The late former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Photo: Jesse Awalt
I belong to a vibrant WhatsApp group of African journalists. We have robust debates; we share news, views and updates and discuss anything from politics, economics, showbiz and sport to social issues and just banter that gives us a good laugh.
Inevitably, politics dominates. So, recently – and not for the first time – there was a discussion in the group about a cruel pattern that replays itself across Africa.
Politicians who once suffered repression eventually rise to power, only to reproduce and even strengthen the very systems they once condemned.
Victims of State abuse become architects of new abuses. The faces change but the methods remain disturbingly familiar. This has been a cycle dating more than half a century. In the 1950s and ’60s, liberation movements across Africa fought colonialism and triumphed to become governing parties. It was heralded as a new era.
The oppressor was overthrown. It was now time for the Black man and woman to govern. But what followed was not a dismantling of the old order.
Instead, post-independence governments retained the same oppressive systems, tactics and archaic laws they once fought against. These were now used in the new republics against opponents and enemies, real or imagined.
To ensure that only they had a say, the former freedom fighters now in charge of the State apparatus decided to enact one party states. Dissent was outlawed. Only they – the new rulers, had the right to heard. Thus, what was once welcomed as a new epoch on the continent just amounted to a false start, nothing more than a rearrangement of a few chairs.
Enter the 1990s.This saw another era in Africa, the birth of pro-democracy movements inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Society Union.
The new breed of activists rode the democratic wave sweeping across the continent and promised a clean break from the past, decrying dicta- torships that had held sway over the preceding decades. Given a chance to govern, they, too, committed the cardinal sin.
The dividends of liberal democracy are still largely a pipe- dream in much of the continent.
Since the early 2000s, there have been several political transitions in Africa, each newcomer promis- ing radical governance reforms anchored on legal and institutional renewal.
Granted the mandate, they have gone on to do the exact oppo- site – squeezing opponents and sti- fling dissent using the very laws that the colonialists left. Some have even enacted laws that would make colonialists look like saints.
How is it that in the second decade of the 21st century, African governments have no qualms running their countries on laws that were created to oppress them?
What we have is not a story of moral failure by individuals alone.
It is the consequence of a political culture shaped by the seductive nature of power.
Once in power, the formerly oppressed often govern with fear, convinced that losing power could mean returning to persecution.
In that fear, repression feels justified. The tragedy is not just that ideals are abandoned but that oppression is normalised as a legitimate tool of governance. This cycle persists because power is rarely constrained.
Institutions meant to limit power are often captured. Courts pander to the executive. Parliaments become an echo chamber rather than a platform for checks. In such an environment, personal restraint is not enough.
Even well-intentioned leaders who once preached justice and the rule of law are swallowed by systems that reward domination and punish tolerance and compromise.
Those that once promised to change the system become changed by it, leaving citizens to wonder: Are these the same people who promised us change?
When suffering in opposition is packaged as a rite of passage to power, cruelty is seen as proof of strength. It’s as if the more they were oppressed, the more brutal they themselves become given an opportunity to lead.
Consequently, incumbency becomes a re-enactment of past trauma, with new actors assuming old roles.
Breaking this cursed playbook requires more than new leaders produced by a cycle of elections every five years.
It demands strong institutions, constitutional limits that are respected and civic cultures that reject the notion that suffering entitles anyone to rule without accountability. Voters should now demand more from those seeking power.
Merely having ‘suffered’ at the hands of one brutal regime should no longer entitle anyone to power.
Citizens also need to forcefully resist the temptation to excuse abuse simply because it is done by familiar faces or former heroes.
Africa does not lack visions of freedom. It lacks durable systems that protect freedom from those who claim to embody it.
Until power is made boring, limited and reversible, yesterday’s victims will continue to become tomorrow’s oppressors and the cycle will remain unbroken. Reginald Ntomba is a Zambian journalist, author and political scientist based in Lusaka.