Howard Barrell There is widespread support for democracy among people in countries neighbouring South Africa, according to a six- nation survey of public attitudes conducted by a consortium of researchers headed by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa). Southern Africans credit democracy for achieving significant increases in their political freedoms but they are less sure that it has led to more personal or economic security than previous regimes. Researchers for the Southern Africa Democracy Barometer report that “in contrast to the typical academic wisdom, democracy is not a foreign or unknown concept in Southern Africa”. Instead, they say, “large majorities are able to offer some spontaneous definition of the word”. Moreover, when asked to explain the concept, “people see it, by and large, as based on civil rights and personal freedoms, popular government, and elections and voting”. Survey results released this week cover Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Fieldwork was done between late last year and early this year. Research is currently under way among South Africans. Many Southern Africans question the performance of their governments. Significant numbers, particularly Zambians and Zimbabweans, feel that that the performance of their present governments “is no better, or even worse, than their former authoritarian governments” on issues like trust,
responsiveness and corruption. Moreover, “there is a strong sense among people in the region that governments cannot use the legacies of the past as an excuse for policy failures or slowness of delivery”, the Southern Africa Democracy Barometer reports.
The results of the research among Zimbabweans, which was undertaken late last year – before the recent election that brought Robert Mugabe’s 20-year-old Zanu-PF government to the brink of defeat – in many respects prefigured that outcome. The research showed that Zimbabweans expressed “a high level of ‘demand’ for democracy, yet also a very low degree of perceived ‘supply’ of democracy”. The public mood in Zimbabwe was “not just ‘anti-Mugabe’, but [expressed] a generalised discontent with the larger system of one-party dominant Zanu-PF rule”. Moreover, “the vast majority of Zimbabweans wanted their government to place its priorities on improving the economy and creating jobs”, whereas “issues concerning land and land reform were mentioned by just one- in-100 respondents”. Botswana, where 82% said that democracy is always preferable and 74,6% were very or fairly satisfied with their democracy, emerges as the most mature democracy of the countries surveyed. Some 74% of Zambians and 70% of Zimbabweans felt democracy was always preferable but only 58% and 18,2%, respectively, were satisfied with its performance in their country. Democratic legitimacy appeared to be lowest in Lesotho, where only 39% supported democracy unequivocally, followed by Namibia (58%). Nostalgia for authoritarian rule was highest in Malawi, where 22% endorsed its possible return – a reference to the era of former Malawian strongman Kamuzu Banda.
Rejection of non-democratic alternatives was strongest in Botswana, followed by Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
On Southern Africans’ view of democracy, the Democracy Barometer reports that “there is very little evidence of a unique, distinctive African collective/communal or economic/substantive understanding of democracy”. Its research shows that “less than one-half of 1% of respondents [referred] to group rights” when outlining their
understanding of democracy. It adds: “Even if we give the benefit of the doubt to the collectivist argument and assume that [when defining
democracy] all [respondents’] references to equality,
justice, unity, independence and majority rule implied group conceptions of all these terms, they do not come close to the frequency with which individual rights are mentioned.” Moreover, the Barometer reports that “at most, one in 10 Batswana, Zimbabweans and Namibians link economic outcomes to their understanding of democracy, when unprompted”.