democracy
Yusuf Hassan
LAST Sunday’s Sierra Leone coup d’etat shocked the world. But any serious observer of Sierra Leone would have seen it coming.
For years the people of Sierra Leone have been saddled with a plundering elite and maladroit regime, which left what was once a thriving nation in ruins.
Five years ago, the anger of the poor and marginalised boiled over, plunging the country into a bloody civil war. The Revolutionary United Front-led rebellion not only put the final nail in Sierra Leone’s ailing economy, but also seriously wounded the military regime of Captain Valentine Strasser.
The West rushed in with a directive that the solution to Sierra Leone’s unfortunate plight was democracy. Never mind the fact that it was in no state for elections.
The country was devastated and its people exhausted. Some 500 000 were refugees and many more were internally displaced. Many others were starving. Economic marginalisation leads to political marginalisation.
Sierra Leone could not afford democracy; the West footed the bill. Under these difficult circumstances, last year, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was elected president of Sierra Leone.
Once the elections were over, it was business as usual for Sierra Leone’s elite and its Western backers. No provisions were made for the eradication of poverty or for the reconstruction of the shattered infrastructure.
Instead, the new government called in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which were quick to impose their discredited structural adjustment programme. The poor continue to wallow in their misery.
The African political landscape is littered with the debris of this failed experiment. It’s true that democracy provides the tools to find solutions to the problems of dictatorship and autocratic rule and to a certain extent the problem of oppression.
But democracy does not automatically mean that human rights are respected. A similar scenario to that of Sierra Leone is now unfolding in neighbouring Liberia. No sooner had the warring factions got together and formed a Government of National Unity, than the billboards were up announcing the date of the elections.
Out of Liberia’s 2,5-million people, about a million live outside the country, while another million are internally displaced. If the planned July 19 elections go ahead, the question on the lips of many Liberians will be what kind of democracy would arise.
Closer to home, Southern Africa has witnessed the dire consequences of hurrying war-torn societies into elections. The Angolan elections of 1992 provoked a new and even more deadly war between the MPLA and Unita.
In an effort to stop Mozambique going the Angola way, the West poured millions of dollars into a bid to transform the rebel Renamo into a political party and funded the country’s first multi-party elections.
In this democratisation game, no awkward questions were to be raised on the dismal performances of the MPLA and Frelimo governments, or on the brutal record and the gross human rights abuses committed by Unita and Renamo.
The United States, no longer obsessed with the threat of communism, embarked on a crusade for democracy. At the same time, the European Union made its development aid dependent on democratisation.
A zealous optimism gripped Africa promising the new dawn of democracy. Popular uprisings and national conferences gently deposed dictators in Algeria, Mali, Benin, Congo, Niger and Madagascar, and non- governmental organisations became the hope for a democratic awakening.
Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, Etienne Eyadma of Togo, Hastings Banda of Malawi and Omar Bongo of Gabon – the premier league of African despots – all professed their faith in democracy, while at the same time banning parties, censoring the press and killing or torturing opponents. Mobutu and Moi, in a classic divide-and-rule ploy, went as far as creating their own opposition parties.
One country emerging from conflict that has successfully shunned this kind of democracy is Uganda. On assuming power in1986, Yoweri Museveni banned all party politics. The politics of multi-partyism which were based on ethnicity and religion had, in fact, played a major role in the destabilisation of Uganda and, to a certain extent, bear some responsibilities for the country’s woes.
Instead, Museveni introduced non-party grassroots elections, which in the past 10 years have devolved power and empowered the poor and the marginalised. One of the visible impacts of his democratisation policy is the rise of women in Ugandan politics. Uganda, once a basketcase, is the fastest growing economy in Africa today.
Last week the new government of the Democratic Republic of Congo outraged the Western world when it announced a ban on all political activities. Since his takeover of Kinshasa, the new president, Laurent Kabila, has come under mounting pressure to form a government of national unity with Etienne Tshisekedi at its head, and to hold elections soon. Kabila appears to have ignored both calls.
On Wednesday, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, was sent to Kinshasa to impress upon Kabila the importance of democracy and adherence to “new standards” of behaviour.
This must be particularly difficult to take from the country that put Mobutu into power and supported him for three decades.
On April 24 1990, Mobutu succumbed to internal and external pressure to end his one-party system. Zaireans gathered in a national conference and adopted a comprehensive framework for the transition to democracy, and elected Tshisekedi as prime minister in August 1992.
When Mobutu subverted the popular will and prevented Tshisekedi from running Zaire, the US, France and Belgium hardly raised a voice, sparking the suspicion that their interests were better served by Mobutu.
Since 1992 Mobutu promoted a policy of ethnicity and regionalism, and implemented ethnic cleansing against his opponents. It was the programme against the minority Banyamulenge that gave impetus to the rebellion which was finally to bring about his downfall.
While Mobutu was weakened beyond recovery, the West hesitated in its support for the democratic forces in Zaire as it did not have an acceptable successor. The Alliance for Democratic Forces of Congo-Zaire-led rebellion was unexpected and its lightning military successes caught the West by surprise.
Whichever path the new Congo takes, the lesson for Africa is that while Western governments support democracy, the kind of democracy that they want Africa to have must be subordinate to their own economic and strategic interests.
For the people of Africa, the quest for democracy continues for it’s driven by the strong desire to determine their own destiny and free themselves from the shackles of local dictators or foreign or international financial officials.
Yusuf Hassan is the public information officer for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Southern Africa and a veteran African correspondent