Yahya Jammeh is not a household name, but in his native Gambia he has been president for twenty two years. One can safely assume that all this long period in power has been reliant on the force of authoritarianism. But about three weeks ago, when Gambians voted to elect Adama Barrow as their next president, Jammeh quickly conceded defeat and congratulated his rival. Celebrations broke out in Banjul, the capital. One more African state, it was thought, was transiting from one-man rule to democracy. The happiness was short-lived. Only days after he had accepted his defeat, Jammeh went on television to make the eerie announcement that he was rejecting the results of the election because he thought irregularities had marked the voting. It was nonsense. The truth is he got frightened when men close to Barrow made their intentions known of prosecuting Jammeh for abuses of authority during his long stranglehold on power. Besides, the Gambian military, itself afraid of prosecution over human rights abuses, clearly joined hands with the defeated president, intent on saving its own neck. Africa, as you can guess, remains an interesting place for politics to play itself out. Over the years, large tracts of it have embraced democracy, places like Liberia for instance. Senegal has always been a rather good model of pluralism. And, of course, despite the many pulls and pressures, South African democracy has been consolidating itself in increasingly deeper ways. But that is not what you can say of some other African states. Men who have ridden to power, with so much of hope attached to their character, have grown comfortable and complacent and power-hungry in office. In the early 1990s, Eritrea earned its freedom from Ethiopia after a three-decade guerrilla war against Addis Ababa. With Issaias Afewerki taking power in Asmara, it was natural to suppose the country was on its way to an honourable place in the global community. Ministers were humble, wore simple sandals and used bicycles to work. But as the years wore on, the system became entrenched, with President Afewerki beginning to display all the hallmarks of a dictator. He has crushed the opposition, has intimidated the media into silence and has determinedly carried on. The dream of an egalitarian Eritrea simply disappeared. One of the most influential of African leaders is Rwanda's Paul Kagame. He has been around since his forces put an end to the ethnic violence in the country in the mid-1990s. It is to his credit that Rwanda, so often prey to historical conflict between its Hutus and Tutsis, is today a peaceful country. It is also an economic destination for foreign investors and President Kagame has been much feted in the West for his pragmatic policies. But in the process the popular yearning for a more open, democratic society has remained a dream. And with Kagame suppressing all forms of opposition, including causing fears among the country's journalists should they stray from official interpretations of happenings, the dream is now more a nightmare than anything else.
In neither Uganda nor Congo is there any sign of change. Like Kagame, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni has turned his country into a peaceful, economically vibrant place. Nowhere does one spot any sign of the chaos that marked the times of Museveni's predecessors. That has been Museveni's achievement. But the damage done by President Museveni's hold on power --- he has been in office since 1986 --- is that no moves were made to give a structural form to democracy. The political opposition remains weak and with little sign that Museveni will call it a day anytime soon, authoritarianism is a reality Ugandans must go on living with. Much the same has been happening in Congo, where President Joseph Kabila, in power since the assassination of his father Laurent Kabila in 2001, shows absolutely no sign of preparing to quit office. Indeed, he means to wring changes in the constitution to allow him to remain in the presidency. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, in power since white minority rule came to an end in 1980, remains a chirpy ninety-plus years in age. No matter how hard the opposition has tried to make him go, he has dug in and stayed on. But good news comes from Angola. Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been president since he took over after the death of the country's first president Agostinho Neto in 1979, has promised to step down in 2018. One needs to keep one's fingers crossed. Not everything is depressing about politics in Africa. Nigeria has quite an energetic though chaotic pluralistic system at work, with President Muhammad Buhari running the show. Ghana, the former Gold Coast that burst into freedom under Kwame Nkrumah in 1957, has just had a defining election. President John Mahama was defeated by his opposition rival, Nana Akufo-Addo, and has conceded defeat. In Mozambique, a wobbly democracy has prevailed, with regular elections taking place since the death of the country's first leader Samora Machel in an air crash. Today, President Filipe Nyusi, elected early last year, presides over the fortunes of the country.r Syed Badrul Ahsan is Associate Editor, The Daily Observer
