Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

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Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
conclusion should be put in perspective in the light of an expanding urban
population which in some cases has lost touch with its ethnic base and devoted
more energy to secular party politics.
6. The weakness of African opposition parties and the inability of their leaders
to aggregate interests with the governing political parties deny them the
opportunity to play their oversight role. The externally-driven quest for good
governance being promoted by the international financial institutions (the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the IMF)), donors and
Western democratic lobby groups has on some occasions forced opposition
political parties to seek more favours from the governing political parties in
return for silence. Few of the corruption or mismanagement charges brought
against ministers from the governing political parties have resulted in loss of
office, let alone court convictions.
Despite the critique and counter-critique that we could levy against and for African
political parties, they are the main democratic institutions capable of impacting on
the continent’s polity and society. However, for African political parties to play their
positive role, they have to build on what is uniquely African and seek bold alternatives
informed by African reality. In the absence of such a vision based on what African
societies could offer to promote democracy, externally-driven blueprints will always
result in the status quo being maintained. Moreover, in the absence of African
alternatives, the long-term prospects would be the creation of democracies without
democrats at best and civil dictatorships at worst.
In short, this report reflects these important issues and outlines the architecture
which informs the nexus between African political parties and African democracies.
Because it is a pan-African report, covering a large terrain, some aspects, naturally,
are treated in less depth than others. 1 We hope that after reading this report the reader
would have developed an understanding of the complex relations African political
parties do endure, with a constituency divided by ethnicity, language, culture, region
and class, and at the same time will better understand what African people also have
to endure, having to put their faith in political parties most of which fall short of
delivering on their election promises.
2.1 The structure of this report
The report is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 presents the methodology of the
research in which the report is based. Chapter 2 is introductory and rather general,
In 2007, IDEA will produce three sub-regional reports on political parties in Africa. The lead authors
are Khabele Matlosa for Southern Africa, Michael Chege for East Africa and Said Adejumobi for West
Africa.