In a stark warning, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said former liberation movements across Africa face a mortal threat from their former colonial powers.
According to Mnangagwa, these imperialist forces are determined to install puppet leaders so that they can unfairly exploit the continent’s natural resources for their own benefit.
Officially opening the 123rd Ordinary Session of ZANU PF’s Central Committee in Harare on Thursday, June 27th, Mnangagwa called on the former liberation movements to stand united in the face of these insidious neo-colonial machinations.
He urged the regional liberation movements to forge a common front against the encroaching influence of external powers seeking to undermine the sovereignty and self-determination of their nations. He said:
I call upon the Central Committee and the party at large to be aware of the realities and onslaughts affecting former liberation movements and the African region as a whole.
These call for greater solidarity and exchanges amongst former liberation movements, as well as the like-minded global South and East.
It is this unity of purpose and our long-standing mantra that states that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’, which saw us dismantle colonial bondage, apartheid and racist white supremacy.
Some of the former liberation movements parties in the SADC region that are still in power are ZANU PF, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Mozambique’s FRELIMO, People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Namibia’s South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and the Botswana Democratic Party.
However, the ANC’s long-standing dominance in South African politics is now hanging by a thread. In the National and Provincial elections held on May 29, 2024, the party failed to secure a majority, forcing it to form a coalition government.
Garnering only 40% of the vote, the ANC was left with no choice but to enter into a power-sharing arrangement with the white-dominated Democratic Alliance (DA) party, as well as eight other smaller political entities.
Political commentators have attributed the gradual erosion of support for former liberation movements like the ANC to a range of factors, including corruption, cronyism, and accusations of rigging elections to maintain their grip on power.
The founder of Africa Mundi David Soler Crespo, who has written about the “slow death of liberation movements”, said:
People will inevitably start to want change. The same party can’t be democratically elected for 100 years.
One of the earlier liberation movements in the SADC region to face rejection by voters was Zambia’s United National Independence Party (UNIP). UNIP came to power in 1964 as British colonial rule came to an end in the country.
For most of the 1970s and 1980s, UNIP governed Zambia as the sole legal political party, with founding president Kenneth Kaunda at the helm.
However, this period of single-party dominance was marked by growing public discontent. In 1990, this culminated in deadly protests in the capital, Lusaka, as well as a coup attempt.
The tide finally turned in 1991, when Zambia held its first multi-party elections in over two decades. In a decisive result, President Kaunda lost the election to opposition candidate Frederick Chiluba.
Since then, UNIP has all but vanished from the Zambian political landscape, a warning to former liberation movements about how they can lose their grip on power when they fail to adapt to the changing demands of the electorate.
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