Why democracy is on trial in Africa

By Raila Odinga

As the Berlin wall started falling in Europe and new nations emerged out of the collapsed Soviet Empire, the western world cheered the triumph of democracy and the demise of what Ronald Reagan once called “the evil empire”.

Except for the bloody conflicts in former Yugoslavia and the unfinished agenda of national liberation in Chechnya, most of these “new nations” in Europe have settled down to be stable democracies where electoral politics as a means of forming and changing governments is accepted and democracy has more or less become institutionalised.

In Africa, the opposite is quite often the case. The democratic upsurge of the early 1990s all seem to have met with tremendous resistance as new forms of authoritarian rule emerge.

Winners are forcing their victory on losers who, quite understandably, cry foul and only succumb to electoral outcomes as fait accompli.

Nearly every cycle of competitive electoral politics in Africa brings with it conflicts and crises that quite often disrupt the very foundations of the nation state.

As politics has got competitive, a number of leaders have resorted to ethnic-based alliances in our multi-ethnic societies. This strategy emphasises ethnic group sizes in determining one’s worth in politics. The smaller your ethnic group, the less your value at the high table of ethnic share-outs that pass for coalitions.

This is having deep negative effects on national unity. It determines whether members of different groups within the nation perceive each other as friends or foes. It determines whether a regime stays at the top and whether it succeeds or tumbles down. When people are mobilised as ethnic groups and not as followers of some ideology, it will not matter how well or badly the regime performs in delivering national programmes. The nation comes last.

Presidential elections are once again becoming zero sum games in which the winners take all while the losers lose everything. Ignored groups tend to regroup and fight back as members of ethnic groups. While citizens can easily walk away from the table where they are considered useless because of their dismal ethnic numbers, they will not simply walk away from the table where the national cake is being divided. They will demand their fair share, somehow.

The mounting momentum of ethnic based coalitions coincides with the re-emergence of the Big Man in Africa; a species we assumed dead and buried about a decade ago.

By the beginning of the 21st Century, the authoritarianism that had characterised most of Africa was in retreat as the “Big Men” were swept out in rapid turns.

Elections were being fought fiercely in an arena in which democratic aspirations of the people were largely reflected in the results. Where authoritarianism persisted, it was vigorously challenged. Africa’s grand march to democracy seemed irreversible. The Big Men’s club was in disarray. Today, the “Big Men” are being reincarnated, in some cases, sadly, in the luminaries of the Second Liberation. They are inventing new tricks of survival: recruiting new converts and revising progressive constitutions to give themselves more power and longer terms.

Africa’s new Big Men know times have changed. They can no longer rule by the gun or by decree.

They too have changed.

They pose as democrats by organising periodic multi-party elections, which they must win, at all costs. They adhere to constitutions by trying to amend them to suit their intentions.

They purport to create free and independent Judiciary, then try to pack the courts with their loyalists, just in case some opposition leaders or civil society types decide to try their chance at justice there.

Unique Africa

When they reverse the democratic gains, the justification is usually framed in terms of how unique Africa is. In the world of the new Big Men, the problems democracy faces are not the results of the roadblocks they put on the highway. It is the unsuitability of democracy to Africa.

Reasonably successful processes of democratisation in Senegal, South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana and Botswana have rebuffed this twisted logic.

Against this background, it is fitting to laud Africa’s opposition leaders who take on ruling parties, knowing well enough that the odds are hugely against them.

Think of the job Morgan Tsvangirai is doing in Zimbabwe, the struggles of Kizza Besigiye in Uganda or the faith of Alassane Ouatara in Ivory Coast that led to his confirmation to the presidency.

These are Africa’s real foot soldiers for democracy. Together with exceptional cases like Senegal and Ghana, these leaders provide hope for the institutionalisation of democracy in Africa.

In Senegal, long time resistance and opposition to the ruling Socialist Party, founded by Leopold Sedar Senghor saw the emergence of ideologically based coalitions in 2001 that finally uprooted it from power.

The beneficiary of this coalition, Abdoulaye Wade of the Senegalese Democratic Party, lost power subsequently in the elections of 2012 partly as a result of being seen to have betrayed the ideological commitments he had made with his coalition partners, and the perceived excesses in his government.

Betrayal and graft

His regime was accused of complicity in corruption. His attempts to remove the constitutional two-term limit added to his electoral woes. Opponents, comprising some of his former partners in government, capitalised on the betrayal and corruption issues, building a big enough electoral bloc to wrestle power from him in 2012.

But we must give Mr Wade credit. In many places on the continent, the opposition, however organised and popular, would not have wrestled power from the ruling party.

The incumbent would have manipulated the electoral process, used state organs to intimidate voters and outrightly cheated in the announcement of results.

That’s what happened in Cameroon where the first multiparty elections in 1992 were administered by the ministry of Territorial Administration despite requests by the opposition for an independent election commission.

Amidst reports of widespread electoral fraud, Paul Biya narrowly defeated his main rival by 39 per cent to 36 per cent. International election observers concluded that “the Cameroon government, for which President Biya bears ultimate responsibility, took unusual extreme and illegitimate actions to ensure the President’s victory. This led inexorably to the conclusion that the election was flawed to the point where its legitimacy and validity are called into question”. Subsequent elections proved no better.

So Senegal is somehow unique regarding the fate of coalition politics and democracy in Africa, and her case should be carefully studied regarding what needs to be done to nurture competitive electoral politics as an important aspect of institutionalising democracy in Africa.

—The writer is former Prime Minister of Kenya