OPINION: A DUAL-PARTY SYSTEM CAN SAVE AFRICAN DEMOCRACIES
By Nokwanda Mamba
#SDN, 9 February 2026
The banning of political parties by Burkina Faso dictator Ibrahim Traoré was very wrong because the decision was not informed by the will of the people, but by his hunger for power.
The banning of political parties was the final nail in the coffin for democracy. It put an end to the hope of a return to civilian rule that he promised would be achieved by 2025 after assuming power in 2022. This is how dictators operate: they rise to power making promises that never materialise, only to later destroy democratic institutions and create their own dictatorships.
Traoré banned political parties simply because he believed they were divisive. He forgot that this is the beauty of democracy. We can never be the same; we cannot all place our trust in the same individuals to lead. Democracy is about choice. However, if we are to preserve our democracy as Africans, we need to adopt a dual-party system, just like in the USA, the UK and Ghana. During elections, two major political parties would compete for power alongside independent candidates. People would be at liberty to vote for either political party and also to elect independent candidates.
We already know that Africans often do not follow political ideas but influential individuals. That is why people form multiple breakaway parties that end up dividing nations, as Traoré would say.
In a dual-party system, instead of creating many breakaway parties, aggrieved individuals would be allowed to compete independently and still garner a huge following. Diversity exists even within party ranks, and we cannot run away from that. This is what gives birth to smaller parties. A dual-party system would likely control this by limiting the number of parties that contest for power.
Banning political parties altogether may work in the short term, but it becomes a disaster in the long run. Traoré himself has survived numerous coup attempts, which is a sign that he is not loved by everyone in that country. He is not a supreme leader, but a human being after all.
There’s no country in world which exists on dual-party system and that includes UK and USA. The two parties we hear in these countries are just the dominant ones but they are not the only ones. In UK, besides Labour and Torres, we have the Lib Dems, Green Party, Scottish National Party, Reform UK, Cooperative Party and several others totaling to more than 390. In the USA, besides the Dems and the Republicans, we have Green Party, Libertarians, Constitution Party, Natural Law Party etc. So the dual party system can’t work out anywhere unless some kind of dictatorship is used.