Outing Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos crowns his successor
João Lourenço at a ceremony at the Praça da República in Marginal da
Praia do Bispo in Luanda on September 27, 2017. ARNALDO VIEIRA | NATION
MEDIA GROUP
After 38 years as president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos reign as the country’s chief executive has come to an end.
Though
he’s no longer president, Dos Santos is for now still Angola’s ruler,
because he remains president of the country’s powerful governing
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
Ahead of
the rigged August 23 election, which paved the way for his successor
Joao Lourenco, dos Santos covered his flanks by making a series of
changes to Angola’s security services leadership, that strengthened his
hand.
Dos Santos’ exit from State House, changed the ranking of the longest-serving Africa leaders.
He
was second on the list after Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Zimbabwe’s fragile 93-year-old Robert Mugabe now moves into second
place, with 37 years on the throne.
Paul Biya is third
at 35 years, opening the way for a grand East African entrance by
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni into fourth position.
In
another time and place, dos Santos’ departure would have signaled the
beginning of the end for Africa’s club of presidents for life.
Particularly
so, because we are also seeing more democratic tremors in West Africa.
In Togo, protestors demanding constitutional reform have momentarily put
President Faure Gnassingbe on the back foot.
President
Gnassingbe’s family has been in power for the past 50 years. Gnassingbe
Jnr succeeded his famously autocratic and eccentric father Gnassingbe
Eyadema in 2005.
Gnassingbe Snr was the dean of
Africa’s presidents for life, having ruled for nearly 40 years by the
time he expired in February 2005.
However, the evidence
is that the old order is well and alive. In Uganda the moves to amend
the constitution and remove presidential age limit to allow Museveni
stand in 2022 gained tremendous momentum in recent days.
In
Zimbabwe, 93-year-old Mugabe has thrown his hat in the ring for the
2018 election, despite appearing at his campaign rallies in a vegetative
state.
So why are we not in another moment of democratic upheaval in Africa? First, the leaders have China to thank for it.
China entry
The
billions China has pumped into Africa in the past 15 years, has gone
some way in rehabilitating otherwise decrepit regimes, with a new form
of “infrastructure legitimacy” from all the roads, bridges, airports,
and railways it has helped build.
Secondly, and perhaps most significantly, credit goes to the Arab Spring revolutionaries of 2011.
The
most enduring legacy of the Arab Spring is how much social bribery it
unleashed, which in turn deradicalised politics in many African
countries.
In Kenya after the 2008 post-election
violence, Kenya established “Kazi kwa Vijana” (Youth Work) and poured in
millions of dollars. It amped it after 2011.
Morocco announced a $64 million youth innovation fund.
Tunisia,
where the Uprising started and overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
started paying unemployment benefits under the “Amal” programme worth
$144 a month, and launched a youth enterprise fund worth billions of
dollars.
In Uganda, the Museveni government unveiled a “job stimulus programme” which continues to run in different iterations.
Mauritania set up a fund to sponsor profit-making initiatives by young people in sport, culture.
In
South Africa President Jacob Zuma announced a $1.3 billion kitty for
job creation for youth. In short, the post-Arab Spring revolution was
bought off.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3
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