Albert Einstein is reported to have loved the saying: “Doing the same thing and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.”
This is the cautionary warning for any political organisation, especially when going to elective conferences as do the DA and the ANC this month.
Democracy does not die only in coups. It also decays in comfort, in the slow normalisation of leaders who cannot imagine the life of an organisation without them at the helm.
This attitude leads to organisational decay rather than renewal.
And this is why I respect DA leader John Steenhuisen for opting out of contest for the sake of his organisation when he realised his time had lapsed.
Across cultures and centuries, political thinkers have warned that power retained too long corrodes both the ruler and the republic.
Elections matter. Constitutional limits matter. But equally important is something less codified and more moral — a leader’s disposition to recognise that political authority is temporary.
When leaders overstay their mandate — whether by manipulating rules, bending party constitutions or cultivating personality cults — they undermine institutional integrity, erode public trust and create fertile ground for factionalism, patronage and corruption.
Political renewal is not a decorative ideal.
It is the mechanism by which a political system regenerates leadership, ideas and norms.
Healthy democracies uses turnover of periodic electoral change not for spectacle, but to prevent stagnation and authoritarian drift.
When leadership becomes permanent, parties ossify. Competition weakens.
Governance devolves into cronyism if they’re governing parties because loyalty replaces competence.
Fear of losing deployment parades as loyalty, and accountability is replaced by mediocrity.
Aristotle understood this danger. In his seminal book, Politics, he argued that stability requires balance and rotation.
“The best political arrangement is one in which power is so balanced that no one class, and no one man within a class, can tyrannise.”
Political systems decay when leaders seek permanence rather than service.
And once decay sets in, the only way to maintain authority is through coercion or manipulation.
Then tyranny becomes the logic of preservation.
Modern history has supplied abundant evidence of this.
In SA, Nelson Mandela offered one political leadership model.
After becoming its first democratically elected president in 1994, Mandela enjoyed unrivalled moral authority.
There was no meaningful political force that could have unseated him had he sought a second term beyond 1999.
Many South Africans would have gladly extended his tenure indefinitely.
He refused the second term though lawfully entitled to it.
Mandela stepped down voluntarily after one term, signalling that no individual — not even a liberation icon — should stand above constitutional rotation.
His exit was not an abdication of responsibility but an affirmation of institutional supremacy over personality cults he saw were replete in most post-colonial African states.
He wanted to teach by example that strengthens constitutionalism and normalisation of succession in our fragile African democracies, knowing very well that leadership change would enhance the stability of our young democracy, rather than threaten it.
The contrast within the same political tradition is instructive.
Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor, served almost two terms as president.
But in the mid-2000s he sought a third term as president of the ANC.
Though technically permissible under party rules, the move strained established norms and intensified factional divides within the ANC.
The internal battle that followed did more than end Mbeki’s leadership. It weakened the party’s ethical centre.
The erosion of internal norms — the sense that leadership rotation had limits — created the conditions for intensified factionalism.
Out of that fragmentation rose Jacob Zuma, whose presidency from 2009 to 2018 became synonymous with state capture, a systemic corruption and institutional degradation.
It would be simplistic to blame one man’s third-term ambitions for the collapse of governance standards.
But the episode illustrates a broader truth that when norms of rotation weaken, institutional guardrails loosen.
Parties become arenas for personal survival rather than vehicles for public service.
In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni removed presidential term limits and later age limits to remain to extend his oppressive regime indefinitely
Political overstay does not merely damage reputations, it damages systems.
This pattern is usually starker on the African continent.
In Cameroon, Paul Biya has ruled since 1982, extending his tenure through constitutional changes and electoral dominance.
In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni removed presidential term limits and later age limits to remain to extend his oppressive regime indefinitely.
In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe governed for nearly four decades before being ousted by his own party.
And the Zanu-PF led cabinet has recently voted for the extension that allows Emmerson Mnangagwa to remain in office until 2030, two years beyond the end of his current tenure.
In Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang has ruled since 1979.
These leaders often justify permanence in the language of stability or liberation credentials.
But the longer they stay, the more the states became indistinguishable from the ruler and decayed to the core.
And common to all of them is the growing oppressive nature of their regimes.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a Komani-born writer
Permanent rule breeds permanent patronage networks. Institutions hollow out.
Security forces become guardians of incumbency rather than of the constitution.
Only those who depend on the incumbent patronage usually argue for political overstay.
Knowing when to leave as a leader is not weakness but discipline and a show of integrity.
It signals that institutions matter more than individuals, that continuity does not require permanence, and that renewal is not threat but necessity.
The danger is not uniquely African. In Russia, constitutional engineering has enabled Vladimir Putin to extend his rule far beyond initial term limits.
In parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, populist leaders have tested the elasticity of democratic constraints.
Even in established democracies, the temptation to erode term limits or delegitimise electoral defeat signals a broader impatience with rotation itself.
And from his words and behaviour, Donald Trump is salivating for permanent rule in the US.
To cling to power for its own sake is to reject the natural limits that preserve justice.
A republic usually survives in a healthy state only where leaders accept their term limits after serving the common good and remain accountable to moral law.
Authority is stewardship, not ownership.
When leaders personalise power, they violate the principle that governance exists for the community, not for the ruler’s legacy or security.
Mandela’s departure strengthened SA’s constitutional culture.
Mbeki’s third-term bid revealed how fragile party norms can be.
The experience of long-ruling African strongmen demonstrates how overstay corrodes the state.
Across contexts, the lesson is consistent, power that refuses to end eventually undermines the order it claims to protect and decays to a rotten state the system that gives it legitimacy.
Democracy depends on rules. But it also depends on restraint — on leaders who understand that sometimes their greatest act of service may be their exit.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a Komani-born writer
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