The Far Right Now Controls Brazil's Congress and Africa Should Be Watching

Here is a question every African citizen should ask of their own parliament: what happens to a president who wins the palace but loses the house?

Brazil is about to find out. The country that gave the world samba, the Amazon's stewardship debate, and a remarkable story of popular resistance to dictatorship now faces a governing reality that should trouble anyone who believes in democracy as a living system rather than a ritual performed every four years. Both houses of its National Congress are dominated by the right and the far right. Whoever occupies the presidency after the 2026 elections, and whoever seeks a fourth-term mandate, will govern against a legislature that does not share their agenda and is not shy about showing it.

We in Africa should pay close attention, because we have lived this script in every variation imaginable. We have seen presidents elected on promises of reform who spent their terms negotiating with men whose only interest was their own survival. We have seen parliaments turned into bazaars where votes are bought, loyalties are rented, and national interests are auctioned to the highest bidder. The lesson is never that divided government is inherently wicked. The lesson is that divided government without strong institutions becomes a machine for paralysis, and paralysis is always paid for by ordinary people.

Consider what is at stake in a country of more than 200 million people where the gap between the powerful and the poor is among the widest on earth. Every legislative stalemate delays a clinic, a school, a bridge, a water project. Every compromise traded in a back corridor is a price paid by a mother in a favela or a farmer in the northeast who never got a seat at the table where the deal was struck. Democracy is not measured by the speeches delivered on election night. It is measured by whether the state keeps working when its leaders cannot agree.

Brazil's situation also carries a warning about accountability, and here the continent has a direct stake. Between 2014 and 2016, the Lava Jato investigation exposed how the construction giant Odebrecht built a sprawling bribery machine across the world. The company admitted to paying bribes in multiple countries, and its African operations were among the most damaging. In Angola, Mozambique, and beyond, contracts were won through payoffs to officials, while the public bore the cost in inflated budgets and infrastructure that too often failed the people it was supposed to serve. The global settlements that followed ran into hundreds of millions of dollars, yet the question African citizens should still be asking is simple: who in our own governments signed those contracts, who took the money, and who has been held to account?

That question matters more when political fragmentation makes accountability harder. A legislature dominated by an opposition can be a powerful check on executive overreach. It can also become a shield for allies of the powerful, a tool for blocking anti-corruption investigations, or a theatre for culture-war grandstanding that distracts from the business of governing. Brazilians know this danger intimately. Their democracy survived a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 and a presidential impeachment in 2016, and it has been tested repeatedly by institutional fights between Congress, the Supreme Federal Court, and the executive. The resilience of those institutions is the real story, and it is one we should be studying with envy and determination.

So let us be precise about what is needed, because vague hope is what powerful men count on. The first requirement is an independent judiciary that answers only to the constitution, not to whichever coalition controls the chamber this year. The second is an anti-corruption apparatus with real budgets, protected prosecutors, and the authority to pursue politicians of every colour. The third is transparent public procurement, with contracts, beneficial ownership, and payment records published in full so that journalists and citizens can audit the deals that shape their lives. None of this is radical. These are the building blocks of any functioning market economy and any credible democracy, and they are the bedrock of what center-right thinkers have always called good governance: property rights respected, rules applied equally, and state power constrained by law.

Africa has proof that this works. Botswana, which has been a stable multiparty democracy since independence and built one of the continent's most prosperous economies on transparent management of its diamond wealth, shows that institutions can outlast any single leader. Mauritius has used disciplined fiscal policy, an independent central bank, and an open economy to become one of Africa's most admired success stories. Senegal demonstrated in 2024 that a peaceful transfer of power could follow a bitterly contested election when courts, electoral commissions, and citizens refused to let incumbents rewrite the rules. Ghana showed the same thing in its own 2024 transition. These are not perfect nations, and no one should pretend otherwise, but they prove that the outcome of democratic struggle is not predetermined by geography or history.

Brazil's experience, with its fragmented legislature and its powerful right-wing bloc, offers a similar lesson in both directions. Democratic competition is healthy. Democratic collapse is not inevitable. But neither is the survival of democracy automatic. It depends on whether parties accept the outcome of elections, whether courts enforce the constitution without fear or favour, and whether ordinary citizens treat their votes as the beginning of their responsibility rather than the end of it.

So here is what we demand, and what every African citizen should demand of their own leaders. Demand that legislators, whatever their political colour, commit in public to protecting judicial independence and anti-corruption agencies. Demand that every government publish its contracts, its budgets, and its beneficial owners in machine-readable form, so that no deal can hide in the dark. Demand that regional bodies like the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States make democratic transitions and institutional integrity a condition of partnership, not a footnote in a communiqué. Demand that foreign investors, including the Brazilian firms that have operated across our continent, be held to the same anti-bribery standards they would face at home.

Brazilians have spent decades learning that democracy is a fight, not a gift. We in Africa have learned it at a higher price. The next Brazilian president will govern with an opposition Congress breathing down their neck. The question is not whether that is comfortable. The question is whether the institutions will hold, and whether we, the citizens, will hold our leaders to the standard that democracy demands. If we wait for the powerful to choose accountability out of kindness, we will wait forever. The time to demand it is now, while the stakes are still ours to shape.

Based on reporting by SAIIA