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DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
For advocates of a necessary authoritarian passageway to modernity of an earlier epoch, the two clinching arguments were economic development and containment of cultural pluralism. Only a developmental dictatorship could marshal the resources and national energies required to achieve rapid growth. The incubus of politicized ethnicity could only be exorcised by denying it the political space for mobilization. These claims merit revisiting after the experience of two decades of democratic transitions in nearly all of Africa. Although the greatest number of emergent regimes fall into the semidemocratic (or semiauthoritarian) categories, as I have argued, even with circumscribed liberalization the openings for an awakened civil society are sufficient to impose a degree of accountability. Such regimes cannot enjoy the unencumbered autonomy from society anticipated by the bureaucratic-authoritarian state model. In my reading, although ten fully autocratic polities remain (see table 6.1), none of them stand out as exemplars of effective development, although Equatorial Guinea, Angola, and Libya enjoy the huge advantage of large oil revenues and relatively small populations.
A backward glance should suffice to puncture the claims of developmental dictatorships in Africa; during the decades when such patterns of state organization were predominant, economic growth figures continued to decline, culminating in the absolute shrinkage of the 1980s. Between 1977 and 1985, across the continent per capita GDP declined by 15%.54 The only two countries that clearly and consistently deviated from this trend were Botswana and Mauritius, the sole continuous liberal democracies on the continent. Since 1990, and especially since 2000, African economic performance has improved. Among the most virtuous performers are several from the roster of table 6.1 democracies: Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa. One hesitates to make the contrary assertion that democratic opening clearly fosters improved developmental performance. But statistical analysis by Adam Przeworeski and Fernando Limongi does demonstrate that relatively low levels of economic development are not an insuperable barrier to democratization, though they make consolidation more problematic.55
DEMOCRACY AND CULTURAL PLURALISM
The management of cultural diversity within the setting of competitive multiparty politics is a challenge, to which I return in chapter 8.56 In the post–cold war world in which socialist ideologies have been globally discredited, defining a distinct ideological niche as a means of distinguishing political parties becomes problematic. Perhaps surprisingly, given the negative image of SAPs, parties have by and large avoided populist appeals to reverse economic re form or to a return to statism. Thus ethnic or religious identity stands out as a key marker, readily mobilized for political ends. The likelihood of political competition acquiring an ethnic coloration is enhanced by the sheer dramaturgy of the election process. Though a fluid and ongoing process of social construction, political ethnicity translates into metaphorical kinship, with its powerful emotional tug.57
The drafters of the new transition constitutions were keenly aware of this difficulty. In most cases, constitutional prohibitions were erected against formal incorporation of ethnicity or religion as bases for party membership. Various other devices were employed to ensure that a party could not gain power on the basis of a pure regional appeal, such as the Kenyan requirement that presidential candidates win at least 25% of the vote in six of the eight provinces and the similar Nigerian stipulation calling for at least a quarter of the vote in two-thirds of the states. Another mechanism was a proof of broadly distributed membership to secure registration as a political party. Proportional representation was far more widely employed than in the independence constitutions, in the belief that it better assured equitable parliamentary representation for the range of ethnic communities.58
In a number of countries, the salience of ethnicity was limited by the existence, even in a multiparty setting, of a single dominant movement; this was the case in Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Mali, and Botswana, among others. In several of the clearly democratic countries (Ghana, Mali, Mauritius, and Senegal), multiparty competition including alternation of winning party did not activate intense ethnic animosities. Conversely, in two of the four instances of 2009 failed states in table 6.1, the population is culturally homogeneous (Comoros and Somalia). The fuel for persistent paralyzing conflict lay at a lower level of identity (the three islands for Comoros, the clan hierarchy in Somalia).
Religion as an identity system poses somewhat different challenges. Where the religious proportions of Muslims and Christians are nearly equal (Nigeria, Ethiopia), fears of subordination to the theological dictates of the other readily arise: witness the apprehensions in southern Nigeria triggered by the adoption of shari’a in the criminal codes of a dozen northern Nigerian states following the democratic transition, or the spread of the violent Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in 2011–12. In northern Africa, fears about the democratic commitments of Islamic parties after electoral triumph lie close to the surface and have long operated to keep authoritarian currents flowing among incumbents. Ghassan Salamé argues that such concerns necessitate that transition be accompanied by a firm pact binding the major political forces to guarantee that democratization did not lead to Islamist autocracy.59 But in most of Africa religious difference has not posed a major challenge to post-transition stability.
DISRUPTED TRANSITIONS
Still, in five of the fifteen cases in which democratic transitions were interrupted or aborted, violent conflicts linked to cultural pluralism were implicated. In Algeria, the 1992 military intervention to block the Islamist party FIS from an electoral victory brought a decade of civil war and one hundred thousand deaths. In Congo-Brazzaville, the street warfare that broke out in 1993 and again in 1997 between three ethnopolitical militias tied to leading politicians led directly to the breakdown.60 In Ivory Coast, northern soldiers mutinied and seized the northern half of the country in 2002, leading to years of paralysis and to a derailment of a return to an elected government. In Kenya, though constitutional continuity was in the end preserved, the failed 2007 elections triggered the worst ethnic violence since independence.
By far the most serious of the disruptions of democratic transitions were the horrendous genocides in Burundi and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994. The latent risk of violent escalation inherent to ethnic difference was several orders of magnitude greater in these two polities because of the bipolarity of mobilized identities, the historical hierarchy enshrining dominance of the smaller group, and the cultural mythologies surrounding their difference. Dubious racial theories that gained currency in colonial times portrayed Tutsi as a superior stock of Ethiopian origin; Hutu riposted with the claim that Tutsi were an alien race of invaders, usurping the natural rights accruing to indigeneity. Interestingly, the two postgenocide (and postconflict) regimes drew diametrically opposed conclusions from the catastrophic experiences. In Rwanda, a Hutu autocracy was replaced by a semiauthoritarian regime under the tight control of Tutsi immigrants from the refugee diaspora; Paul Kagame rules with limited tolerance for dissent but sustains the indispensable flow of external assistance through careful cultivation of Western guilt over failure to halt the genocide and unusually competent management of the state domain. In Burundi, the former Tutsi regime, after a decade of civil war, was replaced by a delicately balanced consociationalism that established ethnic quotas applicable to the ministries, parliament, the army officers, and top bureaucrats. Parliamentary membership must be 60% Hutu, 40% Tutsi. One national election under this formula was successfully held; the second, in 2010, was the focus of angry controversy. The durability of this formula remains to be seen. The terrible public memories of unending ethnic violence perhaps help sustain a tenuous peace but cannot guarantee that past nightmares will not recur.
Two decades after the democratic transition began, uncertainties remain about its future. Coups still occur: there have been four between 2006 and 2010, in Guinea, Madagascar, Mauritania, and Niger. However, the c
onstraints imposed by the global environment are much greater than in the past. The AU ban on coups and the immediate suspension of countries where they occur from the organization have a certain impact, even if indulgence is shown to the perpetrators if they summon elections. Mauritania is a case in point; the military junta that seized power in 2008 had no intention of subjecting itself to a competitive election until AU mediators led by Senegal compelled it to do so. However, readmission to respectable society at once followed when coup leader General Mohamed Ould Abadallahi easily won the balloting. AU troops invaded Comoros in 2008 to reverse a coup on one of the islands. The AU and SADC refused to recognize the 2009 Madagascar coup and forced the insurgent leader Andry Ralijaona into still unresolved negotiation with ousted president Marc Ravalomanana and other former leaders. Much of the international community as well initially continued to recognize the former ruler and suspended its large assistance program. As noted at the outset, the continuing weakness of most states raises the stakes on presentability. There is a broad range of toleration for semidemocracy or even semiauthoritarianism, but respectability requires at least formal democratization, whose badge is multiparty elections.
Particularly disconcerting was the trend toward subverting electoral outcomes that appeared with the 2007 Kenyan and 2008 Zimbabwean voting. The capacity of incumbents through dilatory maneuver to eventually remain in office despite evident electoral defeat under a “national unity government” formula negotiated with external mediation in effect conferred an international blessing evading voter verdict. These unfortunate precedents likely encouraged Ivory Coast incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to cling to usurped power in November 2010 despite internationally certified election returns showing a clear majority for Alassane Ouattara. This time, however, the international community and most of the AU refused to recognize the Gbagbo usurpation and eventually intervened militarily in April 2011 on the side of Ouattara forces to install the elected president.61
THE THIRD WAVE OF DEMOCRACY EVALUATED
Though the evidence if far too mixed for categorical conclusions, nonetheless I would share on balance the cautiously positive overall reading of several recent analysts. A group of Ghanaian scholars in an appraisal of the first decade of democratization after 1993 concludes that “not all needs have been satisfied by the liberal state but it cannot be disputed that peace, stability, transparency, accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law have been its enduring features.”62 Long-standing Ghana specialist K. C. Morrison finds a stable structure of two-party competition taking root, accompanied by alternating winners in the current constitutional regime.63 Linda Beck in a carefully qualified monograph on Senegalese politics finds that even though political society is permeated by clientelism the country merits its reputation as a democracy, demonstrated by the graceful acceptance of defeat by long-standing president Abdou Diouf in 2000 and then by his successor Abdoulaye Wade in 2012.64 The seminal recent study by Lindberg of elections in Africa argues that detailed review of the data gives grounds for “measured optimism.” He notes that forty-seven of forty-eight sub-Saharan states were in the process of planning or already holding participatory, competitive, and legitimate elections. Elections, he argues, “not only signify democracy; they breed democracy, through the self-reinforcing, self-improving quality of repetitive elections.”65 Richard Sandbrook concludes his appraisal of democratization by suggesting that, given the obstacles, some impressive successes are evident; even “low intensity democracy” is still an improvement.66
These judgments draw support from the survey data provided by Afrobarometer, gathered a decade ago in a dozen countries and now collected in twenty. A 2009 briefing paper found that in the twenty countries surveyed, support for democracy averaged 70%. Military rule, one-party systems, and strongman government were rejected by large majorities. Demand for democracy, although it declined for a time late in the 1990s, is on an upward curve. Some 59% believed that their own countries were substantially democratic. Some of these findings are detailed in table 6.2.67
Perhaps the most important lesson to draw from the African “third wave” of democratization is that success over time is possible, and that setbacks are not fatal. Consolidation of democracy is a protracted process, a long march toward a better future. Reversals will continue to occur, but a widespread return to patrimonial autocracy is unlikely. One may recall the puckish response of former president Dawda Jawara of Gambia to an interview question from John Wiseman as to why it was important to maintain a democratic system. “If you look at the alternatives, I think you can see why,” replied Jawara, echoing the oft-cited aphorism of Winston Churchill that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others.68
TABLE 6.2. African Perspectives on Democracy, Twenty Countries, 2008 (Percentages)
Country Support for Democracy Perceived Extent of Democracy Rejection of Military Rule
Benin 81 76 73
Botswana 85 91 89
Burkina Faso 58 51 50
Cape Verde 81 71 79
Ghana 78 83 78
Kenya 78 43 94
Lesotho 46 37 75
Liberia 72 63 78
Madagascar 39 36 66
Malawi 74 56 84
Mali 72 60 61
Mozambique 59 59 63
Namibia 64 73 67
Nigeria 72 42 74
Senegal 70 37 69
South Africa 67 48 67
Tanzania 72 74 90
Uganda 79 54 78
Zambia 83 66 91
Zimbabwe 66 14 84
SOURCE: Constructed from data in Afrobarometer Briefing Paper no. 67, May 2009. On “support for democracy,” the question posed was “Which of these three statements is closest to your own opinion?” (1) Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. (2) In some circumstances a nondemocratic government can be preferable. (3) For someone like me, it doesn’t matter what form of government we have.
On “perceived extent of democracy,” the question was “In your opinion, how much of a democracy is your country today?” Included in the percentage figure are responses indicating that full or almost full democracy exists.
Regarding “rejection of military rule,” the wording of the question was “There are many ways to govern a country. Would you disapprove or approve of the following alternative? The army comes in to govern the country.” The percentage figure includes those disapproving.
As the second half century of the African independence era that began in 1960 opened at the beginning of 2011, the astonishing overthrow of longstanding dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya by urban popular protest (followed by armed insurgency in Libya) demonstrated the vitality of democratic aspirations among the citizenry. Once street action gained momentum, armies declined to intervene in Tunisia and Egypt, and the enormous, detested security police apparatus proved powerless to halt popular uprisings.69 Seemingly entrenched and invincible authoritarian regimes can suddenly implode. Still, even the imperfect, hyphenated forms of democracy offer a more hopeful pathway. But so also can apparently successful instances of democratization prove subject to sudden and unexpected reversals, as illustrated by the 2012 military coup in Mali.
In retrospect, one might argue that the essence of the 1990 transition was away from authoritarianism rather than to full democracy.70 In the new openings for civil society, often courageous human rights activists combat repressive acts. A freer press illuminates regime malfeasance. Judicial institutions acquire more scope to uphold the rule of law. In many small ways, the political and economic liberalization since 1990, however limited in many cases, opens new space for autonomous activity. Even though the democratization surge falls far short of the most optimistic visions of that moment, in my reading its salutary effects are measured in the distance between the despairing pessimism about African prospects at the depth of the state crisis in the late 1980s and the far more sanguine outlook today.
PART THREE
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7
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Morphology of Violent Civil Conflict
Here, then, is one of the reasons for the near indestructibility of the idea of the post-colonial state. Those who disarranged and nearly destroyed its physical machinery were the most ardent bearers of its ideal. It was thus sustained as a focus and an object of conflict, even where there seemed to be no limit to the disintegration of its material organization and assets.
—Sam C. Nolutshungu, 1996
EXPLORING VIOLENT CONFLICT
Violent civil conflict has been part of the African landscape since the 1950s, though its forms have radically altered. Armed liberation struggle played an important role in the drama of African independence, although sustained guerrilla challenge to colonial rule occurred in only a few territories. In the first three postcolonial decades, civil wars appeared here and there, a first wave in the 1960s generated by abortive decolonizations, inadequate postindependence institutional frames, or separatist movements. An additional set of insurgencies emerged in the 1980s, a product of state crisis. But following the reconfiguration of global and African political parameters in the 1990s, with widespread state crisis, the democracy wave, and the end of the cold war, protracted internal wars ignited over broad stretches of the continent. In a number of respects, these conflicts were driven by novel factors, reflecting the changing political landscape since 1960. The at times high levels of violence and the degree of victimization of civil populations often gave a starkly negative image to the post-1990 rebel movements that stood in bald contrast to the heroic cast of the liberation movements that led the independence struggle.1 The Nolutshungu epigraph points to one of the paradoxes; state destruction was a frequent consequence but not a purpose of their combat.2