From: This is Africa
To: jaluo@jaluo.com

Hello people!

Is the age of the visionary leader dead in Africa? It surely wasn’t only the euphoria of independence that produced the ones we had in the 60s and 70s, so what explains the dearth of leaders as change agents, leaders with revolutionary ideals and ideas for shaping their nation, ideas beyond the prosaic stuff of road-building and foreign investment, ideas that bind people together because they give them a clear idea of where the country is heading?

One such leader was the socialist president of Mozambique, Samora Machel, who died in highly suspicious circumstances when the plane carrying him crashed in the mountain range that lies between South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. Was it murder? We might get an answer sometime this year. It won’t answer the question of why we no longer have visionary leaders, but perhaps the news coverage will remind us all that we once had some.

Enjoy the rest of this update.

Peace.

Siji Jabbar (Editor for This is Africa)