The Great Divide
Michael Holman & Greg Mills
The unfolding catastrophe in Kenya, where elections have triggered the country’s worst crisis and violence since independence, raises questions that go to the heart of Africa’s development challenge.
Kenya, along with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa, are four African countries which are regarded not only as encouraging examples of political reform and economic progress, but as states with wider potential.
Not only could they turn their respective regions in West, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa around, but in so doing drive the continent forward. Together they total more than one-third of sub-Saharan Africa’s 750 million people and over half of its combined economy.
But elections in each over the past 18 months have not gone quite to plan, raising doubts not only about the path of these countries, but the impact on their regions and the role that external actors might play in ensuring stability.
The enormously expensive first-time elections in the DRC which elected Joseph Kabila in October 2006 have been followed by months of instability culminating now in fierce fighting in the east. In Nigeria, the government itself conceded that the election of President Umaru Yar’Adua in April 2007 was flawed. In South Africa, the election victory of Jacob Zuma over incumbent Thabo Mbeki as the president of the African National Congress has cast doubt as to future stability in Africa’s model state. And problems with Kenya’s election on 27 December 2007 has resulted in an outbreak of violence of unprecedented fury, turning a country once viewed as the favourite surf-and-safari destination to just another African country in the minds of those preferring the caricature of the ‘hopeless continent’, one teetering on the brink of disaster.
Different countries and circumstances, no doubt, from Africa’s largest economy (South Africa) to its largest failed state (Congo), and from a key ally in the West’s war on terror (Kenya) to one (Nigeria) with volatile sectarian fault-lines. But out of each of these democratic experiences, five commonalities can be drawn:
Tribalism and sectarianism still matters. In Kenya, the race was between Mwai Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, the largest in Kenya, and Raila Odinga, a Luo, and battle-lines were drawn countrywide and widespread rigging occurred according to these differences. In Congo, staring electoral defeat in the second-round presidential run-off, President Kabila had to bolster his support through deals with some of the more extremist yet powerful elements in Congolese politics, threatening the Banyamulenge in the eastern Kivu province and explaining current troubles. Nigerian politics remains a balancing act between the oil-rich (and largely Christian) south and populous Islamic north from where the president draws much of his support, and where Islamic law has been imposed in several states. Ethnicity was not to the forefront in the South African contest between the more populist Zuma against the comparatively erudite Mbeki, but provincial returns may hint at a certain bias in this regard.
Incompetent management and corruption is pervasive and political. When Kibaki swept to power in 2002 he was regarded not primarily as Kikuyu, but as a reformer who led a coalition which promised clean government. Barely a year later the man appointed by Kibaki to lead the campaign against graft, John Githongo, went into self-imposed exile in London. Far from tackling sleaze, the president and his cabinet allegedly initiated a further set of corrupt practices. Corruption and patronage runs deep, much deeper than any peer review process aiming for better governance can instantly address; indeed, it makes the system work to a degree, if only to the benefit of the privileged. While Africa’s vibrant press generally does an excellent job in highlighting the extent of malfeasance, but this also focuses on the blame on a few individuals rather than the overall system of governance. And donors have done little to help deal with this cancer by using aid as a lever. In Kenya, the truth is, they never had the stomach for a fight. They did not believe it was ultimately in their interests to have a showdown with the barons of corruption. They did not want to upset what they saw as a regional ‘island of stability’ and ally in the ‘war on terror’ from which the UN and other international relief agencies, including hundreds of foreign non- governmental organisations, operate – a business that accounts for one-fifth of Kenya’s annual foreign exchange earnings.
Unemployment is the critical destabiliser. To see the crisis in each of these four countries only in terms of tribalism and corruption is to miss a vital element. Today some four decades after independence, more than half of Kenyans, for example, subsist on a couple of dollars a day. Fewer than ten percent of Kenya’s 400,000 annual school-leavers can be expected to find jobs. The picture is worse in Nigeria and the DRC – so bad in fact that statistics are not available. South Africa’s continuing high unemployment of around 30 percent, nearly a decade and a half after democracy’s advent, along with the slow delivery of basic services is one important reason for Mr Zuma’s elevation.
Growth is imperative, but not enough. All four have experiences an unprecedented period of recent growth, over five percent annually, buoyed by high commodity prices and better macro-economic management. But for all of the growth, the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening, partly explaining the South African election result and why the mood in the slums of Nairobi, for example, was overwhelmingly in favour of Odinga. For those frustrated at the polls, there is little to lose by taking to the streets driven by discontent over their circumstance and fury at the electoral system. The key challenge for all of Africa remains to find a way to create jobs and growth, though the rise of Asia and relative lack of African labour competitiveness makes manufacturing-driven export-led growth unrealistic.
Democracy is not an event. A difficult election does not mean the end of progress and reform. Indeed, today’s situation is far cry from when African elections were single-party charades, if they happened at all. However, nor should politicians regard their commitment to democracy and the related need for consensus-building as being limited to an occasional, internationally-scrutinised election day. Whether a winner-scoops-all, executive-centric presidential system is best suited to Africa’s needs or whether it encourages extreme electoral behaviour in order to stay in power, is also moot. In Kenya, for example, this has led to vote-rigging and, now, violence. Either way, it amounts to daylight democratic robbery. But the system is like this because many African presidents prefer it that way – where power is centred on their offices and the legislative branch of government is kept marginalised and weak as a check and balance on power.
Outsiders, like Africans, prefer to see the continent in uniform almost linear terms – occasions informing trajectories of renaissance, recovery, decline, or failure. The reality is that Africa is far more complex and recovery vulnerable to continuous setbacks – as such events in key states continue to remind us.
South Africa apart, the other three highlight the poor record of external actors in exposing graft and delivering better governance. These goals are often sacrificed to the greater apparent good of maintaining a donor-government relationship and regime stability. But the best role that external actors can assume is to be honest in their deliberations about and with these countries, and not attempt to pick and back winners.
Holman is a former Africa editor of the Financial Times and the author of two recent novels set in Kenya; Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, dedicated to strengthening African economic performance.