African leaders, you are also human!

Death has today taken the life of another African leader, the six in 36 months. While the illness of Guinea-Bissau's President Malam Bacai Sanha seemed to have been in the public domain and as was that of Ghana's President John Atta Mills the same can not be said of the other leaders who passed on. There was a suspicious secrecy around the illness of Zambia's President Levi Mwanawasa, Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua and more recently Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It got even more sinister when authorities tried to conceal, without much luck, the death of our very own President Bingu wa Mutharika for a good two days.

African leaders are humans not gods. Illness and death is a part of human life. Lets learn to deal with that. Once leaders come to terms with those facts maybe they will also realise that they need to fix the broken health systems they avoid once they fall sick.