It’s an old story, too many times told. The classic versions were those of Napoleon Bonaparte and Joseph Stalin: revolutionary ideals shattered on the shoals of personal aggrandizement and paranoia; too close a tie between the fortunes of a particular leader and the fate of a revolutionary project. With Napoleon and Stalin it was the stuff of Shakespearean grand tragedy and resulted in the death of millions of victims. Thankfully, it’s a not a cast-iron law of history (as many on the cynical Right would have it): otherwise we wouldn’t have the Gandhis, Mandelas and Nyereres of the world. But it still goes on. Today it is a sadder, smaller, and entirely sillier set of mini-tragedies which are repeating themselves from Asmara to Harare.
Take Nicaragua’s re-elected (2006) revolutionary hero Daniel Ortega. You remember the brave and handsome young Sandinista leader from the early 1980s who stood up to Ronald Reagan and his lavishly funded Contras? Some 30,000 Nicaraguans gave their lives to defend an experiment in equitable development that had replaced the decrepit old Somoza dictatorship so favoured by US Cold Warriors.
