Prevalence of conflicts over the legitimacy of election results in Africa : can the regional economic communities (RECs) provide a panacea? A case study of ECOWAS and SADC

Abstract

Civil and political strive in Africa is in the main, this is due to an increase in disputes over who won elections. The disputed elections in Kenya, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Ethiopia and more recently Ivory Coast to mention but a few, indicate how disputes over election results in Africa have been escalating. ‘Over the last couple of decades, many elections in Africa have been marred by ‘extreme controversy’. Elections ‘rigging and brigandage’, violence and elections invalidation are common phenomena in Africa. The report prepared by the British-Angola Forum (BAF) following a conference on the challenges for free and fair elections in Angola, reveals that many elections in Africa are ‘subject to human error and manipulation’ and this is mainly because those who are in power want to cling onto it especially ‘in countries where there is a perception that politics means money’. Adejumobi argues that in Africa most elections in their current form appear to be ‘a fading shadow of democracy’ jeopardising the frail democratic project itself. According to the African Union Panel of Wise (AUPW), while in some countries elections have built ‘democratic governance and prosperity of citizens’, in others they have led to disputed results and violence among the political actors.