Africa

by Guy Arnold

  The Democratic Republic of Congo (the former Zaïre) has been in a state of crisis for years (see chapter 37 below) and by 2000 faced possible disintegration with the help of its predatory neighbours. It did make some minimal moves towards democratization in the early 1990s, as a consequence of external events rather than by design on the part of President Mobutu. ‘For all practical purposes, the Mobutu regime as a system of personal and dictatorial rule ended on 24 April 1990, when internal and external pressures finally convinced him to replace the one-party system with multiparty democracy.’19 The change was relative, Mobutu reacting to forces he could not resist entirely but, as he soon demonstrated, could so manipulate that he was to remain in power for another seven years. He was supported in his determination to hold on because of the weak democratic tradition that existed in the country – or, more accurately, did not exist, a divided opposition and a hierarchy determined to hold on to its privileged position at all costs. The so-called transition to democracy under Etienne Tshisekedi over 1992–93 generated optimism that was never to be realized. Tshisekedi argued for reform and change and told his political adversaries (those who supported the Mobutu regime that had enriched them) that he pardoned them for any wrongs they had done him. Their response was contempt. Tshisekedi found himself in the position of leading a caretaker government to whom an endless stream of supplicants came for preferment. The transition to real democracy did not take place. When in 1997 Mobutu was finally forced to flee the country and was replaced by Laurent Kabila, the latter refused to work with the Congo’s democratic forces but relied, instead, upon the support of the Rwandans and Congolese of the diaspora who had backed his bid for power. Mobutu had so debilitated and corrupted the body politic of the Congo that in the 1990s, first under his malignant hand and then under the grotesque and greedy Kabila, democracy had no chance. As the state imploded individuals tried to grab what they could for themselves while the idea of implementing a democratic system that would sort out the state in the hope of producing a more equitable, democratically controlled system seemed a non-starter.

  Few of the small states of West Africa had an easy economic passage through the 1990s and in most cases democracy was at best fragile in practice. At the beginning of the twenty-first century Burkina Faso had to deal with the return of 200,000 of its citizens from the north of its troubled neighbour Côte d’Ivoire. Legislative elections of January 2001 in Cape Verde brought an important change of government: a decade of rule by the Movement for Democracy (MPD) was ended and the former ruling party – the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC/PAIVC) won a majority of seats and its leader José María Neves became prime minister. Then, in the February presidential elections Pedro Pires of the PAICV emerged victorious. In another of West Africa’s mini-states, The Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh decided in July to lift the ban on the political activities of the parties, which he had overthrown in his military coup of 1994, opening the way for democratic challenges in the scheduled presidential elections for that October. When these were held on 18 October they were marred by violence. Jammeh, supported by the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), won another five-year term with 52.96 per cent (242,302 of 509,301 votes cast) while his closest rival, Ousainon Dalboe of the United Democratic Party (UDP), obtained 149,448 votes, 29.34 per cent of the total. In Guinea-Bissau a shaky government presided over a volatile political situation as President Kumba Yalla was urged by the UN Peace-Building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau to pursue a policy of national reconciliation following a difficult confrontation with the armed forces. The neighbouring state of Guinea was deeply affected by the civil wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone and suffered from cross-border incursions into its territory from both these countries and there had developed a major refugee crisis in the Gueckedou area close to where the three countries meet. President Lansana Conté responded forcibly to these incursions and had at his disposal a loyal army that was also much stronger than those of Guinea’s two neighbours. On the home political front Conté planned constitutional changes that would permit him to stand for a third presidential term and have this extended to seven years. His political opponents claimed that he was perpetuating a dictatorship. On 12 November 2001 he held a referendum on these proposals, which were approved by 98 per cent of the votes in a 20 per cent turnout of voters. Other changes allowed the government to appoint local officials, who hitherto had been elected. International donors were upset by these moves, since they had been pressing for decentralization; however, because Guinea faced ‘considerable difficulties’ the international donor community remained supportive.

  Liberia and Sierra Leone had experienced a decade of brutal civil wars whose devastation and death tolls seemed greatly out of proportion to their small populations. Both countries entered the new century in turmoil though in the case of Sierra Leone, with a substantial UN force on its soil, the possibility of achieving a more settled situation seemed greater than in Liberia (see chapter 36 below). The year 2001 was the last in office for President Alpha Oumar Konaré, who had won Mali’s first multiparty elections in 1992 and had generally won plaudits for the moderation of his rule. By the end of the year some 80 political parties were preparing for the succession struggle though in the end they would join together in coalitions. In neighbouring Mauritania the Democratic and Social Republican Party was firmly in the saddle and won the legislative and local elections of that year. At the end of 2001, Senegal’s first President, Leopold Sedar Senghor (1960–80), died. He had laid the foundations of the country’s democratic system when he voluntarily stood down in 1980 at a time when few heads of state contemplated doing anything of the sort. His immediate successor and protégé, Abdou Diouf, who was out of the country, returned for Senghor’s funeral, and the incumbent president, Abdoulaye Wade, ‘claimed’ to be Senghor’s spiritual successor. In Togo President Gnassingbe Eyadéma shared with Gabon’s Bongo the perhaps dubious distinction of having been continuously in power since 1967 and was regarded as the continent’s leading ‘unreconstructed’ dictator. Although he announced that he would not run in the 2002 presidential elections, no one believed him. In the tiny island state of São Tomé and Principe the 2001 presidential elections were pronounced free and fair by observers. President Trovoada was not permitted to run a third time and Fradique de Menezes obtained 56 per cent of the vote to defeat Pinto da Costa, the leader of the Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP) (Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Principe). Menezes was leader of the Ação Democratica Independente (ADI) (Independent Democratic Action) party and he was sworn in that September. In December he dissolved the legislature and set elections for March 2002.

  After 20 years in power, Jerry Rawlings stood down as President of Ghana in January 2001, following the presidential elections of the previous December that had been won by John Agyekum Kufuor, the leader of the National Patriotic Party (NPP). The NPP also gained narrow control of the legislature, winning 52 of the 100 seats and six months after Kufuor’s accession to power Ghana’s democracy seemed relatively stable. Many Ghanaians, however, had doubted that Rawlings would go quietly. It is true that Rawlings had said in 1998, ‘My time is up. I want to obey the Constitution.’20 Cynicism about such statements was to be expected however, for too many African heads of state had made similar pronouncements and then found excuses to remain in power. Rawlings, moreover, had liquidated three previous heads of state, killed several inconvenient judges and put opponents in prison and such legacies are not easily forgotten. Judgements on Rawlings (as with other dictatorial figures in Africa) are mixed: ‘In the beginning, there was no doubt that Rawlings was a military man: he acted just like a typical African despot. But in 1992 he very noisily took off his uniform and organized democratic elections which he unsurprisingly swept; slightly more surprisingly, particularly given the evidence to the contrary, the elections were sanctioned by the international community. The dose was repeated
in 1996, although local dissent, at least, was louder.’21 In 19 years Rawlings got Ghana back on track and, despite his very shaky record on human rights, he did take a number of vital decisions that benefited the country rather than a presidential supporting elite.

  On the other side of the continent, the little states of Burundi and Rwanda experienced a decade of civil war and massacres: at the turn of the century South Africa’s elder statesman Nelson Mandela was trying to mediate reconciliation in Burundi while Rwanda was still trying to recover form the horrific events of 1994. In Somalia, which had experienced an equally traumatic decade of civil strife, the Transitional National Government (TNG) that had been established in 2000, despite recognition by the UN, had failed to establish its authority even over the whole of Mogadishu, let alone outside it. In June 2001, Kismayo produced a regional administration that declared its support for the TNG. However, no reconciliation had been achieved with the faction leaders and warlords who refused to accept the reconciliation proposed in 2000 at the Anta conference. A referendum of June 2000 in Uganda had seen 90 per cent of voters retain the country’s no-party ‘Movement’ advocated by Yoweri Museveni although pluralists condemned the referendum for creating a de facto one-party state. In the legislative elections that followed, the pro-no party ‘Movement’ won 230 of 292 seats although 50 MPs, including 10 ministers, were defeated. Then in March 2001, after a bitter campaign, Yoweri Museveni won a landslide presidential election victory, obtaining 69.3 per cent of the vote as opposed to 28 per cent for his opponent Kizza Besigye. Irregularities, mainly on behalf of Museveni, did not affect the outcome.

  No other region of the world has seen so much constitution making – or remaking – as Africa over the last 40 years and the new constitution worked out by the Constitutional Commission for Eritrea (CCE) following the end of its war of independence from Ethiopia in 1991 is worth examination. The constitution had to serve the basic aims of nation building, equitable development and stability, the building of democracy, the protection of human rights and the assurance of popular participation. However, the CCE also stressed the need to balance the rights of citizens with their duties to national unity, such that basic freedoms had to be guaranteed by a ‘democratic political culture’ and economic and cultural development. Stress was also placed on the need for firm and strong government and governmental institutions in order to create the social, economic and cultural foundation for the growth of democracy which ‘has to develop gradually, taking root through a process of struggle and change’. A multiparty system and competitive elections were viewed in a rather negative light and were described as ‘procedural as opposed to an essential’ aspect of democracy. There was need for strong leadership with clear vision for development.22 Eritrea’s new head of state Issayas Afewerki, the former war leader, became president, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, chairman of the national assembly and secretary-general of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) so that all effective power lay in his hands. There were some ‘Orwellian’ aspects to the creation of this constitution as one critic suggests: ‘…the need to create national unity devoid of past ethnic and religious tensions. The framework for this has been a relatively authoritarian government modelled on the policies and practices of the EPLF, and a recognition that whereas the EPLF instilled nationalist sentiments and values in its members, unreconstructed sub-national loyalties lurked in the hearts of broader Etritrean society.’23 A good deal of reconstruction was clearly intended. In essence this constitution represented the transition of a successful liberation movement turning itself into an exclusive ruling party. By 2001, following the war over borders with Ethiopia at the end of the 1990s, opposition to President Afewerki’s autocratic rule surfaced. A group of critics, the ‘G15’ including Mahmoud Sherifo, a former minister who had chaired a committee to prepare for elections for December 2001 (which were indefinitely postponed), drafted a report favouring political parties. However, when pre-publication copies were distributed to members of the National Assembly in February, President Afewerki dismissed Sherifo, who had been regarded as unofficial vice-president, and later had 11 of the 15 who were still in the country arrested. Dissent was clearly not to be part of Eritrean politics.

  At the end of the 1980s donors began to exert serious pressures upon Kenya’s President, Daniel arap Moi, to democratize but Moi, like other tenacious leaders, was to weave and obfuscate issues for another decade before he was finally voted out of power. At the beginning of the 1990s he referred to democracy campaigners as ‘unpatriotic people with borrowed brains’. However, in November 1991, donors suspended aid to Moi’s regime worth approximately US$1 billion, leading him to accept the reintroduction of democratic elections that December. With considerable skill Moi managed so to divide the opposition that he retained power and political control, winning the 1992 elections and surviving through the decade at the end of which he still claimed that he was the one to change the country, ‘even after 20-odd years of misrule’.24 In June 2001 Kenya’s first coalition government was formed when Moi appointed Raila Odinga, leader of the National Development Party (NDP), to the cabinet as Minister of Energy and another NDP member as Minister for Planning. In November he made Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first President, Minister for Local Government. He was trying to breathe new life into KANU against his resignation (under the terms of the constitution) that had to take place in 2002: he hoped by these appointments to keep control of the party. The elections of December 2002 finally brought an end to both Moi’s long rule and his influence. The National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), led by Mwai Kibaki, won 132 seats in the legislature against KANU’s 68, and Kibaki was elected President with 3,578,972 votes (62.3 per cent). It was the first time since the establishment of the multiparty system in 1991 that the opposition had united to present a credible challenge to Moi. According to African Business, ‘The change has been a subtle but profound alteration in the attitude of the people themselves. The NARC is a coalition of all the various peoples of Kenya and all the different classes. In previous elections, bickering and infighting among opposition parties handed victory to KANU on a plate. By uniting together, the people have succeeded in toppling the massive edifice that KANU represented… The emphasis has changed from leaders to people. Now the people will lead and will dictate terms to those they select to represent them.’25 Given past experience, this may well be too sanguine a view; at least the democratic situation in Kenya had taken a marked turn for the better. Organizing opposition to longstanding incumbents is never easy. ‘A number of factors explain the victory of unpopular incumbents in countries such as Kenya, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. One important reason in all three countries was the failure of the opposition to maintain unity and to fight the president on a single platform.’26 At last NARC had managed to remedy that fault in Kenya.

  Africa’s four Indian Ocean territories – Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar – have undergone varied political fortunes since independence. In 2001 Comoros faced a continuing stalemate over the island of Anjouan’s determination to secede that dated from 1998. In Mauritius, the most stable and economically successful of the four, elections in 2000 saw the return to power of Anerood Jugnauth of the Mauritian Socialist Movement (MSM) as Prime Minister, and Paul Berenger of the Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM) as his deputy, a combination that worked well. The island seemed set for a further period of reasonable economic progress. In Seychelles President Albert René of the Front Progressiste du Peuple Seychellois (FPPS) (Seychelles Popular Progressive Front) was re-elected for a third and final term. He had originally come to power by means of a coup in 1977 (the year after independence) but had transformed the island into a multiparty democracy in 1991. Madagascar began the new century dangerously. The close presidential election results of December 2001 led to six months of confrontation and near civil war over the first half of 2002 before Didier Ratsiraka finally accepted defeat and retired to France and Marc Ravalomanana became Pr
esident.

  Democracy had never had an easy ride in Lesotho and at the end of 2001 the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) was preparing a new electoral role for elections the following year while the opposition was riven with factions. Even so, the LCD also suffered from internal fighting and 27 members broke away to form the Lesotho People’s Congress. It seems almost a rule of thumb that the smaller an African country, the greater the likelihood of political fragmentation. In Mozambique the RENAMO opposition still refused to accept the 1999 election results that had returned FRELIMO to office. In Namibia, President Sam Nujoma had persuaded the National Assembly to change the constitution so that he could stand for a third presidential term in 2000, which he did successfully; then, early in 2001, he announced that he was prepared to run for a fourth term in 2005 although later he said he would not do so. In Swaziland the issues of democratization and liberalization continued to dominate the political scene, with the monarchist establishment pitted against the political reformers. The Constitutional Review Commission, which had been established in 1996, submitted a private report to the King in August 2001. This act in itself aroused controversy since most of the commissioners were not allowed to see it and assumed that it had been ‘doctored’. It argued that the absolute monarchy should continue and that political parties should remain banned although it did make provision for a bill of rights. The previous June the King had announced a decree enabling his government to ban any book, magazine or newspaper without providing reasons. No person or court could challenge any matter pending before the King. There was to be no bail for a range of crimes. However, pressures from the United States and COSATU in South Africa forced the King to revoke this decree although controls of the press continued unabated.