(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Over the past few weeks and months, Zimbabwe's 84 year-old dictator Robert Mugabe has had the world's spotlight among African heads of state.
Mugabe's gag of the opposition and the winner of the first round in March, Morgan Tsvangirai (56), has not only received strong criticism from so-called Western leaders. The criticism has also come from a number of African leaders – including his peerless but democratic anti-thesis, 90-year-old Nelson Mandela.
But in the new report Freedom of The World 2008, which the independent institute Freedom House launched 2. July, another picture emerges of the long-term trend in Africa: Democratic winds over large parts of the African continent.
Eleven African countries are now defined as free and democratic by the Freedom House, then also in terms of freedom of expression, religious freedom and political rights. They are mainly concentrated in two regions, in West Africa and in southern Africa.
Cape Verde best
In West Africa, the Cape Verde Islands are the best, with a perfect score of 1,0 – the same as Norway and Sweden. In 2006, free and democratic elections were held once again, the change of power has been peaceful since the 1990s. This time with the left-wing Freedom Party with Prime Minister Jose Maria Pereira Neves in power. The economy is also doing very well: the UN has decided that in 2008 the Cape Verde Islands will be moved from the category of «least developed country» to «medium-developed country», as the second country in the world. Only Botswana has managed the same promotion, in 1994, after having had real democracy since 1966 and a growth of over 7 percent in recent years.
Right behind the Cape Verde Islands, Ghana follows with an almost perfect score – defined as freely and democratically as Greece, Japan and Bulgaria. Last year, the country celebrated the 50th anniversary of liberation from British-colonial occupation, as the first country in Africa. In Ghana's neighboring Benin, newcomer and banker Yayi Boni (56) won the free election in 2007.
The West African countries of Senegal and Mali were weakened due to restrictions on freedom of the press, but still remain as stable democracies on a par with Ukraine, Mexico and India. The archipelago of Sao Tome and Principe is also defined as free and democratic after the 2006 elections.
The same has not happened in Liberia, although Harvard graduate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (70) then won the free election over football star George Weah. Johnson-Sirleafs Liberia is still only considered "partially free" on a par with Bosnia, despite progress, due to major problems with corruption. After the bloody civil war of the 1990s, Liberia has nevertheless made some of the greatest advances. The brutal warlord Charles Taylor is now sitting in The Hague court awaiting his verdict.
Sirleaf has also been one of the African leaders who most clearly spoke against Mugabe, as during the African Union meeting that ended in Egypt on 1 July. This is how she joined forces with Mandela, who last year asked Mugabe to resign "sooner rather than later".
In southern Africa, South Africa under the leadership of the ANC has been a democratic stabilizer in the region, despite recent months' attacks on immigrants from Zimbabwe. And that both Prime Minister Thabo Mbeki and newly elected ANC leader Jacob Zuma, who in August must be prosecuted in corruption, fail to live up to Mandela's high standard.
Kenya's solution
Neighboring countries Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho are all defined as as democratic and free as South Africa, although there has been unrest and a slight decline in Namibia where the liberation party SWAP has won the elections since liberation in 1990. The eleventh democratic and free country in Africa currently Mauritius, where opposition leader Navinchandra Ramgoolam won the 2005 election.
But also in African countries that are partially free, there have been positive signs to be traced. Togo held its first free election last year, while Mauritania after that is still considered one of the world '121 election-based democracies. The same is true in Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone, while press freedom increased in Mozambique, reinforcing the trend of democratic regions in western and southern Africa.
Kenya experienced gruesome riots and killings this winter after President Mwai Kibaki apparently tried to win a landslide victory in the December 27 election. But Kofi Annan and Tanzania's African Union leader Jakaya Kikwete secured a unique peace deal in February, which led opposition leader Raila Odinga, 63, to join a coalition government with Kibaki.
Odinga has boasted of being related to the United States' Barack Obama. Although not true, Odinga's statements are one of several examples of how Obama's success in the US presidential race is helping to inspire a new generation of African leaders: Old liberation heroes like Mugabe are no longer the role models for the new generation of African politicians.