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Burundi aside, it seems voters don’t want change

Friday May 08 2015

This is an interesting time for the East African Community.

In newish member, fragile Burundi, there is turmoil as President Pierre Nkurunziza fights to extend his presidential feast into what the opposition calls an illegal third term.

There are those who fear that it could all go up in smoke, but the uncertainty in Burundi should not distract us from a historic milestone in East Africa.

Burundi is scheduled to vote in June, though there is a clamour for the vote to be postponed. However, over the next 12 months, there will be two elections in the “old” EAC — in Tanzania in October, and Uganda in February 2016.

In Tanzania, much more than Kenya in 2013, with the election the country will have delivered two fully formed generations to the polls. In other words, there will be very many voters who are children of parents who were not born by the time Tanzania gained Independence in 1961 or became a Union with Zanzibar in 1964.

These voters did not hear stories of Independence around the family dinner table. In addition, it means most modern-day Tanzanians have lived through something rare in Africa — two generations of peace, without a civil war or a military dictator ruling after a coup.

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One would expect that their political mindset should be quite different from that of their grandparents who were there in 1961, and their thinking shouldn’t be shaped by the fear generated by recent national tragedies.

Burundi has barely known 10 years of peace, so it can be discounted for now. But Uganda is an interesting story. A troubled nation for nearly two decades, it has known relative stability since President Yoweri Museveni seized power at the head of a victorious rebellion in 1986.

Barring the war in the north, Uganda will also enter unfamiliar territory. It will deliver the first generation that has lived mostly in peace, has produced the least number of refugees, and whose members have the most opportunity to die in their sleep, from a disease or some other tragedy but not at the hands of a murderous soldier.

Like the Tanzanians, one would expect that this generation of Ugandans would think like none in the past.

However, in Tanzania, the status quo looks unlikely to change in October. The only ruling party the country has known, Chama cha Mapinduzi, will most likely win.

And in Uganda, Museveni, who did his Nkurunziza act in 2005 and removed term limits, is set to stand again. Some young people who have known nothing but peace, earlier in the year launched an app to support Museveni’s 2016 campaign. Like in Tanzania, then, young voters are likely to divide equally between the ruling parties and the opposition.

This begins to tell us what to expect in a stable East Africa, and the likely outcome of the campaign in Rwanda to amend the Constitution and enable President Paul Kagame to stand again when his second term runs out in 2017.

It seems East Africans who live through long periods of stability don’t gain the courage to explore new political directions and uncharted waters.

They vote to keep things as they are. They are a status quo generation. Sorry, gung ho East African progressives.

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