There was dancing in the streets when The Gambia’s long-time ruler, Yahya Jammeh, finally left for
exile, says Azad Essa. He’d been digging in his heels after being soundly beaten in elections, but with
troops in neighbouring Senegal poised to invade, he bowed to the inevitable. Bigwigs in the UN and
the African Union were ecstatic. Democracy had triumphed, they tweeted: it’s a signal to other
African dictators that “their time is over”. Nonsense. There’s nothing to rejoice about in this sorry
story. Jammeh will never pay back the millions of dollars he looted before leaving; nor will he pay
for his crimes against civilians, journalists and politicians. And he left because he was pressured to by
his neighbours. But that didn’t happen with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who refused to step down
after losing elections in 2008, nor Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza, whose contested decision to seek a
third term in 2015 triggered widespread bloodshed. Both stayed because no one in the African Union
or its regional bodies objected. Events in The Gambia merely confirm that power in Africa rests with
cliques, not the people. “Democracy didn’t win, but rather a man just got away with murder.”
