tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/african-politics-17544/articlesAfrican politics – The Conversation2021-07-01T10:10:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1636752021-07-01T10:10:28Z2021-07-01T10:10:28ZUS government UFO report: from shrouded history to a data–driven future – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409129/original/file-20210630-17-1x5syyn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=178%2C146%2C1218%2C805&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screenshot from a Depart of Defense video of an unidentified aerial phenomenon. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/1%20-%20FLIR.mp4">US Department of Defense/US Navy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> we look at the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s report on unidentified aerial phenomena and explore the cultural history and scientific taboo around UFOs. And three months after rebels killed the president of Chad in central Africa, we talk to experts about the balance of power there.</p>
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<p>When it finally dropped on June 25, the <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf">report on unidentified aerial phenomena</a> didn’t mention the word extraterrestrial. And nobody had expected it to. Still, ufologists were excited that this official US government report might give them a signal or evidence of other-worldly explanations for mysterious sightings by navy pilots over the past few decades.</p>
<p>In this episode, Chris Impey, university distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, talks us through what the government report actually reveals. And he explains why doing serious research into UFOs has been such a taboo for scientists fighting against the link between UFOs and conspiracy theories. “Guilt by association for a lot of scientists is just enough that they won’t want to go there,” Impey says. The report may move the needle a bit, he tells us, “but not substantially.” </p>
<p>Greg Eghigian, professor of history at Penn State University, gives us a cultural history of UFOs. He explains how the American obsession with them began in the late 1940s in the US and then spread around the world. “It’s always been global,” says Eghigian. “Different governments across the world have at different periods of time investigated this or had dedicated UFO desks.”</p>
<p>And in our second story (27m54s), we head to Chad in central Africa. When the country’s long-serving president, Idriss Déby was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56815708">killed suddenly</a> by rebels in April, his son, a general, took charge of a transitional military council promising to hold new elections within 18 months. </p>
<p>Line Engbo Gissel, associate professor of global political sociology at Roskilde University in Denmark and Troels Burchall Henningsen, assistant professor at the Royal Danish Defence College recently <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09557571.2020.1828281?journalCode=ccam20">published research</a> on how Chad’s political elite have retained their grip on power. They talk to us about why the legacy of this “gatekeeper politics” will <a href="https://theconversation.com/legacy-of-chads-gatekeeper-politics-lives-on-beyond-deby-and-carries-grave-risks-160295">live on beyond Déby</a>.</p>
<p>And Naomi Joseph, arts and culture editor at The Conversation in London, gives us some recommended reading (40m10s). </p>
<p>This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a>. or via email on podcast@theconversation.com. You can also sign up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">The Conversation’s free daily email here</a>.</p>
<p>News clips in this episode are from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO_M0hLlJ-Q">CNBC News</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZeKQ6tSMc">NBC News</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XPt0Kck21Y">CBS News,</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI1m98uGNd8">Channel 4</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWuS_7FL6cA">Channels Television</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWuS_7FL6cA">Network Africa</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAMvgX_pMyE">Reu</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5-r-hj8xQA">ters</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VipeVp1PTCc">France 24</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNQNVu3efZw">English</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzaq7Sr_qYA">RT</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl9AtpxHXQ">France 24</a>. </p>
<p><em>You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out how else to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">listen here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify that the report was produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Plus, what’s happening in Chad, three months after rebels killed the president, Idriss Déby.Gemma Ware, Head of AudioDaniel Merino, Associate Breaking News Editor and Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1543932021-02-08T14:15:57Z2021-02-08T14:15:57ZEthiopia’s next poll could be more competitive. But big challenges remain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381927/original/file-20210202-19-1llhtf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">National Election Board of Ethiopia personnel patrol a warehouse stacked high with boxes of polling kits in Addis Ababa in October 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Photo by Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ethiopia is set to hold general elections for members of the federal parliament and regional councils on June 5, 2021. It will be the sixth such elections, and another chance for Ethiopia to transit to democracy.</p>
<p>For many centuries, Ethiopia was ruled by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/09/haile-selassie-ethiopia-king-solomon">a long line of absolute monarchs </a>. The last emperor was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Haile-Selassie-I">overthrown</a> by a popular revolution in 1974. However, the revolution was hijacked by a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283186455_The_Ethiopian_Revolution_after_40_Years_1974-2014_Plan_B_in_Progress">military junta</a> that ruled the country until its overthrow in 1991. </p>
<p>There was hope that Ethiopia would embrace democracy for the first time when the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of four ethnic political parties, took power in 1991 and introduced multiparty elections. This was not to be. The front conducted <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262090287_Ethiopian_Elections_Past_and_Future">five sham general elections</a> and ruled the country with an iron fist for 28 years.</p>
<p>From 2016 up to 2018, the coalition faced a popular uprising against increased human rights violations and massive corruption. It also faced an internal power <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/policy-brief/2018/reform-ethiopia-turning-promise-progress">struggle</a> between reformists who sought the opening of the political space and those who wanted to maintain the status quo.</p>
<p>The political crisis climaxed in the exit of prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and entry of prime minister <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/2/abiy-ahmed-sworn-in-as-ethiopias-prime-minister">Abiy Ahmed in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://blog.prif.org/2019/10/29/abiy-ahmed-and-his-achievements-in-ethiopia-from-lost-hope-to-new-optimism-with-the-medemer-concept/">new optimism</a> of a democratic transition springs from several important developments. In the last two years, the government has taken political and legislative reforms that may contribute to a more competitive election. For example, the electoral board which oversees the polling has been re-established as <a href="https://nebe.org.et/sites/default/files/Proc-1133-NEBE-establishment.pdf">an independent institution</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the upbeat expectations, the June elections face serious challenges. Ethiopia’s party system is extremely volatile. Political parties are <a href="https://nebe.org.et/am/political-parties-list">weak and fragmented</a>. And the elections will take place amid the upheaval in Tigray, one of the country’s 10 federal regions. </p>
<h2>Advances</h2>
<p>There are many reasons for the optimism.</p>
<p>Firstly, several exiled opposition politicians and political parties are allowed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/sep/25/abiy-ahmed-miracle-ethiopia-democratic-awakening">to operate inside the country</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, a new electoral law has set out new rules for <a href="https://nebe.org.et/sites/default/files/Ethiopian-Electoral-Proclamtion-No-1162.pdf">political party registration</a>. These have had the effect of pushing out a large number of weak and fragmented political parties from the party system. Previously, there were more than 130 political parties many of which were weak and volatile. The majority were not active in elections or any political movement. The new law requires re-registration on the basis of standards such as proof of endorsement from voters and constituencies. </p>
<p>Alongside this, political parties that have previously been marginalised in the regional states of Afar, Benishangul Gumuz, Harari, Gambela, and Somali are now part of the national political discourse. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia is now accountable to the House of Peoples’ Representatives, the federal legislative house. And, in a significant compromise between the ruling and opposition political parties, a prominent former opposition politician and political prisoner, was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46301112">appointed by the House of Peoples’ Representatives</a> in late 2018 to lead the board. </p>
<p>Fourth, the Federal Supreme Court and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission are now led by prominent professionals. Both worked for the advancement of human rights and social justice <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/07/02/ethiopia-appoints-top-rights-advocate-as-head-of-human-rights-body//">for many years</a>.</p>
<p>And a new law on <a href="https://www.abyssinialaw.com/uploads/1113.pdf">civil society</a> has made it possible for nongovernmental organisations, professional associations, and consortiums to engage in the advancement of human rights and democracy. These include civic and voter education, capacity building for political parties, human rights institutions, and courts.</p>
<p>Nevertheless there are still serious challenges. </p>
<h2>Challenges</h2>
<p>Parties continue to exist that don’t have strong links with voters and constituencies. In addition, most of the political parties that make up the party system are regional and continue to be focused on ethnicity to mobilise supporters.</p>
<p>The problem with this is that ethnic political parties use extreme ethnic propaganda to win the support of the ethnic groups they claim to represent. They are also unlikely to seek political compromises. </p>
<p>Another challenge is the first-past-the-post election rule. The rule makes representation of diverse interests and views in the federal and regional legislative organs difficult. Likewise, some leaders of opposition parties <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-10/ethiopian-opposition-leader-charged-with-terrorism-lawyer-says">are in prison</a>, limiting the diversity of views and interests that should be represented in the general elections. </p>
<p>The lack of security in some constituencies poses an additional challenge to the general elections. In the regional state of Tigray, the election for the regional council has <a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/article/election-board-announces-election-d-date-amid-security-concerns-0">been postponed</a> by the National Electoral Board until security is improved, and election polls are established by the provisional regional government.</p>
<p>Also, the COVID-19 pandemic remains a threat against several aspects of the election process. This includes voter and candidate registration, voter education, organisation of polling stations and constituencies, election campaigns and voting.</p>
<h2>Postponed ballot and fallout</h2>
<p>The 2021 elections were originally set to be carried out on 29 August, 2020. But they were <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-politics-idUSKBN23H1ZV">pushed back</a> by the House of Peoples’ Representatives because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to an extension of the mandate of the federal government that run out on 5 October, 2020. </p>
<p>Both processes faced criticism from opposition politicians and political parties. The Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front, the political party which governed the regional state of Tigray for 30 years, opposed the extension. Moreover, the front <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/11/16/averting-civil-war-in-ethiopia-its-time-to-propose-elements-of-a-negotiated-settlement/">refused to recognise</a> the federal government beyond 5 October, 2020. </p>
<p>The front <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/9/ethiopias-tigray-region-holds-vote-defying-abiys-federal-govt">conducted</a> its own regional election on 20 September, 2020 and declared itself the winner. This was in violation of the Federal Constitution and against the mandate of the National Electoral Board. This action led to the escalation of political differences between the front and the federal government. </p>
<p>The Tigray Peoples’ Libration Front had been on a collision path with the federal government from the first day of its fall from a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/19/tigray-tplf-war-against-ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-isnt-about-autonomy-its-about-economic-power/">federal to regional power in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, the fact that the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front is an <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/18/ethiopia-who-are-forces-fighting-in-tigray">armed ethnic political group</a> arguably made it inherently susceptible to resort to violence as a way of resolving political differences. </p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The upcoming 6th general elections are yet another historic chance for Ethiopia to hold free and fair elections. Through democratic competition, Ethiopia can avert conflict, strengthen its democratic institutions, and begin the transition to democracy. The elections are a matter of survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Girmachew Alemu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ethiopia’s party system is extremely volatile due to the prevalence of weakly institutionalised and fragmented political parties.Girmachew Alemu, Associate Professor of Law, Addis Ababa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1490062020-11-16T14:59:52Z2020-11-16T14:59:52ZGrowing turbulence in DRC’s ruling coalition points to an early divorce<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369276/original/file-20201113-23-1f96hpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former DRC President Joseph Kabila, left, congratulates his succesor, Felix Tshisekedi, on his inauguration in January 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kinsela Cunningham</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rickety coalition that has governed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for 20 months, forged by President Félix Tshisekedi and his predecessor Joseph Kabila, appears to be falling apart. </p>
<p>In 2019, for lack of a parliamentary majority, Tshisekedi chose to share power with his former rival, Kabila, in a coalition of their respective political platforms – the Cape for Change and the Common Front for the Congo. The Cape for Change is led by Tshisekedi and opposition figure <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/Africa/News/drc-opposition-figures-tshisekedi-and-kamerhe-form-joint-ticket-20181123">Vital Kamerhe</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than put the country on the path of economic and social recovery as intended, this alliance turned out to be a centre of conflict from early on. The alliance partners have fought over the sharing of ministerial posts. They have also clashed over the control of other state agencies, including the judiciary and the national electoral commission.</p>
<p>The tensions have become more pronounced in the last six months, as shown by, for example, the ousting of <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/30182/drc-tshisekedi-loses-an-asset-in-parlia">Jean-Marc Kabund a Kabund</a>, the interim president of Tshisekedi’s party, Union for Democracy and Social Progress, from his post as vice president of the National Assembly. This was at the instigation of Kabila’s platform. The members of the platform in the government have also been refusing to execute orders from Tshisekedi. </p>
<p>In addition, the parliament, which is dominated by Kabila’s platform, has accused Tshisekedi of violating the constitution. He appointed three new judges to the constitutional court <a href="https://www.radiookapi.net/2020/07/18/actualite/justice/justice-felix-tshisekedi-nomme-trois-nouveaux-membres-la-cour">in July</a> and the Kabila camp considers the appointment to be <a href="https://in.reuters.com/article/us-congo-politics/congo-leader-boosts-influence-with-new-constitutional-court-judges-idUSKBN27629F">flawed</a>. They also accuse the president of wanting to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/46712/drc-constitutional-court-fight-reveals-kabila-tshisekedi-struggle/">control the country’s judicial institutions</a>.</p>
<p>Members of parliament aligned to Kabila have been boycotting initiatives by Tshisekedi, in both the government and parliament. They refused to take part in the swearing-in of the three recently appointed judges.</p>
<h2>Unworkable marriage</h2>
<p>Tshisekedi became president 20 months ago. Before then, his political party had been the main opposition party for more than 35 years, to the successive regimes of <a href="https://www.lesinrocks.com/2017/04/16/livres/actualite/lascension-et-la-chute-de-mobutu-lhomme-leopard-qui-ravage-le-congo/">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurent-Kabila">Laurent Désiré Kabila</a> and his son <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/25/drc-what-is-joseph-kabilas-legacy-after-18-years-in-power">Joseph Kabila</a>. </p>
<p>As his party didn’t get enough MPs to form a government, he got into a coalition with Kabila’s Common Front for Congo, which had more than the required number of MPs. This enabled him to lead the war-weary, unstable country, promising to rebuild it.</p>
<p>But being a president without a loyal parliament made his position precarious.
From early on, the governance of the country was like a vehicle driven by two people at the same time, without any prospect of positive economic outlook.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long for a breakdown to happen.</p>
<p>Major disagreements arose between the coalition partners. They differed over how to share ministerial posts, management of the state-owned companies, diplomacy, the <a href="https://actualite.cd/2020/08/03/rdc-elections-les-trois-principales-reformes-proposees-par-les-12-personnalites">electoral process</a>, appointments of the head of the electoral commission as well as judges of the constitutional court, to mention but a few.</p>
<p>From the onset, many observers dismissed the coalition between Tshisekedi and Kabila as an <a href="https://afrique.lalibre.be/44907/opinion-la-coalition-tshisekedi-kabila-duo-ou-duel-au-sommet-de-letat-en-rd-congo/">unholy alliance</a> doomed to fail. The experience of the last 20 months supports the sceptics’ view that the coalition was never sincere about working together for the benefit of the Congolese people. </p>
<p>For Kabila, the motivation seems to be the desire to retain power behind the scenes. His platform used its parliamentary majority to get cabinet positions and other positions in stated-owned companies (such as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-15859686">national railway of the Democratic Republic of Congo</a> and <a href="https://www.gecamines.cd/">Gécamines, the Congolese commodity trading and mining company</a>).</p>
<p>For Tshisekedi, the main goal appears to have been to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the coalition to destroy the system of cronyism and corruption that had become entrenched under Kabila. He relied on popular support and political gamesmanship to tighten his grip on power. </p>
<h2>Looming divorce</h2>
<p>After endless, futile negotiations with the Kabila camp, Tshisekedi appears to have finally recognised the limits of the coalition government, and has lost patience. In a brief address to the nation <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0ZptIKGTDe0">on 23 October</a>, he denounced the Kabila camp’s obstructive actions. It was thinly veiled rebuke of his coalition partner. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These disagreements between parties involved in this Agreement are hindering the economic take-off of the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He announced a consultation with social, religious and political leaders with a view to bringing about reforms. His aim is to gain a majority in parliament and establish a new government loyal to him. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would not let any political commitment of any kind take precedence over my constitutional prerogatives and over the best interests of Congolese people. I will never compromise the best interests of the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The statement underlines the primacy of constitutional order over all kinds of political arrangements, including the governing coalition. The president promised to report back to the nation on the outcome of his consultations. Undoubtedly, this statement spells the end of the ruling coalition. </p>
<p>The Kabila camp was caught by surprise. It came soon after they failed to make good on their threats to impeach the president. This is even more unlikely since he appointed new judges to the constitutional court. </p>
<p>The constitutional court is the institution empowered to proclaim the results of both the presidential and legislative ballots, and to judge the head of state and the prime minister if necessary. Its verdicts are final.
It is, therefore, a strategic institution in the control of power. In this context, the frustration of the Kabila camp is understandable. They suspect the newly appointed judges <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/46712/drc-constitutional-court-fight-reveals-kabila-tshisekedi-struggle/">belong to Tshisekedi’s movement</a>. </p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>If successful, the president’s consultation process would end the Kabila faction’s stranglehold on his government. He will be free to set up a new government – through a new parliamentary majority – in line with his own political agenda.</p>
<p>Now, the question is how to get this new parliamentary majority. In the labyrinth of Congolese politics, two possibilities seem to open to Tshisekedi: either to dissolve the parliament and call early parliamentary elections, or to create a new coalition with the participation of new partners from the current parliament. </p>
<p>Calling early elections seems unlikely for want of time and funding. The second option sounds more plausible as Tshisekedi is more likely to be supported by dissidents from the Kabila platform and other opposition leaders, including for example, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9tvaP9Upkc">Bahati Lukwebo</a>, <a href="https://www.financialafrik.com/2020/11/08/moise-katumbi-peu-bavard-apres-avoir-rencontre-felix-tshisekedi/">Moise Katumbi</a> and <a href="https://www.financialafrik.com/2020/11/04/jean-pierre-bemba-a-felix-tshisekedi-je-soutiens-ce-dialogue-entre-congolais/">Jean-Pierre Bemba</a>. The consequence would be that Kabila and his remaining supporters would be a minority in the parliament, and subsequently join the opposition. </p>
<p>If Tshisekedi wins this battle for a new parliamentary majority, he will have achieved a masterstroke. Meanwhile, the Congolese people are holding their collective breath.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Albert Kasanda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After endless, futile negotiations with the Kabila camp, Tshisekedi appears to have finally recognised the limits of the coalition government and has lost patience.Albert Kasanda, Researcher in Political Philosophy and social sciences, Center of Global studies, Institutes of Philosophy, Czech Academy of SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1483202020-10-20T14:56:16Z2020-10-20T14:56:16ZWhy #EndSARS protests are different, and what lessons they hold for Nigeria<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364326/original/file-20201019-23-9um7zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian youths protest against police brutality.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1992, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigeria-sars-police-robbery-end-sars/2020/10/10/999e2400-0a48-11eb-991c-be6ead8c4018_story.html">Special Anti-Robbery Squad</a> was set up by the Commissioner for Police to curb a spate of armed robberies in Nigeria. By 2009 it had become a large and powerful unit, and its focus expanded beyond armed robbers to internet fraudsters. It had also become largely <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54499497">uncontrolled</a>. </p>
<p>Members of the unit were allowed to carry guns, drive unmarked cars and operate without badges or uniform. They became known for their <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nigeria-disbands-notorious-police-unit-after-mass-protests-11602443607">violent harassment</a> of innocent young Nigerians. They also <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2020/10/09/how-sars-robbed-me-yele-bademosi-ceo-bundle/">forced</a> young Nigerians to withdraw money from ATMS and make transfers under duress. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/251271-endsars-police-mum-nigerians-recount-atrocities-special-anti-robbery-squad.html">numerous examples</a> of people who have been raped, harassed, flogged, extorted, injured or killed by the unit. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/15/nigerians-want-polices-sars-force-scrapped">In 2016 </a> a campaign was launched calling for the Special Anti-Robbery Squad to be disbanded. It became widespread and drew some attention. Within three years the unit had been reformed, overhauled, decentralised and disbanded about <a href="https://twitter.com/AmnestyNigeria/status/1314697299235348480">three or four times</a>. But without success. </p>
<p>Then in early October the <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1915472/endsars-young-nigerian-protest-rogue-police-unit/">first protests</a> started against the infamous police squad. Mostly young Nigerians gathered in the front of the House of Assembly in Lagos State to demand the end of the unit. Within days thousands of protesters had gathered in 100 cities around the world, with the #EndSARS <a href="https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-54588788">trending globally</a>. </p>
<p>The government <a href="https://www.pulse.ng/news/local/igp-disbands-sars-nationwide/l86hxre">announced</a> on October 11 that, yet again, it was disbanding the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. But the protesters have not let up. They are now calling for <a href="https://www.channelstv.com/2020/10/16/endsars-protesters-at-alausa-maintain-tempo-after-days-of-protest/amp/?_%20_twitter_impression=true">wider reforms</a> of the police. Adejuwon Soyinka asked Damilola Agbalajobi to explain why these protests are different and what their political implications could be.</p>
<h2>What makes these protests different?</h2>
<p>Firstly, the protest is not just about the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. It’s the result of <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2020/10/14/endsars-protests-why-this-is-different/">pent-up anger</a> over the dehumanising policies of government, maladministration, injustice, hunger as well as high energy and fuel prices.</p>
<p>The cumulative effect of these roll into one. That’s why the protesters have refused to end their action. It seems this is seen as a once in a lifetime opportunity to address critical national injustices. </p>
<p>This generation of young Nigerians are doing a good job. There is good coordination, arrangements have been made for food and water as well as music to keep them busy. They have medical personnel on standby, ambulances and mobile toilets for convenience. They have also hired private security (bouncers) for protection, raised money and ensured properties are safe.</p>
<p>They have also made it clear that they have no leader. This could be the result of mistrust of past leaders. </p>
<p>Nigeria is said to be the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/nigeria-overtakes-india-extreme-poverty-intl/index.html">poverty capital of the world</a>. Yet young Nigerians have been protesting for over a week across the country without looting shops. They have ensured that the streets are cleaned after the day’s protest and that there’s no violence or lawlessness. </p>
<p>Another key factor that makes this protest unique is the use of social media. The way this has helped mobilise protesters is unprecedented.</p>
<h2>Why have the protests been driven by young Nigerians?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-08/nigerian-population-hits-182-million-with-widening-youth-bulge">Over 70%</a> of the population is under 30 years of age. <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2020/08/14/13-9-million-nigerian-youth-are-unemployed-as-at-q2-2020-nbs/">Unemployment</a> stood at 21.7 million in the second quarter of 2020. The youth account for 13.9 million of this.</p>
<p>Young Nigerians are, therefore, most affected by government policies that have led to a lack of jobs and meaningful sources for livelihood. Other triggers include the lavish lifestyle of political leaders. The government budgets more money for the members of the National Assembly than for health and education. </p>
<h2>Are there important lessons from this protest?</h2>
<p>One takeaway is that a new social contract is being written. Nigerians are creating a new understanding of how leaders and public servants should relate to citizens.</p>
<p>Secondly, the youth are reinventing governance in Nigeria and bringing about a new culture of asserting rights among the citizenry. </p>
<h2>Most of the protesters have never experienced military rule. Is this material?</h2>
<p>The 30% of Nigerian who are adults and have experienced military rule seem to have that etched deep into their psyche. They are afraid of a man in uniform. This has become a part of Nigerians’ conditioning. </p>
<p>However, the youth believe that the men in uniform are meant to serve the citizens and to protect them. It is a different relationship entirely. Young people are more exposed to the fact that things could be better and are ready to take their destiny into their own hands. They want to reinvent the country and to be a better place to live. </p>
<p>Their access to the internet also informs their action. They are able to reach the world from their bedroom. </p>
<h2>Is the history of Nigeria’s military rule fading?</h2>
<p>The history and experience Nigeria had during the military era doesn’t resonate as much with young Nigerians. But, they must have read history and are, therefore, not unfamiliar with the past. But they have proven not to be deterred by the use of force of any kind. </p>
<h2>Has political exclusion of the young people played a role?</h2>
<p>For many years, Nigeria has been ruled by leaders who are quite elderly. These have not succeeded in finding solutions to the nation’s challenges. Corruption and hunger are rife. It is obvious that young Nigerians feel alienated and are now ready to take the bull by the horns and ensure good governance. </p>
<h2>What are the likely political implications of the protests?</h2>
<p>Politicians and leaders are waking up to a new politically conscious society. Take the comment from Chairman Nigeria’s Governors Forum, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State:</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.channelstv.com/2020/10/15/in-areas-where-f-sars-are-effective-we-should-allow-them-work-fayemi/">There is nothing wrong</a> in what the young people are doing. I think we should encourage them to ask more questions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Various state governments are beginning to see how important it is to have a good relationship with young people. Given the awakening of this new political consciousness, it will not be business as usual for the country’s political leaders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damilola Agbalajobi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although the Nigerian government has announced the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, protesters have not let up. They are now calling for wider reforms.Damilola Agbalajobi, Lecturer, Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1429332020-07-20T15:18:29Z2020-07-20T15:18:29ZIvorian president might be sorely tempted to seek a third term. Why he mustn’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348420/original/file-20200720-37-19cl3xu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/ivory-coast-prime-minister-amadou-gon-coulibaly-dies-200708183836945.html">Ivorian Prime Minister Gon Coulibaly</a> and subsequent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-politics/ivory-coast-vice-president-quits-days-after-pms-death-idUSKCN24E1D9">resignation</a> of Vice President Daniel Kablan Duncan, reportedly on personal grounds, have added heat to the contestations over the presidential elections planned for October this year. </p>
<p>Coulibaly was the chosen successor of the current president, Alassane Ouattara. The events have reignited concerns over a possible third presidential bid by Ouattara which commenators believe could lead to political instability.</p>
<p>The country was expected to have its first ever peaceful democratic change of power, following Ouattara’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-politics/ivory-coasts-ouattara-says-he-wont-run-for-re-election-idUSKBN20S1IZ">announcement</a> in March that he would step down at the end of his current term. </p>
<p>The death of Coulibaly has reopened a Pandora’s box. </p>
<p>Quattara’s governing coalition, Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace, has asked him to seek a third term, following the death of his preferred succcessor. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/07/20/world/africa/20reuters-ivorycoast-politics.html?searchResultPosition=8">According</a> to the party’s executive director, Adama Bictogo </p>
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<p>A majority of our supporters have turned to President Alassane Ouattara. He is our solution…</p>
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<p>Importantly, Quattara (78) has been blowing hot and cold on whether he’ll be seeking a third term. He may be tempted to reconsider his promised departure to give himself time to groom a new successor. </p>
<p>In my view he should not. Quattara has done well economically. The economy <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/cotedivoire/overview">grew above 8% between 2011 and 2018</a>, becoming one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Staying in power could mean continuing this trend. But, that’ll have dire implications for the country’s democratic trajectory. The potential political and security instability that his return could spark would only serve to undo what he has achieved.</p>
<h2>Constitutional ambiguity</h2>
<p>When Ouattara came to power in 2010, the Ivorian constitution contained a two-term limit on presidential candidacy. During his 2015 presidential election campaign, he promised to lead the adoption of a new constitution. This was primarily to abolish the principle of <a href="http://constitutionnet.org/news/third-cote-divoire-republic-towards-inclusive-constitutional-reform-process">“Ivoirité”</a>, which was used to exclude individuals from the Muslim north from high office. </p>
<p>They were excluded ostensibly because of their perceived links with neighbouring countries. It was infamously used to exclude Ouattara, himself from the Muslim North, from running for the presidency <a href="http://constitutionnet.org/news/third-cote-divoire-republic-towards-inclusive-constitutional-reform-process">in the 1990s</a>. </p>
<p>A new constitution approved in a referendum in October 2016 <a href="http://constitutionnet.org/news/third-cote-divoire-republic-towards-inclusive-constitutional-reform-process">resolved</a> the ‘Ivoirité’ problem. Under the new constitution, a presidential candidate need only show that he or she is exclusively Ivoirian, born of a father or of a mother Ivorian by birth.</p>
<p>Under the old constitution, both parents needed to be Ivorian by birth. The new constitution also introduced a new senate and a position of a vice president. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most significant thing about the new constitution is what it didn’t say. It retains the two-term limit on presidential aspirants, but says nothing regarding terms served prior to its adoption. </p>
<p>Exploiting this ambiguity, Ouattara <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-politics-ouattara/ivory-coasts-ouattara-says-hes-free-to-run-again-in-2020-jeune-afrique-idUSKCN1IZ0S3">declared</a> in June that he could run for two more terms.</p>
<p>He subsequently <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/11648/a-third-term-for-ouattara-my-decision-is-almost-made/">quipped</a> that he would step down at the end of his term in October 2020 – but on condition that other members of the old guard also abandoned their presidential aspirations. He was referring to former president and current rival Henri Konan Bédié. Bédié (86), a historical adversary of Ouattara’s, hatched and pursued the “Ivoirité” drive in his first stint as president <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/47c565a0c.html">in the early 1990s</a>. </p>
<p>In the run-up to this decision, Ouattara <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-politics-soro/ivory-coast-presidential-candidate-soro-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison-idUSKCN22A2E0">pursued criminal charges</a> against Guillaume Soro, a former ally-turned-rival and presidential aspirant.</p>
<p>Following a declaration of his intent to run for the presidency, Soro was hastily charged and convicted of embezzlement for events <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-politics-soro/ivory-coast-presidential-candidate-soro-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison-idUSKCN22A2E0">dating back to 2007</a>.</p>
<p>Many saw the prosecution and its timing as politically motivated. With Soro effectively out of the way, Coulibaly was set to secure victory for the ruling <a href="https://www.ourcampaigns.com/PartyDetail.html?PartyID=5102">Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace</a> coalition and stay the course Ouattara charted. </p>
<h2>Case against a third term</h2>
<p>With the vice president resigning, Ouattara faced the uneasy lot of backing a less known face. This could ignite succession battles and potential divisions within his ruling coalition, and a potential electoral loss. The party’s view that he should seek a third term would seem to put paid to that. </p>
<p>But, seeking a third term would deny him the chance to leave a good legacy of an improved democratic dispensation, peaceful alternation of power and economic recovery.</p>
<p>Crucially, a new presidential bid would raise legal complexities and could worsen instability and insecurity at a time of when <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-security/suspected-jihadist-militant-head-arrested-in-ivory-coast-idUSKBN23T1U7">terrorism</a> is expanding in the Sahel region.</p>
<p>A third Ouattara presidential bid will almost certainly provoke legal challenges because of the constitutional two-terms limit.</p>
<p>Because all Constitutional Court judges were appointed during Ouattara’s reign, such a case would provide a test of their independence. There is a precedent for this. </p>
<p>Courts in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/30/senegal-president-run-third-term">neighbouring Senegal</a> held in 2012 that a new constitution resets the term count, allowing then President Abdullahi Wade to run again, drawing serious criticism from the opposition, alleging judicial complacency.</p>
<p>To avoid a similar prospect, <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Gambia_2019D.pdf?lang=en">Gambia’s draft constitution</a> includes a specific provision counting terms served prior to the new constitution. If adopted, the Gambia would be the first in Africa to set this trend.</p>
<p>Regardless of the outcome, the spirit of the two-term limit in the Ivorian constitution and the general understanding at the time of its writing was against having presidents for life.</p>
<p>More seriously, a third term for Quattara could worsen risks of political instability. Already, the practical exclusion of Soro and a potential return of former president Laurent Gbagbo, who was recently acquitted of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, plus Quattara’s historical rivalry with Bédié, have created a <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/c%C3%B4te-divoire/cote-divoire-defusing-electoral-tensions-amid-polarised-politics">potentially combustible political atmosphere</a>. </p>
<p>With the departure of Bédié and other key partners, the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace coalition is effectively composed of Ouattara’s former <a href="https://www.peaceinsight.org/conflicts/ivory-coast/conflict-profile/key-people/">Rally of the Republicans</a>, with a support base concentrated in the north of the country. Accordingly, the presidential election could heighten inter-regional contestation and rivalry.</p>
<h2>Role for the African Union and ECOWAS</h2>
<p>Considering their mandate to promote stability and democracy, the <a href="https://au.int/en/psc#:%7E:text=The%20powers%20of%20the%20PSC,conflicts%20where%20they%20have%20occurred">African Union </a> and Economic Community of West African States (<a href="https://www.uneca.org/oria/pages/ecowas-peace-security-stability-and-governance">ECOWAS</a>) should closely monitor the developments in Cote d’Ivoire. In view of the risks, it would be advisable for them to pursue a proactive rather than reactive approach.</p>
<p>The African Union and ECOWAS would do well to actively nudge Ouattara to leave a good legacy, not just for his country but also the continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adem K Abebe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Alassane Ouattara (78) has been blowing hot and cold on whether he’ll be seeking a third term.Adem K Abebe, Extraordinary Lecturer and editor of ConstitutionNet, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1374992020-05-05T13:51:38Z2020-05-05T13:51:38ZSouth Africa’s efforts to stabilise Lesotho have failed. Less intervention may be more effective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332360/original/file-20200504-83721-1pxbc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lesotho's embattled prime minister deployed troops onto the streets in April, ostensibly to 'restore order'.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Molise Molise/AFP-GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lesotho has been plagued by political <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-lesothos-in-such-a-mess-and-what-can-be-done-about-it-79678">instability</a> since its return to democracy in 1993. </p>
<p>Throughout this period, South Africa, often under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has intervened on numerous occasions to steady the political situation in its small, landlocked neighbour. Unfortunately, its frequent involvement in Lesotho’s politics has not helped the mountain kingdom achieve lasting peace. Instead, it has had the unintended consequence of encouraging Basotho politicians to act in intransigent and inflammatory ways.</p>
<p>During the most recent South African attempt to calm conflict in the kingdom, President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/sa-brokers-deal-for-lesotho-prime-minister-tom-thabanes-dignified-retirement-46942711">dispatched a delegation</a> headed by former minister Jeff Radebe to Maseru, the capital. Radebe’s visit came in response to the decision by the embattled prime minister, Tom Thabane, to send the army onto the streets of the capital.</p>
<p>While Thabane claimed the deployment was to restore law and order, his actions are widely seen as an attempt to cling to power and avoid prosecution for his alleged role in the <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2020-02-24-thabane-finally-in-court-in-connection-with-murder-of-his-wife/">murder of his estranged wife</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa’s intervention seems to have temporarily quieted this recent crisis. But it will do nothing to alleviate the long-term problems that cause instability in the country. In fact, it may worsen them. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lesothos-constitution-says-about-immunity-for-a-sitting-prime-minister-133089">What Lesotho's constitution says about immunity for a sitting prime minister</a>
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<p>There are a number of reasons for Lesotho’s <a href="https://saiia.org.za/research/lesotho-in-2019-looking-back-to-find-a-way-forward/">chronic instability</a>, including unhealthy civil-military relations, parliamentary rules that encourage the formation of factions, a small and moribund economy that makes holding political office one of the most profitable positions in the country, and a culture of combative politics. </p>
<p>Another factor that aggravates political tensions in Lesotho is the role recurring South African interventions have come to play in the political calculations of competing Basotho actors. While well-intentioned and stabilising in the short term, repeated South African interventions have encouraged the country’s political actors – the government, opposition parties and the monarchy – to spurn compromise and seek conflict.</p>
<h2>Brinkmanship and belligerence</h2>
<p>Over the years Basotho political actors have been willing to risk instability, even violence, to achieve their maximum positions. This is in part because they have come to expect that if political confrontation in Lesotho skids toward violent confrontation, or reform efforts grind to a halt, South Africa will step in. </p>
<p>Over the past 27 years all of Lesotho’s political actors have at one point or another either requested or engaged in provocative behaviour that induces their larger neighbour’s involvement in the hope that the power of Pretoria will help them prevail over domestic rivals.</p>
<p>The result is continued brinkmanship and belligerence. Political scientists Timothy Crawford and Alan Kuperman <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=jdO3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PR10&lpg=PR10&dq=long-term+history+of+intervention+in+a+state+perpetuates+its+instability.&source=bl&ots=E_EvhqreWC&sig=ACfU3U0pVPaZIGM5ydhc24dxd2ArBnKnhg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEu971npzpAhV3ShUIHUrYB9QQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=long-term%20history%20of%20intervention%20in%20a%20state%20perpetuates%20its%20instability.&f=false">describe this as</a> “chronic moral hazard”, a situation in which a</p>
<blockquote>
<p>long-term history of intervention in a state perpetuates its instability.</p>
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<h2>History of conflict</h2>
<p>There is a long history of South Africa intervening in Lesotho’s politics. In the early 1990s democratic transitions in both Lesotho and South Africa held out promise for greater peace both within and between these two countries. </p>
<p>In Lesotho, that hope was immediately undercut. Early in 1994 a conflict within the country’s military broke out. Fighting between two factions of the defence force escalated and gun fire was exchanged across Maseru. </p>
<p>Desperate for help, prime minister Ntsu Mokhehle wrote to the South African president, FW de Klerk, asking that he dispatch</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a peacekeeping force to Maseru, in order to separate the two sides in the army who are definitely on a bloody collision course…</p>
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<p>After discussions with South Africa’s presumptive future president, Nelson Mandela, De Klerk demurred. Instead, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/king-of-lesotho-told-he-must-reverse-coup-1378683.html">intense diplomatic intervention by Southern African Development Community</a> helped to temporarily steady Lesotho’s precarious politics.</p>
<p>But a pernicious precedent was set. When confronted with domestic problems Lesotho’s political actors would look for assistance beyond their borders, rather than seek to compromise with their compatriots. This dynamic has manifested itself many times since. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332364/original/file-20200504-83730-8ww4mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Lesotho’s prime minister, Tom Thabane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gianluigi Guercia/AFP-GettyImages</span></span>
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<p>In August 1998, with protests over a contested election in Lesotho mounting, King Letsie III asked Mandela, who was by then president of South Africa, to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2019.1585282?src=recsys&journalCode=rsaj20">help resolve the situation</a>. South Africa’s attempted solution, a Southern African Development Community commission to look into the elections, was inconclusive. A mutiny in Lesotho’s military compounded the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-09-19-mandela-and-military-force-its-use-is-determined-by-the-situation/">crisis</a>. </p>
<p>In September 1998 prime minister Pakalitha Mosisili <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2019.1585282?src=recsys&journalCode=rsaj20">asked that Southern African Development Community leaders</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>put together quickly a strong military intervention to help Lesotho return to normalcy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ensuing regional intervention force did restore stability, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/23/world/tiny-neighbor-gives-south-african-army-rude-surprise.html">but at a high cost</a>. About 90 lives were lost and Maseru, Mohale’s Hoek and Mafeteng incurred heavy damage. </p>
<p>In August 2014, after an attempted coup against Thabane, he fled to South Africa. He then called on Pretoria to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/lesotho-tom-thabane-south-africa">send troops</a> to stabilise Lesotho. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lesothos-prime-minister-plays-for-time-but-the-end-beckons-137410">Lesotho's prime minister plays for time. But the end beckons</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These are only the most dramatic examples of how South Africa – and the Southern African Development Community – have been sucked into Lesotho’s politics.</p>
<p>A more mundane but no less important example is <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/will-ramaphosas-new-reform-timetable-save-thabanes-skin">the much-delayed Roadmap for Reforms and National Dialogue</a>. South Africa’s former deputy chief justice, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/moseneke-outlines-lesotho-peace-plans-16159383">Dikgang Moseneke</a>, is doing his best to shepherd this toward completion. </p>
<h2>The alternative</h2>
<p>It will be difficult for South Africa to alter this damaging dynamic because it has an important national interest in preserving stability in Lesotho. </p>
<p>The Lesotho Highlands Water Project provides Gauteng, South Africa’s economic hub, with much of its <a href="http://www.lhda.org.ls/lhdaweb">water</a>. For this supply to continue, there needs to be relative stability in Lesotho. </p>
<p>What’s more, insecurity in Lesotho would spill into South Africa. It could lead to problems like the diffusion of weapons and an increase in criminality.</p>
<p>One strategy South Africa can adopt is to limit its interventions to situations that truly threaten to escalate into violence. This approach runs contrary to the <a href="https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/resources/docs/ISS_Africa-policybrief103.pdf">African Union’s emphasis on conflict prevention</a>. But it has the virtue of forcing the country’s leaders to find compromise themselves or deal with the consequences if they don’t. </p>
<p>The key to this strategy is good intelligence. South African officials must have the necessary information to discern when a political crisis in Lesotho will burst into violent conflict. </p>
<p>Stepping back in all but the most extreme cases would be a major departure from past South African policies. It has potential downsides if a political crisis in the kingdom unexpectedly spins out of control. But it might be worth a try – more than a quarter century of close South African involvement has brought Lesotho no closer to stability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s numerous interventions in Lesotho contribute to the acrimonious nature of its political culture.Christopher Williams, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1330892020-03-12T08:22:16Z2020-03-12T08:22:16ZWhat Lesotho’s constitution says about immunity for a sitting prime minister<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318902/original/file-20200305-106584-17qcn7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane and his new wife, Maesaiah, at the Magistrate Court in Maseru.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AFP-Getty Images/Molise Molise</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://lesotholii.org/ls/legislation/num-act/1993/1">constitution of Lesotho</a> has come under international scrutiny over an unusual question: does it give the prime minister immunity from prosecution? </p>
<p>Previously, constitutional questions that attracted attention in relation to the tiny kingdom landlocked by South Africa orbited around <a href="https://www.eisa.org.za/pdf/JAE17.2Nyane.pdf">elections</a>, the appointment and <a href="http://lestimes.com/nss-officers-challenge-their-unlawful-dismissals/">dismissal of security chiefs</a> and the dissolution of government. </p>
<p>The question of immunity has arisen against an intriguing backdrop. In January, Lesotho police announced that they had concluded investigations into the murder of Lipolelo Thabane (58), the estranged wife of Prime Minister Tom Thabane (89). She was shot dead <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2017-06-15-estranged-wife-of-lesothos-incoming-pm-shot-dead/">in 2017</a>, two days before his inauguration as prime minister. He was, at the time, involved in a relationship with the woman who he was later to marry. </p>
<p>In February his new wife, Maesaiah Thabane (42), was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51387964">charged</a> with the murder of Lipolelo Thabane. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Thabane was later also charged for the murder. </p>
<p>The expectation was that when he <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/02/24/lesotho-pm-thabane-appears-in-maseru-court-after-friday-no-show">appeared</a> at the Maseru Magistrate Court he would be charged after which he would have his say on the validity or otherwise of the charge. </p>
<p>But this didn’t happen. </p>
<p>Instead, his lawyer argued that Thabane could not be prosecuted because, under the country’s constitution, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51615327">he enjoyed legal immunity</a> as a sitting prime minister. He argued that the issue be referred to the High Court to decide on the immunity issue. In terms of the country’s constitution (Section 128(1)), this issue can only be settled by the High Court. </p>
<p>The magistrate <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/02/24/decision-to-charge-tom-thabane-now-in-the-hands-of-the-high-court">agreed</a> to refer the matter to the High Court. When adjudicating on constitutional matters, the High Court sits as a constitutional court with a panel of no less that three judges. However, the High Court’s decisions can be sent to the Court of Appeal for determination. The Court of Appeal is the final arbiter. </p>
<h2>Lesotho’s constitutional framework</h2>
<p>Lesotho’s constitution is a prototype of liberal constitutions bestowed on a host of African countries after they gained independence from Britain. In Lesotho’s case, it <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Lesotho_1998.pdf">adopted a new constitution in 1993</a>. This document was a mirror-image of the constitution adopted in 1966 after independence. </p>
<p>One of the key principles of liberal constitutionalism is that of equality in general, and equality before the law in particular. This is reflected in Section 19 of the kingdom’s constitution. Furthermore, Lesotho’s constitution provides for equality in several other sections such as sections 12, 18 and 26.</p>
<p>In its broadest sense, equality before the law subjects all people to the law, regardless of status. But, as a relic of the <a href="https://www.civilservant.org.uk/the_westminster_model-homepage.html">Westminster constitutional design</a>, Lesotho’s constitution still retains the antiquated doctrine of monarchical immunity. It posits that the King, or any person exercising the powers of his office, will be immune from criminal prosecution for any acts done by him in a <a href="https://lesotholii.org/ls/legislation/num-act/1993/1">private or official capacity</a>.</p>
<p>But there is no provision in the constitution that extends legal immunity to the prime minister or any other person. This is the case despite the fact that most of the old monarchical prerogatives – like the dissolution and <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/occasions/prorogation/">prorogation</a> of parliament – have effectively shifted to the prime minister.</p>
<p>Therefore it is apparent that in terms of the constitution, only the King enjoys legal immunity. </p>
<p>As such, in view of the doctrine of equality before the law, the exception granted to the King will be interpreted very narrowly and restrictively by the High Court. It will clearly be an affront to the doctrine of equality if the exception could be interpreted broadly. </p>
<h2>Colonial legacy</h2>
<p>One of the enduring legacies of British colonialism in Africa is that when the newly-independent countries drafted their new constitutions, most of them retained the antiquated notion that</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/doing-no-wrong-law-liberty-and-the-constraint-of-kings/82CF7F0636DCD8DBA16DD67D9DD1CAD4">the King can do no wrong</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This notion has been enshrined in many African constitutions. </p>
<p>In the decades since countries became independent, a number of African countries have <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/57942/Fombad_Africa_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">extended this right to protect presidents</a>, as heads of states and governments, against legal suits, albeit in varying degrees. </p>
<p>The modern <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ajls/5/2/article-p91_1.xml?body=pdf-22559">justification</a> for legal immunity for heads of government is that it is undesirable for a head of state to be hauled before the courts, while he is supposed to focus on matters of public interest. </p>
<p>The proponents of this view also contend that it borders on offending the principle of separation of powers when the judiciary is seen to be “tossing” the head of another equal branch of government before the courts of law.</p>
<p>These justifications for immunity notwithstanding, the <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ajls/5/2/article-p91_1.xml?body=pdf-22559">emerging wave of scholarship in Africa</a> is that legal immunity for heads of government is an affront to everything that modern constitutionalism stands for.</p>
<p>These include accountability, rule of law, equality, respect for human rights, constitutionality and even separation of powers.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Lesotho’s High Court – sitting as the Constitutional Court – will uphold the prime minister’s immunity argument. </p>
<p>What is palpably clear, though, is that in terms of Lesotho’s constitution the legal immunity enjoyed by the King does not extend to the prime minister. </p>
<p>If the court decides to uphold his claim, it will be for reasons other than the express provisions of the constitution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hoolo 'Nyane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The doctrine of equality is ingrained both in theory and in the express provisions of Lesotho’s constitution.Hoolo 'Nyane, Head of Department, Public and Environmental Law Department, University of LimpopoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100762019-04-01T10:39:03Z2019-04-01T10:39:03ZAs its ruling dynasty withers, Gabon – a US ally and guardian of French influence in Africa – ponders its future<p>The fragility of one of the world’s longest-lasting political dynasties was exposed when the military attempted a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gabon-coup/gabon-thwarts-military-coup-attempt-in-presidents-absence-idUSKCN1P10FE">coup in Gabon in January</a>.</p>
<p>The coup, orchestrated by junior members of Gabon’s military, failed to unseat Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has run the central African country since the late 1960s. And Gabon’s next presidential election isn’t until the summer of 2023. </p>
<p>Bongo’s time in office may run out sooner. </p>
<p>The 60-year-old strongman has been effectively unable to rule since suffering <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN1N31VY-OZATP">an apparent stroke</a> in October 2018, during Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative – often called “Davos in the desert.” </p>
<p>His evident frailty in recent TV appearances, coupled with the failed coup and lack of an obvious heir, has created a strong national sentiment that Gabon’s five-decade Bongo dynasty is on its last legs.</p>
<h2>One of France’s last neocolonial outposts in Africa</h2>
<p>Political upheaval is rare in Gabon, a diminutive central African nation about the size of the state of Colorado, with a population of <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/gabon/overview">2 million</a> and a lucrative oil industry. </p>
<p>Except for a short-lived military coup in 1964, Gabon has been regarded as a bastion of stability in <a href="https://www.cfr.org/interactive/global-conflict-tracker/#!/conflict/violence-in-the-central-african-republic">troubled central Africa</a>, <a href="http://ut.academia.edu/GYLDASOFOULHASTOTHAMOT">where my research is focused</a>. Oil wealth and the Bongo dynasty’s French backing has contributed to Gabon’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-corrupt-nepotist-who-ruled-gabon-for-40-years-1700197.html">security</a>, and in recent years Bongo has used this stability to turn Gabon into a key <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/05/meet-ali-bongo-ondimba-obamas-man-in-africa/">U.S. ally</a> in the region.</p>
<p>But stability is not the same as democracy. </p>
<p>Since winning independence from France, in 1960, Gabon has had just three presidents. The first was Léon M’ba, who ruled from independence until 1967. The current president’s father – Omar Bongo Ondimba – assumed power <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/524984?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">after M'ba died</a>. </p>
<p>Omar Bongo went on to rule Gabon with an iron fist for 42 years. To stay in power, he oversaw changes that ensured that the country’s nascent electoral system never became <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-africaine-2009-2-page-126.htm">independent, free or fair</a>. </p>
<p>During his rule, the elder Bongo helped to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/713675627?casa_token=J8_PMc81kmsAAAAA:74wMxqVYPCQvFxZdf3ttPvD9H7lRvVeu3TzuD65L8EZST9WXaMpw_TH3LrXAlyI78DGWFS_jx_COkQ">keep French political influence</a> and <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/africa/gb-forrel-fr.htm">military might</a> alive in Africa by signing several mutual defense treaties with France. His policies benefited the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0963948052000341196">Françafrique</a>” – a now-<a href="https://newafricanmagazine.com/opinions/francafrique-a-brief-history-of-a-scandalous-word/">disparaged term</a> describing France’s “special” relationship with its former colonies on the continent, which has included supporting dictators who protect its economic interests.</p>
<p>Omar Bongo ensured that Gabon remained a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161015?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">neocolonial enclave</a>,” as anthropologist Michael Reed wrote in 1987 in the Journal of Modern African Studies. </p>
<p>“Gabon’s very identity is inseparable from France,” Reed argued, “and the latter’s continued claim to ‘major power’ status, in which Africa is crucial, requires Gabon’s assistance.” </p>
<p>President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who assumed power after his father died in 2009 – in yet another election marred by <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2012/gabon">irregularities</a> – inherited his father’s fealty to France. </p>
<p>Gabon still routinely aligns itself with French interests in Africa. During Libya’s 2011 political upheaval, for example, Ali Bongo <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-07-01/african-union-refuses-arrest-gaddafi">broke with the African Union</a> and called for the embattled President Muammar Gaddafi <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/11/us-think-tank-hails-african-leader-accused-of-stealing-an-electi/">to step down</a>. France and other Western powers sought to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20110430-libya-muammar-gaddafi-offers-ceasefire-refuses-to-leave">dislodge the authoritarian Gaddafi</a>, while African nations supported Gaddafi, promoting “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2012.761463?src=recsys&journalCode=cjca20">African solutions to African problems</a>.”</p>
<h2>A stable non-democracy</h2>
<p>The rise of Ali Bongo – who was minister of defense during the latter part of his father’s reign – was contentious even within his own Gabonese Democratic Party.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266557/original/file-20190329-70999-1vckduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gabon is an island of peace in the often unsettled central Africa region.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bongo was forcefully challenged by a senior former party member in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/24/gabon-court-rules-president-ali-bongo-rightful-winner-of-september-election">2016 presidential election</a>, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/who-jean-ping-gabons-presidential-challenger-494551">Jean Ping</a>. Boosted by the failure of Bongo’s reform agenda to <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gabon-politics-insight/gabons-bongo-struggles-to-transform-african-oil-republic-idUKKBN0ET1W720140618">transform Gabon into an emerging economy</a>, Ping almost convinced the Gabonese people that the Bongo dynasty had to go.</p>
<p>In the end, Bongo beat <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/who-jean-ping-gabons-presidential-challenger-494551">Ping</a>, a former head of the African Union Commission, by fewer than 6,000 votes, with 50.66 percent of the vote. Ping, along with many local and foreign observers, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gabon-election-election-idUSKCN11C112">considers the results of that race</a> fraudulent.</p>
<p>The 2016 presidential election was damaging for the Bongo dynasty. It was the first time that the opposition to the Bongo family coalesced around a single, credible candidacy. </p>
<p>Ever since then, once peaceful Gabon has experienced <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/01/09/a-libreville-un-putsch-rate-revelateur-du-malaise-gabonais_5406573_3212.html">political crises</a>. Ping’s party <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/gabon-votes-for-first-time-since-violence-marred-2016-election-20181006-2">boycotted last year’s municipal elections</a>, and his half of the electorate considers Bongo an illegitimate president. </p>
<h2>Rich and poor</h2>
<p>Gabon has also been in an <a href="https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/gaulme_crisis_oil_producing_countries_gabon_congo_2018.pdf">economic and fiscal crisis</a> since 2014. </p>
<p>Between 2014 and 2016, government revenues decreased substantially due to the <a href="http://africa-me.com/gabon-economic-crisis-government-fuels-investor-mistrust-expropriation-veolia-seeg/">fall of global oil prices</a>. Last year, the International Monetary Fund agreed to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/gabon-economy-imf/gabons-economy-to-recover-in-2018-needs-progress-on-reforms-imf-says-idUSL8N1TS374">bail out Gabon’s government in exchange for</a> structural reforms, including a <a href="http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20180626-gouvernement-gabonais-reduire-train-vie-etat">three-year hiring freeze in the public sector</a>.</p>
<p>Inequality is also <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/income-gini-coefficient">very high</a> in Gabon. Historically, its oil wealth <a href="http://www.ga.undp.org/content/gabon/fr/home/countryinfo/">has not financially benefited most of its people</a>, who remain quite poor.</p>
<p>Gabon places <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">110 out of 189 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index</a>, which assesses longevity, education levels, poverty, social equality, maternal death and other measures of well-being. That is higher than <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">immediate neighbors like Cameroon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea</a>, but lower than expected for a middle-income country whose government runs on oil money.</p>
<p>The African island of <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mauritius/overview">Mauritius</a>, for instance, whose gross domestic product is similar to Gabon’s – which was <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=GA-MU">US$15 billion in 2017</a> – fares far better. It ranks 65th worldwide on the UN’s human development index. </p>
<h2>A future yet to be written</h2>
<p>Surveys show that 87 percent of Gabonese feel that the country is <a href="http://www.afrobarometer.org/press/despite-overwhelming-discontent-gabonese-want-democracy-and-reject-military-rule-survey-shows">headed in the wrong direction</a>. They blame Ali Bongo for that, though 71 percent reject any attempt to install a military dictatorship.</p>
<p>Despite attempts by the Gabonese Democratic Party to reassure the public that Bongo’s health is improving, it is <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/gabonNews/idAFL5N20K387">unclear if he will ever recover enough to again lead Gabon</a>. </p>
<p>For now, an amendment of the constitution by Gabon’s constitutional court in November 2018 has ensured that the president remains – at least nominally – <a href="http://constitutionnet.org/news/gabon-constitutional-court-amends-constitution-address-presidents-absence">in charge</a> while recovering from the stroke.</p>
<p>When Bongo dies or is rendered incapacitated – a scenario that, in my assessment, is already well underway – the Bongo dynasty will end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gyldas A. Ofoulhast-Othamot is not affiliated with any political organization, but he was a supporter of Jean Ping in Gabon's 2016 presidential election.</span></em></p>Gabon’s strongman president, Ali Bongo, is barely clinging to power after contested elections, a stroke and a coup attempt. The Bongo family has run this stable central African nation for 52 years.Gyldas A. Ofoulhast-Othamot, Adjunct professor, Political Science and International Studies, University of TampaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1133872019-03-14T13:14:09Z2019-03-14T13:14:09ZNew dictionary provides nuanced insights into the language of African politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263655/original/file-20190313-123519-md28kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Ghana, "skirt-and-blouse voting" means to vote for different parties for presidential and legislative positions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every country has its own political language. These terms and phrases that have developed over time give distinctive meanings that may not be fully understood by outsiders. Unless we learn them, we may miss critical information about how politics really works.</p>
<p>Our new <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836?rskey=S2GlUD&result=1">dictionary of African politics</a> reveals the witty and insightful political terminology that people in different African countries use to speak truth to power and discuss everyday developments. It shows the importance of language for understanding politics and the varied experience of different nations.</p>
<p>The dictionary serves three key purposes. First, it provides clear and concise overviews of hundreds of key personalities, events and institutions from the colonial period to the present day. These range from Sudanese President <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-18?rskey=uTavSU&result=6">Omar al-Bashir</a> to former South African leader <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-369?rskey=1JOzOD&result=1">Jacob Zuma</a>, through the late Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-207?rskey=niJ4CK&result=1">Wangari Mathaai</a>, and <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-380?rskey=eqpWgn&result=1">Aja Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang</a>, a leading gender activist and the vice president of Gambia. </p>
<p>Second, it explains a rich set of theoretical terms that emerged out of the research on Africa over the last 70 years. These include <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-241?rskey=jM8Mmk&result=2">neo-patrimonialism</a> and <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-126?rskey=DB6e4C&result=3">extraversion</a>, which have become important for global debates about power and the way it’s exercised. </p>
<p>Third - and much more significantly - it allows for a better understanding of the contributions that the continent has made to the practice and understanding of everyday politics. It also makes it possible to share the perceptive and shrewd ways that people speak truth to power in various countries: this is the real reason that the world needs a new dictionary of African politics.</p>
<h2>Crowd-sourcing</h2>
<p>To access this wealth of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-191?rskey=UBSFIz&result=1">“kona”</a> knowledge (street corner wisdom in Kiswahili), we crowd sourced suggestions for the most relevant and insightful terms using social media. The hundreds of responses we received mean that the dictionary is packed full of fascinating terms from across the continent. These come from a variety of languages including Kiswahili, Chibemba, Kikuyu, Wolof, isiZulu and isiXhosa. There are also Africanised versions of English, French and Portuguese words.</p>
<p>An illustrative example is the wealth of English vocabulary that has emerged from the interaction between local political norms and democratic institutions. This includes the Kenyan model of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-238?rskey=EdksMo&result=1">“negotiated democracy”</a> – the sharing of political positions between different communities in advance of an election to avoid conflict.</p>
<p>Another is the Nigerian practice of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-367?rskey=wb49fF&result=11">“zoning”</a>, which was set up to try and ensure that the presidency of Africa’s most populous country alternates between northerners and southerners. That way, no community is permanently excluded from power.</p>
<p>Clothing-related expressions have also emerged in countries like Kenya and Ghana to show voting behaviours. <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-331?rskey=btv8Ex&result=1">“Three-piece suit voting”</a> refers to supporting the same party for all elected positions. On the contrary, <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-307?rskey=9fm46D&result=10">“skirt-and-blouse voting”</a> means to vote for different parties for presidential and legislative elections. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263591/original/file-20190313-123545-1uk04ol.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>A series of evocative expressions describe a politician’s move from one party to another – usually from the opposition to the governing party following an inducement. Terms such as floor-crossing or <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-92?rskey=fi4a30&result=2">cross-carpeting</a> are inspired by the parliament’s settings, or nomadic traditions - examples are <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-335?rskey=8YEWOD&result=8">transhumance</a> and <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-247?rskey=fi4a30&result=1">“nomadisme politique”</a>.</p>
<h2>Ingenuity and humour</h2>
<p>The ingredients that shape these terms are decades, if not centuries old. They thus provide an insight into a collective memory that goes back to well before colonial rule. But, language also evolves to keep up with the times. In French, for example, <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-154?rskey=UDYlO6&result=1">glissement</a> means to slide. But, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the word recently took on a whole new meaning. This, as former President Joseph Kabila repeatedly postponed scheduled elections that would see him stand down. Congolese citizens started using the term to refer to the act of deliberately “sliding” past the official election date to retain power indefinitely. </p>
<p>Similarly, in Francophone Africa the term <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-22?rskey=OVO2zc&result=1">“alternance”</a>, used as the demand for a transfer of power, shows a passionate commitment to the liberal-democratic norm of putting limits on the number of terms a president may serve. This has no equivalent in Europe and North America.</p>
<p>While the use of words such as glissement hint at the world-weary cynicism many ordinary people feel towards their leaders, other terms revel in the joy of wordplay. One of our favourites is <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-354?rskey=9XpuIj&result=6">“Watermelon politics”</a>. It refers to an individual that professes to support one political party but in reality belongs to another. </p>
<p>It was coined in Zambia, where activists from the opposition <a href="http://www.lusakavoice.com/2016/08/11/watermelon-campaign-can-history-repeat-itself/">United Party of National Development</a>, (whose colour was then red), pretended to support the governing party, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/patrioticfrontzambia/">Patriotic Front</a>, (whose colour was green), to avoid reprisals. They were thus depicted as “green on the outside, but red on the inside”. </p>
<p>Such expressions show the ingenuity and humour with which citizens evade despotism and exercise their democratic rights. They also show how much researchers and journalists miss when they don’t pay attention to African ideas and concepts. Thus, the best reason to read this dictionary is to learn about the political ingenuity of African citizens and to gain insights into local political ideas and frames of reference.</p>
<p>The dictionary is also about much more than that. It includes one of the most thorough timelines of African political events ever compiled, with direct links to entries that put critical events into context. It also provides useful overviews of the topics that are of most interest to students. These range from from <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-162?rskey=x1r3cO&result=26">HIV/Aids</a> to <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-151?rskey=Yl2bUJ&result=1">gender quotas</a>, and from the anti-<a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-30?rskey=pwVNsB&result=6">apartheid</a> struggle to the Rwandan <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/abstract/10.1093/acref/9780191828836.001.0001/acref-9780191828836-e-153?rskey=05849U&result=17">genocide</a>. </p>
<p>Our hope is that it does justice to the efforts of the many people who took time to send in the suggestions that have enriched it, and that everyone who takes a look learns something new.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nic Cheeseman and the other authors of this piece wrote the dictionary referred to in this piece for Oxford University Press.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eloïse Bertrand and Sa'eed Husaini do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A dictionary of African politics reveals the witty and insightful political terminology that people in different African countries use.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamEloïse Bertrand, PhD Student in Politics and International Studies, University of WarwickSa'eed Husaini, DPhil Candidate, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1130482019-03-12T13:51:10Z2019-03-12T13:51:10ZAfrican peer review: progress is being made, but there are problems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263355/original/file-20190312-86682-jj7wuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Embassy of Equatorial Guinea </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There was great excitement and hype when the <a href="https://au.int/en/organs/aprm">African Peer Review Mechanism</a> was launched <a href="https://au.int/en/organs/aprm">16 years ago</a>. This was because it presented an innovative approach to improving governance on the continent.</p>
<p>The review mechanism was established in 2003, soon after the Organisation of African Unity became the African Union (AU). It was inspired by the desire to find <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/Legacy/sitefiles/file/46/1322/17295/welttrends92themanathansdafrikaafrikanischeunionsicherheitspolitikdiplomatie.pdf">“African solutions to African problems”</a>. It was supposed to signify a new approach to politics in Africa: a voluntary, non-adversarial peer-review which would lead to improvements in governance.</p>
<p>States that are party to the peer review mechanism develop self-assessment reports, which are then combined with reviews produced by experts from other African countries. The reviews are then tabled and discussed by heads of state of member countries. Finally, the reviewed country embarks on implementing its <a href="http://saiia.org.za/research/lessons-from-implementing-the-aprm-national-programme-of-action-in-nigeria/">national programme of action</a> to address any governance shortcomings that were identified. </p>
<p>These are not just government reviews: they focus on the country as a whole. Civil society and the private sector are involved in putting together the national self-assessment. Reviews are supposed to take place every three to five years, but in practice only a handful of countries have been reviewed twice. </p>
<p>The mechanism got off to a good start. But enthusiasm soon waned. Between 2008 and 2016 the peer review mechanism’s secretariat did not have a permanent CEO, hardly conducted any reviews and was marred by <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201404101502.html">allegations of financial mismanagement</a>. </p>
<p>Three years ago the political stewardship of Kenyan <a href="https://www.enca.com/africa/kenyatta-revive-african-peer-review-mechanism">President Uhuru Kenyatta</a>, and the appointment of South African Professor Eddy Maloka as CEO of the secretariat brought new energy to the review mechanism. More countries joined.</p>
<p>Maloka implemented the <a href="https://www.uneca.org/cfm2016/pages/africa-peer-review-mechanism-restoration-reinvigoration-and-renewal">“Three Rs Strategy”</a>: restoration, reinvigoration and renewal. This helped, for the most part, to restore faith in the review mechanism and put it in a much stronger position. But political and technical challenges remain. </p>
<p>Country reviews have once again stalled and review reports aren’t being released on time.</p>
<h2>The decline</h2>
<p>The peer review mechanism works as a voluntary partnership between government, civil society, and the private sector. The aim is to collectively and collaboratively address socio-economic problems, improve governance practices and strengthen laws and policies. The key philosophy behind the initiatives is that, by working together, different stakeholders can achieve improved transparency, greater accountability and good governance. </p>
<p>The first decade saw 17 mostly solid, comprehensive and honest review <a href="https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/saia_spb_170_gruzd-turianskyi_20180307.pdf">reports being published</a>. However, even then most enthusiastic member countries failed to implement their recommendations.</p>
<p>At the same time, attendance of the peer review mechanism’s annual <a href="https://www.aprm-au.org/apr-forum/">forums</a>, which were held on the sidelines of African Union summits, dwindled. Most heads of state delegated authority to ministers, who don’t have the same political clout.</p>
<p>What was supposed to be a frank discussion between African leaders about governance problems devolved into a mostly technical exercise, sprinkled with words of praise – but never criticism – from the few attending presidents. </p>
<p>Things went from bad to worse when not a single state was reviewed between <a href="https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/saia_spb_170_gruzd-turianskyi_20180307.pdf">2013 and 2016</a>. </p>
<h2>Some progress but still problems</h2>
<p>The situation has improved significantly since then. Reviews are resuming, and some countries are undergoing second reviews. These are intended to be pithier, specifically focusing on cross-cutting issues emanating from the countries’ first reviews.</p>
<p>And new members are joining, among them <a href="https://neweralive.na/posts/namibia-joins-au-governance-body">Namibia in 2017</a> and <a href="https://www.politicalanalysis.co.za/botswana-joins-african-peer-review-mechanism-forum/">Botswana in February 2019</a>. </p>
<p>As part of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-02-23-00-kagames-au-reforms-will-struggle-to-survive-without-him">reforms</a> introduced by Rwandan President and former African Union chair Paul Kagame in 2018, the review mechanism was incorporated into the continental body as a specialised agency, and given an expanded mandate. </p>
<p>Apart from conducting country reviews, it will now also track progress achieved under the <a href="https://au.int/en/agenda2063">African Union’s Agenda 2063</a> and the United Nations’ <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld">Sustainable Development Goals</a>. It will do this for the 38 members as well as countries on the continent that aren’t African Union members.</p>
<p>But there are still questions about whether African leaders have the will to make the peer review mechanism a strong initiative that can change the continental governance landscape. Its recently launched <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/Voices/a-check-on-state-of-governance-in-africa-20190301">African Governance Report</a> is a case in point. Although it provides trends and data on governance on the continent, it doesn’t mention any countries by name. This shows an unwillingness to “name and shame” those that lag behind in implementing progressive policies and ratifying treaties. </p>
<p>It’s also a missed opportunity to commend countries which are leading in promoting good governance, transparency and accountability. </p>
<p>The attendance of peer review mechanism forum meetings by top officials surged briefly under Kenyatta and Maloka, but quickly dissipated. Only four heads of state attended the recent meeting in February. Even more worrying is the failure to release available country reports. These are supposed to be published six months after they are tabled at the forum. </p>
<p>The Senegal review is now two years late, while Sudan and Uganda’s second reviews are over a year late. Chad and Djibouti’s 2017 reports have been released, but are only available in French. Insiders suggest that politicians are reluctant to make the information – which provides a balanced overview of governance in the country, including both strengths and weaknesses - available to their citizens.</p>
<p>The African Peer Review Mechanism must follow its own rules, and not be complicit with governments in burying these reports.</p>
<h2>Going forward</h2>
<p>The review mechanism should build on its current momentum to strengthen its status within the African Union. It should be able to release the review reports without waiting for politicians’ approval. It should also name member states that are not progressing or are not paying their annual financial contributions. </p>
<p>It also needs to modernise its website and make all documents, reports and press releases easily accessible. It is currently easier to conduct a Google search and find this information from other sources. </p>
<p>Finally, the review mechanism would benefit from establishing a civil society desk at its secretariat. Civil society is an important stakeholder and stronger links should be built for relationships that promote synergy in improving African governance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yarik Turianskyi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The African Peer Review Mechanism got off to a good start, but enthusiasm soon waned.Yarik Turianskyi, Yarik Turianskyi is Manager of the Governance and African Peer Review Mechanism Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs and guest lecturer in African Governance and Eastern European Politics, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129672019-03-11T14:18:25Z2019-03-11T14:18:25ZZimbabwe’s MDC faces a leadership contest. But can it be peaceful?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262465/original/file-20190306-100793-m9f32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of MDC's Nelson Chamisa believe he could win Zimbabwe's 2023 elections.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party, has announced that it will hold its elective congress in May 2019. The announcement has stirred interest – inside and outside the party. This is because there could be an intriguing contest for the presidency of the party between the incumbent <a href="https://informationcradle.com/africa/nelson-chamisa/">Nelson Chamisa</a> and the secretary-general <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Douglas_Mwonzora">Douglas Mwonzora</a>. The two have a history of rivalry.</p>
<p>Mwonzora is Chamisa’s political nemesis. In 2014 Mwonzora unexpectedly won a contest for the position of secretary-general even though Chamisa, as organising secretary, was in a position to influence party structures in his favour and had been nominated by 11 out of 12 provinces. One theory is that the MDC’s former leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who died of cancer in <a href="https://www.enca.com/africa/zimbabwean-opposition-leader-tsvangirai-dies">February 2018</a>, engineered Mwonzora’s victory by influencing the voting patterns of congress delegates. The reason given for this is that he wanted to curtail Chamisa’s political ambitions because of his perceived role in the MDC’s surprising poor showing in the 2013 national elections.</p>
<p>After his defeat, Chamisa was relegated to an ordinary party member, until Tsvangirai brought him back into the MDC’s executive. The speculation is that Tsvangirai did this because he sensed that Chamisa was still popular within the party’s structures, especially among younger members. </p>
<p>A Mwonzora victory is worrying for some of Chamisa’s most fervent supporters. This is because they believe Chamisa is the future of the party. He’s only 41 years old. Also, they believe he gave Zanu-Pf candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa a run for his money in the 2018 presidential elections. Chamisa’s camp believes he’s better placed to defeat Mnangagwa in the 2023 elections because of his <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/2018zimelections-who-is-nelson-chamisa-16237399">widespread national appeal</a>. </p>
<p>Mwonzora too has his fair share of supporters. He’s also widely respected within the MDC because of his easy going temperament. </p>
<p>What this all adds up to is that a victory by either candidate could split the party for the umpteenth time. Even a contest carries risks because the MDC has a chequered history in which violence has been used regularly against opposing factions. If the two do contest the party presidency in May – and Mwonzora in the past few days has <a href="https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/i-will-be-tougher-for-zanu-pf-says-mwonzora/">hinted that he might</a> – their supporters’ tactics could heighten the danger of violence and intimidation. This could further divide or damage the party and set Zimbabwean democracy back after decades of authoritarian rule. </p>
<h2>Troubled past</h2>
<p>Tsvangirai’s MDC had a “T” at the end – which stood for Tsvangirai himself. This was to distinguish his MDC from the <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/MDC-Welshman_Ncube">Welshman Ncube MDC</a> which had cut ties with Tsvangirai. Ncube was the founding secretary-general of the MDC. </p>
<p>Just before he died Tsvangirai had agreed to bring back former “rebels” who had been founding members of the party. This included Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti and Job Sikhala. For his part, Chamisa agreed to accommodate and rope in his former “comrades-in-arms” into his election campaign. </p>
<p>The coalition under their umbrella became known as <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zim-chamisa-forced-to-register-mdc-alliance-as-a-political-party-amid-squabbles-20180616">the MDC-Alliance party</a> just before Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. The reason for the name change was that former MDC member Thokozani Khupe was arguing in the courts that her formation was the bona fide MDC-T. </p>
<p>A succession puzzle was created in the MDC-Alliance when Tsvangirai, as president and before his death, appointed Chamisa as head of policy and research and then as one of three deputy presidents of the party. This muddying of the waters appears to have been deliberate. It meant that Tsvangirai could easily play his deputies against each other if he felt threatened by any one of them. </p>
<p>But having three vice-presidents – Chamisa, Elias Mudzuri and Thokozani Khupe – didn’t do the party any favours. After Tsvangirai’s death a bloody battle for succession ensued, and led to another split in the party.</p>
<h2>The contest hots up</h2>
<p>The MDC’s May congress has inevitably sucked in the ruling Zanu-PF. The two have been at loggerheads since 1999 when the <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6ad8338.html">original MDC was formed</a>. A succession of bruising electoral contests, including the highly disputed 2008 elections which the MDC-T was <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-elections-really-rigged-mr-trump-consult-robert-mugabe-68440">widely believed to have won</a>, galvanised the ruling Zanu-PF party into resolving to weaken, if not destroy, the MDC brand. </p>
<p>It’s against this backdrop that Zanu-PF is being accused of having a role in the unfolding MDC-Alliance drama ahead of the impending congress. </p>
<p>Some top MDC-Alliance leaders in Chamisa’s camp have been claiming that the governing Zanu-PF has set aside between US$ 4 million to US$6 million to pay MDC delegates to vote for Mwonzora <a href="https://nehandaradio.com/2019/03/03/zanu-pf-pouring-millions-to-influence-mdc-congress/">at the party congress</a>. Biti, who is currently the party’s vice-chairperson, has said he will reject any candidates sponsored by Zanu-PF.</p>
<h2>Best case scenario</h2>
<p>As party leader Chamisa has the opportunity to foster peace, tolerance and democracy. He should make sure that the lead up to the congress is violence- free and that party members who are in good standing can contest any post without being intimidated.</p>
<p>He needs to be wary of political sycophants within his party who want to turn him into a demigod, as was the case during Mugabe’s long reign as the leader of Zanu-PF. Chamisa has already shown that he has nothing to fear from a fair contest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tapiwa Chagonda has previously received funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF). </span></em></p>Nelson Chamisa has the opportunity to foster peace, tolerance and democracy within Zimbabwe’s main opposition party.Tapiwa Chagonda, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1036432018-12-12T12:15:45Z2018-12-12T12:15:45ZSouth Africa’s electoral body has its work cut out to ensure legitimate 2019 poll<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248967/original/file-20181205-186073-8vdm3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africans head to the polls in May 2019 but there are challenges.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niyazz/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is among relatively few African countries that hold regular democratic elections with high levels of integrity, enabling citizens to choose their government. Since democracy in 1994, its elections have been consistently adjudged <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/economist-intelligence-unit-2017-democracy-index-best-countries-2018-1/">legitimate, free and fair</a>.</p>
<p>But there may be trouble on the horizon. The <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/">Electoral Commission of South Africa</a>, the body responsible for municipal, provincial and national elections, is struggling to ensure the integrity of the voters’ roll for the 2019 polls. The elections – for the national and nine provincial legislatures – are <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/">scheduled for May</a>. </p>
<p>It has been more than two and a half years since the Constitutional Court <a href="https://www.gminc.co.za/news/news-list/95-constitutional-court-judgment-iec-v-mhlope-other">ordered</a> the commission <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/15.html">to ensure</a> that all registered voters and candidates have verifiable residential addresses. To date, this hasn’t been done.</p>
<p>The commission was <a href="https://www.gminc.co.za/news/news-list/95-constitutional-court-judgment-iec-v-mhlope-other">ordered</a> to develop a list that captures “sufficient particularities of the voter’s address” for all voters by June 2018. This would enable voters to cast ballots only in the voting districts where they ordinarily live. </p>
<p>The commission’s failure to ensure a credible voters’ roll threatens to undo its legacy of conducting <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/economist-intelligence-unit-2017-democracy-index-best-countries-2018-1/">internationally acclaimed elections</a>. </p>
<p>Even though the court has since acceded to the commission’s request to extend the deadline – it’s now <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-11-22-electoral-commission-granted-more-time--to-finalise-voters-addresses/">November 30, 2019</a>, which is after the elections – it has a duty to ensure that the elections are legitimate despite the problems with the voters’ roll.</p>
<p>This will require concerted efforts by all political parties and other election stakeholders. They will need to use the <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/content/For-voters/My-voter-registration-details/">pre-election registration weekends</a> set aside by the commission for 2019 to guarantee that only those eligible to vote do so.</p>
<p>In addition, to retain public confidence in its credentials as an independent body, the commission needs to do all it can to remove doubts and suspicions regarding the eligibility of voters and candidates. The need for it to ensure – as far as possible – that the largest number of registered voters are <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/About-Us/News/Call-to-all-South-African-voters-to-visit-voting-stations-on-10-and-11-March-2018/">legitimate</a>, with traceable physical addresses, cannot be overemphasised. </p>
<h2>Why verifiable addresses matter</h2>
<p>Electoral systems rest largely on verifiable election registers. These include <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=502000">voter and candidate lists</a>. Verifiable voters’ credentials ensure that only those who are entitled to vote do so.</p>
<p>A voters’ roll is also a crucial mechanism for those, like political parties and election monitors or observers, who seek to verify who qualifies to vote. A lack of verifiable addresses suggests a lack of transparency in the electoral system, raising suspicions and doubts.</p>
<p>South Africa’s voting population changes every five years as the number of registered voters increases. Not knowing the extent of the increase, and where to target first-time voters, poses a problem for political parties <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/15.html">during campaigning</a>. It would also be difficult to know how many polling stations to expect in their voting districts.</p>
<p>If a voter’s residential addresses, or other means of determining where they live, cannot be verified, they may be prevented from voting. This denies them the right to choose their leaders or to run for office. Alternatively, they may be allowed to vote through an onerous process that relies on presiding officers’ discretion. This isn’t ideal and is usually viewed with suspicion by duly registered voters. </p>
<p>Another problem is that ineligible people might vote. And others might vote outside of their voting districts, unfairly influencing the outcome. This can undermine the legitimacy of elections. </p>
<p>These hitches and issues are the reason that the Constitutional Court’s 2016 judgment was so welcome.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the past</h2>
<p>The court’s ruling came after by-elections in Tlokwe, or Potchefstroom, a small town in the country’s North West province, were <a href="https://theconversation.com/annulled-local-byelections-shed-light-on-the-state-of-south-africas-democracy-52100">annulled</a> by the Electoral Court in 2013. The annulment followed complaints that the by-elections were not free and fair. </p>
<p>Opposition parties accused the governing African National Congress of bussing in voters from outside the area – which could be done because verifiable addresses were absent from the voters’ roll. </p>
<p>The commission’s failure to comply with the court order to fix the problem raises questions about its preparedness to conduct next year’s crucial elections. There are real fears that the elections <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-c1ebd15cb">might be compromised</a> somehow. This has serious implications for South Africa’s electoral democracy.</p>
<p>The commission has argued that having to record all registered voters’ addresses entails enormous logistical problems and costs. It has pointed out that some addresses, in a conventional sense, were simply not available in populous rural and urban areas that have no house numbers and street names. </p>
<p>It has also contended that making the capturing of addresses obligatory would result in <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/15.html">long queues</a> forming outside voting stations on election day. </p>
<p>The commission has been given an extended deadline to November next year. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t wait that long to act. After all, the credibility of the voters’ roll has international implications. That’s because the management and quality assurance of national elections are no longer the monopoly of individual states. </p>
<p>South Africa must also comply with the African Union’s <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/african-charter-democracy-elections-and-governance">Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance</a> and its <a href="https://www.eisa.org.za/pdf/au2002declaration.pdf">Principles Governing Elections</a>. Both place emphasis on the credibility of electoral infrastructure, <a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/lets-address-voters-roll">including voters’ rolls</a>. </p>
<p>The country must also abide by the provisions of the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>, which guarantees the right to vote, among other international <a href="https://www.cvk.lv/pub/upload_file/anglu/Handbook-Internl-Standards_EN.pdf.pdf">instruments</a>. </p>
<h2>Salvaging the situation</h2>
<p>Despite problems with its voters’ roll, South Africa remains a beacon of electoral hope and democracy. Its status as a country that upholds international election management best practices is envied. </p>
<p>The 2019 national elections may still retain a semblance of fair representation in public participation; based on other factors such as voter participation, free political campaigning, and the tolerance of divergent political views and parties. </p>
<p>The commission’s ongoing discussions and mediation efforts with all election stakeholders through the political party liaison committees and civil society organisations are crucial to addressing any potential problems. </p>
<p>A sustainable strategy is to engage relevant civil society bodies to provide continuous voter education long before major elections. This will help ensure addresses are captured correctly in the voters roll.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kealeboga J Maphunye receives funding from National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, NIHSS. </span></em></p>South Africa’s electoral commission’s failure to ensure a credible voters’ roll threatens to undo its legacy of free and fair elections.Kealeboga J Maphunye, Professor and Chair of Department - Political Sciences, University of South Africa (UNISA), University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1078402018-12-05T12:09:51Z2018-12-05T12:09:51ZLiberation hero Mugabe evokes polarised emotions among Zimbabweans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247966/original/file-20181129-170250-1fqyfc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The end of Robert Mugabe’s rule was greeted with momentous national celebration. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert Mugabe’s name is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mugabe">synonymous</a> with both Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and its post-colonial politics. His role and that of his Zanu-PF party have been central to the country’s dynamics since the early 1960s – and could well set the tone for the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>For much of his political life Mugabe has often been viewed, in the words of one of his biographers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=vQY4DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT23&lpg=PT23&dq=Martin+Meredith,+Mugabe+%22secretive+and+solitary%22&source=bl&ots=DmCK97xurM&sig=PymYcd-DCAyFl-2WFRS18fAIbao&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijmNmroPneAhWQsKQKHZANDhAQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Martin%20Meredith%2C%20Mugabe%20%22secretive%20and%20solitary%22&f=false">Martin Meredith</a>, as “secretive and solitary”, an “aloof and austere figure”.</p>
<p>However he is described, there’s no doubt that Mugabe’s political legacy is highly contested. To understand how this happened, it’s necessary to examine his personal history; his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/17/its-been-one-year-since-zimbabwe-toppled-mugabe-why-isnt-it-a-democracy-yet/?utm_term=.11c978401892">political demise</a> in 2017; and Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/19/zimbabwe-needs-aid-to-prevent-further-crisis-warns-ruling-party">deepening political and economic crisis</a> more than a year after Mugabe’s ouster.</p>
<p>For the faction that has succeeded Mugabe, led by President Emmerson Mnangagawa, moving beyond the highly problematic legacy that they helped to create remains a daunting task.</p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>Robert Mugabe was born 94 years ago at Kutama Mission in Zvimba District, west of what was then called Salisbury, the capital of then <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Rhodesia">Southern Rhodesia</a> (today’s Zimbabwe). He received a <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/africa/robert-mugabe">Jesuit education</a> and was by many accounts an exceptional student.</p>
<p>In 1945 Mugabe left Kutama Mission with a teaching diploma. He won a scholarship to South Africa’s Fort Hare University in 1949. There he met other emerging nationalists and was <a href="http://www.channelafrica.co.za/sabc/home/channelafrica/news/details?id=7aa25498-9448-4324-89c2-e4f62a324e17&title=The%20rise%20and%20fall%20of%20Mugabe">introduced to Marxist ideas</a>. </p>
<p>Armed with a BA degree in history and English Literature, Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952. He soon moved to the Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) in 1955 to take up a teaching post. In 1958 he moved again, to a teacher training college in Ghana. There, a year after Ghana’s independence in 1957, he experienced the thrill and sense of possibility of a newly independent African state. It was a seminal political moment for him.</p>
<h2>Making of a revolutionary</h2>
<p>Mugabe returned home in 1960 on extended leave to introduce his new wife <a href="https://www.zambianobserver.com/the-forgotten-story-of-sally-mugabe-the-beloved-mother-of-zimbabwe-robert-mugabes-first-wife-and-true-love-the-woman-whose-death-changed-president-mugabe-forever/">Sally Hayfron</a> to his family. Instead of returning to Ghana, he became entangled in nationalist politics. This included the turmoil that the two major nationalist parties, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035743?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) and Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu)</a>, split. </p>
<p>In 1963 he was arrested, along with many other nationalists. He was <a href="https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2011/10/dtente-the-release-of-nationalist/">released</a> after 11 years. </p>
<p>Mugabe and his colleague <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Edgar_Tekere">Edgar Tekere</a> escaped to Mozambique in 1974 to join the liberation war against the regime of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ian-Smith">Prime Minister Ian Smith</a>, conducted from bases in that country. There have been different accounts of Mugabe’s rise to the top of the leadership in Mozambique. As liberation war veteran <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/a-real-zimbabwean-war-veteran-speaks-97206">Wilfred Mhanda tells it</a>, their support for Mugabe was premised on his commitment to building unity between the rival nationalist movements. </p>
<p>But he reneged on this, instead pursuing the supremacy of his own party Zanu.</p>
<p>Following the Lancaster House settlement and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40395186?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">1980 elections</a>, Mugabe’s Zanu emerged as the dominant party. He set out his policy of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hd4n.7?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">reconciliation with the white population</a>. This allowed the existing property and economic relations from the Rhodesian period to continue, while the politics of state control was transferred to Zanu. </p>
<p>This period witnessed the consolidation of Mugabe’s control of both his party and the state. The massive violence committed against the competing party of liberation, <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Zimbabwe_African_People's_Union">Zapu</a>, through the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi massacres</a>, signalled Zanu’s violent intolerance of opposition. </p>
<p>However, the 1980s were also evidence of Mugabe’s commitment to social policies such as health and education. Mugabe’s government greatly expanded the state expenditure in these areas in the <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/zimbabwe.-the-political-economy-of-transition-1980-1986">first decade of independence</a>. </p>
<p>The hostilities between Zapu, led by Joshua Nkomo, and Mugabe’s Zanu officially ended with the signing of a <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Unity_Accord">Unity Accord</a> by the two leaders on December 22, 1987. Zapu was effectively swallowed by Zanu PF. The ruling party had used the acronym since the end of the brief Patriotic Front coalition (1976-79) between the two liberation parties, on the eve of the 1980 elections. </p>
<h2>Things go south</h2>
<p>During the 1990s, opposition to Mugabe <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300366769_The_Movement_for_Democratic_Change_MDC_and_the_Changing_Geo-Political_Landscape_in_Zimbabwe">grew</a> in size and influence. Faced with the real possibility of political defeat – and dissent from the war veterans – Mugabe drew on <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/ZimLand0302-02.htm">longstanding land grievances</a> to reconfigure the politics of the state and Zanu-PF. </p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358530500082916">Fast Track Resettlement</a> programme radically reconstructed the land relations from the settler colonial period. There is a continuing debate about the effects of the land redistribution exercise. It resulted in the violent allocation of land to a combination of large numbers of small farmers and the ruling party elite, and its long term impact on the country’s economy remains problematic.</p>
<p>The process also created a massive rupture between <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/111691/P202.pdf">human and redistributive rights </a>. By legitimising the Fast Track programme, Zanu-PF emphasised economic redistribution and settling the colonial legacy around the land question. </p>
<p>But in doing so, the ruling party opportunistically labelled the fight for human and democratic political rights – which had long been central to the anti-colonial struggle – as a foreign <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/sunday-times/20180218/282342565314857">“regime change agenda”</a> pushed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic movements. </p>
<p>The politics of the land reform process unleashed many questions around citizenship, belonging, and assertions of identity. Mugabe’s often valid critique of imperialist duplicity was accompanied by an unacceptable authoritarian intolerance of dissent within Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>The armed forces were <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-mugabe-why-the-role-of-zimbabwes-army-cant-be-trusted-87872">central to his stay in power</a>. The push in his final years to have his wife Grace succeed him heralded a <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mugabe-announces-appointment-of-controversial-wife-grace-to-a-key-post-20170915">longer term reign for a Mugabe dynasty</a>. To further his wife’s ambitions, Mugabe first moved against Vice President Joyce Mujuru, the favoured contender to succeed him, in <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/clues-to-successor-as-mugabe-names-vice-president/a-18122886">2014</a>.</p>
<p>Next, the Mugabes, with the support of a faction of Zanu-PF known as the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-politics-g40-factbox/factbox-key-figures-in-zimbabwe-first-lady-grace-mugabes-g40-faction-idUSKBN1DF1DX">G40 group</a>, took on another potential successor, Vice President Mnangagwa. He was dismissed from his state and party positions in <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/mnangagwa-fired-disloyal-disrespectful-deceitful2/">early November 2017</a>.</p>
<p>This set off a dramatic series of events. In mid- November 2017, following military chief Constantine Chiwenga’s warning of <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/counter-revolutionaries-want-to-destroy-zanu-pf-army-chief-tells-mugabe-20171113">“counter-revolutionaries”</a> in the ruling party, the armed forces <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-military-coup-is-afoot-in-zimbabwe-whats-next-for-the-embattled-nation-87528">effectively took power</a> away from the executive. </p>
<p>This was followed by the initiation of an impeachment process against Mugabe. But, on the day the process began, in November 2017, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42071488">he resigned</a>. </p>
<h2>End of an era</h2>
<p>For many Zimbabweans Mugabe remains a contested figure. For those who lived through the humiliations of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/720978?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">settler colonialism</a>, his strident critique of its legacies still ring true. But others will find it impossible to accept his exclusivist assertions of <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-129803.html">national belonging</a> and authoritarian intolerance of dissent.</p>
<p>When combined with the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249599119_Zimbabwe_Now_The_Political_Economy_of_Crisis_and_Coercion">deep economic crisis</a> over which he presided, it is little surprise that the end of Mugabe’s rule was greeted with such momentous national celebration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Raftopoulos is a Research Fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, and Research Director of Solidarity Peace Trust a Human Right Organisation working on Zimbabwe . </span></em></p>For many Zimbabweans Robert Mugabe will remain a contested figure.Brian Raftopoulos, Research Fellow, International Studies Group, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1074432018-11-26T13:34:21Z2018-11-26T13:34:21ZIs South Africa’s Constitutional Court protecting democracy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246887/original/file-20181122-182050-16wr165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2018/45.html">decision</a> by South Africa’s Constitutional Court on the right to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/what-does-the-constitutional-court-judgment-on-peaceful-protests-mean-18190008">peaceful protest</a> has drawn renewed attention to its role in safeguarding the country’s democracy. In declaring a section of the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/Act205of1993.pdf">Regulation of Gatherings Act</a> partly unconstitutional, the Court confirmed its function as a protector of democratic rights.</p>
<p>But, how in general should we measure the success of a constitutional court when it comes to protecting democratic rights?</p>
<p>The answer isn’t straightforward because there are conflicting views about the standard we should use.</p>
<p>For most lawyers, constitutional courts’ success in protecting democracy should be measured by their jurisprudential record - their performance according to legal professional standards of appropriate decision-making. </p>
<p>On this view of things, courts are essentially reactive institutions. The only power they have to influence the quality of democracy is to interpret democratic rights in the cases they happen to be asked to decide. </p>
<p>For many political scientists, this legalistic measure is inadequate. What needs to be assessed is the actual impact of a court’s decisions on the overall quality of democracy.</p>
<p>On this alternative account, constitutional courts have much greater agency than lawyers give them credit for. They should be seen as political institutions with the capacity to adjust their decisions according to their likely effects. </p>
<p>The Colombian Constitutional Court, for example, famously thwarted President Alviro Uribe’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/world/americas/27colombia.html">bid for a third term</a>. In a bold decision, the Court correctly calculated that it had sufficient institutional legitimacy to stand up to a charismatic politician. </p>
<p>The political science account represents a more realistic picture of the discretion constitutional courts enjoy in shaping the law. The problem, however, is that it is difficult to assess the influence of any particular decision on democratic health. There are just too many intervening variables.</p>
<p>Thus, for practical purposes, we are forced back to assessing constitutional courts’ performance by looking at their record in interpreting democratic rights. But this doesn’t mean we have to treat them as reactive institutions. The key to appreciating their role in safeguarding democracy is to fuse the sense lawyers have of their duty to decide cases according to law with a political science perspective.</p>
<h2>Track record</h2>
<p>Every time a court decides a case it not only settles the issue in dispute but also invites other types of litigation. That happens because the court’s interpretation of the law in one case sends out signals about how it’s likely to interpret the law in the next. </p>
<p>A constitutional court, on this understanding, has the power either to play itself into the business of safeguarding democratic rights or play itself out. It plays itself in when it takes a decision that enhances its capacity to take further decisions protective of democracy. It plays itself out when its decision forecloses that possibility.</p>
<p>Judged by this more nuanced measure, South Africa’s Constitutional Court has performed remarkably well since 1995.</p>
<p>The major threat to South Africa’s democracy during this time has been the governing African National Congress’s entrenchment as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-has-remained-dominant-despite-shifts-in-support-base-63285">dominant political party</a>. Denied the sunlight of regularly rotating governments, South Africa’s democracy has developed certain well-known pathologies.</p>
<p>Faced with this situation, one approach the Constitutional Court might have taken would have been to decide cases according to its assessment of the threat posed by the ANC to South Africa’s democracy. But this approach would have undermined the special legitimacy the Court enjoys as a legally constrained actor, and exposed it to political attack. </p>
<p>Instead, what the Court has done has been to progressively expand the scope of its authority. In small, incremental steps, it has built public understanding of its legitimate power to review all aspects of the democratic process, from the quality of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-has-remained-dominant-despite-shifts-in-support-base-63285">democracy within political parties</a> to the functioning of the legislature.</p>
<p>The best-known recent example of this was the Court’s ruling that the National Assembly’s failure to make rules regulating the removal of a President in terms of section 89(1) of the Constitution <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2017/47.html">violated that provision</a>.</p>
<p>The majority decision in this case provoked a forceful response from Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. He <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/mogoengs-deep-seated-agony-and-bafflement-over-majority-concourt-judgment-20171229">argued in dissent</a> that the Court’s insistence that an inquiry should always be held before impeachment violated the separation of powers.</p>
<p>Mogoeng’s dissent shows that the question of the appropriate scope of the Court’s authority is always legally fraught. But it also shows how creative the Court has been in pushing the limits of its authority to protect the democratic system.</p>
<h2>Oiling the wheels of democracy</h2>
<p>This, in conclusion, is arguably what constitutional courts established on the liberal-democratic model have to do. The current populist threat to democracy is not coming out of thin air. It exploits a sense, however unjustified, that liberal constitutionalism has failed a large section of the population.</p>
<p>To counteract this threat, constitutional judges need to demonstrate that they are not on the side of the status quo. Rather, their role is to support democratic social change, wherever that might lead. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this is what the Court’s recent judgment protecting the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/what-does-the-constitutional-court-judgment-on-peaceful-protests-mean-18190008">right to protest</a> was about. By protecting the applicants’ right to demonstrate, the Court oiled the wheels of democracy as the primary vehicle of peaceful social transformation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Theunis Roux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s Constitutional Court has performed remarkably well in protecting democracy since 1995.Theunis Roux, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1053012018-10-31T12:49:39Z2018-10-31T12:49:39ZNamibia’s long-standing land issue remains unresolved<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241870/original/file-20181023-169822-ls11z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the new resolutions on land related to Namibia's urban areas, like the capital city Windhoek.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grobler du Preez/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thirty years of German settler colonialism in South West Africa – from 1884 to 1914 – paved the way for continued apartheid under South Africa. The resistance of the local communities against the invasion culminated in the <a href="https://stichproben.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_stichproben/Artikel/Nummer33/01_Article_Melber_Genocide_Namibia_draft_FINAL.pdf">first genocide of the 20th century</a> among the Ovaherero, Nama and other groups. As main occupants of the eastern, central and southern regions of the country they were forced from their land into so-called native reserves.</p>
<p>Forced land dispossession continued. Even independence brought little relief. The negotiated transition to independence in 1990 entrenched the <a href="http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A275566&dswid=2400">structural discrepancies created during colonialism</a>. In exchange for occupying the political commando heights of a sovereign state the national liberation movement SWAPO accepted the material inequalities it inherited without any major debate. </p>
<p>Namibia’s <a href="https://www.gov.na/documents/10181/14134/Namibia_Constitution.pdf/37b70b76-c15c-45d4-9095-b25d8b8aa0fb">Constitution</a> was adopted as a precondition to independence. Its chapter 3 on Fundamental Human Rights and Freedom cannot be changed. Next to civil and political rights, its article 16 states that any expropriation of private property requires compensation that is just. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the question of land has been hotly contested ever since independence. A <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.538.3535&rep=rep1&type=pdf">National Land Reform Conference</a> took place in 1991. Its <a href="http://www.mlr.gov.na/documents/20541/290353/Conference+Consensus+Document+%28Booklet+and+Programme%29.pdf/dfa21c58-1112-49e8-b22e-54d09e77cf52">recommendations</a> included the redistribution of commercial farmland, a land tax and the reallocation of underused land.</p>
<p>But meaningful restitution wasn’t implemented. In addition, the buying of farm land was slow and inefficient. Beneficiaries were often not able to use farms they’d got for resettlement purposes because they lacked capital and know-how.</p>
<p>Finally, many beneficiaries were anything but still disadvantaged. Members of the political and bureaucratic elite received preferential treatment. Subsidised by taxpayers’ money, they became <a href="http://ippr.org.na/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Opinion11.pdf">weekend or hobby farmers</a>. </p>
<h2>Second land conference</h2>
<p>More recently there have been increased demands to address the failures of the past; these culminated in a second land conference in early October 2018. But local responses to the final document that was adopted were based on previous experiences – that is, in most cases not much happens after such conferences. As an editorial in a <a href="https://www.observer.com.na/index.php/editorial/item/10517-let-them-eat-cake">weekly paper</a> remarked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Placing one or two plasters on the stump of an amputated leg, is not a cure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government invited more than 800 participants to the conference and allocated N$ 15 million (one million USD$) for the five-day event. Given the overwhelming dominance of state authorities and other official institutions as well as indications that SWAPO tried from the get-go to hijack the agenda, civil society organisations threatened to boycott. At the end, most of them participated merely because it was a chance to voice their frustrations.</p>
<p>The Ministry for Land Reform provided access to most of the <a href="http://www.mlr.gov.na/land-conference1">documents submitted</a>, including those of the first Land Conference. Compared with the 24 resolutions adopted but hardly implemented then, many matters in the now <a href="http://www.mlr.gov.na/documents/20541/638917/Second+National+Land+Conference+Resolutions+2018.pdf/15b498fd-fdc6-4898-aeda-91fecbc74319">40 resolutions</a> were a <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/72030/read/Land-conference-resolutions-Whats-new">modified follow up</a>.</p>
<p>A significant new addition was the issue of urban land and informal settlements. It recognised the demands of urban squatters to affordable housing, estimated at 900,000 people (40% of Namibia’s total population). </p>
<p>Notably, the issues of communal and of ancestral land also received more prominence and there appeared to be a greater willingness to consider interventions. These include the protection of tenure rights mainly in the interest of the poorest as victims of illegal land occupation and privatisation by members of the new elites.</p>
<h2>Reconciliation and justice</h2>
<p>What complicates matters is that land is not merely an economic affair. More than any other issue, land is a matter of identity – for those who own it as much as for those who feel it should be theirs. </p>
<p>Colonialism went along with violent land theft. The current distribution of land in Namibia is a constant reminder that colonialism has not ended despite independence.</p>
<p>History cannot be fully reversed. The structural legacies created under apartheid and the long-term demographic impact of the genocide have left irreversible marks. However, what seems a feasible compromise is to offer the San communities access to and protection in the parts of Namibia which have remained, in their views, home. </p>
<p>The forced removal from land on record since the early times of white settler encroachment would also be a widely accepted reference point.</p>
<p>Some of the still festering wounds can be treated. The recent Land Conference stated on “ancestral land rights and claims” in resolution 38 that “measures to restore social justice and ensure economic empowerment of the affected communities” should be identified. And it proposes to “use the reparations from the former colonial powers for such purpose”. This might offer a way out of the current stagnation in the negotiations between the <a href="https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697">Namibian and German governments</a>. </p>
<p>As part of the long overdue compensation, Germany should fork out the necessary funds for a just compensation of commercial farmers, whose land was previously utilised by Namibia’s indigenous communities. It then also has to finance the necessary investments – both in terms of infrastructure as well as know-how – that will empower local communities to fully benefit from resettlement. This would be a wise investment by both governments into true reconciliation towards a peaceful future for all people who want to continue living in Namibia.</p>
<p>But such brokerage requires honesty to obtain legitimacy and credibility. Ten days after the Land Conference disturbing news made the rounds. A Russian oligarch, who has been in possession of three farms since 2013, had added another four farms to his <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/72336/read/Russian-buys-four-farms">Namibian empire</a>. This shady deal with the Land Reform Ministry was made a week before the Land Conference, whose resolution 21 stated “no land should be sold to foreign nationals”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is a member of SWAPO since 1974.</span></em></p>The question of land has been hotly contested in Namibia ever since independence.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054332018-10-28T09:20:46Z2018-10-28T09:20:46ZANC will go to the polls with only one major asset: its president Ramaphosa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241666/original/file-20181022-105773-mjwpek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is now more popular than his governing party, the ANC. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is common cause that the performance of South Africa’s government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), has been worse than abysmal. Under former President Jacob Zuma, ANC functionaries <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">pillaged</a> numerous institutions of state. They enabled state owned institutions to be looted, mismanaged the provision of <a href="https://theconversation.com/local-government-in-south-africa-is-in-crisis-how-it-can-be-fixed-97331">basic services</a> and presided over an alarming downward spiral of the <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/research/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-an-economic-review-of-zumas-presidency/">economy</a>.</p>
<p>Evidence keeps mounting of dishonesty and profligacy. The unfolding scandal around <a href="https://www.news24.com/Tags/Companies/vbs_mutual_bank">VBS Bank</a> has shone a <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/anc-integrity-commission-has-started-looking-into-vbs-scandal-20181022">spotlight on the ANC</a> as a nest of thieves. In addition, a <a href="https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/">commission of inquiry</a> is relentlessly exposing how Zuma’s henchmen <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-10-21-magashule-must-account-at-zondo-commission-for-free-state-state-capture-says-da/">amassed huge riches</a> from <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-09-14-00-definition-of-state-capture">state capture</a>. And another <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/Sars-commission-of-inquiry">inquiry into the South African Revenue Services</a> is revealing how the state’s capacity to raise revenue from the politically powerful and influential was systematically undermined.</p>
<p>All in all, the ANC has completely forfeited its right to be reelected in 2019. It knows it, and is running very scared. But the odds are that it will still win, even though with its smallest majority yet. </p>
<p>What the party does have going for it is its president Cyril Ramaphosa. He is the ANC’s one big pull. And much to the chagrin of the Zuma faction, the party is going to have to build its election campaign around him – precisely because he is far <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-09-21-as-internal-polls-confirm-his-personal-popularity-emboldened-ramaphosa-moves-to-outflank-plotters-cabal/">more popular than the party</a>. Indeed, South Africa can expect the 2019 election to bring the most presidential-style campaign yet.</p>
<p>The irony is that Ramaphosa will privately welcome a smaller rather than a larger ANC majority. A thumping reduction in the ANC’s vote will serve as a popular rebuff of the Zuma faction, and erode its base in the party. An ANC which knows that it may have lost its majority had it not been for Ramaphosa’s personal popularity will be an ANC in which he will at last be able to assert his authority.</p>
<h2>A troubled party</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa sits atop a party which has long been in a state of internal factional turmoil. He defeated his rival for the presidency, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, at the ANC’s five yearly congress with an <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/meet-the-ancs-new-top-6-20171218">excruciatingly narrow vote</a>. He lacks control over the party’s national executive (its highest decision-making body between conferences) where Zuma’s supporters remain strong. And, he is facing a robust fight back campaign by Zuma’s acolytes in provinces around the country. </p>
<p>Zuma himself, like <a href="https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-importance-banquo-s-ghost-9755">Banquo’s ghost</a>, remains an ambiguous and dangerous presence. He professes innocence of all crimes as well as continuing loyalty to the party. But, behind the scenes he’s seemingly still <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2018-09-08-exposed-jacob-zuma-plot-to-oust-cyril-ramaphosa/">pulling the strings of his puppets</a>. </p>
<p>With the party in a state of continuing internal war, the scramble for positions on both its national and provincial electoral lists will be overt, in some places <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/political-killings-in-kzn-continue-strongly-condemned-20180512">violent</a>, and overall, very probably, embarrassing. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, come the election campaign, it is more than a little likely that its competing factions will forge something of a truce, and preach a new-found unity. The ANC may be divided over policies, positions and spoils, but one thing it is united about is the necessity of retaining power. It will prove ruthless in doing so. One of the few things it knows how to do well is to run an election campaign, and how to induce or scare its popular constituency into voting for it. </p>
<p>Even so, it is uncomfortably aware that its <a href="https://theconversation.com/jacob-zuma-likes-to-be-cast-as-a-man-of-the-people-but-is-he-50665">base is eroding</a>. The loyalty of its traditional supporters is declining; it is failing to attract support among “born-frees” (those born after Mandela’s release in 1990); its narrative of having liberated the country from apartheid is <a href="http://www.africansunmedia.co.za/Sun-e-Shop/Product-Details/tabid/78/ProductID/535/Default.aspx">wearing tired and thin</a>; and the different commissions of inquiry are going to uncover more and more dirt as the campaign goes on. </p>
<p>So, what is the party going to be doing to win back the vote of the disillusioned?</p>
<h2>The campaign</h2>
<p>ANC elections head Fikile Mbalula recently acknowledged that the party has allowed itself to become mired in <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-10-11-heads-will-roll-over-vbs-scandal-vows-fikile-mbalula/">“the sins of incumbency”</a>, to have become distanced from its base, arrogant and unaccountable. Under Ramaphosa, therefore, it will be making fulsome promises of renewal. The ANC will claim that the establishment of the various commissions of inquiry signal a determined assault on corruption, and indicate that the party’s bad apples will be thrown out. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in all humility, the ANC is promising to renew its bonds with the people. This will involve a country wide process of consultation with what Mbalula has referred to as “strategic sectors of society” in a bid to “broaden and deepen participation” the drawing up of a <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/2022402/anc-changes-tack-with-cyrils-peoples-manifesto/">“People’s Manifesto”</a>. </p>
<p>Amid all this, the party will be promising to build on Ramaphosa’s various reform initiatives to return the economy to growth. </p>
<p>The ANC’s major problem is that none of this is going to be particularly convincing. The gospel of the party’s commitment to virtue and renewal is going to be a hard sell to a corruption-weary electorate. </p>
<p>Its base divided and increasingly cynical, the ANC knows that it is going to have to look for support beyond its normal boundaries. It knows all too well that it is likely to lose important ground to the radical Economic Freedom Fighters. It knows that it may have a hard time in getting the voters out in KwaZulu-Natal, where support for Zuma remains strong. It knows that many of its traditional supporters may be tempted to record their disgust with the party by staying at home. </p>
<p>Given all this, the ANC knows that it will have to play to Ramaphosa as its one major asset. A Ramaphosa-centred strategy is likely to work because there is no credible alternative as a party of government to the ANC. </p>
<p>The main opposition Democratic Alliance will again go unchallenged in the Western Cape, and may do surprisingly well in provincial elections in provinces such as Gauteng and Eastern Cape, based upon its “better-than-the-ANC” record in local government. But at the same time it may well suffer at national level because its conservative constituency fear the prospect of the ANC losing its majority and being forced into a coalition with Julius Malema and the EFF. In short, some will hold their noses, and vote for Ramaphosa and the ANC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall receives funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>The ANC has lost so much support among its traditional voters it’s now forced to look beyond them to retain power.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1056112018-10-25T13:42:40Z2018-10-25T13:42:40ZBolsonaro’s victory is likely to see Brazil scale down Africa interests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242100/original/file-20181024-71011-p1gf7n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro on the campaign trail in Rio.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> FEF-EPA/Marcelo Sayao</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>His first son is a senator for the state of Rio do Janeiro. His second son a municipal councillor in the city of Rio, and his third is a federal deputy for the state of São Paulo. And he himself has served seven terms as deputy and as member of several political parties. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/who-is-jair-bolsonaro-brazil-13470717">Jair Bolsonaro</a>, the favourite candidate for Brazil’s upcoming runoff presidential elections, likes to present himself as a new man who operates outside of the “system”. </p>
<p>The rhetoric of a new man, untainted by the culture of corruption that prevails among the political class, is a powerful device. It’s succeeded in folding the interests of disparate social categories into those of seasoned right wing politicians.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro is candidate for the Social Liberty Party. He’s the author of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/24/planet-populists-brazil-jair-bolsonaro-environment">incendiary pronouncements</a>, happily racist, misogynist and homophobic. The former army captain has managed to coalesce eclectic crowds whose commitment to democracy depends on the exclusion of entire sections of Brazilian society. He has colossal support among Brazil’s prolific evangelical communities. These have re-purposed their religious fervour to passionate hate and the <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/08/radicalismo-de-bolsonaro-afasta-parte-dos-evangelicos-afirmam-lideres.shtml">demonising of adversaries</a>.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro assuages the fears of a middle class that feels it’s lost privilege. He also confirms their aversion for Brazil’s internal “others” – namely black Brazilians and various Indian communities. In fact, he promises to keep privilege spaces of university education, residential suburbs and commercial spaces free from poor people. </p>
<p>For Bolsonaro, the choice Brazilians have to make is rather simple: it’s either “prosperity, freedom, family and God” – in other words him, or “the path of Venezuela”. In other words <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/39073-Bolsonaro-Prosperity-Freedom-Family-and-God-Or-The-Path-Of-Venezuela">Fernando Haddad’s Workers’ Party</a>.</p>
<p>In the first round of elections, Bolsonaro’s party secured 46% of the total vote. Haddad’s Workers’ party secured 29%. Haddad is routinely the victim of his opponent’s foul mouth. Bolsonaro is a slavery-denialist, who claims that the Portuguese never set foot in Africa and that Africans themselves <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/07/portugueses-nem-pisaram-na-africa-diz-bolsonaro.shtml">“delivered” slaves to Brazil</a>. </p>
<p>Needless to say his views on Africa are narrowly informed by the prism of Brazil’s uneasy, strained and unresolved racial question. As a result, his government can be expected to scale back Brazil’s engagements with the continent.</p>
<h2>The end of Lula’s Africa moment?</h2>
<p>Bolsonaro is expected to turn threats by the current administration to close Brazilian embassies in Africa into policies. Cutbacks on <a href="https://www.brasil247.com/pt/247/mundo/232642/Serra-pode-fechar-embaixadas-na-%C3%81frica-e-no-Caribe.htm">scholarships for African students</a> are also expected.</p>
<p>At home he’s expected to put further restrictions on immigration and to withdraw into national priorities. These include Brazil’s economic doldrums, its fractured society, the high levels of crimes and more crucially the <a href="http://diplomaciacivil.org.br/eleicoes-2018-as-propostas-de-haddad-e-bolsonaro-para-politica-externa-e-educacao/">economic recession</a>.</p>
<p>The only area where a Bolsonaro government policy might intersect with previous policy could be the military cooperation and the trade in military equipment.</p>
<p>If little is known about Bolsonaro’s views on foreign policy in relation to Africa, his running mate, General Hamilton Mourão, has been very clear. During a recent speech he criticised Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff’s South-South diplomacy claiming that it had resulted in costly association with “dirtbag scum” countries (African) that did <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-Bolsonaros-VP-Running-Mate-Calls-Africans-Dirt-Bag-20180918-0004.html">not yield any “returns</a>.</p>
<p>Africa was the centrepiece of Lula da Silva’s geopolitical aspirations for Brazilian status in an expanded and reformed multilateralism. In eight years of his presidency he visited 27 African countries over 12 trips. </p>
<p>But Brazil’s Africa moment had already began to fade under Rousseff. The election of Bolsonaro is likely to signal the beginning of the end of Africa-Brazil relations as we know them. It could even mean the end of the five country grouping known as <a href="http://www.brics2018.org.za/what-brics">BRICS</a> as he has promised to review Brazil’s <a href="https://www.as-coa.org/articles/brazil-election-where-jair-bolsonaro-and-fernando-haddad-stand-foreign-policy">participation in the coalition</a>.</p>
<p>Brazil’s relations with Africa have been particularly strong with the Lusophone countries of Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, and Sao Tome and Principe. Angola in particular became a springboard in Brazil’s expansion into the South Atlantic <a href="https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/brazil-and-africa-bridge-south-atlantic">beyond the Lusophone world</a>.</p>
<p>Lula da Silva sought to institutionalise the new Global South framework in the form of a biannual Africa South America Summit and also through the <a href="http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/en/politica-externa/mecanismos-inter-regionais/7495-india-brazil-south-africa-ibsa-dialogue-forum">India, Brazil South Africa Dialogue Forum</a>. He doubled Brazil’s diplomatic presence in Africa between 2000 and 2010. By 2010 there were <a href="http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0034-73292010000300013">39 embassies</a>. Over the same period, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-muggah/what-is-brazil-really-doi_b_6413568.html">18 African embassies </a>opened in Brasilia.</p>
<p>These various initiatives fed a momentum in Brazil’s rise to global prominence. Brazil was for instance able to get José Graziano da Silva elected Director-General of the UN <a href="http://www.fao.org/home/en/">Food and Agriculture Organisation</a> with the strong support of African countries. </p>
<p>Beyond punctual strategies, Brazil’s engagement with Africa served to enhance its global standing and to buttress Brazil’s ambition to become a leading voice of the Global South.</p>
<h2>Economic strategies</h2>
<p>Brazil’s economic strategies took an expansionist pattern similar to that of other emerging powers. They targeted resources-rich and fast growing economies. Main export destinations were Egypt and Nigeria. Imports come mainly from Algeria and Nigeria. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2013, trade between Brazil and Africa expanded from $USD4.3 to <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-muggah/what-is-brazil-really-doi_b_6413568.html">USD$28.5 billion</a>. But it dropped by <a href="https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/brazil-and-africa-bridge-south-atlantic">USD$12.4 billion</a> in 2016 following economic recession and political upheaval in Brazil. </p>
<p>Brazil’s economic engagement with Africa is not without its problems. For instance, the infrastructure giant Odebrecht is at the heart of Operação Lava-Jato (Operation Car War) which exposed the largest corruption scandal in the history of modern democracy. It involved over 200 leaders across the political and business sectors and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39194395">over USD$2 billion</a>.</p>
<p>Under Bolsonaro, economic ties can be expected to take a different turn. Institutions such as the <a href="https://www.embrapa.br/en/about-us">Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation</a> can be expected to grow in prominence in Africa as he makes a big push for agro-business expansion. This will come with its own set of problems, notably pollution caused by fertilisers and attendant health risks. That, however, is unlikely to deter him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Niang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jair Bolsonaro has very rightwing views likely to put a final nail in the coffin off Brazil’s Africa moment spearheaded by former president Lula da Silva.Amy Niang, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Wist University, Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1011462018-08-22T08:59:22Z2018-08-22T08:59:22ZRwanda wants to be a Francophone leader – even though it distrusts France<p>For <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/ea/Rwanda-campaigns-for-leadership-of-Francophonie-group-/4552908-4626340-brtgbhz/index.html">more than a year now</a> Rwanda has been campaigning enthusiastically to be the next leader of the <a href="https://www.francophonie.org/Welcome-to-the-International.html">Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie</a>, an organisation of French-speaking states that have political, social and economic connections with France. The new secretary-general will be chosen at the Francophonie’s upcoming summit in Armenia in October. Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, is already <a href="https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20180128/president-paul-kagame-elected-new-chairperson-african-union-year-2018">chair of the African Union</a>, so if his country nets the Francophonie seat, it will lead two of the world’s largest regional and global organisations. </p>
<p>Rwanda’s minister of foreign affairs and co-operation, Louise Mushikiwabo, is campaigning to become the Francophonie’s secretary-general. She’s focusing on <a href="http://lmfrancophonie.com/">four main issues</a>: increasing the influence of the French language around the world, elevating Francophone countries within political and economic international debates, tackling youth unemployment, and exchanging governance practices (encompassing everything from national reconciliation practices to better tax collection systems).</p>
<p>These goals are admirable, and they address some pressing issues facing many Francophone nations. But what makes Rwanda’s Francophonie campaign particularly interesting is the country’s complicated relationship with France. To this day, the two countries’ relations are strained – and many attribute the tension to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ffcbc7ea-df59-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c">France’s failure to accept</a> its historical role in the 1994 genocide. </p>
<h2>Dark times</h2>
<p>Before the genocide began, the French and Rwandan governments had worked together closely for years. Then-president Juvénal Habyarimana shared close relations with his French counterpart, François Mitterand. Scholar <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-rwanda-crisis/9780231104098">Gerard Prunier</a> has described how at the time, French officials distrusted the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), then a Uganda-based rebel group of Rwandan exiles, which it considered part of an Anglo-American attempt to undercut France’s influence in central Africa.</p>
<p>This concern led France to boost its support of Habyarimana despite his government’s ethnic-based public policies, which hindered and victimised Rwanda’s domestic Tutsi population – and which ultimately set the stage for the genocide.</p>
<p>Habyarimana was killed when his Falcon 50 plane was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/12/rwanda-hutu-president-plane-inquiry">shot down</a> by unknown assailants on April 6 1994, triggering the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi Rwandans. The plane itself was a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/03/world/france-s-rwanda-connection.html">French gift</a>, and was piloted by a French crew.</p>
<p>What’s particularly troubling for the current Rwandan government and genocide survivors is the history of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/11/rwanda.insideafrica">French assistance in the formation and training of the Interahamwe</a>, the killing squads that spearheaded the genocide.</p>
<p>After the Rwandan Civil War began in 1990, France provided arms and sent military personal to Rwanda in order to train Interhamwe forces. Journalist <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo20851207.html">Linda Melvern</a> has researched the close relationship between French and Rwandan officials, and described how France sent military teams of “advisers” and “technical assistants” to prepare not only the Rwandan military but the Interhamwe to stop the RPF and their allies at all costs. France has never fully accepted its responsibility for the consequences.</p>
<p>Since taking power and leading the formation of a post-genocide Rwandan state, the RPF government has consistently held sceptical views of France and French identity. Post-genocide reconstruction has largely tried to turn away from French influence in politics and society. The most pressing example <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/jan/16/rwanda-english-genocide">is the demotion of the French language</a>.</p>
<p>Despite Mushikiwabo’s campaign to increase the language’s relevance in the international community, domestically speaking, French has been steadily demoted. It is no longer the country’s primary language (alongside Kinyarwanda) as it was in the past. <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97245421">Since 2008</a>, English has overtaken French as the primary state-recognised foreign language, and Swahili was recently <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/207840">added to the list</a>.</p>
<p>But the demotion of French isn’t just about France’s troubling history in Rwanda; it also reflects a generational shift. The bureaucrats and officials who fought in the Rwandan Civil War (1990-1994) and the genocide have slowly been replaced by a new generation of English-speaking Rwandans. Additionally, many Rwandan elites within the government and private sector consider adopting English a matter of necessity, since it’s generally perceived as the primary language of international trade.</p>
<h2>Leading the way</h2>
<p>Set against this background, Rwanda’s campaign to lead the Francophonie looks odd indeed. After all, back in <a href="http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/rwanda">2009</a> the country went in the other direction by joining the British Commonwealth; among the organisation’s 53 members, only Rwanda and Mozambique lack any particular historical connection with the UK.</p>
<p>At the time, Mushikiwabo <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/rwanda/6685316/Rwanda-joins-the-Commonwealth.html">described</a> Rwanda entering the Commonwealth as an opportunity for the nation’s development: “Rwandans are ready to seize economic, political, cultural and other opportunities offered by the Commonwealth network.” But there’s more to this move than meets the eye. In interviews since 2012, Rwandan informants within the government, private sector and civil society have often described to me how joining the Commonwealth was an “anti-French” decision.</p>
<p>So why is Rwanda campaigning to lead the Francophonie anyway? Just as it currently holds the chair of the African Union, Mushikiwabo’s campaign to lead the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie is part of a larger project: to foster a new international identity and promote state interests around the world. Rwandan elites want the international community to perceive their country as a primary gatekeeper as they try to engage with Africa.</p>
<p>These leadership positions not only boost national self-esteem, but allow the Rwandan elite to strike international agreements that can foster development. The resulting relationships can be used not only to promote Rwandan interests, but to deflect international criticism for questionable <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/rwanda">domestic and regional human rights abuses</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24424868">interfering with neighbouring states</a>. If Rwanda wins the campaign for secretary-general, it will have to somehow not let its past history with France interfere with its grand plans for global influence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Beloff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the 1994 genocide, Rwanda pivoted towards the Anglophone world. But not entirely.Jonathan Beloff, Teaching Fellow, Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1009562018-08-02T08:46:52Z2018-08-02T08:46:52ZZimbabwe’s historic elections: a case of leopards not changing their spots<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230371/original/file-20180802-136664-1fjyzcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protest against polling results in Harare, Zimbabwe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe’s general elections on July 30 <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zimbabwes-first-elections-after-the-mugabe-ouster-are-so-significant-100505">were being labelled</a> as “historic”. For the first time since independence in 1980, the ballot paper featured the faces of new presidential candidates, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Nelson Chamisa. And, prior to the poll, there was no large scale violence by security institutions and youth militia, as had happened previously.</p>
<p>Indeed, the elections were peaceful and voters turned out in large numbers. But that’s where the good news ended <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/zanu-pf-wins-majority-of-seats-in-zimbabwe-parliament-elections">as violence broke out</a> after the release of the parliamentary results. </p>
<p>Supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)- Alliance led by Chamisa marched to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s command centre protesting against the slow release of the presidential election results. The parliamentary results were released early in the day, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/997207/Zimbabwe-election-results-2018-Mnangagwa-Chamisa-who-won">giving Zanu-PF (68%) of the seats</a>. The MDC-Alliance was insinuating that the presidential results were being rigged. </p>
<p>The day before any results were released MDC-Alliance leaders had upped the ante <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/mdc-alliance-has-won-zimbabwe-elections-says-proud-chamisa-16330459">by announcing they’d won</a>, and saying that they wouldn’t accept any other result.</p>
<p>The army and police responded to protesters with the familiar brutality, leaving <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-zimbabwes-presidential-results-expected-shortly-56958220">three people dead</a>. In the space of two hours Zimbabwe went from having peaceful, free and fair elections, to ones marred by violence and accusations of fraud. The promise of a new dawn seemed to vanish instantaneously. </p>
<p>What went wrong? Are the parliamentary election results a reflection of voter rigging or of the MDC-Alliance’s own weaknesses?</p>
<p>Zimbabwe needed these elections to be credible, no matter who won. A legitimate government – with a strong mandate – can develop and implement a much needed national development plan to fix the country’s shattered economy. </p>
<p>Both presidential candidates and political parties promised peace and a new beginning. But, when the chips were down and the votes began to show a familiar trend of Zanu-PF dominance, both parties resorted to old tactics. MDC-Alliance resorted to disruption and discrediting the elections while Zanu-PF, through the security establishment, used undue force.</p>
<p>Accusations and counter accusations of who was to blame became the order of the day as they both plunged the country back into familiar chaos. These leopards were now revealing that they had not changed their spots, in full view of an international community they were hoping would come and invest after an election. </p>
<h2>Zanu-PF</h2>
<p>Last November the governing Zanu-PF ushered in a new political dispensation, via a military assisted transition that <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-mugabe-why-the-role-of-zimbabwes-army-cant-be-trusted-87872">ousted former president Robert Mugabe</a>. The party was never going to hand over power on a silver platter and would have been preparing for a win in what they no doubt expected to be a competitive race. </p>
<p>Zanu-PF always had the upper hand given its 38 years in power since independence. It had access to more funding, including state resources, that enabled it to run a more effective campaign. Its many huge billboards, advertising a re-imaged Mnangagwa, new vehicles and a flood of green party paraphernalia all indicated that it had invested large amounts of money in these elections. </p>
<p>The party also benefited from a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-vicious-online-propaganda-war-that-includes-fake-news-is-being-waged-in-zimbabwe-99402">biased state media</a>. And it could also still ride on the wave of the sweeping changes it had brought about from November 2017, which included opening up the democratic space in terms of freedom of speech and association and movement. </p>
<p>The fact that these elections were held in full view of international and regional observers, that political parties were allowed to campaign freely, and that the run up to the polling day was largely peaceful, could all be credited to their new form of governance.</p>
<h2>MDC-Alliance</h2>
<p>The MDC-Alliance went into the elections on a weak footing. They were fractured, having brought five parties together very recently in an alliance through the efforts of the young Chamisa. They didn’t have enough resources, nor time to mobilise effectively, though they still attracted thousands to their rallies in urban areas.</p>
<p>But the MDC-Alliance ran a campaign that focused mainly on the presidential elections. They pinned their hopes on Chamisa being able to woo a predominantly young Zimbabwean population eager to see change. </p>
<p>But after votes had been caste, the behaviour of the alliance’s two leaders left a lot to be desired. Tendai Biti and Chamisa <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-07-31-weve-won-say-both-the-opposition-mdc-and-ruling-zanu-pf/">declared themselves</a> the winners of the presidential poll well before election results were announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. They also said they would not accept any result that did not declare them the victors.</p>
<p>This could have been partly responsible for the violence that erupted.</p>
<p>At a time when they needed to show good leadership, they employed the usual tactics of discrediting electoral processes before results were even announced. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the electoral commission took a long time to release the presidential results (citing procedures for the delay). This was bound to exacerbate tensions in a country with such very low trust in the electoral process. </p>
<p>The electoral commission has always been accused of being <a href="https://zwnews.com/chigumba-wears-ed-mnangagwas-scarf/">biased towards Zanu-PF</a>. It should have developed mechanisms to alleviate distrust, and come up with a strategy to ensure that results were released without delay and through proper channels, and not through social media.</p>
<p>There were a few irregularities that were noted by all the observer missions. These included the voters’ roll not being available on time, too many assisted voters, the lack of an effective communication strategy by the electoral commission, media bias, and intimidation of voters, especially of women candidates.</p>
<p>It was certainly not a level playing field. But, the environment and irregularities were not deemed to be at a scale big enough to jeopardise the credibility of the elections. </p>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>It’s time political parties and individuals put their narrow self interests aside and act on behalf of Zimbabwe as a whole. This is the only way for the country to move forward. </p>
<p>If the MDC-Alliance claims Zanu-PF rigged the elections with the help of the electoral commission, the onus is on them to prove it. Till then, both parties need to sort out their differences as quickly and as peacefully as possible for the sake of the people of Zimbabwe, who have endured much hardship because of political elites intent on serving their own interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Hendricks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the MDC-Alliance claims Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe’s electoral commission rigged the elections, the onus is on them to prove it.Cheryl Hendricks, Executive director, Africa Institute of South Africa, Human Sciences Research CouncilLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006792018-07-27T16:17:05Z2018-07-27T16:17:05ZZimbabwe poll explained: ballot papers galore, and loads of new politicians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229580/original/file-20180727-106517-sf0fv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">MDC-Alliance supporters at a campaign rally addressed by the party leader Nelson Chamisa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Zimbabeans go to the polls they will be voting in what’s been dubbed <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zimbabwes-harmonised-elections-too-close-to-call-15411721">“harmonised” elections</a>.</p>
<p>When I see the word “harmony” used in the context of Zimbabwean politics, I shudder a bit. Instead of turning my gaze to the complicated combination of votes to be cast in this election, the term takes my mind back to the Zimbabwe African National Union’s (Zanu) guerrilla camps based in Mozambique in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2017.1273537?src=recsys">mid-1977</a>. </p>
<p>Zanu had been through some tough years. In early 1975, the Lusaka-based national chairman Herbert Chitepo and his Volkswagen Beetle were <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21858">blown to bits</a> – just after a rebellion had been quelled. Robert Mugabe used the word “harmony” chillingly at the historic Chimoio central committee meeting as he took a large and nearly final step towards consolidating his rule over the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/rMgI4U3XnXMEkDA33t4X/full">fractious party and its army</a>.</p>
<p>Mugabe was referring to the 1974 rebellion and another perceived one in 1976 when he uttered these chilling words, to be printed and published in Zimbabwe News, Zanu’s globally circulated magazine. He <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.nuzn197707_final.pdf">warned</a> that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Zanu axe must continue to fall upon the necks of rebels when we find it no longer possible to persuade them into the harmony that binds us all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, we can forget these menacing words now, when those striving to change the country’s leadership can do so via the ballot box (as long as the slips deposited in it are counted correctly) and a vigorously debated campaign (given no intimidation and open violence). </p>
<p>But the process is complicated. Voters much chose the next president from 23 candidates. They must also choose MPS from over 1 600 candidates for 210 parliamentary seats. Then they will have to chose from thousands more contenders for municipal councillors’ <a href="http://archive.kubatana.net/docs/demgg/rau_mayor_ele_zim_legisl_131029.pdf">posts</a>. There are also 60 senators – each of the 10 provinces have six each, half of whom are women. But the voters don’t have to choose them: they are on party lists and will fit in according to proportional representation. </p>
<p>All make for a huge number of ballot papers, and a large contingent of new politicians. </p>
<h2>What is a ‘harmonised’ election?</h2>
<p>From 1980 to 2008 Zimbabwean voters experienced a plethora of electoral forms, but not a lot of real choice. There was a prime minister and his ceremonial president surrounded by MPs. Until 1987, 20 of the parliament’s 100 seats were reserved for whites.</p>
<p>After 1987 things became close to one-partyism. Robert Mugabe assumed far-reaching powers and soon had no limits to his terms. This was after the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi massacre</a> of thousands of Matabeleland-and Midland-based Zimbabweans in which current President Emmerson Mnangagwa played a key <a href="https://www.sithatha.com/books">role</a>. It also followed Joshua Nkomo’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/content/chapter-two-brief-history-context-zapu-guerrillas">Zapu-PF</a>, the long-time opposition party overwhelmed by Zanu’s violence, being swallowed into Zanu. </p>
<p>By 1990 the presidential race took place every six years and parliament’s twice per decade, including a Senate reinstated after 2005.</p>
<p>The system changed again in 2008 – a game changer year in many respects. Since then, Zimbabwe’s voters have made many electoral choices with one visit to the polling station every five years. They have deposited their choices for presidents, the 210 MPs as well as local councillors in their separate boxes. </p>
<p>The presidential choices in the first round of the 2008 election resulted in less than the 50%+1 majority needed for either Mugabe (at about 43%) or Morgan Tsvangirai (at around 48%) to claim victory. Thus a run-off was <a href="http://concernedafricascholars.org/docs/acasbulletin80.pdf">required</a>. </p>
<p>The vengeance wreaked by Mugabe’s henchmen was so bad – at least 170 MDC, and some Zanu-PF voters who split their presidential and assembly votes, were killed and hundreds more <a href="http://www.hrforumzim.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/200812MPVR.pdf">abducted or beaten</a> – that Tsvangirai withdrew. This led the Southern African Development Community to push for a <a href="http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/store/history-and-%20politics/the-hard-road-to-reform-detail">government of national unity</a>. </p>
<p>Violence like this wasn’t repeated in 2013, although that election was <a href="https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/717/715">suspect in many ways</a>.</p>
<h2>New goalposts</h2>
<p>Now we have another contest, with new goalposts. No more <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/16/robert-mugabe-zimbabwe-disgraceful-coup-must-be-undone">Mugabe</a>. No more <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-morgan-tsvangirai-heroic-herald-of-an-epoch-foretold-91845">Tsvangirai</a>. At last count Nelson Chamisa and Mnangagwa were only separated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwe-poll-the-bar-for-success-is-low-the-stakes-are-high-and-its-a-close-race-100100">three percentage points</a>. </p>
<p>The other 21 runners – some more or less planted by Zanu-PF to confuse things while others are angry splinters from the main <a href="https://www.myzimbabwe.co.zw/news/24888-full-list-of-all-the-133-political-parties-that-are-going-to-contest-in-zimbabwes-2018-elections.html">contenders</a> – do not amount to much, unless they help keep the winner’s margin down under 50%. </p>
<p>A runoff? Such a nuisance and so scary. Maybe a wee fudge of counting would make a respectable win for the incumbent amid lots of horsetrading to cool the ardour of the increasingly fiery aspirant.</p>
<p>Aside from the big race, the over 1 600 candidates for MPs (including less than 250 women) were chosen at some fairly shambolic primaries. Some constituencies, such as Bulawayo’s Pelandaba Mpopoma, host 17 candidates including two from the MDC-Alliance (which does not include Thokozani Khuphe’s MDC-T) and Strike Mkandla - who has experienced many bruising moments in his political <a href="https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Struggle-Liberation-Zimbabwe/dp/1496983238">history</a> - for Zapu. </p>
<p>If the election will be judged by the hundreds of international observers as credible and the parties accept the verdict, then harmony won peaceably – not by a falling axe – would have won. </p>
<p>That would be no small victory in itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Zimbabweans face a complicated array of choices at the polls.David B. Moore, Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; Professor of Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998592018-07-16T14:15:04Z2018-07-16T14:15:04ZCan Zimbabwe finally ditch a history of violence and media repression?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227563/original/file-20180713-27045-2alah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zanu-PF supporters at a peace rally in Harare.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe’s governing Zanu-PF is earnestly courting international legitimacy as the country approaches its first post-independence elections <a href="https://www.apnews.com/baee38cf5cd24282be5d7c332848a8b2">without Robert Mugabe</a>. </p>
<p>The party frequently uses clichés like “fresh start”, “new dispensation”, and “open for business” to signal its willingness to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/24/africa/zimbabwe-president-emmerson-mnangagwa-davos-intl/index.html">engage with the West</a>. The talk has been matched by some action.</p>
<p>The government has repudiated most of its <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/govt-amends-indigenisation-law/">indigenisation legislation</a>, and recently <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/62f28a38-5d0a-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04">applied to re-join</a> The Commonwealth. Additionally, <a href="https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/zimbabwe-invites-46-countries-to-observe-2018-polls/">46 countries and 15 regional bodies</a> have been invited to observe the elections. This includes many Western nations that had been excluded in recent years.</p>
<p>Their assessments will probably not be decided by technical factors. It seems unlikely that ongoing debates over <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/06/zec-under-fire-over-undelivered-voters-roll/">the voter’s roll</a> or the prominence of ex-military personnel in the <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/02/soldiers-make-15-zec-staff/">Zimbabwe Electoral Commission</a> will have much impact on the final judgements passed by the monitoring missions.</p>
<p>It’s more likely that the credibility of the elections will be shaped by issues such as political violence and media freedom. In both spheres, the legacy of colonialism and the liberation struggle weigh heavily. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-71015.html">breakaway party</a> from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) in 1963, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) emerged in a very fragile position. It endured violence against its members and was denied access to a free media. In later years, the party perpetrated and perpetuated the same tactics under which it was conceived – both as a liberation movement and in government.</p>
<p>There are a number of examples of how Zanu-PF drew on colonial-era repressive tactics in its post-independence quest for political primacy. These include the <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2018/01/31/gukurahundi-is-mugabe-s-baby">Gukurahundi violence</a> under the Mugabe led government in the 1980s against areas predominantly supporting Zapu, the government’s 2005 <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-operation-murambatsvina-overview-and-summary">Operation Murambatsvina</a> which targeted properties belonging mostly to urban opposition supporters, and the 2008 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/22/zimbabwe1">election run-off violence</a> after Mugabe lost the first round of voting.</p>
<p>As Zimbabweans head to the polls on July 30, this history looms large over the electorate and those responsible for overseeing its successful execution.</p>
<h2>History of political violence</h2>
<p>In July 1960, unprecedented protests in Zimbabwe’s two largest cities ushered in a new era of political violence in the British colony. A year later violence erupted within the liberation movement itself. In June 1961, the first significant attempt to form a breakaway nationalist movement in Zimbabwe was thwarted. Members of the <a href="https://zimhistassociation.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/the-first-split-in-zimbabwes-anti-colonial-struggle-continues-to-cast-shadows-over-contemporary-politics/">Zimbabwe National Party</a> (ZNP) were physically prevented from launching the party at their own press conference by <a href="http://www.sundaynews.co.zw/events-leading-to-banning-of-ndp/">National Democratic Party</a> (NDP) sympathisers.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227581/original/file-20180713-27024-1a70nja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ill-fated efforts of the ZNP would have been prominent in the minds of Zanu founders when it was formed two years later. </p>
<p>Zapu, which replaced the NDP after it was banned, went to great lengths to beat Zanu into submission. The houses of Mugabe and Ndabaningi Sithole, the top leaders in Zanu, <a href="http://cba1415.web.unc.edu/files/2014/07/zapu.pdf">were stoned</a> after the new party was launched.</p>
<p>As other African nations became independent and Zimbabwe remained under minority rule, frustration mounted. This led to a determination to achieve majority rule by any means. A <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/arts/roots-political-violence-go-deep-zimbabwe">culture of political violence</a> became institutionalised.</p>
<h2>Media Repression</h2>
<p>Assaults on the media were particularly prominent under white minority rule following the unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/40-years-on-from-udi-zimbabwe-is-still-paying-the-price-1-1101979">Censors </a> redacted broad swathes of news stories, littering papers with blank pages.</p>
<p>This overt censorship was but a new manifestation of a repressive media heritage. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/blcas/welensky.html">Political papers</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/07/world/sir-roy-welensky-84-premier-of-african-federation-is-dead.html">Roy Welensky</a>, the second Prime Minister of the Federation to which Southern Rhodesia belonged from 1953 - 1963, reveal the invidious nature of attempts to control the press. His government covertly worked with journalists and editors to produce articles critical of the white opposition in newspapers that were nominally independent. He also consulted with the white publishers of newspapers geared toward a black audience about ways to promote his government.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol23n2/juz023002004.pdf"><em>Central African Examiner</em></a>, a news magazine that was theoretically independent and had links with <em>The Economist</em>, changed editors in the middle of the 1958 elections. The new editor, David Cole, was Welensky’s public relations adviser. </p>
<p>In 1961 the government considered blocking the sale of the colony’s newspaper titles catering to a predominantly black audience to the Thomson Newspaper Group. The concern was that it would be difficult to influence the editorial policy of papers with foreign ownership. Meanwhile, newspapers geared toward a predominantly white audience and owned by the South African based Argus Press were not seen as posing a threat.</p>
<p>The sale went ahead. But in August 1964 both the African Daily News (which had a pro-Zapu bias) and Zanu <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol6n2/juz006002015.pdf">were banned</a>. </p>
<p>Zanu learnt the importance of media control in its early years. Once in power it exerted its own influence. Forty years after Zanu and the <em>African Daily News</em> were proscribed, Zanu-PF replicated the tactics when it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/jan/22/pressandpublishing.Zimbabwenews">banned a newspaper, also known as the Daily News</a> amid a media clampdown.</p>
<h2>Eyes on Mnangagwa</h2>
<p>While President Emmerson Mnangagwa has backtracked from Mugabe’s more confrontational rhetoric, his political career is nearly as long as his predecessor’s. His political upbringing was profoundly shaped by the repressive measures the nationalists endured and took up in the 1960s to dismantle the unjust system that governed them.</p>
<p>Zanu-PF’s assaults on the media and penchant for violence are reflective of similar tactics that were used against the party during the colonial era. And they have been critical to its ability to <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/06/10/violence-dominates-zim-political-history/">obtain and retain power</a> for 37 years. </p>
<p>Will Zimbabwe be able to turn the corner and move toward a more equitable election campaign in which the historic trajectory of media repression and political violence is fundamentally altered? If the answer is yes, Mnangagwa will have made a significant stride in truly ushering in a “<a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-first-100-days-of-the-new-dispensation/">new dispensation</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooks Marmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The credibility of Zimbabwe’s elections will depend on issues like political violence and media freedom.Brooks Marmon, PhD Student, Centre of African Studies, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/996212018-07-12T14:45:50Z2018-07-12T14:45:50ZANC won’t fix internal strife unless it addresses root causes of discontent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227392/original/file-20180712-27030-12221dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ANC members show their support for party leader and president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenton Geech/EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), is in crisis less than a year before a general election expected to be held in mid-2019. If it wants to end the crisis, it may have to do something about which it talks a great deal, but does little – trust its members.</p>
<p>The ANC has been in crisis for years, as its own <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/sites/default/files/54th-Conf-Organisational-Report.pdf">documents confirm</a>. Its regional and provincial leadership elections are almost routinely challenged as losers claim the winners broke the rules. Often the challenges centre on claims that the process in which branches send delegates to conferences was flawed.</p>
<p>It was this crisis which ensured that the ANC could choose leaders last December only because the contesting factions made a deal to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-deal-with-provincial-strongmen-is-haunting-south-africas-ruling-party-96666">share positions</a>. Without that bargain, the losers would have cried foul. There was no guarantee that the conference would continue – and every certainty that, if it did, the outcome would be tested in court.</p>
<p>The deal kept the ANC afloat, but did nothing to ensure that anyone in the governing party trusts its processes or that there’s a structure in the ANC with enough credibility to settle disputes and convince the losers, or those who fear they will lose, that the processes are fair.</p>
<p>This crisis could grow as the ANC <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/anc-kzn-almost-ready-to-hold-its-provincial-conference-jessie-duarte-20180711">chooses candidates</a> for its 2019 election lists. Much is at stake. Who is chosen will decide which faction dominates in national and provincial parliaments. And, because economic opportunities in the market are limited, winning a place on the list which gets you a seat can, for many, be a ticket into the middle class. </p>
<p>So a <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2018-05-22-thousands-attend-kzn-anc-protest-rally-over-political-killings/">heated contest</a> seems certain and the ANC’s current performance makes it likely that losers will claim they were done down. Since <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/editorials/2017-12-13-editorial-anc-needs-to-watch-the-polls/">voting trends </a>(in local by-elections which give a sense of who voters are supporting) suggest that the ANC will win next year’s election comfortably, the battle to choose candidates may be far more damaging to it than the election.</p>
<h2>Millions excluded</h2>
<p>Part of the reason for the crisis is the ANC’s failure to tackle the exclusion of millions from the mainstream economy. Because it has not engaged key economic interests in negotiations on opening up the economy, politics for many of its members is not about public service or status but about looking for resources. </p>
<p>Even if it plans to address this urgently – and there is no sign it does – the problem will take years to fix. So its elections will remain, at least in part, a battle to make it in the economy and there will be huge incentives to break the rules. This means that it will remain in crisis unless it looks at its own organisational problems.</p>
<p>It has recognised these problems – it excels at identifying its woes and discussing them openly. But, although it has debated remedies and set up teams to deal with them, its willingness to say what is wrong is not matched by an ability to put it right.</p>
<p>This is because the problems are deep rooted. But it is also because the ANC has done little or nothing to fix the structures where the problem starts – its branches. The more than 3 000 branches are the core element of ANC decision-making. They nominate candidates for office and choose most of the delegates at conferences who vote for leaders. They are also meant to be the units in which ANC members discuss policy. But ANC documents and other sources report constant claims that branches are constituted, or operate, in ways which are irregular. </p>
<h2>Broken branches</h2>
<p>The ANC routinely insists that the branches are all-important. And it does try sometimes to put out fires at branch level. But it has never begun a concerted effort to ensure that the branches really are where power lies and where members can express themselves openly. </p>
<p>ANC leaders would hotly deny this. It is an article of faith within the organisation that the leaders are simply servants of the members in the branches. But many branch members complain about being ignored, bullied into supporting factions or generally being treated like useful weapons in the battles between elites.</p>
<p>Making sure branches wield real power and allow members a say is difficult –because so many are excluded from the economy, some do join branches in the hope of attaching themselves to politicians who will steer resources their way. But it is not impossible. Many members belong to branches because they care about the ANC and the country. Many are unhappy with vote-buying and corruption and would fight it if they were taken seriously.</p>
<p>It is also essential. The only way to fix the ANC is to make sure that the branches have power to fend off those who would buy or bully them and to hold to account leaders who look after themselves, not citizens.</p>
<h2>Holding leaders to account</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most common refrain in this country is that we need “leadership”. But leaders do what the people want only if the people are strong enough to make sure they do. That is as true for the ANC as for the country.</p>
<p>If it wants elections that are about who has most support, not who is better at rigging branches and pushing them around, it has no option but to make sure that its branches really do call the shots.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The problem with South Africa’s governing ANC, is that to many of its members, politics is not about public service but about resources.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/992282018-07-04T13:45:31Z2018-07-04T13:45:31ZZimbabwe’s first Mugabe-free election: Mnangagwa promises Western cash, but little else<p>Zimbabwe’s elections on July 30 will be the first Robert Mugabe has not contested. At the time of writing, he is in Singapore receiving medical treatment – as he was so often during the later years of his presidency. Rumours abound as to what type of medical care he receives there, ranging from simple treatment for eye complaints to radical cancer therapy. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, his successor, Emerson Mnangagwa, is running strong in a campaign to earn an electoral mandate of his own. He recently survived a <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/06/mnangagwa-bombing-claim-a-life/">bomb attempt on his life</a> during a rally in the city of Bulawayo, and responded by pointing the finger at <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mnangagwas-govt-not-in-a-hurry-to-arrest-grace-mugabe-ally-says-aide-20180530">Grace Mugabe and her allies</a>. He has provided no evidence that she was involved.</p>
<p>Without Mugabe on the ballot in an election she was once keen to contest, Mnangagwa’s main opponent is instead an opposition alliance led by Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Chamisa has brought along with him many senior MDC figures who were alienated by his predecessor as opposition leader, the late Morgan Tsvangirai. But his party is far from fully united. And among those excluded are leaders from the Ndebele-speaking west of the country, an area with its own grievances against Mnangagwa for his involvement in the violent pogroms of the 1980s – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-policy-towards-zimbabwe-during-matabeleland-massacre-licence-to-kill-81574">Gukurahundi</a> – which left many thousands dead.</p>
<p>Mnangagwa’s would-be assassins in Bulawayo, capital of the western provinces, could just have easily have been Ndebele separatists as supporters of Grace Mugabe. Whatever the truth, Mnangagwa will be happy to leave the opposition divided – but nonetheless, ZANU-PF is not going to roll over and die just because the Mugabes are out of the picture.</p>
<p>In fact, Mnangagwa has made a virtue of not being Mugabe, promising a new start and making the claim that only he has the authoritative standing to persuade the West to reinvest in his country’s battered economy. The West, however, has made it clear that the key precondition for any major reinvestment would be a clean election.</p>
<h2>Above board</h2>
<p>This will probably be the cleanest election for many years in Zimbabwe. Chamisa and his MDC Alliance have gone largely unmolested, and Chamisa has held rallies in what were once no-go regions for the opposition. The MDC platform has been covered on state television, and a real effort has been made to give public indications of a fair campaign.</p>
<p>But questions still linger over the integrity of the electoral roll, the printing and vetting of the ballot papers, and how any biometric element of the election would work. And there are still plenty of senior military figures in Mnangagwa’s cabinet and inner circle.</p>
<p>Mnangagwa is certainly outspending his rivals, allocating huge sums to transport his candidates and cadres around rural areas – his ZANU-PF party’s traditional heartlands – and spending heavily on advertising in the cities. Where did this money come from? Chamisa has accused Mnangagwa of receiving <a href="http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/main/i-will-kick-out-chinese-investors-chamisa/">Chinese funding</a> for his campaign, but the truth is probably that state resources were funnelled into party coffers.</p>
<p>If Chamisa makes a late surge, will Mnangagwa and his comrades have enough leeway to get away with a rig? It’s not beyond imagining, nor beyond ZANU-PF’s capacity for contingency planning. But Mnangagwa is <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201806080069.html">ahead in the opinion polls</a> and most foreign diplomats feel he will win, even though Chamisa will push him hard.</p>
<p>What could Chamisa use to mount a late surge? Public opinion, for one thing; the government’s popular anti-corruption drive has seriously stalled, and the ZANU-PF elite’s flair for conspicuous consumption is untamed. Mnangagwa has no real plan, except to promise an influx of Western reinvestment. But then again, Chamisa has no plan either.</p>
<p>The West, in the spirit of “better the devil you know”, would probably prefer a Mnangagwa victory. Chamisa, for all his energy, is an unknown quantity – the various factions among his opposition alliance would have to be represented in his cabinet, and not all its leaders have exhibited much ministerial potential. </p>
<p>There is a huge field of presidential candidates apart from Mnangagwa and Chamisa, but none has secured much support. But their number, at least, does indicate that Zimbabwe’s political space is liberalising. The question is whether the election will continue that process – or whether a last-minute panic on the part of ZANU-PF will send it into reverse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99228/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Emmerson Mnangagwa blames Grace Mugabe for a failed bombing at a rally, his rivals try to find a way to close the gap.Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/982482018-06-24T07:21:37Z2018-06-24T07:21:37ZCameroon’s Anglophone crisis threatens national unity. The time for change is now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224195/original/file-20180621-137717-1xr78ht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cameroon's President Paul Biya has been in charge for nearly 40 years. His people want change.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/LINTAO ZHANG</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cameroon’s governance and security problems have historically attracted little outside attention. But this seems likely to change, for two reasons. The first is the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/cameroon-electoral-uncertainty-amid-multiple-security-threats">growing political crisis</a> in the Central African nation’s English-speaking region. The second is a <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/cameroon-opposition-party-picks-presidential-candidate-20180224">presidential election</a> scheduled for October 2018.</p>
<p>Roughly <a href="https://qz.com/1097892/cameroons-anglophone-crisis-is-danger-of-becoming-a-full-blown-conflict/">20% of the country’s population</a> of 24.6 million people are Anglophone. The majority are Francophone. The unfair domination of French-speaking politicians in government has long been the source of conflict.</p>
<p>Activists in the country’s Anglophone western regions are protesting their forced assimilation into the dominant Francophone society. They argue that this process violates their minority rights, which are <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-explains-why-cameroon-is-at-war-with-itself-over-language-and-culture-85401">protected under agreements that date back to the 1960s</a>. Anglophone political representation and involvement at many levels of society has dwindled since the Federal Republic of Cameroon became the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972. There are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/12/world/africa/ap-af-cameroon-deadly-violence.html">growing calls</a> for the Anglophone region to secede from Cameroon. </p>
<p>This festering conflict represents <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/cameroon-electoral-uncertainty-amid-multiple-security-threats">a major test</a> as Cameroonians prepare for the October elections.</p>
<p>Three things are urgently needed now in Cameroon. The first is to understand the origins of the crisis. The second is to support an inclusive national dialogue. And the third is to ensure that the 2018 elections are free and fair for all.</p>
<h2>Growing crisis</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgBBzrjMUI">Before 1961</a>, the Southern Cameroons were a British administered territory from Nigeria. They elected to join the Republic of Cameroon by UN plebiscite in 1961 around the time of decolonisation. </p>
<p>A power-sharing agreement was reached: the executive branch of government was meant to be shared by Francophones and Anglophones. But that agreement has not been upheld and, over the years, Anglophone political representation has been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgBBzrjMUI">steadily eroded</a>.</p>
<p>The crisis came to a head in late 2016 when lawyers, joined by teachers and others with similar grievances, led protests in major western cities demanding that the integrity of their professional institutions be protected and their minority rights respected. </p>
<p>President Paul Biya responded by deploying troops to the region and blocking internet access. When peaceful demonstrations were met with violent repression it exacerbated tensions and escalated the conflict to a national political crisis. </p>
<p>On 12 June 12 2018, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/12/world/africa/ap-af-cameroon-deadly-violence.html">Amnesty International issued a report</a> documenting human rights violations in Cameroon. <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/cameroon-electoral-uncertainty-amid-multiple-security-threats">The International Crisis Group says</a> that at least 120 civilians and 43 members of security forces <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-says-160-000-anglophone-cameroonians-fled-violence-145916871.html">have been killed</a> in the most recent waves of violence. </p>
<p>More than 20,000 people have fled to neighbouring Nigeria, and an estimated 160,000 are displaced within Cameroon. </p>
<p>Some human rights activists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/30/africas-next-civil-war-could-be-in-cameroon/?utm_term=.0880fcf57106">worry</a> that Cameroon could be the site of Africa’s next civil war.</p>
<p>Agbor Nkongho, an Anglophone human rights lawyer and director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, told the <em>Washington Post</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are gradually, gradually getting there (civil war). I’m not seeing the willingness of the government to try to find and address the issue in a way that we will not get there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another issue is that there are diverse views even within the Anglophone and Francophone communities about what would be best for Cameroon going forward.</p>
<h2>Obstacles to national unity</h2>
<p>In October 2017 the separatist leader Julius Ayuk Tabe declared the independence of the <a href="https://www.ambazonia.org/">Republic of Ambazonia</a>. His interim government laid claim to a territory whose borders are the same as the UN Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons under British rule (1922-1961). </p>
<p>The interim government’s spokesman, Nso Foncha Nkem, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL7HM47aqA8">invited</a> Francophones to leave the region and called on Anglophones in Biya’s “rubber-stamp” government to return to Ambazonia and support the movement. He also pleaded for unity, asking that Anglophones speak in one voice. </p>
<p>However, that call has not overcome the challenges posed by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgBBzrjMUI">diverse viewpoints</a> within the Anglophone population itself. Some favour secession. Others want to return to the 1961 federation and the power-sharing agreement. There are those who prefer decentralisation that would devolve power to regional leaders, and some who simply want an administrative solution that would leave the Republic of Cameroon as it stands. </p>
<p>And among the Francophone population, there is some support for the radical separatists, while some see the Anglophone situation as a general crisis of governance and others deny any problem exists. </p>
<p>Mongo Beti, a Francophone novelist and activist who spent 30 years in exile, observed after <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820363?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">returning home</a> in the 1990s that a general absence of identification with a viable, unified nation due to various divisions had frayed Cameroon’s social fabric and was a significant impediment to progress. </p>
<p>It is unclear whether Biya, who is 85 and in power since 1982, will run for re-election. His 38 years in office as a corrupt, absent leader have left <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/cameroon-electoral-uncertainty-amid-multiple-security-threats">the nation in tatters</a>. The vast majority of Cameroonians, whether Anglophone or Francophone, are hungry for change. </p>
<h2>The way forward?</h2>
<p>There is an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgBBzrjMUI">urgent need for an inclusive national dialogue</a> to harness this desire for change. </p>
<p>The government must recognise that it faces a substantive national crisis and take extraordinary steps. A general conversation about governance in all its regions is also necessary. Given the depth and severity of people’s grievances, a holistic approach is needed that would address issues of governance, security, and civic engagement to mend the bonds that have been broken. </p>
<p>This is necessary if the current crisis it to become an opportunity to develop a new road map for the future that could empower citizens.</p>
<p><em>Phyllis Taoua is the author of African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and was a Tucson Public Voices Fellow with the Op-Ed Project.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phyllis Taoua does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some human rights activists worry that Cameroon could be the site of Africa’s next civil war.Phyllis Taoua, Professor of Francophone Studies (Africa, Caribbean), Faculty Affiliate with Africana Studies, World Literature Program and Human Rights Pracice, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974802018-06-01T08:12:50Z2018-06-01T08:12:50ZEven Africa’s most entrenched presidents are still preferable to dictators<p>There are fewer and fewer outright dictatorships in Africa, but even as elections are held across the continent, still the same faces have occupied the same elected presidential offices year after year.</p>
<p>All over Africa, leaders are using elections to legitimise themselves and shore up international support – or at least to make sure the rest of the world tolerates them. An uneasy but still secure tolerance is extended to <a href="https://theconversation.com/rwanda-cant-achieve-reconciliation-without-fixing-its-democracy-94925">Paul Kagame</a> of Rwanda, who’s extended his tenure via a democratic referendum – and the president of neighbouring Burundi, <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/burundi-court-validates-vote-to-extend-presidents-tenure-20180531">Pierre Nkurunziza</a>, has followed suit.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, parties with historically massive majorities, including the ANC in South Africa, know that they still have electoral breathing space – even after their leaders are exposed as failures and even <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-trial-matters-for-south-africas-constitutional-democracy-94323">fraudsters</a>. Party loyalties take a long time to fade. Promises for a better future are easily made by incumbents and oppositions alike – except that whereas incumbents can point to their record in office, most oppositions can’t.</p>
<p>Most oppositions haven’t been given the chance to become governments, despite election after election. There are conspicuous exceptions, such as Ghana and Zambia, though the latter is showing signs of a new authoritarianism. And some strong ruling parties – in Ethiopia, for instance – are yielding to huge public protest and starting to incorporate opposition personnel and policies. </p>
<p>Provided a ruling party is strong enough not to lose office, it can afford to do this in the name of sustaining itself. Even Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, after some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2008/jun/23/zimbabwecrisisthabombekisr">protracted interventionist diplomacy</a> from South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, gave in and formed a coalition government with the opposition in 2008. Then again, he went on to defeat that opposition once more in 2013.</p>
<h2>Till the bitter end</h2>
<p>Until he was ousted at the end of 2017, Mugabe was the ultimate presidential limpet. He subjected himself to regular elections, but somehow, for nearly a quarter of a century, his popularity and that of his party proved remarkably enduring. In his latter years that changed dramatically – and Mugabe is now gone. But today, his successor and party comrade Emerson Mnangagwa hopes to secure an electoral victory of his own <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zimbabwe-elections-a-major-test-for-mnangagwa-20180530">in July</a> – promising, as Mugabe did, to win it freely and fairly.</p>
<p>That Mnangagwa and his ZANU-PF party will win is highly likely. The opposition, having lost its charismatic leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/morgan-tsvangirai-the-man-who-dared-zimbabweans-to-dream-again-91925">Morgan Tsvangirai</a> to cancer, has a new young and untested leader – but not everyone in the opposition wants to follow him. At time of writing, there are at least two major MDC parties, with several splinter parties that were once part of the MDC or ZANU-PF.</p>
<p>It would take a remarkable swing to the MDC, now run by Nelson Chamisa, to make ZANU-PF lose its nerve and resort to irregularities and the massive powers of incumbency. The party’s contingency tactics are all-too familiar: sudden splurges of public spending in electorally volatile areas, police forces being mysteriously slow to permit opposition rallies, electoral espionage into the plans and strategies of the opposition parties – all this even before any intervention in the vote-tallying itself. </p>
<h2>The bad and the ugly</h2>
<p>This sort of thing is unedifying, to be sure – but it needs to be kept in perspective. </p>
<p>These “masquerade democracies” aren’t all that outlandish by global standards. At least they <em>have</em> opposition parties – which is more than can be said for China, among others. While many of sub-Saharan Africa’s opposition leaders face intimidation, their travails generally pale in comparison to the deadly government retribution meted out in Russia. And then there are the various Western powers, especially the UK and the US, where two long-established parties simply trade power back and forth while their governing institutions remain largely unchanged.</p>
<p>Even where real change is not forthcoming, elections at least allow for some sort of political debate and airing of political demands. Even if the incumbent government knows it’s going to win, it has to make a show of listening to the public. Of course, as in Uganda, an uneasy government can imprison or prosecute opposition leaders to stop them leading a national campaign – but most governments’ tactics are now more sophisticated and subtle than that.</p>
<p>Yes, the results are less than ideal, to put it mildly. But better than out-and-out dictatorship? The answer can only be yes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many African elections are less than ideal. But is the rest of the world really that much better?Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.