Strengthening African Democracy
By Nnanna Anyim Ude, 03.02.2005
Africa has come a long way. In 1960, then British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan stood in the South African Parliament and noticed
a "wind of change" blowing across the continent. Exactly three
decades later, in 1990, the US President at the time, George H.W.
Bush proclaimed a "new world order" in which "the rule of law
supplants the rule of the jungle... nations recognize the shared
responsibility for freedom and justice...". During this period,
Africa stagnated on the democracy journey as the continent recorded
only one successful civilian-to-civilian democratic succession - an
incumbent president actually losing election and conceding defeat
(President Ramgoolam of Mauritius was voted out of office in 1982).
However, from 1990 to 1999 this feat was repeated 12 times on the
continent.
Democracy is simply defined as the rule of people. It requires the
protection of basic liberties such as speech, assembly, movement,
conscience, religion and private property and guarantees the rights
of the individual to vote, equality, justice and freedom. A
functional democracy entails free and fair elections, the rule of
law, separation of powers, virile opposition, and strong
institutions such as independent judiciary, impartial electoral
body, dutiful police force and organised political parties.
However, in a simplified model of democracy, the conduct of free and
fair elections is widely believed to be the strongest indicator of a
country's democratic content. As I write these lines about 47 of
Africa's 53 countries are ruled by governments that were brought
about by some form of elections. (Even though 17 of such governments
have been in power for at least 15 years and a number of others
easily 'win' re-elections). For the most part, these ele ctions are
characterised by voting irregularities and suppression of the
opposition. Consequently African governments are
organising 'elections' but democracy is not taking root.
Without a doubt, strengthening democracy in Africa requires
governmental and non-governmental action but if governments do not
encourage free and fair elections, which constitute the basics for
true democracy, how can they be trusted to undertake the difficult
tasks of building a democracy? Therefore strong non-governmental
action is required across the continent to strengthen African
democracy.
The civil society is a veritable tool for transformation and
mobilisation in any civilization. In her essay in 1997 titled Power
Shift, Jessica Matthews (then Senior Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations but now President of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace) noted the rise of global civil society in
pushing around even the largest gove rnments. She wrote that "they
breed new ideas; advocate, protest, and mobilise public support; do
legal, scientific, technical, and policy analysis; provide services;
shape, implement, monitor, and enforce national and international
commitments; and change institutions and norms". The civil society
is an integral part of building and strengthening democracy. As
sociologist Ernest Gellner put it: no civil society, no democracy.
During the dark days of dictatorships in Africa, the civil society
in the form of human rights and pro-democracy organisations stood up
to such regimes and demanded free elections and democracy. The good
news is that that they got the elections (but not democracy). The
sad part is that they went to sleep afterwards. The capacity of the
civil society to mobilise for noble causes must be put in play to
strengthen African democracy. The role of the civil society in
Africa should not be restricted to election monitoring and
subsequent publication of reports. A lot of work needs to be done
long before Election Day. Democracy is built on spirited discourse
by an informed citizenry, which has always been championed by the
civil society. The civil society can reconstitute and rebuild our
traditional values, norms, behavioural rules and attitudes.
Fortunately, the village square approach in traditional African
societies indicates that Africans are democratic by nature. The
civil society's wide reach and diversity means that they can
successfully mobilise peoples around democratic ethos and
institutions. They can engage (and where necessary blackmail)
politicians into submission to democratic accountability and
governance, especially in collaboration with the local and
international media. The expansion in information technology means
that they have wider possibilities.
Globalisation means that in a borderless world there is no longer a
clear difference between what is foreign or domestic and what is
national or international. Weak democracies leading to poor
governance and later failed states have as much impact in the
continent as in the world as a whole. Foreign governments and global
governance institutions are increasingly playing vital roles in
instituting democracies around the world, peacefully as in East
Timor and Bosnia and forcefully, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know
that the African literary landscape is beset with a plethora of
literature blaming the West for the ravages and scavenges that have
led to Africa's underdevelopment. But can we in all honesty expect
to build strong African democracies entirely on our own? If born-
again western governments can help us, then we need them especially
since a number of our "personalist, neopatrimonial" rulers view such
governments with awe and trepidation. The international community
must the refore make good its ugly perceptions in Africa by putting
it to African governments and reining it on them that only
democracy, in its truest form, is good enough for Africans. It is a
debt that they owe Africa.
To strengthen African democracy we will also need high literacy
rates, low incidences of poverty, strong institutions and ultimately
leadership. As the world marches towards liberal democracy
especially in the Arab world and the greater Middle East region, the
time to strengthen African democracy is now. We can still get it
right. At the opening of the Africa Conference on Elections,
Democracy and Governance in Pretoria last year, President Thabo
Mbeki of South Africa reminded delegates of what Colin Legum wrote
in his 1999 book, Africa since Independence, that our "dream of a
Golden Age had withered on the tender vine of independence, and it
became clear that Africa was not going to escape the experience of
Europe , the Americas, and Asia in comparable historical periods when
they were evolving and consolidating their new nation-states. Many
of the factors which destroyed the optimism of the period of the
romanticism in Africa were not very different from those in Europe -
which had its Hundred Years' War, Napoleonic conquest,
assassinations, times of chaos,...It was similar, too, in the
Americas, with the fratricidal killings and the bitterness of the
American Civil War; the racism of slavery; the corruption and
miseries of the Reconstruction years; and in Latin America, where a
succession of wars was fought over the shaping of borders; the rise
of dictators and military regimes; oppression and widespread abuses
of human rights of the indigenous populations; and the failure of
Sim�n Bol�var's ambition to unify Latin America. The wars and
revolutions in Europe and the Americas exceeded in scale and
casualties the violent episodes in Af rica, bad as these were..."
Today, these continents have made quantum leaps on democracy's path.
The kind of leaps many governments in Africa have not made but can
still make.
To strengthen African democracy, participation by all good people of
Africa is most essential. While delivering a lecture to students of
Harvard University in 2002 titled: "Looking Back on Perestroika",
former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pointed out that his direct
involvement with Soviet politics made it possible for him to see
firsthand the deficiencies of the Soviet system and what was
required to turn things around. This gave rise to perestroika
(restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Participation is
everything. According to Gorbachev, "if people unite for some
objective, for some goal, they should act without being nudged,
without being pushed. They should take the initiative. They should
take responsible initiative". Why don't we?
� Ud e writes from Abuja
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