25 February 2016

Happy Birthday, Mr President

African leaders race for the record books.

by Neil Tidmarsh

This week, President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is 92 years old.  He is the world’s oldest head of state.  He has been in power for 35 years, very nearly another record (he is beaten only by José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, both tying in first place with 36 years in power).  As he celebrates, President Mugabe will no doubt be reflecting on what he has done for his country in those 35 years.

His proudest achievement must be the transformation of Zimbabwe into a virtual one-party state (most of those 35 years have been dedicated to crushing any opposition); and yet an ugly fracture in his Zanu (PF) party is overshadowing this week’s celebrations.  Rivalry between his wife Grace Mugabe and his vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, both of whom lead competing factions, threatens to tear that party apart.

His next most significant achievement is the impoverishment of his country; inflation to rival Weimar Germany has been rampant for decades, and his policy of land redistribution has been disastrous for the country’s agricultural base.  And yet his birthday celebrations are costing his country almost a million dollars.  Zimbabwe is also held to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world: the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranks it 163 out of 176 countries.

A monster birthday cake is being made for him – all of 92kg, one kilogram for each of his years – and yet a famine is closing in on the people of Zimbabwe, many of whom are already facing starvation even without it. (Let them eat cake? No, Mugabe and his cronies are having all the cake and eating it too.)  He can hardly be blamed for a famine which is threatening the whole of southern Africa, but he can be blamed for his country’s lack of preparations to meet it; he declared a state of disaster only two weeks ago, long after it was clear that the prolonged and serious drought meant that famine was inevitable.  Other countries in the area declared a state of disaster months ago, and have been making emergency preparations ever since.

So – poverty, starvation and a one-party state which is unlikely to outlast him.  Not much to show for all those years.  Nevertheless, it seems that others are keen to emulate his record.

President Museveni of Uganda has just claimed victory in this week’s elections.  He is 71 years old and has been in power for 30 years.  One more victory in 2021 would see him within sight of Mugabe’s 35 years and even dos Santos’s and Obiang’s 36 years.  But first he would have to change the constitution, which specifies a presidential age limit of 75.  That is unlikely to stop Museveni from having a crack at that record. He abolished term limits in 2005, and the nature of this week’s victory shows just how determined he is.

His main rival Kizza Besigye was arrested four times during the elections (he has been arrested 46 times since 2011).  Mr Besigye’s party headquarters were raided and many staff members were also arrested.  Police fired tear gas at his supporters during a rally; one person was killed and 19 injured.  Another opposition leader, General David Sejusa, has been in prison for weeks.  A third, Amaba Mbabazi, was intimidated by armed police trucks parked outside his house on election day.  There were reports of delayed ballot papers, missing ballot papers, pre-marked ballot papers and people prevented from voting.  Police fired on protesters demonstrating against these irregularities.  The president even blocked Twitter and Facebook.

But President Museveni of Uganda isn’t the only African leader hot on the heels of President Mugabe in pursuit of those records.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has just had the constitution changed to allow him to stay in power until 2035.  Last year, a referendum in Rwanda to allow the President not just two terms, but three or four or five, was won by a 98% vote; and last month President Kagame confirmed that he will indeed be running for a third term in elections later this year.

Last week, President Idriss Déby of Chad, who is 63 and has been president since 1990, announced that he intends to run for a fifth term; his country changed the rules on presidential terms last year.

Congo (Brazzaville), Angola, Djibouti and Algeria have also recently changed their constitutions to allow more presidential terms.  Benin is considering it.  But such attempts elsewhere have triggered violence and even potential civil war, as has recently been the case in Burundi (which has suffered high levels of violent protest since President Nkurunziza insisted on a third term last April), the Democratic Republic of Congo (where it is feared that President Joseph Kabila will postpone this year’s elections rather than step down) and Burkina Faso.

And outside Africa, President Morales of Bolivia is hoping that a referendum this week will allow him a fourth term in office.  He has already changed the constitution to allow a third term – he has been in power since 2006.  His popularity is threatened by a number of scandals, however, and the result of the referendum is likely to be very close.

But wait – back in Africa, what is happening in Senegal?  This week, the Senegalese president Macky Sall announced that he wants to cut his term of office from seven years to five, introduce a two-term limit and expand the powers of parliament!  The reforms will be put to a referendum next month. (Though, ironically, even if they are passed, the constitutional council – Senegal’s highest court – has ruled that they cannot take effect until 2019, so President Sall will nevertheless have to reluctantly serve the full term of seven years for which he was elected!).   President Sall declared that “We have to understand, in Africa too, that we are able to offer an example and that power is not an end in itself”.

It’s a declaration which President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is unlikely to consider as he tucks into his monstrous birthday cake, or President Museveni of Uganda as he tucks into his victory feast. Nevertheless, those words demonstrate that President Sall of Senegal is more deserving of such rewards than all of them. By ignoring the race for dubious records, he will no doubt prove that the last shall indeed be first and the first shall be last.

 

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