A string of votes provides stress test for health of African democracy

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JOHANNESBURG — An African population equivalent to those of the U.S. and Canada combined will be going to the polls this year, as nearly two dozen countries hold presidential and parliamentary elections that could reshape the continent’s political profile.

The unprecedented string of votes will provide a real-world stress test for the strength of popular rule and democratic institutions across Africa and provide a scorecard for U.S. and allied efforts to head off China’s and Russia’s economic and security inroads for influence on the world’s fastest-growing continent.

From Libya to South Africa, old names and new are vying for top leadership. Whether the final tally will usher in a new generation or entrench longtime power players is up in the air.

Joseph Siegle and Candace Cook, writing in analysis for the Africa Center, outlined in part what is at stake in the 2024 African elections.

“Roughly half of the elections are unlikely to be competitive because of heavy-handed management of the electoral process by well-entrenched incumbents,” they said. “These processes raise questions for the continent of what qualifies as a genuine election — and the legitimacy that emerges from an authentic popular mandate. … The high number of elections makes it key to assess the continent’s overall quality of governance and degree of democratic consolidation.”

As the Arab Spring of 2010 spread across the Middle East, riots toppled Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi who fled the capital and was later shot dead. After more than a decade of unstable rule in the wake of the Libyan revolt, Gadhafi’s 51-year-old son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, is running for president.

In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame has effectively held power since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. As president from 2000, he abolished the two-term limit in the constitution. He will offer himself again at a July 15 election. Despite his long grip on power, Mr. Kagame has proved a close ally of the West, the country’s economy is booming and the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index scored it on a par with France in 2020.

Five years ago, with most of the opposition in prison or exile, Mr. Kagame won more than 98% of the vote. Observers say there is no reason to believe 2024 will be any different.

Botswana as outlier

Botswana is one of the few African countries never to have undergone a coup or suspension of the democratic process since Seretse Khama became the founding president at independence from Britain in 1966. For almost 60 years, electoral victory has gone to Khama’s ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), albeit by increasingly smaller margins. It’s a bright spot that bears careful watching, the U.S. envoy to the country said.

At the U.S. Embassy in Gaborone, Ambassador Howard Van Vranken told The Washington Times that he had every expectation this year’s election “will, as in the past, be free and fair.”

“As one of Africa’s longest-standing, stable democracies, Botswana plays an important role both globally and regionally,” he said. “It is a key political and economic partner that shares our values on democracy, respect for human rights, and promoting economic growth.”

In October, President Mokgweetsi Masisi will seek a second and final five-year mandate, but his first term has been marked by a squabble with his predecessor, Ian Khama, the eldest son of Seretse, who served as commander of the army in his father’s time, then as vice president followed by 10 years as head of state.

Not long after taking power in 2018, Mr. Masisi accused Mr. Khama and his associates of embezzling $10 billion — equivalent to half the country’s gross domestic product — even naming banks around the world where the Botswana intelligence service claimed the money was held. An independent investigation found no paper trail, and several of the banks opened their books to no such accounts.

Since 2021, Ian Khama has lived in South Africa. A warrant for his arrest was issued after police searching his home in the capital, Gaborone, claimed to have found unlicensed weapons. Mr. Khama insists he is innocent of all charges.

Polls suggest the ruling BDP may struggle to win a majority after several opposition parties united behind 53-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer Duma Boko. The “Umbrella for Democratic Change,” as the alliance is known, has been holding rallies around the country, and Mr. Boko has brought crowds cheering to their feet with the promise of jobs and a crackdown on crime, which ranks high as a concern among voters, though research shows that Botswana is more law-abiding than some of its neighbors.

Inching toward democracy

When the League of Nations was set up in 1919, Africa had just four independent countries: Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt and South Africa.

At the founding of the United Nations almost 30 years later, the list hadn’t grown, but a lengthy, messy and often bloody period of withdrawal by European powers ravaged by World War II was on the horizon.

Sudan gained independence in 1956 and Ghana a year later. Ghana’s charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, who would later help found the African Union, embarked on a series of building projects first in the capital, Accra, then farther afield. When the opposition demanded to see how such vast sums of money were being spent, Mr. Nkrumah banned all political parties but his own, censored the press and declared himself president for life.

In 1966, while on a visit to North Vietnam, he was deposed by the military, a pattern that would repeat itself in country after country across the continent.

Elsewhere, freedom and democratic rule proved short-lived. Elections, once unthinkable in Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania, have brought opposition members into parliament. For now, though, there is little hope of displacing the government.

Unique challenge

The African electoral spree poses a unique challenge to Washington. Early in his administration, President Biden touted a global alliance of democracies as a new touchstone for American diplomacy.

Interest pf the U.S., Russia, China and other competing states is not just altruistic. With 54 countries each holding a seat at the United Nations, Africa is the single biggest voting bloc in the world body, though a common view on any issue is rare. Despite pleas from Washington, many African nations, including continental bellwether South Africa, abstained on motions over Ukraine and have taken a sharply pro-Palestinian position on the Israel-Hamas war.

Still, African democracy is proving a hardy plant in some forbidding landscapes. Voters in Chad approved a new constitution in December that opens the way to elections, ending three years of military rule.

Burkina Faso, like Chad a former French colony with a history of coups and an increasing reliance on Russian military advisers, has an election, but a civilian government will need the army at its back with rebel forces controlling about 40% of the territory.

Also in West Africa is an election in Togo, though the challenges are even steeper. A dynasty begun in 1967 with a coup by army officer Gnassingbe Eyadema and still going strong under his son Faure Eyadema remains firmly in control. Opponents are kept in line by the feared Research and Intelligence Service, a shadowy force named every year by Amnesty International as among the worst in the world for torture and abuse.

Big prize

Perhaps the most consequential election takes place on May 29 at the continent’s southern tip.

South Africa, a country of 62 million and America’s largest trade partner in the region, will face its most divisive and hotly contested vote since the collapse of the apartheid system and the 1994 electoral victory of national hero Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress.

Thirty years on, polls suggest the ANC’s support has slipped to about 40% amid internal divisions and allegations of high-level corruption and mismanagement. Former President Jacob Zuma was removed from office in 2018 and faces hundreds of charges including corruption and diversion of state funds. In May, his successor and former vice president Cyril Ramaphosa will run for a second and final five-year term facing his own allegations of impropriety.

With Mr. Ramaphosa struggling to unite and energize the ruling party, Mr. Zuma formed one of his own in December. Mkhonto we Sizwe, or MK, was named for the military wing of the ANC that fought a guerrilla campaign against the former White government. The ANC claims to own the name and has gone to court. In a country marked by tribal division, Mr. Zuma has always profiled himself as a Zulu and has called on his kinsmen to vote for MK.

The September death of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, long seen as the voice of the Zulu nation, has left a vacuum that Mr. Zuma and his MK party hope to fill. Mr. Ramaphosa hails from the Venda people on the border of Zimbabwe, whose language is different from Zulu as English is from Portuguese, though he is multilingual.

The ANC has split several times. Most damaging was in 2013 when Julius Malema, then head of the party’s youth wing, was expelled and formed the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose platform includes a pledge to nationalize all land, banks and mines without compensation. At the last election in 2019, the EFF took 11% of the vote to become the third-largest party in parliament behind the moderate Democratic Alliance, or DA. The ANC won with 57%, its lowest share to date.

A poll released Saturday from the respected Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg showed gains for the DA while support for the EFF had slipped. Just 4 months old, Zuma’s MK notched an impressive 13%. There is little doubt the ANC will gain the largest share of the vote, but without a majority. What happens then is a major question.

Multiple votes

Elections are also due in Algeria, Ethiopia, Namibia, South Sudan and the French-speaking island of Madagascar. On voting day anywhere in the world, U.S. diplomats routinely file reports on fairness, transparency and freedom of the press. In Libya, the State Department has yet to reestablish an embassy and maintains relations with neighboring Tunisia.

Critics contend that where leaders side with Washington — as in the case of Rwanda’s Mr. Kagame or the Eyadema family in Togo — barely credible elections still get a nod from the White House. Rights groups say oil-rich Angola and Equatorial Guinea, where President Teodoro Obiang, 81, has ruled since 1979, are subject to less scrutiny than impoverished Zimbabwe, where the country’s record on human rights is regularly condemned in Congress, and President Emmerson Mnangagwa is banned from entering the U.S.

Over the past half-century, Africa has had more coups and civil wars than any other continent. Now, with so many elections in a single year, there is hope that at least some of them will bring a change for the better.

In Togo or Rwanda, expectations will be tempered. Ironically, it is Africa’s most enduring democracy, Botswana, that could be held to a higher standard. For the first time, a former president is in exile on what Mr. Khama’s supporters say are spurious grounds, and he is rarely featured on state-owned radio and television.

If the political space narrows further, President Mokgweetsi Masisi may struggle to persuade observers that this year’s election has been free and fair and not yet another example of a country where the outcome has been preordained to suit those already in power.