Laments are common that Africa is burdened with old and out-of-touch leaders who cling to power (e.g. Kiwuwa 2015; Chan 2018). Accordingly, the presidential transitions which have recently swept across Southern Africa, most notably in those countries which have been ruled by liberation movements since independence or the arrival of democracy, have excited hopes that wider changes, leading towards more open and vibrant societies, are on the way.
The excitement has been generated, above all, by the leadership changes in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe was removed as president by a ‘military-assisted transition’ in November 2017, and in South Africa, where popular relief greeted Jacob Zuma’s reluctant resignation of the state presidency in favour of Cyril Ramaphosa, the latter having won the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) the previous month. Elsewhere, of course:
Filipe Nyusi had succeeded Armando Guebeza to become Mozambique’s fourth president in January 2017, the latter having been compelled to stand down because of presidential term limits incorporated into the constitution in 2004.
Having won the leadership of the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Hage Geingob had become the third president of Namibia in March 2015.
In Angola, João Lourenço had succeeded Eduardo dos Santos as president after legislative elections in 2017.
Overviewing these changes, one enthusiast has recently declared: ‘Something is happening in Africa and almost imperceptibly, a democratic revolution might be underway’, a stealthy African equivalent of the ‘Arab Spring’ (Rotima 2018).
The most interesting suggestion is that the recent presidential transitions, all of them involving the handover of power to younger men, indicate that the ruling national liberation movements (NLMs) are in the throes of generational change. In other words, power within them is passing from those who were active in the struggles for liberation from colonial and apartheid rule to those who were too young to be able to do so. In turn, this is likely to bring about a new form of politics, and new possibilities for democracy. A recent expression of this line of thinking was explicit:
Mugabe was removed from his party and government last year, having been forced by a military intervention and political process to resign on November 21 (2017). Only 86 days later, [Morgan] Tsvangirai [leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change] is no more. The strongmen – the Big Men of Zimbabwean politics will no longer dominate Zimbabwe. It is a prospect for a whole new politics. A new generation of politicians, that are more tolerant of each other across party lines, is emerging. It’s an opportunity for a new generational politics. (Zindoga 2018)
The liberation movement regimes of Southern Africa are changing their leaders, their credos and their identities. Afflicted by crashing economies and sharpening clashes between elites and grassroots, as well as between generations, these regimes are dealing with their crises by dropping their malevolent pilots.
The thrust of speculation is that while the NLMs are likely to remain politically dominant, their policies are likely to become less ‘ideological’ and more ‘pragmatic’ (e.g. Thomashausen 2015; Mavindidze 2017). This assertion is buoyed by arguments that NLMs have a 20–25-year lifespan before the countries they govern weary of them. In consequence, they are compelled to adopt more democratic ways (Qobo and Mashele 2014; Vines 2016; Gumede 2017).
It is accepted here that there is considerable purchase in these various arguments. The changes in presidencies would indeed seem to indicate that the region is in a state of flux. Even so, we need to be sceptical about any suggestion that the transition to younger leaders indicates that NLMs are changing their spots, as well of the related assumption that generational shifts within them will inevitably bring about democratic change.1 Indeed, it is equally arguable that, notwithstanding generational change, NLMs are likely to prove as committed to retaining power alongside the privilege and prosperity that go with it as ever they have done previously.
Towards a new generational politics?
The proposal that the arrival of younger leaders in power will bring about more flexible and democratic politics would seem to derive from two main ideas. The first is that the economic crisis which extends across Southern Africa (albeit unevenly) will compel new leaderships to abandon NLMs’ historic attachments to statist and socialist-inclined ideologies in favour of pragmatic policies which will address massively high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality. Today, it is said, the bankruptcy of the Zimbabwean economy; the danger of financial meltdown and downgrading by the international rating agencies in South Africa; and the necessity of attracting multinational companies which can bring the know-how to run the high-skill, capital-intensive gas and oil extractive sectors in Angola and Mozambique, will force new leaders to render their countries increasingly attractive to international investors. If they don’t, the further downward spiral of their economies will force them into the hands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and they will lose control of their own destinies (Chirmambowa 2018; Stratfor 2018).
This does not imply that new leaders will necessarily become free-wheeling free-marketeers, for it is recognised that they are going to continue to have to pay lip-service to formal party programmes which are likely to continue to adhere to radical social rhetoric which is likely to remain committed to retaining core sectors of their economies under state control (if only for the patronage which state ownership allows). Nonetheless, it does suggest that they will recognise the urgency of adopting policies that are more likely to ‘work’, and that these are likely to require increased inflows of capital investment. From this perspective, the loud proclamations by Mnangagwa and Ramaphosa that Zimbabwe and South Africa are ‘open for business’ signals a renewed effort to make deals with multinational corporations, even at some cost to their parties’ radical pretensions (Bendile 2018; NewsDay 2018).
The second argument behind the idea of ‘the new generational politics’ follows is that if NLMs are going to retain their popular legitimacy, they face an increasingly urgent need to appeal to the younger generation of voters. Given that something like 70% of Africa’s population is below 30, ruling parties that fail to adapt their programmes to attract the youth are from this perspective likely to risk becoming irrelevant and to face punishment at the polls. The ‘born-frees’, it is said, those who were born after the liberation of their countries, have no memory of direct oppression by colonialism and apartheid and are weary of constant recitations of the sacrifices made by their parents’ generation. Theirs is the ‘turned-on’ globally aware generation of cell phones, the Internet, social media, hip-hop and international fashion, whose aspirations cannot be met by constant retelling of the mythology and remembrances of ‘the struggle’, and the leading role of the liberation movement within it. They are overwhelmingly interested in ‘results’, jobs and social delivery, and if the NLMs can’t provide them, they will look elsewhere. In short, Africa’s younger citizens are increasingly distanced from the rulers and far less likely than their parents’ generation to be unremittingly loyal to the liberation movement, however glorious its history. They are interested in the present and not the past (Mattes and Richmond 2014; Oosterom and Pswarayi 2014; Graham 2017).
There is of course the added factor that today, NLM domination of their countries’ politics is constrained in a way that it was not during the early days of the era of liberation. The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) abandoned Marxism and Soviet-style one-partyism in 1990 and 1991 respectively, embracing multi-partyism as part of settlements designed to bring about an end to devastating civil wars. Unable to defeat the enemy and forced into compromise settlements with former settler regimes, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU-PF), SWAPO and the ANC established their dominance on the basis of overwhelming victories in competitive elections. While SWAPO has managed to maintain what Melber (2014, 62, 83) has termed its ‘super-dominance’ (on the basis, he asserts, of its authoritarianism and structural violence), the electoral hegemony of both ZANU-PF and ANC has been steadily eroded. ZANU-PF was forced into a coalition with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 2008. It only swept back into power in 2013 by virtue of its well-honed capacity to rig elections alongside the opposition’s naivety. Correspondingly, the extent and intensity of support for the ANC has fallen in successive elections (Schulz-Herzenberg 2014).
Meanwhile, term limits for presidents have become the norm: they were adopted in Namibia by constitutional amendment in 1990 (although grounds were found for enabling founding president Sam Nujoma to serve a third term);2 as part of the constitutional settlement in South Africa in 1994; and as an element of constitutional reform in Mozambique in 2004, Angola in 2010 and Zimbabwe in 2013. Dos Santos may have been in power for 38 years and Mugabe displayed every intention of remaining de facto president-for-life, and both had attempted to entrench familial dynasties. However, their removal would seem to signify that such days are over.
Herbst and Mills (2018) have recently declared that Lourenço, Mnangagwa and Ramaphosa are following ‘rulers whose corruption and poor governance impoverished their lands.’ If their reformist agendas succeed, ‘there will be renewed hope for the 100 million people who collectively live in those countries.’ Yet as they themselves concede, the implementation of reformist agendas in Southern Africa faces considerable obstacles.
NLMs and generational change: new faces, old agendas?
NLM political culture is inherently authoritarian, impatient if not downright intolerant of political opposition and criticism. As such, it is at odds with the tenets of liberal democracy which the NLMs have all either chosen to formally embrace, either as a project of post-socialist reform (Angola and Mozambique) or as a defining element of the political settlements reached with outgoing settler regimes (Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa). In practice, this paradox has been resolved by all the NLMs recording serial election victories at the polls and establishing their domination over their political arenas, backed where and when necessary (notably in Zimbabwe in 2008) by the security services (Southall 2013).
Two questions follow. First, does the new crop of presidents genuinely represent ‘generational change’? Second, does the shift to younger leaderships indicate the will and the capacity of the NLMs to less ambiguously embrace democracy and to pursue the reforms required to energise their ailing economies?
Do new leaders represent generational change?
Critiques of gerontocracy revolve around the increased dangers of ill health and associated risks of misjudgement which come with age, alongside supposed tendencies of the old towards political inflexibility and lack of openness to new ideas. In Southern Africa, continued hold on power by the liberation generation is also widely deemed to signify continued subservience to NLMs’ rigid political culture. As a result, the salience of presidential transitions to generational change appears to be highly uneven.
As noted above, younger men have succeeded older ones across the sub-continent: Nyusi was 55 when he succeeded Guebeza (74), Lourenço was 64 when he replaced dos Santos (75), and Ramaphosa was 65 when he displaced Zuma (75). Likewise, Geingob was 74 when he followed Pohamba (80) and Mnangagwa was 76 when he replaced the 93-year-old Mugabe. Overall, the age differences are not insignificant (on average, these new presidents were over 12 years younger than their predecessors), but what is more relevant is whether these new presidents can be said to have replaced ‘the liberation generation’ of freedom fighters.
This is manifestly not the case in Namibia and Zimbabwe, where the relatively advanced age of Geingob and Mnangagwa has excited comment that both SWAPO and ZANU-PF remain in the grip of gerontocracy. Melber (2014, 83) has observed that even while the SWAPO cadres in control since the ‘struggle days’ approach their biological expiry date, ‘they still occupy to a large extent the commanding heights and a “new” generation is not yet in sight.’ In Zimbabwe, those backing Grace Mugabe for the presidential succession termed themselves ‘Generation 40’ (G40), implying a change in generational leadership was required to revive ZANU-PF. However, when it came to the crunch, it was again the struggle generation which won out via the military’s intervention on behalf of Mnangagwa, who had been a close ally of Mugabe for some four decades prior to the latter’s dismissal of him as vice-president in November 2017 (Davies 2017).
It is less certainly the case that the struggle generation remains in charge in Angola, Mozambique and South Africa, where the new leaders may be taken to represent age cohorts who have risen through the party and the state since the NLMs acquired power. Lourenço served in the MPLA military wing as a teenager during the liberation struggle and subsequently became a general, later serving as a governor of different provinces before becoming secretary-general of the MPLA in 1998. He held this until 2003, before moving on to a series of party and state positions before becoming vice-president in 2016. Nyusi received military and political training in Tanzania after joining Frelimo in 1973. Subsequently he worked in state entities until 2008, when he was appointed minister of defence. In short, throughout their careers, both Lourenço and Nyusi worked closely in alignment with the struggle generation, for all that the former fell out of favour with dos Santos for a period after expressing his interest in succeeding him as president.
Of the three, it is Ramaphosa who is the outlier, and whose claim to represent a new political generation is strongest. Famously, he is the first ‘inzile’ to have become president, his political origins lying in black consciousness, and his rising to political prominence as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1980s. He only joined the ANC after being part of the delegation of the then new Congress of South African Trade Unions to meet with it in Lusaka in 1986, although thereafter he rose through the ranks rapidly, serving as the party’s secretary-general between 1991 and 1997. However, after he was passed over for the presidency of the ANC in 1996 in favour of Thabo Mbeki, whose election confirmed the ascendance of the exiles, Ramaphosa formally withdrew from politics and went into business. Within a few years he was to amass a fortune (in part through his continuing close connection to the ANC, whose goodwill large corporations wanted to foster).
Ramaphosa returned to politics in 2012 with the ambition of becoming president and, with the backing of the Zuma faction, was to be elected deputy president of the party in the national conference of that year. Subsequently, his silence in the face of massive evidence of billowing corruption under Zuma was to attract much criticism, although his backers claimed that this was necessary for the ‘long game’ he was playing to secure the presidency. He was to begin to openly distance himself from Zuma only once the latter had thrown his weight behind Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (his former wife) for the top job. Consequently, for all that Ramaphosa’s past experiences connect him to the trade union movement and those who were active within the country in the struggle for democracy, as well as big business, he now has a three-decade-long experience within the ANC.
What these biographies of the region’s new leaders indicate is that they are all deeply embroiled in the internal politics and struggles of their particular parties. Necessarily so, for if they were not, they would never have been able to ascend to the top job. At a deeper level, however, they indicate that, to the extent that younger leaders may indicate power shifts between generations, these shifts take place within the ruling parties precisely because the latter dominate their countries politically. In other words, in countries where opposition parties stand little or no chance of securing more than local power, the politically ambitious seek to rise within ruling party structures in order to access influence and office.
This process of generational upward mobility within NLMs has been tracked in detail by a recent study by of power relations within SWAPO. Ironically, this indicates that the average age of Geingob’s first cabinet was higher than ever before! Furthermore, Melber, Kromrey, and Welz (2016) have shown unambiguously that, under Geingob, the country’s political affairs continue to be dominated by SWAPO’s first generation of leaders, who still provide three-quarters of the cabinet. Even so, Melber and his colleagues demonstrate that a second generation of ‘party activists’ who had gone into exile from the mid 1970s have gradually expanded upward into leading positions (in parliament, if not so much in the cabinet). While this signals that ‘the ship of state continues to be steered by those who represent the first generation’, it simultaneously suggests that when, inevitably, this first generation is forced to hand over power to younger successors, it will do so in a manner structured to reinforce the party’s hegemony.
Equally compelling case studies of age mobility within the region’s other liberation movements are not available. Nonetheless, if SWAPO’s case is broadly representative – and observation suggests that it is – then it casts significant doubt upon any suggestion that, as power passes to younger generations within the NLMs, it will necessarily lead to better government and greater democracy. The replacement of ANC stalwarts with more youthful faces, remarks McKaiser (2013), is unlikely to have any progressive impact upon South Africa’s politics: ‘party discipline trumps the fresh thinking that is required to challenge the status quo.’ Unable to move beyond ideological and personality battles, any new generation of ANC activists will prove unable to provide the leadership focused on building a state capable of improving citizens’ lives.
This brings us back to whether Southern Africa’s new presidents are able to bring their parties to embrace reform.
Younger leaders, necessary reform?
Embedded in NLM political culture is the notion that liberation movements have the capacity to ‘self-correct’, that is, to tackle divisions or pathologies within their ranks because of their history, values and enduring closeness to the people. The mantra goes that although they may be faced by many challenges after long years in power, such as hostility to their revolutionary path, internal factionalism, and the temptations of careerism and corruption, they are driven by an inner compulsion to overcome them, for if they do not, they may face the unthinkable: their defeat and decline. ‘Self-correction is a function of what the ANC does’, proclaimed Gwede Mantashe, then secretary-general of the party, in the lead-up to its 2017 five-yearly national conference (Goba 2017). However, inevitably, reformist-inclined leaders inevitably face problematic baggage from the past.
Within his first hundred days in office, Lourenço earned much praise for sacking Isabel dos Santos, the multi-millionaire daughter of his predecessor, as head of Sonangol, the state oil company (and fulcrum of the economy, responsible for around a third of GDP and 95% of exports). During her father’s presidency, Isabel’s companies, or companies with which she was closely involved, had been awarded highly lucrative contracts (worth billions of US dollars) by the state, which had, by reputation, elevated her to becoming ‘Africa’s richest woman’ (De Morais 2018). Lourenço followed this up by dismissing José Filomeno, Eduardo dos Santos’s son, as head of the nation’s US$5 billion sovereign wealth fund, citing misappropriation of funds (Pilling 2017). Both siblings had been cited in the Panama Papers, which suggested they had used their positions to launder vast sums of money out of the country.
These indications that the new president intended to cleanse the Augean stables were warmly welcomed. However, critics suggested that his actions were at least in part forced upon him by independent oil companies warning that they would take their business elsewhere unless he undertook structural reforms, by the need to impress the international financial agencies and by political pressure to appease his domestic audience (Okello 2017).
Whether or not Lourenço will follow up a concerted attempt to tackle dos Santos’s massive political-financial empire that funnelled Angola’s wealth to family and friends, is another matter. Initially, at least, dos Santos remained leader of the MPLA, and before retiring as president placed numerous cronies in powerful party, state and business positions. Furthermore, during his last days in power, the MPLA passed a bill granting him status as president emeritus (with generous emoluments), this including his immunity from prosecution for any abuse of office (Quaresma dos Santos 2017). On top of that, parliament passed a law blocking Lourenço from appointing any new chiefs of military, police and intelligence services for eight years, and, instead, dos Santos promoted 165 senior police officers of his own choice to key security positions. Although Lourenço has subsequently defied these latter provisions by appointing his own security chiefs, it will be quite another enterprise to systematically deconstruct the powerful network which surrounds the dos Santos family. Indeed, as Isabel dos Santos has indicated, the family has every intention of fighting back (Nsehe 2018). Unless strongly backed by powerful elements within the MPLA, good intentions are unlikely to prove enough to carry through far-reaching reform, or to rid the cronyistic dependence of the political elite upon Angola’s oil money (News24 2017). In any case, the more the dos Santos empire is attacked, the more likely its wealth will find its way out of the country.
In Zimbabwe, ordinary Zimbabweans reacted to the accession of Mnangagwa with wild celebrations. In the heat of the moment, any alternative to Mugabe was deemed to hold out hope for a better future, despite the fact that the new president had been put in power by the army and was known to have been centrally involved in the Gukurahundi, the quasi-genocidal crackdown of the military upon opposition supporters within Matabeleland in the early 1980s. Mnangagwa responded with an inauguration speech which promised significant reforms to revive the bankrupt economy. He also made a ritual promise to crack down on corruption.
His speech went down well, but within days disappointment was rife, for, after roundly rebuffing opposition and civil society pleas for the formation of a new coalition government, he appointed a cabinet forged from the core of the ZANU-PF old guard. Although he dispensed with some who had backed Grace Mugabe and G40, almost half of his ministers had served under Mugabe and were ‘steeped in non-delivery’ (Games 2017). But what disturbed critics most of all was his appointments of Chiwenga as vice-president, Air Marshal Perence Shiri (who had commanded the notorious Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi) as minister of lands and settlement, and Major-General Sibusiso Moyo, who had been the first public face of the military intervention on television, as minister of foreign affairs. These appointments pointed to the continuing influence of the security forces.
Nonetheless, Mnangagwa promised economic reforms. These revolved principally around: first, persuading international agencies to reschedule Zimbabwe’s massive debt, which in turn would help stabilise the banking system; second, granting a three-month amnesty to allow individuals and companies who were reckoned to have illegally exported some US$1.8 billion to bring it back into the country; and third, reviving agriculture and mining to boost exports. This last project involved controversial efforts to persuade white farmers to return to Zimbabwe by issuing promises of the grants of 99-year leases alongside the removal of indigenisation demands that had required companies to cede 51% of their shares to Zimbabweans across a swathe of sectors.
Recognising that these reforms would need to be backed by greater political openness if they were to be found convincing, Mnangagwa committed to an early election, and one which would be free and fair. This was scheduled for 30 July 2018 and ran on time, with the official results recording a landslide victory for ZANU-PF in the legislative elections and a victory for Mnangagwa in the presidential election. (In the latter contest, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced that Mnangagwa had won 50.8% of the vote, just sufficient for him to avoid a second-round run-off had he won less than half of the votes cast).
However, although it was widely accepted that the opposition had enjoyed relative freedom to campaign and that the campaign had been largely peaceful, the results were received with widespread scepticism. Notably, key electoral monitoring groups judged that the field on which the election had been played had been uneven and had unduly favoured ZANU-PF. Unsurprisingly, the opposition MDC claimed foul, even before the results were fully released. In particular, the party leadership claimed to have evidence of cheating in the counting by the electoral commission. In response, its supporters poured on to the streets in Harare, only to be met with a brutal response by the military.
Given the presence of the international media, the army was compelled to admit to having used live ammunition and having killed six people (although other sources claimed that the body count was higher). This was followed up by a series of raids on opposition premises and arrests of senior personnel. Although there was some doubt whether Mnangagwa had full control over the army, the aftermath of the election gave ample confirmation that the military was not prepared to allow any serious challenge to ZANU-PF’s monopoly of political power (Moore 2018a, 2018b).
The unravelling of the election has cast a major pall over Mnangagwa’s reform project. The holding of ‘credible elections’ had emerged as a critical factor in his bid to re-establish uninterrupted trading and investment relations with (notably) the European Union, United Kingdom and the United States. Although they may possibly choose to overlook the flaws in the electoral process (justifying this by the argument that Zimbabwe is now freer politically than previously), they will now have renewed fears about political stability and the safety of investments. Likewise, they will have to take account of critiques that Mnangagwa’s reforms have given inadequate indication that they will do anything to undermine the patterns of power which had enabled the ZANU-PF elite to accumulate massive wealth even amongst the devastation of Mugabe’s economy.3 Continuity rather than change seems to be the name of the game (Southall 2017).
In South Africa, Ramaphosa’s elevation was greeted with widespread acclaim, and after his election to president by parliament, he made a series of commitments which promised a ‘new dawn’ after the tawdry, corruption-suffused years of government under Zuma. Critically, as well as pledging ethical leadership, he promised extensive restructuring of the state-owned enterprises which had fallen victim to ‘state capture’ and massive looting by an immigrant Indian family close to Zuma, the Guptas, and their Zuma faction allies. Government departments would be reconfigured to make them more efficient and less costly; there would be summits for promoting foreign investment, youth enterprise and employment, and for the forging of a new working relationship between government, non-governmental organisations and civil society. Major efforts would be made to address an immediate crisis about the future of the mining industry and to revive manufacturing, and to prepare South Africa for the ‘fourth and fifth industrial revolutions’. Overall, Ramaphosa was much praised for restoring dignity and credibility to the presidency, although it was simultaneously noted that he had felt constrained to pay obeisance to ‘radical economic transformation’, the slogan of the Zuma faction.
Ramaphosa’s capacity to steer ‘the capable state’ to which he aspires relies heavily upon a small number of like-minded technocratic allies (notably finance minister Nhlanhla Nene and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan) and will inevitably be compromised by the continuing strong presence within both state and party of those who were close to Zuma and were deeply complicit in the project of ‘state capture’. Indeed, although Ramaphosa’s cabinet featured the appointment of ministers of unquestioned competence and integrity to key positions, the continuing political weight of the Zuma faction meant that he was also constrained to appoint ministers who were notorious for their dismal track record in the previous administration. However, the strongest indication of the extent to which Ramaphosa’s freedom of manoeuvre was limited was given by the appointment of David Mabuza as deputy president. Hitherto premier of Mpumalanga, Mabuza had been implicated in extensive corruption and political assassinations in that province, but it was his last-minute support for Ramaphosa at the ANC’s national congress which had proved critical in assuring the latter victory over Dlamini-Zuma.
In short, with a general election in view in 2019, Ramaphosa appears to be prioritising the maintaining of party unity over vigorous pursuit of a reform agenda. This was to be confirmed by his announcement, as party leader rather than as state president, that the ANC was committed to implementing its December 2017 Congress resolution requiring the expropriation of land without compensation in order to speed up the process of land reform. Ramaphosa’s announcement was widely construed as having been made to attract support away from the Economic Freedom Fighters of Julius Malema, whose own programme was designed to outflank the ANC from the left. However, because implementation of ‘expropriation without compensation’ would require an amendment to the constitution, and because this was widely regarded in the media and by business as constituting a major attack upon property rights, Ramaphosa’s move was construed as running wholly counter to his aim of attracting US$100 billion of international investment to South Africa within five years.
Meanwhile, although there was still strong support for Ramaphosa’s continuing efforts to clean up the parastatals, many of which had been reduced to penury through Zuma-related looting, fears began to mount that this project was stalling in the face of resistance from within the ANC. These were to find international voice with a major expose of David Mabuza’s dubious background by the New York Times in August 2018 (Onishi and Gebrekidan 2018). In short, conviction is growing that, for all that Ramaphosa himself remains strongly committed to reform, he is lacking the political clout to see it through.
Meanwhile, credible reports suggest that Nyusi, when defence minister, was deeply involved in the massive debt scandal which has led to the suspension of Mozambique’s relationship with the IMF. In 2013, the government began raising US$2 billion (equivalent to around one-third of the national budget and which violated commitments made to the IMF that same year) for projects around tuna fishing and maritime security. The government set up three state-owned enterprises to implement the programme, contracting with the Middle Eastern shipbuilders Privinvest and others to provide a range of fishing and defence vessels. These loans eventually caused sovereign debt to swell to unsustainable levels, and in March 2016 the government was forced to restructure part of the debt. This led ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Mozambique’s credit rating, triggering a series of events that led to the disclosure of over US$1 billion in previously undeclared loans. Subsequently, after the government had turned in desperation to the IMF, the latter had commissioned a report which indicated, inter alia, that some US$500 million was unaccounted for, and that although Credit Suisse and VTB had earned some US$200 million in fees for arranging the loan, they had reportedly failed to disclose to investors that the loan procurement process lacked required parliamentary approval, and had thus contravened the constitution. It was this that had led to the earlier breach with the IMF. Nonetheless, despite these dubious machinations, parliament has retrospectively endorsed the borrowing, rendering it legal, and has indicated it will seek a further restructuring of the debt, this suggesting that inquiry into the matter will be brushed aside (Patel 2017; Zitamar News 2017).
Meanwhile, in Namibia, the Reserve Bank’s Financial Intelligence Centre has been investigating whether two politically connected businessmen paid off Geingob’s substantial debts to Windhoek municipality before he became president, presumably in hope of future favours (Immanuel 2017a); and whether he is (or was) a partner of a Chinese businessman arrested in connection with a N$3.5 billion tax evasion, fraud and money-laundering case (although Geingob made much of the fact that he had not interfered with the arrest) (Immanuel 2017b). Geingob has also been cited by a French anti-corruption investigation of having received ‘illicit transfers’, which amounted to bribes, from French nuclear giant Areva. This was in connection with its purchase of the Trekkopje uranium mine owned by the Canadian mining company Uramin, which, inter alia, was granted tax concessions not granted to other uranium miners when he was minister of trade and industry. Geingob denies any corrupt involvement in the deal, claiming that payments were made to him (via an offshore account) in return for ‘consultancy’ (Immanuel 2018a, 2018b, The Namibian 2017).
What all these issues suggest is that, even if Southern Africa’s new presidents have a will for ‘self-correction’, the region’s liberation movements will remain mired in a morass of patronage and corruption from which it will be difficult to escape.
A new generational politics?
NLMs’ conviction that they have a right to rule implies that, notwithstanding the longevity of leaders such as dos Santos and Mugabe, they recognise that power must eventually pass from the founding struggle generation to a younger generation of successors which has no direct experience of the fight for freedom from colonialism and apartheid. This process of handing over is presently occurring at different rates (most evidently in Angola and South Africa, most reluctantly in Zimbabwe). Change is recognised as inevitable, as even the region’s most convinced gerontocrats recognise that they are mortal (even though Mugabe and dos Santos aspired to quasi-immortality through the emplacement in power of family dynasties). Nonetheless, the extent to which the recent presidential transitions constitute ‘generational change’ varies considerably, and to the extent that it is happening, it constitutes little more than a handover of power to younger generations of party leaders already deeply caught up in the NLMs’ political culture of authoritarianism, patronage and self-enrichment.
The reforms envisaged by the new crop of presidents may well serve to bring about some improvements in the day-to-day lives of the region’s people. However, ‘the new generational politics’ has more than a passing resemblance to the politics of old and appears unlikely to bridge the gap which is opening up between the NLMs and the burgeoning youth of Southern Africa.