Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
political instability. It is therefore not unlikely that control over the political parties
themselves will become more important for national political power as well. While
this could potentially be a good thing, it also opens up the possibility of power
struggles that can threaten the break-up of parties and governments.
Since material on leadership succession problems is abundantly available, we will
devote some attention to recent cases of succession-driven constitutional crisis (see
Table 5.1), divided into four categories:
1. cases where a coalition between opposition political parties, civil society and
even opposition within the ruling coalition and parliament was able to thwart
a president’s ambitions to amend the constitution in order to extend their term
of office (President Muluzi in Malawi and President Olusegun Obasanjo in
Nigeria);
2. cases where the opposition parties and their leaders failed to stop the incumbent
presidents from amending the constitutions (President Yoweri Museveni in
Uganda and President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe);
3. cases where the succession issue engendered a constitutional crisis fuelled by
ethnic rivalry, resulting in a military coup, electoral fraud, civil unrest and the
subsequent division of the country into South and North, each under separate
political leadership and military command (Côte d’Ivoire); and
4 the case of Togo, where the succession crisis was fuelled by the Togolese military,
which subverted the constitution by appointing the son of the deceased president
(Gnassingbe Eyadema) instead of the speaker of Parliament as required by the
constitution. The succession crisis resulted in political instability, riots, the
killing of demonstrators and the arrest of opposition leaders and democracy
and human rights activists.