"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation."
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe should step down and allow other Zimbabweans to take over from him, the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said on Monday. The EFF said this in statement, as it congratulated the people of Gambia for holding a peaceful and democratic election that saw President Yahya Jammeh conceding defeat to his opponent Adama Barrow.
In one province in Gabon, the stronghold of President Ali Bongo, the results declared by the Gabonese Electoral Commission indicated that 99.83% of the electorate turned out to vote, and that 95.46% of them voted for Ali Bongo! The question is: how can we ensure that election results in Africa are not dependent on an electoral commission or constitutional court that is in the pocket of the incumbent?
Monsieur Jean Ping is one lucky African whose proverbial bread has for years been significantly buttered by the ancestors. His CV gleams like the customised gold-plated iPhones Goodluck Jonathan gave out as gifts to guests at his “daughter’s” wedding in 2014.
On Wednesday, the results of last Saturday’s elections were announced in Gabon. President Ali Bongo was declared winner, beating former African Union Commission chief Jean Ping by the slimmest of margins. Bongo won a second seven-year term with 49.8 per cent of the vote to Ping’s 48.2 per cent, a margin of 5,594 votes. So, no surprises there. And what followed was also not a surprise in African politics.
“France is in tears, it’s deeply distressed, but it’s strong and will always be stronger – I assure you of that – than the fanatics who seek to attack it today.”
Why do so many African leaders overstay their welcome or break electoral rules? In the recent elections in Uganda, 30 year incumbent Yoweri Museveni won a fifth five-year term. Opposition activists are contesting the results. This has raised again that eternal post-independence question. Museveni is seventy-one years old and has governed since he took power in a military coup in 1986; longer than the majority of the country’s population have lived.
Native of Cape Town, Sean Jacobs lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches in Manhattan. He obsesses about the relationship between politics and popular culture, but the main rationale for his blog is to comment on what passes for media coverage of the African continent.
Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian social justice activist living in Spain, with a background in technology, gender issues and human rights. She is interested in creating a community of grassroots African bloggers as a way for Africans to exchange ideas, share experiences and tell their own stories in our own words.
Rosebelle Kagumire is an experienced Ugandan Journalist. She won the best Journalist blogger English category at the Panos hosted competition in 2009. Currently she is a student of MA. Media, Conflict and Peace studies at University for Peace (UPEACE), Costa Rica.
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