Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics Edited by Roger Southall and Henning Melber Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Compiled by the Democracy and Governance Research Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council First published in South Africa by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za Published in Europe and the United Kingdom by Nordiska Afrikainstitutet/ The Nordic Africa Institute PO Box 1703, SE-75147 Uppsala, Sweden © 2006 Human Sciences Research Council First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Copy editing by Vaun Cornell Typeset by Jenny Wheeldon Cover design by Farm Design Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver PO Box 30370, Tokai, Cape Town, 7966, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477 Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 email: orders@blueweaver.co.za www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by The Nordic Africa Institute PO Box 1703, SE-751 47 Uppsala, Sweden Tel: +46 18 56 22 00 Fax: +46 18 56 22 90 email: orders@nai.uu.se www.nai.uu.se Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Order Department, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741 All other enquiries: +1 (312) 337 0747 Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 email: frontdesk@ipgbook.com www.ipgbook.com Worldwide, except Europe and the United Kingdom ISBN 0-7969-2120-2 In Europe and the United Kingdom ISBN 91-7106-558-X Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Contents List of tables vii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations and acronyms xi Introduction: about life after presidency xv Henning Melber and Roger Southall 1 Former presidents in African politics 1 Roger Southall, Neo Simutanyi and John Daniel 2 Soldiering on: the post-presidential years of Nelson Mandela 1999–2005 26 John Daniel 3 Unpacking the ‘model’: presidential succession in Botswana 51 Kenneth Good and Ian Taylor 4 The contested role of former presidents in Zambia 73 Neo Simutanyi 5 ‘Presidential indispensability’ in Namibia: moving out of office but staying in power? 98 Henning Melber 6 ‘When I am a century old’: why Robert Mugabe won’t go 120 David Moore 7 Toxic mushrooms? The presidential third-term debate in Malawi 151 Seán Morrow Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za 8 Politics and presidential term limits in Uganda 175 Roger Tangri 9 Immunity or accountability? Daniel Toroitich arap Moi: Kenya’s first retired president 197 Thomas P Wolf 10 Troubled visionary: Nyerere as a former president 233 Roger Southall 11 Rawlings’ former presidency: a threat to democracy in Ghana? 256 Kwame Boafo-Arthur 12 An army of ex-presidents: transitions, the military and democratic consolidation in Nigeria 281 Sola Akinrinade 13 Despot deposed: Charles Taylor and the challenge of state reconstruction in Liberia 308 Daniel Hoffman Appendix 332 Contributors 334 Index 338 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za vii List of tables Table 1.1 How leaders have left office in sub-Saharan Africa, 1960–2004 2 Table 2.1 Members of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, 2004 34 Table 5.1 Parliamentary election results for the larger parties in Namibian elections, 1989–2004 101 Table 12.1 Regime changes in Nigeria, 1960–99 284 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za ix Acknowledgements This volume is an outcome of collaborative efforts between the Democracy and Governance Research Programme of the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa (LiDeSA) project of the Nordic Africa Institute based in Uppsala, Sweden. It builds upon previous cooperation which resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Africa Studies (Volume 21, Number 2, May 2003) which was co-published as a freestanding volume by HSRC Press in 2003 as Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa: The unfinished business of democratic consolidation, edited by Henning Melber. Encouraged by this earlier experience, the two partner institutions agreed to proceed further with work originally undertaken by the HSRC on behalf of the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) on a smaller scale concerning the role of former presidents in Africa. Consequently, with the backing of the NMF and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the project on ‘Presidential Transitions and the Role of Ex-Presidents’ emerged during late 2003 as a comparative endeavour, finally resulting in the exploration of a dozen different case studies in Anglophone African countries. The scholars assigned discussed preliminary papers at an internal workshop in Cape Town in December 2004. It was fully appropriate that we, as editors, should meet to edit these revised drafts in Windhoek in late March 2005 during the time when the people of Namibia celebrated the 15th anniversary of that country’s independence, and witnessed for the first time a transfer of presidential power. The torrential rain which fell during the ceremony, welcome in a country which too often experiences drought, did nothing to dampen the spirits of those present as they gave a warm reception to their new president. At the same time, when in Windhoek for many a dream came true, unfortunately other dreams found a painful end in confrontation with political reality. Ken Good, one of the contributors to this volume, was at the time of the celebrations in Namibia, served with a deportation order by the president in neighbouring Botswana for being considered a threat to the country’s national security interests. This was directly related to his involvement in the chapter Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za LEGACIES OF POWER x on Botswana presented in this volume. We regret to experience once again that the pursuance of rigorous, committed, but at the same time intellectually honest scholarly work is met with repression even in environments widely regarded as being liberal democratic. We will remain loyal to advocating the principles of uncompromising academic freedom and pursuing the advocacy role of social sciences in contributing to notions of good governance. We trust the contributions to this volume offer testimony to this. We are hopeful that this volume will offer constructive insights and add relevant aspects to the body of currently available knowledge. It aims at scholars, policy-makers and a wider audience alike in the hope of promoting best practices in a sensible policy area of direct relevance to the people in African societies. We are grateful to the Open Society of South Africa for further funding which will enable us to disseminate the findings of the study throughout the southern African region. We wish to acknowledge our debt to the NMF, the Open Society of South Africa and Sida for their generous financial support, without which the completion of this project would have been impossible. We would also like to give particular thanks to John Samuel, Chief Executive Officer of the NMF, for his quiet but constant support (in this, as for other projects conducted at the HSRC). Joan Makalela, administrative assistant in the Democracy and Governance Research Programme, worked indefatigably to ensure our workshop was a success. John Daniel, wearing his HSRC publishing hat, dealt with many aspects of project management, as well as making his own valuable academic contribution, while other members of the HSRC Press were as efficient as usual in dealing with the technical aspects of editing. Finally, we would like to thank our contributors for taking part in a project which has been as much fun as it has been so thoroughly fascinating. Roger Southall and Henning Melber Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za [...]... 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 rule of others, with no fewer than 20 having been in office for less than a year At the end of 1988, the continental average duration of office for the 158 African leaders who had been or were heads of government... heads of state were not as passive as his formulation implied Indeed, far from being in a minority, extant heads of state or government in the 16 Commonwealth countries in Africa who had left or lost office between independence and August 1992 were in a large majority: of the 52 who had held office during that period, 16 were still in office, and of the 36 no longer in power, four had died in office of. .. grounds of his being considered a risk to national security This application of the full force of unrestricted autocratic repressive power at the discretion of the President’s Office clearly indicates that our topic is a highly sensitive one and that consideration of the role and status of current, former and future presidents does constitute an important, and hitherto largely unexplored, dimension of democratic... (Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Ketumile Masire of Botswana), who reached the expiry of constitutional term limits (Hassan Mwinyi of Tanzania, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Frederick Chiluba of Zambia) (Widner 1994; Ottaway 1998; Barkan 2000; Southall 2000; Rotberg 2003),... (Mathieu Kerekou of Benin, Mamadou Diouf of Senegal, Aristides Pereira of Cape Verde, and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia) A useful starting point for discussion about the role of this increasing clutch of retired African presidents in the contemporary era is a set of proposals made by Mazrui (1994) as to why former heads of state should be honoured He argued, first, that they had a large reservoir of experience... exceptional African heads of state who ‘may genuinely aim to transcend the short-term view in favour of longer-term developmental goals’ Nonetheless, they insist ‘that the ability of such exceptional leaders to move the political system beyond its present rationality is limited, not primarily because of a lack of ambition but much more fundamentally because of the nature of existing forms of political legitimacy’... issue of former presidents has been brought more to the fore as an important aspect of the dynamics of democratic transitions as an increasing number of presidents have retired (Polhemus 1992; Baker 1998, 2004) The roll-call features some of the major African names of the last half-century They include first and successor presidents who retired voluntarily (Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nelson Mandela of. .. have been systematically structured to maintain the regime in power and undercut the opposition Even closer to home, one of our own authors, Ken Good, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Botswana, when seeking to present an earlier draft of his jointly authored paper for this book to a departmental seminar at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, was served with an arbitrary notice... stay in power by manipulating new rules of the game, which now usually included the imposition of limits on the length of time a president could stay in power Yet others were compelled to bow out, some far less gracefully than others But the outcome was that an increasing number of rulers were displaced, and new regimes and former presidents were compelled to seek some answer to the question of what... basis of the rich and nuanced analyses offered by our contributors wherein the motivations and actions of presidents in conceding power are so often contradicted by the actual outcome For instance, we most certainly acknowledge that Nyerere’s record as a former president ranks equal or close to that of Mandela; yet equally, we also have to recognise that the Tanzania in which he stood down from power . brevity of rule of others, with no fewer than 20 having been in office for less than a year. At the end of 1988, the continental average duration of office. in power by manipulating new rules of the game, which now usually included the imposition of limits on the length of time a president could stay in power.