By Tony Okafor
The recent American military venture in Venezuela, which culminated in the forcible removal of President Nicolás Maduro and his subsequent transfer to the United States on criminal charges, has sparked fierce debate across the globe.
Critics argue that the action violated international law and the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty.
Ironically, not a single African head of state has openly condemned the dramatic act. That silence speaks volumes.
For decades, African leaders have perfected the art of impunity—subverting constitutions through midnight amendments, trampling electoral mandates, weaponising the judiciary to punish opponents, muzzling dissent, and looting public treasuries—while the international community responded with gentle sanctions and polite concern. Nothing changed.
Then came Donald Trump’s brand of politics—crude, unpredictable, and unburdened by the etiquette that once shielded bad rulers. Call it madness if you like.
But for a continent long plagued by leaders who play by their own rules, it is precisely the shock Africa needs.
African citizens know the story all too well: votes are cast, results are manipulated, and opponents are told to “go to court,” even as judges are hurriedly summoned to validate fraud.
The people are urged to move on “for peace.”
Presidents extend their tenures through midnight constitutional tweaks. Security forces are deployed to suppress protests, while leaders sermonise about “stability.”
In this ecosystem, impunity thrives because it expects softness from outside—often disguised as respect for sovereignty.
Trump’s so-called madness—transactional, abrasive, and unromantic—appears to have upended this old comfort zone.
He shows little patience for the ritual language dictators master so easily. His foreign policy did not pretend that autocrats were misunderstood reformers; it treated them as liabilities.
Aid was questioned. Alliances were reviewed. Sanctions were applied without apology.
The message, however clumsily delivered, was unmistakable: consequences are back on the table.
This is not an endorsement of vulgarity or recklessness. For too long, some African leaders have relied on the world’s good manners as a shield.
Trump is disrupting that calculus. His indifference to old diplomatic scripts is removing the cover under which impunity flourished.
Critics argue that Trump’s style undermines institutions and norms. They are right—elsewhere.
But Africa’s crisis is not a shortage of norms; it is a surplus of violated ones. Constitutions already exist. Electoral laws are there. Anti-corruption agencies are established. What is missing is enforcement.
Of course, no foreign leader will save Africa. The work of accountability belongs to Africans themselves. But history shows that internal struggles often require external pressure to break entrenched stalemates. South African apartheid did not end on sermons alone; it ended when injustice became costly.
Today’s democratic backsliding will not reverse through rhetoric alone; it will reverse when impunity becomes inconvenient.
Trump’s so-called “madness” punctures the diplomatic theatre that allows leaders to rig elections on Monday and receive handshakes on Friday.
For African strongmen, unpredictability is frightening. Some are now being forced, late in political life, to learn table manners they long ignored.
If Trump’s unruly style helps reintroduce the idea that power answers to the rule of law—and that the law can be enforced—then the discomfort may be a price worth paying.
In a continent where impunity has become normalised, a little madness may be the medicine that finally forces accountability onto the agenda.
Fiat justitia, ruat caelum — Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
