Leaders who flout term limits have no place in today’s Africa

A dangerous trend is cropping up — that of some African leaders shunning term limits and using unorthodox means to tighten their grip on power.

The situation obtaining in Ivory Coast and Guinea and the recent military takeover in Mali should worry every African who cares about the democratic potency of the continent. Many African nations are rich but fraying at the edges due to misrule and bad economic policies. Add this to the tendency by presidents to tinker with law for self-aggrandizement and you have a continent in crisis.

Recent estimates show the average poverty rate for sub-Saharan Africa is 41 per cent. And out of the world’s 28 poorest countries, 27 are in sub-Saharan Africa. A lot is at stake.

Across the continent, elections and term limits are fast losing meaning. President Alpha Conde, 82, has trampled on his country’s constitution, declaring his decision to seek a third term and threatening a war-like crisis in Guinea.  

In Ivory Coast, a country still scarred by conflict that killed nearly 3,000 a decade ago, President Alassane Ouattara is determined to cling to power. Despite Ouattara’s earlier indication that he would step down after two terms, he is now seeking a third one. For a man who became President on a reform platform, many are struggling to fathom Ouattara’s sudden about-turn.

Retired colonel and former minister Bah Ndaw is now Mali’s interim president. Last month, a coup overthrew embattled leader Ibrahim Boubacar Keita who critics accuse of having overstayed his welcome. It did not start with them.

There were many others before, including Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, DRC’s Joseph Kabila, Togo’s Faure Eyadema and Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe.

In Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade’s quest for a third term fell flat in the face. Yes, in Africa we have leaders who have ruled for three decades and still counting. They cut the image of men in control but the economic misery in their countries represents serious ruin and despondency.  

In Zimbabwe, it is simply an old order disguised as new. President Emmerson Mnangagwa was in the inner circles of Mugabe. That time, he religiously backed controversial government policies, including the seizure of land from white settlers.

Now, Mnangagwa, the crocodile, is contending with a disgruntled population pushed to the margins by joblessness, high cost of living and an apparent shrinking democratic space in the southern Africa country once the region’s bread basket.

Regrettably, elections in Africa can be bloody and the temptation to rig elections is hard for incumbents to resist.

Our own experience in Kenya tells us that politics of brinkmanship can tear apart a society. We saw it in 2007 and 2017. And now, we have a clique that believes President Kenyatta shouldn’t retire because he is “too young”.

Let’s persuasively remind politicians that leadership can’t be a matter of life and death. We challenge leaders to shade off the mud and prove to skeptics that as a people, we can manage our destiny.

There’s absolutely no harm in obeying the law. It is disheartening that many of the continent’s leaders pride in defiling the very constitutions they swore to uphold. They have turned into chameleons who change colours depending on their immediate circumstances. It is regrettable that in the 21st century, Africa’s leadership doesn’t inspire confidence despite the threat of graft, poverty, disease and endless civil strife.

An important lesson for every leader is that what you do to access or cling onto power will be done unto you. A coup succeeds a coup. A botched election succeeds another.

Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and his ilk can only be remembered in ignominy. Mobutu Sese Seko, a man who formed a totalitarian regime in DRC, killed and maimed but hit a dead end in 1997 after 26 years. With the increasing rights awareness levels sweeping through the continent, we urge every African to abhor impunity. By and large, impunity is responsible for most if not all of the continent’s challenges.

We urge the African Union (AU) to represent a different lesson for every country. Like the European Union, AU has to assert itself in every affair of the continent beyond the crybaby it has always been in recent years. The dusting should start now and these home-truths will have to be digested.