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COMMENTARY
There is a famous story about Alexander the Great which, whether historically verified or preserved through generations as a moral parable, carries a lesson that modern Africa desperately needs to hear. Alexander, the Macedonian conqueror whose name became synonymous with military ambition and imperial power, is said to have made three unusual requests as death approached. He wanted the finest physicians to carry his coffin, his accumulated treasures to be scattered along the road to his burial place, and his hands to be left hanging outside the coffin for the world to see.
The symbolism was profound. The physicians were to demonstrate that even the finest medical knowledge could not ultimately defeat death. The scattered gold and treasures were to remind the living that material wealth remains behind when its owner departs. And the empty hands were perhaps the most powerful message of all: that a man may spend his entire life acquiring kingdoms, gold, property, and influence, yet at the final hour he leaves this world exactly as he entered it, with nothing in his hands.
The story is not established history in the strictest sense, and the famous three wishes do not appear in the principal ancient accounts of Alexander's death. But perhaps that is not what matters most. Sometimes humanity preserves a story because of the truth it communicates rather than the certainty of every historical detail. And the truth contained in this story is painfully relevant to Uganda and to Africa.
For what is African politics today if not, in many places, a desperate competition to acquire what cannot ultimately be carried into the grave?
Across the continent, political office has too often ceased to be understood as a temporary public trust and has become an avenue for personal enrichment, patronage, influence, and the accumulation of extraordinary private wealth. The language of public service remains everywhere. The reality of public appetite is often something else.
A politician enters office speaking about the people, the poor, the village, the taxpayer, the farmer, the unemployed graduate, and the ordinary citizen struggling to survive. But somewhere along the journey, public service can quietly become private service. Government contracts become opportunities. Public land becomes an investment. State resources become political currency. Public appointments become rewards for loyalty. Political influence becomes a business asset. The office that was supposed to belong to the people begins to look increasingly like personal property.
Uganda is not immune to this disease. Year after year, public institutions are subjected to audits examining how public resources are collected, allocated, spent, and accounted for. The persistence of such findings should remind us that corruption is not merely a political slogan or an opposition talking point. It is a continuing question of how the resources of the Republic are managed on behalf of its citizens.
But the problem is deeper than figures in audit reports. It is a question of political morality.
A country can establish an Auditor General, an Inspectorate of Government, Parliament, courts, procurement institutions, and anti-corruption laws, yet still struggle with corruption if the people entrusted with power develop an appetite for wealth greater than their commitment to the public good. Institutions matter, but institutions are ultimately inhabited by human beings. Where public morality collapses, even impressive legal architecture can become an empty shell.
Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index placed Uganda at 24 out of 100, ranking it 148th among 182 countries. Whatever one thinks about the methodology of perception indices, the figure should provoke serious reflection. Uganda is not alone. Much of Africa continues to wrestle with corruption, weak accountability, and the concentration of public power.
But perhaps we should ask a more uncomfortable question: why are people so hungry to become rich through political office?
The answer is not simply greed, although greed is certainly part of it. It is also the transformation of political office into a gateway to social status, economic security, and personal power. In societies where the difference between a powerful politician and an ordinary citizen can become extraordinarily wide, political office begins to look less like a responsibility and more like a prize.
And once office becomes a prize, the struggle for power becomes a struggle for wealth.
This is where the Alexander story speaks directly to the African political condition.
Imagine a leader who has spent decades acquiring property, companies, bank accounts, vehicles, political influence, and networks of loyalists. Imagine another who has accumulated enormous wealth while hospitals struggle for medicines, schools lack basic facilities, and young people search endlessly for employment. Imagine a third who has spent public resources building a political empire while the ordinary citizen is repeatedly told to remain patient.
Then imagine the coffin.
At that moment, the mansion becomes silent. The bank account becomes irrelevant. The political title becomes a memory. The convoy stops. The security detail disappears. The office is occupied by somebody else. The signature that once moved millions becomes merely ink on old documents.
And the hands are empty.
This is the part that our political class must never forget.
We come into this world without titles, without bank accounts, without government vehicles, without official residences, and without political constituencies. We arrive naked and dependent upon the kindness of others. Yet somewhere between birth and death, human beings convince themselves that accumulation is the meaning of existence.
We build bigger houses than we can inhabit, acquire more land than we can walk across, accumulate money that we cannot personally spend, establish businesses that our children may fight over, and create political empires that collapse the moment their architects leave the stage.
Then death arrives without seeking permission.
Perhaps the most painful irony is that even the wealth we accumulate for our children is not truly ours to guarantee beyond death. We can write wills, appoint executors, and distribute property according to our wishes. But once we depart, we lose the ability to supervise the inheritance. Those who remain may honour our wishes, administer the estate according to law, contest provisions in court, or, in some cases, simply fail to preserve what we spent a lifetime building.
The dead cannot attend the family meeting. The dead cannot enter the courtroom. The dead cannot telephone the bank. The dead cannot ask whether the property they worked for has been preserved. The dead cannot stand beside their children and say, "That is what I wanted you to do with it."
That is why the hunger for accumulation is ultimately a strange human tragedy. We spend our lives gathering things whose final destiny we cannot witness.
For the political leader, the tragedy is even greater because public wealth is not personal wealth.
A public office holder does not inherit the treasury. He or she temporarily administers it on behalf of citizens. The money belongs to the public. Public institutions belong to the people. Government revenue is collected from citizens. Taxes are not a private contribution to the political class.
When a leader steals from the public, therefore, the victim is not an abstract government. The victim is the child sitting in a classroom without adequate facilities. The victim is the patient waiting for medicine. The victim is the young graduate who cannot find employment. The victim is the farmer whose produce is bought cheaply while the cost of living continues to rise. The victim is the citizen who pays taxes yet receives inadequate public services.
Corruption is therefore not merely an accounting irregularity. It is a moral transfer of suffering from the powerful to the powerless.
Africa's problem is not that its people have failed to understand wealth. Africans understand wealth very well. Our problem is that too many political systems have permitted wealth to become a substitute for accountability.
We have created societies in which political success can be measured by the size of one's convoy, the number of houses one owns, the businesses controlled by one's family, the influence one exercises over state institutions, and the number of people dependent upon one's political patronage.
We have sometimes begun to admire the accumulation without asking the question: where did it come from?
A society that celebrates unexplained wealth eventually teaches its young people that integrity is for fools.
If the honest civil servant retires with little while the corrupt official leaves office with enormous wealth, the lesson received by the next generation is devastating. If the person who steals from the public becomes more respected than the person who protects public resources, corruption ceases to be merely an individual vice. It becomes a social culture.
This is why the fight against corruption cannot be reduced to arresting a few officials whenever a scandal becomes politically inconvenient. The deeper struggle is to restore the moral meaning of public office.
A leader must understand that occupying State House, Parliament, a ministry, a district office, or a public agency does not make one the owner of the country.
Power is borrowed.
Office is temporary.
Titles expire.
Governments change.
Political fortunes reverse.
And eventually, the body returns to the earth.
The Alexander story therefore asks a question that every African leader should answer privately before going to bed: when your coffin leaves your home, what will your hands contain?
Nothing.
Not the money hidden abroad. Not the land acquired through influence. Not the government contracts awarded to friends. Not the luxurious vehicles purchased through questionable wealth. Not the political party. Not the security detail. Not the parliamentary seat. Not the presidential title.
Nothing.
The gold will remain behind. The houses will remain behind. The companies will remain behind. The political networks will remain behind. Even the will shall remain behind.
And those who inherit what remains will continue living in a world from which the deceased has already departed.
This is not an argument against wealth. Wealth honestly earned is neither a crime nor a shame. Africa needs prosperous citizens, successful entrepreneurs, strong businesses, and leaders who can create wealth rather than merely redistribute poverty. The problem is wealth acquired through the abuse of public power, wealth acquired by stealing opportunities from citizens, wealth acquired through corruption, and wealth accumulated at the expense of institutions that are supposed to serve the public.
The question, therefore, is not whether our leaders should become wealthy. The question is how they became wealthy.
There is nothing wrong with a leader leaving a legacy of prosperity. There is everything wrong with leaving behind a legacy of corruption.
There is nothing wrong with leaving children houses. There is everything wrong with leaving them wealth obtained through the suffering of millions.
There is nothing wrong with political leaders becoming successful. There is everything wrong with transforming public office into a personal inheritance.
And perhaps this is where Africa must rethink what it calls success.
A leader should not be remembered merely because he died rich. He should be remembered because children went to school because of his leadership, because hospitals worked, because farmers prospered, because institutions became stronger, because courts could operate independently, because citizens could criticise government without fear, because public money was protected, because the Constitution remained greater than the individual, and because when power changed hands, the country did not collapse.
That is the kind of wealth that survives death.
Alexander's alleged empty hands therefore speak across more than two thousand years to the African political present. The story reminds us that the ultimate failure of a human being is not dying poor. It is dying having possessed everything except the wisdom to understand what was worth possessing.
Our leaders should remember that the cemetery is the one constituency from which nobody campaigns for another term.
Death does not recognise political parties. The grave does not recognise military rank. Ashes do not recognise presidential authority. And the soil does not distinguish between the wealthy and the poor.
We came empty-handed.
We shall leave empty-handed.
Between those two moments lies the brief opportunity called life. The real question is not how much we can take from our countries before we die, but how much we can leave behind for our countries before we do.
For eventually, even the most powerful African leader will become a name spoken in the past tense. The convoy will disappear. The speeches will fade. The portrait will gather dust. The office will belong to another. The money will belong to those left behind. And the body will become ashes.
Only the consequences of one's life will remain.
Perhaps, therefore, before our leaders ask how much more they can accumulate, they should occasionally look at their own hands and ask a simpler question: when the coffin is closed, what will these hands have achieved for the people from whom their power came?
That is the question Alexander's empty hands leave for Africa.
And it is a question no amount of stolen wealth can answer.
About the Writer
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate whose writings focus on governance, constitutionalism, democracy, and the political economy of power in Africa. He is widely published on issues of judicial accountability, electoral justice, human rights, and institutional reform, with particular emphasis on Uganda's political and legal systems. Writing from a Pan-African critical perspective, he interrogates the failures of state institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens under entrenched systems of power. He strongly believes that the liberation of Africa will ultimately be achieved through the mighty pen.