Africa’s responses to election-related tensions are about stability

Elections are common in Africa today but peaceful transfers of power are not. It is even rarer for elections disputes to be settled peacefully through courts of law as it is becoming normal in Kenya.

Between 2017, when Kenyans went to the polls and the supreme court annulled the presidential results and 2022 when the same court affirmed the presidential results from a hotly disputed election, many other countries on the continent have gone to the polls.

Between 2017 and 2022 there have been about fifty elections in Africa. Of these, only a handful have resulted in peaceful transfers of power where an opposition candidate won the presidential polls.

In the East African region, for instance, only the DR Congo has voted for an opposition candidate but the rest have opted for incumbents as individuals or the ruling parties with a different candidate.

Oftentimes, these peaceful transfers of power have occurred in countries which have gone through the same experiences in the past like Zambia, Malawi or Ghana.

There were some exceptions of course, where an opposition candidate won elections like in the D.R. Congo or Sierra Leone. However, in the majority of the countries which went to the polls, incumbents, whether political parties or individuals had a perfect record in elections.

These tensions around elections or their possible outcomes are a legacy of many things including colonialism and the early rulers of post-colonial Africa.

The continent did poorly to instill a culture of peacefully changing leaders whether there are limits or not to presidential terms. State institutions were never given the necessary space to be arbiters of disputes.

The responses to these disputes have varied over time and from one country to another depending on context.

There have been violent military coups in some countries because of election disputes. There have been wars in others as political opponents claim victory or legal and political legitimacy over their opponents. Other countries endured prolonged periods of political uncertainty, instability and unease after polls. There have been countries where the election disputes have led to power sharing agreements where political rivals form governments with varying degrees of inclusivity.

In others, like Kenya, poll disputes have ended up in courts of law to be settled there. As Kenya waited for the supreme court’s decision, The East African magazine ran a story about the anxiety that around the region as the court’s decision was being waited.

This is what is at the heart of the election aftermath in many African countries. Regardless of what a particular country opts for as a means to settle election-related disputes, this should be key and be tailored around the particular needs at that time or as it is informed by the history of that country.

Many of these responses are either imposed by regional or global powers, hence are temporary or when they are permanent, like legal decisions, are not solutions to the many underlying causes of these political differences, some of which predate elections or outlive them.

It is for this reason, power-sharing arrangements in some countries failed to solve election tensions as was the case in Zimbabwe or Kenya.

Legal rulings do not sweep away the reasons which lead to political tensions as has been the case in Kenya or other countries like D.R Congo. They are legal solutions to political challenges.

The solutions to election-related tensions in Africa must be reflective of the dynamics of a particular country because a solution in one country may not work in another country even though both countries might be going through election-related tensions or violence.

However, regardless of the effectiveness or lack thereof of these responses to the arising challenges to elections in Africa, they point to a continent that is willing to find answers.

For a continent that has spent a better part of its independence years in search of political stability, the responses to the underlying tensions caused by election outcomes, are about finding certainty, stability.