Africa’s ‘Leaders for Life’

Why problem persists

Leaders are increasingly securing longer terms through “constitutional coups,” proposing amendments for approval by the legislature or judiciary, or in national referenda, that allow for additional terms in office. This practice grew more frequent after 2000, when many postcolonial leaders were nearing the ends of their constitutional term limits.

Since then, at least eighteen heads of state have tried to remain in power by tweaking their countries’ constitutions. Namibian President Sam Nujoma did so in 1998, followed by Lansana Conte, president of Guinea, in 2001, and Gnassingbe Eyadema, president of Togo, in 2002. One year later, the Gabonese parliament voted to remove term limits from its constitution, allowing President Omar Bongo to run for a sixth term. Following these initial instances, attempts to extend terms became fairly regular occurrences, popping up every one to two years on the continent in countries including Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, and Uganda.

Angola’s dos Santos and former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, among others, claimed they were eligible to run for additional terms because the constitutions containing term limits were passed during their mandates; they argued the limits should only apply to future presidential terms. Burundi’s Nkurunziza made a similar claim in 2015, saying that his first term, which he won in a parliamentary vote rather than a popular one, did not count toward the limit. Uganda’s Museveni paired the elimination of term limits with the introduction of multiparty politics to pass a constitutional amendment in 2005, and his party eliminated the presidential age limit in a 2017 amendment.

Many experts say that countries lacking an effective political opposition are vulnerable to constitutional coups. Though several countries across sub-Saharan Africa tout themselves as multiparty states, some, including Cameroon and Rwanda, remain de facto one-party states. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, who has effectively been the country’s leader since 1994, secured another seven-year term in August 2017, with the electoral commission reporting he had the support of almost 99 percent of voters. “Executives are able to act with impunity because there is no strong, organised opposition to challenge entrenched incumbents and push them toward a genuine political opening,” American University’s Adrienne LeBas writes of these countries.

Kleptocratic incumbents have even more incentives to stay in office; they could lose their wealth if they were to lose power and potentially face prosecution. The network of businesses that Kabila and his family have built in and beyond the DRC has brought them hundreds of millions of dollars. Angola’s dos Santos was long accused of funneling government funds to a small group of elites, as well as to his own family. His daughter Isabel, the wealthiest woman on the continent, was named head of the state oil company by her father in late 2016.

“Very few African countries—in fact almost none—have any kind of pension or security scheme for former presidents or heads of state. So out of power means out of money,” Anneke Van Woudenberg, then Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for Africa, told Newsweek. Dos Santos’s successor, former Defense Minister Joao Lourenco, pledged to crack down on corruption; he removed Isabel dos Santos from the national oil company, and her brother, Jose Filomeno dos Santos, as chair of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. In January 2020, the release of hundreds of thousands of documents, known as the Luanda Leaks, detailed how Isabel used her father’s position to amass over $2 billion. Days later, state prosecutors charged her with embezzlement and money laundering.

During his tenure, Mugabe called the push for term limits a Western attempt to “place a yoke around the necks of African leaders,” and some politicians who concur with him point to Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and Canada, that have no such provisions.

Leaders who failed to extend

Zambian President Frederick Chiluba’s and Malawian President Bakili Muluzi’s proposals to raise presidential term limits in 2001 and 2003, respectively, were stopped after opposition and civil society groups formed alliances with lawmakers from the countries’ ruling parties. In 2006, Nigeria’s senate rejected an amendment put forth by President Olusegun Obasanjo that would have allowed him to serve a third term.

Citizens have often opposed constitutional coup attempts through protest, at times successfully blocking them. In 2012, large protests in Senegal led to an electoral defeat for Wade, who was running for a disputed third term. After weeks of demonstrations in October 2014, Burkinabe citizens stopped Blaise Compaore from repealing the constitutional provision on term limits and forced his resignation. Polling by Afrobarometer between 2016 and 2018 found that, on average, 75 percent of citizens surveyed in thirty-four African countries believed leaders should be limited to two terms in office.

Gambia’s small size and geography conspired against former President Yahya Jammeh, who ruled from 1994 until his ouster in 2017, argues Virginia Comolli, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The country is surrounded by Senegal, which supported opposition candidate and election winner Adama Barrow.