We’re in a brave new world – even if our leaders are not

Starting this week, our guest columnist forages for hope in the underbrush of African politics.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki

Fist come, fist serve: Atop a moving car in Yaoundé, Cameroon, a man roars his support of opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma, ahead of elections that returned 92-year-old Paul Biya to the presidency for an eighth term. (Photo: Marco Longari/AFP)

Ian Khama, former president of Botswana, didn’t mince his words when he slammed the recent performative, sham elections in Cameroon and Tanzania. “It is totally unacceptable when an African leader, to stay in power, will resort to killing his or her own people … [and] will rig an election,” he said, describing Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan as “an illegitimate president”.

In Cameroon, elections were held on 12 October. Paul Biya, the world’s oldest president, claimed victory with 55% of the vote. That extended the 92-year-old’s tenure for an eighth term. He reportedly had to send life-size puppets of him and his wife on the campaign trail because he was too frail to attend in person.

The country erupted in protest, predictably repressed by the security services. The violence adds another element to the insecurity already prevalent in Cameroon. There is ongoing Anglophone armed resistance in the northwest and southwest in the region separatists call Ambazonia, not to mention insecurity caused by Boko Haram in the north.

In Tanzania, the incumbent ran with no credible challenger. The main opposition leader was in jail on a treason charge, which his party describes as politically motivated. Turnout was low – observers noted voting lines of zero to only a dozen people. That did not stop reported ballot-stuffing by the ruling party, with the electoral commission announcing Suluhu had won with 98% of votes cast in her favour.

Then, unprecedented in Tanzania, protests erupted. Demonstrators targeted property linked to ruling party officials and celebrities seen as mouthpieces for the incumbent.

The security services struck back. Footage and photos leaking out of the country – despite an internet shutdown and phones being searched and purged of evidence – are shocking. Multiple reports describe mass graves being dug at night in public cemeteries, with staff coerced into the grisly work, and of cement factories and incinerators being used to dispose of bodies.

It is impossible to verify the number of deaths yet (the United Nations says the death toll is at least in the hundreds; civil society groups put it even higher).

But the truth will always out and what is already in the public domain suffices. What’s clear is that both elections were shams and that the protests are being shut down in a brutal fashion.

The emperors have no clothes. These electoral performances are incapable of establishing what they are supposed to: the social contract, through which citizens consent to surrender some personal sovereignty in exchange for collective sovereignty. That collective sovereignty is meant to be exercised by the executive in the public interest to deliver public goods and services and to act as the referee in the private market.

These past two years have seen protests by young men and women across the continent. Kenya. Mozambique. Morocco. Madagascar, where the entry into the fray of the security services, Sudan 2019-style, even sent the president into exile.

These protests have to do with anger – rage – at our broken social contracts. In Mozambique, Cameroon, and Tanzania, they came to a head to say that electoral theatre will not cut it anymore. As a means of establishing the social contract, that’s done. Over. Passé. In Kenya, Morocco, Madagascar, their message was that they expect actual delivery on the social contract. Occupying political office merely to gouge from the public purse without delivering public benefits is also done.

The young protesters also point to something that should have been obvious. The generation gap between the leaders and the led – most stark in Cameroon – will not be tolerated much longer. The expectations and worldview of the people they lead are increasingly incomprehensible to the leaders.

But the irony, satirical humour, and wit of young people across the continent don’t only allow us to laugh at our leaders’ absurdities: they provide hope. Gen Z is so far ahead. We are already in a brave new world. Our leaders simply do not get that yet.

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Dr L. Muthoni Wanyeki is a Kenyan political scientist