B009THJ1WI EBOK

by Young, Crawford

  However, by the late 1990s ominous trends were apparent. Investment shortfalls, unfavorable export prices, and soaring urban unemployment eroded ZANU-PF support, especially in the towns; in the words of William Tordoff, “ZANU-PF had become little more than a Shona peasant party, with little or no urban or union support.”40 The decision to dispatch twelve thousand troops to Congo-Kinshasa in 1998 to help rescue the Laurent Kabila regime, which was faced with an invasion by a new insurgent force organized by Rwanda and Uganda, saved Kabila and brought lucrative business opportunities to top Zimbabwean officers and some Mugabe allies, but the half-decade deployment meant heavy costs for the treasury (an estimated $1 billion).41 Mugabe attempted to deflect the vocal discontents of some thirty thousand unemployed former guerrilla fighters by making extravagant payoffs in 1997, a further large drain.

  By the end of the 1990s, trouble for Mugabe had broken out on new fronts. In 1999, a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), emerged and quickly won broad union, urban and Matabeleland support. An effort to reinforce presidential powers by constitutional amendment in 2000 lost badly in a referendum, a humiliating defeat. Mugabe responded by encouraging “war veterans” and ZANU-PF rural youth (Green Bombers) to invade many of the white-owned large farms. According to Scott Taylor, “by 2002 over 80 percent of Zimbabwe’s 4,500 white-owned commercial farms had been forcibly seized. The chaotic, corrupt, and violent ‘solution’ to Zimbabwe’s historical landownership disparities has precipitated economic collapse and contributed to the prevailing environment of lawlessness.”42 By 2009, nearly all the white commercial farms had been seized without compensation and a number of farmers killed in the process. Worse, many of the seized farms passed into the hands of Mugabe cronies rather than to African smallholders (though a number did benefit) or to the three hundred thousand African farm workers who were major victims of this lawless operation. Hyperinflation gathered force; life expectancy, an enviable sixty-one in 1991, fell to thirty-nine in 2004. In an environment of rising violence, the ruling party fared poorly in the 2000 parliamentary elections, winning sixty-two seats to fifty-seven for the MDC, which swept the cities. The 2002 presidential elections were far worse; the Mugabe triumph has been described as “a sham, littered with censure, violence, intimidation, presumed vote rigging, and refusal to accept international observers.”43

  In simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections in 2008, the MDC in the face of a climate of rural violence and intimidation actually won a parliamentary plurality with a small allied fraction, and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai led Mugabe in the first round of presidential balloting. With the Green Bombers on a rampage in the countryside, Tsvangirai felt constrained to boycott the second round, leaving Mugabe with an empty victory on a tiny turnout. By this time, Zimbabwe had become a failed state; schools and many rural clinics were closed because staff salaries were worthless and commercial life was paralyzed by hyperinflation that reached 9,030,000% by mid-2008. The GDP had shriveled by 60% over the previous decade.44 Millions—perhaps a third of the population—had fled the country. Only an inner core of ZANU-PF securocrats and Mugabe political henchmen remained to exploit the remnants of the state domain.

  Mediation by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) finally brought a precarious power-sharing transitional regime into being in early 2009, with Mugabe retaining the presidency and Tsvangirai becoming premier. However, Mugabe has contravened the delicate balance intended by the compromise by retaining full control of the security agencies, arresting MDC parliamentarians, and continuing farm invasions and other rural violence. Still, Tsvangarai has managed to achieve control over the finance ministry, has abandoned the worthless Zimbabwe currency in favor of the dollar and rand, has restored a degree of operationality to schools and clinics, and has brought cautious hope in some quarters that a functioning state outside its security core can be rebuilt. The institutional remains of a once efficacious government can provide the vessel for state restoration; the Zimbabwe descent into a failed polity only occurred during the past decade, and the resource base is ample. For such a restoration to occur, the promised new reformed constitution, internationally credible elections, and an end to the Mugabe grip on ultimate power are preconditions. So also is large-scale international assistance, available only with restoration of a legitimate regime. Democracy once again offers the only exit strategy.

  MANAGING ELECTORAL CONFLICT

  In one important respect, the Zimbabwe crisis that came to a head with the 2008 contested elections is illustrative of a broader African dilemma: how to manage the high tensions resulting from closely divided or disputed electoral outcomes. Electoral crises shaking the political system to its core have punctuated the postdemocratic transition era in Niger, Nigeria, and Kenya; in 2010 Ivory Coast joined this list. The heated, divisive, and violent episodes that followed bear witness to the possible perils in democratic consolidation. The dramaturgy embedded in electoral process is enacted in a theater of conflict. Political parties acquire collective personalities, perhaps including ethnic, regional, or religious components. The campaign is a ritualized combat, accompanied by a crescendo of expectations and apprehensions. The adversary is readily suspected of violating the rules of battle. In mobilizing supporters, the temptation arises to secure the party with youth militias. The prize—control of the state with its imagined rewards—assumes greater value as the election date nears; defeat means calamitous exclusion. The final moments awaiting the result are thus fraught with tension. Defeat in this mood of escalated competitive tensions inevitably appears cataclysmic; the search for explanation turns quickly to malpractice by the adversary in its numerous possible forms. Acceptance of defeat when the margin is narrow is especially difficult, the more so if the conduct of the election falls short of the “free and fair” gold standard. Given the intrinsic logistical hazards in the complex tasks of registration of voters, supervision of the campaigns, conduct of the balloting, and tabulation of the vote, not to mention infrastructure limitations, the flawless election is probably beyond reach in African circumstances. A remarkable aspect of the democratic transitions is the number of elections that have been relatively well conducted, more than those that have fallen short. But the crises triggered by a failed election impose high costs on the polity.

  In Niger, electoral conflicts have produced repeated breakdowns. At issue has been not the conduct of the election but unmanageable divisions ensuing from closely divided results; in the decade that followed the 1991 national conference that drove military ruler Ali Saibou from power, the country experienced no less than four constitutions, three transitions, two military coups, and four heads of state.45 The initial transition constitution provided for an elected president and a prime minister responsible to parliament. The pretransition ruling party, the Mouvement national pour la société et le développement, won the largest number of parliamentary seats (twenty-nine of eighty-three), with three other parties sharing most of the rest in the first 1993 elections. Although its presidential candidate, Mamadou Tandja, led the presidential poll with 34%, the other parties formed an alliance on the second round to block his victory. As a result, the president and prime minister were from different parties, a prescription for the impasse that swiftly followed. New elections in 1995 reproduced the same impasse, leading to a military coup in 1996 led by Colonel Ibrahim Mainassare Baré. A new constitution was adopted, and Baré created a new party, the Front pour la restauration et la défense de la démocratie. By dubious means, Baré declared himself president following the ensuing elections, a power seizure the opposition refused to accept. After three years of constitutional maneuvering, Baré was assassinated by his presidential guard, and a new army ruler seized power, Major Douada Mallam Wanke.

  Finally, with yet another new constitution in place, Mamadou Tandja again contested the presidency, winning 32%; however, on this occasion he found an ally during the second round and became a clearly legitimate head of state. H
e was reelected for a second term in 2004, this time winning 41% in the first round, securing enough allies in the second to triumph and sustain a working relationship with parliament. During these years of stability and constitutional rule, Niger experienced modest prosperity, and its uranium mining sector has shown signs of growth. However, in 2009 Tandja sought a constitutional amendment to extend his term; when parliament and the constitutional court rejected his request, he dissolved both, rammed through a referendum to approve his power seizure and once again returned Niger to impasse, renewed autocracy, and the likelihood of further instability in the near future. A widely welcomed military coup soon followed; the army rulers have won approval for a new constitution, and by 2011 widely accepted elections had been held and a further democratic transition had taken place.

  Even more damaging was the calamitous failure of the 2007 Kenya elections. There was reason to hope that Kenya would serve as model for a political learning process in electoral management. Staffan Lindberg’s careful study of African elections, written before the 2007 failure, suggests Kenya is one of several countries where a virtuous cycle of progressively strengthened democracy in reiterated elections through adaptation and learning has been visible. “Elites,” he writes, “seem to adjust their behavior and strategies accordingly with increasing experience with elections,” as fear and mistrust “is slowly replaced by more-peaceful coexistence, acceptance, and competition.”46 Unfortunately, the Kenyan elites failed to follow this script in 2007.

  In the first two multiparty elections in 1992 and 1997, long-time autocrat Daniel arap Moi won electoral mandates as KANU party leader by muscular means but still narrow margins. The 1992 campaign was marred by serious ethnic clashes in the Rift Valley pitting Masai and Kalenjin warriors against Kikuyu settlers. This region, a site of large white settler estates in colonial times, had once been pastoral grazing land. Kikuyu came to the estates initially as squatters in the colonial period and even more came after independence. With land reform providing for individual or corporate ownership, many individuals or land partnerships acquired titles. Top politicians in the Moi entourage fomented the conflict, their lingering Kalenjin resentments at what they regarded as Kikuyu intrusion providing ready fuel. An underlying motivation in provoking these clashes was to demonstrate the dangers of ethnic conflict detonated by electoral competition.47 This tragedy was reenacted on a much larger scale following the failed 2007 elections.

  A Moi effort to remove the two-term limit in the transition constitution failed, and the 2002 elections took place in an open field and in a reconfigured political party universe. Not only did Moi disappear from the scene, but his KANU party lost power for the first time since 1962 independence. The elderly Mwai Kibaki won the presidency based on an unstable coalition of fifteen parties, the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which broke apart soon after the election. Although money flowed freely in the campaign and the en demic corruption plaguing Kenya was manifest in the competition, the election was free of major flaws and its results enthusiastically accepted. Kenya seemed on a pathway to democratic consolidation.

  However, the 2007 election proved instead a major setback; the bitterly disputed result and wave of ensuing violence wreaked havoc on Kenya’s political stability and economic prosperity. As the election came onto the political horizon by 2005, the three hundred parties in the competition entered into an ever-shifting set of alliances; most were the personal followings of diverse “big men,” with core constituencies that were local and ethnic. The key prize, the presidency, required a plurality plus at least 25% in six of the eight provinces; thus any winning coalition had to have strong support from at least one of the two largest groups, Kikuyu (40%) and Luo (15%). The two leading candidates, Kibaki and the perennial contender Raila Odinga, were allies in NARC in the 2002 election defeating KANU but split soon after; Odinga led a coalition in 2005 that became the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and that, in a referendum that year, rejected a Kibaki-tailored proposed new constitution by 57–43%. The main objections were to enhanced presidential powers and to regional decentralization.

  The 2007 campaign opened with a large field of contenders, a plethora of parties awaiting regrouping in alliances broad enough to win the presidency. These coalitions were virtually unconstrained by ideological difference, beyond the decentralization issue. As van de Walle has observed, in most African multiparty settings “political cleavages are not well-set, and identity politics typically trumps ideology. As a result, political alliances are more fluid and changing, and individual politicians have a greater degree of autonomy in the deals and alliances they make to gain political power.”48 The final crystallization of leading candidates and coalitions emerged only a few months before the elections. Kibaki assembled the Party of National Unity, comprising KANU and the three wealthiest Kikuyu families linked with the old Kenyatta party. Odinga reconfigured his ODM to assemble a large fraction of the smaller ethnic groups in western Kenya and the coast.

  An important new feature of this competition was the key role played by election polls, which have become salient only in the last decade. Their credibility was greatly enhanced by their remarkable accuracy in predicting the results of the 2005 constitutional referendum. In the weeks leading up to the December 2007 polling, Odinga moved into a narrow lead. In the final survey published by the leading pollster, Odinga had 45% and Kibaki 43%. However, in the results officially announced, these figures were reversed; Kibaki claimed a lead of 230,000 votes out of 9.8 million cast. The ODM at once denounced the results as fraudulent and rigged; its followers took to the streets in violent protest. Ethnic fighting broke out on a large scale, especially in the Rift Valley, this time not only in the countryside but also the towns. Weeks passed before the violence could be tamped down. Over a thousand were killed and a quarter of a million displaced.

  The conviction of many Kenyans that the announced results were falsified was intensified by the fact that they were at odds with the final surveys by polling agencies. Also rendering the Kibaki victory claim suspect was his replacement of five of the members of the national electoral commission a few months before the election. As Tom Wolf has observed, one possible impact of the seeming accuracy of the polls was the revelation that the required doctoring of the results was small, the polls offering clear guidance as to how many votes needed to be added. Another poll six months after the election showed that 57% of Kenyans believed that Odinga had won, and only 25% believed that Kibaki had been really elected.49 This opinion is shared by most international observers.

  An imperfect resolution to the crisis took many weeks and the mediation of former UN general secretary Kofi Annan. Kibaki retained a damaged presidency, with Odinga as prime minister. But the harm was done, and an opportunity for democratic consolidation had been squandered. A very harmful precedent was set as well in the country accepting a probably fraudulent outcome. At the same time, this election, like those in Niger and Zimbabwe, illustrated the special tensions arising from hotly disputed contests decided by very narrow margins in a context in which building democracy remains a work in progress.

  The 2007 Nigerian elections were yet another body blow to the credibility of the electoral process. Although over time most grudgingly conceded the presidential chair to the announced victor, Umaru Yar’Adua, the European Union’s declaration that the elections were “not credible” echoed the convictions of most observers, Nigerians and outsiders. The announced results showed Yar’Adua with 24.6 million votes, compared to the 2.6 million of runner-up Muhammadu Buhari, a margin too large to dispute the winner, although suspect in its size. But the colossal corruption, disorganization, and thuggery surrounding the conduct of the election denied any legitimacy to the process.

  The 1999 transition election that ended military rule and brought former general Obafemi Obasanjo to power as the first southern head of state since 1979 was marred by fraud, like almost all previous postcolonial Nigerian balloting. The Obasanjo reelection i
n 2003 was more deeply flawed, although the outcome was not contested. But the scale of the malpractice in 2007 was much worse, as “godfathers” who bought and sold entire state legislatures visibly emerged and armed youth militias were incorporated as party auxiliaries.50 The violent student “cults” that infest university campuses often provided the muscle, as did violent local vigilante groups such as the “Bakassi Boys” in other cases.51 A vice-presidential candidate explained the mechanism to a Human Rights Watch interviewer: “Earlier I had 20 boys here to see me. If anyone attacks me my boys will unleash terror. . . . I help them to secure a little patronage from government or to start small businesses. . . . It is not possible to start a campaign without your boys.”52

  After protracted deliberation, the high court rejected a challenge to the outcome. However, elections in several states were annulled by the courts. Lacking the standing and mandate that a legitimate election would have provided, Yar’Adua’s capacity for leadership of a large and fractious country was compromised and was further diminished when he became seriously ill, dying in 2010. Confronted with endemic violence and well-armed insurgent militias in the oil-producing Niger Delta and violent Islamic sects in the north, an embattled nation has paid a heavy ransom for the inability to manage a credible national election.53 The 2011 elections, under the able management of electoral commissioner Attahiru Jega, were a substantial improvement.