LAGOS (AFP) — Africa may have hailed his victory, but Barack Obama’s election as the first black president of the United States has triggered awkward questions about the continent’s own democratic track record.
As the euphoria fades, opposition parties across the continent contrasted Obama’s victory with the shortcomings of their own democracy as a reason for despondency.
“When the declaration was made, I broke down and I wept; one — for joy that ‘my eyes have seen the coming of the Lord’; number two — I wept in sorrow for my country,” said former Nigerian foreign minister Bolaji Akinyemi, now a member of the National Electoral Reform Committee.
Akinyemi’s organisation faces an uphill struggle to iron out the democratic wrinkles of Africa’s most populous country, where President Umaru Yar’adua’s April 2007 poll victory is still subject to approval by the Supreme Court, which recently indefinitely postponed a ruling.
Those elections were described as neither democratic nor credible by the European Union, while the White House said it was “deeply troubled” by the violence which accompanied them.
Similar concern surrounded recent elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, which were marked by widespread violence and intimidation.
And on Monday, the main political parties in the Ivory Coast agreed to postpone November 30 elections until next year because of insecurity and problems with voter registration.
In Harare, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who believes he was robbed of an outright victory in Zimbabwe’s March elections, said Obama’s victory has a particular resonance with its lesson of “political maturity and tolerance”.
“Zimbabweans appreciate the true value of a vote, the preciousness of a poll that is conducted openly and fairly, and a result that is respected by all,” said Tsvangirai who pulled out of a runoff against Robert Mugabe after scores of his supporters were killed.
While Obama can stay no longer than eight years in the White House, more than half a dozen African leaders have already chalked up more than a quarter of a century in power.
Mugabe has been in charge since 1980, Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos since 1979 while Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt for 27 years and routinely been re-elected unopposed with vote totals of more than 95 percent.
Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema seized power in a 1979 coup, three years before Paul Biya became president in neighboring Cameroon.
Moamer Kadhafi has been in power for nearly 39 years in Libya but he falls just short of qualifying as Africa’s longest-serving ruler, a distinction belonging to Gabon’s Omar Bongo, who came to power in 1967. He won the country’s most recent presidential election with 79 percent of the vote.
Obama’s victory was greeted with particular jubilation in Kenya, with President Mwai Kibake hailing it as “an inspiration to millions”.
But some commentators drew an unflattering comparison with his disputed re-election last December. Kibaki was ultimately forced to share power with the now Prime Minister Raila Odinga following post-election violence that killed more than 1,000 people.
The Daily Nation newspaper said there was much in Obama’s victory “that can profit us in Kenya — that true democracy requires tolerance and the ability to give in with grace when we lose a political contest.”
South Africa, and its peaceful elections in 1994, 1999 and 2004, stands as an example to the continent, one that Nigeria, and its 140 million people, hopes to emulate.
“There has been so much enthusiasm also about the efficiency of American democracy, even from political parties, and state governors who are sponsors of violence and electoral fraud in Nigeria, said the daily Guardian in Lagos.
“If we love success and democracy so much, why don’t we create an enabling environment for the same value in Africa?”