Normalizing child abuse in Africa is evidence of Africa's Cowardice AND collective mental instability—a succinct metaphor: the fucking empress is a butt-naked idiot, like a $20 toothless Las Vegas crackhead putana.

Child abuse in Africa cannot be discussed only as a private family problem. It is also connected to a much larger culture of power, fear, humiliation, poverty and authoritarianism—one in which people who have very little control over their lives sometimes exercise extraordinary control over those beneath them.

Consider the ordinary worker who has almost no authority in the workplace. He is intimidated, humiliated or ignored by his superiors throughout the day. Yet when he returns home, he may become an authoritarian in his own household, using his children or partner as emotional punching bags. The person who appears quiet, respectful and almost saintly before his boss can become frighteningly domineering at home.

It is a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde contradiction: civility upward, brutality downward.

The same contradiction can exist at the level of national leadership. A government may present itself beautifully at the United Nations, the African Union, the European institutions, BRICS and other international forums, speaking the language of diplomacy, development and human rights. Yet behind closed doors, the most vulnerable citizens—including children—may experience neglect, hunger, violence and state indifference.

That contradiction should disturb us.

A child does not understand geopolitics. A hungry child does not care about diplomatic speeches. A sick child does not experience a country's international reputation. They experience the immediate reality of whether there is food, medicine, protection and an adult who will listen to them.

When children cry because they are hungry or in pain, the answer cannot be repression. When vulnerable citizens protest their suffering, the answer cannot be bullets. The Lekki tragedy in Nigeria, for example, remains a painful reminder of the consequences of a state responding to citizens' grievances with force rather than accountability and protection.

And this is where I believe we need to look beyond individual incidents.

What happens to a society when the people entrusted with protecting its children instead teach those children that power means intimidation? What happens when discipline becomes synonymous with humiliation, beating and fear? What happens when children learn that the person with the most power is automatically the person who is right?

We should not be surprised when those children grow into adults who reproduce the same hierarchy.

The tragedy is that these children are not merely today's victims. They are potentially tomorrow's doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, civil servants, scientists, managers and political leaders. They are the people who may eventually be expected to take responsibility for their communities and countries.

Yet we can spend their childhood psychologically dismantling them through violence, instability, neglect and fear—and then, decades later, demand that they perform like Einstein, Mandela or some other extraordinary intellectual and moral giant on the global stage.

That makes no sense.

You cannot continually break the weakest links in a society and then complain that the chain keeps failing.

Africa's children need more than survival. They need environments in which curiosity is safe, mistakes do not invite terror, discipline does not become cruelty, and adults understand that authority is a responsibility rather than a licence to dominate.

The question, therefore, is not simply: Why are African children struggling?

We should also ask:

What are the adults, institutions and cultures around these children teaching them about power?

If a child learns that the powerful are permitted to abuse the powerless, that lesson does not disappear when childhood ends. It can follow that person into the workplace, the military, government, business and politics.

Perhaps one of Africa's greatest leadership challenges begins much earlier than the presidential palace or the boardroom.

Perhaps it begins in the home.

If we want better leaders tomorrow, we have to stop psychologically destroying children today.