The Playbook for African Democrats

One of the main strategies used by authoritarian governments is to divide and rule and to fragment opposition parties, while launching sustained attacks on the character of key opposition leaders to stigmatise and demean them. Successful opposition campaigns therefore need to find ways to resist these strategies and to present their leaders as effective unifying figures, despite the disinformation that will be spread about them.

There are two key aspects to achieving this.

First,

building inclusive and stable coalitions and having clear and concrete policy proposals can boost the credibility of opposition movements.

Second,

avoid making basic mistakes, such as using violent or ‘tribalist’ language, that play into the government’s hands. 

Smart autocrats are constantly on the lookout for the greatest threat to their authority. In many cases, they are actively following, monitoring and bugging individuals before they have even decided to run for office. This is especially likely when it comes to the leaders of prominent civil society groups and trade unions, and the children of former opposition leaders or national founding fathers. If you are being talked about as a potential opposition leader, your phone may well be bugged, and your movements tracked. Your past tweets and posts will also be stored on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter/X, and users may well screenshot them so that there is a record of what you have said, even if you delete your accounts. 

Resisting divide-and-rule strategies therefore involves taking a long-term approach, thinking about your brand and reputation well before becoming a candidate, adopting an inclusive approach and anticipating the divisive strategies ruling parties will deploy.

Divide-and-rule politics has been a staple strategy of authoritarian regimes from before the colonial era to the present day. Dictators and autocrats are well aware that the greatest threat to their hold on power comes from a united opposition. Avoiding defeat therefore depends on exacerbating tensions to fragment resistance to authoritarian rule.

There are two main ways in which this is done.

The first

is to try to divide the opposition along economic, ethnic, racial, religious or regional lines. This is most effective, and hence most likely to be attempted, in countries where ethnicity, race, linguistic groups and/or regions are particularly salient, such as sub-Saharan African, or where economic identities are more pronounced, as in Latin America and Europe.

The second

is to frame key opposition leaders as traitors or sellouts and the legitimate target for state violence. This strategy has proved particularly effective in cases where external powers are salient and seen to have played a malicious role, as is the case with regards to the United States in many Latin American countries, and former colonial powers in Africa. If governments can do this successfully, they can make rival leaders and movements appear ‘toxic’, preventing them from being able to form coalitions and alliances with other more moderate groups. 

In addition to these approaches, governments often seek to brand opposition leaders as threats to national security. This may go hand in hand with the claim that they are traitors, but it can also take other forms. Depicting the opposition as particularly violent and destabilising, for example, can be used to justify using severe repression to control them. Meanwhile, accusations that a particular opposition leader supports radical social and economic policies that would threaten property and families – for example, of the middle class – has proved to be an effective way to prevent cross-class alliances from emerging.

A classic strategy of exclusion is to preclude opposition candidates and parties from actually registering for elections, preventing them from appearing on the ballot.

This is done in three main ways.

First,

opposition forms can be rejected on a technicality, i.e., on the basis that one part of the form was not completed exactly as it should have been.

Second,

candidates can be said to be ineligible because they do not meet one of the criteria, such as being a national of the country or having a certain level of education.

Third,

governments try to prevent opposition candidates from being able to physically submit their papers. In all three strategies, governments do not play fair, of course, and instead manipulate the law and the evidence to justify illegitimate exclusions.

This approach can be very effective for ruling parties because it is less high profile than election violence and can be framed as a simple technical issue rather than a blatant act of political exclusion. This helps to explain why between 1989 and 2010 opposition candidates were excluded in more than one in every ten elections. Classic examples of this include Zambia, where Kenneth Kaunda was excluded from contesting the 1996 general elections by President Frederick Chiluba. Ahead of the elections, Chiluba’s government had passed a law that stated that presidential candidates had to be born to two Zambian citizens, and then alleged that Kaunda’s parents had not been Zambian, despite the fact that Kaunda had been the Zambian president from independence until 1991.

Other examples of exclusion abound. How to Rig an Election tells the story of the 2006 general elections in Madagascar, when ‘[Marc] Ravalomanana’s re-election prospects faced a stiff challenge from Pierrot Rajaonarivelo, a former deputy prime minister’. Having been sent into exile, Rajaonarivelo had to return to the country in order to contest. ‘Under Malagasy election law, candidates are only eligible to run for office if they have applied for candidacy in person – in Madagascar. As a result, Rajaonarivelo took the logical step: he booked flights home in an effort to end his exile and run for president … Supporters turned up at the airport, ready to welcome their party leader home. Instead, they were confronted with tear gas. At the same time, President Ravalomanana unilaterally closed the Toamasina airport to all air traffic, and Rajaonarivelo’s flight was turned back due to the “security risk” on board.’² The same thing happened repeatedly until the deadline for filing nomination papers had expired. Ultimately, Rajaonarivelo was barred from standing, and Ravalomanana won in a landslide.

This strategy continues to be heavily used. In the 2020 elections in Belarus, Europe’s ‘last dictator’, President Alexander Lukashenko, faced growing pressure from a population desperate for political freedom. Opposition to his rule had previously been fragmented by the use of many of the strategies described in this chapter, but it began to crystallise behind Syarhei Tsikhanouski, who had risen to prominence as a result of his pro-democracy content on YouTube and social media. 

Recognising that he would likely lose to Tsikhanouski in a free and fair contest, Lukashenko had Tsikhanouski and a number of other opposition leaders arrested. On this basis, Tsikhanouski was subsequently barred from contesting the presidential elections.

Establishing effective internal procedures to ensure forms are filled out correctly and the necessary proof of eligibility is secured well in advance can help reduce the risk of electoral exclusion. But if a government is determined to ban a rival from contesting, filling in the forms perfectly will not be enough, as the administration will find spurious reasons to ban opposition. When this happens, flexible leadership is critical. To return to the example of Senegal, when it became clear that President Sall did not intend to allow Sonko to contest the 2024 elections, as he was the best known and most charismatic opposition leader, Sonko stood aside in favour of Diomaye. This meant that the opposition could contest the polls, albeit with a different leader, and after the party itself had officially been ‘disbanded’ by the government.

The other main option available to the opposition was to boycott the elections on the principle that Sonko should have been allowed to stand, seeking to embarrass the ruling party into making concessions and attract the support of the international community. This was the option taken by the main opposition party in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, ahead of the elections of January 2024, on the basis that the level of repression was so high that it was not feasible to effectively contest the polls. This decision was understandable in the context – since October 2023, more than 1 500 opposition leaders and activists have been convicted as a part of a wave of repression – but it is a risky one.³ Not contesting legislative seats, for example, can massively increase the majority the ruling party enjoys in the legislature. This is particularly significant because in most countries a two-thirds majority is enough to be able to change the constitution, which can empower the government to pass more restrictive legislation or remove term limits on the president. At the same time, boycotts can empower new parties and leaders to emerge to fill the vacuum, making it difficult for boycotting parties to re-establish themselves afterwards. This is why Matthew Frankel’s review of the evidence finds that...

...‘electoral boycotts rarely work, and the boycotting party almost always ends up worse off than before’.⁴

In the Senegalese case, the decision of Sonko and Diomaye to stand was clearly the right one. Sonko was able to transfer his popularity to Diomaye, who won comfortably with 54% of the vote. A ‘stand-in’ candidate was less successful in the case of Belarus, but nonetheless managed to keep the flag of democracy flying and provide hope for the future. Having found that she could not submit nomination papers for Tsikhanouski, his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, decided to run in his place. President Lukashenko allowed her to stand on the misogynistic basis that a woman could be no threat to him. Proving Lukashenko wrong, Tsikhanouskaya’s bravery, and the fact that she was not a ‘normal politician’ rallied citizens to her side, leading to mass rallies and a new sense of opposition momentum. Electoral manipulation and threats of violence were ultimately used to stop her winning the presidency, but only after she had demonstrated the desire of Belarusians for political change.

Two aspects of electoral manipulation that receive much less attention than they should is media manipulation and vote buying. The media landscape tends to be inherently biased towards ruling parties. Even in established democracies, sitting governments tend to dominate new coverage simply because the media has to cover major policy statements and speeches. In authoritarian states, the situation is much worse, with a wide range of underhand and often illegal strategies used to undermine media freedom. Given the role of the media in shaping popular attitudes towards leaders and parties – and even to whether the government is doing a good job in the first place – it is essential to have an effective media plan to outmanoeuvre these restrictions.

Ruling parties also seek to manipulate popular attitudes by using patronage, promises of new development and vote buying. In almost all elections, the government is able to outspend opposition parties due to its access to state resources and ability to use corruption to shift government revenue into its campaign budget. 

Opposition parties often make two key mistakes when responding to media manipulation and vote buying.

On the media side,

there is sometimes a temptation to give up on traditional media, such as newspapers and the radio, and to focus extensively on social media, which is easier to access. This is an understandable approach, given how closed-off traditional media can seem and the hype around social media, but online campaigns cannot win an election on their own.

Where vote buying is concerned,

it can be tempting to try to compete with the ruling party by consistently giving handouts. While some distribution of funds in this way may be necessary to ensure that candidates appear to be credible and generous, however, outspending the ruling party is likely to be impossible. A more effective approach is to tell citizens that the secret ballot means they can take money from as many candidates who offer it to them and still vote for their chosen party.

It is therefore critical for opposition parties to develop flexible media strategies that do not lose sight of the importance of traditional media, can operate even in restrictive environments, and remind votes that they can take ruling party money and still ‘vote with their conscience’.

Governments tend to utilise five main strategies to assert control over the media landscape. They tightly censor public broadcasters, including the main radio and television stations. They use government advertising – which in some countries is worth more to newspapers than sales – to punish critics of the regime and reward loyal mouthpieces. They heavily promote their own narratives through a combination of domestic and international media, ensuring that citizens receive their communications on a daily basis. They distort social media by spreading disinformation and employing teams of ruling party supporters to pretend to be ‘normal citizens’ to mask how unpopular government is. And they use repressive legislation to target and arrest critical voices online, and to influence the behaviour of mobile phone and telecommunications companies to their advantage. 

The full arsenal of strategies is deployed in particularly repressive regimes, making it extremely difficult for opposition groups to get their message out. In Nicaragua, for example, attacks on the press dramatically increased after Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007. 

Since then, harassment of journalists and media censorship has ramped up, as well as media self-censorship – when journalists decide not to write things critical of the government because they know the potential risks. According to the V-Dem Institute, ‘Ortega’s government has closed the journalistic space over the years, passing laws that enable the criminalization of dissenting news, detaining and intimidating journalists, and revoking licenses of independent media outlets. Anti-government protests in 2018 were met with violent repression, followed by even heavier attacks on the independent press.’⁵

Many of these strategies will be well known to opposition leaders, but the extent to which social media is manipulated and multinational companies can be intimidated is often underestimated.

Governments have a natural advantage where vote buying and money politics are concerned, because they have direct access to state resources that they can use to fund their campaigns. They also know that local communities are often frustrated that members of parliament and other leaders campaign heavily in their area during elections and then spend more time in the capital once elected. Given that many campaign promises are usually broken, it is easy to see why ruling parties often resort to handing out money around campaigns in an attempt to improve their image and curry favour with voters. What is given out often varies between countries and regions. Cash is commonly distributed at rallies and street corners, with food, T-shirts and drink freely dispersed during party gatherings. This is one reason why elections are often so expensive for candidates and parties of all stripes – with 2024’s election in India set to be one of the most expensive ever, at over $16 billion, according to the Economist.⁷

Handing out money and gifts fulfils a number of functions for a candidate. It can demonstrate that they are generous and willing to act as a community leader who will deal with citizens’ concerns. This is particularly important in countries that lack a welfare state and where norms have developed that politicians service the basic needs of constituents, from school and hospital fees to funeral costs. It is also a way that leaders can demonstrate they are accessible, which, as Portia Roeloffs argues, is one of the main things that voters care about, especially in countries with constituency-based elections.⁸

Despite the ubiquity of vote buying in many countries, and the fact that it is generally illegal, it is very rare to see prosecutions for this offence, or to see it cited as a reason that an election is flawed. One reason for this is that it is often done by a wide range of candidates from different parties. Another is that electoral commissions are generally cautious about bringing cases against government leaders and often require the support of the police to make a successful prosecution in any case. This can make it appear as if there is no way to combat vote buying, but in fact many opposition parties have found a way to undermine governments that seek to buy support, turning such practices into a powerful campaigning tool of their own.

An excellent example comes from Namibia’s founding elections when the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), which had liberated the country, came up against the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA). Towards the end of Namibia’s lengthy period of minority authoritarian rule, the DTA had engaged in talks with the apartheid government in South Africa that created a blueprint for the elections that would have left key aspects of apartheid attached. Recognising that it was unlikely to win on the basis of popularity and legitimacy, the DTA set about buying votes. In response, SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma realised that his party could not compete, given the vast amounts of money flowing to the DTA, and instead he told Namibians to take whatever they were offered but to vote in the national interest. As one of his fellow SWAPO leaders put it, ‘Eat DTA, vote SWAPO’.⁹

Political violence is very common in elections in new democracies and more authoritarian settings. Between 2012 and 2016, a quarter of all elections saw violence against the opposition. Violence is particularly useful for the government because it serves a number of functions, demobilising opposition supporters and silencing the media, while making the idea of defecting to join the opposition less attractive for members of the ruling party. In some cases, violence is blatant and committed by the police and security forces, in which case it is obvious to observers and the international community. 

In other cases, however, governments have become very good at disguising violence or blaming it on opposition parties. This has included employing non-state actors, such as vigilante groups and militias, so that clashes with opposition supporters can be framed as local, spontaneous and/or ethnic, and therefore beyond the government’s control or responsibility. It has also included ‘false flag’ tactics, such as ruling party operatives pretending to be opposition supporters and committing acts of well-publicised violence that are then used to legitimate a crackdown on opposition supporters. 

This means that opposition parties often face a dual challenge if they are to win unfair elections – protecting their supporters and activists from violence, on the one hand, while capturing evidence of abuses to hold the ruling party accountable, on the other.

Especially in cases where divide-and-rule politics and efforts to silence critical voices are not successful, authoritarian governments resort to the use of violence. It is often assumed that violence is attractive to autocrats because it intimidates opposition leaders and supporters and so makes it easier to win elections. This is only half of the story, however. Another reason dictators use violence is to scare their own allies and supporters so much that they do not consider defecting to the opposition. By demonstrating the high cost of leaving the ruling alliance, autocrats can shore up discipline within their own ranks – even in cases where some of their allies would prefer to leave. This is particularly important because in many entrenched authoritarian states, such as Uganda and Rwanda, the government is unlikely to be defeated unless there is a split within the ruling party itself. Indeed, in many countries, the first transfer of power only occurred after a faction broke away from the government. In most cases, this was triggered by the intensity of the succession battle to replace a president who had either died in office or been forced to step down by term limits, which is why ‘open-seat’ elections in which the ruling party has to stand a new presidential candidate are far more likely to result in transfers of power.¹¹

The multiple uses of political violence explain why this strategy continues to be used around the world, despite the onset of mobile phone technology, which means it is far more likely that abuses will be recorded. In Uganda’s 2021 general elections, for example, there was a significant increase in the use of repression compared to the previous polls. Most notably, the main opposition leader, Bobi Wine, was continually harassed, and he was also arrested and abused.

Following protests by Wine supporters, a brutal response from the security forces resulted in hundreds of deaths, with many opposition supporters and activists detained and tortured.

Once such violence has been deployed, governments may be able to invoke the memory of it to repress communities and opposition leaders for years to come by making it clear that the same thing will happen if they do not behave ‘the right way’. In Zimbabwe, this is sometimes referred to as ‘subtle violence’ or ‘shaking the matchbox’ – i.e., once you have burned someone’s house down once, you do not need to do it again, you just need to stand outside shaking a matchbox and people feel intense pressure to fall into line.

The benefit of this approach is that it reduces the number of physical abuses a government needs to commit, enabling intimidation to go under the radar of election observers and the mass media. Similarly covert strategies are also regularly used to intimidate journalists and key checks and balances institutions. Judges and domestic election observers, for example, regularly receive death threats in the build-up to releasing key verdicts on electoral processes. 

It is rarely wise to respond to these tactics with violence for two reasons. First, this tends to legitimise the use of greater violence against the opposition, and the government has more guns. Second, many governments demonise opposition parties by claiming they are troublemakers who drive societal tension, as discussed above, and any use of violence makes this strategy easier to operationalise.

A better option is to try to leverage domestic and international pressure to force the government to reduce the level of repression.

To do this, it is important to systematically collect evidence of human rights abuses so that they can be presented to domestic and international media, courts and civil society groups. This requires the development of a strong network to record violent incidents and evidence of what happened, building ties with domestic human rights and civil society groups, and communicating clearly with election observers and domestic and international media. 

Leaving supporters open to attack is likely to undermine morale, so it is important that opposition parties are seen to be proactive. One way to do this is to build an internal unit responsible for taking care of those targeted with violence and their families, while also seeking to minimise the risk of human rights abuses. Effective steps taken by some parties in the last ten years include the use of ‘watermelon’ politics, in which opposition supporters are encouraged to either profess no political allegiance or pretend to support the ruling party in order to safely navigate the election campaign.

The term comes from Sierra Leone and Zambia, where it referred to citizens wearing green – the colour of the ruling party – on the outside but being ‘red’ – the colour of the main opposition party – on the inside. This tactic makes it harder for government thugs and activists to know who to target during the campaign and who to try to stop getting to the polling station in order to cast a vote. 

What such strategies cannot do is to protect opposition supporters in their home areas, where the government knows that most voters will be casting ballots for rival parties. In attempts to defend supporters in such areas, some opposition politicians and leaders have formed ‘self-defence’ groups to try to protect supporters from attack when they go to the polls. This was done, for example, by some opposition leaders in the Nigerian elections of 2023. This can help to boost the confidence of opposition voters, but, again, it is crucial to avoid being seen to employ militia to commit violence, for the reasons set out above. In Nigeria, for example, the employment of militias and gangs by politicians has been a significant contributor to the spiralling violence witnessed in many parts of the country, which has left all citizens less safe and has created a security crisis that is so severe it threatens to undermine the prospects for democracy.

Another major challenge that opposition parties have faced in recent years is restrictions on campaigning. In general, opposition parties are far more likely to have their rallies banned and to face restrictions on campaigning. In countries with repressive or outdated colonial legislation, this is often done by refusing to issue permits to hold elections. In the Zimbabwean elections of 2023, for example, the Citizens Coalition for Change, the main opposition party, had to cancel the launch event for its campaign after it was denied permission at the last minute by police who cited a lack of toilet provision. In other cases, spurious security concerns are often used to prevent or shut down opposition rallies, when the main threat of violence actually comes from government gangs and the security forces, rather than opposition members themselves. 

The use of these strategies peaked during the Covid-19 epidemic, when legitimate health concerns were used to create a highly restrictive campaign environment. In countries such as Uganda, for example, opposition parties were regularly denied the right to hold meetings and events, while the same rules were rarely applied in the same way to the government. These strategies can be particularly difficult to counter, especially when they outwardly appear to be legitimate due to health or security concerns, and when they are brutally reinforced by the security forces. During Covid-19, for example, there were numerous instances of the security forces committing serious human rights abuses, while enforcing social distancing measures, including across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Over the last ten years, the most effective strategy to counteract these restrictions has been to find alternative ways to communicate with voters in the affected areas by using:

A.

incidents were opposition candidates are blocked from holding events to generate online support and sympathy;

B.

social media and local media, such as community radio and sympathetic regional newspapers to communicate with citizens in areas that cannot be reached physically; and

C.

spreading key opposition messages through party structures and networks that have been developed in advance of the campaign.

The combination of these strategies was used, for example, by the Hichilema campaign in the Zambian elections of 2021. In some cases, the government tried to undermine Hichilema’s movements by preventing him from hiring aeroplanes to travel to certain locations or by having the security forces block the progress of his convoy.

During some of these incidents, the UPND team took footage of Hichilema calmly and powerfully explaining to security force officials why he should be allowed to pass and the damage they were doing to Zambian democracy. This footage was then uploaded to social media, where, in some cases, it went viral. This served three purposes. First, it explained to party supporters and other citizens why their area had not seen an opposition rally – preventing the government from spinning the lack of a meeting as evidence that the area was not valued by the UPND. Second, the intelligent and reasonable tone adopted by Hichilema, in the face of the irrational reasons that were provided for blocking his path, furthered his reputation as a statesmanlike figure, while undermining the government’s legitimacy. Third, widespread engagement with UPND social media posts helped to alert domestic and international observers to the unfair restrictions the opposition faced during the campaign.

At the same time, the UPND campaign used WhatsApp and other platforms to communicate messages in areas that Hichilema himself could not reach. Combining these kinds of messages with ‘traditional’ strategies, such as going door to door in neighbourhoods likely to be sympathetic to the opposition, can be particularly effective. Because many individuals may not see WhatsApp and Twitter messages, and because citizens particularly value candidates who are accessible and approachable, as discussed above, it is extremely impactful to reinforce regional campaigns with personal contact at the grassroots level.

Smart autocrats don’t rig on election day – that is for amateurs. The real experts manipulate the polls long in advance, away from the eyes of the international media and election observers. Two of the most effective ways to do this are gerrymandering and voter suppression. Gerrymandering is the process of manipulating the design of constituencies so that the ruling party secures more seats for the same number of votes. Voter suppression refers to the use of various strategies to prevent voters of a certain identity or party affiliation from registering to vote and/or being able to cast a ballot. 

These strategies are particularly effective because they go under the radar and are rarely the sources of great election controversy. The evidence for this is that they are widely used, even in established democracies. A recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in the US a remarkable 29 states have passed a total of 94 restrictive voting laws in the last 10 years.¹² In many cases, these new laws had the effect of making it less likely that non-white voters would go to the polls in states controlled by the Republican Party.

The motivation behind these changes is therefore clear:

they are designed to prevent groups likely to vote Democrat from casting ballots.

At the same time, there is widespread gerrymandering by both Republicans and Democrats seeking to draw constituency boundaries in a way that enables them to win more votes. This distorts the electoral map and also has a partisan effect, giving the Republicans between 10 and 20 seats that they would not win otherwise.

The fact that these practices are common and shape electoral outcomes in ‘established democracies’ demonstrates how important it is for opposition parties and leaders to find ways to contest them.

The manipulation of the electoral register and voter suppression tends to involve seven main strategies designed to maximise the number of ruling party voters on the roll and exclude opposition supporters.

When authoritarian governments are unpopular, elections often see high levels of manipulation of both the voting process and the counting process. These typically fall into two main categories.

First,

strategies are designed to depress the opposition vote. This can include efforts to keep voters away from polling stations in opposition areas, such as violence or disruption to transport routes, efforts to intimidate voters inside polling stations, such as a heavy military presence, and attempts to undermine the secrecy of the ballot.

Second,

where this does not work and governments appear to be heading for defeat, we also see a range of methods being used to manipulate the vote count itself, including burning or discarding opposition votes, ballot box stuffing and the deliberate miscounting of votes. 

The most effective way to detect manipulation is to build a strong structure of party agents that can monitor elections from the polling station all the way up to the national level. This is easier said than done, however, as it is an extremely costly and challenging logistical exercise. At least two party agents are required per polling station. In a country like Nigeria, which has almost 180 000 polling stations, that means recruiting, training and paying 360 000 people. Another problem is government interference. Governments generally want to avoid blatant electoral fraud, as it is more likely to be condemned and to trigger popular protests. This means they often engage in strategies designed to co-opt and/or intimidate opposition party agents to prevent them from collecting information. Some governments have also developed ingenious strategies over the years to try to mask rigging, such as creating new mobile phone apps that are designed to make it look like modern methods are being used to safeguard the vote, while in reality the system has been preprogrammed to deliver a government victory.

If opposition parties do not respond to these strategies effectively, they are likely to end up ‘losing’, even if they do everything else well. In developing strategies to fight back, it is critical that the opposition does not rely on digital election technology to do their job for them. Digital technology can help protect elections, but, in many cases, it is implemented by electoral commissions whose independence is questionable at best.

Opposition parties should therefore use the latest mobile phone and digital technology to co-ordinate their activities in order to generate their own sources of information and results in case formal processes and digital equipment are subverted. 

In the last five years, there has been a significant increase in efforts to make voters feel unsafe at polling stations. This has included putting video cameras in polling stations in Russia, turning voting booths around so that they can be seen by party agents in Zimbabwe, and locating a large security presence or group of ruling party supporters near the entrance in Uganda.

In some less wealthy countries, these strategies are made easier by the fact that citizens in rural areas often vote outside, filling out their ballot by bending down and placing it in a bucket, rather than standing behind a screen in a physical polling station. Tight scrutiny of who turns out to vote by traditional leaders and ruling party officials is also common in rural constituencies. One of the developments that has made this easier in recent years is the decreasing size of polling stations, which is often motivated by a desire to reduce the length of queues, but also makes it easier to see how certain villages and groups voted.

Under these conditions, it is easier to make voters fear that their ballot is not secret. This is important because it means they may fear retribution and because, if they have taken money from ruling party candidates, they may feel unable to ‘vote with their conscience’. It is therefore critical that opposition parties effectively mobilise to minimise polling station abuses. 

Opposition parties often struggle to respond to these strategies because it is difficult to recruit enough party agents and because they prefer to invest money in rallies and media campaigns rather than party agents. This is one reason that opposition parties often fail to collect the evidence they require to be able to demonstrate electoral manipulation. When opposition parties do invest in such structures, the outcome is often dramatic, because agents can immediately challenge problematic practices, such as efforts by electoral officials to influence voters. This is critical because election observers are not allowed to directly intervene in elections – their job is to record abuses, but they do not have the right to stop such abuses. Having party agents on hand who can immediately protest to the presiding officer and escalate concerns to party and electoral officials at the national level is therefore critical.

In the Ghanaian election of 2016, for example, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) used its extensive party networks to recruit tens of thousands of party agents. The NPP did this by running centralised courses to teach prospective agents the electoral rules, and then testing prospective candidates on key aspects of the electoral process, as well as their history of and loyalty to the party. In addition to taking measures to ensure the loyalty and suitability of party agents, the NPP established structures to make sure that they could stay in their polling station; for example, by having party members distribute food by bicycle. This enabled party agents to challenge polling station officials when they felt that an intimidatory atmosphere had been created. For example, when a group of ruling party ‘foot soldiers’ had formed around the entrance and exit to a polling station, opposition party agents pointed out to polling station staff that this was in contravention of electoral guidelines. Although the polling station was in a ruling party stronghold, the officials felt compelled to request the group to disband because there were also domestic and international observers present who would have recorded the incident if this action had not been taken.¹⁶ In addition to enabling NPP supporters to vote with greater confidence, this enabled the opposition to generate an almost complete set of results – which, in turn, increased the pressure on the electoral commission to announce that the ruling party had been defeated.

Exactly how electoral fraud is committed depends on the electoral system and the extent to which the government fears defeat. In more subtle cases, governments seek to artificially inflate their tally during the tallying process when polling station votes are aggregated at the national level. This occurred in Kenya in 2007, when votes were added to the tally of President Mwai Kibaki in two constituencies between the results being counted at that level and being formally announced at the national level, giving him just enough votes to win.

In the most egregious cases, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018 and Belarus 2020, the real results are set aside, and a fake version is created for presentation to the public and the international community. In the DRC, for example, the 2018 election was won by opposition candidate Martin Fayulu. Having failed to effectively manipulate the polls, and having seen its own candidate perform so badly that it was unfeasible to claim he had won, the ruling party concocted an imaginative scam to retain political control. The government proceeded to offer the ‘opposition’ candidate who came second, Félix Tshisekedi, a deal: the government would fix the election in his favour in return for guarantees that senior government figures and the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, would have their interests and influence protected under a Tshisekedi administration.

This required the widespread fasciation of the results. The DRC had utilised digital technology during the election, so the electoral commission had an accurate set of figures at its disposal, but instead invented a new set of results that were completely implausible in light of pre-election opinion polls. This was understood by those watching the elections closely but was not explicitly exposed. Although church groups had done a reasonable job of domestic observation and had collected results that demonstrated the result was fraudulent, they were too scared to release them – in part, because key international powers seemed willing to go along with the pretence, and so were unlikely to take measures to protect civic groups who spoke up. As a result, the parallel tally was never released, and a wholly flawed election outcome was allowed to stand.

How rigging is conducted also depends on how much control the government has over the electoral commission. When the entire commission is allied to the government, all forms of fraud are possible. But when the ruling party can only really control the electoral commission in its own areas, the possibilities for rigging become more localised. In these countries, we sometimes see more egregious manipulation at the polling station level than in the national tally. In Malawi and Uganda, for example, elections have often been manipulated at the polling station level, with ballots added to the tally of the president and Tipp-Ex (correction fluid) used to ‘remove’ votes for opposition candidates. A number of cases of multiple voting and underage voting have also been recorded over the past decade, as well as voting by citizens from neighbouring countries. The use of digital verification software to ensure that voters are on the electoral register – and that they only vote once – can help with this. But technology is no panacea because there are many examples in which such equipment has ‘gone down’ at crucial moments in elections, during which it often transpires that large numbers of votes were cast for the ruling party. In Kenya’s 2013 general elections, for example, domestic observers found that digital verification equipment had failed at some point during election day in more than half of all polling stations.

The DRC example demonstrates a number of points that are important to keep in mind when thinking about how to resist electoral fraud. One is that neither digital technology nor the presence of international observers and domestic monitors effectively safeguards the vote. Opposition parties therefore need to do it for themselves, which means using the system of party agents described above to collect a full set of results from every polling station and taking pictures of the results forms to prove that they are real. This does not mean that there is no value in pushing for the adoption of digital technology – the biometric verification of voters in polling stations can reduce the number of abuses. But it is very dangerous to rely on technology that is under the control of compromised electoral officials on election day, when the pressure on them is greatest and there is hardly any time available to rectify any errors. 

That means that opposition parties should develop their own technology to make it possible to record and share as complete a set of results as possible.

This strategy worked effectively for opposition parties in Ghana in 2016, as discussed above, and in Zambia in 2021. One advantage of conducting a parallel vote tabulation digitally is that it becomes easier to save a copy of the results and accompanying evidence to the cloud and with party officials in other countries. This is particularly important because otherwise the ruling party can send the security forces to raid the offices of opposition parties and domestic monitors and destroy their materials, as occurred in Zimbabwe in 2023.

It is critical to keep in mind that while digital technology can make the work of safeguarding the vote quicker and easier, it is not the technology that does the heavy lifting in these cases. Mobile phone apps are important aides, but only if opposition parties have agents and representatives at every level of the vote counting and tallying process.

Defeating voter fraud is therefore just as much about forming effective party structures and recruiting party activists today as it was before the advent of digital technology.

It is also essential to make sure that digital processes have a manual backup in case governments implement an internet shutdown, which is becoming increasingly common in parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa. In the 2021 election in Zambia, for example, the opposition UPND employed a manual backup process, which meant that they could still collate a full set of data even if its online processes were sabotaged.

None of this is possible, however, if results are not released at the polling station level. Without lower-level results, it is not feasible to create a parallel tally to contrast with the official national level results presented by the electoral commission. It is therefore important to push as hard as possible for results to be released at the polling station level, with copies of the signed results forms posted on the wall and given to party agents. Any attempt by the government to remove this provision ahead of an election should be resisted in the strongest possible terms, as it is some of the clearest evidence available that the regime is planning electoral fraud.

A critical final point is that most constitutions allow a very short time frame for election complaints to be filed – sometimes as little as one or two weeks. This means it can be extremely difficult to put together the necessary documentation and build a strong case. Opposition parties should therefore have their legal teams start to put together a petition for the most important contests well before polling day. When facing an authoritarian government, the assumption should always be that the election will be manipulated, and therefore will need to be legally contested. Starting early means there is a much greater chance that the petitions that are produced will be effective. Even in cases where opposition parties have lost confidence in the ability of the courts to deliver justice, it is still worth putting this document together, because it can play a critical role in persuading observers, civil society groups, citizens and the international community that an election was flawed, building support for reform and increasing the prospect of less manipulated elections in the future.

While it is counterproductive to over-bureaucratise party structures, it is essential that there is a campaign management team that consists of senior leaders and is empowered to make decisions about events, speeches, the placement of leaders at events, advertising and the media. This campaign management team must have the seniority to make quick decisions, especially when it comes to responding to high-level events, such as acts of repression.

The inclusion of a legal specialist is critical, especially in environments where the courts might be called on to intervene due to repression or a breach of electoral law of the constitution, which frequently occurs when authoritarians attempt to rig elections.

This team should meet daily, and even twice daily, as the election date approaches, receiving reports from all members.

The emphasis should be on short, punchy inputs and quick decisions.

You do not want your key players sitting for hours in meetings, when they should be engaged in campaigning.

The central task of this committee – well before the election – is to devise a clear campaign strategy and an implementation road map. The committee must also devise the party’s key message for the election campaign and approve the party’s narrative (more below). 

Developing a campaign plan is not just a matter of sitting in room and brainstorming what you should do over the election. Brainstorming is valuable, and it is good to hear all the voices in the room, but it is nothing without a solid foundation in data.

Before devising a campaign, the management team needs to map the terrain.

Having a clear identity and message is critical to campaigning and must be the first priority when developing a campaign plan.

Every use of campaign resources – on social media, in traditional media and even with posters and T-shirts – must be targeted at reaching concentrations of voters who can be persuaded to vote for you. 

Precious commodities that must be allocated efficiently include:

Time

There are only so many hours in the day and decisions about where leaders campaign should be made to maximise impact. This is particularly so with the party leader who is likely to attract more people to rallies.

Money

The management of often limited financial resources requires strong leadership. How money should be raised, spent and accounted for is critical to a successful targeted campaign.

Media space

The presence of party leaders on social media should be built and campaigns should be driven aggressively with frequent posts. Traditional media advertising should be secured where possible.

A strong, clear message is essential. So, too, is a strong, clear identity.

What is the one line that is best able to communicate what the party stands for and what resonates with voters? In general, it is best to avoid negatives (‘An End to Repression’) and to focus on positives (‘A Future without Repression’).

There is a long tradition of election sloganeering, and it is advisable to look at how parties in other countries have campaigned successfully.

Two recent messages used in US politics stand out. Barack Obama’s slogan ‘Yes We Can’ spoke to the possibility of making a change following a long period of Republican dominance. Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ – borrowed from Ronald Reagan decades earlier – spoke to a desire by Americans to turn around the mounting perception that the country was drifting and unable to assert itself.

Although from very different personalities and with very different agendas, these two slogans have several things in common. They are both positive and hopeful, looking to the future. They both include the voter and make them part of the campaign. They would have been much weaker if they had been, for example, ‘Yes I Can’ or ‘I Will Make America Great Again’.

They are also both brief and to the point. It is notable that Obama’s real campaign slogan was ‘Change We Can Believe In’, but this was quickly overtaken by the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan used on posters. The trouble with slogans that are developed by committees is that they can often become long and unwieldy, as every party wants their point included. No one ever won an election using a laundry list. Understand that an encapsulating electoral slogan is not your full platform, it is a message that conveys a direct sense of what you are striving for and inspires hope.

The most important decision you will make in constructing a campaign plan is to identify the issues that will underpin your message to voters.

The key is to communicate around issues rather than generalisations about what your party stands for, as this makes for a more direct interaction with voters and speaks to what they are encountering in their daily experiences.

How are such ‘issues’ defined?

Issues arise when events occur that impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. These range from high-profile events, such as an act of violence by the security authorities, to lower-profile events, such as the failure to provide adequately for a drought by assisting farmers.

In all cases, the party must be prepared, ahead of time, to pick up on the issue and offer criticism, along with proposing an immediate solution and a policy position that would prevent further instances of the problem.

It is vital that party communicators are well prepared in advance to handle issues as they arise with speed, so that they are able to insert the party’s perspective into the public debate while it is still ‘hot’ in the media and on social media.

The above illustration shows how parties fail to dominate the national conversation because they are reacting to events and issues after the fact. Social media has vastly increased the rate at which issues arise in the national conversation, and responding afterwards with reactive commentary leads to a weak messaging impact.

By anticipating issues and preparing in advance, parties are able to be the first in the public domain with messages on social media and to comment in the traditional media. This enables them to help set the national conversation and get the party’s messaging across. 

The above scenarios apply when handling issues that arise outside of the party’s control. While this is often the case as events arise, it is of course more desirable that the party set the agenda by being the first to raise issues that are of critical importance to voters. This vastly improves the party’s messaging.

In the age of social media, narrative has become more important than ever. Narrative is the ‘story’ that a party tells to convince voters that its claim to governance makes sense. It is not just about saying what you will do once in power, although this is vital; it is about telling a story of how you got to where are today and how you will go forward.

A narrative demonstrates that your party is not opportunistically seizing on contradictory issues but is coherent and trustworthy and has been consistent in its approach to key issues.

Voters are far more likely to support a party that has a strong narrative arc, telling a convincing story of dedication, resilience and preparedness to govern.

A detailed narrative or ‘history of the party’ should be written both as a public document accessible on the party website and on other public platforms such as Wikipedia. This detailed story should form the basis for storytelling at other levels, including op-eds in the traditional media and social media postings and videos. This leads to a consistent repetition of the party narrative and ensures that the message is strengthened and free of contradictions.

As important as the story is, it has to be told well to make an impact.

Stories are not told by committees but by individuals, whether they be speaking at an event or in an interview with the media. How these individuals understand and project the party narrative is vital to its authenticity and its credibility.

Also important is to acknowledge the counterview and the successes of those who might now be opponents in the fight for democracy and accountability. In South Africa, the African National Congress brought political freedom in 1994, but it is now plunging the country into economic decline, corruption and lawlessness. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni liberated the country from tyranny in 1986, but, in his fourth decade of rule, he is now imposing his own tyranny. Acknowledging the role of Nelson Mandela and of Museveni (back then) does not weaken your narrative but adds depth and honesty and avoids the trap of propaganda.

A coherent and detailed strategy for dealing with the media should be developed to ensure that the party message is effectively communicated to the public at all times. 

In highly repressive societies, the domestic media is likely to be state controlled through direct ownership or through laws limiting the freedom of speech. In such environments, the use of social media becomes the most effective tool.

In societies where there is some freedom of expression, traditional platforms, such as television and newspapers, should be used alongside social media. 

The first rule of successful media engagement is the development of a professional, disciplined media unit within the party that is well schooled in the party narrative, and which consists of people who are suited to public engagement. Choosing the right people is critical because a lot of damage can be done by one negative intervention or one wrong message on social media. This is not a place for aggressive, confrontational people.

While a media unit is essential, it remains vital that leaders are accessible to and take calls from journalists, regardless of their political affiliation.

Building strong personal relationships with journalists at the highest level is crucial...

...and following this up by taking their calls and devoting time to speaking with them is critical if you wish to properly communicate your message. 

Include editors, news editors and political editors in this contact-building process. This also applies to those who openly oppose you. You want your message to be carried, but you also want your critics to temper their criticism.

In the words of Andrew Solomon: ‘It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.’

It is vital that this committee understands and maps the news cycle. Newspapers work on deadlines, completing early pages during the day and leaving the front page and perhaps one or two others for completion in the evening. Unless you are very confident that your story is front-page news, there is no point in getting it to a journalist late in the day. Working with traditional media means that your day starts early, and you communicate with journalists and newsrooms well before deadline, or you will be wasting your time.

This map of traditional media deadlines should be placed prominently on the wall of the media unit office. Alongside it should be the names and contact numbers of key journalists and, vitally important, of all news editors.

In an emergency late in the day, it is the news editor and sometimes, the night news editor, who will be your first port of call, as your journalist contacts might have already called it a day.

The social media terrain, discussed in the above section, is only one component of the digital space where fierce electoral contestation occurs.

Unscrupulous actors and authoritarians are using fake news, AI-generated content and server attacks to undermine opponents, and these need to be detected and counteracted as early as possible.

The main terrain of the contest over the digital space occurs on digital media platforms. While the ‘legacy media’ – printed newspapers, television and radio – are important because they are still viewed by many as a reliable source of news, just as important is social media.

Reaching a younger audience, which is vital to those challenging an entrenched establishment, is key to a party’s electability. Younger audiences consume more social media and online press, although they are also still significant consumers of printed media. Online TV is close to traditional TV with this audience.

To engage effectively on social media, you need followers you can reach, either through party accounts, leader accounts or through the accounts of third parties with many followers.

The first step is to audit your internal party reach across social media.

This can be established by checking the number of followers across all platforms that the party or its leaders have and tabulating this. Once this is done, a mechanism needs to be developed to maximise the use of this channel by creating party groups for the dissemination of releases, video and other media.

This can be done effectively by creating groups on WhatsApp, where the party’s key influencers are sent media for reposting or quoting on their accounts.

Once you have an idea of the strength of your internal following and how to get the message out via their channels, you need to take the important step of understanding and communicating the rules of social media platforms so that your content is not blocked by the social media company. While you do not control what an authoritarian government might do to block your content, you should avoid getting your content blocked by the social media channel.

Some channels have rules about portraying violence and other scenes that are classed as distressing. While you might believe that this is wrong, as it prevents you from bringing grave injustices to light, you would be better served by preparing content that gets the message across without violating the rules.

To this end, you should create an independent party web presence, where you can display content that might run afoul of these rules, and then use social media to direct traffic to this content.

The party website needs to be a reliable repository of all things related to the campaign and must be updated at least once a day with fresh content.

If you release your manifesto, it must be available on your website at the time of release because this is where the audience will look for it. This is particularly the case with journalists wanting to see the source document in full. The latest content must enjoy prominence on the home page. Ensure that your website is professionally updated and does not contain errors. 

Equally important is to understand what sort of content is promoted and trusted by social media networks. For instance, you might follow the ‘5-3-2 rule’, which says that for every ten updates on social media, five should be content from others relevant to your audience, three should by content from you relevant to your audience and two should be personal ‘non-work related’ posts that humanise your brand.³ This is believed to be the most effective way to move content on LinkedIn; other social networks might take a different approach.

Finally, you need to measure your social media engagement by recording views, likes and reposts of your content on a regular basis.

You will quickly see what is proving popular and deserves more airtime. If the budget allows, you can pay for promotional advertising of these posts, which means the social media network will push the content out to selected audiences. You can select these audiences through demographics and geographic location.

The universe of potential voters is determined by the voters’ roll. There is no point in conducting a competitive election campaign if your supporters are not registered to vote. Such registration usually occurs during registration windows set by the electoral commission.

As important as campaigning is the process of getting your supporters registered. In some cases, voting outcomes are manipulated by changes to the voters’ roll due to new constituency delineation or even a change in the voting venue. This may lead to voters going to the wrong place to vote or finding that they are not on the roll despite voting in the past.

Persuading people to vote in repressive societies is a challenge. Many may support your party but be afraid to participate in formal politics because they fear retribution or discrimination. Voter education, particularly about the secret ballot, is vital to allay such fears.

These days most election days are peaceful and orderly as voters queue up to cast their ballots, and observers, mostly concentrated in the urban areas, are present. This is because regimes intent on rigging the poll seldom do so on election day. They prefer to manipulate the result when no one is looking during the campaigning phase and then during the counting phase.

To counteract the manipulation of results, many parties – and in some cases NGOs – use Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) to conduct an unofficial count of votes so that discrepancies between official results and the actual result may be exposed with some credibility.

PVTs conducted by independent NGOs carry more credulity than party PVTs because they are non-partisan and cannot be accused of political bias. However, it is essential that parties conduct their own PVTs so that they can alert NGOs and observers to voter counting irregularities.

PVTs are not just restricted to vote counting, important though this is. They can also be used to measure whether or not electoral materials were delivered, and whether or not party agents were allowed to freely observe voting and counting and to report on incidents.

The illustration below was produced by the National Democratic Institute, which has assisted with PVT in several countries.⁴

While it is possible for regimes to ignore parallel vote tallies, it is essential that this tool is used to make the case where irregularities have occurred. A credible, systematic PVT may be a very useful tool in a court battle and may be used to publicly plead the case where an election has been stolen. A data-based challenge is likely to have far higher resonance than anecdotal opinions about what went wrong.

Cyber control and manipulation of information are rapidly becoming the next frontline of an invisible but highly destructive war on democracy. Cyberattacks by non-state actors and authoritarian regimes can influence outcomes of elections even before the vote. Mass internet surveillance, monitoring of social media accounts, trolling of activists and opposition members have become widespread during election cycles, in particular because there are no international guardrails and there is only vague legislation with significant discretionary authority to monitor citizens. Increasingly, governments are enacting national security and secrecy bills that allow for mass surveillance, the use of clearance and vetting of civil society, and broad definitions of security that covers everyone’s actions. These bills are purposefully silent on judicial accountability and transparency. The use of spyware against the opposition, journalists and activists is becoming more common. The Israeli NSO Group’s notorious spyware Pegasus has become the worlds most powerful cyberweapon for its ability to target devices without requiring the user to click a link to activate the malware. We now know this began years before and with other software companies, such as FinFisher over a decade ago. Companies are not restricted from selling these weapons to authoritarian governments – even if they claim to abide by the export controls of the Wassenaar Arrangements.

Spyware is everywhere and everyone is producing it – especially the democratic north.

New practices of election manipulation involving digital tools are becoming more common, without a clear understanding of opposition parties, election observation missions, and citizens to mitigate and reverse their effects. Below are a few identified technological interventions that have contributed towards changing election outcomes, rendering them unfree, unfair and opaque. 

01

The use of social media to spread malinformation and misinformation was seen in Kenya´s 2017 and 2022 polls.

Influencers were bought, fake and automated accounts were created, and posts were made with similar key words to manipulate algorithms and make topics trend. False news went viral with fabricated newspaper front pages and photoshopped images to discredit or support a candidate. An Israeli group called Team Jorge, which claimed to have run 27 successful presidential-level campaigns, is a new type of cyber mercenary that works to subvert the democratic process. The company is headed by Tal Hanan, a counterterrorism and cybersecurity expert. For a large amount of money (between 6 and 15 million euros) they work to disrupt the logistics of the opposition, intimidate them and make people mistrust the voting system, while using tactics as varied as forging blackmail material, spreading false intelligence, spreading disinformation and deploying targeted social media campaigns. Team Jorge created an influence platform called Advanced Impact Media Solutions that has been allegedly sold to intelligence services in ten countries, where realistic-looking avatars, or bots using stolen pictures of real people, drive disinformation campaigns (Wire report).

02

The compilation of electronic voters’ rolls and their auditing process, if any, is an area where authoritarian governments may cushion numbers they fabricate with more voters than those that were actually registered.

Voters’ rolls that are not properly audited may have a significant number of ghost voters that make it harder to understand the percentage of the electorate that voted and the abstention level. For example, in Angola in 2022 over 2 million voters were added to the voters’ roll – with evidence of deceased and children being part of the roll. This facilitated a mass fabrication of results to annul the actual results that the opposition got. The opposition coalition, United Patriotic Front, proved (using their parallel vote count) showed that in merely three out of eighteen provinces UNITA was robbed of 500 000 votes, which would have tilted the results significantly against the ruling MPLA party. 

03

Intimidation, infiltration and surveillance by intelligence services – ahead of politically dangerous moments like elections for incumbent presidents who have gradually lost their appeal and support base – has led to the infiltration of opposition parties, youth movements and civil society organisations.

The aim is to disrupt, sabotage and gather evidence to later falsely accuse them of attempted coups, treason or instigating violence. Another tactic used is the instigation of fear with the circulation of ‘hit’ lists on social media that cannot be verified for authenticity, or the marking of houses, gates or cars of individuals who need to be silenced. Blackmail produced by deepfakes are more easily deployed against high-profile individuals with little or no recourse to proving their innocence. 

04

Control of the computation process will allow for the changing of results. Electronic data management systems are more difficult to verify and monitor by international observers, who are restricted to the manual count system.

Forensic audits are required and the capacitating of election management bodies to oversee the computation system. Interference can come in the form of computer hacking or internal manipulation of the central computer systems, or the use of algorithms to change results of some polling stations. Manipulation can occur during the electronic transfer of results from the polling stations to the election commissions and the central computation process. During Ghana’s 2016 presidential elections, the government reportedly manipulated the electoral commission’s data systems and used a neutralising algorithm programmed to offset the doctoring of election results. The supreme court overturned the Kenyan elections of 2017, despite respected international observation missions endorsing the outcome. It was revealed that hackers using Gmail accounts logged into the electoral commission’s system to alter the results sheets. Several of the forms were deleted off the system and others did not have the watermark or bear a security feature or were illegible. The University of Michigan’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science recently developed an algorithm that easily manipulated ballot images, moving voters’ marks to another candidate. The experiment was done to exemplify the dangers and ease with which computer systems can be hacked, with attackers running malicious codes that will change voting results on digital scans of ballots and other election technology devices. Their conclusion was that post-election audits have to occur with inspections of the physical paper ballots to verify results. 

05

Internet shutdowns or disabling of social media platforms during voting and counting are strategies that in the past (for example, the 2016 Gabon presidential polls) were used to prevent PVT processes by the opposition and civil society.

During the 2023 Mozambican municipal elections, there was evidence of internet interruptions. Civil society reported that in the main cities there were restrictions on energy, on the internet and on journalists during the voting and the tabulation process. When the polls closed, there was a major outage of the service provider Movitel.

06

Experts who work on psychological warfare are advising on strategies that will be deployed against civilians.

Wired magazine reported that the company Pangea IT bought a system called Sensority, which detects psychological stress in subjects and is most likely to detect if the campaigns are working.

Digital interference in elections will become more common.

Opposition and civil society groups therefore need to alert international observers of tech strategies for election fraud; they need to protect their parallel count, store information on and off the cloud and have manual backups of everything. They should also have an ‘army’ of investigative reporters, NGOs and friendly diplomats ready to evaluate the evidence and take it outside the country.

Opposition parties, leaders of social movements and members of civil society need to implement strict holistic systems of security – both physical but also digital. Phones should always be on Lockdown Mode to protect against spyware and other hacks. Updates of iOS or other programs are key, as Apple and others are constantly patching security fragilities in their operating systems. High-risk individuals need defined security systems to mitigate the risks of becoming a target of surveillance by ensuing that communications remain private by using virtual private networks to hide their IPs, secure messaging apps (like Signal that does not store your metadata), smart phone scanning apps (like the Am I Secure app from Numbers Station) and secure email providers like Proton Mail. Very sensitive information should be kept off the cloud on external hard drives and closed systems that cannot be hacked. 

In a post-election environment where there is no clear winner, coalitions will form to take power by amassing a majority of votes or of MPs, depending on the electoral system. This coalition negotiation period can be a time of chaos and contestation. It is very important to prepare for this environment well in advance, so that when the scenario arises, you have a clear plan built on solid foundations and do not find yourself outmanoeuvred by opportunists and abandoned by those you thought were allies.

Deciding which of these approaches to take is important and must take place well in advance of election campaigning to ensure a coherent message to voters.

In pre-election consolidation, such ‘coalitions’ lead to the formation of a single, united ‘movement’, in which a range of political parties and leaders put aside their differences to make the greatest impact at the ballot box. The extent to which the parties share values and policies is vital to the success of such an approach, as the parties will, in the event of winning, govern together and have to adopt an agreed-on programme.

There are, nonetheless, two types of pre-election consolidations.

The first

...is where the parties have substantial policy and other disagreements but believe that, for the good of the country, they must unite their forces to bring about change. Such a movement requires very strong leadership and a willingness to compromise in order to present a united front to voters. The breadth of such a coalition cannot, however, be infinite and cannot include malign forces whose values are antithetical to democracy, openness and accountability. Including such forces ‘in the interests of winning’ can confuse voters and make them cynical about opportunism. 

Secondly

It is important, then, to clearly draw the boundaries of such a consolidation in order to avoid sending poor messages to voters. Such a platform of democrats must share the vales of free and fair elections, democracy, the rule of law and transparent accountable governance, at a minimum.

The role of outsiders in promoting democracy has long been controversial. 

Targeted regimes have rejected this role as ‘neo-colonial’, such as the speech made by President François Mitterand at the Franco-African summit in June 1990, when he announced that French aid would in the future be conditional upon democratic reforms.⁵

That speech positioned France’s relations with Africa in a post-Cold War context. Instead of being driven by naked self-interest, the speech linked trade and aid to human rights and democracy. Until that time, France’s post-colonial African policy had been characterised by a cocktail of intimate personal ties with African leadership and a close collaboration on issues such as monetary policy, development assistance, education, telecommunications and, of course, defence. During Mitterand’s fourteen years in office (1981–1995), the French military intervened no less than ten times in sub-Saharan Africa.⁶

How can one create a positive cycle of opportunity, investment, growth, stability, trade, skills, health, governance and inclusion, and in the process encourage a compounding continuum of better choices? What is the political economy of change – what political choices enable the economy to develop faster and in an inclusive fashion?

Key to answering this economic growth development puzzle is to ensure that politics enables this change, that one is in power to be able to make the changes to policy needed. There follows the need to encourage the power of the individual, spontaneous problem solvers rather than simply those who can identify the problems and preach about the solutions. Someone has to actually make things happen. This includes understanding where and how government must not act. It requires answering the formula for better governance, whether this lies in a highly centralised state or, in larger countries, in a devolution of authority to local government agencies – cities, municipalities and/or provinces – and in which areas, from taxation to policing.

How government devises and pursues a realistic revenue model to fund itself and its agenda is crucial to long-term development.

A failure to invest sufficiently in people’s welfare, education and health or in physical assets, including electricity and transport, is going to shape the long-term growth trajectory.

Too much expenditure on infrastructure, and political stability is likely to suffer; similarly, too much on a bureaucracy and consumption, and the failings of infrastructure will undermine the economy. But someone has to pay for the things on which the government chooses to spend money. Usually, privatisation – or at least a concessioning of state assets, if not an outright sale – offers a relatively easy technical solution to a lack of efficiencies. But, this can often backfire politically due to the perception of the loss of control of national assets and the market-pricing of services leading to an increase in costs for already stressed consumers, amplifying wealth divides and worsening difficulties of access to a modern economy. Another solution is to allow the private sector to build, own and operate new assets for a stipulated period, permitting the power of choice by citizens. To make this model work, government has to allow relatively generous terms, without which the private sector won’t invest. 

Finding an appropriate formula also asks what the appropriate role for the state should be in licensing and regulating business. It asks whether and how the state should be involved with the provision of public goods, including transport, power and housing. It asks where the line should be drawn on fiscal sustainability, how to reduce debt while maintaining welfare expenditure to the most vulnerable and promoting capital investment over consumption. It asks whether politicians can become agents of change, rather than the source of the problem. It is never going to be easy to let go of the vested interests that ensure power but prevent change. This explains how a vicious cycle of poverty, high costs, low skills, limited investment, weak and expensive logistics, poor market access, low growth, violence and social exclusion pervades in many African contexts.

Very often the answer provided to the question as to what separates high performing countries from the rest comes down to ‘good leadership’. That this argument is often followed by some bluster about ‘benign dictators’ can be ignored, if only because in Africa, there has been no such thing, and dictators have in almost every instance been even worse at governance and development than their democratically elected counterparts. As noted in the Introduction, while people might want a Lee Kuan Yew, more often than not they have instead a Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Idi Amin or another such brutal and incompetent thug. Today they might get a different, less violent version, where the rule by fear is eclipsed by the ‘rule of spin’, as Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman have coined it, but where only a pretence of (electoral, not liberal) democracy and free choice is allowed.⁴

And yet, most Africans overwhelmingly reject autocratic rule.

Nearly three-quarters of Africans surveyed prefer to live under a democracy; even though – or perhaps because – more than 90% of Africans today live under a shade of authoritarianism.⁵ The absence of institutional accountability and public debate in such autocratic situations tells its own story about why development success has eluded much of Africa. 

But what are the qualities that define a ‘good’ leader? Can leaders be made, or at least tutored and shaped into a model of efficiency and compassion? Are there useful role models that cut across geography, history, race and religion? What mixture of attention to detail and of micro-management, having one’s finger on the pulse, is required, and to what extent should leaders delegate authority? Good leaders are supposed to prioritise, but what factors shape a ‘priority’, and what might assist a leader best in its resolution?

We know more easily, and often at great cost, the qualities of poor leaders. Edgar Lungu’s apparently dazed mode of presidential detachment, for instance, paralleled Zambia’s economic slide at a time when the country should have boomed, as prices for its principal export, copper, rose, and money was cheap to borrow in international markets. Instead, the windfall was squandered, and borrowed money stolen as patronage and sycophancy became the operating system of government. Hichilema’s subsequent hands-on style stands out in contrast, but the bureaucracy presents its own challenges in an environment where selfish, personal interests habitually trump much else. 

Leadership, we also know, can make a difference. Take another example: Ukraine over Afghanistan. It has turned out that a comedian, a man known before the Russian invasion in 2022 as ‘the television President’,⁶ Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had a 40% approval rating before the war on account of his (lack of) governance, was a Churchillian figure, with a 91% approval rating by the end of the second week of the conflict.

His ability to transmit leadership proved a key element in his initial success in resisting the Russian invasion.

Zelenskyy seemed perfectly skilled and trained for this role, where every aspect of his appearance, actions and words have been calibrated for maximum public effect: the combat T-shirt, the unshaven sleepless look of a man working around the clock, and his soundbites. Who can forget his ‘I need ammunition, not a ride’ remark, in stark and obvious comparison to Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled his country when the heat was turned up?

‘I need ammunition, not a ride’

Zelenskyy’s version of leadership instantly reinforced the sense of Ukrainian agency in the war, despite the overwhelming comparative size of its foe in Russia, with nearly four times the population and ten times the economy. By comparison, the Afghans never owned the problem and thus the solution, a weakness exhibited by the sudden and catastrophic collapse of the government of Ashraf Ghani in August 2021. The Ukrainians certainly do. They have agency of a type that President Ghani and his predecessor Ahmed Karzai could only dream about. Policy and direction stem from leadership, and the manner it presents itself and engages with the public – through the media and other institutions of state.

Zelenskyy has had to put his life on the line to fight an autocratic invader. Going into combat to fight for democracy – military or otherwise – no doubt builds a proper appreciation of the difference between freedom and its absence.

For all of the differences in style and the divide between autocratic over more democratic leadership, there are several enduring traits. These generally value delegation, professional understanding, innovation and the use of technology, self-discipline, moral integrity, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to work with others, both within their own country and outside. While some might put more store in ruthlessness, iron will, political allegiance and discipline, leaders should build a powerful team of minds and competencies that complements their own skills rather than satisfies their insecurities. This requires enough humility to listen and learn so that leadership is capable of constantly adapting and adjusting in a very dynamic era. 

Character matters, as does politeness and manners as a skill in gathering others around you.

As Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, has noted, ‘You lose nothing by being polite.’

This human dimension of leadership and relationships is critical since the challenges for outsiders especially is not to tell people what to do and even less to tell them what they are doing wrong. This is inevitably seen as patronising and counter-productive. Rather, the secret is to build the relationships that enable things to change. 

At a personal level, showing genuine care for those led should be fundamental at every level of leadership, along with powers of delegation, professional understanding of all aspects of government, an acceptance to innovate, self-discipline, moral clarity, and an ability to work with others, inside and outside your government and country. It also depends on what phase of government one is in: whether you are looking to stop and turn around failure, initiate and carry through reforms, or build off a base of pre-existing solid growth. Some are not so lucky with the nature of their inheritance.⁷

The ability to work with others, to maintain collegiality but also decide on a course of action and then ruthlessly pursue it is more difficult but particularly necessary in those countries beset by division, and an absence of trust, across races, religions, tribes, geographies, and between the public and private sectors. 

The image cultivated by the likes of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery or the US General George Patton, to take two examples of military types, or of the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko and Donald Trump in a political context, of a showy individual, can funnel authority in a positive way, but the peacocking has to be purposeful rather than driven by ego alone. Headlines are necessary, as Zelenskyy shows, but only in tuning in the public and turning the debate in the interests of the mission.

In June 1947, in a speech to Harvard University, the United States Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that European nations create a plan for their economic reconstruction to which the United States would provide financial assistance.