By Reuben Abati
The second wave of democratization in Africa, beginning
in the 80s, and the gradual establishment of democracy
as the new normal in the continent brought much hope
and excitement. As we have seen in the recent
intervention by the military in Zimbabwe, coup d’etats
have become unpopular and unacceptable in the entire
continent in deference perhaps to dominant global
politics.
In the past two decades, there have been many
electoral transitions across the continent indicative of a
pattern of democratic consolidation. In reality, however,
mercenaries of democracy, dictators and a military
culture dominate African politics. The form of governance
may have changed, but the form of politics has remained
seemingly unchangeable.
We are forcefully reminded of this by certain recent
developments across the continent. In Burundi, President
Pierre Nkurunziza has just ensured that the officials of a
football team, which rough-tackled him during a football
match last year, have been sent to prison.
Nkurunziza, a
graduate of Sports Education (1990), loves to play
football, even as President. He owns a football team,
Haleluia FC, and a choir, “Kameza gusenga” which
means “pray non-stop”. President Nkurunziza is a
member of his football team and he actually joins them to
take part in tournaments, friendlies and other matches,
fully attired in the club’s colours.
A day may well come when the President may decide to
play for the national team, prompting concerns across
Burundi that the President plays too much football,
instead of attending to state matters. Nkurunziza had his
day on the field when Haleluia FC met Kiremba FC. If in
previous matches the President was treated with respect,
and even allowed to score, the Kiremba soccer team was
not ready for that. They played man to man, and treated
the match with professional seriousness.
They tackled
the President each time he had the ball. He fell on the
pitch several times.
It is for this reason the administrator of Kiremba FC,
Cyriaque Nkezabahizi and his assistant, Michel Mutama
are now in prison, having been charged and tried for a
curious felony called “conspiracy against the President”!
Nkurunziza may be a sports graduate, and even taught
the subject for a while at the university level, but he is not
in any way a sportsman. Like his other colleagues across
Africa, he is a dictator who likes to have his way. Football
is a body-contact sport, like rugby, boxing and wrestling.
Not even the almighty Lionel Messi or Neymar or the
skillful Cristiano Ronaldo, with all their accomplishments
in the sport expect to be treated like royalty in a football
match. Like Nkurunziza, most African leaders do not like
to play by the rules. They like to cheat and force their
options down the people’s throats.
This same Nkurunziza who came to power in 2005,
refused to go after the expiration of his constitutional
tenure of two terms in 2015. He insisted on having a third
term. Protests by the people were suppressed, media
houses were shut down, journalists were detained,
members of the opposition were harassed, after two
months more than 200 persons had been killed and
hundreds of thousands had fled into exile. Nkurunziza had
his way. He likes jogging, but when members of the
opposition also began organizing Saturday morning
joggings, he placed a ban on jogging across the country.
He is the only one who is allowed to enjoy the pleasure of
jogging as he wishes, in a country of 12 million people.
He is not the only African leader however who has been
able to get away with a third term in office through a
violation and manipulation of the Constitution.
To many
African leaders, the Constitution does not matter at all. In
Rwanda, Paul Kagame, President since 2003, completed
his constitutionally stipulated second term in 2017, but
the constitution was altered to allow him serve for a third
term, and now the constitution has been further altered to
keep Kagame in power till 2034. The excuse is that he is
doing a good job and that there is no alternative to him.
The only person who summoned the courage to challenge
Kagame in 2017, a lady, Diane Rwigara was harassed and
detained. Her nude pictures were posted on the internet.
This no-alternative thing is a dubious misinterpretation of
democracy in Africa. And it is one of the stupid points
being canvassed in Nigeria, currently, by those who want
President Muhammadu Buhari to remain in office beyond
2019, despite growing protests that he should be a one-
term President. Nigeria is a country of about 200 million
people. Is it not the height of idiocy to say that there is no
alternative to Buhari?
Africa is not in short supply of mercenaries who mouth
such idiocy and actively give effect to it. In the Democratic
Republic of Congo, 46-year old Joseph Kabila whose two
terms in office expired close to two years ago has
refused to organize elections. He negotiated a one-year
extension till 2017, but despite protests, and international
objections, he has extended the election time-table till
December 2018 on the ground that there are “logistical
problems”.
Now, the country’s electoral commission has
further announced that no Presidential election can
possibly take place in the DRC before April 2019. Various
militias, rebel groups, and civil society organisations,
backed by the Catholic Church are insisting that Joseph
Kabila will not be allowed to rule the DRC forever.
Widespread violence has made the DRC politically
unstable and fragile, but Joseph Kabila cannot be
bothered.
The standard African response is to descend on the
opposition, including political parties, journalists, writers,
human rights activists and thinkers as harshly as
possible. The African man of power does not understand
that the right to protest, to differ and to express an
opinion is part of democracy. In Togo, there is an
ongoing popular protest titled “Faure Must Go”. President
Faure Gnassingbe has been in power since 2005. He
succeeded his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled
Togo for 38 years.
With the Constitution of Togo not
indicating any Presidential term limits, the Togolese
opposition has been leading a series of protests to
demand for such term limits – a restriction to a
maximum of two, five-year terms and a two-round voting
system. Faure wants to rule forever like his father, and
so, even in spite of mediation by Ghana and Guinea, he
has been sending soldiers after the protesters.
The
opposition in Africa is probably the most abused in the
world.
Go to Egypt.
Egypt goes to the polls on March 26 but
incumbent President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi does not want
any opposition. He has taken every measure to scare
away every person who has shown interest in competing
with him for the office. One Presidential aspirant, Colonel
Ahmed Konsowa was accused and convicted for
“expressing political opinions as a serving military
officer”.
Another, Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, after being
detained by the Egyptian military, had to call off his
presidential bid. He was accused of “blatant legal
violations (and) a serious breach of the laws of military
service.” Other aspirants – Mortada Mansour, Khaled Ali
and Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat have all dropped their
presidential ambitions because they could not stand the
climate of fear imposed by President Sisi.
Only one aspirant is still standing, Mousa Moustafa
Mousa and he is, because the court saved him. The ruling
party had asked for his disqualification on the grounds
that he does not have a certified university or higher
education degree.
This is a minimum requirement for the
Presidential office in Egypt. I hope some Nigerians would
take special note of this! The Supreme Administrative
Court has now ruled that Mousa Mousa indeed holds an
MA in Architecture from a French University, and the
National Electoral Authority has certified this, thus putting
paid to the orchestrated possibility of President Sisi
getting a second term unopposed. Still Sisi is not
prepared to lose.
He has declared that anybody or “forces
of evil” who defame the country’s security forces through
“the broadcast and publication of lies and false news”
would be charged for “high treason.” He is of course
referring to himself and not necessarily the military
operation in the Northern Sinai Peninsula.
Absolute power corrupts and so it is also with
Cameroon’s Paul Biya and Equitorial Guinea’s Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Cameroon has been battling
secessionist rebellion in North West and South West parts
of the country.
The Biya government has done everything
possibly negative to suppress the people of the proposed
Ambazonia Republic including detention, police brutality,
internet black-out, curfews, arrests and intimidation.
When about 50 of the rebels, including their leader, Sisiku
Ayuk Tabe fled across the border, they were chased all
the way to Nigeria, where they were arrested by the
Nigerian authorities on Cameroon’s request and
repatriated.
This couldn’t have been a difficult request for
the Buhari government to accede to, given the fact that it
had also launched a military operation against would-be
secessionists in the Eastern part of Nigeria. Paul Biya
also probably learnt a lesson from Nigeria or perhaps it
was the old fox just being himself. He has just appointed
two persons from the aggrieved North West/South-West
of Cameroon into his newly reconstituted cabinet to
assuage fears of marginalization by the Ambazonians.
One of the portfolios is that of the Minister of Interior. The
average African leader is manipulative and trickish. In
Biya’s case, it is worse. He is 85, he has been in power
for more than three decades, and he still plans to run for
election this year. His opponent from the main opposition
party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF) is likely to be a
49-year old, Joshua Osih. Biya is Cameroon’s Mugabe.
His sit-tight colleague in Equitorial Guinea is no better.
Last week, Mbasogo proscribed the main opposition party
in the country, the Citizens for Innovation (CI) for
allegedly undermining state security. In November 2017,
there were clashes between CI supporters and armed
policemen. Party leaders have argued that their
supporters did not carry any arms, and that they were
only campaigning.
21 of them have been sentenced to 26
years imprisonment for sedition, and 10 years for breach
of authority, and fined 210,000 Euros along with their
party! I suspect that CI’s main offence would be that of
having the audacity to win one seat in parliament in that
country’s last elections, while the ruling party won 99
seats out of 100 seats.
That makes Teodoro Mbasogo
uncomfortable: he cannot afford the growth of opposition
in his country, or anything that would threaten his plan to
hand over power eventually to his first son, 48-year old
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue who is currently the
First Vice President in charge of defence and security and
the oil and gas sector.
First sons and first daughters are often part of the
political equation. Togo’s Faure, DRC’s Kabila, Equitorial
Guinea’s Teodorin, and Angola’s former first daughter,
Isabel dos Santos. They share power with their father and
possibly succeed him, and if not, they could become as
wealthy as Isabel.
This is why it baffles me that Nigerians
are always hypertensive anytime they see first or second
sons and daughters in the corridors of power enjoying
privileges extended to them by their fathers.
The Minister
of State for Health received Yusuf Buhari at the airport
and they won’t allow us rest. What if the President had
sent Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to the airport? He
would refuse to go?
The sad part of the African story is that even when you
discover a President who seems to be doing well, he does
well only for a while, before he begins to misbehave like
the rest. Take John Pombe Magufuli, the developmental
President of Tanzania, the “Bulldozer.” In nearly three
years in office, he has brought fresh energy and creativity
to governance in Tanzania. He has waged war against
indolence, incompetence, corruption, ghost workers, bad
infrastructure, but he is also now waging war against
democracy.
His government has banned public rallies by
the opposition. It has introduced a law, which
criminalises free speech on social and electronic media,
and jailed at least two politicians for “hate speech”.
Magufuli has also banned the smoking of Shisha, and
famously declared, that “no pregnant student will be
allowed to return to school…”
In Tanzania, it is an offence
to “annoy” the government, but okay to rape young girls!
When an African leader finally decides to leave, he insists
on choosing his own successor. Sierra Leone goes to the
polls tomorrow, for example, with 16 parties and six
leading candidates on the ballot, but the fight is between
the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) and the Sierra
Leone People’s Party (SLPP).
Outgoing President Ernest
Bai Koroma has, in the meantime, handpicked his former
Foreign Minister, Dr. Samura Kamara (APC), as his
successor, because according to him, “he knows exactly
what he needs to do…” Our democracy suffers in this
manner in part because the people themselves play what
the Sierra Leonean musician, Daddy SAJ calls
“watermelon politics” (2007) – the people not knowing
what they want or what is good for them.
Nigerians have
made that mistake too often. But then, is there something
in the African DNA that is anti-democracy?
Is this about
African culture or the truth about universal democracy?
Whatever it is, as they go to the polls tomorrow, Sierra
Leoneans should eschew “watermelon politics” and vote
wisely.
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