Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this year: Elections in key countries, Rwanda and Tunisia likely to entrench authoritarian rule, and democracy deferred in the Sahel.
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Will the ANC Lose Its Hold on Power?
South Africa’s upcoming election is set to be the tightest race since the end of apartheid in 1994. The governing African National Congress’s voter base is eroding and the party is in danger of losing an overall majority. Though a date has not been announced, the election must take place within 90 days of the end of Parliament’s term in mid-May.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has been plagued by troubles for most of his five-year term. The “Farmgate” scandal, involving an alleged heist and undeclared cash in a sofa, proved to be the least of the party’s worries. Ramaphosa faced a possible impeachment hearing back in December 2022 after an independent panel concluded that he may have broken anti-corruption laws over the 2020 theft of $580,000 buried in the furniture at his Phala Phala game farm. But he was cleared by a watchdog organization and managed to avoid an impeachment.
However, the incident highlighted problems within the African National Congress (ANC)—a party marred by widespread corruption in government. Meanwhile, the country faces high unemployment levels, failing energy infrastructure, and soaring crime rates. The wealth gap between Black and white South Africans makes the country the world’s most unequal society, according to the World Bank.
Meanwhile, former President Jacob Zuma hovers in the background as a campaign spoiler and a symbol of the ANC’s failure to tackle corruption. Apart from Zuma himself, no one from the former president’s inner circle has gone to jail despite a raft of investigations, known as the Zondo Commission, into alleged wrongdoing during his term. Zuma said last month that he would not vote for the ANC and extended his support for the newly formed Umkhonto we Sizwe party, named after the ANC’s defunct armed wing.
Yet many South Africans wonder why Zuma remains out of prison. The worst unrest in the country’s post-apartheid era erupted in 2021, after Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for refusing to testify before the inquiry investigating systemic corruption and cronyism under his presidency. Much of the rioting took place in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, where he enjoys significant support. He spent two months in prison before being released on medical grounds. The release was later ruled illegal, but his return to prison in August 2023 lasted just a few hours. Zuma was then conveniently released under a program to ease prison overcrowding.
The ANC faces strong competition. The centrist Democratic Alliance—the largest opposition party, whose support is strongest among white South Africans—believes that it could make a bigger dent than usual in the ruling party’s numbers this year, due to the ANC hemorrhaging Black voters. The ANC has only a 7 percent polling lead, according to the Democratic Alliance’s own polling. The far-left populist Economic Freedom Fighters party has drawn support from the ANC’s Black voters, becoming the country’s third-largest party over the past decade. Just 57.5 percent of South Africans voted for the ANC in the 2019 parliamentary elections, down from a record 69 percent in 2004.
Without Ramaphosa at the helm, one poll suggested that voter support for the ANC would drop to less than 40 percent. Even with him as leader, analysts predict that votes could go below 50 percent, raising the likelihood of the country being led by a coalition government for the first time in the post-apartheid era. That scenario would not end the ANC’s power, but it would weaken its hold on the country’s institutions and force it to compromise with coalition partners—giving South Africans accustomed to one-party rule a taste of European-style parliamentary democracy.
But the Democratic Alliance has its own problems. Several high-profile Black politicians have left the party, a strong factor in a country where racial diversity matters. The first Black leader of the Democratic Alliance, Mmusi Maimane, resigned in 2019 and implied that the party was still being led by a white minority; he argued that the party was not the best vehicle to unite South Africa.
In local elections in 2016 and 2021, coalition governments between the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties that joined forces to run major cities, including Johannesburg, collapsed. A coalition between the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters could boost the ANC’s backing for a multipolar global order and intensify great-power competition in the region by further antagonizing the United States. The EFF has positioned itself as a Marxist-Leninist party and suggested nationalizing almost all institutions and redistributing land from the white minority—which still holds 72 percent of the country’s land—without compensation.
Africa will hold 18 elections this year, including in Algeria and South Sudan (which have yet to set a date). Here are the votes with major political and economic consequences for Africa in 2024.
Africa’s Election Year Ahead
Sunday, Feb. 25: Senegal holds presidential elections.
Monday, July 15, to Tuesday, July 16: National elections take place in Rwanda.
Wednesday, Oct. 9: Presidential and legislative elections in Mozambique.
Sunday, Nov. 24: Presidential elections are scheduled in Tunisia.
Saturday, Dec. 7: Ghana holds presidential and legislative elections.
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What We’re Watching in 2024
Senegal’s firebrand politician. Having never experienced a coup since independence from France in 1960, Senegal is West Africa’s democratic stalwart. But recent crackdowns on dissent have made analysts jittery about elections in February.
Senegalese President Macky Sall last July ruled out seeking a third term, ending months of speculation that he would ignore term limits; however, multiple court cases against opposition leader Ousmane Sonko triggered deadly street protests and social media shutdowns.
Sonko, a former tax inspector, became popular among young Senegalese voters after he exposed a Canadian company’s nearly $9 million tax avoidance in Senegal in 2018. He has criticized Senegalese politicians and their relationship with France, but the Senegalese government accuses him of inciting instability. A criminal conviction now prevents him from running in the elections. Sonko was struck off the electoral roll and sentenced in June to two years in prison for “corrupting youth”—a lesser offense than the initial rape charge he had faced.
A Senegalese court in December ordered that Sonko be reinstated on the electoral register, paving the way for him to run in February’s election. However, this is the second time that a judge has ruled in favor of his reinstatement. Even if Sonko does run, Sall’s governing Benno Bokk Yakaar coalition still has a strong chance of winning under its candidate, incumbent Prime Minister Amadou Ba.
Rwanda’s Teflon president. Rwandan President Paul Kagame amended the constitution in 2015 to make himself eligible to run in elections until 2034. He has held onto power for more than two decades since his Rwandan Patriotic Front forces helped end the 1994 genocide, often in landslide victories that political observers find implausible. He intends to run for a fourth term and the result will likely surprise no one.
Critics accuse Kagame of ordering political assassinations against opposition leaders and rivals. State repression has largely been overlooked by U.S. and European officials who bankroll the Rwandan government. Even more troubling, tensions between Kigali and the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo have reached new heights at a time when Congo yet again faces a disputed election outcome, in which incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi was declared a landslide winner.
Tunisia’s one-man rule. Tunisia’s upcoming presidential election is the first to be held under the country’s new constitution, which was drafted by President Kais Saied and passed last July in a referendum largely boycotted by voters. Saied shut down the elected parliament in July 2021 and moved to rule by decree after shuttering key institutions and jailing opposition figures. Under the new constitution, the president can hire and fire the prime minister and parliamentary ministers. He announced in September 2023 that foreign election monitors could not observe the election. Many Tunisians are expected to boycott the vote.
Ghana’s economic pain. Ghanaians staged several protests over the rising cost of living last year as a $3 billion bailout inked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) caused fiscal pain for many ordinary citizens. The bailout is Ghana’s 17th IMF program since it gained independence in 1957. Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo had made progress toward ending Ghana’s previous bailout in 2019, and despite some bad spending decisions on infrastructure—such as a $400 million state-funded cathedral— the government made investments in health and education.
Ghana’s slump was caused partly by the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s overreliance on the U.S. dollar, and a high exchange rate following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A controversial tax levy on digital payments was badly implemented and fell short of expected state revenue by more than 90 percent.
This year’s election is up for grabs. Ghana has a strong culture of youth activism, and victory in the race to succeed Akufo-Addo, who has reached his two-term limit, is not guaranteed for the governing New Patriotic Party—now led by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
Democracy deferred in the Sahel. A continued theme in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa is the trend of leaders who seek to change their nations’ constitutions to consolidate power or run for life—a practice that triggers new instability and coups. Chad, Mali, and Guinea-Bissau are slated to hold elections this year. The outcome of these elections is predictable; the foremost question is whether these votes will even take place.
Malians voted in a referendum in June that introduced a new constitution granting the head of state sweeping powers including the ability to appoint and sack ministers. Political observers suspect Mali’s military leader and interim president, Col. Assimi Goita, and other coup leaders are positioning themselves as potential presidential candidates in elections that were slated for February 2023 and have now been delayed until sometime around October 2024.
Chad’s military leader, Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby, seized power in 2021 when his father, then-President Idriss Deby, was killed on the battlefield. He delayed elections by two years over a new constitution passed through a referendum in December establishing autonomous local assemblies that would allow locally elected representatives and tax collection. Some opposition members rejected the new constitution in favor of federalization, as they say power is too concentrated in the hands of one man. The possibility of an internal coup by members of Deby’s inner circle—over Sudan’s civil war and his alleged alliance with the United Arab Emirates—put Chad in a precarious situation as elections loom.
In nearby Guinea-Bissau, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo dissolved parliament for the second time in less than two years after what he called a failed coup attempt on Nov. 30. Embalo similarly dissolved parliament in May 2022 after another apparent overthrow attempt in February 2022.
Embalo took office in 2020, but the opposition’s majority win in legislative elections last June wrecked his plans to push through a constitutional change that would have dismantled the country’s semi-presidential system and consolidated his power. Ongoing events suggest a tumultuous election—which is also slated for sometime in 2024.
Source link : https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/03/what-to-watch-in-africa-in-2024/
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Publish date : 2024-01-03 08:00:00
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