Instructors at the Fort Leavenworth college for military officers in the United States of America are accustomed to the presence in their midst of African cadres who may very well be visiting the world’s remaining super power as heads of state in the near future. Right now that position is occupied by Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba son of Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
Uganda is an ally of the United States and the young officer is receiving training in the art of war. Once also occupying the sits at the officers’ mess at the college was current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Around Africa, grooming one’s young to take on the father’s trade is not a new vocation. An intriguing example is the case of Gen. Ian Seretse Khama of Botswana. Born to Sir Seretse Khama, the man who led Botswana to independence, the prince of Gaborone provides an interesting example of the problems that father-to-son transition presents to emerging African democracies. On the face of it, Botswana is an economic success story and a bastion of democracy. Its stability, largely owed to the hegemony of Gen. Khama’s father and his cattle tending tribe, is a blueprint that many of the new continental monarchies would envy. The ascent of Gen. Khama, however, follows a similar path that leads up to not just “life presidency” but the creation of monarchies at State Houses around Africa.
Firstly, the state and founder of the kingdom tend to be one and the same person. In the case of Seretse Khama, his party, Botswana Democratic Party, dominated politics during the time he was in power.
To guarantee continuity, Seretse ensured that he would pick his own successor, pushing through legislation that allowed the President to appoint cabinet members who had lost the popular vote in an election.
The man who succeeded him as head of state and leader of the BDP was then Vice President, Sir Ketumile Masire, who was twice rejected in his Kanye constituency. The next steps were more about constitutional tinkering in order to allow the ruling party to determine who would become head of state indirectly and not through an election.
Sir Ketumile Masire took over from Seretse and repeated the process, choosing the now retired president Festus Mogae. It is Mogae who fished Seretse’s son from the army, fast-tracking his rise within the BDP to the position of vice president while essentially acting as a surrogate mother for the continuation of the Khama dynasty.
One of the main items one has to get to grips with is the ability of the founding father to maintain power long enough; to command the instruments that exercise authority, legal or otherwise, through some form of patronage.
Togo provides an example closest perhaps to what is underway in Uganda.
All through his long years as president, the late Togolese “King” Gnassingbe Eyadema managed to subjugate his party, the Rally for the Togolese to his whims by entrenching a body of loyalties within it. At his sudden death on February 5, 2005, this machinery sprang into action virtually installing his son Faure Eyadema as successor.
A graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris as well as George Washington University, Faure had been equally fast-tracked through the system as heir apparent. He was elected to Togo’s parliament and placed strategically as a minister at his father’s side, appearing with the old man at official functions.
Togo’s constitution requires that the head of parliament (or National Assembly) should takeover if the President dies suddenly. The man who should have led Togo then was Fambare Ouatarra Natchaba who was abroad when Eyadema died.
But the allies of Eyadema in the military and political establishment declared Faure president and engineered the dismissal of Natchaba before he could return.
The army, whose control is key to these under-the-table style transitions, had chosen Faure. The son of Eyadema, himself a military man, has now legitimised his rule with an electoral victory. A lot of tinkering with existing laws was done to ensure he got Togo’s top post including constitutional amendments to reduce the age requirement for the Presidency by 10 years from 45 to 35 years and enacting legislation which made it impossible for his exiled challenger to stand for elections.
One must establish a patronage network that functions as a vehicle for controlling power through legal plebiscites like parliaments. This serves the purpose of dressing up the mischief in democratic colours in order for it to be acceptable in today’s world. Longevity at State House is also important. Political dynasties need the leader of the “revolution” to have stayed in power long enough to stamp their authority on everything: parliament, the courts and security services.
With this in place any challengers to the leader’s authority would not have a prayer. Existing opposition parties are stringed along as part of the charade — to show how “democratic” the country is.
Often this domination by founding fathers is so complete that the only real challenge to their rule is their own mortality, brought on by disease, stress or the wear and tear that are consequences of the monumental task of clinging onto state power.
In Libya, the Gadaffi dynasty is being set up through the control Muammar Gadaffi wields over the Jamahiriya, the ruling ‘revolutionary’ council he controls. His eldest son, Seif al Islam al Gadaffi, is being groomed. Seif is head of the Gadaffi International Foundation for Charity Associations (Gifca) which has been instrumental in negotiating Libya’s acceptance into the world community. Gifca under Seif has successfully been used to implement the payment of Libya’s international debt; ransom money for the victims of the Lockerbie terrorist plane bombing and the abandonment of Libya’s nuclear ambitions.
In Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, the son of Hosni Mubarak, has been elevated within the ruling National Democratic Party, which his father as dominated for over 27 years. Egypt, Libya and Syria may be Arab countries but the game remains the same.
In Syria, its ruthless leader of 30 years, Hafez al-Assad, ensured that his allies in the Baath party chose his successor, the British-trained ophthalmologist Bashar al-Assad, by the time of his sudden death in 2000 and have maintained him through elections where he regularly wins more than 90% at the poll despite the regime’s repressiveness.
Bashar was not the first choice but was called back from London after Hafez’s favourite, groomed through the military, Brig. Basil al-Assad, tragically died in an accident in 1994.
In troubled Kenya, a failed transition from Jomo Kenyatta to his son Uhuru Kenyatta was attempted by the old man’s surrogate and Kenyan president of 24 years, Daniel Arap Moi.
Uhuru may still become president but unfortunately widespread opposition to Moi unravelled the game plan and is partly responsible for the turmoil presently ravaging that country. Moi’s replacement Mwai Kibaki has shown the same autocratic tendency but his advanced age and narrow political base has been exposed.
Uganda will undoubtedly be the scene for a test of a father-to-son succession. Yoweri Museveni has been a leader for more than two decades but his control of the ruling party is not as effective within Uganda’s democratic shell as is his total domination of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, an army whose precursor, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) was founded by him.
During his rule, a new constitution was promulgated and then amended to remove presidential term limits, which would have restricted his own political career, and therefore any succession based on his continued control of the state.
Uganda’s Parliament is impotent to the extent that the key questions are decided the way he wants them to be; appointments of ‘cadre judges’ to the Judiciary, opposition members say, are meant to create a safety valve to legal challenges to his power.
Museveni has expanded his political stable with opponents pointing out that his wife, Ruhaama MP Janet Museveni is now eligible to contest for the Presidency.
Opponents also say the meteoric rise of Muhoozi in the army is a clear sign the First Son is on his way down a well-trodden path. It remains to be seen if the ethnicity dominated past of political competition can be overcome by the current mechanisms of state control without a violent upset like has happened in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
What is clear is that today’s political ‘presidential royalty’ have chosen democracy as the vehicle through which to sustain power in the hands of ruling elites. Some major questions arise from these developments.
One is whether ideology, long a litmus test of self determination, can be a factor in the political evolution of the nation state in Africa. The other is whether if Africa’s so-called revolutions are not simply disguised attempts at monarchy.
Lastly for democracy whether if these political revolutions can continue dismissing the will of the majority for change expressed through the window dressing elections they hold.
Parliamentary elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe have punished the ruling party and its kingpins while Muhoozi Kainerugaba must find it difficult to watch the weakening legitimacy of his father who has lost by a margin of 10% in the last three elections cycles. That is a problem he will eventually inherit as heir apparent.
