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The role of Ex-Presidents in Africa: A life after office?
Henning Melber
August 04, 2005
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29138
Do African presidents
have a life after they leave office? asks Henning Melber. For many years
in post-independence Africa, the image of African leaders was of ‘Big
Men’ who could only be removed from office by their own death. But
a recent shift shows an increasing number of leaders who hand over presidential
powers voluntarily. In June this year the African Statesmen Initiative
was launched in Mali’s capital Bamako with several elder statesmen
committing to democratic ideals. The positive trend does not necessarily
mean that anti-democratic tendencies have been banished, writes Melber.
Retired African Heads
of State seem to emerge in ever-bigger numbers as a new species on the
continent. Opting out of office more or less voluntarily, they are seeking
an active role and requiring a defined task for their remaining years.
“Is there life after presidency?” asked BBC Africa Live of its
web site visitors in mid-2005. The numerous responses showed not only
a strong interest in the issue but also offered the whole panorama of
possible views, including the few selected ones below:
- “Presidents
are people too. The life after presidency should be retirement.”
(Ghana)
- “Former presidents
should be respected because of what they did for a country. However
at the same time, when Mugabe becomes a former president, my views will
change.” (Zimbabwe)
- “There is
always life and prosperity for presidents in Africa because most of
them are thieves.” (UK)
- “Oh yes, there
is life after the presidency. In fact a far better life … compared
to the presidency. For example, you get to sleep peacefully at night
(don’t have to worry about whether your army is plotting to oust
you the next morning); you become a well respected statesman (provided
you left office voluntarily … poor Charles Taylor), and the lot.
Life after the presidency
in Africa is like life after death – although no one has ever died
(please, don’t count Jesus) and come back to give account of what
it is like at the other end. However, the good news is that Africa is
on the right path. At least we are beginning to count Africa’s former
presidents who left office constitutionally. And it should send a very
strong positive message to sitting-presidents that … yes, there is
in fact very good life after the presidency, given you kept your promises
to the best of your ability.” (Liberia)
By the end of the
20th century the notion of the ‘Big Men’ was still considered
to be part of a neo-patrimonial system, in which ‘disorder’
was qualified as ‘political instrument’. Patrick Chabal and
Jean-Pascal Daloz maintain in their provoking book ‘Africa Works’
that the “ultimate ambition of those who have power is most often
to establish their standing as Big Men. Such standing is, by its very
nature, subjective and can only be achieved within a context of personalized
relations where clients, or dependants, will ensure its recognition. It
is not, therefore, sufficient to be acknowledged as the supreme political
ruler. It is also necessary to be recognized as the primus inter pares
among all Big Men.”
African rulers, according
to the dominant perception up until the early 1990s, do not vacate their
office alive. The 1990 presidential address to the African Studies Association
of the U.K., delivered by A.H. Kirk-Greene and published in ‘African
Affairs’ (no. 359, 1991) presented some striking arithmetic to illustrate
the point. By then, the mean duration in power of leadership in 17 African
states (a third of the continent) was 25 years. The ‘for life’
image associated with African rulers contrasted however with the brevity
of the rule of others, with no fewer than twenty in office for less than
a year. At the end of 1988 the continental average duration of office
for the 158 African leaders recorded as head of government in 50 states
since 1960 was calculated at 3.1 years. But the assumption pertained that
the shorter periods in office were attributed almost exclusively to the
incumbents’ departure from this world. A.H. Kirk-Greene therefore
concluded: “If my question of ‘What Happened to the President
Afterwards’? has been overlooked in the literature, this may largely
be due to the indisputable fact that, unless one is talking of a meta-physical
after-life, in nine cases out of ten it is a rhetorical question; there
was no Afterwards.”
But soon thereafter,
this notion was challenged on the basis of the empirical reality. Instead,
it was suggested that the question requires rephrasing, since the (former)
heads of state were not as passive as the ‘what happened to’
formulation implied. The more apposite question for many may be ‘What
did the President do Afterwards?’ rather than what happened to him.
Indeed quite a number of them – in contrast to the widely held perception
– did have a life after their term(s) in office. As a presentation
by J.H. Polhemus to the 15th annual conference of the African Studies
Association of Australia and the Pacific in 1992 concluded: “…a
substantial number of individuals, … notwithstanding a wide variation
in style, personality and psychology, had the unusual qualities required
to become a head of state or government and … on leaving office,
faced the questions of what to do with what remained of a life which had
to that point been characterized by power, purpose, and not to put too
fine a point on it, position and privilege.”
The recent shift in
trends in presidential transitions on the continent is highlighted by
the increasing number of those who more or less voluntarily hand over
presidential powers while still being in rather good physical shape and
mental health. A recently compiled overview for the book volume on ‘Presidential
Transitions and the Role of Ex-Presidents’ (to be published by the
Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa before the end of 2005),
registered a total of 204 African presidents in office between 1960 and
2004. More than half of them were overthrown, which confirms the earlier
assumptions. Only 25 cases (or 12%) were classified as voluntary retirements.
But significantly so, 17 (or three quarters) of these took place since
1990 alone, and since 2000 there were eight such cases, amounting in the
last five years to one third of all voluntary departures from office in
the 45-year period recorded.
In the light of such
an emerging new trend, the question posed by Polhemus in his 1992 paper
remains more valid than ever. He asked whether an increasing number of
“African heads of state will follow the eminent person path upon
their retirement from political office, rising above narrow national politics.”
As he suggested: “For some it would seem to be an attractive way
of putting their talents to good use and minimizing the pangs of withdrawal
from a life of prominence and importance.”
The birth of an African
Statesmen Initiative, launched in Mali’s capital Bamako in the presence
of 15 former heads of state in June 2005, is an almost logical result
of the needs to (re-)define the role of ex-presidents. With the support
of several international institutions the elder statesmen (indeed still
all men) agreed on a remarkable document with far reaching statements
in terms of their political ideals. The ‘Bamako Declaration of the
African Statesmen Initiative’ adopted on 8 June stated among others:
“We believe that
democracy is the sole form of government that permits the development
of the range of national institutions needed to ensure sustainable peace,
security, economic growth and social well-being. We applaud the spread
of democratic values and respect for the rights of citizens in a growing
number of African countries. We commit ourselves to continuing to use
our good offices to foster dialogue and the peaceful resolution of the
continent's conflicts, and to promote human security and democratic models
of government that offer citizens the opportunity to choose their leaders
freely and participate fully in the political life of their countries.”
The document went
further to say:
- “We welcome
the future participation of outgoing heads of state and government in
efforts to promote democratic principles, good governance, and human
security and development through individual and collective action.”
- “We affirm
that changes of power and political succession should always be based
on constitutional rule and democratic principles.”
- -“We affirm
the special responsibility of former heads of state and government to
support the development of strong, well functioning legislative and
judicial bodies, as well as other public institutions to ensure public
accountability.”
These are clearly
new tones, though one is curious to see how big or small the discrepancy
between rhetoric and reality this time turns out to be. The Organisation
of African Unity (OAU) was often referred to as little more than a self-serving
club for African presidents. Its existence was premised upon the mutual
convenience of ‘non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states’,
a doctrine that provided cover for authoritarian and despotic regimes
throughout the continent.
In contrast, the launch
of the African Union (AU) in 2002/2003 resulted in the subsequent institutionalisation
of a visible (though not yet always consequently applied) political will
to exercise more collective responsibility over the policy of member states,
whose systems and their (lack of) delivery fail to respect the minimum
standards as defined in the new AU Constitution. This includes sanctions
against those who claim to represent their countries without a minimum
of legitimacy. It is an indication that the present generation of African
leaders – one which is more subject to pressures for democracy at
home and for ‘good governance’ internationally – will be
more prepared to police regimes which offend against international norms,
rights and laws.
This also offers,
as the African Statesmen Initiative signals, a more constructive role
for retired presidents to make a continued positive contribution on the
continent, including an active participation in conflict mediation and
other forms of political negotiations and diplomatic brokerage. They might
also pursue a variety of advocacy roles on other burning issues, such
as further awareness creation concerning HIV/AIDS or lobby work to mobilize
for meeting other challenges on the continent to achieve a more decent
living and secure a better future for its people.
But notwithstanding
the odd light at the end of the tunnel, progress is uneven. While recent
interventions concerning political leadership issues in Togo and the Ivory
Coast show the political will to collectively pursue the notion of ‘good
governance’ in certain cases, the continued passivity with regard
to Zimbabwe and the rampaging dictator Mugabe remains a scandal.
In Botswana, Ken Good,
a Professor of Political Studies at the local university for 15 years,
presented in March 2005 to a departmental seminar a critical analysis
of the presidential succession in the country (drafted as a chapter to
the book currently in print). He was served with an arbitrary notice from
the authorities declaring him a prohibited immigrant on the grounds of
being considered a risk to national security. Upon intervention and appeal,
the Constitutional Court ruled that the President has the power vested
in his office to do so without offering any further reasons. After this
verdict, the 72-year old was handcuffed in court, prevented from talking
to his lawyer and deported the very same day. He was denied the chance
to say good-bye to his teenage daughter.
Only two weeks later,
on 13 June 2005, five African Presidents met their fellow Head of State
George W. Bush in Washington, DC. The US President welcomed the same Festus
Mogae of Botswana, who had just abused his presidential authority to get
rid of an unwanted academic, together with John Kufuor (Ghana), Armando
Guebuza (Mozambique), Namibia’s President Hifikepunye Pohamba and
Mamadou Tandja of Niger to the White House. According to the official
announcement, this initiative was to “highlight the value that the
United States places on supporting democracy across Africa. President
Bush looks forward to recognize these countries’ successes at holding
free and fair elections last year”.
The question still
begs to be answered of whether this illustrates progress in democratic
transition on the one side (of the invited guests), or a lack of democratic
sensitivity on the side of the host. As so often, the answer might lie
somewhere in between, if one considers the way elections were conducted
not too long ago in the North American federal states of Florida and Ohio,
which were to a large extent decisive in the ‘democratic’ process
to a) bring the current president into office, and b) to keep him there.
After all, political office bearers all over the world tend to be not
as different or remote from each other as the geographical distance might
suggest.
* Dr. Henning Melber
is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden.
This essay is a revised part of an introduction to a book volume on Presidential
Transitions and the Role of Ex-Presidents in Africa, co-edited with Roger
Southall and to be published by the Human Sciences Research Council in
South Africa.
* Please send comments
to editor@pambazuka.org
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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