The Democratic Challenge in Africa
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The Democratic Challenge in Africa The Carter Center The Carter Center May, 1994 Introduction On May 13-14, 1994, a group of 32 scholars and practitioners took part in a seminar on Democratization in Africa at The Carter Center. This consultation was a sequel to two similar meetings held in February 1989 and March 1990. Discussion papers from those seminars have been published under the titles, Beyond Autocracy in Africa and African Governance in the 1990s. During the period 1990-94, the African Governance Program of The Carter Center moved from discussions and reflections to active involvement in the complex processes of renewed democratization in several African countries. These developments throughout Africa were also monitored and assessed in the publication, Africa Demos. The letter of invitation to the 1994 seminar called attention to the need for a new period of collective reflection because of "the severe difficulties encountered by several of these transitions." "The overriding concern," it was further stated, "will be to identify what could be done to help strengthen the pluralist democracies that have emerged during the past five years and what strategies may be needed to overcome the many obstacles that are now evident." A list of 12 questions was sent to each of the participants with a request that they identify which ones they wished to address in their discussion papers. As it turned out, the choice of topics could be conveniently grouped in six panels. Following the seminar, 19 of the participants revised their papers for publication in this volume, while an additional four scholars (John Harbeson, Goran Hyden, Timothy Longman, and Donald Rothchild), who had been unable to attend the meeting, still submitted papers for discussion and publication. The Democratic Challenge in Africa is a challenge not just to African peoples and their governments but also to officials of external governments and agencies, and to members of the international academic community, who have become intimately involved in promoting, monitoring, and assessing the relevant processes. A comment by Crawford Young cited in Beyond Autocracy in Africa is still relevant today: "No handful of facile formulas can overcome Africa's travail. No single observer is likely to have sufficient breadth of perspective or vision to propound a definitive charter for future resurrection." By circulating these papers, we hope to continue the reflections that took place in Atlanta. If democratization is to acquire in Africa the self-sustaining dynamic evident in other areas of the world, it will be because collaboration in thought and action has continued despite, and even because of, the problems encountered. The papers are organized in sections that closely parallel the actual sessions of the seminar. Michael Chege provides a timely review of the many ways in which military establishments in Africa still constitute obstacles to democratization, and he explores the need to bring the military into a more positive relationship with these changes. Sahr John Kpundeh examines the threat that pervasive corruption poses to political renewal using Sierra Leone as a case study. Donald Rothchild looks at the upheavals that have accompanied democratization in Africa and suggests that simultaneous attention to enhancing peacemaking capabilities should be made intrinsic to these transitions. The seminar took place while the Rwandan tragedy was still unfolding. It was also influenced by the exhilaration and relief experienced as a result of the transfer of governmental power in South Africa. It is understandable that considerable attention was therefore devoted to exploring the issues of ethnic mobilization and conflict. The breadth of these discussions cannot be captured in a few sentences. It is generally known that democratization often provides an impetus, and excuse for, the exacerbation of social conflicts as the politically ambitious seek to mobilize a potential voting community. How, it must be considered, can democratization enhance the capacity of African states to contain and resolve conflicts, especially those based on ethnicity and other sectional identities? These are questions that Marina Ottaway, Harvey Glickman, and Donald Rothchild tackled in various ways. Catharine and David Newbury provided a case study of Rwanda based on their long years of involvement in that country and their valiant efforts to help avert the unfolding calamity. One of the three graduate students who contributed to the proceedings, Timothy Longman, took us beneath the surface of political and economic reforms during the later years of the Habyarimana regime in Rwanda to show the tensions that were building up and the responses being made at the level of group action. Africa, as is well-known, is undergoing a series of simultaneous transitions, the most notable being programs of political and economic liberalization. Will the new democracies be able to "deliver" in the way of meeting the urgent material needs of the African people? F. van de Kraaij focused on the degree to which freedoms of speech and of the press were being enlarged in Africa and of their economic consequences; while Nicolas van de Walle indicated what was needed to generate successful outcomes as neo-liberal economic reforms were being adopted in Africa. He further called attention to what appears to be the fundamental preconditions for the establishment of a "developmental state" in Africa. A number of contributions reflected the end of the euphoria generated by the first wave of democratic transitions in Africa. Marina Ottaway was one of several participants who questioned whether democratization or differing degrees of political liberalization was occurring. John Harbeson queried how reversible were the political changes occurring and how stable were the governments emerging from these processes. Linda Beck, in a preview of her forthcoming doctoral dissertation, examined the persistence of clientelism and clan politics in Senegal and the uncertainties they create in one of Africa's earliest but now problematic democracies. Stephen Ndegwa, in reviewing institution-building and civic education in rural Kenya, suggests the possibilities for political mobilization in local arenas. Drawing on the direct experiences of Carter Center engagement, the editor provided an assessment of the possibilities as well as the pitfalls of an incremental approach to democratization. Much of the energies invested in the struggle to establish pluralist democracies has been directed to the holding and monitoring of multiparty elections, often the first in most countries in decades. The seminar benefitted from the presence of several participants who had actively participated in such exercises, including senior officials of two organizations that play a major role in them; Ned McMahon of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and Keith Klein of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Their papers provide a useful distillation of the lessons learned by these organizations from their wide engagement. Jean-German Gros, the third of our graduate contributors, examined the experiences of the deeply flawed elections in Cameroon. He shows the interplay between a recalcitrant regime and external organizations as the former moves to meet the lowest criteria of the latter (for political reform) through hastily arranged elections. Michael Bratton, in a paper based on substantive research on Zambia, looks beyond the rhetoric about popular participation to examine, empirically, just who is participating, and where and when, in a country officially embarked on building a pluralist democracy. Goran Hyden contributed a paper on the need for more critical attention to be paid to the actual electoral systems adopted in Africa and makes the case for the desirability of adopting proportional representation. The final session focused on the activities of external actors and agencies. Lucie Colvin Phillips, while reviewing an array of issues, called attention to the need to look beyond the short-term efforts associated with elections to the multifaceted and long-term nature of building new democracies. H. R. von Meijenfeldt, representing a new European Center established to address these issues, reviews the elements of a "more inclusive international approach in support of democratic development in Africa," whose key premise is the need to treat democratization as a process rather than a specific event or series of events. Joel Barkan, who can look at these critical issues from the perspective of an academic scholar as well as someone who was actively involved in a U. S. government program to support them, identifies several critical needs including better donor coordination and external involvement designed "for the long haul." Other areas of the world have benefitted from the efforts of external agencies to assist their political and constitutional transitions. Rozann Stayden was able to draw on the positive experiences of the American Bar Association (ABA) in its extensive work in Eastern Europe to explore the necessity, and opportunities, to build strong legal systems in Africa's emergent democracies. Willard Johnson, after reflecting on pivotal events of the recent past, looks ahead to provide a comprehensive overview of key issues that must be confronted by external actors and agencies, including the U. S. government. His paper suggests the need for enhanced global action to meet these simultaneous