Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
If African political parties initially emerged within the framework of the colonial
powers’ policies, which aimed to prepare the political elite to assume power when
their countries were poised to gain independence, during independence some
political parties were created by military rulers (Mohamed Salih 2003: 19–27) to
bring about development and national integration and to defend against what they
misconstrued as the ‘threat of division’ to national integration. In other instances,
civilian politicians who inherited power from the colonialists banned all existing
political parties and transformed their states into one-party systems in order to
achieve goals similar to those professed by the military leaders—development and
national integration. As recent history and subsequent events have shown, both goals
remained elusive.
Clearly, not all political parties were inclusive. Historically, political parties established
by European settlers on the eve of independence (in South Africa, Namibia, Zambia
and Zimbabwe) were neither inclusive nor mass-based, and some of them were racist
and deliberately excluded the African majority.
However, from a formalist viewpoint, African political parties have been successful
in adopting and assimilating the form and not the substantive content. Early on, as
the struggle against colonial rule progressed, African political parties succeeded in
cultivating not only nationalist sentiments but also the human and financial resources
necessary to carry out their activities and realize their objectives. Typically, they did
what Weiner says defines a successful political party: they were able to recruit and train
personnel, thereby perpetuating themselves as organizations; win support (goodwill,
money, votes) from the population; and maintain internal cohesion (Weiner 1967:
7). This essentialist measurement of political party success is consistent with a more
recent conception developed by Hague et al. (1998: 131). In their view, political
parties are permanent organizations which contest elections, usually because they
seek to occupy the decision-making positions of authority within the state.
Almost all African political parties are in pursuit of actualizing the four major
functions of political parties in the developing countries described by Randall (Randall
1988: 183–7). First, they endow regimes with legitimacy by providing ideologies,
leadership or opportunities for political participation, or a combination of all three;
second, they act as a medium for political recruitment, thus creating opportunities
for upward social mobility; third, they provide opportunities for the formation of
coalitions of powerful political interests to sustain government (interest aggregation),
have major influence on policies as a result of devising programmes, supervise
policy implementation, and promote the political socialization or mobilization of
people to undertake self-help activities; and, fourth, they maintain political stability
in societies able to absorb increasing levels of political participation by the new