Benin's National Conference — the African Transition Template
Benin invented a way of ending a dictatorship without a coup or a war, and eight other African countries copied it within two years. Mathieu Kérékou had taken power in 1972 and declared a Marxist-Leninist state in 1974 in a country of some four million people with almost no industry. By 1989 the state could not pay its teachers or its soldiers, students were on strike, the banks were insolvent, and the Soviet bloc that had underwritten the ideology was disappearing. He renounced Marxism in December 1989 and, having no other card, agreed to a national conference. It met in February 1990 with 488 delegates: parties, unions, churches, traditional rulers, the army, business associations, students and exiles brought home for it, chaired by an archbishop, and broadcast live on radio for nine days. On the second day it declared itself sovereign, meaning that its decisions bound the government, and Kérékou — advised to send in troops and reportedly told by the army that it would not go — accepted. The conference suspended the constitution, appointed a prime minister, and set elections. Kérékou lost them in 1991 and handed over power, which is the part that made the model credible, and was elected again in 1996 and 2006 and left when his terms ended. Congo, Niger, Mali, Togo, Zaire and others held conferences of their own, with varying results. Benin has had regular elections since, and their quality has declined markedly in the last decade. The model's transferable element was the sovereign declaration, and it worked where the army would not shoot and failed where it would. Togo held a conference the following year and Eyadéma sent troops into it.
- Year: 1990 CE
- Category: Political
