Meet Africa’s sit-tight leaders
Democratic governance has been a major political challenge in Africa since the dawn of independence in the early 1960s. Though African democracy has shown some improvements, with elections becoming more frequent and more regular in some parts of the continent, few African states are still characterised by corruption and autocracy.
In such states, the incumbent cows the opposition and exploits the power of the state to skew the electoral contest in his favour.
In some other climes especially in east and central Africa, constitutional coups appear to be the new tools incumbents employ to sidestep term limits. This, they do, by amending the provisions of a national constitution to achieve tenure elongation.
Last year in West Africa, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh was forced to leave after he had refused to step down following his defeat in the December 2016 election. He went into exile after last minute diplomatic push and threat of military invasion by ECOWAS troops.
Over the past decade, more 30 African countries have witnessed a direct or indirect presidential election that resulted in change of leaders. Fifty six heads of state relinquished power, while nine died in office and 13 stepped down after a coup or uprising.
Through elections, leaders of 15 countries have remained the same over the past 10 years. They include Angola, Burundi, Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, DR Congo, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Aside Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 14 of the leaders took office before 2006.
15 African countries that haven’t changed leadership in the last ten years Angola Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 75, has been President of Angola since 1979, when the country’s first post-independence president, Agostinho Neto, died.
After a peace deal signed in 1991, Mr Dos Santos beat Unita leader Jonas Savimbi in the first round of Angola’s first contested presidential election in 1992, but Savimbi rejected the result and resumed guerrilla war.
While some have praised the septuagenarian for leading the country to recovery after the end of its 27-year civil war in 2002, others accuse him of authoritarianism, overstay in office and failing to distribute the proceeds from the oil boom more widely.
Critics accused him of being increasingly authoritarian when he appointed his daughter Isabel as the head of the state oil firm, Sonangol. Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 75, has ruled the small oil-rich nation for almost 38 years, amid persistent accusations of corruption and electoral fraud.
In 1979, he seized power from his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema, who was the leader at independence and whose rule prompted a mass exodus and thousands of deaths.
Obiang was re-elected in 2009 with 95% of the vote in presidential elections. Officials reported similar results in the December 2002 elections.
His son, Teodoro ‘Teodorin’ Nguema Obiang, who is also the country’s second vice president, was charged, in January 2017 in France, with spending millions in state funds to feed an opulent lifestyle of fast cars, designer clothes, works of art and high-end real estate. Cameroon Paul Biya, 84, has been in power since 1982. Before that, he had spent his entire political career in the service of President Ahmadou Ahidjo, becoming prime minister in 1975.
With Mr Ahidjo’s resignation in 1982, he assumed the leadership and in 1983 accused his predecessor of organising a coup against him, forcing the former president to flee the country.
After the country’s parliament in April 2008 passed a controversial amendment to the constitution enabling Biya to run for a third term, the octogenarian won a new seven-year term in the October 2011 election, in a vote that observers said was marred by irregularities.
The Cameroonian leader, who has spent 35 years in office, is believed to be among the highest paid African presidents, earning 359m Central African CFA francs (£397,019), according to International Business Times UK, quoting Africa Review.
Africa Review compared his salary to what an average Cameroonian earns and found the leader’s annual income is about 229 times more than the average salary. Uganda Yoweri Museveni, 73, became Uganda’s president in 1986. The big-hat-wearing septuagenarian was involved in rebellions that toppled Ugandan leaders Idi Amin and Milton Obote.
With five presidential terms in office, Museveni claims Uganda is one of the most democratic countries in the world. In 2005, the constitution was changed to allow him to extend his time in office.
Museveni was re-elected in 2016 in an election overshadowed by arrests of politicians and allegations of rigging. Police carried out multiple arrests of opposition activists, including his closest rival, Kizza Besigye, during the vote.
In a surprised cabinet appointment in June 2016, he named his wife and first lady, Janet Kataaha Museveni, Minister of Education and Sports. Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, 93, is considered the world’s oldest national ruler. He has been President of Zimbabwe since 1987, after he led the country as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987.
Amid growing concerns over his frailty and deteriorating health condition, he shows no sign of quitting politics. At his lavish 93rd birthday party, he said he has no plans to step down.
“People who are busy forming their own groupings, saying ‘Mr Mugabe must go’. I ask myself where should I go?” Mugabe, who has been in power for 30 years, said in a speech that was broadcast on state radio and television. Chad Idriss Deby, 65, took office in 1990 in a coup and has faced several attempts to oust him by similar means.
He won a fifth term in presidential elections in April 2016, securing 62% of the vote. His closest rival, Saleh Kebzabo, garnered 13%. But opposition parties said the vote counting lacked credibility.
He won the country’s first postindependence presidential election in 1996 and re-elected in 2001. In 2005 he won a referendum allowing him to stand for a third term.
Deby survived a bid to topple him in April 2006, when rebels attacked the capital, and again in February 2008, when they were beaten back by government forces backed by French warplanes and troops. Sudan Omar Al-Bashir, 73, is Sudan’s seventh president. He has held power since his 1989 coup when the country was in the midst of a 21-year civil war between north and south.
Al-Bashir won consecutive elections in 2010 and 2015. Despite an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, he has made diplomatic visits to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Eritrea Isaias Afewerki, 71, has occupied Eritrean presidency, since the country’s independence in 1993.
He led Eritreans through most of the 30-year war with Ethiopia that culminated in independence. But the country has never held an election. Presidential poll, planned for 1997, never materialised.
Eritrea is a one-party state, with the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice the only party allowed to operate.
Mr Afewerki has been criticised for failing to implement democratic reforms. His government has clamped down on its critics and has closed the private press.
The northeast African country is mired in poverty and repression with thousands of its youths fleeing the country, through the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean, to seek better life in Europe. Republic of Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, 74, extended his 32 years in power, after he won the 2016 presidential elections. The long-serving leader is accused by critics of rampant corruption and nepotism and of stifling democracy.
The country descended into political tensions in the mid 1990’s. Though Nguesso became president following the 1997 conflict and prepared to allow a return to democracy, renewed fighting by rebels led to the collapse of that effort in 1998.
The timber-rich Congo has been on edge since the January 2002 constitutional referendum that ended a two-term limit on presidential mandates, allowing the 72-year-old former paratrooper colonel to run for office again. Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 80, is the fifth President of Algeria. He won a fourth term as Algeria’s leader, receiving 81.5 percent of the vote in the 2014 election boycotted by opposition leaders.
Bouteflika won the presidency in the 1999 polls and secured landslide election victories in 2004 and again 2009.
He rarely appears in public after suffering a stroke in 2013. But he has managed to strongly hold onto power and has avoided the democratic changes prompted by the Arab Spring uprisings in neighbouring North African countries. Djibouti Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, who has been in office since 1999, secured a fourth five-year term after a landslide victory in the April 2016 election criticised by opposition parties and rights groups.
He won 87% of vote, which critics complained was preceded by political repression and restrictions on basic freedoms.
The 70-year-old leader also won the 2011 election with 80 percent of the vote after the country’s parliament amended the constitution to allow him to extend his rule.
Guelleh rules a nation troubled by longstanding ethnic hostilities. The internal troubles led to political discord, which eventually resulted in the two main opposition groups boycotting the 2005 presidential election. Rwanda The sixth and current President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, took office in 2000 when his predecessor, Pasteur Bizimungu, resigned.
He spearheaded the launch of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement, which took power in Kigali to end the 1994 genocide.
The country’s constitution was amended in the 2015 referendum to allow Kagame to run for a third term of seven years at the end of his current tenure in 2017.
The newly amended constitution reduced a presidential term from seven to five years but that will come into effect when Kagame’s third term tenure of seven years comes to an end.
This enables him to run for another two terms of 5-years each under the amended constitution, making it possible for the 60-year-old leader to rule until 2034. DR Congo Joseph Kabila, 46, took office in 2001 ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila.
He reached the end of his constitutional two-term limit last year, but has refusal to step down.
Polls were not held last year because of what the government said were budgetary constraints, sparking violent protests in December 2016 in which security forces killed at least 40 people.
Critics say Kabila deliberately delayed elections in order to remain in power. Burundi Pierre Nkurunziza, 53, became the first president to be chosen in democratic elections since the start of Burundi’s civil war in 1994.
His election by parliamentarians in 2005 was one of the final steps in a peace process intended to end years of fighting between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-controlled army.
His re-election to a controversial third term in 2015 followed a disputed elections boycotted by the opposition.
Burundi’s constitution limits presidents to a maximum of two terms in office. But the constitutional court ruled in favour of his argument that his first term does not count, as he was elected by parliament and not by the entire electorate, and was thus eligible to stand again. Togo Faure Gnassingbe’s family has ruled the small West African country for half a century.
The 51 year old took over presidency in 2005 after the death of his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who died after 38 years in office.
Prior to his election, he was appointed as Minister of Equipment, Mines, Posts and Telecommunications, serving from 2003 to 2005.
The 2005 elections, which brought Mr Gnassingbe to power, were overshadowed by fraud allegations and violent protests which left at least 400 people dead.
Faure was re-elected for a third term in the April 2015 elections. In 2014, opposition protests failed to bring about constitutional changes limiting the president to two terms in office.