Africa

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.

The African Elections Database is an invaluable resource (and a dangerously seductive time-waster). I would strongly encourage you to bookmark it, and I am adding it to the (still under construction) blogroll.

Recent polling data indicates that South Africans simply have no real sense of who Kgalema Motlanthe is or what he stands for. This is exactly as Jacob Zuma would like it, as a cipher as placeholder in the office of the president only strengthens Zuma’s claim on the position. The Congress of the People is poised to present enough of a challenge to the ANC that name recognition will be a huge factor in the 2009 election. The ANC is thus going to rely on both the brand name and emphasize the good elements of Zuma’s renown while at the same time planting the seed in the minds of voters that COPE is an unknown quantity.

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.

[Crossposted from a much longer post on the Zimbabwe situation at the FPA Africa Blog.] 

While South Africa maintains its wary silence on the elections, the ANC has issued a predictable and unexceptional statement asking Zimbabweans of all parties to respect the results, however they turn out. One hopes this boilerplate does not ask Zimbabweans to respect any results just because the government announces them however. By playing so close to the vest it is tough to determine precisely where the government and the ruling party stand. Finally, Desmond Tutu has weighed in, praising Mugabe’s legacy in a perhaps transparent attempt to soften Tutu’s request for Mugabe to step down peacefully.

Two interesting developments in the Zimbabwe election campaign. The first is that it appears that many of Simba Makoni’s supporters are hedging their bets, quietly supporting the upstart candidate while avowing their loyalty to Zanu-PF and thus implicitly, it would seem, to Robert Mugabe. One can sympathize with the inclination — crossing Mugabe almost always comes at a cost — and yet during a time when Makoni and his supporters are taking a great deal of risk and revealing tremendous courage, it would be nice if some of Zimbabwe’s most prominent members of the political class could do the same. It is this sort of fecklessness that will help Mugabe secure the presidency again by hook or by crook, violence or theft.

The second story is equally telling. Zimbabwe’s economy has gone to hell over the last few years with nary a helping hand from Mugabe and Zanu-PF for any but the smallest, most well-connected cadre of loyalists.  But suddenly Mugabe is demanding faster food imports, particularly of maize, in light of the country’s food emergency, which the president seems a bit late in discovering. It was not all that long ago that Zimbabwe was the region’s breadbasket. Nonetheless, Mugabe’s nakedly self-interested reaction does bring about one question: If the old man wins re-election, which only a fool or an optimist would bet against, could Makoni’s challenge have awakened in him a realization that he is not bulletproof? Or are these merely the temporal machinations of a despot interested only in consolidating power? I would bet on the latter, but assuming that Mugabe is going to find a way to win, we all had better hope against hope for the former.

South Africans, like people the world over, are beginning to take a great deal of interest in the primary campaigns taking place in the United States. According to a story on NPR (Click on the link to hear the full report.):

South Africans have been consumed with crippling nationwide power outages and other issues closer to home, such as a much-condemned racial incident involving four white students and some black university employees. But when asked about the U.S. presidential race, the name they seem most familiar with is that of Barack Obama.

This brief report does not portray the election, or South African views of it, with a great deal of depth. It is a man-on-the-street series of brief interviews. Nnetheless, it is probably not a bit surprising that South Africans a) Do not have much regard for the Republicans, and b) Support Obama in light of his African roots. However, Bill Clinton was a popular figure in many parts of the continent, and one wonders if that does not redound to Hillary’s benefit. In the end, South Africans will almost certainly be rooting from afar for whoever wins the Democratic nomination.