Time to raise Africa’s dead parties?

With every electoral cycle, Kanu has sunk further into oblivion. This problem is not unique to Kanu. It has been the fate of all independence parties in Africa. Uganda’s independence party, the Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC), has withered to near-Kanu levels following its second ouster from power by the army in 1985.

Tanzania’s independence party, in its iteration as Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM – or Party of Revolution), has thrived. But it’s most likely because it is East Africa’s and Africa’s longest continuously ruling party, clocking 62 years in power now. Should CCM lose control, it, too, is unlikely to survive.

Nevertheless, even if it has held on partly through a combination of the larger-than-life prestige of its founder Julius Nyerere, repression, stick and carrot, and electoral theft, 62 years in power is impressive in a region of Africa that remains rocked by violent political change, war, and instability.

The sub-region, after all, is the first where a party that came to power through a revolutionary war, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), all but died after 28 years in charge. It followed a factional split in December 2019 after incumbent Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a former top lieutenant, established his now-ruling Prosperity Party.

Revolutionary parties that came to power in the post-independence period have tended to have great staying power. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) is not going anywhere in a hurry. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), which came to office after the Rwanda war and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, is sitting pretty. In Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, all their parties that came to power after fighting a liberation war are still in charge. The only one that is looking wobbly is South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), which has been emasculated by corruption and incompetence, so tragically; it will need a small miracle to hold power in the 2024 election.

Opposition parties, on the other hand, seem to do comparatively better. The oldest active East African political party that still has MPs elected to Parliament is Uganda’s Democratic Party (DP). Founded in 1954, it has endured more electoral thefts than one can count and other political humiliations all these years, but it is still there. DP’s survival suggests that torment in the opposition can be lifeblood.

In Kenya, the longest surviving active political party of its multiparty era is the Raila Odinga-led Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Founded in 2005, it has, alone or in alliance, been a competitive parliamentary party with several MPs elected on its ticket since. But ODM has failed (or is being foiled) in its bid to win the presidency. Like Uganda’s DP, being outside power and the sense of injustice it often feeds on seems to nourish it.

On Kanu’s 63rd birthday, there is at least one reason to mourn its decline. These parties were fuelled by the grand goals of winning independence for Africans and then moulding modern nations from the disparate groups and loyalties they inherited from the colonialists.

Those were big objectives. Decades after independence, nationhood has been somewhat consolidated in places with varying degrees of success. Overall, though, that project became troubled and ceased to be a compelling idea around which to build a successful electoral platform for the second and third generation of independent citizens. It became an even more giant hill to climb, where the independence parties had a disastrous record, most discredited by one-party dictatorship, ethnic rule, and colossal economic mismanagement. Many of them also ceased to be national movements and turned into cults of the leader, which cut them off from the grassroots.

However, reimagined as bright, successful nations for the modern age, part of that independence ideal is still desperately needed. Too many electorally successful parties today are parochial. The state-building project is troubled in too many countries. A new generation of rapacious political elite, cartels, and even outright criminal networks, have seized states, draining the riches of the land for a tiny group. Some of those grand ideals of independence, of nations where all citizens got their fair share, and systems worked to give Africans pride, are again much needed. The independence parties know how to paint these big pictures, and even the bad ones still have some historical credibility to do so.

We once believed that the Kanus of this continent would lead us to political paradise. They didn’t, but there’s still a little joy in remembering that once we dared to dream.