Did our liberation struggles sow the seeds of authoritarian rule in Southern Africa?

The violent unrest currently unfolding in Tanzania, following President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s controversial re-election, should not come as a surprise.

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It is emblematic of a broader pattern: liberation movements, once celebrated as champions of freedom, evolving into authoritarian governments.

To understand this, we must examine not only their organizational structures but also the methods they used to attain power.

Across southern Africa, countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Tanzania share a common political genealogy.

Their ruling parties—ZANU-PF, FRELIMO, SWAPO, ANC, and CCM—came to power primarily through armed struggle.

By using violence to overthrow colonial regimes, these movements effectively imposed independence.

That independence, though celebrated as a moral and political triumph, was achieved through undemocratic means: power was seized, not elected, and authority was imposed rather than consented to.

The method of attaining power has had enduring consequences.

Leaders who rose through coercion internalized the logic that authority is to be taken, defended, and maintained by force.

The liberation struggle was not a democratic exercise: questioning leadership was treated as betrayal, unity was enforced, and the people’s role was to obey and sacrifice, not to choose.

Once in government, these hierarchies and disciplinary practices were transplanted into state institutions, producing militarized states in which citizens were treated as subjects rather than stakeholders.

This historical trajectory explains the authoritarian reflexes that persist in southern Africa.

Having gained power through the gun, these movements naturally see the gun—or coercion, intimidation, and manipulation—as the ultimate guarantor of political authority.

Their legitimacy was rooted not in popular consent but in revolutionary victory.

Consequently, when confronted with opposition or electoral challenge, they instinctively resort to the same coercive methods that brought them to power.

President Hassan’s administration in Tanzania, accused of jailing or barring key opponents, is following a pattern seen repeatedly across the region.

When power feels threatened, democracy becomes expendable.

And, as usual, the regional response has been silence.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), largely composed of liberation parties, has once again demonstrated its unwillingness to confront one of its own.

The organization issues lofty declarations about democracy and good governance while quietly endorsing electoral fraud and repression among its members.

In Zimbabwe in 2023, for example, SADC’s observer mission reported that elections had fallen short of regional democratic standards—but the Heads of State ignored the findings.

Today, as protests engulf Dar es Salaam, SADC remains characteristically mute, implicitly backing President Hassan despite credible reports of irregularities and state violence.

This complicity is no accident.

It is a form of liberation solidarity—an unspoken pact among ruling parties that once fought colonialism, now united in protecting one another’s grip on power.

These parties see themselves not as competitors in democratic systems, but as comrades in a continuing revolution.

Their allegiance is not to constitutions or citizens, but to each other.

This explains why ZANU-PF can openly campaign for Mozambique’s FRELIMO or Botswana’s BDP, or why ZANU-PF supporters reportedly participated in Mozambique’s elections, with no outrage from SADC.

Such behavior exposes a regional ecosystem built not on democracy, but on mutual protectionism.

Each regime understands that one genuine democratic transition in a neighboring state could threaten the entire network.

If citizens succeed in removing a liberation party through the ballot, it would shatter the myth of eternal revolutionary legitimacy that sustains them all.

This shared fear of democratic contagion explains SADC’s habitual silence in the face of constitutional violations, electoral fraud, and state repression.

It also explains the double standards in how these governments interpret sovereignty: non-interference is demanded in human rights abuses within a member state, yet interference is routine when it ensures liberation parties maintain power elsewhere.

The tragedy is that these movements still operate under the illusion that they are liberators, not rulers.

They weaponize their liberation credentials to suppress dissent, claiming moral authority because they “brought freedom.”

But the freedom they claim to have brought has long since been hollowed out.

The postcolonial state has become a tool for elite preservation, where independence is measured not by citizens’ welfare or rights, but by uninterrupted party dominance.

In truth, the seeds of authoritarianism were planted long before independence.

Liberation struggles that valued loyalty over debate, command over consensus, and violence over dialogue could not have nurtured democratic cultures.

The method of attaining power—coercion and force—predetermined the outcome.

Movements that silenced dissent in the bush could hardly tolerate political pluralism in government.

Once independence was achieved, the same centralized, militarized logic was applied to the state, and the citizens who were once instruments of liberation became subjects of domination.

This is why southern Africa’s liberation parties are now often synonymous with corruption, economic decay, and repression.

Their leaders view the state not as a public trust but as the spoils of a long struggle—a reward to be guarded jealously.

Because their legitimacy rests on a mythic past rather than present performance, they invest heavily in controlling national narratives, rewriting history, and suppressing independent voices.

Thus, when we see Tanzania’s CCM cracking down on protests or Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF manipulating elections, we are witnessing the logical continuation of liberation-era practices, not deviations from them.

Until southern Africa confronts the uncomfortable truth that democracy cannot emerge from undemocratic revolutions, the region will remain trapped in a cycle of liberation without liberty.

SADC, if it is to remain relevant, must stop acting as a sanctuary for failed liberation movements and become a true defender of democratic principles.

Otherwise, it will continue to preside over a region where revolutions were won, but freedom was lost.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/