By George Nyabuga

This week saw the ‘election’ of Ali Ben Bongo as the president of Gabon. In this contested victory another dynasty is being created, as Ali succeeds his father, Omar, who ruled the oil-rich state for 41 years. The election, which opposition politicians and critics say was fixed, has sparked violence around that West African country, and threatened to destabilise a state that has remained relatively stable since independence in 1960 and despite having more than 40 ethnic groups. The violence reminds us of what happened in Kenya after the disputed presidential election of 2007, and demonstrates the ‘uselessness’ of elections in Africa as the ‘hallmark’ of participatory ‘democracy’.

From Kenya, to Zimbabwe, Nigeria to Uganda, Gambia, Mauritius, Gabon and numerous other countries in Africa, elections have become shams. The trend has become ever too common in Africa where people hardly concede defeat, and where those with access to power see it almost as their intrinsic right to maintain the status quo.

In many of these cases, presidential-monarchs have tended to use state resources, and distributed offices as patronage among close relatives, friends and clients. The longevity of Omar Bongo’s rule and others around the continent has been bulwarked by populating key positions with people close to the big man who consider their countries almost private property from which they can arbitrarily plunder to reward cronies. They see no wrong in such plunder even as the people they claim to serve live in abject poverty. Bongo was until his death one of the world’s richest men with a vast fortune. Despite the fact that Gabon is sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth biggest oil producer and Africa’s second biggest wood exporter, most of its 1.4 million people live in poverty.

Even though he was tipped to win the election, Bongo’s ‘victory’ continues to reflect badly on the continent, particularly with regards to political governance and democracy. In a continent where elections are apparently not ‘won’, such dynastic successions consolidate personal rule rather than democracy.

Such patrimonialism also reinforces their myopic belief that they are in power by right, and accordingly do not need to adhere by the rules of fair play.

Even though the younger Bongo pledges to be "the president of all the people of Gabon", there is no guarantee that that will advance democracy, or that he will revert some of his family’s ill-gotten wealth to the State.

But again, the election reinforces the notion that in Africa, contenders hardly concede defeat. To the former interior minister Andre Mba Obame, who came second in the election, this was "an electoral coup d’etat" which he does not recognise. More important to him is that he is the winner.

Amid these power struggles and perhaps as they start the journey to the formation of a coalition government (the precedent has already been set in Kenya and Zimbabwe), the crux of the matter is: of what benefit are these power-hungry politicians, and bungled and fixed elections to ordinary Gabonese, and democracy?