Issue No.588
International
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30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 International |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
In whose name?
Democracy seems to have come to Africa, but in fact the voice of the people is being ignored. Gamal Nkrumah writes
Kiss good-bye to those comforting illusions that democracy is thriving in contemporary Africa. Yes, a string of parliamentary and presidential polls have just been staged in a number of African countries. Yes, democracy had apparently reached countries as far afield as Sierra Leone and Mali in West Africa, Lesotho in southern Africa and in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar off the continent's south- eastern coastline. And yes, the elections mostly took place when, and where, they were supposed to. So is democracy in Africa in rude health? The answer, sadly, is an emphatic "No".
Madagascar is a case in point. Its elections have resulted in a political deadlock and old ethnic and racial tensions have flared between the people of southeast Asian descent who inhabit the central highlands around the capital, Antananarivo, and people of African descent in the coastal areas around the island's ports.
Madagascar is now in the bizarre position of having two presidents- elect: one for the highlanders in the now-besieged capital, and one for the coastal peoples entrenched in the capital's main outlet.
Africans have learned the hard way the limits of democracy. Well- funded political parties, invariably with strong Western connections, usually fare better at elections regardless of their stated political agendas or electoral promises. This is particularly clear in Madagascar. Not satisfied with being the mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, Marc Ravalomanana, a tycoon-turned-politician, contested the presidential elections and, his supporters say, won overwhelmingly. Ravalomanana was sworn in as president on 6 May, but Dedier Ratsiraka, Madagascar's president for the past 23 years, rejected the results. Ratsiraka's coastal supporters are deeply suspicious of Ravalomanana, believing he will rob them of their patrimony in favour of his highland backers. The Indian Ocean island is on the verge of being engulfed in ethnic and racial conflict.
Madagascar's experience shows clearly that "He who pays the piper calls the tune." Ravalomanana used an army of private radio and television stations, an expensive Website and a fleet of helicopters to drum up support for his cure for the country's economic ills -- a strong dose of unabashed capitalism.
But despairing that Ravalomanana's election will bring drastic improvements to their lives, the socialist-oriented workers of Ratsiraka's stronghold, Toamasina, the country's chief port, have vowed to fight him to the bitter end.
And bitter it may well be. Because for all its redoubts in places like Toamasina, socialism is a spent force and everywhere the free market is winning. It is, of course, free only in name: for all the rhetoric, it protects the freedom of the mighty, while chaining the weak with hostile subsidies, tariffs, and regulations of every kind. And its doubtful promises of economic salvation in Africa threaten to derail the nascent democratic experience and unleash a horde of social plagues. The corrosive impact on African communities of democracy in bondage to economic liberalisation augurs ill for the continent's future.
It is little good looking for salvation abroad. Deaf now to anything save its obsessions with the war on terror, good governance, multi- party democracy and individual human rights, the United States persistently refuses to admit that its African agenda is a recipe for disaster. Africans constantly remind US officials that the main reason for the continent's economic hardship is its foreign debt burden. But the US simply refuses to listen.
US Treasury-Secretary Paul O'Neill, currently on a tour of Africa, has reiterated Washington's refusal to cancel Africa's crippling debt. O'Neill also defended subsidies to US farmers, which African countries complain bar them from the US market.
O'Neill was accompanied on his 10-day tour by Irish rock star Bono, lead singer of the rock group U2. It was clear from the start of the tour that the world's most powerful finance minister had serious differences with Bono, an advocate of debt relief to poor countries, who has been active in the world campaign to cancel Africa's debt through his involvement with groups like Jubilee 2000, a coalition of non-governmental organisations and religious groups.
Yet for all the star-power mobilised on Africa's behalf, the true winners in the continent continue to be the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which have systematically tightened their strangleholds on the decision-making process. By keeping African nations in debt, they ensure that by election or coup, whoever wins power must bow to their strictures if they are to prevent their people falling deeper into poverty.
The defining trait of African democracy is that it masks the cruel peripheralisation of the bulk of the continent's people. Democracy's advocates in the US and elsewhere are complicit in the lie that because Africa's people have the right to vote, they have any say in the futures of their countries. In poor countries, political participation does not always empower the people. Governments may be voted out of office, and new administrations may be formed, but the directives of the IMF and World Bank remain the same.
In any case, the sad truth is that democracy has not yet taken root in much of Africa. True, a majority of African countries now hold multiparty elections: but the nascent democracies have yet to prove that they are working to better the lot of the poor (in Africa the majority).
Take Sierra Leone. This month's elections resulted in a landslide victory for incumbent President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, but not before British-led United Nations operation had disarmed 45,000 Sierra Leoneans who were members of opposition militias. The most powerful of these was the vehemently anti-British Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which controlled most of the country, including its lucrative diamond deposits, and stood poised to storm the capital Freetown before the British intervened at the behest of the Kabbah Administration. No doubt that administration will now continue happy and unencumbered on its free-market path -- with the help of its Western ally.
How neat and simple it all seems. In fact, it is neither. Together with Angola, Sierra Leone has the dubious distinction of having the highest per capita number of physically-handicapped people, many of whom were literally obliged to vote with their feet in the latest presidential poll. They were maimed in the protracted conflict between the government and opposition groups.
Look beyond the current euphoria about Sierra Leone, and there is a second, less optimistic, interpretation of the democratic transition in Africa. After multi-party elections in 1996 pronounced "free and fair" by the Western powers, Kabbah -- a former UN official who worked in New York, Lesotho and Tanzania -- became president of the tiny and impoverished West African nation. A 1999 peace agreement with RUF leader Foday Sankoh was scrapped and the British captured Sankoh and imprisoned him. Even as the vote was cast, Sankoh, deprived of his army, still languished in jail, largely considered a spent force.
This mood of post-electoral business as usual does not tell the whole tale. Many in Sierra Leone resent and mistrust the newly-instituted administration. The composition of the new 22-member cabinet, with ruling party stalwarts and prominent members of the civic society was not totally unexpected: but it was egregious. Kabbah kept the defence portfolio for himself, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation went to Momodu Koroma, a former presidential affairs minister, and the Interior Ministry went to Hinga Norman, leader of a pro-Kabbah militia during the civil war.
The Kabbah Administration insists that the new cabinet is one of "inclusion" which takes account of "regional balance, age and gender", and the health, trade and industry and social welfare portfolios are held by prominent women.
Yet for all that, Sierra Leone, which gained independence from Britain in 1961, and its president, rely utterly on the former imperial overlord for security and the smooth functioning of democracy. Nor can Kabbah let go the apron-strings of the former colonial master. If he does, he knows that the country will soon descend into chaos again. It is the presence of foreign troops that guaranteed the elections, and now guarantees Kabbah in power. Such a "democracy" must have shallow roots indeed. And such "democracies" are spreading all over Africa.
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