POLITICS
Africa
Will the Year of African Elections Cement Democracy or Sow Discord? by Jon Rosen
I
t’s a big year for Africa at the ballot box, with more than two dozen critical votes in countries ranging from Congo to Liberia to Nigeria. And as political upheaval continues to sweep the Arab world, people are naturally wondering if the democratic fervor will nudge a few other African autocrats from power as well. But are elections the solution to Africa’s woes? Or just another source of them? If the scenes from Abidjan are any indication,Africa’s year of elections is not off to a very democratic start. Four months after the run-off poll that was supposed to mark an end to Côte d’Ivoire’s eight-year political crisis, the country is in turmoil. Alassane Ouattara has been recognized as the election winner by Côte d’Ivoire’s Electoral Commission, as well as the African Union, the United Nations, European Union, the United States and much of the world. But as of press time, his opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent endorsed by the country’s high court, showed no signs of ceding the presidency and appeared quite willing to plunge his country back into civil war in an effort to cling to power. By mid-March, despite international pressure and economic sanctions seeking a peaceful end to the crisis, the world’s largest cocoa producer was beginning to resemble a combat zone, with hundreds of people killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced. Security forces loyal to Gbagbo disrupted pro-Ouattara demonstrations in Abidjan, opening fire on civilians with impunity, while Ouattara-aligned rebels — fed up with the diplomatic standoff — began seizing parts of the country. Rival gangs of youth are clashing in street battles some call worse than the fighting that broke out during the 2002-03 civil war — a conflict that effectively divided the country in two as tensions simmered along ethnic, religious and regional fault lines. According to the International Crisis Group, the most likely scenario in the coming months is “armed conflict involving massive violence against civilians, Ivorian and foreign alike.” Even if all-out war is averted, the Côte d’Ivoire poll — intended to unify the country — has been an unmitigated disaster, one that’s set a wary tone on a continent facing one of its most critical election years in history. In 2011, citizens in 26 African countries are scheduled to head for the ballot box, voting in 17 heads of state. To some, this is proof that democracy is finally taking root in subSaharan Africa, a region long plagued by coup d’états, bush wars and serial kleptocrats. Yet in the face of failed polls like Côte d’Ivoire’s, others wonder if this election mania is really in Africa’s best interest. Though regarded as democracy’s sine qua non — the essential ingredient of government by the people — elections on the continent have long been held hostage by a host of unsavory elements: from voter intimidation and ethnic strife to rigged polls and incumbent strongmen, like Gbagbo, who refuse to go when their time is up. Aside from Southern Sudan, where January’s independence vote unfolded with few hitches — though subsequent violence in Abyei has many worried — the first months of 2011 have not brought signs of promise. In February, Yoweri Museveni extended his 25-year rule in Uganda with a convincing win in a poll marred by extensive voter bribery and
April 2011
CREDIT: UN PHOTO / BASILE ZOMA
A man dips his finger in ink at a polling station in Côte d’Ivoire during elections last year whose results produced a presidential stalemate that now has the country teetering on the brink of civil war — which doesn’t exactly bode well for the full slate of presidential elections Africa will hold in 2011, a critical test of the continent’s commitment to democratic ideals.
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[T]he challenge Africa faces is not just to hold elections but rather to create the conditions under which elections can deliver to the ordinary person. — ANDREW MWENDA
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Ugandan journalist and commentator
intimidation — one that reportedly cost Ugandan taxpayers $350 million (also see “From Shoo-in Election to Gay-Bashing, Uganda Finds Itself on the Defensive” in last month’s issue of The Washington Diplomat). In March, the International Criminal Court summoned six high-level Kenyans on charges of crimes against humanity linked to the country’s 2007-08 post-election violence that killed at least 1,100 — a move some hope will help disrupt the country’s deeply ingrained culture of impunity but others worry might stir up ethnic strife ahead of Kenya’s next poll in 2012. And now, tensions are rising in Nigeria ahead of its widely anticipated presidential election on April 9, which is shaping up to be a potentially destabilizing contest between Christian and Muslim candidates — a scenario the country has long sought to avoid. Then there is the pall cast by Côte d’Ivoire, once West Africa’s most prosperous nation. “There is a belief that multiparty politics and competitive elections are the solution to every political problem regardless of context,”wrote Andrew Mwenda, a prominent Ugandan journalist and commentator. “This solution was imposed on Côte d’Ivoire and the results are already beginning to show.
The ‘solution’ is now threatening to lead to the dismemberment of the country.”
WITHER THE ONE-PARTY STATE Half a century ago, when most of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries gained independence, multiparty politics and competitive elections were hardly given a thought in states forged arbitrarily by colonial powers, with little regard to competing ethnic groups or power bases. Compounded by the Cold War, in which the United States and Soviet Union competed for the loyalties of African dictators, the one-party state was the norm, whether among strongmen in the Western orbit like Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko or self-styled Marxist-Leninists like Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam. Though rooted in geopolitics, the West’s eschewing of African democracy was also linked to concerns that it would hinder development. In his classic 1968 work “Political Order in Changing Societies,” Samuel Huntington argued that governments of fledgling states, facing major development challenges, could not risk full accountability to their people, who would demand more than limited resources made possible. Others questioned whether democracy — a system born out of Western individualism and egalitarianism — could take root in tribally oriented, community-based African societies. Yet by the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union crumbled, independence fever waned, and a quarter century of “president for life” rulers had left Africa in economic tatters, voices inside the continent and out began to turn on the one-party state and embrace a shift toward participatory democracy. Among African scholars, the push for democracy gained traction in a series of debates between Kenyan political scientist Peter Anyang Nyong’o and Malawian economist Thandika Mkandawire. Decrying Africa’s “miserable” state of development, Nyong’o argued that the channeling of public resourc-
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