Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) supporters cheer in the streets of Gaborone in November as President Mokgweetsi Masisi's party suffers a resounding defeat in general elections. (Photo by MONIRUL BHUIYAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The once-dominant liberation parties of southern Africa are having a terrible 2024 .
Just last week, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) suffered an embarrassing defeat at the polls, losing by a landslide.
It is the first transfer of party power in the country’s post-independence history.
That political earthquake followed a historic election in South Africa, where the African National Congress fell below 50% of the vote for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.
It does not stop there.
The fate of the ruling party in Mozambique, Frelimo, remains uncertain after October’s general election.
Support for opposition candidate Venâncio Mondlane was so high – and Frelimo appears to have manipulated the polls so badly – that the country’s Catholic bishops challenged the credibility of the official result, which gave the ruling party candidate a sizeable majority.
Opposition supporters continue to demand that the government leaves power and, despite a violent crackdown on those protests, Frelimo may yet be forced to do so.
Even if it stays put, its legitimacy and authority may have suffered a fatal blow.
Fading memories, fresh concerns
This wave of resistance to the dominance of liberation parties has been dramatic, but not unexpected. They have been haemorrhaging support for some time.
The BDP, for example, has consistently failed to secure a majority of votes but – because Botswana does not use a proportional electoral system – would regularly win a majority of parliamentary seats nonetheless.
From the collapse of the parties that secured independence in countries such as Benin, Kenya and Zambia, we know at least three factors that fatally weakened their hold on power: generational shifts, economic stagnation and internal divisions.
Decades after independence, the combination of increasingly young populations and fading memories of the anti-colonial struggle meant that leaders could not rely on their status as “founding fathers” for legitimacy.
That shone a brighter spotlight on the governments’ economic performance, which was problematic: their political dominance had encouraged corruption and inefficiency, exacerbating the challenges created by an inhospitable and often unfair international financial system.
These failings amplified personal rivalries, ethnic tensions and ideological disagreements within ruling parties, which were inevitable in parties that came to power as broad churches unified more by opposition to colonial rule than anything else.
The more individuals quit the government or were expelled, the greater the size of the “opposition in waiting”.
By the early 1980s, nationalist parties in much of the continent were holding onto power by their fingertips, propped up by the one-party state political system, which insulated them from having to contest competitive elections.
Once it was removed in the early 1990s, they were living on borrowed time.
In countries where governments and leaders were more committed to the national interest and respecting the will of the people, as in Benin and Zambia, they rapidly lost multiparty elections.
Election manipulation
It was only where leaders were willing to systematically manipulate elections and use violence to intimidate and divide their opponents, as in Kenya and Togo, that ruling parties held on.
The same is true today.
The popularity of the ANC, BDP and Frelimo has been undermined by economic decline.
In Botswana, a sharp downturn in the global diamond market means that the economy is only expected to grow by 1% this year, which means the unemployment rate of 28% is likely to increase.
Citizens have attributed these problems to government failures rather than global trends because they were already concerned about corruption.
A recent report from Afrobarometer revealed a sharp increase in the number of citizens across the continent who believed “the president and officials in his office” to be corrupt.
In Botswana, a key concern is nepotism, after large contracts were awarded to a company owned by outgoing President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s sister.
Concerns about graft are even greater in Mozambique and South Africa, where state capacity has been increasingly undermined by the emergency of entrenched kleptocracies.
Internal splits have also continued to be damaging, contracting the support base of today’s ruling parties.
The new political vehicles built around former ANC members Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema won 24% of the national vote in the 2024 general election, which would have given Cyril Ramaphosa a landslide victory had it been mobilised behind his government.
The BDP was similarly harmed by the fallout between President Masisi and his predecessor Ian Khama, the son of the country’s founding father, Sir Seretse Khama, who quit the party and subsequently denounced it.
As well as bolstering the opposition, these very public spats undermine the claims of governments to have a right to hold power because it embodies the values and traditions of the liberation/independence movement.
The way these trends play out varies, but their cumulative impact has undermined the ability of almost all independence and liberation parties to stay in power democratically.
The reason why the vote share of ruling parties in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe has not fallen as much as those in Botswana and South Africa is not that they have performed much better, but that they have used greater intimidation and repression, and manipulated election outcomes.
All eyes will now turn to Namibia, which goes to the polls on 27 November.
Economic downturn, rising unemployment and corruption allegations have eroded support for the Swapo government. If it allows a free and fair election, there may yet be another liberation party licking its wounds when 2024 winds to a close.
Nic Cheeseman is the Director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) at the University of Birmingham.
This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here.