Why ‘Mechanical’ Political Transitions Aren’t Working in Africa

The last decade in Africa’s recent history has been marked by some dramatic and significant developments on the continent’s political terrain. These developments have been as varied as they have been contradictory.

The changes which have taken place on the African political landscape over the last decade have been multidimensional. They have occurred as much at the level of formal politics as in the arena of the informal processes that underpin the political system. They have also been generated to a smaller extent by factors internal to the political system and largely to other external forces. Furthermore, while domestic, local and national-level considerations are critical to the definition of the process of change, external factors and international actors also continue to play an important, even, at some conjunctures, determinant role in shaping outcomes. Understandably, much of the attention which has been focused on political change in Africa has been concentrated on the formal institutions and procedures of politics because these are both more visible and measurable.

And for this reason several African countries have in recent times undergone a period of chaos that has been to a large extent instigated by an invisible hand in the name of regime change or political transition, however the glaring evidence shows that these mechanical changes have not yielded results in countries where they have been tried, instead these nations have been plunged into worse situations than before.

Furthermore, it shows how some of the inadequacies of dominant Western perspectives, especially those originating from the US and allies about political transitions in Africa, and focus on the current democratic transitions, have plunged the continent into deeper problems than before.

Failure of these mechanical political transitions, can also be attributed to the hegemonic and ideological interests which these transitions are designed to serve and which underlie approaches made popular by Western scholars, to a ‘periodic’ conceptualization of the process of transition itself, to the consequent treatment of transition in ahistorical manner and the abandonment of previous perspectives of social and political change, and to the failure to relate transitions to the developmental needs of countries involved as determined by the peoples themselves.

Because this is mechanically done with the sole purpose of regime change it tends to ignore some elements required for proper transition, for example it excludes people who would give opposition to the authorities on the redress of wrongs and matters of public policy using both conventional and unconventional means yet these could ensure that the macro‐societal conditions for social movements ‐ like dissatisfaction, ideology, capacity to mobilize, and opportunity ‐ and a micro‐model of participation by challengers in opposition actions such as petitions, protests, demonstrations, and strikes are  reinforced.

Political transition is said to be the act and process of changing and evolving from one form of government to a radical form of government which focuses on human rights, the rule of law and empowerment of the people to ensure their choices, voice and will is heard. Its also said to be vital in so many countries around the world to ensure human rights, the rule of law and empowerment of the people is implemented.

The decade of the 2000s in African history has ushered in popular street protests or pressures which in many cases culminated in concerted efforts at reforming the institutions and procedures of politics and governance.

The purpose of promoting these foreign mechanical transitions, it is claimed to be working to create a level playing field for all political actors, make government more representative and accountable, allow for greater popular participation in national governance, and enrich the public space as an autonomous arena for the articulation of popular aspirations and/or the canvassing of policy and political alternatives.

These are worsened by the critical changing frame of politics in Africa, for example the rapid rate of urbanization taking place across the continent and the intensive internal population migration associated with it, and the emergence of social media frenzy together with improved education levels; so the promoters of political transitions attempt to use this available but somehow idle resource to achieve their intentions. However, since this has not been built on popular participation of masses,  who are just supposed to chat some thought-of slogans by the promoters, as soon as the intentions are achieved they are forgotten and a new wave is initiated now to undo the achievements of the transition , Egypt and Libya paint a good picture for us about these failures to maintain political transitions.

Those who are championing these transitions do not mind that a country has laws and that may be guiding the decision by citizens, but will find all excuses to rally people to the streets , make the cities ungovernable an eventually the leader forced to throw in the towel, if not arrested and embarrassingly killed like the way late Gadhafi was treated, or Mubarak or Bashir has been humiliated by his captors.

One would wonder why a former head of state would be treated like a dog in a cage after the arrest, what would happen if he was transported to court in a humane way, but since this may please the founders it’s done as an appeasement act to the foreign backers of the revolution (sic).

Many countries that have suffered this new political formula, are the ones with leaders who have seemingly overstayed in power, the conspirators will quote all types of reason to convince people to join their crusade, the law of the country that may be giving these leaders legitimacy is nothing to be listened to, since they are made under the same people interestingly to protect the incumbent so, the alternative political short cut is to cause a revolution using underhand methods we have seen above.

Unfortunately for them none of these mechanically enforced and radical political changes have succeeded anywhere they have instead led to chaos in those these countries and they seem not to be learning from their mistakes, they seem to be energized even more by the craziness of social media and the youths bulge. To them these are enough social and political dimensions to back their interest for regime change, they assume to know it all and they end up have un sustained regime change because they misread the signs and had wrong social and political analyses of the existing social dynamics, they also commit a treasonous act by imagining that they can simply copy and paste methods, but keep changing players yet each country has its unique dynamics that require a different approach.

They need to ask themselves why these places don’t have violence and anarchy that befall it as soon as the hated leader leaves power, Libya, Iraq, and Egypt, Zimbabwe and now Sudan should be a good case study for those who would till want to mechanically short circuit regime change in any country.

Lastly, we need to let countries decide their own destiny, make their mistakes an learn from them to perfection, otherwise, the foreign methods have not worked miracles and they are not about to do so soon. The citizens of each country and their leaders understand better what works for them drawing from their home-grown system, traditions, historical experiences, social structures, aspirations, and readiness. Any attempt to short cut this will only breed chaos and take the country back to stone age period.

For God and the Pearl of Africa.

Paddy Kayondo