Leadership Quote by Mathieu Kerekou

Kerekou’s line tries to pry poverty loose from the two stories societies reach for when they don’t want to change anything: shame and sanctification. Calling it a “humiliation” names the everyday social violence that turns economic lack into personal failure. But he’s equally allergic to the opposite myth, the romantic idea that suffering is morally ennobling, a “position of honour” that demands admiration instead of policy. That pairing matters: it rejects both contempt and consolation, the two emotions that most reliably keep the poor in their place.

The last word, “fatality,” does the real political work. Fatality is what rulers invoke when they want history to feel like weather: unfortunate, immutable, nobody’s fault. Kerekou pushes back against that drift toward inevitability. Poverty, he implies, is not a verdict handed down by fate; it’s a condition produced by decisions - budgets, land, wages, corruption, trade terms, the priorities of the state. In West African postcolonial politics, that’s a pointed claim. It quietly disputes the idea that underdevelopment is either a cultural defect (hence humiliation) or a noble hardship to be endured (hence honour). It’s also a warning to leaders: if poverty isn’t fate, someone is responsible.

The rhetoric is disciplined: three framings, all refused. By stripping away the emotional narratives attached to poverty, Kerekou clears space for the only stance that follows logically - responsibility without stigma, and policy without patronizing charity.