I write this because my Malian friends can’t. They probably can’t event tweet it or FB it. Yesterday the Malian junta banned political reporting and commentary. This, after last week banning political activities by parties or organized civil society. They did this because of a backlash of frustration, as two years into their regime they haven’t been able to solve the problems of Malians.

In the medium term there is no such thing as an enlightened dictatorship. Two years ago, when the military swept into power, people were relieved. They were absolutely sick of the self-dealing of the ‘democratic’ government of IBK and hoped maybe some strong-armed action could sweep away the debates that crippled the country’s political system. Consensus is much harder than decree.

And yup, IBK’s rule was awful. Corruption and Dogon death squads wiping out Fulani villages. In Africa, the trappings and institutions of democratic governance more often than not don’t serve as a check on state capture but instead a tool for state capture.

Let me talk here about my 1000 days in Mali. Because it’s a remarkable place. The seat of ancient kingdoms, based out of Gao and Timbuktu, which made the onetime ruler Mansa Musa the richest man in the history of the world. It is said when he went on Hajj he collapsed the price of gold in Cairo for a decade through his lavish spending. Timbuktu’s library had 400,000 manuscripts when Oxford’s only had 800. It was the center of a Socratic university (called Sankore) where they talked about medicine and math while Europe was still in the dark ages.

But Mali fell on hard times. As always happens — kingdoms rise and fall. When the growing Berber dynasties in Marrakech started paying notice, in the 1500s, and sacked Timbuktu, Mali receded into poverty from which it has never emerged.

Mali, specifically the Sahara sands where the Tuareg ride, is also the birthplace of the blues. There are still ethnomusicologists who live permanently in the little villages, studying the evolutionary origins of rock music. Bono called that part of West Africa “The big bang of all the music that we love.” My time there, working on elections and the peace process (which we got signed in 2015 and which the junta just pulled out of), has settled pleasantly into my imagination. A quiet time (Our internet was no good and we only had Malian TV, so mostly ordering DVDs from Amazon and using the pouch, so the constant harassment of social media wasn’t even an option to become addicted to.) I was raising my little boy. He learned to walk there, then to run and jump. He learned to speak — English and Spanish and French. We went often to the little zoo in the center of Bamako to look at the 15 or so animals who were safely protected by the Aga Khan and his foundation (I hope they are still OK). We enjoyed the thundering rainstorms across the Niger; smelled the heavy air, taking shelter from the heat as our eyes were softened by the sandy browns and tans of the Sahara. Bamako is said to be Africa’s biggest village. And I worked hard; because it was a time of transition — away from a previous dictatorship and from a war that had almost arrived in the south. Which is why I can’t imagine a ban on all political activity. Malians love to opine and debate; they are sophisticated in sort of a French way (legacy of the colony); and while certainly conciliatory they don’t hide opinions or ideas. Which made working on a political program in a society that was becoming freer and freer so exciting. We brought in think tanks to organize people; we did book-reading clubs; we funded dozens of community radios and helped improve content; we translated the peace process documents into 13 languages and had village-level discussions of their implications; we organized rallies and marches. Political activity.

All of which is now illegal.

There’s a new totalitarianism that is creeping across the world. Nicaragua is now despotic; Afghanistan is the worst most brutal oxygenless tyranny the world has ever seen, apartheid against an entire gender; Venezuela is a failed drug dictatorship: Eritrea, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, China, Belarus. They’re all getting worse. Dictatorship spreads like a cold.

Not that we are also not to blame. Our democracy hasn’t provided the answers, and has created tremendous self-dealing, corruption, rent-seeking and disorder which is exploited by those who pretend there is a better way. Our democracy promoters have become too missionary, too technocratic and too universalist in their own way (too often pushing cultural values as a bait-and-switch with real human rights and thereby weakening the entire movement by dividing it from within) — and not recognizing that there are a million-and-one ways to arrive at consent and those must be respected. And that maybe we could even learn something from them. Yes, we too share the blame.

I write this because if I were in Mali right now and wrote this I’d likely be thrown out — because I’d be lucky and have diplomatic immunity. But Malians have no such immunity. So somebody must speak for them, until they themselves can speak again.