Après moi, moi

PIERRE NKURUNZIZA is the latest in a string of African presidents to risk a conflagration by refusing to step down when the constitution says their time in office is up. His announcement on April 25th that he would seek a third term in an election due at the end of June sparked riots in Bujumbura, the capital. So far at least six people have been killed and 25,000 are said to have fled across the border.

The UN, the African Union and Western governments have urged Mr Nkurunziza to think again before things spin out of control. As the constitutional court prepares to hear the case, the president’s loyalists are arguing that his first term in office, starting in 2005, does not count, as he was elected to his first stint by parliament rather than directly by the people, as the constitution requires. So he is entitled to suppress what they call an insurrection.

Burundi is at the best of times highly flammable. Since independence in 1962 it has been plagued by coups, massacres and the killing of several presidents, against a backdrop of ethnic strife between the country’s Tutsis, who make up a tenth of the 10m-plus population, and the Hutus, who comprise most of the rest. Mr Nkurunziza, a Hutu, came to the fore as a rebel leader in the 1990s after many thousands of Burundians, including his father and most of his siblings, had been murdered. A fragile peace has more or less held since 2000, initially thanks to the mediation of South Africa.

Mr Nkurunziza’s fate will be watched warily across Africa, for the issue of presidential term limits is increasingly fraught. Since the early 1990s, when a breeze of democracy swept across the continent, at least 34 of Africa’s 54 countries (55 since South Sudan was recognised in 2011) have put term limits on their presidents, usually giving them a maximum of two five-year spells, as in Burundi.

Most have stuck to the rules. A handful—Zambia’s Frederick Chiluba in 2002, Malawi’s Bakili Muluzi in 2004 and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007—stepped down only after trying in vain to wangle extensions. Last year mass protests prevented Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré from hanging on, and he was forced to flee.

Other backsliders have had more success. At least half a dozen presidents have cajoled their legislatures, by foul means or fair, into ditching the limits. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, once confined to ten more years in office by the constitution of 1995, has now served 29 years in all. Paul Biya, another rule-changer, has presided over Cameroon since 1982. This month Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé was re-elected to a third term, extending his family’s unbroken tenure to 48 years.

Others suspected of wanting to stretch their terms in defiance of the constitution include Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who should retire next year, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, across the river in Congo-Brazzaville, who has ruled for most of the past 31 years. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the top American official for African affairs, has warned that term limits are “under threat”.

Some leaders seek cannily to retain a veneer of constitutional propriety even while flouting its spirit. Friends of Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s dynamic but authoritarian ruler, talk of a “Putin-Medvedev scenario” that would let him stay merrily in charge, perhaps as prime minister, when his supposedly final term as president ends in 2017. In Ethiopia the presidency is limited to two six-year terms, but Meles Zenawi ran the show for 17 years as prime minister, with no hint of cutting short his rule, until his death in 2012. And Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who has held power (as prime minister and president) since 1980, signed a new constitution in 2013 that limits the head of state to two terms—but only from that date. So he hopes to retire as a sprightly 99-year-old.