The events at the end of 2002 in Africa made me very proud to be an African. We as Africans can look at one another, smile and give ourselves high-fives.

We achieved what America has yet to achieve, a free and fair election.

It was an election free of “chads,” free of one particular group of Americans prevented from voting, or when they cast their votes, more than 40,000 of those votes thrown out; it was an election where Africans didn’t have to run to a Supreme Court packed with one party’s supporters to name a president. It was an election decided by a majority, in which the person who won the majority of votes cast by the masses became the president, and not by a so-called electoral college. Yes, if I dwelt on this I might never finish and I don’t want to spoil the euphoria with a bad taste in my mouth.

I begin 2003 with the knowledge that motherland Africa is marching in the direction of our dream. Kenya’s electoral victory, as that of our Senegalese soccer team, is Africa’s victory.

But where are the same Western media pundits who suddenly crawled back into their caves, but who continually beat the drum of Armageddon when elections were held in Zimbabwe, an election which African heads of state pronounced free and fair? Unfortunately, the people who always ask us to remove the wool from our eyes always forget the wool over their own eyes.

It is like the teacher who asks his students to always brush their teeth in the morning with a black piece of vegetable on his teeth. I have yet to see the same amount of scorn they heaped on the outcome of the Zimbabwe election translated into the same amount of praise they should accord the outcome of the election in Kenya. I have yet to see the same editorializing that met the Zimbabwe election given to the outcome of the Kenyan election, and what it means and portends for the African continent.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that everything in Africa is hunky-dory because of one election in Kenya. But we have to pat ourselves on the back, give a Bronx cheer to our elder statesman—am I really using that word?—former President Daniel arap Moi, because he has behaved like a statesman. Moi confounded his critics as well as his admirers with the grace with which he left the scene.

After all, if Americans could give former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani all that accolade and money for one good deed, why can’t we, as Africans, do the same for Daniel arap Moi?

I don’t care what anybody says, he deserves to be called a statesman;

former President Abdou Diouf of Senegal deserves to be called a statesman; former President Jerry Rawlings deserves to be called a statesman; and former President Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali has always been a statesman. Like New Yorkers under Giuliani, Africans lived under the unbearable autocratic and dictatorial leadership of the former three presidents, but at the right time, each bowed out gracefully. I cannot in any way ascribe the word “statesmanship” to a Mayor Giuliani, but I am totally comfortable with ascribing it to the former three presidents, despite their past misdeeds.

It was Leopold Senghor followed by Nelson Mandela who first sowed that seed of statesmanship, followed by Diouf, Rawlings and now Moi. I can say that looking to the future, the core leadership of Africa has started to understand that transparency in governance is not only good for themselves, but better for the masses of Africans. After all, there is no other group of people who have been so oppressed, victimized and balkanized as Africans by European imperialists, and if we are see a light at the end of the tunnel with what is happening today in Africa, it is a time to pray for more

to come.

Kenya is not the only country in Africa whose elections we should examine. We could look at the earlier election in Mali, where former President Alpha Oumar Konare basically orchestrated one of the smoothest elections to occur in Africa. Konare is tipped to do for the African Union what he did in Mali when, if he so accepts, he will be appointed the new chairperson of the Commission of the African Union when the heads of state hold their next meeting in Mozambique this year.

Yes, 2002 is a year Africans can look to with a sense of belonging and a sense of pride. On July 9, 2002, in Durban, South Africa, we saw the Organization of African Unity transformed into the new African Union. It was the culmination of a three-year effort, which started in 1999 when Libyan President Muammar Quaddaffi called for a stronger African Union than the OAU, which many critics had benevolently dubbed “the dictators’ club.”

Of course, there were few outside Africa who believed that Africans could come together, united in their resolve to see a stronger Africa, especially given the proponent of such an idea. The question most people continue to ask is whether the new African Union is really different from the Organization of African Unity. Only time will tell, although already there are rumblings that the new African Union has started to flex its muscles. For example, from its beginning, it not only denied Madagascar admission into the Union; it insisted that new elections must be held if President Marc Ravalomanana is to be recognized as president. The West said the island nation didn’t need Africa to survive, but eventually there was a new election, which gave Ravalomanana the legitimacy he needed to be admitted to the African Union.

Africans are also watching with anticipation how the new vehicle of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) will empower the economic growth of Africa. NEPAD is premised on Africans taking charge of their own economic renaissance, through planning what they want and how they want it. The so-called G8 nations have already promised $6 billion to the continent; of course there is a drawback, which is that Africa must first of all show good governance vis-à-vis democratic institutions before any of that money will be dispensed to the continent. There is nothing wrong with having good governance in Africa, after all it is what we all want.

But the same G8 nations did not ask the same conditions of Russia before handing Russia the sum of $20 billion, no questions asked.

In the frame of the positive events that happened in Africa in 2002, we must not forget Angola, where we saw the demise of Western-supported rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. It is said that egomaniacs like him don’t know when it is time to retreat and make peace with their fellow countrymen. Unfortunately, we have to admit that the death of Jonas Savimbi was one of the best things to happen to Angola in particular, and Africa in general. At least, it is one less war to settle in a continent which has seen its share of wars and millions of deaths by power-hungry men.

Having said all the above, 2002 was not apples and roses and it would be remiss and misleading on my part to claim otherwise. While we were jubilant over the triumphs of the election results in Kenya, Africa was being stabbed in the back by the knuckleheads in Togo, West Africa, where “legislators” decided to take Africa back to the dinosaur age by “voting” to make the dictator of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, president for life. He is the rotten egg and sewer that is now stinking up the whole continent. As they say, it takes only one bad apple to spoil the rest.

Eyadema has been in power since 1967, when as a sergeant he engineered a coup. In 1998, he staged an election and abruptly cancelled the vote counting when it appeared that he was going to lose.

What has now been established is that given the choice, African voters will make the right decision. It is pathetically shameful that people like Eyadema (I hate to use the word “leader” to refer to such a person), who was even president of the Organization of African Unity, don’t understand how history would treat them.

Eyadema might project the illusion of being powerful, but at the end of the day the same fate that befell dictators and totalitarians with grandeur complex like Hitler, Mussolini, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sani Abacha, awaits Eyadema.

When the day of reckoning comes, he will be tossed into a makeshift grave, with hardly a teary eye to mourn his demise. Togo and Africa will still exist long after we have all gone.

Africans are happy to celebrate the lives of Leopold Senghor, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jomo Kenyatta, and if this doesn’t give Eyadema pause for reflection, he should ask himself who is celebrating the lives of Mobutu Sese Seko, Sergeant Doe or Sani Abacha.

You will ask what happened to the AIDS pandemic in Africa before I close this article. I will answer that I didn’t forget it, because I know that a large number of African leaders have started paying major attention to the eradication of the disease.

But right now, I want to close with a positive spin, which is that Africa is marching to the beating of the drums of progress, albeit in a small way, but nevertheless quite significant for the comfort of most of us.