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The Playbook
for African Democrats

by The Brenthurst Foundation · About the Authors


Produced with the assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the World Liberty Congress

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Foreword

Bobi Wine

Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine)

Vote Rigging and the Authoritarian Toolkit

The 2021 general election in Uganda showcases the lengths authoritarian leaders will go to retain power. For General Yoweri Museveni, the 79-year-old leader who assumed power in Uganda through the overthrow of Idi Amin, the desire to cling to power is as great – if not greater – than his ambition to first wield it many decades ago. He has at his disposal a toolkit of crude yet effective tactics to ensure that he remains the country’s commander-in-chief. A primary tactic is that of vote rigging.

Map showing 2021 Ugandan Presidential Election results

Original graphic: Kingofthedead, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The most recent instance of this tactic can be seen in Uganda’s 2021 general elections, which was contested by myself and ten other candidates, and which saw a host of overt and covert measures used to rig the vote in favour of President Museveni.

Video footage shared with NGOs, journalists and across social media platforms details these incidents. In Kisoro in the Western Region of Uganda a police officer can be seen at a polling station stuffing ballots into a ballot box, while an election official observes. In a separate video, ballots with a mark against my name could be seen abandoned in a polling station and not in the ballot boxes. Meanwhile, in Bulambuli, a man in a bright yellow shirt (the colours of the Museveni campaign) is seen repeatedly marking ballots in favour of President Museveni. Egregious acts such as these took place across Uganda, with many facilitated by security and election officials.

Bobi Wine protests: death toll rises in Uganda’s worst unrest in years

A supporter of Ugandan musician turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, carries his poster as they protest on a street against the arrest of Kyagulanyi during his presidential rally in Kampala, Uganda, on 18 November 2020. Photo: BADRU KATUMBA/AFP via Getty Images

The counting phase also presented an opportunity for malfeasance. Following a confrontation with the Daily Monitor, a Ugandan newspaper, the Electoral Commission acknowledged that votes from more than 1 200 polling stations were not counted. These were from urban areas, such as Kampala, where I had polled favourably, amassing more than 75% of the vote. Counting irregularities also included instances of deceased individuals having voted.

Bobi Wine greets supporters as he sets off on his campaign trail towards eastern Uganda

Bobi Wine greets supporters as he sets off on his campaign trail towards eastern Uganda on 1 December 2020. Photo: SUMY SADURNI/AFP via Getty Images

The unfortunate reality is that vote rigging is simply one piece of a larger authoritarian toolkit, as I have come to discover, together with my supporters and family.

In the days leading up to the election, my supporters were routinely beaten by security personnel. Their crime: voicing their support for me and carrying opposition signs. The day after the 2021 elections saw me and my wife placed under house arrest for eleven days, during which time our property was encircled by the police and military. Family, friends and even the US ambassador were all denied entry to my home. I was only allowed to consult with my lawyer once during this ordeal. This is the authoritarian toolkit in use.

Bobi Wine with family, at home

Bobi Wine under house arrest, photographed with his family. Source: X/@HEBobiWine

For leaders such as Museveni the desire to retain power dictates their every action. The toolkit at their disposal, which includes vote rigging, is not only effective, but it is also transferable; it will continue to change hands from one authoritarian to the next. This has been our struggle in Uganda, but we will not concede defeat.

Introduction

Countering the Rise of Authoritarianism

Contemporary politics is characterised globally by an ongoing struggle between autocracy and democracy. In one corner are the heroic democratic campaigns exemplified by the ‘Colour revolutions’, today representing just 20% of the world’s eight billion citizens; and in the other, the authoritarians led by Russia, Iran and China. This is not simply a struggle about freedoms and the type of society in which people prefer to live, but about other, practical outcomes. Free, open and accountable democracy is a necessary precondition for the improvement of the lives of people, enabling inclusive economic growth, jobs, health, education and security.

Yet, just 20 years ago, autocracy appeared to be on the decline. No longer could autocrats then easily turn to violent methods and blunt weapons to keep people under their thumb, as Stalin had done in sending perhaps as many as ten million of his countrymen and women to their deaths in the gulags, through executions and engineered famines; or as Mao had done with his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which together cost as many as 35 million lives. The great shift towards democracy started with the Portuguese coup on 25 April 1974, which, in Samuel Huntington’s words, released political forces marking the beginning of a global democratic wave, and which he termed the ‘third wave’.1 Right-wing dictatorships ended in Europe in the wake of events in Lisbon, with the collapse of the Metapolitefsi in Greece and the death of Francisco Franco in Spain, followed by junta after junta in Latin America. Then came the collapse of the Eastern bloc governments in Eastern Europe after 1989. 

The world seemed set on a democratic path. The end of the Cold War saw a surge in democracies and its attendant cottage industry. The number of countries classified by Freedom House as Free increased from 56 out of 165 in 1987 to a record 81 of 191 nations,2 the highest number recorded in the then 25-year history of the annual democratic survey. 

Timeline showing number of countries classified as free: 56/165 in 1987 vs 81/191 in 2023

Many of the repressive regimes lost their principal sponsor with the end of the Soviet Union and quickly (and mostly peacefully) succumbed to their people’s wishes for greater openness. With the advent of social media, for a while, the costs of tyranny, notes William Dobson in The Dictator’s Learning Curve, had then never been so high.3 But autocrats quickly learnt to adapt.

Not free · Partly free · Free

Map showing Global Freedom Status. Freedom House assigns a freedom score and status to 210 countries and territories. Source: freedomhouse.org

As Freedom House put it in its report on 2021, the year ‘marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006. The long democratic recession is deepening.4

The report went on to note:


Nearly 75% of the world's population lived in a country that faced deterioration last year.

The ongoing decline has given rise to claims of democracy’s inherent inferiority. Proponents of this idea include official Chinese and Russian commentators seeking to strengthen their international influence while escaping accountability for abuses, as well as antidemocratic actors within democratic states who see an opportunity to consolidate power. They are both cheering the breakdown of democracy and exacerbating it, pitting themselves against the brave groups and individuals who have set out to reverse the damage.


Democracy has since continued its downward trajectory. On the cusp of 2024, Freedom House summarised in its annual review: ‘Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The breadth and depth of the deterioration were extensive.Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries made improvements. Flawed elections and armed conflict contributed to the decline, endangering freedom and causing severe human suffering.5 While there are more elections than ever before, many of these lack open and free contestation and transparent counting. Former liberation movements are, in many instances, failing to live up to the promise of replacing oppressive systems with thriving democracies and are, instead, actively collaborating to hollow out democracy, manipulating the outcome of elections to stay in power and capture the state through the weaponisation of media, fake news, AI-assisted propaganda and other technological interventions in voting and counting. The construct of the ‘Global South’ is being abused by autocrats to suggest that Africans and others in the less developed world do not support democracy, while credible research clearly shows that the majority favour free elections and democracy, and there are clear correlations between development performance and the quality of democracy.

Even though autocrats play a malign role in support of each other, democrats can expect little help from outside.

Even though autocrats play a malign role in support of each other, democrats can expect little help from outside. Still, attacks on democracy anywhere from Ukraine to Venzuela, in Sudan as in Myanmar, have costs for democrats everywhere. Rembering Justice Johann Kriegler’s wisdom that ‘only a fool rigs an election on election day’, maintaining vigilance and building methods of collaboration between democrats during and between elections is now more critical than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

The year of elections

The year 2024 had been described as ‘the year of elections’ and as ‘the ultimate election year’.6 But this did not mean it would be the year of democracy. On the contrary, it may well prove to have been the year of the authoritarian.

During 2024, half the world’s eligible voting population would head to the polls in 64 countries (and across the European Union), more than ever in history. The results of many of these elections could prove significant for years to come.

In 2024, eight of the world’s ten most populous nations - Bangladesh, Brazil, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico - voted. Taiwan’s election in January 2024, for example, which produced another Democratic People’s Party victory, is likely to inform China’s approach to the island, possibly increasing the level of military threat, given the DPP’s more autonomous line towards Beijing. Pakistan and Indonesia, the two most populous Muslim nations worldwide, have both already hosted elections, with both processes shaping their policies towards inclusion or extraction. Iran would follow later in 2024.

Nahendri Modi

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi at an informal meeting of heads of state and government of the BRICS countries. Source: Wikimedia/The Kremlin (CC BY 4.0)

India’s election, between April and May 2024, will be the world’s largest. More than 900 million people registered to vote from India’s population of 1.4 billion in an election in which current Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes to be re-elected for a third five-year term.

900 million registered voters from India's population of 1.4 billion

Venezuela is another country hosting elections, which are expected to be controversial and cement authoritarian rule. The Venezuelan Supreme Court ratified the fifteen-year ban imposed on opposition leader María Machado from holding public office in January. This was later confirmed by the country’s electoral authority, meaning her name will not appear on the ballot. Between its revolutionary rhetoric and red berets, Venezuela is a country looked up to by many populists in South Africa, including in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

On Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, Julius Malema said:

“I join millions of progressive individuals … in sending my heartfelt condolences to the people of Venezuela for losing a fearless, politically determined and ideologically steadfast leader in President Hugo Chávez.’7 The Venezuelan strongman’s death from cancer ended his fourteen years of rule, but not his Bolivarian movement, which remains in power ten years later. ‘Despite massive resistance from rented imperialist puppets, [Chávez] was able to lead Venezuela into an era where the wealth of Venezuela, particularly oil, was returned to the ownership of the people as a whole” — Julius Malema

The Young Communist League of South Africa, part of the ruling ANC-led alliance, said, ‘Comrade Chávez was an inspiration to all progressive forces around the world …. His defiance of imperialism and his insistence that Venezuela’s vast oil reserves be used to uplift the masses of the people has changed the lives of millions of people.’8 By 2024, more than one-quarter of Venezuela’s population had fled the country, making it both the greatest store of oil reserves and source of refugees worldwide.

Some elections will be more consequential than others, not least the elephant in the room, the US presidential contest. Despite all the forecasts of former President Donald Trump not being allowed to run, or running from jail, he is currently well placed, it seems, to secure a second term, reflecting if nothing else the extent of social divisions in the US and entrenched insider-outsider views about the ‘system’.

Donald Trump speaking at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in Florida

Donald Trump speaking at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in Florida. Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Many of these elections will not be free, but rather a means of legitimising the ruling party and/or satisfying donors and other partners. 

Across Africa, elections are expected – or were scheduled – in Mauritania, Mali, Mauritius, Botswana, Chad, South Sudan, Rwanda, Mozambique, Ghana, Algeria, Togo, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros, Tunisia, Senegal, Somaliland, Madagascar and, of course, on 29 May in South Africa. Of this number, five fall into the Not Free category, as defined by Freedom House, nine Partly Free and another five into the Free category – Ghana, Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia and South Africa. 

75% of the 2024 elections in Africa were to be held in countries considered Partly Free or Not Free.

The Malian election had already been postponed indefinitely, while the Senegalese event was delayed as a result of political interference from the president as he prevaricated in the face of a likely opposition victory. 

Africa is not uniquely affected in managing the rise of authoritarianism. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a fourth consecutive term in January 2024, although the election was boycotted by the country’s main opposition party in protest over a crackdown on political dissent.

Sheikh Hasina, Honourable Prime Minister of Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Source: Flickr/Russel Watkins, DFID (CC BY 2.0)

Similarly, in Pakistan, even though his party was suppressed, and he was jailed on what his supporters claim are trumped-up charges, former Prime Minister Imran Khan won the most votes in the February 2024 election, but not enough to win an outright majority. March’s ‘re-election’ of Vladimir Putin also falls into this category, especially following the murder in jail just the previous month of Alexei Navalny, his most prominent domestic critic. 

59% of the 64 elections worldwide in 2024 to be held in countries considered party free or not free

Of the 64 elections worldwide in 2024, 38 (59%) would be held in countries considered to be either Not Free or Partly Free by Freedom House. There are nuances to these elections, of course, not least in the extent of the true vote turnout, one indicator of a strongman’s (or woman’s) support, and in the character of the regime in power. It is one thing, for instance, trying to catalyse a democratic process and ensure a fair outcome in a country under military rule, another in a regime with authoritarian tendencies. 

Authoritarian democracies

‘For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law,’ said Peru’s General Óscar Benavides. The general served twice as Peru’s president, the second time (1933–1939) during a period termed one of ‘authoritarian fascism’.

The methods by which autocratic regimes stay in power reminds us of Benavides’ statement. They may, indeed, be characterised as oxymoronic ‘authoritarian democrats’ in the manner in which they use public institutions in undemocratic ways to turn affairs to their advantage, from removing rivals from running in elections to overturning acceptable practices. A variety of tactics are used to retain power and the illusion of democracy: local NGOs can be pressured through tax and other inspections and audits, with stringent registration procedures, and through clampdowns on foreign donor flows, while government-sponsored NGOs (known perhaps appropriately as GONGOs in Russia) proliferate. These are countries where criticism is seen as treason, where diversity of views is seen mostly as a weakness and seldom as a strength. Leaders who discourage the study and critical scrutiny of their own situations so obviously lack a sense of irony, given that such questioning helped not only to achieve liberation from colonial authorities but has also been at the root of innovation in developed economies. 

Leaders who discourage the study and critical scrutiny of their own situations so obviously lack a sense of irony.

Such regimes like party lists and appointments, not direct elections. They target media outlets and independent journalists (sometimes fatally, as has been the case in Russia), while again ensuring they are front and centre of the local news outlets. They play to the need for stability, while buttering up supporters with contracts, social grants and pensions, and jobs – a recipe for widespread corruption and stagnation. The concept of a ‘development state’ or ‘state as the agency for development’ is the preferred language. State employment is kept high, along with loyalties. In South Africa, where unemployment hovers above 40%, the state is now the largest employer, at around one-quarter of the workforce. 

South Africa: 40% unemployed, 60% workforce

And when it comes to elections, this is more sophisticated than simply beating up or imprisoning opponents, or even fiddling with election results. Techniques include gerrymandering districts, tampering with voters’ rolls, inventing shadow voters, delving into voting records (most infamously through the Maisanta digital database in Venezuela), redistribution of the spoils in the form of contracts and goods to supporters, strangulation of resources for opponents, including through intimidation of funders, clamping down on foreign funding to NGOs and control of media assets. Elections are a necessity to maintain legitimacy, and so they become a target of the state apparatus. As Dobson has noted about Venezuela under Chávez:

...a "unique paradox: with each election, 
the country loses more of its democracy".9

The political economy is shaped by the needs of power and patronage. As Tendai Biti reminds us, ‘Power retention fuels the use of the state as an arena for redistribution.’ Identity is similarly weaponised as a tool of loyalty and of priviledge. Equally, ‘poverty and ignorance is weaponised through the use of handouts, through food and social grants, in which dependency is used as a malign force by the rulers’, according to Biti, a veteran opponent of Robert Mugabe’s rule, who served as the Minister of Finance in the unity government in Zimbabwe.10 

The temptation for leadership to steer away from liberal ideals is obvious, not least since it removes the constraints on manoeuvrability and imposes levels of transparency and accountability. Authoritarianism is thus not just about violence per se, or even whether votes count – and are counted – in domestic elections. It is about a system and the purpose of government, where elites profit disproportionately and have little (or no) accountability or chance of being evicted via the polls. This model is attractive to these elites. It offers the prospect of rapid wealth accumulation for a select few (with the ‘big man’ at the top of the billionaire pile, as with Vladimir Putin, for example) and of never losing power without legal limits to personal authority and state control over all checks and balances, including the media. 

This is foreign to Western countries, no matter the personal appeal to some leaders. Imagine, as Anne Applebaum writes, ‘an American president who controlled not only the executive branch – including the FBI, CIA, and NSA – but also Congress and the judiciary; The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News, and all of the other newspapers; and all major businesses, including Exxon, Apple, Google, and General Motors’.11

In response to their insecurity, ‘instead of democracy’, Applebaum continues, Putin and his ilk ‘promote autocracy; instead of unity, they try constantly to create division; instead of open societies, they promote xenophobia. Instead of letting people hope for something better, they promote nihilism and cynicism.’

This cabal wants democracy to fail, and not just in Ukraine.

Hence the decision to again invade Ukraine, collapse its democracy and its economy, strain Western institutions to breaking point, and support authoritarians elsewhere from Syria to Sudan, all the while shrinking American influence. To parody Francis Fukuyama’s line on the end of the Cold War, it’s the return of history. But it is a history that is being rewritten at great risk and huge cost. 

There are increasing dangers in the temptation of authoritarianism, not least in governance, accountability, transparency and human rights. But this is not a huge leap in attitude for a liberation movement steeped in faux communist ideology (the leaders all have extensive private business interests) and a struggle where the ends routinely justified the means. Added to this, living in a region surrounded by other similarly minded movements from Angola through Namibia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique and Tanzania, all are still firmly ensconced in power since independence. Most have until now operated less through outright fear and violence than more sophisticated means, a combination of mafia-like economic schemes, control of the media, and weakening of institutions, a careful mixture of ‘calibrated coercion’ involving the application of some fear along with the distribution of rents, intimidation and propaganda, elaborate ideological schemes and what Sergei Guriev and Daniel Triesman refer to as ‘loyalty rituals’, from bribery to self-censorship.12 These methods include the use of offshore banks and institutions to both protect their assets and bribe others to their cause. While they may (largely) stay within the bounds of the law and violence, they routinely ignore the spirit of the law. 

The rise of these ‘authoritarian democrats’ can of course be resisted. The history of non-violent democratic activism illustrates the importance of this process of singling out the foreign supporters of regimes, not local officials, and one or two key personalities, in attempts to fragment their facade. Targeted sanctions against these individuals may also take effect, if only as a tool of ostracism, since there is nothing a political pariah usually likes more than to be loved.

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto. Source: Flickr/AnneAE (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Benazir Bhutto, as one example, talked about the effectiveness of financial measures on leaders, given the pressure points. ‘The first call they will get will come from their mistress shopping at Harrods when her credit card is stopped,’ she told biographer Ron Suskind.13 ‘And the second one from their wife complaining why little Ahmed’s fees have not been paid at Georgetown. They will soon change their ways.’ There are counter-arguments, including that sanctions externalise the reasons for a country’s problems, as the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has attempted to do with targeted measures against prominent party members in Zimbabwe, and that they demand stamina that democracies lack. But the hostile rhetoric about these types of personalised measures suggests that they are effective – or, at the very least, personally painful to those at the centre of their sights.

Tunisian Revolution

Tunisian Revolution. Source: Flickr/Chris Belsten (CC BY 2.0)

Non-violent rallies and gatherings can be useful for bringing social and political issues unobtrusively to the surface, while key slogans and symbols can be powerful, politically catalysing tools (the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, Georgia’s Rose Revolution and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine are examples). Polling is another method of resisting intimidation and attempts to play the identity card. By contacting sample groups directly, it is possible to both establish what the issues are that concern voters and play to these, in so doing altering identity stereotypes.

It is not only the ruling parties, however, that are at fault or need to be checked or changed. Oppositions, too, will have to up their game. 

The challenge of the first liberation

Another trend is in the manner in which former liberation movements quickly learn to turn power, in the style of authoritarian democrats, to their own advantage, including in the manner in which they collaborate with each other in responding to the challenges posed by democratic opposition parties and movements.

Most southern African countries have yet to experience a ‘second’ liberation; that is, the liberation from the liberators. Instead, the seven remaining former regional liberation movements have sought to entrench their power, working in collaboration with each other to this end against their enemies, perceived and otherwise.

These include:

  • The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (
MPLA, in power for 48 years by 2024), 
  • The Botswana Democratic Party (
BDP, 58), 
  • The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (
FRELIMO, 49), 
  • The South West Africa People’s Organisation of Namibia (SWAPO, 33 years),
  • Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi 
(CCM, or ‘Revolutionary Party’, some 63 years if one included the pre-party period between 1961 and 1977), 
  • The African National Congress (ANC) 
in South Africa (30), and
  • ZANU-PF, 43.

One means of co-operation has been through the Former Liberation Movement (FLM) organisation, the most recent summit of which occurred at Victoria Falls on 18 March 2024. All members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the FLM is a reincarnation of the Frontline States grouping that bandied together in the 1970s to fight apartheid. But the modern incarnation of this organisation is not about advancing the interests of the 216 million people who live within its members’ borders, but rather in maintaining ruling party political power. According to an ANC press statement following the Victoria Falls summit, the FLM is:

Intro Anc

[A] crucial platform to advance the consolidation of a progressive front in the southern Africa region and the continent as a whole, more so as counter-revolutionary forces seek to divide and fragment the progressive front through splinter political forces, including funding NGOs as fronts to achieve such ends. Therefore, the counter-revolutionary agenda continues to rear its ugly head, through the support of various political opposition parties meant to fragment the popular electoral support of the FLM. The aim of these forces is to halt the advance of the revolution and keep the African continent as a supplier of natural resources to enrich the western world as it has been during the era of slavery and colonial conquest. Neo-colonialism considers the FLM as a main threat, hence the agenda to destabilise our unity by utilising elaborate processes interwoven with every sphere [of] our nationhood, to capture the minds of our people and array them against the FLMs.14

ANC Statement on the Handover of the Chairmanship of the Meeting of the Former Liberation Movement (FLM) Six Sister Parties from Zanu-PF (Cde Dr O.M. Mpofu) to the ANC (Cde Fikile Mbalula) at Victoria Falls, 18th March 2024’, African National Congress, 17 March 2024

This description conveniently ignores decades of poor governance and blames voter anger at the FLMs on external actors. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Frontline States faced the common enemy of apartheid. These days they are united by less noble goals. They share a new common enemy: opposition parties that dare challenge their hold on power and the sizeable rents that accrue to their elites through contracts and corruption. It is inconceivable to them that opposition parties are wholly indigenous to their countries and have strong support among most of the people. The FLM has been set up to monitor and analyse geostrategic trends, and domestic and global challenges to their rule, while generating plans to support each other. 

Even the most celebrationist Western enthusiast for the liberation movements – and there are still a few fellow travellers – would have to acknowledge that this development is not in the interests of the people who live under these regimes or the cause of democracy more broadly. An earlier, 2017 FLM summit adopted the document, ‘War with the West’, which accused former colonial powers and the US of seeking regime change through ‘colour revolutions’, financing opposition challengers and even coup plots. That summit concluded that a joint political school for ideology was needed to instil vigilance against such threats. It would provide ‘strong ideological grounding’ for party cadres, along with a series of ‘tough disciplinary measures’ to be undertaken by the sister liberation movements.15

In tilting at windmills in search of imaginary ideological enemies, the statement of the 2024 FLM summit concludes:

Intro Anc

‘As we approach the National and Provincial elections, we are confident that the neo-colonial forces that seek to destabilise the liberation movements will not succeed. As the ANC, we are confident of an outright electoral victory because the people who will defend the movement are the motive forces and beneficiaries for change, the masses of our people.’ The statement added, ‘We are confident that our transformation agenda speaks louder than the cheap propaganda that seek to derail the political hegemony of the FLMs.’16

ANC Statement on the Handover of the Chairmanship of the Meeting of the Former Liberation Movement

The FLM thereby openly expresses its aim to develop strategies for liberation movements to hold on to political power, parties that have already been in uninterrupted power in 2024 for a combined 324 years. The ends of power, put differently, justify any means, whether this be jaded caricaturing of democratic oppositions as neo-colonialist, neoliberal or ‘Western’ or the dismissal of the Colour revolutions as externally instigated plots against the people’s interest. 

Democrats everywhere, and especially in the West, should shake themselves out of their stupor in believing that African liberation movements support their values or even their interests, not least since the two are interlinked. But African democrats should be even more concerned about deliberate attempts to dilute and diminish their rights. They cannot pretend that they have not been warned, given the brazenness of the former liberation movements in this regard. 

Authoritarians brazenly unite

The Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School was set up in 2022 in Tanzania by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a political training school, referred to in the above FLM statement as the ‘apex political school for all parties member [sic] to the FLM’. This should be viewed with great concern, and not just by China’s external continental competitors. Democrats everywhere, including in Africa, should catch a wake-up. 

Mwalimu Nyerere Leadership School

The first thing participants see when entering the leadership school is a quote by Tanzania’s first leader after independence, Julius Nyerere. Photo: Mwalimu Nyerere Leadership School

Supported by China’s CCP, the Nyerere Leadership School has been established to provide ideological training and networking to cadres from six of the seven southern African liberation parties (Botswana was not included at the outset) that have remained in power since independence: the MPLA, FRELIMO, SWAPO, CCM, ANC and ZANU-PF.

This concern about China’s role does not stem from Sinophobia. The new wave of Chinese interest in Africa since 2000 has brought much positive change, investing in business and building infrastructure, and in so doing helping to change the perception of the continent as a problem to be solved to a business prospect. 

But this party school does not seek to pass on the lessons of economic reform, bureaucratic efficiency or anti-corruption strategies, all of which China has some considerable experience with. None of these messages are particularly interesting to the attendees in any event.

Instead, it is a cynical geopolitical move that comes with clear strings and seeks to create leverage. The Chinese conditionality, to use a ‘Western’ term, is not in this case better governance – perhaps the opposite in fact – but debt, lots of it.

Money graphic showing increase from 138.7 million in 2004 to 170.1 billion in 2024

Chinese lending to African countries has risen from $138.7 million to $170.1 billion over the last 20 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, China’s share of total external public debt rose from less than 2% in 2005 to nearly ten times that percentage in 2021. It is a pretty useful lever to ensure African support for China per se, and its wider goals and a firm down payment on the region’s mineral and energy resources.17

This is a deeply concerning political development and should cast doubt as to why these liberation movements originally sought office and the means employed to do so. The Nyerere Leadership School enables the FLM parties to collaborate systematically through shared training at facilities gifted to them by the CCP’s Central Party School in Beijing through a $40 million donation.18

This has not been made in the interests of democracy, to the contrary, given the historic tendency among five of the six founding members of the school (South Africa exempted, for now) towards one-party rule, and the consistent manner in which they have machinated to undermine constitutionalism and democratic electoral practice. They not only share an open disdain for political opposition but have stifled and interfered with democratic threats to their rule, including imprisoning and even assassinating opposition and troublesome civil society leaders. Now they are banding together to preserve their rule, no matter what their populations might prefer. 

Two thirds of African prefer democracy

Two-thirds of Africans polled by Afrobarometer consistently prefer democracy to other forms of government, including 43% in South Africa, 47% in Angola, 75% in Zimbabwe, 79% in Tanzania, 49% in Mozambique and 55% in Namibia.

It generally seems the longer you have tasted one-party rule, the more you appreciate democracy.19

As the Ugandan scholar Paul Nantulya notes, the Mandarin term for this mutual help is weiwen, translated as ‘stability maintenance’ or ‘regime survival’ under CCP rule. Writing for the African Center for Strategic Studies, Nantulya concludes, ‘The CCP’s governance model is emerging as one of the manoeuvres being employed to rig multiparty systems to cling to power.’20

Map of Africa showing location of Mwalimu Julius Nyere Leadership School

The Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School is a partnership between the ruling parties from Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the CCP.

Building on the legend of Tanzania’s post-colonial leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the eponymous leadership school is the first political school the CCP has built overseas. Political commissars from the CCP’s Central Party School in Beijing have been deployed to the Nyerere Leadership School as instructors in forming a ‘United Front’ (or tongyi zhanxian), a CCP strategy reportedly to mobilise support to advance the party’s interests and isolate its adversaries. 

The first outside media outlets to report on the Nyerere Leadership School wrote: ‘Behind the school’s closed doors, economics takes a back seat to political training. Chinese teachers sent from Beijing train African leaders that the ruling party should sit above the government and the courts and that fierce discipline within the party can ensure adherence to party ideology.’21

Eight flags fly in front of the school’s entrance

Eight flags fly in front of the school’s entrance: Tanzania’s national flag and one for each ruling party of the participating African countries, as well as the CCP’s flag. | Photo: Politiken/Sebastian Stryhn Kjeldtoft

The CCP emblem is included in all the Nyerere Leadership School’s official communications, along with the insignia of the six FLM parties, while the CCP flag flies at its entrance. Ironically, despite Nyerere’s promotion of social justice and mediation through a culture of tolerance, the Nyerere Leadership School has a vastly different focus. At the June 2023 graduation attended by CCP and FLM leaders, Richard Kasesela, formerly a senior Tanzanian official, spoke about various upcoming SADC polls. ‘If we don’t win them, there will be no liberation movements to talk of. For now, we should help ZANU [Zimbabwe] win its elections. [South Africa] and SWAPO [Namibia] go for elections next year [he was referring to 2024] and CCM [Tanzania] in 2025. We need to put together plans to help each other win these elections.’22

The manner in which Russia has lent military support to African authoritarians, and extracted mineral and other financial rewards in return, and the growing relationship of the Iranian theocracy on the African continent are similarly all reasons for concern as to the future plight of democracy. But this is not only an African challenge.

The need for a playbook for democrats

The liberation movements once used the fight for rights for all as the means to legitimate their campaign for political power, and constrastingly to delegitimate their opponents. Since then, they have been openly willing to undermine or abrogate these rights to retain power, even in the multi-party era. What the Cambridge University Africa scholar Christopher Clapham observes about the history of liberation movements, however, is that the moment soon arrives when such a regime ‘is judged not by promises but by performance, and if it has merely entrenched itself in positions of privilege reminiscent of its ousted predecessor, that judgement is likely to be a harsh one’.23

The rise of autocrats and ‘authoritarian democrats’ can be resisted, but this demands learning some critical, recent lessons.

First, the West is not going to come to the assistance of democrats, in Africa as elsewhere. They are too concerned with fighting their own battles, and not losing ground to China, Russia and others.

Stability and strategic interests trump human rights. While exernal support would be helpful, there is no good recent reason to be especially hopeful. At least, however, they should, as the Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi – aka Bobi Wine – noted about the US, and ‘not pay our oppressor’. Outsiders should do no harm if they cannot find the moral and financial wherewithal to do good. 

Second, the liberation movements might be weak at delivering services and better economic choices and outcomes for their citizens, but they are very good at staying in power and relying on each other for assistance.

This can only be strengthened with the involvement of other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the bulk of which are authoritarian states. Success has to primarily come from local ownership and organisation. 

Brics Leader’s Family Photo on the side line of the 10th BRICS Summit

BRICS "family photo" on the sidelines of the 10th BRICS Summit in 2018. | Photo: Flickr/GovernmentZA (CC BY-ND 2.0)

And third, the responsibility to win elections has to fall on opposition movements themselves. While incumbents will try to steal elections in many ways, oppositions must act and avoid being passive bystanders.

They need their own narrative, connect with voters, unify their movements and adopt best practices from the playbook for democrats. Important steps include voter registration drives and targeted advertising based on polling outcomes, a messaging strategy to deal with fake news, as well as the more mundane training (and funding) of polling agents, assiduous checking of voters’ rolls (especially in removing dead voters), and the mobilisation of democrats across regions, given the centrality of African monitoring and support. Citizens, not external actors, have to win the vote well before election day comes around. 

Leaders of opposition parties and civil society movements thus need to develop a ‘democracy playbook’ for elections. Oppositions cannot rely on the justice of running against the government. While social media provides real opportunities for the opposition, especially as it lowers the cost of campaigning, it is no panacea, because government can also take advantage of the same tools, and can ‘turn off’ the internet. Beyond running good campaigns, oppositions must have a vision that differentiates them. Parties have to provide citizens with a good reason to vote for them. There is a need, too, for democrats – within and without government – to establish a narrative that transcends the boundaries of identity. In all of this, the opposition has to demonstrate its own democratic credentials in delivering the promise it ran on.

These tactics and the strategies that underpin them are the subject of this playbook, which brings together a group of international specialists, all of whom are keen observers of authoritarian behaviour in Africa and abroad, and many of whom have themselves participated in elections as candidates or observers. This book is intended as a guide for those seeking a more democratic future in turning the tables against autocracy. To ensure a different and better outcome, a dedicated and tough struggle lies ahead. 

There is much at stake, more so than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Politics and the need for freedom of choice, checks and balances, and the competition of ideas is crucial for bettering governance and economic performance.24 But, as Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine who led that country’s Orange Revolution in 2004, which saw it set on its path towards Europe rather than remain under Russia’s wing, ‘You can't have freedom without democracy.’25

1 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.

2 ‘Freedom in the World Timeline’, Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/50-Year-Timeline.

3 William J. Dobson, The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy. New York: Anchor, 2013.

4 ‘Democracy under Siege’, Freedom House, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege.

5 ‘The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict’, Freedom House, 2024, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2024/mounting-damage-flawed-elections-and-armed-conflict.

6 Koh Ewe, ‘The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections around the World in 2024’, Time, 28 December 2023, https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/.

7 Sapa, ‘Malema Mourns Death of Anti-Imperialist Chávez’, Mail & Guardian, 6 March 2013, https://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-06-malema-mourns-death-of-anti-imperialist-chavez/.

8 Sapa, ‘Malema Mourns Chavez’, Soweton, 6 March 2013, https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2013-03-06-malema-mourns-chavez/.

9 Dobson, The Dictator’s Learning Curve.

10 Speaking at the launch of the Platform for African Democrats, Cape Town, 23 March 2024.

11 Anne Applebaum, ‘The Reason Putin Would Risk War’, The Atlantic, 3 February 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/.

12 Sergei Guriev and Daniel Triesman, Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

13 Discussion, Bellagio, 7 May 2013.

14 ‘ANC Statement on the Handover of the Chairmanship of the Meeting of the Former Liberation Movement (FLM) Six Sister Parties from Zanu-PF (Cde Dr O.M. Mpofu) to the ANC (Cde Fikile Mbalula) at Victoria Falls, 18th March 2024’, African National Congress, 17 March 2024, https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-statement-on-the-handover-of-the-chairmanship-of-the-meeting-of-the-former-liberation-movement-flm-six-sister-parties-from-zanu-pf-cde-dr-o-m-mpofu-to-the-anc-cde-fikile-mbalula-at-victoria/.

15 ‘When “Democracy” Becomes “Regime Change”’, Institute for Security Studies, 15 December 2017, https://issafrica.org/iss-today/when-democracy-becomes-regime-change.

16 ‘ANC Statement on the Handover of the Chairmanship of the Meeting of the Former Liberation Movement’.

17 Hany Abdel-Latif, Wenjie Chen, Michele Fornino and Henry Rawlings, ‘China’s Slowing Economy Will Hit Sub-Saharan Africa’s Growth’, International Monetary Fund, 9 November 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/11/09/cf-chinas-slowing-economy-will-hit-sub-saharan-africas-growth.

18 Jevans Nyabiage, ‘China’s Political Party School in Africa Takes First Students from 6 Countries’, South China Morning Post, 21 June 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3182368/china-party-school-africa-takes-first-students-6-countries.

19 ‘Analyse Online’, Afrobarometer, https://www.afrobarometer.org/online-data-analysis/.

20 Paul Nantulya, ‘China’s First Political School in Africa’, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 7 November 2023, https://africacenter.org/experts/paul-nantulya/.

21 Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, ‘In Tanzania, Beijing Is Running a Training School for Authoritarianism’, Axios, 20 August 2023, https://www.axios.com/chinese-communist-party-training-school-africa.

22 ‘Richard Atufigwege Kasesela Speech on Closing Ceremony at Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School’, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wNOgIQaTDw.

23 Christopher Clapham, ‘From Liberation Movement to Government’, KAS International Reports, 1 February 2013, https://www.kas.de/documents/252038/253252/7_dokument_dok_pdf_33517_2.pdf/7434a417-9120-2bc4-62b3-e9d6ab7c9078?version=1.0&t=1539663338095.

24 Greg Mills, Rich State, Poor State. Johannesburg: Penguin Random House, 2023.

25 Speaking at the launch of the Platform for African Democrats, Cape Town, 23 March 2024.

Part 1

How to Rig an Election

Over the last ten years, dictators and their allies around the world have consistently demonstrated they understand how to manipulate elections and remain in power using a wide range of increasingly sophisticated strategies. Even leaders who drive the economy into the ground and let corruption spiral out of control understand how to play divide-and-rule politics and intimidate rival supporters. The book How to Rig an Election (2024) identifies five main strategies that have been used over the last 30 years to prevent unpopular governments from being defeated: ‘invisible rigging’ strategies, such as gerrymandering and the manipulation of the electoral roll; patronage and election bribery; divide-and-rule strategies, including the use of fear and violence; digital and online tactics, including disinformation and hacking; and electoral fraud and ballot box stuffing. The combination of these strategies can make it exceptionally difficult for opposition parties to win power and helps to explain why on average authoritarian regimes that hold elections are actually more likely to survive than those that don’t. In general, the quality of elections is particularly low in Africa, large parts of Asia, post-communist states and, to a lesser extent, Latin America (see Figure 1).

Quality of elections around the world