Why Mr. Gbagbo’s Capitulation is Good for Africa

Petulance is a term hardly strong enough to describe the expression on face of Mr. Gbagbo (former President of Côte d’Ivoire) when he was taken by forces belonging to the legitimately elected Ivorian President, Alassane Ouattara, with French support.

Caption: "They took all my toys..."



Laurent Gbagbo is a former historian. Perhaps the lesson he took from history was that in Africa, losers of elections do not always have to leave power. His must have taken a page out of the history books of Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe continues to occupy State House despite a series of rigged elections, and Kenya, where an uneasy alliance presides between the President and the Prime Minister who were on opposing sides of a botched election. But it looks like Mr. Gbagbo was wrong. His refusal to leave le Palais Présidentiel in the Plateau neighborhood of Abidjan had been widely condemned worldwide, most notably — and courageously — by the African Union and ECOWAS. The UN Security Council endorsed the positions of the pan-African bodies. Only South Africa, the engineer of the Zimbabwean solution, seemed to be trying to broker another power sharing arrangement between Messrs. Gbagbo and Ouattara. The African Union, ECOWAS and the UN Security Council held sway in the end.

Perhaps the wind is turning in Africa? Because Côte d’Ivoire is not alone. Guinea-Conakry recently pulled back from the brink when Dadi Camara was sidelined in Ouagadougou, to allow elections to proceed. In November 2010 Alpha Conde was elected, ending decades of authoritarian rule — in fact, the first duly elected President since independence in 1958. In Niger in February 2010, the army removed President Tandja who was seeking to extend his mandate for a third term, leading to democratic elections one year later.

In 2011 Sub-Saharan Africa will hold 17 separate elections. One has to believe that some long-standing autocrats on the continent are eyeing Mr. Gbagbo in the photo above, and weighing alternative career options to that of continuing to be President. If this is so, then we may be witnessing a sea change in Africa — one that is perhaps overdue, but no less welcome.