 The big man in African politics. Curiously the first person who could be said to have fulfilled what we now regard the mantle of the big man. There was a white man, an explorer, Stanley, the man who rediscovered Livingston. He attracted a nickname from his native helpers, Bullah Moutari, the man who smashed the rocks. And this is because of Stanley's penchant for blowing up obstacles along the river path with dynamite. The whole idea that nothing could stop the big man and that he would plow on relentlessly despite anything put against him. This has entered a sort of African political mythology surrounding certain leaders. Now in fact the idea of the big man has applied to leaders of many states, including those outside Africa, has been applied to people like Shoshescu, the communist dictator of Romania for instance, has been applied to people like Suharto of Indonesia. But I think there is a critical difference in the sense that these other big men in other states had increased and larger powers of administration so that when they ran their states, when they were at the centerpiece of their states, those states were more complex in their institutional structure. Where it's applied to African states, it's applied to a condition of underdevelopment so that the rule of the big man who smashes his way forward is a very familial and intimate one. It's one to do with close connection. It's one almost to do with a very very extended family but with emphasis on the word family and the connections that come with that. We probably associated today in the 2000s with somebody like Robert Mugabe but Robert Mugabe is a very curious big man of Africa in the sense that he in many ways resembles an Englishman with his perfectly tailored suits, his love for English tradition, cricket etc. Today we want to have a look at big men who were a little bit different from the Mugabe image. But the whole idea of the big man commanding resource and distributing it even within a kind of extended family relationship that has attracted a very great deal of African commentary. People like Akil and Bembe for instance wrote about this the form of necropolitics. It was also Karl of Alask, something circus-like about it. But necropolitics in the sense that if the big man can command not only the distribution of resources in a neo-patrimonial way but also held the power of life and death over his citizens then this necro command enforced the idea of neo-patrimonialism which first and foremost benefited those closest to the big man himself. Probably no one fulfills that image better than someone like Mobutu. Mobutu was the leader of Zaire as he called it. He came to power in a coup. The coup did end the early years of immense turmoil, strife, division and bloodshed that accompanied the independence of the Congo and also saw of course the assassination of people like Patrice Lemumba. But Mobutu came to power in 1965. He lasted until 1997 and he instigated a campaign which he called authenticity. This is his contribution to African thought that somehow in the 20th century it was possible to be authentic. But what did he mean by that? He certainly postured as an authentic African ruler. He dressed in a certain way which he claimed was authentic although the glasses and the smartly tailored modern version of a Chairman Mausud were anything but African but the wearing of a leopard skin pool box hat, the waving around of totems in his hands, totems of rulership. All of these things suggested an attempt to create a certain imagery which he amplified by his choice of names. By the time he'd finished he had a long list of names and titles all of which spoke to a conquering of everything before him. A literal breaker of rocks in the modern era and when Congolese or Zairean television signed off every single evening there was this picture of Mobutu as an angel descending from God's clouds bringing benefaction to his people. Now in fact, benefaction to his people was one of the least things that he accomplished. Zaire remained deeply divided a huge state in which there were huge divisions of wealth. The key point here is that efforts at authenticity do not of themselves bring development and the whole idea of accumulating power within a very very small circle, the whole idea of a one party state, the whole idea of singular personified individual rule does not bring with it development. A contrasting example would be the person who came to rule in Malawi, a much smaller state, a state which was impoverished, it was not like Zaire which had many many riches to plunder. Malawi was literally dirt poor. Came to power Hastings Bander, an American and a Scottish trained medical doctor who when he went back to become the independence leader of Malawi actually spoke no native language. He was very very much an anglified person, an exile leader, went back and his idea of development was to try to recreate the splendors of British educational rule and public administration in Malawi. He set up a college for elite students where they studied classics meaning Latin and Greek. He tried to recreate Eaton in an African setting. To his country also he brought no development but he certainly like Mobutu adopted a great number of names to do with conquest, triumph and victory ruled over his state with an iron hand, persecuted people who got on the way and persecuted people who in fact posed no threat but who did not want publicly to subscribe to his rule. Parties such as Jehovah's Witnesses were wiped out during his time in office and like Mugabe he held on to the bitter end. By the time he ceased being president on the eve of his death he was a very very old, very frail, very sick man noted for going to international conferences and having to wear continents underwear underneath his tuxedos and basically giving a spectacle of the big man in decay. This I think is one of the key problems that besets African political thought these days not whether something is authentic or not but whether or not what is authentic is a form of necropolitics that is in fact decadent leading to actual physical decay of the person who claims to be the big man.