How is south africa free?
It's all about the populace having a right to vote And the government having a certain degree of accountability.
In Somalilands case yes but greenly flawed concurrent election delays and voting by tribal affiliation how this works is that the elders of tribes get paid by a party to tell they're people to vote for them.
There is no accountability with the central govt of SL and they duck their ground on most unpopular policies unless there's wide scale backlash only then they reverse it.
Local Govt is abit diffrent as it's a smaller settlement, where the locals can easily strong arm the mayor