Africa’s autocrats are strong but vulnerable

Tanzania and Cameroon elections reveal rising political pressures

- YONATAN MORSE

AUTOCRATIC leaders in Africa like their numbers to be in the high 90s, it appears. In October, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan won a highly dubious 98% of the presidential vote, perpetuating the ruling party's grip on power to 60 years. During the same month, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, who has ruled the country since 1982, secured an unprecedented eighth term in office. It will allow him to serve until he turns 99.

In neither case were elections deemed free or fair, and in both cases protests and severe government crackdowns followed. Yet, while the outcome was ultimately the survival of incumbent governments, these elections are quite telling about the changing fortunes of autocracy in Africa. "How Autocrats Compete" showed how Tanzania and Cameroon used to reflect two different strains of autocracy: party-based and a personalist. For decades, Julius Nyerere was the driving force in Tanzanian politics. An immensely popular anti-colonial leader, Nyerere in 1965 created a single-party state governed by a robust and effective political party apparatus - first under the Tanganyika African National Union and later recast as Chama Cha Mapinduzi, or CCM. The party attracted a wide swath of rural voters, had national functioning institutions and a widespread grassroots presence. Importantly, when Nyerere stepped down from power in 1985 - then a precedent in African politics - he established an internal primary system to select CCM's future presidential candidates.