African Opposition Parties Have Their Share of the Blame
The end of the Cold War led to or coincided with the establishment or re-introduction of multiparty political systems across Africa. In the early 1990s, almost all the African countries adopted new constitutions that provided for democracy, multiparty and the holding of competitive elections at regular intervals. Only a few countries (e.g. Botswana, the Gambia, Mauritius, and Senegal) had this system before 1990, and Libya is almost the only African country with no multiparty system today.
Issaka K. Souaré, senior researcher, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Pretoria Office
The end of the Cold War led to or coincided with the establishment
or re-introduction of multiparty political systems across Africa. In
the early 1990s, almost all the African countries adopted new
constitutions that provided for democracy, multiparty and the holding
of competitive elections at regular intervals. Only a few countries
(e.g. Botswana, the Gambia, Mauritius, and Senegal) had this system
before 1990, and Libya is almost the only African country with no
multiparty system today.
While the regular change of leadership or ruling party is not a
condition for democracy, it is nevertheless a desirable characteristic
of the democratic system. Viewed in light of this observation, one
could argue that the result of the post-Cold War political
liberalisation in Africa has been a mixed one. True, leadership has
changed hands in various African countries. But the majority of these
changes have been between leaders of the same political party. Since
1990, there have been more than 40 peaceful (post-election) leadership
changes on the continent. But in only 16 instances in 13 countries has
the opposition benefited from this. This excludes ‘opposition’ wins
after transitional governments whose members were not allowed to stand
for elections. For in this case, the victorious party was not an
opposition one but just a political party among others.
Unless this is seen as normal – but most people do not see it as
such – one has to ask the ‘why’ question that seeks to fathom this
state of affairs. To most observers of African politics and to almost
all opposition leaders, the answer is simple: ruling parties rig
elections.
There can be no denying the fact that in the yet-to-be consolidated
democratic systems of Africa, most ruling regimes resort or try resort
to fraud in order to stay in power. They engage in gerrymandering of
electoral constituencies to favour their party. They prepare the voters
roll to their liking and intimidate the opposition during electoral
campaign while controlling state-owned media. They resurrect the dead
and give a vaccine to the kids to reach voting age on election day,
while stuffing the polling boxes and cooking the results before they are
served by a state-controlled electoral commission.
All this they do to the detriment of the opposition and this is to
be condemned. But are the opposition always victims they ritually
purport to be? If so, what explains opposition wins in 16 instances, as
noted above?
Writing in 1951 in his seminal book on Political Parties,
the French sociologist and political scientist, Maurice Duverger,
opined that regime change between two parties is almost impossible
unless the political system is a two-party one. Other analysts have
added the ‘bipolarised’ system as an alternative to the two-party one.
The two-party system referred to here is not a de jure one,
but a system in which two political parties, amongst others,
effectively control more than 80 per cent of seats/votes in the country
on a more or less equal basis in consecutive elections. The
bipolarised one is a situation where the myriad opposition parties come
together to form a coalition against the ruling regime to create an ad
hoc two-party system. This is not to argue that once the political
system fits one of these two categories, the opposition will
automatically win. It simply means that meeting one of these two
conditions is necessary but not sufficient to effect opposition win.
To substantiate this remark in the African context, let’s now take a
cursory look at the abovementioned 16 opposition wins and compare this
to some opposition loses in which they cried foul. Of the 16
instances, five were generally the result of a coherent opposition
coalition; and five others occurred in two-party or bipolarised
systems. The first coalition win arguably happened in Zambia in October
1991. In this historic poll, almost all opposition parties stood behind
Frederick Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) against
the incumbent Kenneth Kaunda and his United National Independent Party
(UNID). If it was not a coalition, then it was a de facto two-party
system, for they were the two parties that competed for both the
presidential and legislative elections that were held on the same day.
The other opposition coalition wins happened in Niger in March 1993, in
Burundi in June 1993, in Senegal in March 2000, and in Kenya in
December 2002.
The opposition candidates have won twice in both Cape Verde (1991
and 2001) and Ghana (2000 and 2008), and once in Sierra Leone (2007).
But there is an effective two-party system in all these three
countries, at least since 1990. In Cape Verde, power alternates and is
more or less equally shared between the African Party for the
Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) and the Movement for Democracy
(MpD). In Ghana, it is between the National Democratic Congress (NDC)
and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), while the All People’s Congress
(APC) and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) have dominated the
political scene in Freetown since the country regained independence
from Britain in 1961.
The remaining six cases happened after transitional arrangements in
which the former one-party ruling regime had been greatly weakened and
discredited. This is what explains, to a large extent, the electoral
victory of Pascal Lissouba’s Pan-African Union for Social Democracy
(UPADS) in the Republic of Congo in August 1992; Albert Zafy’s in
Madagascar in February 1993; Ange-Félix Patassé’s in the Central African
Republic in September 1993; Bakili Muluzi’s in Malawi in May 1994; and
Coumba Yala’s in Guinea-Bissau in January 2000. And in all these
cases, save the Malawian one, the opposition victory only came at the
second round when other parties coalesced behind the main opposition
candidate, which then brings them to the first category. Didier
Ratsiraka’s return to power in 1996 in Madagascar is the sixth and the
only exceptional case of the data. The conclusion is almost clear and
self-explanatory.
Let’s now look at some recent opposition losses. In the just
concluded presidential election in Gabon (30 August 2009), the
candidate of the ruling party, Aly Bongo, was declared winner with 41.7
per cent of the votes, against 25 per cent for each of his two closest
rivals, who ran as independent candidates. With a plurality voting
system based on simple majority (First-Past-The-Post), a coalition
between these two individuals would have landed them victory with 50
per cent of the vote, 8 per cent clear of the share of Bongo.
Likewise, in the December 2001 presidential elections in Zambia,
Levy Mwanawassa carried the flag of the ruling MMD, against some 10
opposition candidates. The latter failed to unite behind the most
serious challenger among them – United Party for National Development
(UPND)’s Anderson Mazoka. As a result, Mwanawassa won with a mere 29.15
per cent, against 27.20 per cent for Mazoka. Yet, the third candidate
bagged 13.17 per cent; the fourth one 10.12 per cent and the fifth one
garnered 8.9 per cent of the votes. Clearly, the coalition of any of
these candidates with Mazoka would have given him more than the 1.96
per cent that he needed to beat MMD’s candidate.
Beyond these figures, which are retrospective, formidable opposition
coalitions can have a psychological effect that dissuades the ruling
regime from rigging and eventually land them victory. The reason for
the low turnout in most African elections in recent times is because
many people do not want to vote for the ruling party yet do not want to
‘waste’ their vote on a fragmented opposition that does not stand any
realistic chance of winning. Opposition coalition building can therefore
restore the hope of such voters in the process and persuade them to
vote. Seeing such popular support for the opposition, the
ill-intentioned ruling regime may then be discouraged from rigging.
The modest record of regime change on the continent is therefore not
the fault of ruling parties alone. The opposition has its share of
responsibility for failing to unite. This failure can sometimes be
explained by the internal dynamics in opposition parties. Most African
opposition leaders are ‘macro democrats’ and micro autocrats’; that is
leaders that call for democracy at the national level while they do not
practice the same within their parties. The reason for this is that
they form parties to seek power for themselves rather than to
contribute to the democratic process in the country. If their
leadership of the opposition coalition were not assured, they would
rather go it alone even if they know that neither they nor another
leader would win in a solo act.
