INTERNATIONAL
Africa’s democratic joys and tribulations
South Africa and Nigeria made a democratic splash this week. In
fact, most African countries have officially embraced
democracy even though many of the same old rascals run them
WITHIN a week, the two most important countries in sub-Saharan
Africa, South Africa and Nigeria, have gone through a solemn
democratic ritual. South Africa held its second multi-racial
general election on June 2nd. In Nigeria, 16 years of military
rule came to an end when the generals handed over power to an
elected president on May 29th. Both occasions are joyful. But, at
the same time, both South Africa and Nigeria demonstrate the
immense difficulties that democracy is encountering in Africa.
The last votes were still being counted in South Africa as The
Economist went to press. But the suspense, such as it was, was
not whether the ruling African National Congress (ANC) would win,
but how overwhelmingly it would win: the big question was whether
it would get a two-thirds majority and thus theoretically be able
to change the constitution. If the party hangs together, there is
no foreseeable prospect of a change of government through
elections. The party still wears the cloak of a liberation
movement and, as such, it is more than a political party for
black South Africans. Voting for it is an expression of ethnic or
personal solidarity, not support for a set of principles or
policies. That is the way it works in Africa.
Nigeria, despite the formal change of government, will still be
largely run by its corrupt elite. It will take a long time to
curb the power of their money, even if Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria
’s new ruler, tries to take them on. It was the well-connected
big men who bankrolled the political parties, chose the leaders
and paid people to vote for them. The lawyers and human-rights
activists who had campaigned bravely for democracy during the
years of military dictatorship were nowhere to be seen. During
the campaign there was no debate on issues.
If democracy is about throwing the rascals out, then it is not
working in Africa.
At the end of the 1980s, Africa was hit by the democratic
revolution sweeping Europe. Under internal and external pressure,
dictators were forced to dismantle their one-party states and
hold elections. Until that time, there had been only four
functioning multi-party democracies in Africa: Botswana, Senegal,
Gambia and Mauritius. And the first three of these never managed
to produce a change of government.
During the 1990s, a further 42 sub-Saharan African countries (out
of 50), all of them either one-party states or military
dictatorships, have held elections of varying credibility. In
only ten of these was the government changed. And when it came to
the election after that, in only two countries (Madagascar and
Benin) did the voters throw out the elected government. Whom did
they vote for instead? Astonishingly, they both plumped for the
military men who had been deposed to make way for democracy. The
only other African country where a democratically elected
government has been turned out in an election is Mauritius which,
like Madagascar, is an Indian Ocean island and African by
location rather than culture. In Africa, the incumbents, however
bad, tend to win elections.
When the democratic wave broke over Africa, some called it the
second liberation. It was hoped that the continent, freed from
tyranny, would at last begin to develop.
But, so far, there seems little correlation between democracy and
economic success.
With disillusion has come the fear that elections neither can nor
will change anything.
The ruling parties and their leaders manipulate the vote with
ease. Most African heads of state see nothing odd in using the
trappings of office to campaign for re-election. While an
opposition leader has to depend on donated cars and advertise
only when he can afford it, the head of state zips around in a
government helicopter and uses his nightly slot on the radio and
television news (many of which lead off, His Excellency,
President X, said yesterday...) to promote his electoral
chances.
Some presidents also appoint those who run the election. And,
when all else fails, they can loot the treasury to buy votes.
With only a small middle class, many of whose members owe their
wealth to their closeness to the government, opposition parties
are poor and fractious, and defections to a cosy official job are
common. In this way, the ruling lot find it easy to play one
ethnic group off against another. Several elections could have
been won by the opposition if it had managed to be more united.
There seems to be little thought given to alternative democratic
systems more suited to African societies. Uganda is experimenting
with a no-party-system, and Ethiopia insists on parties that are
ethnically based. Certainly, both systems serve to maintain the
existing regimes in power. At the same time, it can be argued
that they are attempts to develop democratic ways that
incorporate African realities.
Africa should look to its past when there were councils of elders
and other counterweights to royal or chiefly power for political
structures that suit its society, say some. But there is little
debate about how structures from the past could be incorporated
into modern democracies.
Source:
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/ir2180.html
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