Why should we Africans tolerate standards that are less than the best? To accept anything less than the best is to play into the damning stereotypes employed by Afro-pessimists everywhere.
So why should Nigerians and those interested in the sustainability of democracy in Africa’s giant accept less than the best X on the ballot paper?
There is now consensus that the Nigerian election was a shambles. The churches, civil society, the media and the opposition have branded the election unfair and substantially shackled by the monumental malÂadministration of a poll that was arguably one of the most important in 21st-century Africa.
It is not just the election monitors who think so — witness the editorial in Nigeria’s ThisDay newspaper: “Outrage is too weak a word to describe the reactions to the shame and the sham.”
Pundits say that, “even by Nigerian standards”, the elections were a disaster; an Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) observer declared them “fairly acceptable” rather than “free and fair”.
This business of setting the bar lower in Africa is cynical nonsense. We will never grow out of our democratic diapers if we accept inferior standards. For this reason, the Mail & Guardian believes the polls should be run again.
If they are, there is every chance that the result will be the same — with the crucial difference that it may have some legitimacy. Umaru Yar’Adua is likely to win, albeit with a much smaller majority.
Though of political stock, he lacks charisma. But Nigeria needs a boring leader who will continue along the hard-won path of democracy, rather than a “big man” with dictatorial tendencies or an erratic, rabble-rousing demogague. Perhaps space should be made in the Cabinet for the opposition leaders who are likely to take second and third positions in a proper presidential poll: Atiku Abubaker and Mohammed Buhari.
Power-sharing and coalition are political systems that work best on our continent and they are not employed with sufficient frequency. Often, this is because incumbents do not want to share the spoils of office. But in a country the size of Nigeria, it is a far more pragmatic option than winner takes all.
A ThisDay newspaper columnist also had this to say to Nigerians: “I want to appeal to Nigerians not to lose faith in democracy … the fact that President Olusegun Obasanjo has made a complete mess of our democracy and turned Nigeria into a chicken farm doesn’t mean democracy is bad.”
To ensure political stability, it is vital that the poll is rerun quickly to sustain popular confidence in democratic rule. Nigerian leaders across society are now engaged in balancing the imperative of successful transition with the need for the democratic foundation of a legitimate poll.
On balance, the election is so universally condemned that it will not provide the solid footing from which a successful and peaceful transition can take off. Another vote is essential.
No place for the politics of fear
No-go areas have an inglorious history in KwaZulu-Natal. It was not very long ago that the apartheid security apparatus gleefully stoked tensions in that fractious province, feeding with cash and weapons a low-intensity civil war that claimed thousands of lives. And the threat of even more appalling conflict there exerted a powerful force on the shaping of our transition to democracy, with Mangosuthu Buthelezi tap-dancing on the brink of disaster and able to exert influence quite out of proportion to his national support.
We thought we were now beyond such dangerous games: everyone now has a stake in this society that should preclude them from practising politics by violence, or the threat of violence. Indeed, one of the most basic and important fruits of our transition is the right to move around freely a country that was once cut across by barbed wire, both metaphorical and real.
So it was not surprising that President Thabo Mbeki let a little real anger show when he was confronted with reports that supporters of Jacob Zuma in the KwaZulu-Natal Cabinet were mobilising their ground troops to place parts of that province off-limits to him.
To be sure, ANC-aligned leaders in the region have at times in the past guarded their fiefdoms against each other almost as fiercely as they fought off Inkatha and the police, but the cynicism of party leaders who in 2007 threaten to hold the political process hostage to the threat of violence Âbeggars belief.
And it imposes a stark choice on Jacob Zuma. He played a crucial role in the battle for KwaZulu-Natal and its ultimate resolution, and it is his Âpowerful network there that makes the threat of no-go areas plausible.
He can either use his real muscle in the province to shut down the Âpolitics of violence, or he can formally distance himself from his more Âatavistic supporters, while tacitly allowing them to do his dirty work.
So far he seems to be opting for the second approach, and forgoing an opportunity to spin himself as the candidate who can soothe the rage of the underclass. Either way, it seems clearer than ever that his is the Âpolitics of fear.
We were fed-up with it in 1994; there is no place for it in 2007.