Lessons from Africa

For the past four years I have been given an opportunity by Duma FM Radio station to discuss African politics every Tuesday. The segment provides a platform to discuss the socio-economic and political situations in various African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Cameroon, Western Sahara, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan etc. Being involved in this segment on a weekly basis requires that I go through vast literature of African political and economic history and leadership styles of many African leaders. From the vast research that I carried out, there are some interesting conclusions that I have made about the African continent, which I want to highlight in this week’s article.

In many African countries, ethnicity plays a pivotal yet destructive role in politics. In countries such as South Sudan, conflict which has its origins on economic and political factors is defined along ethnic lines. South Sudan has never known any peace since its independence in 2011. Two belligerent factions led by prominent politicians, Riek Matchar (of the Neur ethnic group) and Salva Kiir (of the Dinka ethnic group) are embroiled in a horrendous conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 100, 000 people. The Dinka and the Neur are bitter political enemies that have polarised South Sudan along ethnic lines.

In other parts of Africa such as the Central African Republic, privileges are given to an ethnic group, which the incumbent president belongs to. Top cabinet and key government positions are exclusive to members of the tribe of the president. For example, when Andre Tolimgba overthrew Emperor Bokassa in 1972, his Yakoma tribesmen enjoyed all privileges and later when he was removed from power by Felix Patasse, those privileges were stripped from the Yakoma ethnic group and diverted to the Saba-Badra ethnic group, which Patasse belonged to. It has become a trend in many African states to politicise ethnicity to such extent that ethnicity has become more powerful than political ideology.

The second observation I have made is that constitutions are mostly used by many leaders in African states not to protect the rights and freedoms of the people, but used by incumbents to tighten their grip on power. In fact, constitutions can be amended or bastardised willy nilly by an incumbent to either keep political opponents at bay, increase his undeserved shelf life in power and to completely oppress the ordinary citizens. African leaders such as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Theodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea and others have recklessly amended constitutions to perpetuate their prolonged stay in power. Obiang is currently the longest serving president (non royal) in the world having served for the past 43 years.

Thirdly, even though there are multi-party democratic systems in many African countries, the continent is characterised by lack of strong democratic institutions that can go a long way in creating good governance, accountability, transparency and the rule of law. Even in countries where these institutions exist, they are more often very weak and this has sadly resulted in rampant corruption and abuse of power by political elites. Lack of institutional oversight mechanisms create a fertile platform for the institutionalisation of corruption in many African countries.

The late Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola allowed his daughter and son to embezzle millions of petro dollars to enrich themselves. Teodorin Obiang, the son to Equatorial Guinea president has embezzled oil revenues to acquire property worth $200 million dollars in Europe and the USA. His father is worth $600 million. This ill-gotten wealth became possible due to weak or absence of robust institutions of good governance.

Another observation made is the vulnerability of African countries to external influence both within the region and from abroad. A country like Central African Republic has been weakened not only by internal forces but to a large extent to foreign interference from countries such as Chad, Sudan, the DRC and France. In actual fact France has been involved in almost all the military coups that have rocked Central African Republic since independence. Many other countries with internal strife have seen the interference of outside powers such Rwanda and Uganda assisting rebel forces in the toppling of Mabuto Sese Seko and current allegations of Rwanda arming M23 forces in the DRC.

Last but not least, the civil-military relations in many African countries are very fragile. There are many cases of militaries intervening in the political affairs of states thus undermining the civilian elected governments and democracy in general. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was removed from power by the military in 2017 after being at the helm for close to 40 years. In the Central African Republic, military coups have dominated local politics since the country gained its independence. In Egypt, the military was very instrumental in the removal of the first ever democratically elected government of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood to bring in former military strongman Fatah Al Sisi.

The armed forces also played a role in intimidating Sisi’s political opponents who resulted in almost all of them withdrawing from the 2018 General Elections. Military takeovers in Guinea, Sudan, Mali and Burkina Faso are other cases in point. In short, one can safely say that in many African countries, there is no democratic civilian control of the armed forces where the military accounts to a democratically elected civilian government.

Meanwhile, the ordinary citizens of many African countries continue to suffer from immense poverty, marginalisation and are vulnerable to effects of instability and conflict in their respective countries. The continent is very rich in resources but the revenue accrued from these resources end up lining the pockets of a few political elites and their network of cronies. One can further say Africa is characterised by rampant kleptocracy, inept attitude and political rascality, which require a lot of security sector reforms.