Political Transitions

Recent news out of Angola has raised the stakes in new President Joao Lourenco’s push to differentiate his tenure from that of his predecessor. Though he became president in September 2017, it was not until a year later that Lourenco assumed control of the ruling party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), significantly bolstering his authority in a country where the distinction between the party and the government has never been entirely clear. The world got a hint of how he intends to use his newly consolidated power last month with the arrest of Jose Filomeno dos Santos, son of former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose tenure in office lasted thirty-eight years.  The younger dos Santos had served as the chair of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund until January, when he was removed in the wake of reports regarding inappropriate payments to the fund’s asset manager. (His sister, Isabel dos Santos, was removed from her position at the head of the state oil company, Sonagol, last year as well.) By March he was facing criminal charges, stemming from allegations of an illicit transfer of half-a-billion dollars from Angola’s central bank to an account in the UK. His arrest, along with others in recent days including that of a former transportation minister and the head of the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation, suggest that Lourenco is committed to a public and dramatic break from the past.  But it remains to be seen what kind of change is in store for Angola. For many years, the dos Santos family seemed inseparable from the MPLA, which derived its legitimacy not just from the party’s history of resistance to Portuguese colonialism, but also its ultimate victory in the long civil war that ended in 2002. That the MPLA drove out the oppressors and ended the war was enough for a time. It is not enough anymore.  With a majority of Angolans too young to remember personal experiences of the war, President Lourenco may be working on a new narrative about legitimacy in Angola, one in which leadership is based on taking on some of the country’s endemic corruption and lifting more Angolans out of poverty. But he must contend with a party and governing structures that were not created for these purposes, and with elites threatened by change. Whether he will undertake a transformational project or simply replace the old guard with his own loyalists will be determined not simply by his intentions, but also by the capacity of the MPLA to reform, and the degree to which Angolans themselves demand fundamental change.

Adam Valavanis is a volunteer intern in the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. On September 12 in Ethiopia, President Salva Kiir and former vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar signed what was meant to be the final peace deal in South Sudan’s civil war, bringing an end to nearly five years of fighting. The new deal would return Machar to power, where he would serve as the “first” of five vice presidents, and maintain Kiir as president. Despite this latest development, the promise of lasting peace in South Sudan remains a distant hope.  Fighting between rebels, ostensibly under Machar’s command, and government forces, ostensibly under Kiir’s, resumed less than one week after the signing. But it is not clear if these skirmishes are related to the content of the recent deal; soldiers on both sides have reportedly engaged in violence at the behest of local leaders, rather than of Kiir or Machar, signaling a broken chain of command. Nevertheless, this violation comes three months after the collapse of a previous ceasefire, the Khartoum Declaration, which was signed in late June.  The United States, United Kingdom, and Norway, commonly referred to as the Troika and who supported South Sudan’s push for independence in 2011, expressed concerns over this most recent peace deal. Their skepticism is at least partly the result of years of consistently broken ceasefires. But even if these skirmishes ended and Kiir and Machar successfully reined in their forces, it is hard to believe that the current peace deal would prevent the country from sliding back into civil war in the months and years to follow. At its core, the deal fails to address the root causes of the civil war: unequal access to government resources and near-authoritarian powers of the president. Instead, it reaffirms the presidency’s enormous powers, which are codified in the 2011 transitional constitution.  Specifically, the transitional constitution grants unchecked powers to the office of the presidency, such as the power to appoint and dismiss elected representatives at the federal and state levels. Before the outbreak of violence in 2013, Kiir and Machar butted heads over the unequal distribution of power in government; Machar reportedly felt that he was effectively shut out from power in his role as vice president. Meanwhile, Kiir began consolidating his rule and undermining the country’s nascent democracy. In this context, Machar understood that any attempt to unseat Kiir in the future via democratic elections was fruitless. With his sacking in 2013, it became clear to Machar that his only remaining avenue to the presidency was to take up arms, which he did later that year. If the country is to see lasting peace, any future deals must radically reform the transitional constitution to promote inclusivity and diffuse power away from the office of the president. By instituting a parliamentary executive, federalism, and proportional representation, South Sudan will begin to ensure stable democratic rule in the country. In light of the political splintering that has occurred in the last few years, a diverse array of parties, particularly rebel groups, must be included in all future peace talks. By excluding them, any government that results from these talks risks lacking the requisite support to prevent war.

In The Third Revolution, Economy reveals Xi Jinping’s new China model—more controlling and authoritarian at home with a more ambitious and activist role abroad—and asks us to fundamentally rethink how the United States and others approach this complex and increasingly powerful country.

After keeping his own citizens and the international community in suspense for over two years past the end of his mandate in 2016, President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that he will not stand for another term in this December’s long-delayed elections. Reactions to Kabila’s announcement have ranged from the relieved to the encouraged, as Congolese citizens, regional neighbors and the broader international community had all feared the destabilizing conflict likely to accompany a blatant, and unconstitutional, effort on the part of the President to retain power indefinitely. But celebrations of a victory for democratic governance and stability in the DRC are decidedly premature.  Kabila endorsed Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, his former interior minister, to succeed him. Shadary, a ruling party loyalist with little political following and the dubious distinction of being one of the individuals internationally sanctioned in 2017 for his role in violently suppressing political protests, is not a particularly compelling choice. His name now joins those of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a warlord and former vice president recently released from The Hague after the International Criminal Court overturned his conviction for war crimes, and Felix Tshisekedi, the son of longtime Congolese opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi, in the top tier of contenders for the presidency. Moise Katumbi, a former provincial governor with a sizeable political base who has been living in self-imposed exile, was thwarted in his efforts to register his candidacy by Congolese officials who denied him entry to the country.  The heavy-handed treatment of Katumbi, the selection of Shadary, and the absence of domestic or international confidence in the capacity, independence, and integrity of the electoral commission all indicate that Kabila has no intention of throwing open the door to genuine democracy. But to some degree, focusing on who wins at the polls in December misses the point.  Kabila’s presidency proved that it is possible to hold the DRC together—though just barely—with a set of patronage relationships that reward loyalty and dole out spoils to elites with enough access to mineral wealth or power over armed groups to be useful. It’s a ramshackle set of often-shifting relationships designed for the survival and enrichment of the few and nothing more, and in this sense Kabila could be interchangeable with anyone canny and connected enough to continue at the center of an essentially parasitic network.  For real change to come to the DRC, for the state to begin to function in a way that provides security and political accountability to its citizens and channels the country’s rich resources into meaningful development gains, it would have to adopt an entirely different kind of governing model than the one familiar to most Congolese today. Leadership will be determinative, but it will not be a question of who leads, but rather how, that will make the difference between the status quo and a better future.   

  The trajectories of the Kenyan elections of 2017 and those just concluded in Zimbabwe have an eerie similarity, and may hint at the future denouement in Zimbabwe. In Kenya, incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta benefitted from an uneven playing field dominated by his control of state media and the security forces. He ostensibly won the presidency in August 2017, and outside election observers quickly endorsed the outcome. Raila Odinga challenged Kenyatta’s election in the courts, which ordered new elections. They were held in October 2017. Again, Kenyatta was declared the victor after Odinga boycotted the elections. Odinga then, in effect, threatened civil war. The crisis ended with a personal deal between Kenyatta and Odinga, the details of which are not public. Meanwhile, there is anecdotal evidence that Kenya seethes and institutions, such as the judiciary, are undermined.  In Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa benefitted from an uneven playing field, even more so than Kenyatta. He controlled state-owned media and the security services, and benefitted from a long-standing atmosphere of the intimidation of opposition figures. He has been declared the winner, an outcome promptly and shamefully endorsed by African Union observers and those from the Southern African Development Community, but questioned by observers from the European Union, the National Democratic institute and the International Republican Institute, and, most important, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a local NGO umbrella that deployed 6,500 observers around the country. The opposition candidate, Nelson Chamisa, claims to have won the election and is challenging the results in the courts with hints that his supporters will take to the streets if necessary. Meanwhile, the Mnangagwa regime is pursuing a campaign of violence and intimidation in opposition strongholds.  There are broader similarities between Kenya and Zimbabwe as well. Both are potentially rich, with abundant natural resources and fertile soil. Both were colonies of white (mostly British) settlement, and a wealthy white-minority dominated both economies, which were characterized by racism and segregation. The overwhelming black and poor majorities in both countries continue to be deeply divided along ethnic lines, and their respective independence struggles were marked by violence, though it lasted far longer in Zimbabwe. As part of the independence process in Kenya, white farmers were bought-out by the British government, but no such land reform took place in Zimbabwe. Instead, white farmers were driven out by Robert Mugabe almost twenty years after independence. In effect, Mugabe destroyed his country’s economy to preserve his power and enrich his supporters. In both Kenya and Zimbabwe, new political elites largely appropriated their country’s post-independence wealth, with little trickling down to the mass of the population. In both, there has been little change in leadership since independence; Kenyan politics are dominated by Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, the sons of the most prominent independence-era politicians and, among other things, tribal leaders. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe was deposed by a coup orchestrated by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been his violent enforcer. In both countries, elections are the occasion for violence. A way out of the current crisis may be the path followed by Kenyatta and Odinga—a personal deal. There is a history in Zimbabwe of deals between incumbents and opposition leaders following close and dubious elections and hand-wringing by international observers. Notably, Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai shared power from 2009 to 2013, with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister. In Zimbabwe as in Kenya, politics are highly transactional; it is about personalities and power, not principle. Hence, it is easy to imagine that Mnangagwa and Chamisa could make a personal deal, though what the elements of it might be are at present obscure. The bottom line is that Zimbabwe is in for a bout of violence and intimidation, but at the end of the day there will be a sharing-out of power and wealth by Mnangagwa and Chamisa. Civil war will be avoided, and whatever the settlement is, it will be welcomed and endorsed by foreign governments and businesses. But, there will be little progress in Zimbabwe toward democracy and the rule of law.   

A new International Foundation for Electoral Studies (IFES) report finds women who run for office in Zimbabwe face a variety of persistent challenges, and calls into question the 10-year time limit on Zimbabwe’s quota system. This post is authored by Hilary Matfess, doctoral candidate at Yale University.

The people of Zimbabwe turned out in impressively large numbers—the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission reported 70 percent of voters turned out—on July 30 to choose a way forward for their country. The election, the first without Robert Mugabe on the ballot, was billed as a chance to close a painful chapter in the country's history, and bring real legitimacy, at last, to the government. It was a moment of hope.   By nightfall on August 1, Zimbabwe's military had locked down Harare, the capital city. At least three civilians had been killed by security forces on the streets, and more were badly hurt—whipped, stabbed with bayonets, and beaten. Distrust, anger, and fear have replaced the hope and pride Zimbabweans expressed as they stood in long lines to exercise their franchise.    Some of the coverage of what is happening on the ground has an equivocal flavor to it. The story seems to be about unruly, impatient protestors, a situation spinning out of control, and "unfortunate" violence. But repression has been part of this political exercise from the beginning, and only one side of the political divide in Zimbabwe can activate it. The Zimbabwean military didn't turn on unarmed protesters spontaneously or accidentally. They were given orders to do so, and sitting president and candidate Mnangagwa cannot escape accountability for this decision.    Likewise, the coalition of “securocrats” and ZANU-PF stalwarts that seized power in November of last year made a deliberate choice not to repeal repressive, unconstitutional laws like the Public Order and Security Act, or POSA, that bring a veneer of legality to brutal crack-downs on dissent. They made a choice not to clearly assure the people of Zimbabwe that their will would be respected regardless of the outcome of the vote.    Of course, all parties should act responsibly as they await the results of the presidential election, and as they raise concerns about the unlevel playing field and the mechanics of the electoral process. But it's important to remember that power—in the form of a monopoly on the instruments of violence—has been exercised on the side of the ruling party from the beginning. The violence in Harare, echoing the all-too-familiar violence the country has seen in the past, was a part of that ongoing exercise.   

  Zimbabwe’s national elections took place on July 30, with the results expected by the end of the week. The media reports that the elections were peaceful, but this is mainly based on observations in urban areas—past election violence has been more common in rural areas. Reports from observers on the election process have been mixed. In some areas, polling appears to have gone smoothly, but in others it was chaotic. The leading opposition candidate for the presidency is Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). At 40 years of age, Chamisa, a lawyer, represents a generational change from President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is 75 and leads the ruling ZANU-PF party. Both candidates said that they will win and that election results not in their favor would suggest vote rigging. Credible conventional wisdom is that Mnangagwa is stronger in rural areas, Chamisa in the towns and cities.  A victorious candidate must win 50 percent of the total vote plus one. If there is no outright winner, the top two candidates will be forced into a runoff, which would take place on September 8. Mnangagwa and Chamisa ran neck and neck in preelection polls, and there are many analysts now raising the possibility, even the likelihood, of a runoff. For the first time in a generation, the country hosted foreign election observers, while Zimbabwean civil groups have fielded more than six thousand observers. What will matter for the preservation of domestic tranquility will be whether Zimbabweans themselves accept the election results. The high voter turnout, upwards of 70 percent of the electorate, is a good sign. Since coming to power in a coup against longtime tyrant Robert Mugabe late last year, Mnangagwa has led an international charm offensive designed to attract foreign businesses and roll back Western sanctions against the regime, all in order to rebuild Zimbabwe’s beleaguered economy. He has even applied for Zimbabwe to rejoin the Commonwealth of Nations. This effort is bounded by the need to preserve his domestic power against rival factions within his own party, as well as the opposition. Mnangagwa is a product of the tyranny of Mugabe. In fact, he played a primary role as the former president’s so-called enforcer, most notoriously during the Gukurahundi, a series of massacres against the Ndebele Zimbabweans in the 1980s that some consider a genocide. The basis of his power in the ZANU-PF was support among the Zimbabwean military and security services. His current vice president and fellow coup-maker is former Defense Minister Constantino Chiwenga. But Mugabe’s departure was not universally accepted in the party, and factions have emerged within the ZANU-PF, most notably a broad division between the military and civilian party members. Still, Mugabe, at 94, played little role in these elections. The day before the voting, he said he would support Chamisa rather than Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa promptly claimed that Chamisa and Mugabe had made a deal, an accusation they both deny. That episode does not appear to have had much effect. While the electoral playing field is better than it was under Mugabe, it remains by no means level. Despite some ZANU-PF factionalism, Mnangagwa still appears to control most of the security services and the state-owned media. Further, the opposition has raised questions about the voter rolls and the electoral commission’s impartiality. Chamisa is already claiming that voters in certain urban areas were unable to cast their votes. Mnangagwa needs these elections to be viewed favorably abroad to give credence to his international charm offensive. Hence, campaigning by opposition parties has been largely free from Mugabe-era thuggery. Mnangagwa would prefer not to rig the election, but if he sees it as the only path to stay in power, he will, likely at the point where vote tallies are consolidated. If the election is close and there is a runoff, Mnangagwa is likely to take the gloves off and the possibility of violence increases. The bottom line is that Mnangagwa will probably be the next president of Zimbabwe, by hook or by crook. If, through an unforeseen development, Mnangagwa fails in the election, the military will ensure that the next president of Zimbabwe protects its interests.   

Michelle Gavin is a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. From 2011 to 2014, she served as the U.S. ambassador to Botswana and to the Southern African Development Community. She started at CFR in February 2018. In March, international donors pledged $1.7 billion to Gambia, a small West African state perhaps best known for its eccentric and sometimes brutal recently departed leader, Yahya Jammeh. For over two decades, Jammeh was the only leader the people of Gambia knew, and he tolerated little dissent. After failing to rig the 2016 elections sufficiently to be declared the victor, he tried to remain in office despite electoral defeat. He left only after regional states represented by the Economic Community of West African States, backed by the rest of the international community, exerted substantial pressure on him to go in early 2017. While today Jammeh lives comfortably in Equatorial Guinea, protected by an even longer-serving dictator (Teodoro Obiang has been President since 1979), his country is left to grapple with his legacy: crippling public debt and utterly corroded governing institutions. In the face of these problems, the new government has the added burden of unrealistically high expectations that naturally accompany a long-awaited change at the top.  The winner of the momentous 2016 elections, President Adama Barrow, cohosted the recent donor conference with the European Union. He was seeking support for his government’s comprehensive National Development Program, which is intended to rebuild the economy so that young Gambians have fewer reasons to flee to Europe. It also aims to strengthen the rule of law and reform the security sector to address the repressive legacy of the Jammeh years. The need for multiple sweeping, soup-to-nuts political and economic reforms is a daunting challenge—and one well worth helping Gambians meet.  Gambia is a small state of just over two million people. But it is worth international attention and support because of the potential power of its example. Democratic transitions are notoriously difficult. Such a transition in a multi-ethnic, majority Muslim society is a rare and encouraging development. A successful recovery from a highly personalized and often erratic regime and transformation into one of Africa’s stable democracies can yield valuable lessons and insights for others far beyond Gambia’s borders. Right now, Gambia has political will at the top and a commitment to inclusive processes aimed at giving all Gambians a stake in building a different kind of state. Those raw ingredients are not easy to come by, and with continued international support, they could deliver results that strengthen the hand of democratic forces striving to change repressive regimes elsewhere, proving that there is indeed another way.   

Michelle Gavin is a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. From 2011 to 2014, she served as the U.S. ambassador to Botswana and to the Southern African Development Community. She started at CFR in February 2018. Burundians are at the polls today to vote in a referendum on constitutional amendments that would, among other things, change the country’s rules around term limits. The change would make it possible for the current president, Pierre Nkurunziza, who has served since 2005, to continue to hold that office until 2034. It is the latest example of a powerful Central African trend that rejects norms around regular leadership transitions and instead embraces a governing style in which a single individual—far more than institutions, ideologies, or even party platforms—dominates decision-making in the name of stability. While West African states have actively worked to shore up the principle that leaders should not seek to stay in power indefinitely, and many of Southern Africa’s ruling parties, while retaining political power, allow for real changes in the personalities at the top, the countries at the heart of the continent seem to be moving in a different direction entirely. Paul Kagame has been the de facto ruler of Rwanda since 1994 and formally president since 2000. Yoweri Museveni has been the president of Uganda since 1986. Joseph Kabila became president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2001, and continues in that role despite the fact that his most recent term expired in 2016. Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC are very different places with very different political dynamics, but each serves to reinforce the sense in their neighbors that term limits are of dubious value at best.  As Central Africa moves in this direction, and the rest of the continent in another, it is no coincidence that the region is plagued by instability. The causes of region’s conflicts are interlinked and complex, to be sure. But it is equally true that the specter of conflict is at the heart of these entrenched leaders’ claim to political legitimacy. Each cultivates a narrative in which he is the only thing preventing a return to a more violent, chaotic past. The constant threat of instability has become inseparable from the governing ethos of its leaders and the state institutions that they shape.  The idea that only one man stands between a society’s ruin and its redemption makes for compelling drama, but it is a truly frightening basis on which to establish governing authority. Every decision—any decision—can be justified on the grounds of meeting the existential threat. Accountability and dissent become confused with plots against the state itself. Dialogues about the future become focused exclusively on questions about individual leaders. And worst of all, this approach leads the state, inevitably, off a cliff. Unless there are immortals among us, these states will outlast their leaders. Paradoxically, the men who claim to be bulwarks against chaos are ensuring that they will leave instability in their wake.   

Ethiopia, a strategically located regional power with over 100 million people and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, has a new prime minister. Abiy Ahmed is a compelling figure and his personal history is resonant—he comes from one of the country’s two largest ethnic groups, has mixed Muslim and Christian heritage, and fought against the Derg (shorthand for Ethiopia's Communist government from 1974 to 1991). At forty-two, he is Africa’s youngest head of state, and his youthful charisma is a breath of fresh air. His political instincts are impressive, as evidenced by his early efforts to listen to and reassure Ethiopia’s disparate regions, and to loosen the restrictions that an increasingly repressive state machinery had used, ineffectively, in pursuit of stability. He is also a man with a very tough job ahead of him. His ascension to office is only the latest development in an attenuated transition process that began with the death of Meles Zenawi in 2012, and has since encompassed shifting dynamics within the ruling party and increasing popular frustration across the country. In accordance with the constitution, Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn stepped into the leadership role when Meles died. Ethiopia’s ruling political party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), worked to project an image of tight control and continuity. To that end, Ethiopia’s information minister was widely quoted as saying, “I would like to stress, nothing in Ethiopia will change. The government will continue. Our policies and institutions will continue. Nothing will change in Ethiopia.” But what a difference six years makes. Having been buffeted by popular uprisings, a violent government response, and a national state of emergency that exacerbated popular disaffection, Hailemariam resigned in February of this year. By the beginning of April, Abiy committed to reform and was apologizing for the mistakes of the past. Change wasn’t just on the table—it was at the heart of his appeal to the nation. To be sure, the issues at stake in Ethiopia’s internal political debates are complex and longstanding. But since the death of Meles, the way these debates have manifested has changed significantly. Ethiopia’s recent experience suggests that, no matter how smooth the process of replacing a leader may initially appear, the very fact of long-awaited change at the top awakens latent appetites for devolving power and intensifies expectations of reform throughout society. Old grievances gain new urgency while popular tolerance for heavy-handed or self-serving policies dissipates quickly.  To the south, ruling parties in both Angola and Zimbabwe have worked to carefully manage major leadership transitions of their own, albeit under very different circumstances. They might take a keen interest in Ethiopia’s recent history. Ruling party continuity does not guarantee that new leaders can govern as their predecessors did, or count on the same patience or leeway from their own party or population.  

South Africa became a “non-racial” democracy in 1994, twenty-three years ago. Nelson Mandela, who has always firmly been identified with the African National Congress (ANC) and the end of apartheid, died five years ago in 2013. Winnie Mandela, his wife during his imprisonment and the transition to non-racial democracy (he was married three times), died this year. She was a radical activist in her own right and was for many in the liberation movement the “Mother of the Nation.” Shortly before her death, Cyril Ramaphosa became the ANC leader and then chief of state. His ascension to power came in the wake of the quasi-criminal ANC administration of President Jacob Zuma, which lasted from 2009 to 2018. Together, the juxtaposition of Ramaphosa’s pro-business presidency with the death of the Winnie Mandela and the prospect of national elections in 2019 are encouraging some opinion leaders and others on the left to question the Mandela legacy with a new vigor. Zuma’s corrupt administration has also contributed to the declining prestige of the ANC and, by extension, Mandela. Since 1994, formal apartheid structures have been dismantled. The ANC government sponsored the construction of more than three million houses and put in place a safety net for the very poor. For the first decade or so, rates of economic growth were respectable, but over the past decade, the country has still not completely recovered from the worldwide recession of 2008-2009. For almost twenty years, economic growth fostered by government policy based on the “Washington consensus” of a free-market economy promised to be the tide that would lift all boats. Confidence in that system is waning, however, and can no longer be taken for granted. The persistence of black poverty highlights that there has been little fundamental social transformation, even if the material conditions of the black majority has improved. Access to education and health services among black South Africans remains poor, and, according to the 2013 South Africa Survey, blacks on average live sixteen years less than whites did in 2010. Most of the white minority live as pleasantly as they would in the developed world, while black South Africans, 80 percent of the country, live as they would elsewhere in Africa, with only a few exceptions. South Africa’s Gini coefficient—a measure of inequality—is by some accounts the worst in the world. Almost from the beginning, critics accused Mandela of “selling out” to the whites in 1994, whereby the latter could retain their wealth and control of the economy in exchange for ceding political power to the black majority. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe bitterly resented his replacement by Mandela as the African liberation icon and increasingly berated him over continued white privilege. Mugabe also supported financially Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who broke off from the ANC and called for a radical restructuring of South Africa’s economy and society, including expropriation without compensation of white property. Winnie Mandela’s death led to an outpouring of affection and nostalgia for a figure associated with black power and justice for the poor (and credibly accused of being a murderess), similar to Julius Malema and his EFF party. Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, is associated with democracy and racial reconciliation. In the wake of Winnie’s death, commentators on the left and advocates for black power are now openly challenging the compromise made by Nelson Mandela because of the persistence of gross inequality and poverty largely defined by race. As I argued last week, these critics tend to overestimate the strength of Nelson's leverage at the time and overlook the role cronyism and corruption has since played in exacerbating racial disparities.  

Following its series of articles on corruption within South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC), the New York Times published an editorial on April 23 accusing the party of “a betrayal” of its ideals. That being said, the Times acknowledges that corruption elsewhere in Africa and the world is worse than it is in South Africa, and that corruption was heavily associated with ex-president Jacob Zuma. However, the Times points out that the new party leader and state president, Cyril Ramaphosa, became rich partly through his party connections. It therefore questions whether he is capable of using “the democratic tools to combat the blight of corruption,” but nevertheless acknowledges that those tools exist and provide a means of overcoming it. The ouster of Zuma was an important first step in that regard. The Times correctly points out that since independence, little has been done to address the gross inequality of South African society, in which most white South Africans enjoy a high standard of living while most black South Africans—eighty percent of the population—have social and economic statistics characteristic of the developing world. Indeed, the white minority is wealthier compared to the black majority now than it was in 1994 when Mandela was inaugurated president, notwithstanding a tiny black elite that has grown rich largely through government connections.   The Times goes on to associate enduring black poverty with Nelson Mandela’s “grand bargain” with “the white minority.” However, it inadequately acknowledges the circumstances surrounding the transition to non-racial democracy. It is true that while the deal gave the black majority control over politics, the economy—and wealth—remained in the hands of whites. But Mandela had little choice. The ANC and other liberation movements had far from defeated the apartheid state; they could render ungovernable some of the townships some of the time, but never seriously threatened to overthrow the entire system. For the ruling-white minority, the economy was stagnating, the intellectual underpinnings of apartheid had been destroyed, and they felt acutely their international pariah status. Hence, the 1994 coming of “non-racial democracy” was not a liberation movement victory over apartheid; instead, it was a bargain in which whites yielded political power to predominately-black liberation movements in return for the preservation of their economic privileges and an end to international condemnation—and sanctions. (That is not to say that the liberation movements did not earn their spot at the table or to diminish their role.) The apartheid state, led by President F. W. de Klerk, together with the liberation movements, led in part by Nelson Mandela, concluded that neither could prevail outright and that continuation of the status quo raised the specter of a race war. So, for better or worse, they made a deal that prioritized the expansion of civil rights and democracy rather than the equitable distribution of wealth and economic opportunity.   

Miguel Diaz-Canel, set to replace Raul Castro as president of Cuba after sixty years of Castro rule, will be faced with the challenges of implementing economic reform and sidestepping regional isolation.