Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

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0 Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy across ethnicity and region (Southall 2005). Generally, however, this is an area in which the evidence so far is still, by and large, anecdotal, although the general trend shows that there is more party competition, with the exception of dominant-party states, than there was for example during the first two multiparty elections in most African countries. 4.5 Party coalitions and networks With the democratic renaissance of the 1990s, those political parties that were banned during authoritarian rule have been resurrected and new ones created. With the exception of the 16 African countries that are ruled by dominant-party systems (see Table 4.2), the majority are multiparty or two-party systems. One contributing factor is that the number of political parties in each country has increased dramatically, with fewer dominant-party states as a result. The awakening of ethnicity which was suppressed during the outburst of synthetic nationalism during the 1950s and 1960s has also meant that the post-1990s political parties are not less ethnically inclined in their orientation than their pre-independence predecessors. In some countries the proliferation of political parties has meant the demise of the so-called national political parties (e.g. KANU of Kenya, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia, etc.); in others it has strengthened the old guard and enabled them to retain or stage a comeback to power (e.g. the Revolutionary State Party (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, CCM) in Tanzania). Although they are at the embryonic stage, African party-to-party coalitions operate at four levels—national, pan-African, regional and global party-to-party partnership. The following are examples of each of these four trajectories. 4.5.1 National party coalitions Coalitions as forms of party-to-party-partnership are common to all countries, and are political mechanisms for aggregating interests and reaching a middle ground in order to form the government in situations where no single political party wins the majority of parliamentary seats. In the severely divided societies of Africa, party-toparty becomes an important vehicle for national integration. In this sense, partyto-party partnership enables political parties to articulate their programmes and interests and through dialogue create ideological affinity beyond the ethnic, cultural and linguistic group. The integrative role of national party-to-party partnership is also relevant to regional party-to-party partnerships; it supports regional integration and interdependence between regional and sub-regional political entities.
International Idea Evidently, post-1990s African elections are more peaceful than those of the early independence days. There is also more cooperation and to some extent peaceful party coexistence in most African states, except a few. 1. In December 1991, only days after the repeal of section 2A of the Kenyan constitution, which restored the multiparty system, Mwai Kibaki left the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), and founded the Democratic Party (DP), which later became the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK). He finished third in the presidential elections of 1992, and second (with 31 per cent of votes) in those of 1997. In preparation for the 2000 elections, the NAK allied itself with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). Opposition groups and civil society groups united to press for a constitutional review. In early 1998, the mainstream opposition parties (the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy- Kenya, or Ford Kenya, the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party) joined the National Convention Executive Council (NCEC) to press for constitutional reforms. On 27 December 1997, NARC won a landslide victory over KANU, with Kibaki winning 63 per cent of the votes in the presidential elections, against only 30 per cent for the KANU candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta. 2. In Niger’s 1993 elections two main contesting coalitions emerged: (a) the National Movement for Society and Development (MNSD), the ruling party since 1960, and its allies the Union Démocratique des Forces Progressistes (UDFP) and the Union of Democratic Patriots and Progressives (UPDP); and (b) the Alliance Forces for Change (AFC), led by the Democratic and Social Convention (CDS), with the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) and Nigerien Alliance for Democracy and Social Progress (ANDP) as the other major coalition partners. However, these alliances were reconfigured in the 1995 parliamentary elections, when the PNDS and UPDP joined together, and hence helped to return the MNSD to power. In the 1999 elections, the majority in parliament was held by the MNSD, which formed the government together with the CDS. 3. Malawi exhibited a similar pattern when the opposition alliance of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) joined forces to win the 1993 referendum with a landslide and create a coalition government of national unity. It then saw Malawi through multiparty elections. In the first multiparty election of 1994, the UDF as part of a loose alliance known as the Common Electoral Group (CEG) won. However, the 1999 elections brought the Malawi Congress Party (the ruling party of the late dictator Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda) to power, with 33 per cent of the votes. African Party and Electoral Systems
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Chapter 7 Conclusions and Recommend
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Acronyms and Abbreviations ACE Admi
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References and Select Bibliography
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Kadima, Denis, (ed.), The Politics
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About the Authors Per Nordlund is a
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