Southern African states show a blatant lack of democratic awareness, Henning Melber argues
With the gaining of political power by liberation movements in Zimbabwe in 1980 and Namibia in 1990, the final decolonisation of the African continent took its course. In 1994 a democratic political system under a lawfully elected African National Congress government was established in South Africa.
During this process, however, the main goal was to obtain the right to self-determination, while the democratic reform of the countries’ societies was not given the same priority.
Governments were formed by the anti-colonial liberation movements, which had been far from non-violent. They took over control of the state machinery and reorganised themselves as political parties. They claimed their legitimacy to rule stemmed from their emergence from the decolonisation process as democratically elected representatives of the majority of the people.
Since then, with varying results (and sometimes accepting the use of further physical violence), they have been able to strengthen their political dominance and maintain control over the state. This is true even if in Zimbabwe at present it can be seen that these governments will not last forever.
It appears that the new political rulers in Southern Africa have not benefited from the learning processes that states further north went through.
The social transformation in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa can at best be characterised as a transition from controlled change to changed control. The result is a kind of rule on a narrow societal base, which is becoming ever more similar to those of other African countries.
The post-colonial perception of politics within the ruling parties, and among sections of their grass-roots supporters, often shows a blatant lack of democratic awareness and forms of neo-patrimonial systems. Tendencies to autocratic rule and politically motivated social and material favours or disadvantages are obvious. The political rulers’ penchant for self-enrichment with the help of a rent- or sinecure-capitalism goes with the exercise of comprehensive controls to secure the continuance of their rule.
Accordingly, the term “national interest” means solely what they say it means. Based on the rulers’ (self-) perception, individuals and groups are allowed to participate in, or are excluded from, nation-building. Such selective mechanisms of the exercise and retention of power have little or nothing to do with democratic principles.
In the meantime, in view of the sobering experiences that followed the initial euphoria over attaining sovereignty under international law, critical voices are mounting, including those who followed and supported the liberation struggles.
There is a growing tendency to critically analyse the processes in which victims in the role of liberation fighters became perpetrators. Breaking the taboos in this regard is necessary in a debate, which deals increasingly with the content of liberation and reflects (if not questions) the concept of solidarity over the past years.
The much-celebrated attainment of formal independence is no longer being equated with liberation, and certainly not with the creation of lasting democracy. Instead, there are increasing attempts to investigate the structural legacies, which in most cases set far too narrow limits for realising societal alternatives in the post-colonial countries.
The realisation is growing that the armed liberation struggles were in no way a suitable breeding ground for establishing democratic systems of government after gaining independence. The forms of resistance against totalitarian regimes were themselves organised on strictly hierarchical and authoritarian lines, otherwise they could hardly have had any prospect of success.
In this sense, the new societies carried within them essential elements of the old system they had fought. Thus, aspects of the colonial system reproduced themselves in the struggle for its abolition and subsequently in the concepts of governance applied in post-colonial conditions.
The result of such general conditions is that the new system has little transparency. Those in power are at best prepared to be accountable only to themselves. Nonconformist thinking is interpreted as disloyalty, if not equated with treason.
But the marginalisation or elimination of dissent limits drastically the new system’s capability for reform and innovation. A culture of fear, intimidation and keeping silent reduces the possibilities of durable renewal at the cost of the public weal. In the long term this means the rulers are themselves undermining their credibility and legitimacy.
The former liberation fighters also have an expiry date (at least biologically). That applies not only to the groups themselves but also to their potential clientele among the people, as Zimbabwe shows. So cultivating the myth of the liberators is not enough for orderly conduct of government business. Thus the rulers’ restriction of their coteries to their own groups of functionaries from the days of the liberation struggles, as still can be seen today, is counterproductive.
As a criterion for classification this has less to do with the concrete political-ideological persuasion of the party-liners than with their similar perception of politics, which is based on common personality structures and features of an authoritarian character.
Similar mechanisms can be seen in many societies around the world that are regarded as democratic states. That power corrupts is by no means a solely African truism. Nor that giving up power is difficult for many once they have had a taste of it. Nonetheless, it might be more than a coincidence that it was in Southern Africa that the “Third Term Movement” founded by Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma arose.
The argument used to support extending the mandate of heads of state armed with sweeping executive powers that only an incumbent can maintain the continuity of reasonably stable political conditions unintentionally signals a lack of democracy.
A sustainable democracy calls for the consolidation of socially institutionalised and legal framework conditions, which enable the process of open political communication regardless of the persons in power. The challenge lies exactly there: the real test of a democracy is how peacefully and constitutionally a country carries out a change in its political leadership.
More than 40 years ago Frantz Fanon described presciently in The Wretched of the Earth the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anti-colonial resistance and organised liberation movements.
The growing blending of party, government and state among the “liberation movements in power” indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era.
The use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of Southern Africa was hardly favourable for the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms.
As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically minded people. But independence without democracy is still far from being liberation.
Dr Henning Melber has been a member of Swapo since 1974. He is Research Director of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden