http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-47217.html
Africa's liberation movements maintain 100% victory record
by C. ONYANGO-OBBO
10 May 2014
>From South Africa and Zimbabwe to Ethiopia and Rwanda, no liberation
movement government leader has ever lost power in the last 40 years. Why?
With nearly all the votes counted in South's Africa's Wednesday election,
the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is set to win with just over 60%
of the vote; still robust, even if slightly reduced from 2009.
Party faithful are already out in the streets in the townships doing
victory jigs. It is a very common sight in African countries led by parties
that came to power as liberation movements; the supporters always
celebrating almost immediately after the polling stations close. They have
reason to- their parties have won all the elections they stood in.
>From South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Uganda to Rwanda, and
Ethiopia, no liberation movement government has ever lost power - and that
is a period spanning nearly 40 years, from when Mozambique became
independent in 1975.
Critics say it makes it easier that they organise the polls, or sometimes
fiddle with them even when seemingly "independent" electoral commissions
hold them. However, their 100% victory record, though suspect, still
suggests there are other dynamics that favour former liberation parties
against their opposition rivals.
The numbers
The numbers speak for themselves: Before this week's ballot, in the four
elections South Africa has held since returning to multiparty democracy in
1994, the ANC has won all of them by more than 60%. In Uganda, President
Yoweri Museveni, a former liberation movement leader, has hovered between
76% and nearly 60% since the first one-woman-one-vote election of his rule
in 1996. His party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has not dipped
below 64% in the parliamentary seats it has won.
Rwanda, where the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels took power in 1994,
ending the genocide in which nearly one million people were killed, had its
first multiparty elections in 2003. It won 73.78% of the vote, and
President Paul Kagame snagged 95.1%, and kept his winning percentage in the
90s again in 2010.
Given the world view of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe as an autocrat, it is
ironical that it is only in his country, in which a former liberation
movement coalition, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
(Zanu-PF) came close to losing power at an election, in 2008 losing
parliament to the opposition. Long used to winning at least 80%, in those
polls Zanu-PF lost its parliamentary majority, and Mugabe trailed in the
first round of the presidential vote. He won it in the second round, after
Opposition MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew, citing malpractices.
Contradictory as that might seem - Zimbabwe can claim to be the most
"democratic" of the Liberation Club.
That said, the stalemate that followed was resolved when a fractious
coalition government was cobbled together between Zanu-PF and the MDC. By
the elections of 2013, Zimbabwe's outlier status was over. Zanu-PF won the
old way - with 76.1% of the seats in Parliament.
Dramatically up
Likewise in Namibia, where the ruling South West Africa People's
Organisation (SWAPO), again a liberation movement, won by 57.33% in the
pre-independence elections of 1989 its vote share edged up dramatically in
subsequently elections. It won in 1994, 1999, 2004, and 2009, scoring more
than 70% in each of the polls.
The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which came to
power in 1975, had a dip in fortunes in the 1992 election - it won with
53.74%. It has not allowed the count to go under 80% in all the elections
thereafter.
The Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), led by Meles Zenawi, allied
with the Eritrean Peoples' Liberation Front (EPLF) defeated the military junta
regime in Addis Ababa in 1991 after a long revolutionary war. Amid cries of
election theft, the TPLF, which is now the lead party in the Ethiopian
People's Revolutionary Democratic ruling coalition (EPRD), went about
winning in 1995 with 82%. It hasn't looked back.
It is telling that when the EPRD won with 62.65% in 2005, it was considered
a "loss" of some kind, and the country was plunged into violence. It
corrected that "mistake" in 2010, winning Parliament by the more familiar
margin of 91.2%.
Seesaws
In Mozambique, the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) victory
margins seesaws between the believable and suspect quite frequently - 1999
- 48.54%; 2004 - 62.03%, 2009 - 74.66%. In Angola, the MPLA goes through
the rituals of elections, and in Eritrea the Eritrean Liberation Front
(ELF), renamed People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) in 1994,
does not bother to even go through the motions. It doesn't hold competitive
elections.
There are two distinct patterns. In the early and pre-independence
elections, where the liberation movements are not yet in government so
can't appoint the election commissioners, and also have the power to extend
their reach and patronage, they have generally won "democratic margins" of
below 50%.
Scholars of African politics have argued that, especially for the older
liberation parties like the ANC, Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF or Uganda's National
Resistance Movement (NRM), their characters are forged in the bush, and
become hardy in ways that opposition parties born of middle class outrage
in urban areas will rarely be.
Master skills
Secondly, that they have to master extraordinary mobilisation skills in the
bush to win wars, and they draw on those skills in elections. Rivals
without that background, often find themselves out-organised and able to
make an impression only in a few urban areas. Thus while a party that has
its roots in a military regime, like Ghana's People's National Party (PNP)
that was formed by Flt Lt (now retired) Jerry Rawlings, could lose power in
elections, it is highly unlikely to happen to EPRD in Ethiopia (taking
power in a coup is a no brainer, compared to fighting a 10-year guerrilla
war).
Similarly, while the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring in countries like
Egypt, though they were able to oust long-ruling military dictator Hosni
Mubarak in 2011, they were subsequently swept aside by the conservative and
better organised Muslim Brotherhood. They then saw their hopes of democracy
buried when the military returned to power, deposing the Brotherhood's
President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
However, after a marginal to significant drop-off in either the electoral
fortunes of the parties or their leaders in the early 2000s, they are
enjoying resurgence as witnessed in Uganda in 2012 and Zimbabwe and Uganda.
On this form, it seems they are not about to lose. When they do, it will be
one of the big surprises of African politics, and it looks that that is
more likely to happen in southern Africa, than in the East. - See more at:
http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-47217.html#sthash.6YeWYDxL.dpuf
Received on Sat May 10 2014 - 16:52:16 EDT