By Vivid Gwede| History is on the march as liberation movements in Southern Africa face a test of survival.
After 58 years in power, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has lost the 2024 national elections to the new governing party, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC).
This is evidence that the fate of the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa(FMLSA) hangs in the balance.
While BDP did not fight an independence war, it was accepted as a permanent member of the FMLSA at its 11th meeting for secretaries general in Victoria Falls, Harare, in March 2024.
The grouping is unsettled as it appears even changing leaders internally will not save them.
SWAPO in Namibia faces elections in November 2024 and Chama Cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania in October 2025.
SWAPO (56.25%) in 2019 together with ANC (40.18%) in 2024, Zanu-PF (52.60%) in 2023, and MPLA (51%) in 2022 lost two-thirds majorities in previous national elections.
MPLA in Angola only survived in the August 2022 election after winning a court ruling following a disputed election.
British Premier Harold Macmillan predicted in the South African parliament in Cape Town in 1960 the “winds of change” that swept away colonialism in Africa.
This new wave was predicted by scholars.
Writing in an paper, “The Slow Death of Liberation Movements” in 2019, David Soler Crespo predicted the decline of liberation movements in Southern Africa.
Those in power at different times disregarded the message.
But as history records the last colonial regime fell in apartheid South Africa in 1994.
The last liberation movement is yet to fall – but the trend has started.
The United Independence Party (UNIP) fell in Zambia in 1991 and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in 1994, though these events seemed political aberrations, to use researchers’ language, outliers.
Under the FLMSA, the liberation movements have been working to avert their political death.
The liberation movements have argued in their defence that their fall would signal the return of colonialism.
If societies in Southern Africa believed this argument they would rally behind the liberation movements as they did against colonialism.
However, Southern African societies are deserting these parties after years of frustration with their governance.
According to the African Development Bank (ADB), Southern Africa experienced the lowest growth rate compared to Africa’s other four subregions since 2022, a trend expected to continue in 2025.
Whereas scholars predicted the liberation movements’ decline, they did not foresee their former leaders and national presidents fast-tracking this decline.
In Zimbabwe, the Zanu-PF regime survives through suspending political freedoms — no one knows for how long.
But former President Robert Mugabe died after endorsing an opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, transferring a sizable electoral following in the 2018 elections.
In the 2024 South African election, estranged former ANC leader and national president, Jacob Zuma formed an opposition party Mkonto weSizwe (MK) precipitating the liberation movement’s worst electoral performance since independence.
In Botswana, former President Ian Khama de-campaigned his former party, BDP, which has lost the elections.
Former FLMSA presidents joining opposition forces or clamouring for political fairness weakens and debunks the narrative that removing liberation parties is “a sell-out” position.
The internal contradictions and high-level desertions mirror the frustrations that ordinary people feel after decades of supporting these parties.
The fall of UNIP and MCP – as that of BDP might prove – have not seen the apocalyptic return of colonial empires, but only consolidated democracy.
After 19 years in opposition, MCP returned to power in Malawi in 2013.
To the credit of liberation movements in Zambia, Malawi and Botswana, the smooth power transfers have deepened democracy and freedom.
The 2024 Freedom in the World report confirmed this trend ranking both Zambia and Malawi partly free and Botswana free in terms of political freedoms.
Some liberation movements like Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe and Frelimo in Mozambique have not shied from political or electoral violence to retain power.
After the August 2024 elections, political violence is engulfing Mozambique.
Their history of having fought armed liberation wars against colonial regimes enables them to mobilise this experience and ex-combatant structures in the security establishments to resist power challenges.
But if history marched in the 1960s against the colonial regimes, it is marching again toward democracy and against the liberation movements’ post-independence monopoly of power.
In both eras, before and after independence neither politicians, nor complex ideologies, but the people are making history as they seek freedom and prosperity.
Zimbabwe, let the weeds grow with the wheat, they shall be seen by their fruits!!!