nothing but Human Rights Watch reports. [lifting shirt to reveal washboard abs] Yoweri, feel my stomach.
MUSEVENI: You fat Kenyans cannot even agree on how to misrule a country.
KIBAKI: Yes, now you are handing out leadership advice. Mr. I Can’t Even Control an Unruly Kingdom Within My Own Borders.
MUSEVENI: [makes a flummoxed face]
KIBAKI: Mr. Let Me Bend Over So the Western Oil Companies Can Stick It In.
MUSEVENI: [cartoon teapot steam spouting from ears] Oh, so says the great leader of the Grand Coalition Government. So says him who can’t even manage to steal an election without maybe half the Western world noticing.
[Enter Zimbabwean President Robert MUGABE in combat fatigues.]
MUGABE: Who, me?
KIBAKI: Comrade Bob, Museveni thinks it is easy to manipulate an election against the democratic will of the people. He thinks the opposition will come and just, what, hand you the keys to State House. “Here, Mr. President. Karibu tena.” Oh, it is soOOOoooo easy to win an election when you have already crushed the opposition.
MUSEVENI: Hahaha. It really is. Hahaha.
KAGAME: Hahahaha.
MUSEVENI and KAGAME: Hahahahaha.
QADDAFI: Opposition? What’s an opposition? Hahaha.
KIBAKI: He thinks Kofi Annan just comes to Kenya to, I don’t know, go swimming in Mombasa.
MUGABE: The West will send its stooges whenever the business interests of the American and European imperialists are threatened by the revolutionary will of the black African majority.
KAGAME: [rolls his eyes and makes a little here-comes-another-rant-about-Western-imperialism face]
MUGABE: We have a favorite saying in Harare: If you can’t beat them…beat them.
ALL: Hahahahaha.
[Cut to KI-MOON, hastily writing a UN resolution.]
DOS SANTOS: [mumbles something in Portuguese]
MUGABE: Are you still here, Jose?
DOS SANTOS: [pointing to IV drip pumping petroleum into his veins]
KAGAME: I think he is saying that today’s despot will always find a complicit Western government to turn its back on electoral irregularities if there is a business interest at stake.
QADDAFI: And how! Hahaha.
KAGAME: Hahaha.
DOS SANTOS: [oil bubbles up in throat, making throttled laugh noises]
YAR’ADUA: …
QADDAFI: I used to be a pariah; now I free terrorists and receive lucrative oil contracts from multinationals. I can do whatever I want! Watch!
[QADDAFI drops pants and poops on original copy of the UN charter.]
ALL: Hahahaha.
YAR’ADUA: …
KAGAME: I used to worry how my strong-handed tactics would play in Western capitals. And then I realized that the West wants leaders like me. Maybe 95.1 percent of the vote in 2003 was being modest. Haha.
MUSEVENI: Haha. I am on thin ice. I only secured 59 percent. 2011 will be too close to call. Hahaha.
KAGAME: Hahaha.
QADDAFI: Election? What’s an election? Hahaha.
ALL: Hahaha.
KAGAME: Winning a free and fair election by a landslide majority with the tacit approval of the West is easy. Do you want to know the real trick?
KIBAKI: ?
MUSEVENI: ?
ALL: ?
YAR’ADUA: …
[KAGAME leaves and returns with a pint-sized marionette of Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph KABILA.]
KABILA: [in high, squeaky voice] Look at me, I’m the leader of a sovereign nation!
MUSEVENI: I can see your lips moving, Kagame!
KABILA: I control a nation as vast as Western Europe, with abundant mineral resources that would never, ever, EVER get smuggled out on my watch.
ALL: Hahahaha.
MUSEVENI: [flashing Congolese diamond-crusted wristwatch] Yes, this watch was made with diamonds from Uganda’s vast hidden, super-secret mines. Hahaha.
ALL: Hahahaha.
KABILA: What has two thumbs and calls the shots in Kinshasa? [jerks thumbs toward KAGAME, who is poorly disguising his lackluster ventriloquist’s skills in the rear] This guy!
MUSEVENI: Hahaha.
KAGAME: [dropping KABILA puppet, now that he’s finished with him] Hahaha.
ALL: Hahahaha.
[Enter Senegalese President Abdoulaye WADE, followed by 10,000 Haitian refugees.]
KAGAME: Look at Wade – generous to a fault!
WADE: That’s what the IMF said! Hahaha.
ALL: Hahaha.
WADE: What’s a bag of money between friends? Hahaha.
ALL: Hahaha.
HAITIANS: …
KAGAME: We Africans must embrace our brothers and sisters in the diaspora. Who else can be counted on to come back and run our countries? Haha.
WADE: Haha. I’ve already offered them voter registration cards. Haha.
ALL: Haha.
QADDAFI: You are so generous to invite our African brothers back to their homeland.
MUGABE: Speak for yourself, Asian.
QADDAFI: [chortles something in Arabic]
MUGABE: [brandishes fist]
[Cut to KI-MOON, effete and panicking in the corner.]
KAGAME: Quick, someone call Zuma.
MUSEVENI: Where is Zuma?
ALL: Zuma!
Cut to South African President Jacob ZUMA in a hot tub, surrounded by buxom South African women.
ZUMA: [whispering in the ear of a giggling young girl] Really, I’m the President. I can do it. We can just say you are a Zulu secessionist queen, and just like that [snaps fingers], I give you half of KwaZulu-Natal.
[Cut to DOS SANTOS, oil burbling.]
[Cut to YAR’ADUA, missing.]
[Cut to KIBAKI, gorging.]
[Cut to KAGAME and MUSEVENI, squabbling over profits.]
[Cut to WADE, grandstanding.]
[Cut to millions of Africans, waiting.]
[Fade to black.]
****************
VO: Next week, on The Real World: African Autocrats.
[Exterior shot: Crouching Dragon nightclub, somewhere in Mombasa.]
[Close-up of ZUMA, standing at the bar.]
ZUMA: [whispering in the ear of a pretty young Kenyan] No, really. You take a shower when you are finished and you are safe.
[Cut to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles ZENAWI, outside, surrounded by 1,000 sycophants and tussling with bouncer.]
ZENAWI: What does this mean, I am not on the list? I have friends in Washington.
[Close-up of gruff, Eritrean bouncer, head shaking.]
ZENAWI: Twenty years ago in my country, we would have fed you to a lion. I am serious. We would have buried you under the prison.
[Cut to Sudanese President Omar AL-BASHIR, sequestered by ICC warrants, pulling on an argilah pipe, alone at his home in Khartoum. AL-BASHIR sighs, belches, drums his fingers on the tabletop. A wallclock ticks loudly in the background.]
[Cut to Hu JINTAO, thrusting his hips on the catwalk and showering 1,000-yuan notes onto the hungry, huddled African masses below.]
JINTAO: I make it rain, bitches! I make it rain!
[Cut to Coca Cola-sponsored commercial break.]
Greek to Me 