Jingles have sounded, the owl has cried milk, dictators beware

The owl, an eerie, spooky animal with its bizarre neck and large, magnetic eyes, is widely feared in Africa. According to superstition, an owl was a harbinger of death. If it perched on your compound and spent the night crying milk, somebody would die.

Another piece of wisdom from our culture: A doomed man does not hear the jingles of an approaching brave. If I lived in traditional Africa, I’d be on my way to retiring as a scarred, cattle rustling, foreigner-despising, woman-oppressing, bloodthirsty warrior. Traditional African men were psychotic victims of conceited masculinity.

Besides walking around buck naked in the rather foolish belief that a real man has nothing to hide, they also announced their approach through jingles — noisy cowbell-like ornaments — tied to their ankles, knees or biceps. So a menacing warrior, bedecked in jingles and plastered in goat lard, would announce his presence from miles away and cause his enemies to take cover, winning without lifting a finger.

DANGER

But a man on whom death had put its mark, for whom an owl has cried milk, is oblivious to approaching danger.

Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in power since I was a schoolboy, was on Thursday toppled in a tawdry, military coup — complete with the closing of the airspace, shut borders, suspension of the constitution, arrest of regime leaders and assumption of power by a faceless cabal.

He could have left four months ago and used his network of political clients and armed groups to cut a deal that would have given him what he desires most: Impunity. Thursday, protesters mocked him in the streets that he has danced for 30 years, now it is their turn.

Mr Bashir is a very bad man; an autocrat, tyrant and suspected war criminal. It was he and Hassan al-Turabi who hosted Osama bin Laden and allowed their country to be used as a staging ground for the growth of terrorism in East Africa. Osama sent missions to establish a foothold in Somalia from Khartoum. And the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam attacks in August 1998 had their origins in terror cells in Sudan.

TERRORISM

Omdurman and other places, I fear, are the petri-dishes on which terrorism and extremism were cultured in this region. Mr Bashir, through his misguided extremism, scarred our lives and deformed our societies.

But it is in Darfur that Mr Bashir earned the wrath of all of rational humanity. His Janjaweed militias raped, brutalised and killed an estimated 300,000 people, his own people. His brutality in South Sudan is well recalled.

The real tragedy of Sudan might not be the centuries of oppression, exploitation and brutality the people of African descent have suffered at the hands of northern brigands but that the apparent moment of freedom is nothing of the sort.

Like Zimbabwe and Algeria, this might be nothing more than a palace coup where the vassals of the dictator depose him and continue with business as usual.

COUP

General Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, the Defence minister, former chief of general staff and intelligence chief, the alleged chief coup plotter who is profusely thanking the Sudanese youth for taking to the streets to protest the lousy lives they have led — queuing for bread and hospitals without supplies — is, like Emmerson Mnangagwa, an insider per excellence.

He was suspected of having a role in the Janjaweed crimes and sanctioned by the US for it. He does not represent Sudan’s future but its dark past.

And Mr Bashir does not belong to the “safe place” where is alleged to be held. He should be handed over to the International Criminal Court, along with his cronies, so that he can face justice for all the children who died in Darfur, all those girls and women who endured nights of rape terror at the hands of his warriors and thousands of blameless souls whose lives were brutally ended in his name.

As for the strongmen still standing, listen for the approaching jingles, watch out for the crying owl.

* * *

I have been watching with weary amusement the fury which has greeted our recent political headlines. This time it is the Orange Democratic Movement which is outraged at the coverage of how Deputy President William Ruto has been running rings around opposition boss Raila Odinga. While everyone was basking in the glow of handshake largesse, Mr Ruto is said to have quietly pulled the rug from under the feet of ODM in various by-elections.

CORRUPTION

A few weeks ago, it was Mr Ruto’s people who were hammering the media for covering corruption cases. Their argument is that the war on corruption is a trick to lock him out of the presidency, whatever that means.

Now, I know the election is years away and Mr Odinga is truly experienced, politically talented and has fanatical following in various parts of the country. In 2012, Musalia Mudavadi was, briefly, the darling of the regime and appeared destined for State House.

His then-party United Democratic Front (UDF) ran Mr Walter Andati against ODM’s Reuben Nyangweso in a by-election for Bukura Ward in Lurambi, Kakamega, Mr Mudavadi’s heartland.

When ODM beat Mr Mudavadi in his own backyard, it is my theory, the sails of his State House-bound boat sprang a leak. And he never recovered.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, but keep an eye.

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