The little African country of Darkeria was frantically preparing for elections after many years of civil unrest. She was visibly struggling with a legacy of years of bloody dictatorship followed by two controversial elections. This year’s elections were not only expected to be more transparent, but they also carried the only hope of this battered country ever regaining any semblance of normalcy. By the last count, twenty-five aspirants, including the incumbent leader, had registered to run. The deadline was still one month ahead.
        Mr. Douglas Kamenda was a little-known personality. He had worked all his life as a schoolteacher and risen to become the principal of Sekana Public School. He loved what he did and had managed to transform a low-rated public school into something that the semi-rural community of Sekana was proud of. He had seemed contented in the little community until this morning at school.
        “I have some good news for you ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Kamenda addressed his teaching staff. The teachers, clustered in the tight little room they used as their lounge, looked eagerly at Mr. Kamenda. They had not taken pay for many months and were expecting him to say something about their salaries. The school morning assembly had just ended and the bell could be heard in the background summoning the students to class.
        “We have worked hard together for many years and it has been a truly rewarding experience,” he continued. The teachers were visibly surprised. One of them whispered to her closest colleague, “now what? Is he resigning or something?” Mr. Kamenda did hear her.
        “Yes, I’m sort of resigning,” he rejoined. The lady teacher swallowed in embarrassment and lifted her bulk in a more upright position as the chair miserably creaked under her weight. She was Mrs. Boomboom, Mr. Kamenda’s most difficult staff member. Mr Kamenda thought he could see ambition creeping under the thick skin of her big, round face and was not surprised. She had long undermined him.
        He did not beat around the bush. “I have decided to run for the presidency of the Republic of Darkeria.” The room instantaneously convulsed in an explosion of hysterical laughter. The teachers were all very sure that their principal was playing some practical joke on them. Mr. Kamenda awaited calm with a frozen smile on his face, and when the laughter finally subsided, he told them plainly, “No, I’m not joking.” When they realized that he was very serious, many of them rose to their feet to hug him and shake his hand for his bold plan. Some were wondering if something had maybe gone wrong with him. Mrs. Boomboom made conscious efforts not to seem too excited. Next to Mr. Kamenda, she was the most senior teacher. Her long-time dream of becoming the principal was now in sight.
        Mr. Kamenda left the lounge and went into his office. Most of the other teachers hurried into their classes that had grown very noisy with unsupervised students. Mrs. Boomboom lingered around pretending to gather her teaching materials. She winked at one of the other female teachers. She was rife with gossip and the other was just too pleased to offer her ears . Mrs. Boomboom pointed in the direction of Mr. Kamenda’s office and placed her right index finger against her fleshy forehead, rotating the hand. They both chuckled childishly. “What do you think? President Douglas Kamenda? I think he’s got some bugs running in his brains,” Mrs. Boomboom said. “I’m sure that proud ugly wife of his is the one pushing crazy ideas into his senile head.”
        “Well he sounded genuine and serious to me. He's not crazy,” the other replied.
        “Oh, you think they will even allow him to run? He is poorer than a church-house rat.”
        “Maybe he has some hidden affiliations and links somewhere that we don’t know about.”
        “Ceecee, don’t tell me you are already convinced. This weak fellow can never become president of Darkeria. Don’t you see that he has failed miserably to bring proper order to this simple high school? He is not presidential material. End of story. He should just remain where he plans to go because if he dares come back to Sekana after suffering national ridicule, I will make sure he doesn’t get near my school.”
        “What if he becomes president after all, maybe we will all get some better opportunities.”
        “Minus me! Let’s get out of here.” They hurried off to their classrooms.
           In his sparsely furnished office, Mr Kamenda sat poring over the resignation letter he had written to the District Education Officer. He stopped for few seconds and began to drum nervously on the table with the palm of his left hand. A hurricane of intense thoughts recklessly swirled within him. “No!” He said aloud. “I am not quitting before I even get started. I have a plan that will change the history of election campaigns in Africa forever. I know the people are tired of those cheats and liars who call themselves politicians. They have nothing more to offer than a package of lies for an opportunity to enrich themselves and run the country bankrupt. The masses will vote for me when I tell them the truth!” He neatly folded the letter and placed it in the envelope. He was resolved to deliver it as soon as possible and prepare for registration.
        With extreme financial difficulties, Mr. Kamenda registered his political party. He named it the Truth Forum of Darkeria. The rank of TFD was swollen with his fellow teachers and students and a handful of youths who saw the campaign as an opportunity to snatch cash here and there.
        By the close of the books, fifty candidates had registered for the presidency. A lot of them were seasoned politicians, some of whom had served in past governments and had huge track records of dubious and unconscionable dealings. There were others who did not have any distant credentials. Until a few months past, they were nobodies who had recently been catapulted to national pre-eminence for their solid roles in the destruction of Darkeria. They were the very ones who were directly responsible for the present woes of the country. Living standards and the level of education had sunken so low that these crooked elements now banked on the high level of ignorance, nonchalance and desperation to get back into power. They were hoping that their pasts would not be remembered and counted against them. The people of Darkeria seemed to have lost their focus as a nation to the extent that there were no clear-cut yardsticks to measure the power seekers by.
        A number of candidates seemed to represent a fair spectrum of the common populace. In addition to Mr. Kamenda, there was a former policeman, a market woman, a driver, a carboy turned car dealer, a lay preacher and a born-again ex-convict. The constitution of Darkeria had no limitations on who could become president; it seemed all these people were just bent on exercising their civil rights. The civil unrest had so demystified the presidency that just about any Darkerian felt that they could make a go at it.
        This was the situation when in the heat of the campaign, it was soon realized that many of the candidates were not really eyeing the presidency itself. They craved positions in the government that could line their pockets and had calculated that the best strategy was to form a party and then merge with the heavyweights who had better chances. That way, they would be assured of some kind of lucrative appointment.
        Two months to the actual elections, the campaign frenzy was suddenly rocked by a scandal that threatened to derail the whole process. The candidate considered the most formidable opponent to the incumbent suddenly died under bizarre circumstances. There was high public suspicion that the state security apparatus, under instructions from the incumbent, had orchestrated his death. To defuse the rising tension, the ruling president quickly organized a committee to investigate the death. Its members were handpicked and instructed to find a culprit at all cost. It was a scheme to buy time and let the elections go on as scheduled. With his main opponent out of the picture, he was sure of wining the elections again. He would then be in the position to offer executive clemency to the accused, and it would be business as usual.
        The climax of Darkeria’s election process was the national forum organized to give each presidential aspirant the chance to give a speech to the nation. It was a vivid performance in which each candidate outdid the other in promising what they intended to do if they became president. The seasoned politicians, who had so skillfully mastered the art of lying, sang their old songs with charm and charisma. They bombarded the poor, besieged electorate with lies of impossibilities and near-magical solutions to their problems, banking on the fact that a lot of the vote casters were too ignorant to read between the lines. Many candidates had practically nothing to say. Mr. Kamenda of the Truth Forum of Darkeria, on the other hand, took the nation by storm.
        As he mounted the podium, he swore to himself to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. His speech was not neatly typed as the rest of his colleagues. He had just made a few notes and an outline on a small note pad. Many in the auditorium seemed surprised and suspicious when he walked up with his small pad.
        “Good evening fellow Darkerians,” Mr. Kamenda began. “It’s indeed a great privilege to talk to you from this position as a presidential aspirant. As a country, we have come a long way through needless bloodshed, failed leaderships, manipulated over the years by greedy and selfish individuals whose primary target had always been to fatten up on your sweat, tears and blood, leaving you sapped, poor and hopeless. Now is the time to make a choice that will change the destiny of this great nation once regarded as an oasis of hope in this region, but now spat upon by everyone.”
        People cleared their throats and chairs scraped the floors. Mr. Kmenda went on without sweating. “I have not come to promise you heaven on earth. I am just a schoolteacher who has suffered with you over the years. I know what it is to go to bed hungry, to be sick and not get proper medical care, all because you don’t have the money or simply because the right services are not available where you live. I know exactly how bad your feet hurt because I have walked in your shoes many times.  I know what hard work is. I promise you a presidency that will be willing to roll its sleeves and get down in the dust to clean the social, moral, economic and structural decadence that has inundated us. I have come with nothing. I don’t have a huge bank account anywhere. I don’t even have a bank account. I am deeply indebted as I stand here, because I borrowed every single cent for my campaign. If you don’t vote for me then I will have to spend the rest of my days paying that money back.”
        What started as a great patriotic speech seemed to be degenerating into self-exposure and disgrace. The audience and the other presidential hopefuls stared at Mr. Kamenda in total disgust and cringed as if he were some moron from outer space. It was considered to be a shameful thing in Darkeria for a person to express in public the kind of things he was saying. The culture of Darkeria was to look down on someone who was in need or didn’t have a lot of money. But Mr. Kamenda stood poised and focused and seemed to know exactly what he was saying.
        “I have no big solutions. We will find them together. I will surround myself with a host of advisors who are highly educated. I will seek out experienced men and women. They will write my speeches. They will help me to think. They will teach me how to dress properly and to exhibit proper table manners. Many of them have their hands already stained but they are all we’ve got.” Some Darkerians were laughing out loud at the things Mr. Kamenda was saying. He ignored them and continued talking.
        “From the start we will depend on foreign grants and loans to do everything because we don’t have any money, though we are surrounded by natural wealth. Sometimes we will have to dance to the whims of the big countries. They will dictate to us how to formulate our policies, how to set our budget and even how to eat, but we have no choice. If we dare deviate they will not only take their assistance away, they will also sabotage us and make us miserable. But, with determination, we will move forward and become less dependent through astute management of our resources. We will manage so well that there will be enough. There will be corruption but we won’t let it grow horns. We will chop wisely. After my first two years in office, we will have created some minimal wealth for everyone to begin to benefit.”
        Mr Kamenda cleared his throat to continue his strange presidential speech, but when he looked out at the crowd it was as if they were about to lynch him. Even members of his own party seemed angered and betrayed. He wasn’t afraid, though the tense atmosphere distracted him enough to interrupt his train of thought. He stood for a while and concluded with a loud, off-key, “Long live Darkeria, long live the truth!” He dismounted the podium amidst dead silence. He was confused because he felt he had spoken for the masses and had spoken the truth. But it seemed like the truth was too unpalatable for the people of Darkeria. They would rather be lied to and deceived so long as there was the faintest promise of peace.
        The opposition to the incumbent won the elections in spite of the murder of their favored candidate, amidst high hopes that Darkeria would finally see the light of progress. The new president did a shocking thing. In his inaugural speech he announced that he would create a new ministry called the Ministry of Truth, and it would be headed by Mr. Douglas Kamenda. He declared that a committee would be set immediately to determine the ministry’s actual role. So in the end, Mr. Douglas Kamenda did not have to go back to Sekana Public School to face the persecution of Mrs. Boomboom. And more importantly, he would have a chance to pay back his debt quickly.  

Copyright © Obed W. Dolo 2005

The painting on this this page, Thin Line Between Life and Death (Oil) appears courtesy of the artist, ENOCK MUKIIBI, Kanyanya Village, Kampala, Uganda