Elderly African rulers sidestepping democracy

Cameroon’s 92-year-old President Paul Biya is now poised to stretch his time in power to five decades. If he finishes his new seven-year term, Biya will be nearly 100. By contrast, the median age of Cameroon’s 30 million citizens is just 18. Indeed, the autocrat is the only leader that most Cameroonians have ever known.

“There was no election; it was a masquerade,” said the main opposition challenger, Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

The country’s pro-government election commission on Oct. 27 released final results showing Biya won 53 per cent of votes compared with 35 per cent for the former labour minister. Yet international monitors and political rivals routinely claim polls during Biya’s tenure have been marred by irregularities. This time was no different.

The president’s contested victory also came amid an ominous backdrop.

Public gatherings had been banned for weeks. Plus, internet blackouts and deadly clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces compounded anxiety in a nation already on edge. Cameroon has since 2016 been mired in low-level civil war between the central government and insurgents in its minority anglophone region.

Biya’s re-election has unnerved foreign investors as well. A prolonged outbreak of civil unrest — or the leader’s sudden passing — could topple government and endanger assets in Cameroon’s agriculture, mining, energy and telecoms sectors.

Much of this uncertainty can be traced back to how Biya has so far refused to pick a successor. Meanwhile, he and his inner circle have centralized power within the president’s office. The two dynamics mean that if Biya were to suddenly exit the scene, the entire country would be plunged into a leadership vacuum and likely violent power struggle.

Experts even make connections between Cameroon today and the horrific conflict currently engulfing East Africa’s largest country.

“There are lessons from Sudan that will likely remain unlearned in Cameroon until it’s too late,” University of Calgary political scientist Chris W.J. Roberts previously argued in Foreign Policy magazine. Given the “impending succession crisis, endless war on the frontiers, a factionalized governing party, and fragmented security forces,” writes Roberts, “outside actors have not yet grasped that a lack of consequences for those with guns puts everyone without guns in jeopardy.”

Yet self-serving leaders putting their longevity in office ahead of fresh thinking is a problem endemic to Africa as a whole. The continent has glaring and profound development and security challenges. Still, the majority of African ruling parties remain preoccupied not with formulating genuine plans for national improvement. Rather, they prioritize anti-democratic tactics to ensure their perennial hold on power.

One tactic copied in over a dozen African countries has been to enact constitutional reforms through sham referendums to lift presidential term limits.

This includes Cameroon. But Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Guinea, Rwanda and elsewhere, too.

Shortly after Biya won re-election, in Ivory Coast — which abolished term limits in 2016 — President Alassane Ouattara, 83, won his own fourth stint in power. This was achieved in part by proactively disqualifying several popular opposition candidates from running.

A political scientist from the University of Ghana told Bloomberg that holding elections that exclude the main challengers gives rise to “democratic dictators.” And it creates fertile ground for military coups. Junta governments led by generals are thus now re-emerging across the continent after relative government stability during the early 21st century.

Yet a host of surveys by independent research company Afrobarometer confirm a huge majority of Africa’s roughly 1.5 billion people view democracy as their preferred form of government — over autocratic systems such as dictatorship, military rule or single-party rule.

However, decades of sclerotic leadership has taken its toll. The invisible destruction of corruption by self-absorbed governments has squandered much of three decades’ worth of economic growth.

From 1990 to 2018, Latin America and South Asia reduced their levels of extreme poverty (those living on less than US$1.90 per day) by more than half. Over that same time period Sub-Saharan Africa saw a reduction of only 15 per cent.

This does not portend well for the continent’s future.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that 100 million more people will join Africa’s labour force by 2035. Governments must tirelessly and creatively channel this youth bulge into new areas of their economies. If not, crises of joblessness will foment crises of unrest and radicalization. And Africa’s aging revolutionaries aren’t fit for the task.

Sufficient time has passed since African states gained independence for citizens to demand more from their political leaders. This is understood by Africa’s populations — if not yet by the political leaders that are failing them.

Kyle Volpi Hiebert is a Montreal-based political risk analyst focused on globalization, conflict and emerging technologies.