Rwandan President Paul Kagame has received a landslide victory within the presidential elections held on 15 July. His occasion, the Rwandan Patriotic Entrance (RPF), additionally emerged victorious within the legislative elections, retaining its parliamentary majority. With greater than 99 % of the votes in favour of Kagame, this presidential election seems to be a repeat of the earlier three, by which the incumbent president achieved anticipated victories.
Kagame’s re-election is available in a broader context of many different essential elections happening throughout Africa this 12 months. Presidential elections have already been held in Comoros, Senegal, Chad and Mauritania. Parliamentary elections had been held in South Africa in Might.
Elections are actually as a result of be held in Algeria (September), Mozambique, Tunisia and Botswana (October), the breakaway area of Somaliland, Mauritius and Namibia (November), and Ghana, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea (December).
With such a excessive focus of nationwide votes, 2024 can function an indicator of the place democracy is headed in Africa and provide essential classes.
Two victories for democracy
Senegal and South Africa have seen two of essentially the most shocking election outcomes of the 12 months up to now. In March, Senegalese voters elected Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, because the youngest president within the nation’s historical past. Simply ten days earlier, he was a political prisoner and Senegalese democracy appeared to be getting ready to collapse.
In Might, South Africa’s African Nationwide Congress (ANC) misplaced its majority in parliament for the primary time because the finish of apartheid and the beginning of free elections in 1994. This compelled the occasion to barter its first coalition authorities with the Democratic Alliance (DA), its ideological reverse, which got here in second within the polls. That is uncharted territory for the nation’s political system and democracy.
Since in each circumstances the ruling events with a robust benefit in energy suffered vital losses, the elections in Senegal and South Africa could be thought of two victories for democracy, however additionally they illustrate the fragility of democracy, since neither of them was a mattress of roses.
Months earlier than the election, Senegal was within the midst of a serious political disaster, as outgoing President Macky Sall engaged in political manoeuvring, presumably to lengthen his time period in workplace or no less than affect the result of the election. In South Africa, after the vote, no less than 20 events denounced fraud and known as for a recount. In the meantime, former President Jacob Zuma, chief of the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) occasion, warned ominously towards “stirring up bother the place there’s none.”
As in Mali, Benin, Niger and even Kenya, democracy has usually been taken with no consideration in Senegal and South Africa. These circumstances present the bounds of the “two political transitions” take a look at utilized by American political scientist Samuel Huntington to evaluate the soundness of a political system’s democracy – that’s, two consecutive political transitions happening with out the democratic constitutional order collapsing.
These outcomes present that democratic complacency is a luxurious we can not but afford. The identical conclusion could be drawn from the controversial outcomes of the elections in Comoros and Chad.
Comoros President Azali Assoumani and Chad President Mahamat Deby, each with army backgrounds, had been re-elected amid allegations of fraud. Violent protests towards the ends in Comoros left no less than one lifeless and 25 injured. In Chad, no less than 12 folks had been killed in pre- and post-election violence amid threats and intimidation.
The dangers of a profession in energy
Whereas optimistic tendencies have been noticed in some African electoral contests, there’s trigger for concern elsewhere, particularly in international locations the place incumbent candidates are working. Excessive-stakes, winner-take-all contests equivalent to presidential elections could be problematic, and much more so within the case of so-called candidate elections by which incumbent presidents are additionally candidates.
Given their private curiosity within the course of, sitting presidents are more likely to exploit all some great benefits of the workplace, equivalent to state assets and administrative equipment, to their very own benefit.
This – as Rwanda’s election illustrates – reduces the prospects of an opposition victory. Kagame has by no means run unopposed in precept, however a tightly managed state equipment has persistently ensured an uneven enjoying area that favours him, eliminating candidates who may arguably pose the best problem to his rule.
For instance, forward of the July 15 vote, the electoral fee rejected the candidacy of Diane Rwigara – arguably considered one of Kagame’s staunchest critics right now – citing irregularities in paperwork. Throughout the 2017 marketing campaign, she was topic to systematic intimidation and finally barred from working for election over alleged signature irregularities. In April, a Kigali court docket additionally blocked the candidacy of one other fierce Kagame critic, Victoire Ingabire, citing earlier convictions for genocide denial and terrorism costs.
There shall be different presidential elections later this 12 months by which this unlucky actuality (or one thing a lot worse) might present itself, and which can happen in contexts of maximum democratic fragility, equivalent to Tunisia, Guinea Bissau, the breakaway area of Somaliland, South Sudan, Guinea and Algeria.
Coups and conservative resurgence
It is usually essential to notice that these 2024 electoral contests are happening in a broader regional context, with lower than ideally suited dynamics. Extra particularly, there was a resurgence and normalisation of army coups in Africa, with coup-makers evidently in no hurry to return to barracks.
Army leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso have indefinitely frozen elections initially scheduled for February and July this 12 months, promising a later date however leaving little question about their intention to run when the vote is held.
In Guinea, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who seized energy in a coup in 2021 and not too long ago proclaimed himself a normal, is very more likely to be a candidate within the December elections. In Niger and Gabon, coup plotters are additionally in cost, whereas within the Democratic Republic of Congo the federal government not too long ago averted a coup.
The worrying developments happening in different components of the world can also have a unfavorable affect on the African continent. The USA, with greater than 200 years of liberal democratic custom, is liable to struggling a democratic setback because it appears to be like set to re-elect Donald Trump, a convicted legal with overtly authoritarian tendencies and an overtly “America First” agenda.
The Labour Get together might have returned to energy within the UK and France might have narrowly escaped a far-right takeover, however the rise of the far proper – with its risk to liberal democracy – is an plain actuality in Europe.
For Africa, the constellation of those dynamics is each heartbreaking and alarming. The (re)election of far-right, Western-involved populist regimes calls into query their claims to world mannequin standing, particularly for these in Africa and elsewhere who’re already questioning the Euro-American conceptualization of democracy.
Help for civil society and establishments
Thus, whereas the electoral experiences of Senegal and South Africa encourage hope, regional and world realities and dynamics underscore why we should redouble efforts to advertise and defend democracy.
Whether or not consolidated or not, democracy is greater than a prize to be received and waited for. Quite, it should be conceived as an ongoing course of that should be continuously nurtured and tended to, even when, on the floor, there could also be no crucial for it.
This requires creativity, innovation, concerted motion, fixed evaluate of approaches and, above all, decisive motion. The potential of, for instance, elections by which candidates are usually not in energy to extend the chance of political alternation by way of the poll field can’t be overstated. Nonetheless, that is solely potential when safeguards, equivalent to time period limits, are constitutionally entrenched and revered. There may be subsequently a compelling incentive to demand penalties when they’re ignored.
Senegal and South Africa additionally provide classes on how you can cease assaults on democracy and the values that underpin it.
The Senegalese case illustrates how the brave response of a robust civil society, a resilient political opposition and a courageous constitutional court docket can in the end be instrumental in producing spectacular ends in a fancy political and electoral context.
The South African case demonstrates how an knowledgeable citizenry and a strong and resilient political opposition can regularly erode the facility of a once-dominant occasion.
A powerful and knowledgeable civil society, political events, sound establishments and processes of political dialogue are clearly sine qua non situations for sustainable democracy. Certainly, this is applicable not solely to Africa but in addition elsewhere, contemplating, for instance, the worrying tendencies which can be rising within the previous democracies of the West. They should be strengthened and supported in any respect prices.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
