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Journal of African Elections Special Issue: Elections and Conflict in Africa

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Journal of African Elections Special Issue: Elections and Conflict in Africa VOLUME 7 NO 2 1 Journal of African Elections Special Issue: Elections and Conflict in Africa GUEST EDITOR David K Leonard ARTICLES BY David K Leonard Denis Kadima Anna Schmidt Titi Pitso Felix Odhiambo Owuor Sam Egwu Khabele Matlosa Volume 8 Number 1 June 2009 1 2 JOUR na L OF AFRIC an ELECTIO N S Published by EISA 14 Park Road, Richmond Johannesburg South Africa P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 11 482 5495 Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 e-mail: [email protected] ©EISA 2009 ISSN: 1609-4700 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher Copy editor: Pat Tucker Printed by: Global Print, Johannesburg Cover photograph: Reproduced with the permission of the HAMILL GALLERY OF AFRICAN ART, BOSTON, MA, USA www.eisa.org.za VOLUME 7 NO 2 3 Editors Denis Kadima, Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Johannesburg Khabele Matlosa, Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Johannesburg Editorial BOARD Tessy Bakary, Université Laval, Canada David Caroll, Democracy Program, The Carter Center, Atlanta Jørgen Elklit, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark Amanda Gouws, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch Abdalla Hamdok, UNECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Peter Kagwanja, International Crisis Group, Southern Africa Project, Pretoria Abdul Rahman Lamin, UNESCO, Accra, Ghana Tom Lodge, Department Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick Robin Ludwig, UN Dialogue with the Global South, New York Robert Mattes, Department of Political Science, University of Cape Town Yvonne Muthien, Corporate Affairs, MTN South Africa Eghosa Osaghae, Igbinedion University, Okada, Nigeria David Pottie, The Carter Center, Atlanta Ben Reilly, Centre for Democratic Institutions The Australian National University Canberra Lloyd Sachikonye, Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe, Harare Jeremy Seekings, Sociology Department, University of Cape Town Timothy Sisk, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, Colorado Gloria Somolekae, Elections Consultant, Gaborone, Botswana Roger Southall, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand The Journal of African Elections is an interdisciplinary biannual publication of research and writing in the human sciences, which seeks to promote a scholarly understanding of developments and change in Africa. Responsibility for opinions expressed and for the accuracy of facts published in papers, research notes, review articles and book reviews rests solely with the individual authors or reviewers. Contributions are referred to specialist readers for consideration, but the Editor is responsible for the final selection of the contents of the Journal. Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission and books for review, should be sent to: The Editor, Journal of African Elections EISA: P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 11 482 5495 | Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 Business correspondence, including orders and remittances, subscription queries, advertisements, back numbers and offprints, should be addressed to the publisher: The Publisher, Journal of African Elections EISA: P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Tel: 27 (0) 11 482 5495 | Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 4 JOUR na L OF AFRIC an ELECTIO N S CONTENTS Overview David K Leonard .................................................................................................................................. 1 Elections and Democratisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo Denis Kadima, David K Leonard and Anna Schmidt ....................................................................... 14 The Political Economy of Democratisation in Sierra Leone: Reflections on the Elections of 2007 and 2008 David K Leonard and Titi Pitso with contributions from Anna Schmidt ......................................... 49 The Political and Institutional Context of the 2007 Kenyan Elections and Reforms Needed for the Future David K Leonard and Felix Odhiambo Owuor with contributions from Katherine George ............. 71 Nigerian Elections Since 1999: What Does Democracy Mean? Sam Egwu, David K Leonard, Khabele Matlosa ............................................................................ 108 Contents of Previous Issues ......................................................................................................... 145 Notes for Contributors ................................................................................................................. 160 VOLUME 8 NO 1 1 ELECTIONS AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA: AN INTRODUCTION1 David K. Leonard David K Leonard is Professorial Fellow in Governance, Institute of Development Studies (UK) e-mail: [email protected] Since 1990 contested elections have again become a regular fixture of the political systems of sub-Saharan Africa. But what do they mean? In this issue of the Journal of African Elections we consider four important sets of African elections and the lessons that can be drawn from them, both for democracy and for best electoral practice. None of these elections was ‘typical’ for the continent. All were fiercely contested. Those in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone came after extended periods of civil war; Kenya’s provoked a major outbreak of violence after the results were announced; while Nigeria’s saw opposition wins at the sub-national level and loss of life around the polling itself. Each has something important to say about the meaning of elections in Africa and the challenges that arise in running them well. DEMOCRACY VS ELECTIONS What does democracy mean and why should it matter? From 1960 to 1990 Africa’s ‘one-party democrats’ generally held sway, with the argument that democracy meant only the regular conduct of elections and perhaps the existence of primaries for legislative candidates of the ruling party. National unity was too precious and the dangers of ethnic violence were held to be too great for genuine contests for the presidency to be risked. Elections in this era should, most accurately, be considered to be plebiscites on the government of the day. Only since the end of the Cold War has democracy in Africa come to mean the right to vote for the holder of executive power in multiparty elections. But even this change does not necessarily connote democracy, for such elections could be rigged or voters’ choices significantly constrained. The most rigorous standards of democratic practice hold that citizens should be informed, uncoerced, and 1 The fieldwork for the studies included in this issue of theJournal was conducted between August and November 2008 and was financed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as part of a separate study on electoral assistance. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) contributed to the printing. The views expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily represent those of DFID, the UK government or SDC. 1 2 JOUR N AL OF AFRICA N ELECTIO N S effective in casting their votes – which implies the absence of election violence, parties that offer meaningful choices, well-functioning and independent media, rule through law, autonomous courts, and protection for the rights of minorities (and losers). In the articles in this issue we consider not only elections themselves but democracy (and its absence) in this larger sense. A consistent lesson that emerges from these and other studies is that election support (be it international or domestic) is too narrow to achieve even good electoral outcomes. At a minimum, support for the electoral cycle is required and ideally the focus would be more broadly still on capacity building for the institutions that underpin democratisation. AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH Democracy is built by and results from the interaction of a significant number of the institutionalised behaviours and organisations present in a society. Some have direct roles, others indirect ones. Some are formal and openly acknowledged, others are informal and implicit. In these articles we highlight the array of institutions that have an impact on the elections, democracy and governance of our four selected countries. A context of patronage The first of these defining institutions is not an organisation, it is a behaviour. Political clientage is important in all of the political systems discussed in the following articles – even though it takes on distinctive features in each. Throughout Africa (and, indeed, in many other developing countries) voting is largely determined by ethnicity, kinship and neighbourhood. In rural areas, where all three tend to coincide, the result is that voting at polling-station level will generally be in favour of one particular candidate, with the decision effectively a collective one, sometimes enforced by implicit coercion. For example, Barkan, Densham & Rushton (2006, p 933) found in Kenya that the average vote for the winning candidate for Parliament in 1997 was 65 per cent, even though there was an average of 4,4 candidates. At polling-station level this pattern of local consensus would be even more obvious. Only in the major urban areas is the coincidence of family and neighbourhood broken. Although kinship and rural ties will still be influential for all but second-generation urban elites, adherence to them will not be obvious in
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