The recent ouster of Omar al-Bashir as Sudanese leader, which launches the north-eastern African country into a new era, marks a historic moment that will echo across the continent, where he was one of Africa’s longest-serving heads of state to be forced out of power. Al-Bashir was overthrown and arrested by the country’s military, which initially said it has decided to oversee a two year transitional period to be followed by elections.
His fall follows months of protests, which began last December as economic conditions worsened in the country, culminating in an almost week-long sit-in outside the country’s army headquarters.
The 75-year-old ousted leader seized power in a military coup in 1989 and he brutally crushed successive waves of dissent against his government. Civil servants and labour union leaders were thrown into jail without trial while religious minorities, particularly Christians, were persecuted in the first years of his regime through application of the Sharia law.
After these, he turned to exploiting ethnic and tribal conflict to consolidate power, with bloody ethnically targeted wars in Darfur and other parts of the country, earning him an International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment for war crimes and genocide and making Sudan’s name synonymous with ethnic cleansing.
No doubt, al-Bashir’s exit swells the ranks of African sit-tight leaders like Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, The Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who have been forced out of office by people power in recent times, however, hundreds of millions still suffer the authoritarian excesses of rapacious, ruthless rulers across the continent
They include Obiang Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea, 39 years); Paul Biya (Cameroon, 36 years); Yoweri Museveni (Uganda, 33 years), Dennis Nguesso (Republic of Congo, 32 years), Idris Derby (Chad, 28 years) and Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea, 25 years). But, at the same time, several countries, including Senegal, Burkina Faso and most recently Gambia and Zimbabwe, have seen popular uprisings, forcing longtime leaders to step down. Before the Arab Spring in 2011, there were 16 African leaders who had been in power for nearly two decades or more.
Today, there are 10 of such leaders in the region with tenures ranging from 16-39 years. While these leaders have succeeded in mutilating the constitutions of their respective countries to suit their desire, the fact remains that their quest negates the principle of democracy as government by the people for the people.
But, so far, three patterns have emerged for compelling the exit of such long-term serving leaders: Popular revolt as in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Burkina Faso; threat of use of force by a sub-regional organisation to achieve compliance with electoral outcome, as in The Gambia and military intervention, as in the case of Zimbabwe.
Each of these patterns has involved some degree of violence or the threat of use of violence. It is against this backdrop that we insist that these sit-tight leaders should not continue to hold Africa down as there can be no justification for men, who have been in power for over three decades to continue in an emerging world order that emphasises clearheaded and able leadership.
Nothing can be more saddening that despite what seems to be a growing trend for young leaders across the globe, particularly in countries like France, Ireland, Estonia, Austria and Canada, which recently elected leaders under the age of 40, older politicians are still very much involved in governing and setting the agenda in Africa.
To the electorate in these countries, there is the feeling that new approaches are needed for today’s problems.
Therefore, less emphasis is put on age and experience. More than youth alone, these new crop of leaders offer their respective countries a renewed sense of vitality and excitement. It is our belief then that it was time that Africa’s sit-tight leaders relinquished power as one major challenge most African countries have continued to face since independence from colonialists is incompetent leadership.
This leadership deficit is so legendary that from all indications and purposes, the continent has continued to lag behind with only backwardness and poverty to show for selfrule despite abundant human and natural resources.
As witnessed in Zimbabwe, the desire to stay in power for as long as possible even in the face of obvious poor performance and decline in physical and mental strength, is one of the reasons why Africa will continue to occupy the attention of the rest of world with one form of crisis or another.
To curb this, we align with the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership that encourages excellence in democratic governance and call on African policy makers, under the auspices of the African Union (AU), to develop a policy framework that will pro-actively discourage leaders from overstaying their tenure in order to prevent the wavering between violence and threat of use of violence to remove them from office.
END
Be the first to comment