Within a space of two weeks, two aging dictators in Africa were toppled as a result of mass protests. The dictators toppled are Abdelaziz Bouteflika of oil-rich Algeria and Omar el-Bashir of Sudan. Bouteflika who is 82 years old and presently on a wheelchair ruled his country for 20 years while Omar el-Bashir ruled his hapless country for 30 years. The two toppled dictators have little in common except their penchant desire to cling to power permanently. As the present analysis would show, Abdelaziz Bouteflika came to power in 1999 through democratic processes which he later truncated while el-Bashir got to power through the barrel of gun in 1989.
Bouteflika is a man whose entire adult life was spent in the limelight of politics. As a 17-year old boy in 1954, he became prominent in the Algerian Liberation Army where he fought the French with other compatriots for Algerian independence. After Algerian independence in 1962, he was rewarded with an appointment as the country’s minister of youth and sport under the then Algerian leader Ben Bella. When his mentor Houari Boumediene,took over power, he became the foreign minister in 1963 and held this post until 1979. He became the United Nations General Assembly president between 1974-1975. In this position, he enhanced the profile of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) by inviting its president, Yasser Arafat to address the United Nations General Assembly. This did not go down well with the friends of Israel especially the United States of America that then considered Yasser Arafat as a terrorist. The then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger openly accused Bouteflika of bias against American interests during his tenure as the president of UN General Assembly.
Bouteflika’s political career came under a serious cloud in 1983 when he was accused of fraud and he had to go on exile. While in exile in the nineties, Algeria suffered a debilitating civil war when the Muslim Brotherhood party won a democratically conducted elections and the party was prevented from taking over power. During this bitter conflict, Bouteflika stayed on the side-line and later he helped to restore peace to his fatherland. His efforts were appreciated by his countrymen and he became the president of the country in 1999 and from that time he has been renewing his mandate every five years. By this year, he was on his fourth term in office after he has engineered the removal of presidential time limit in 2008. The bubble burst on his tenure in his attempt to have a fifth term in office despite his debilitating health condition and he was forced by wild spread protest to resign on April 2. It is difficult to decipher any rational reason while Bouteflika, a consummate politician would like to cling to power despite his debilitating health situation and mental capability.
Omar el- Bashir’s rule on the other hand in Sudan was a bad news for his people throughout his 30 years of draconian rule. After coming to power in 1989 by overthrowing a democratically elected government of Sadiq al-Mahid, he stayed on to be the longest serving ruler of Sudan since the country attained independence in 1956. He took over as a Brigadier and now calls himself a Field Marshall. He manipulated his country electoral processes to get himself elected three times as president and his inglorious long regime was riddled with war, economic dislocation, high level corruption and open support for terrorists as he once gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden the notorious mastermind of the 9/11 tragedy in USA in 2001.
In 2005, el-Bashir was forced to negotiate with the leaders of South Sudan to end the debilitating civil war waged by the southern Sudanese for self-determination. This negotiation led to UN backed referendum which resulted in the creation of a new country called South Sudan. Unfortunately, this new country is embroiled in a civil war because the leaders of the country could not agree among themselves. The destabilizing hand of Omar el-Bashir is very much evident in the dispute in South Sudan. El- Bashir also faced rebellion in Darfur region of his country where he armed the Janjaweed militia who visited the region with mayhem and bloodshed. As a result of the atrocities in Darfur, thousands of people were killed and displaced and this has led to Omar el-Bashir’s indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hague 2008 for genocide, crime against humanity and war crime. He became the first sitting president to be so accused by ICC. So far, he has escaped being sent to Hague despite the warrant of arrest issued against him in 2009 as has been shielded by fellow dictators in Africa and Middle East.
Omar el-Bashir’s inglorious rule came to a predictable end on April 11 after massive protests that started in December 2018 all over Sudan. The Sudanese people protested with justification against increase in food and fuel prices and general economic stagnation. Many people were killed in these protests but the people did not relent despite Omar el-Bashir’s arrogance and intransigence. The people took their case to Sudanese military by staging their protest in front of the militarybarracks. Eventually themilitary heeded the people’s call to remove el -Bashir. He was subsequently replaced by Ahmad Awad Ibn Auf, his minister of defence who promised to set up a transitional government for two years. The new man was unacceptable to the people as they insisted on civilian transitional rule and he had to step aside to give way to Lt-General Abdel Fattah Burhan who is considered to be sympathetic to the peoples’ grievances against the disgraced el-Bashir. The fear many people in and outside Sudan have about the political development in Sudan is that the revolution might be hijacked and truncated by another set of despots in the military as it happened in Egypt where Abdel Fatah al-Sissi thwarted the revolution that sent Mubarak parking only for him to unleash another draconian regime on the people. One only hopes that the trajectory of the present Sudanese revolution will be different and that el-Bashir who is now under house arrest would be sent to Hague to face justice for the crime he committed against humanity in Darfur.
The overthrow of Bouteflika and el-Bashir through the peoples’ mass actions has now beamed the searchlight on the many aging dictators that dotted all over Africa. The history of democracy which was bequeathed to the world by the ancient Greece has not been salutary in the continent of Africa. After many years of one-party rule dictatorship and military incursion into governance, democracy is gingerly taking roots in many countries in Africa such countries include, Republic of Benin, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. However, there are still many countries like Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroons Gabon, Burundi Rwanda, Egypt and Uganda which are still groaning under iron fists of dictators who have been stifling the democratic rights of the people for years. Something has to be done by the youth of Africa whose future is being destroyed by these sit-tight dictators. Two of them have gone in Algeria and Sudan and others should follow to allow democracy to thrive in Africa.
- Prof. Lucas writes from Old Bodija, Ibadan.
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