Last year was a brutal year for incumbent governments all over Southern Africa. Voters went to the polls in Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique and Namibia and delivered clear warning signals to their political representatives.
The only incumbents to survive the cycle with majorities in their respective parliamentary elections were the ruling parties in Madagascar, Mozambique and Namibia — but all three polls were marred with accusations of irregularities, biased conduct by the authorities overseeing the elections, and allegations of vote tampering and manipulation in the case of Mozambique.
Once the dust settled and leaders were sworn in, the true commonality across all of these elections has been a promise of change, reform and renewal by all of the new leaders across the region.
But is reform and renewal even possible given the challenging contexts these new governments face?
Botswana presents the most unique opportunity for change after the election of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) coalition and President Duma Boko in a resounding victory over the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), but the new government will face strong economic headwinds. The UDC was swept into power on a wave of popular discontent towards the BDP after 58 uninterrupted years in power. However, Boko faces a slew of challenges ahead of him, many of which he may have little (policy or legislative) control over.
Botswana’s real GDP growth sank to 2.7% in 2023 — from an average of 5% growth in the past decade, as factors such as a drought and weak global diamond demand have hit the country’s largest economic sectors. Optimistic projections have growth rebounding to 3% or 4% (and some conservative projections as low as 1%) in 2025, with the greatest downside risk being the likelihood of continued weak demand for diamonds. In light of this, the new UDC-led government will have to carefully balance spending that could hamstring Boko’s plans to rapidly expand the country’s non-mining sectors.
Botswana’s voters handed Boko and his coalition a decisive mandate based on their desire to see wholesale political and economic change; the politicians will have to hope that the people are patient enough to wait for the right conditions to facilitate positive change to take hold.
Mozambique also presents some interesting possibilities, albeit with dimmer prospects in the short to medium term. On the face of it, President Daniel Chapo has faced a baptism of fire after months-long violent and disruptive protests against the conduct of elections that handed the ruling Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) a two-thirds majority in parliament.
But Chapo has shown initial signs of progress, ranging from dismissal of police chief Bernardino Rafael — accused of overseeing the brutal police reaction to the post-election protests between October 2024 and January this year — to cutting ministries from 24 to 20 in his new cabinet. As country risk analyst Menzi Ndhlovu wrote recently (Chapo’s trifecta — is the worst over for Mozambique?, February 12), Chapo faces an unenviable task ahead of him as he aims to steer the country past its worst political and economic crisis since a debt crisis in 2013 and an armed insurgency broke out in 2017.
Arguably the challenge that looms largest over Chapo is not whether he can decisively end the insurgency in the northern Cabo Delgado region and secure the return and completion of two major LNG projects, but rather how he will balance government spending with its debt obligations over the next year. Mozambique’s GDP declined by 4.9% in the three months of the post-election protests (worse than the contraction in business activity during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020), further complicating what was already a rising risk of debt distress.
Most first-term presidents typically have a four- to five-year term to prove themselves and their leadership’s ability to the electorate and the international investors they try to woo, but it is not unreasonable to say that Chapo’s toughest challenge will be in his first year in office.
The new governments in Mauritius and Namibia may not face the same steep hills to climb as those in Botswana, Mozambique and invariably SA, but they too will have to grapple with hobbled economic growth, elevated levels of youth unemployment and the challenge of fulfilling ambitious promises made to voters during the campaign period.
They, and other governments on the continent, should take heed from the sweeping changes that 2024 brought to Southern Africa. The lesson to take away from the past year is that voters will demand change — whether it is through the ballot box or on the streets — from their governments now more than ever.
With elections coming up in the next two years in Tanzania and Angola, both of which are and have been led by so-called liberation parties in the past half-century, those governments, leaders and political parties must ask themselves if they can or will reform and renew themselves to meet the challenges set by the voters.
• Stuurman is an independent political risk analyst.
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