As I sat down to write this piece, my mind flashed back to our journalism history classes in college, where the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ headline from November 3, 1948 – published the very morning official results came in – was held up as a classic example of how not to do journalism. That premature declaration, based on early returns and faulty polling, turned out to be spectacularly wrong, as Harry S Truman emerged victorious over his challenger, Thomas E Dewey, thereby becoming the thirty-third President of the US.

The trigger for that memory was the results from Malawi’s September 16 elections, which had not been declared but I had decided to include in my reflections in this piece on the relatively new African phenomenon of the one-term President. You see, I write this column about a week before publication, and, judging by results declared at the time and exit polls, the incumbent, Lazarus Chakwera, who assumed office in 2020, appeared to be headed for the dustbin of history. I was worried that, if he managed to defy the odds and retain his position, I would find myself in the position the Chicago Daily Tribune found itself in decades ago.

In the event, Chakwera conceded defeat to Peter Mutharika, the very man he trounced five years ago.

But while vote verification was still under way last week, senior officials of Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party claimed to have found irregularities in 13 of Malawi’s 28 districts – fuelling speculation they might be preparing to contest the outcome. It would not have been unprecedented: in 2019, Mutharika’s win was nullified by the country’s top court, paving the way for the 2020 rerun that swept Chakwera to power.

Chakwera’s defeat was not surprising. His key campaign promises back in 2020 included creating more than one-million jobs, ending corruption, restoring economic stability and tackling what analysts have described as the country’s cost-of-living crisis, with inflation persistently in the 20% to 29% range.

The promised jobs didn’t materialise. Instead, starting in late 2023, he sent young Malawians to Israel to work on farms, filling labour gaps caused by the Gaza conflict. What’s more, inflation is still sky high and the cost of living remains a huge complaint, while fuel shortages wreak havoc on motorists and businesses alike.

In a commentary in February, an independent think-tank noted that Chakwera made a staggering 204 campaign promises in 2020, with only 14, equivalent to 7%, having been fulfilled by the end of 2024. Some progress was made on 136, representing 66%, but work to fulfil 43 had not started, while 11 had been broken.

Liberia’s George Weah, the celebrated former footballer and Africa’s only recipient of the coveted Ballon d’Or, was also a one-term President, serving from January 2018 to January 2024. Failure to tackle stubbornly high unemployment and debilitating inflation, as well as perceptions of weak governance and failure to meet the high expectations created by his celebrity status, proved to be his undoing.

Also in Liberia’s West Africa neighbourhood, Ghana’s John Mahama could not muster enough support to ensure re-election when his first four-year term ended in 2016. But he was able to have a second bite of the cherry when he triumphed in elections held last year. The litany of grievances that put paid to his ambitions for an uninterrupted two terms nine years ago included economic mismanagement, a high cost of living and frequent bouts of loadshedding, which they call dumsor over there.

In our Southern African neck of the woods, Botswana’s Mokgwetsi Masisi was booted out in 2024, having been president for only one term. That was the first time his Botswana Democratic Party found itself languishing in opposition benches. Once again, economic strain, linked to a slump in the prices of diamonds, on which the country relies heavily, was a key grievance, alongside skyrocketing unemployment, cost-of-living pressures, and perceived public-sector corruption.

What’s the lesson from all this? The first term is no longer a launchpad to a second – at least not by default. In functional democracies, the traditional incumbency advantage is eroding, as voters are proving less tolerant of slow service delivery, economic hardship or vague promises.

In fact, the ballot box is turning into a performance review mechanism rather than a blank cheque for a further five years in office.

Africa’s political culture is maturing. Incumbents who fail to read this shift do so at their own peril.