Young African Voters Sour on the Parties That Ushered in Liberation

The resounding defeat this past week of the only political party that has governed Botswana since it gained independence 58 years ago sent tremors across the African continent.

A spirited young population has over the past year disrupted old-guard liberation parties that had been relying on their credentials from the days of fighting colonialism to stay in power.

That strategy seems to be losing its effectiveness as young people become a larger share of the electorate on a continent where the median age is 19, the youngest in the world.

Many young Africans say they care less about how much a politician suffered fighting colonizers, and more about whether those politicians are stealing public money, providing jobs and respecting basic freedoms, like free speech.

It is fine for governing parties that grew out of liberation movements to hold on to their history, “but we also cannot be holding on to that history when we are doing wrong,” said Lindiwe Zulu, a member of the national executive committee of the African National Congress in South Africa.

There, the so-called born-free generation that has never lived under apartheid has long agitated for new political leadership. They got it this year when the African National Congress, which had governed since apartheid fell and democracy took hold in 1994, plummeted below 50 percent in national elections for the first time.

The Botswana Democratic Party, which had governed the southern African nation since it gained independence from Britain in 1966, went from winning two-thirds of the seats in Parliament five years ago to coming in last among the four parties that competed in Wednesday’s elections.

“The decimation of the B.D.P. is an indication of the discontent and disillusionment that permeates throughout the southern regions with former liberation movements that are divorced from the realities that confront their citizens,” said Rui Tyitende, a political science lecturer at the University of Namibia.

These trends give Namibia’s governing party, the South West Africa People’s Organization, reason to worry. The former liberation movement, better known as SWAPO, faces an election in late November in which youth make up about two-thirds of the 1.4 million registered voters.

Mozambique’s long-reigning liberation party, Frelimo, declared a decisive victory in elections last month. But after several independent observers reported serious voting irregularities, young people have not accepted the result. Large protests across the country turned deadly, with as many as 10 people killed, according to medical groups.

The Botswana Democratic Party did not fight a war for independence, but it is a product of the era in which African nations freed themselves of their colonial shackles.

The party’s loss comes at a time when youth unemployment, at 38 percent, far outpaces Botswana’s overall unemployment rate. Young people also shoulder a heavy burden of the country’s inequality and poverty. Those challenges led to high engagement among a young population that is often passive when it comes to politics, said Adam Mfundisi, a public policy analyst at the University of Botswana.

“Young people had to wake up from their slumber, because no one would rescue them from hardships if not themselves,” he said.

Many liberation fighters turned politicians have struggled to move beyond their past and give way to the new generation, said Ms. Zulu, who fought against apartheid in exile.

It is as if the older generation of politicians is saying, “We are the liberators; the younger people must wait in the queue,” she said.

The Botswana Democratic Party stayed in power because of its reputation for sound governance and fiscal discipline.

The discovery of diamonds a half-century ago lifted Botswana, among the world’s top producers of the stones, from poverty to economic and political stability. But its economic troubles in recent years have upset that narrative of an African success story — and many citizens blame the Botswana Democratic Party, accusing it of corruption and bad administration.

The country has now placed its faith in Duma Boko, who, at 54, is relatively young for an African leader.

Mr. Boko was sworn in as president on Friday evening. His party, Umbrella for Democratic Change, won 36 of 61 seats in the National Assembly. The party he unseated, the Botswana Democratic Party, won only four seats.

Young people were the main foot soldiers in Mr. Boko’s election campaign, helping him to mobilize voters.

“Clearly, he appeals to young people,” said Motlhabane Maphanyane, a founder of the Umbrella for Democratic Change, who has since left the party. “When you go around Botswana, all of them are wearing U.D.C. regalia. They want change.”

Mr. Boko, a Harvard-trained human rights lawyer, fashioned himself as a man of the people. He is from a village about 120 miles from the capital, Gaborone, and attended public school.

He won the election with an ambitious commitment to create half a million jobs, in a nation of 2.5 million people.

Many of the liberation-era parties also made lofty promises.

Ms. Zulu said failing to deliver on them was part of what hurt liberation parties like hers.

“The demands of the people are changing faster than we would have anticipated,” she said.