Chapter I
Introduction
Background
Contrary to the dominant view in the scholarly literature and in American and Western policy circles, the struggle for democratization and democracy in Africa is not a new phenomenon. 1 The genesis of the democratic crusade in Africa can be traced to the colonial era. 2 Since then, the struggle has gone through three cycles. The initial circle known as the “first wave” commenced after the European imperialist powers decided to colonize hitherto independent African states. During this wave, Africans organized broad national movements consisting of peoples from divergent economic, ethnic, regional, religious, and gender backgrounds. The centerpiece of the struggle was the obliteration of European colonialism and its associated vagaries of oppression, repression, discrimination, exploitation, and malaise. Eventually, the struggle paid dividends with the collapse of colonialism, and the commencement of the process of decolonization in the 1960s. The national liberation struggle, coupled with the devastating consequences of World War II, the domestic pressures within the colonial powers, and the anachronism of the colonial trading system, forced the European imperialist powers to give up their respective colonial empires. However, the Portuguese were recalcitrant and refused to conform to the trend of decolonization. Consequently, the wars of national liberation continued between them and Africans in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Principe.
Characteristically, the colonial powers undertook several measures as part of the strategy of retaining their stranglehold on Africa. The fulcrum of the strategy was the balkanization of Africa into several small states with very tenuous economic bases. The calculated purpose was to ensure that these small countries, although politically independent, would be nonviable and dependent economically. Similarly, the colonial powers bequeathed a dependent, nonhegemonic, predatory, repressive, and irrelevant state to Africa. The raison d’être of the emergent neo-colonial state was to cater to the political and economic interests of the colonial and metropolitan powers, at the expense of the interest of the African peoples. In some cases, the colonial powers handed political power to compradors who had been socialized by them.
Unfortunately, the euphoria that greeted the dawn of political independence in Africa was short-lived. A few years after the departure of the European imperialists and colonialists, the new African leaders who inherited state power made little effort to deconstruct the postcolonial state and its attendant structures and processes. Accordingly, the post-independence era witnessed the continuation of repression, oppression, exploitation, and an overall crises of underdevelopment. Ensconced in the fortress of state power, the new African leaders, like their colonial predecessors, resisted change. They viewed the control of state power as an opportunity to plunder the state coffers and personally enrich themselves, despite the pressing national development needs in agriculture, communication, education, health, housing, the infrastructure, job creation, political democracy, and technological development.
Exasperated with the failure of the postcolonial state and its kleptocratic and authoritarian regimes to spur development, the African peoples unleashed the “second wave of democratization.” Julius Ihonvbere provides an excellent description of the crises of underdevelopment that enveloped Africa after political independence:
By the mid-1960s, [African states] had degenerated to levels which were similar to or much worse than what the colonial state represented. Repression, corruption, mediocrity, violence, manipulation of primordial interests, economic decay and subservience, and the concentration of resources in a few places came to characterize African social formation. 3 Unfortunately, this “second wave” was short-lived: by the mid-1970s, it began to lose steam. This was precipitated principally by the violent response of the state. Given the states’ monopoly over the instruments of coercion and with external support, the various authoritarian regimes undertook a violent antidemocratic campaign that witnessed, inter alia, the harassment, arrest, imprisonment, death, banishment into exile, and economic strangulation of pro-democracy activists, their supporters, and relatives. However, pockets of various pro-democracy remained steadfast in the prosecution of the democratic crusade. Operating primarily from the “underground,” they continued to mobilize both within and outside various African states.
To make matter worse, the “second wave” was hijacked by military intervention in politics in countries like Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. Exploiting the grievances of the African masses and civil society, the putschists promised to end the crises of underdevelopment, and set African states on the course of democratic development. Unfortunately, after years of military rule there was no substantive change. In fact, in most cases the military became more ruthless and predatory in comparison to their civilian predecessors. For example, they suspended constitutions and their attendant guarantee of civil and human rights, and ruled by decrees. Also, they banned all political activities, thereby making it difficult for civil society to use legal means to check their abuse of power. In cases like Somalia and Uganda, the military regime militarized the society, destroyed infant institutions, and embarked on campaigns of terror that witnessed the death of scores of human rights and pro-democracy activists.
During the interregnum from the 1970s to the 1980s, some pro-democracy groups in Africa used the period to reassess the complexities of the democratic struggles and rethink their strategies. The foci included a reexamination of the nature and dynamics of the political, social, economic and cultural conditions within the various states; a reassessment of the configuration of forces; the strengthening of old alliances and the building of new ones; and the exertion of pressure on the external patrons of the various repressive African states. While progress was made in some countries in advancing the democratic struggle, cumulatively the antidemocratic regimes remained entrenched throughout the continent.
The end of the Cold War in the 1980s had critical implications for the democratic struggles in Africa. First, it removed the geo-strategic veil which the super- and major powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France—had used for more than four decades to justify their support for dictatorship and the corresponding asphyxiation of democracy in Africa. Second, it made the various authoritarian regimes in Africa expendable in terms of their strategic value to their external patrons; hence, these regimes lost the leverage they had used to ensure support from their patrons. Third, it forced the external patrons of repressive African states to rethink their policies on democratization and democracy in Africa. They determined that it was no longer in their interests to continue supporting authoritarian regimes. In other words, it became more difficult to justify to both domestic and international audiences the continual provision of “oxygen” for corrupt and ruthless regimes.
Emboldened by the new currents of the post-Cold War era, pro-democracy movements throughout African embarked on a campaign designed to end authoritarian rule. Codenamed the “third wave,” this new phase of the democratic struggle has unleashed a “political whirlwind that has, among other things, occasioned the ‘changing of the guards’ in some African countries, and the creation of the requisite ‘political space’ especially the reinvigoration of civil society.” 4 New political parties, human rights associations, pro-democracy movements, and other pro-people organizations have come to complement the struggles of students, workers, market women, farmers, professionals, and the unemployed. 5 For example, democratic elections in Malawi and Zambia led to the ouster of the quintessential tyrants Kamuzu Banda and Kenneth Kaunda, both of whom had ruled their countries since independence.
Despite some successes, the “third wave” has, and continues to experience some conundrums. First, military interventionism remains a major obstacle. For example in Burundi, the Congo, Guinea, Gambia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Sudan, the military intervened and seized control of the levers of state power. This development forced pro-democracy movements in these countries to reevaluate their strategies in order to adequately address these new realities. In particular, by arresting the process of democratization in countries like the Congo and Niger, the military reversed the gains that had been made in the democratic struggles. In the “new climate of liberalization” created by multiparty elections in the Congo and Niger, a “new political space” had been created for pro-democracy movements to operate. By truncating the process, the military regimes in these countries obliterated the gains, especially the “political space.”
Second, there is the persistence of military rule in some African countries. For example, in countries like Burkina Faso and Togo, military rule is entrenched. In fact, Presidents Blaise Campare and Gnassigbe Eyadema have transformed themselves and their regimes into “civilian” ones. Also, they have made token commitments to democratization, among other things, by allowing for the formation of rival political parties and the holding of elections. However, the Campare and Eyadema regimes have controlled the electoral process through an assortment of fraudulent acts, thereby ensuring their retention of power. For example, during the 1999 presidential election in Burkina Faso, Campare illegally used the power of incumbency to prevent the main opposition party candidate from entering the country, thus making it difficult for the latter to contest the election. In the case of Togo, the mercurial Eyadema has used the control of the Elections Commission, violence, and bribery to undercut the opposition.
Third, there is resistance to democratization and democracy from civilian authoritarian regimes in countries like Egypt, Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, and Morocco. In all these countries, systematic efforts have been and continue to be made to strangulate political pluralism, primarily by making it very difficult for opposition political parties to operate freely. Particularly, in the case of Morocco, the state is the province of the King. That is, the King has wide ranging powers that are an anathema to the promotion of the democratization enterprise.
Fourth, there have been some democratic reverses. For example in Zambia, President Frederick Chilouba, who defeated President Kenneth Kaunda in the first multiparty elections, has resorted to the use of the old authoritarian instruments. He tried to prevent President Kaunda from contesting the second democratic elections by falsely implicating him in a coup plot and trying to revoke his Zambian citizenship.
Fifth, authoritarian regimes such as the erstwhile Konan Bedie government in Côte d’Ivoire use “citizenship” as a new instrument from preventing opposition leaders from challenging them for power. For example, Alassana Quatarra, the former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire and President of the African Development Bank, experienced major state-imposed hurdles in his efforts to contest the Ivorian presidency. The then incumbent, President Bedie, argued that Quatarra could not contest the presidency because he is not a citizen of Côte d’Ivoire. (Continued, click below).
Notes
1 Democratization and democracy are two distinct but interrelated concepts. Democratization is the process of empowering people politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Democracy is a state of affairs in which people are empowered politically, economically, socially and culturally.
2 There is a widespread erroneous belief that the struggle for democratization and democracy in Africa is a recent, post-Cold War phenomenon. It is further maintained that Africa benefited from the “democratization contagion” that began to sweep across Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
3 Julius O. Ihonvbere, “‘Where Is the Third Wave?’ A Critical Evaluation of Africa’s Non-Transition to Democracy,” in John Mukum Mbaku and Julius O. Ihonvbere, Multiparty Democracy and Political Change: Constraints to Democratization in Africa (Brooksfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998), 9.
4 George Klay Kieh, Jr., “Democratization in Africa: A Balance Sheet,” in Preparing Africa for the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Mukum Mbaku (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999), 99.
5 Julius O. Ihonvbere, Economic Crisis, Civil Society, and Democratization in Zambia (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996), 125.
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