Why Africans are losing faith in democracy
Something has gone badly wrong in Africa. Sudan has collapsed into carnage, as two grasping warlords battle for control. Genocide has returned to Darfur: fighters loyal to one of those warlords are murdering every male they can find from one ethnic group, even shooting baby boys strapped to their mothers’ backs, as we report.
In Ethiopia one civil war has barely ended and a new one is brewing. Across the Sahel, jihadists are terrorising millions and soldiers are seizing power, promising to restore calm but not actually doing so. You can now walk across nearly the widest part of Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, passing only through countries that have suffered coups in the past three years.
But it would be unwise—you might well be kidnapped. One reason coups have grown more common is that many Africans have lost faith in democracy. Afrobarometer, a pollster, found that the share who prefer democracy to any other form of government has fallen from 75% in 2012 to 66%.
That may sound like a solid majority, but it includes many waverers. An alarming 53% said a coup would be legitimate if civilian leaders abuse their power, which they often do. In South Africa, which has one of the world’s most liberal constitutions, 72% say that if a non-elected leader could cut crime and boost housing and jobs, they would be willing to forgo elections.
There are as many reasons for this growing disillusion as there are medals on a coup-leader’s chest. One is that incumbent regimes, most of which claim to be democratic, have brought neither prosperity nor security. Real GDP per person in sub-Saharan Africa was lower last year than it had been ten years earlier.
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