Temporal Power

The Dadis show is unscripted, eerily brilliant and frightening in its madness, with derision, words flung around the room, in cataclysmic effect, hailing youth, deriding demagoguery, putting on a show trial of televised populism to great effect.
The sad reality is he actually speaks a lot of truths in what he says, but his cloak sends shivers, and madmen, whatever their shade, usually have a poor record when they assume too much power.
---Nico Colombant, The Dadis Show

The scene is in French and it takes place somewhere in Africa, yet there is something fundamentally Shakespearian in its universality.

I am talking about this youtube video in which Guinea's current head of state, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara publicly admonishes Anatoly Patchenko, Rusal’s representative in Guinea.



Everything Dadis says is true:

Patchenko is an international swindler.

And something is rotten in the state of Guinea: corruption is endemic.

But Dadis looks and sounds like a madman.

Dadis had his moment, but when all is said and done, and for all the posturing of the protagonists, the righteous anger of one, and the feint contrite humility of the other, there is little doubt who is the mouse and who is the cat in that particular game, or where the real temporal power actually resides. Hint: don’t look at the "monarchs" (the current head of state or his corrupt predecessors), or at the nation state. Don’t look at the people either: Guinea holds a third of the world's bauxite reserves but despite having bauxite resources worth about $500 billion even at current depressed market prices, Guinea has one of the world's lowest gross domestic products per capita, ranking it 210th in the world. The country also has large deposits of iron ore, gold and diamonds. But its infrastructure is poor, tending to focus on the area around mines and projects, and most of the population lives in poverty.

This is what I have always liked about Africa, everything is so clear and so simple, no pretense at democracy. Everything is condensed, drawn in broad outlines. All that remains is one situation acting as a parable of universal human fate. Dadis’s outburst is a protest against the world injustice. He is wild and drunk with indignation, almost childish in his transports. But in the end, his outburst cannot solve or alter anything. One thing is clear: he is in way over his head. His supporters expect him to be a game changer, but he is trapped. He is trapped into finding himself in a compulsory situation, a situation of local and international politics he doesn’t want but which is now thrust upon him.

There is there a perfect study of politics opposed to morality, and of the divergence between theory and practice.

Already events have been driving him into a blind alley.

Look at the audience and the high dignitaries in the crowd in this other video. They sit in silence; they avoid looking in each other’s eyes; they try to penetrate into the minds of others. Above all, they want to know what he, The Prince, is thinking.

Like him, they are actors in a drama they do not always wholly understand, in which they have become involved.