Africana Periodical Literature 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Term Limit and Political Incumbency in Africa: Implications of Staying in Power Too Long with References to the Cases of Kenya, Malawi and Zambia |
| Author: | Bamfo, Napoleon |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | African and Asian Studies |
| Volume: | 4 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 327-355 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Kenya Malawi Zambia |
| Subjects: | succession heads of State constitutional law Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1163/156920905774270439 |
| Abstract: | African nations never seriously addressed the issue of term limits for incumbents until newly drafted constitutions did so in the early 1990s. Since then, however, some incumbents have initiated campaigns to circumvent that measure. Some of those initiatives have been successful; others have not. Incumbents attempting to stay in office longer than what constitutions originally allowed used to be a time-honoured strategy that African leaders regularly employed throughout the postindependent period until the early 1990s. The autocratic and single-party regimes that littered Africa's political landscape epitomized the extent to which political incumbents would go to keep anybody else, including members of their own party, from winning the highest political office. The response of opposition groups and the military, which assumed a guardianship role, to this wanton aggrandizement of power was a spate of military coups, counter-coups, and sabotage or destabilization of those regimes. African nations paid dearly for this wave of instability with which almost all political systems became associated. This period of uncertainty reminiscent of Africa's recent history is being re-invented following unsuccessful attempts by political incumbents in Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia to seek additional terms. Even as these efforts were being resisted, incumbents elsewhere were succeeding at securing additional terms. This paper examines the impact this recent trend among incumbents for term extension will have on the building of political institutions in Africa. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
