Universal suffrage, political scientists tell us, is the right to vote. It is one of the pillars of democratic governance. In developed democracies, the United States and most of western Europe specially, this power to choose leaders is truly universal, provided you are 18 and above. In the third world, Africa in particular, this right is recognized but hardly is it allowed to work the way it should. Sit-tightism is its bane. However, this seems set to change for good.
Ghana, a fortnight ago, brought the year’s electoral calendar to a close when the small west African nation successfully held presidential and parliamentary elections. The presidential vote was won by John Dramani Mahama, a former president and candidate of the National Democratic Congress [NDC]. He defeated the candidate of the governing party, New Patriotic Party [NPP], vice president Mahamudu Bawumia by 56 percent to 41 percent. The NDC also won the parliamentary poll. In conceding defeat he said,”The people of Ghana have spoken, the people have voted for change at this time and we respect it with all humility.” He acknowledged that Mahama, who was president 2012 to 2017, had won the presidency “decisively.” His win, according to Al Jazeera, “marks a very historic victory, making him the first president in the three decades of Ghana’s Fourth Republic – since the 1992 return to multi-party democracy – to reclaim the presidency after being voted out.” Ghana’s economic woes dominated the election after the gold and cocoa producer suffered a crisis of default and currency devaluation, ending with a $3bn IMF bailout.
Interestingly, the Ghana election outcome reflects similar situations in many other African countries. Al Jazeera reports that the trend “marked the culmination of a surprising election year across the African continent, during which opposition movements made big waves, either totally ejecting incumbent parties from power or significantly loosening their grip.
From some 12 general elections, four countries (Ghana, Botswana, Mauritius and Senegal) alongside the breakaway, self-governed region of Somaliland, recorded total transfers of power. Two others (South Africa and Namibia) saw significant opposition gains. While it is impossible to box all African countries and their electorates together, voters largely assessed some of the same key issues in deciding who to vote for.” “There’s a sense that voters want to punish parties for failure to boost economies, create jobs and fight corruption,” the broadcaster quotes Graham Hopwood, executive director of the Namibia-based Institute for Public Policy Research. In some cases, opposition groups played on these failures in their campaigns, and bonded to get stronger, he said. In Ghana, for example, soaring inflation – the kind not felt in a decade – corruption, and severe environmental degradation from illegal mining or “galamsey” proved the final death knell for the ruling NPP government led by outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Some of the more seismic shifts occurred in the Southern African region where liberation parties, once loved for ending colonialism or apartheid, are increasingly unpopular, particularly among young voters. That’s because young people did not live that history, Hopwood said, and thus, lack the sense of nostalgia that held these parties in place. South Africa led with the first shocker in early June when the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 30 years. The party, once seen as a beacon of hope for ushering in democracy after apartheid, faces criticism for South Africa’s severe economic downturn that has reduced the continental giant to a country racked by poverty, unemployment and embarrassing power cuts. Internal battles between President Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor, former President Jacob Zuma, further divided its traditional support base. ANC votes, which had steadily declined in recent elections, slipped further to 40 percent this time, less than the number required to form a government, forcing the crippled party into a historic “unity government” with the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party and six others.
It was a more complete loss for Botswana’s dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in November, which had ruled the country since independence in 1966. Opposition movements, banded under the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and led by lawyer Duma Boko, denied President Mokgweetsi Masisi a second term and ended the BDP’s 58-year dominance by a landslide. The party — faulted by voters for a declining diamond economy — won only four seats, down from its previous 38 seats in the 69-seat strong parliament.
Elsewhere on the continent, young people’s fury over corruption proved pivotal, in addition to anger over jobs and the economy. In Senegal’s March polls, former President Macky Sall’s attempts to run for an unconstitutional third term led to violent protests, which led to the ushering in of President Bassirou Faye’s PASTEF party coming to power. Then, anger had been boiling since the COVID-19 pandemic when many countries recorded embezzlement scandals. In Mauritius’s November polls, government heavy-handedness and perceptions of increasing corruption levels proved the end for former leader Pravind Kumar Jugnauth. In 2022, a transformation index report by the research organisation Bertelsmann Foundation found that rising corruption in the country, once seen as transparent, worsened during the pandemic, as officials exploited loopholes in the emergency procurement of medical supplies. Distrust of the government worsened this year after explosive allegations of wiretapping operations by government operatives emerged. “It’s not just in Africa,” Yeboah of CDD said. “If you look at most of the governments that went through the pandemic, most of them did not survive re-elections, including in the US.”
Al Jazeera concludes, “The historic opposition wins on the continent signify that democratic institutions in many African countries are becoming increasingly robust and that the people’s will is being respected.” It quotes Yeboah of the Ghana CDD again, “Citizens are getting more enlightened by the day and are voting regardless of ethnic or religious affiliations, unlike before.” According to Al Jazeera, “That’s a significant improvement on a continent where countries were, until the 1960s, under colonial rule, and had to build democratic institutions from scratch. Several countries, till now, hold elections not classified as free or fair, and a wave of coups in West and Central Africa saw military governments forcefully seize power between 2022 and 2023.”
