Attempts by African leaders to circumvent constitutional term limits so they could stay in power longer had become a major source of conflict on the continent, analysts said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
These attempts to cling to power \u2013 which have been dubbed \u201cthird-termism\u201d \u2013 had become the \u201cnew coups\u201d on the continent, a seminar on the margins of this week\u2019s African Union (AU) summit in Sandton heard.<\/p>\n
The summit was expected to address the crisis in Burundi, provoked by President Pierre Nkurunziza\u2019s announcement in April that he would run for a third term in office, despite the two-term limit in the country\u2019s constitution. Similar attempts by other leaders were threatening stability in a few other countries.<\/p>\n
David Zenmenou, of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said at the seminar that Africa had made significant progress towards stability and democracy since independence.<\/p>\n
The high frequency of military coups in the first decades of independence had diminished. \u201cThat\u2019s progress.\u201d Democracy had become \u201cthe new language in town.\u201d<\/p>\n
But most of the continent\u2019s leaders still saw democracy as a threat to their interests and their manoeuvres to stay in power had become a major source of instability and conflict.<\/p>\n
This included the collapse of governments into chaos when leaders clung to power until they died, leaving no succession plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrican leaders don\u2019t hold elections to lose them,\u201d he said, adding that they used whatever instruments they could to win, including manipulating electoral commissions and voters rolls.<\/p>\n
Between 2000 and 2015, 15 African leaders had tried to remain in power by changing their countries\u2019 constitutions to remove presidential term limits. Eleven had succeeded and four had failed. – ANA (shortened)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attempts by African leaders to circumvent constitutional term limits so they could stay in power longer had become a major source of conflict on the continent, analysts said on Tuesday. These attempts to cling to power \u2013 which have been dubbed \u201cthird-termism\u201d \u2013 had become the \u201cnew coups\u201d on the continent, a seminar on the … Continue reading “3rd presidential terms: ‘African leaders don’t hold elections to lose them’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":19342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[930,11901],"class_list":["post-19341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-democracy","tag-third-terms"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/AFRICA-democracy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19343,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19341\/revisions\/19343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}