The right to rule, power and reward: Liberation movements and the currency of political entitlement on the African continent

Abstract

With the attainment of independence across Africa, liberation movements transformed into ruling regimes. They employed various strategies, including the utilisation of liberation heritage to maintain a grip on political power. Victory against colonial rule became a justification for former liberation movements to hold on to power. Using case studies from across Africa, we argue that there is a politics of entitlement among former liberation movements, whereby liberation credentials are mobilised to legitimise political hegemony. We used a neo-patrimonialism framework to explain how liberation movements in Africa leverage historical legitimacy to build personal political capital, promote patronage systems, and justify their entitlement to state resources. Observation and media analysis, blended with an examination of secondary written texts, were used to gather data that addressed questions on how historical legitimacy is employed to entrench neo-patrimonialism. We discovered that despite the uniqueness of individual countries’ geopolitics, the behaviour of liberation movements exhibits striking similarities across Africa, entrenched in the belief that dislodging colonialism justifies perpetual political legitimacy. While there is extensive literature on postcolonial African politics, this study is unique as it contributes to the historiography of African liberation politics by analysing the methods used by former liberation movements in utilising liberation heritage as political capital.