Referendum’s double-edged sword

By Dominic Odipo

Shortly after he assumed supreme power in 1958, French President Charles de Gaulle sought to construct a new political and economic dispensation for France’s African colonies. At the time, there were 12 of these territories, including Cote D’ Ivoire, Guinea (Conakry), Senegal, Gabon and Congo (Brazzaville).

Seeking a new arrangement with "Afrique Noir" or Black Africa, de Gaulle offered the ruling elites of these territories a loose form of internal autonomy, while leaving France effectively in control of foreign affairs, defence and overall economic policy.

Whereas a good number of the leaders of these territories actively supported this Gaullist policy, including Cote D’ Ivoire’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny and Senegal’s Leopold Sedar Senghor, others, particularly Guinea’s Ahmed Sekou Toure, did not. Toure preferred total political, economic and cultural independence for his country, no matter what the immediate consequences would be.

"We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery," he declared at the time.

To settle this seminal question, President Charles de Gaulle decreed that a referendum would be held on September 28, 1958 across all the 12 African territories. Those who preferred continued membership in the French Community would vote ‘Yes’ and those, like Guinea, who wanted total independence from France would vote ‘No’.

After all the votes had been counted, it was found that eleven (11) of these territories had voted ‘Yes’ and were overwhelmingly in favour of de Gaulle’s Franco-African Community. But, in Guinea, the vote had swung almost exactly in the other direction. More than 95 per cent of all those who had voted said ‘No’. Four days later, Guinea declared itself an independent black African state, the second, after Ghana, to shed its European colonial yoke.

Infuriated by what he judged as Guinea’s infantile rejection, de Gaulle struck back swiftly and decisively. All French aid was terminated overnight. Government records were burned or otherwise mutilated. More than 3,000 French civil servants were ordered to return home immediately. As they left, they stripped their offices of all furniture, telephones and even electric bulbs.

Left with nowhere else to go, Sekou Toure turned to the East, particularly the former Soviet Union, the led by Premier Nikita Khrushchev. To this day, Guinea continues to reel from the consequences of the referendum of 1958. As William Faulkner would have said, the past has refused to pass — it is not even past.

Because of their inherent nature, referenda seem to have much longer lasting consequences than ordinary general or presidential elections. They crystallise the central issues much more acutely; generate both deeper and darker passions and tend to stir up larger and more diverse sections of the electorate.

Generally, the results of a well-conducted referendum are the closest we ever get to hearing the real voice of the people.

Accordingly, it is much more difficult to dispute them than those of any general or presidential election. By that same token, it is much more difficult to ignore or overturn them.

When President Kibaki lost the 2005 referendum on the draft constitution, he immediately sacked all those ministers who had campaigned for the ‘No’ side. These ministers then came together to create the Orange Democratic Movement, which gave him such hell at the general and presidential elections of 2007.

Fateful decision

It was primarily because of the real or imagined political threat that ODM later posed in 2007 that the President’s handlers made the fateful decision to hold onto power at whatever cost. It was the collision of ODM and the Kibaki’s countervailing political movement that led directly to the historic and horrific post-election violence of 2008.

And it was the unprecedented political violence of 2008 that led directly to the mediation efforts that culminated in the formation of the Grand Coalition Government under which we live today.

What does all this mean?

Two things. First, that this country has arrived at where it is today directly as a result of the referendum of 2005. Second, it follows that if this issue of the 2005 referendum had been handled much more dispassionately and soberly, it might not have split the country the way it did. It means the ODM counter movement might not have emerged and, arguably, that we would not have taken each other on so murderously at the beginning of 2008.

Greater impact

Of course one cannot say such things for sure. Political actions have a notoriously frustrating habit of generating their own random momentum. What we can nevertheless say for sure is this: the referendum of 2005 has had a greater impact on this country’s political infrastructure than any other single event that has occurred here since Independence in 1963.

It was much more of a watershed than the death of former President Jomo Kenyatta, all the major political assassinations or the coup attempt of 1982.

As we approach our next referendum, we all need to keep these reflections in mind. We need to remember that, like Julius Caesar, we may be about to cross the Rubicon. For us, like for the Guineans, the political facts that this imminent referendum might create could stubbornly refuse to pass into history. We could still be reeling from them 100 years hence.

—The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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