In the lengthening shadows, South Africans stand tall, their determination unwavering as they brave the queues to cast their votes. South Africans headed to the polls for their seventh democratic general election since apartheid ended in 1994. Photographer: Henk Kruger / Independent Newspapers
Kim Heller
A kaleidoscope of elections across Africa in 2024 changed the complexion of the Continent’s political face.
In the rise of new leaders and the fall of old-timers, it is unclear whether ordinary citizens will be winners or losers.
Exuberant promises made by over-excited politicians, in the morning glory of election euphoria often fade away in the unforgiving dusk of post-electoral governance.
It is ordinary citizens who will suffer and shed tears of disappointment in the aftermath of a failed political windfall.
The greatest losers in the Continent’s 2024 elections were Africa’s liberation movements.
In South Africa, the oldest of the lot, the African National Congress (ANC), fell from dizzy heights of political domination in a lightning bolt of voter disillusionment in a jaded Rainbow Nation.
Without majority support for the first time, since political liberation was won in 1994, a beaten ANC was forced into a compromised government of national unity. In a backstroke of political clarity and direction, ordinary citizens are unlikely to win.
Frelimo, once a formidable force against colonial oppression in pre-independent Africa, has been in a fierce battle with its own citizens for weeks after they rejected the results of the October election which declared Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo as the victor.
The streets of Mozambique, once filled with the revolutionary red spirit of liberation are now blood-stained with wrath and rebellion. For now, the outlook for 2025 is gloomy for Mozambicans as the electoral crisis threatens to spill into the new year.
For the youth of Africa, the flame of liberation parties is but a candle in the wind.
The politics of nostalgia offer little light or protection to new generations who are vulnerable and exposed to the cold ravine of daily adversity and economic hardship. Youth discontent and disenchantment are set to become a permanent scar on the face of democracy in Africa.
If long-standing political parties continue to count on reminiscence about yesteryear rather than address burning contemporary issues, they will be snuffed out by the legitimate rage of the youth.
The colossal protests in Kenya in mid-2024 provide a real-time testimony of the disenchantment of youth ready to fight in the streets for their rights, fed up with elite political classes and interests and disservice by the government.
November’s election in Namibia saw Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah elected as the nation’s first female president, (and only the second female leader on the Continent), after a disputatious electoral process. While the new President claimed that the victory was a marker of citizen’s desire for peace and stability, the growing wave of youth discontentment and widespread claims of lack of credibility in the election process could result in a less than smooth reign for the veteran leader, who is by all accounts rather removed from the fervour of Namibian’s youth.
This year, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), like the ANC lost its long-held and priceless parliamentary majority. In a decisive win, Duma Boko and his Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) were voted in to run the country. It was a brutal loss for the BDP who secured a mere four Parliamentary seats.
2024 was the year of opposition party wins, not only for Botswana but in Senegal and Ghana too.
Earlier this year, Senegal’s incumbent President, Macky Sall, was ousted by Bassirou Diomaye Faye, in a surprise win that was largely navigated by the nation’s youth. Last week in Ghana, it was opposition candidate and former President of the country, John Mahama, who won the race.
In his analysis of recent elections in Africa, Nigerian journalist Reuben Abati points out that the heart of the political reconfiguration is economic. He writes of how in Botswana the economy was “in the doldrums,” the government’s treasury almost empty, institutions prostrate and corruption “on stilts”.
In the case of the South African election, Abati argues that people’s expectations had not been met by the ruling ANC. He writes, “The people wanted jobs and a better life.
The ANC had offered them a high unemployment rate with many of the youths jobless.”
In Ghana, a spent economy, high inflation, dangerous unemployment levels and almost unpayable debts were key factors for the defeat of the incumbent President and his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), according to Abati.
In both Botswana and Ghana elections, the incumbent Presidents were quick to congratulate the victors.
Peaceful elections and smooth transfers of power bode well for a Continent marked by power grabs, and military, and constitutional coups. So too, does the decisive shift away from liberation parties which have allowed political party entitlement and non-delivery to trump burning citizen and country issues.
But elections, often elevated as the gold standard lever and expression of democracy, are too often a flimsy and unreliable hallmark. Even the most flawless, or glorious election is no magic formula for governance societal renewal or evergreen development.
Parties that are unable to arrest economic downswings and materially improve the conditions of the poorest, deserve to lose power, time after time. The great revolutionary thinker, Amilcar Cabral said “The people are always fighting to win material benefits, to live better and see peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.” This is the true gold standard for leadership and democracy.
In a Continent with an estimated 500 million people living in poverty, with war, insecurity and famine ravaging many nations, and with the Continent wide deep-set patterns of economic frailty, fanciful leadership and lofty election promises is no way to future-proofing countries in Africa.
The ANC, and President Cyril Ramaphosa, are trying to mask their dramatic fall, through the construction of a flaky narrative of the GNU as a win for South Africans, and the ANC, while both are in bad shape.
Amilcar Cabral said that leaders should “hide nothing from the people, tell no lies and expose lies wherever they are told. He said, “Mask no difficulties, mistakes, and failures. Claim no easy victories”.
Unless the new leadership in South Africa and across the Continent adhere religiously to this powerful mantra, there will be no win-win situation for political leaders and ordinary citizens post elections. The outlook for 2025 will be no better than 2024. Hope, like a candle in the wind, will burn out slowly but surely.
** Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa.
******The views here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media and IOL.
IOL Opinion
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