Africa

The opposition candidate, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), appears to have won a slim margin of victory in Ghana’s runoff election held last week. Both optimistic and pessimistic observers now hope that the results hold up and that no violence springs up in the wake of the final tally.  Place me in the optimist’s camp. The social indicators in Ghana bode well and there was little indication before the runoff vote that real trouble was on the horizon.  

On Sunday Ghanaians will go to the polls again to vote in their country’s presidential runoff election after neither of the two main contenders achieved 50% of the vote earlier this month in Ghana’s national elections. Nana Akufo-Addo, a lawyer running for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP)  faces off against John Atta-Mills, a law professor representing the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). Akufo-Addo received more votes the first time out with 49.1%, but national law requires the winner to receive 50% or more. In the parliamentary elections held on the same day, December 7, the NDC won 113 seats, the NPP 109. Minority parties and independents won the rest of the body’s 230 seats.

There are concerns that tensions are rising in the country and among the antagonists and fears as to how those tensions might manifest.  Events in Kenya in particular are fresh in many minds, though such fears tend to be reactive rather than based on serious analysis of the particular conditions in Ghana.

At Pambazuka News Rafael Marques de Morais has a pretty savvy commentary on September’s elections in Angola. A sample from the introduction:

I would like to share with you a perspective on the legislative elections that took place in Angola on 5 and 6 September 2008. These elections are of profound historical significance for both the country and for Africa. For Angola because they mean, first and foremost, the strengthening of peace and stability and, second, the normalisation of state institutions following a 16-year hiatus between the country’s first and second elections.

The government of Angola, through the voices of the president and other high ranking officials, has reiterated on various occasions that these elections would and have been an example for Africa. Indeed, after the troublesome elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and given Angola’s own past experience of returning to war after the 1992 elections, these proved an outstanding case.

By referring to the official results of the 2008 elections and their organisation, I shall try to answer two questions: Were these elections about democracy? And what lessons can the Angolan elections provide in the African context?

The article provides sound insight both into what bodes well in Angola and where more work needs to be done, and in so doing avoids the pitfalls of both Afropessimism and rose-colored optimism.

Provisional results from the elections in Ghana are trickling in slowly, and the presidential race in particular appears to be incredibly close. In the early accounting, the opposition candidate, John Evans Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Party, has a slight lead on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its candidate, Dr. Nana Akufo-Addo. Let us hope that calm and reason prevail in the days to come, especially if the race continues to be close, as most expect.

Ghanaians are preparing to go to the polls this weekend in what should be a closely contested and vitally important election. The African Studies Centre at Leiden has a useful dossier providing an overview of the election and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) has put together election guides for both the presidential and parliamentary polls.

Ghana is gearing up for a presidential and parliamentary election this weekend. The West African country that became the first to break the shackles of colonialism is now seen as one of Africa’s success stories. With oil riches on the way by 2010 the stakes are high. Can Ghana avoid the so-called oil curse and continue along its trajectory of recent years? If so it will prove doubly to be a model in the region.

In The Star, Mosibudi Mangene wonders about the state of South Africa’s democracy, with Zimbabwe as the looming warning post. The Zimbabwe analogy is, I suppose, a logical one (just as those who wanted to make sense of the Zimbabwe election fiasco looked to Kenya, and those wanting to understand Kenya looked elsewhere as well). But it is also a facile analogy. If South Africa fails — and I do not believe that it will — it will not be because of its correlation with Zimbabwe, but rather because of failings of its own.

Is there hope for an abatement of political violence in Kenya’s ongoing crisis? Despite more deaths in clashes between protesters and police, allegations of banditry, and fears of ethnic cleansing, guarded optimism may be in order as international appeals coupled with Kofi Annan’a active intervention appears to have led to an agreement between President Mwai Kibaki, whose dubious victory in a highly contested election fueled the current nightmare, and the opposition and its leader Raila Odinga. (The Council on Foreign Relations has a useful background primer on Kenyan politics.)

But the emphasis should be on “guarded.” Leaders who allow violence to be unleashed oftentimes find that their ability to marshal that violence becomes limited if nonexistent. Anarchy as a method of control, so popular among Big Men, has a way of spiralling out of control. Once convinced that one group of people is an enemy and violence is the only course of redress, even the most ardent followers will be tough to convince that violence should cease if the alleged enemy is still among them. Demogoguery, cult of personality, the unleashing of terror (and not the hackneyed “tribalism” that some are so quick to attribute when things go awry in Africa) — these things tend to get away from those who choose to use them as means and methods.

It almost certainly comes as a shock to absolutely no one that Robert Mugabe has acted in bad faith and announced unilaterally (even as he has been in the midst of negotiations with the factions of the Movement for Democratic Change) that elections will be held on March 2. Now the MDC is scrambling to figure out what to do. Their options are circumscribed: The opposition can choose to boycott the elections, guaranteeing another Mugabe victory, which the wily tyrant will depict as a mandate, or to participate in elections that are pretty certain to be a sham, in which Mugabe secures victory, thus claiming a mandate. This frustrating hobson’s choice encapsulates the frustration of politics in Robert Mugabe’s brutocracy.

Stephanie Hanson, news editor for the Council on Foreign Relations, recently interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC’s most visible leader. Tsvangirai gives thoughtful answers to questions on a host of issues, though at time the hopelessness of the opposition’s plight seems almost tangible in his words. He expressed his wish for the world’s response to the situation in Zimbabwe:  “The elections that are forthcoming in Zimbabwe must be raised to the same level like Darfur. There must be an international outcry.” But what has the west’s supposed outcry (which frankly seems rather muted and is by any measure ineffectual) accomplished in Darfur? About as much as it has in Zimbabwe.

Tyrants only know one language, and that is the universal lingua franca of power. Power does not have to mean force, though force is never far from power. Until Mugabe is forced to change, to relent, or to cede control, he will do none of those things. The same can be said for Omar al-Bashir and the thugs he empowers in Darfur. Hand wringing is not enough. It never is.

Tomorrow Kenyans go to the polls. In what is becoming an increasingly intense campaign (in what has almost certainly been the most open election in Kenya’s history) it appears that the opposition, led by 62-year-old Raila Odinga — a  businessman and former political prisoner, is pulling ahead of President Mwai Kibaki, who has held office since 2002, and may well win. Both men are vital figures in the history of post-independence Kenya, and Africa observers are watching closely, even as evidence of strong-armed machinations emerge, to see if the election goes smoothly, and if the loser and his supporters go down without fomenting violence. Certainly it appears that a new, more sophisticated, money-driven politics has emerged in Kenya. It remains to be seen if this has a deleterious effect on the country’s political culture.

There is a subtext to this election, and to the political situation in Kenya generally, which is that as with much of the region, Islam is playing an increasing role in politics. Not problematic in and of itself, the rise of Islam nonetheless has seen accompany it strains of radical Islam, which does warrant scrutiny. Thus the west, and especially the United States, will likely be paying increasing attention to events in Kenya and elsewhere.

The problem is that when the United States and the rest of the West intervenes in Africa out of self interest African interests almost always fall by the wayside. This is yet another reason why many of us wish the United States would develop a comprehensive policy toward Africa, and not one based merely on self-interest, temporal concerns, piecemeal approaches, and half-baked understandings. That is unlikely to happen, of course, and so one can imagine sloppy, divisive, detrimental US policy emerging in response to the perceived threat of Islam in Africa that will inevitably do more harm than good and that will do little to address legitimate dangers of radicalism.