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Did you know that not all people are lucky enough to choose their leaders?
In America, Europe (Europe is where countries like France, England and Italy are) and many other countries, people vote to choose who their president will be. In some countries they even choose a woman to be their president. Neat isn’t it?
Well, in Africa, there are lots of different kinds of governments. Some are kingdoms where the country is run by a king or queen. One example of a country with a kingdom is Lesotho. Lesotho is all the way at the bottom of Africa and is completely surrounded by the country called South Africa. You have probably heard of South Africa’s last president whose name is Nelson Mandela. He is one of Africa’s greatest leaders.
Another kind of government is called a democracy. That is the kind that Europe and America have. It means that the people choose their leader by voting. Voting is when you write down who you choose and whoever gets the most people choosing them wins.
Many countries in Africa do that to choose their leaders too. Actually, Africa has been doing that for hundreds of years. Way before the pilgrims even landed here in the United States. But then, Africans were part of smaller groups who picked the chief by voting. They would select the wisest members of their tribe and then choose one of them to act as chief. A chief had many different jobs. He would often be the mayor, police and judge all rolled into one.
Now though, countries are much bigger and some leaders are still chosen by voting. Senegal and South Africa are two countries in Africa which are democracies. Some other Africans are not so lucky though.
In some countries in Africa (and in other parts of the world too), the men who run the country are people called dictators. That is a person who gets chosen by someone to be the leader and then he decides he never wants to give up his power to someone else. In most democracies, people decide every 4 to 6 years who they want as their leader. Dictators don’t like that idea because they get scared that the people won’t choose them again, so they just refuse to have elections. (Elections are when people vote.)
Now to answer the question: “How can a dictator just refuse to leave?”
He does it by making the people in his country afraid of him. He does anything and everything he can do to make sure people are too scared to make him leave.
Some dictators make it against the law to write or say anything bad about him. If anyone is caught saying that what he is doing is wrong, they are put in jail or even killed. In many countries with dictatorships, people are so afraid that this will happen to them that they are even scared to talk to their own family about the president.
Another thing that dictators do to keep their power is that they become good friends of the generals in their armies. They do that because if anyone tries to force them to leave, they can call the army to help them.
Dictators are kind of like bullies. They are stronger than the other kids on the playground and they want to keep all the toys for themselves. Anyone who tries to tell them that they should share gets beat up.
Why do they do it? I wish I could answer that question for you; but I can’t. It seems that they are mostly men who had good ideas and wanted to make their countries good ones to live. But once they saw how nice it was to be rich and powerful; they just decided that their happiness was more important than the happiness of the millions of men, women and children in their countries.
If you lived in a country with a dictator:
• You would be afraid to talk freely.
• You would only see television shows, hear radio and read newspapers that said good things about the president.
• You would never get to hear about things going on in different parts of the world unless the dictator wanted you to.
• You would never be able to dream about being president one day.
• Your country would probably be poor because most dictators keep money for themselves instead of sharing it with their people.
• You might not even be able to go to school because your president would use money to pay his army instead of building schools and paying teachers.
• You would probably know at least one person who “disappeared”.
People who disappear are usually tortured and often killed because of their belief that their country should be free. It happens when people are taken from their beds at night, or even as they walk down the street. They are pushed into a car and never seen again. Their families never know what happened to them, who took them, and don’t even know if they are dead or alive.
I hope that explains what a dictator is and how they end up becoming leaders. And remember that there are millions of kids just like you living in Africa today with a dictator for a leader. We should remember those kids and try to do our part to help them live as freely as we do. After all, they are just kids who wish they had the luck to go to school every day, to never worry that their parents or family will be killed by their own government and who dream that one day they will get to live FREE.
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