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George Ayittey- Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa's future (video)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Why Kenya Imploded: The Solution
George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D.

The real tragedy of Kenya’s political turmoil is that the country has traveled this road before -- in 1992 when a disputed election plunged the country into violence. It seems it never learned from that experience and continued to adhere to the same pernicious script that has claimed several African countries -- Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Togo. Ethnicity or religion was not the underlying cause of the conflagration. Somalia is ethnically homogenous; yet, it imploded. Rather, unpopular politicians play one tribe against others to maintain their deadly grip on power. Nor is colonialism or artificial colonial borders the culprit. Protestors and rebel leaders do not seek to redraw colonial borders; they head straight to the capital city where power lies. The real culprit in virtually all cases is the politics of exclusion.

“Government” in most of Africa has been hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and gangsters. State machinery is used to enrich self, cronies, tribesmen and exclude everyone else – a quasi-apartheid system. The richest in Africa are heads of state, ministers and government officials.

• In Kenya where the government is described as the “Mount Kenya mafia,” the income per capita is $463 a year while the base compensation of legislators is about $81,000 a year, tax free, plus a variety of allowances and perks, which can effectively double their take-home pay.
• In Tanzania, ahead of President George Bush’s visit, the entire Cabinet has been dissolved over a corruption scandal, involving the award of $172.5 million contract to supply 100 megawatts of emergency power to a Texas based company that does not exist. Even the anti-corruption czar, Dr Edward Hosea, is implicated.
• Between 1970 and 2004, Nigeria raked in over $450 billion in oil revenue. But according to former head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the country’s rulers stole $412 billion of that oil revenue. Billions in oil revenue have also gone missing in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

Callous contempt for the poor is palpable in government circles: “The poor are hard to lead. They should be arrested. This is the way to develop,” said Uganda’s agriculture minister Kibirige Ssebunya in 2004.

Discontent and resentment bubble but kept in check by heavy-handed security forces and repressive laws. But elections often blow the lid away. Africans may be poor and illiterate but despite assertions by their leaders that poor people think of their stomachs first, Africans take elections seriously -- very seriously -- especially free, fair and transparent elections. In fact, a careful study of Africa's recent political history reveals the critical importance of the electoral process. The destruction of an African country, regardless of the professed ideology, ethnicity or religion of its leader, always begins with electoral malfeasance.

Blockage of the democratic process or the refusal to hold elections plunged Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan into civil war. Hard-liner manipulation of the electoral process destroyed Rwanda (1993), Sierra Leone (1992) and Zaire (1996). Subversion of the electoral process in Liberia (1985) eventually set off a civil war in 1989. The same type of subversion instigated civil strife in Cameroon (1991), Congo (1992), Kenya (1992), Togo (1992), Lesotho (1998), and Cote d’Ivoire (2000). In Congo (Brazzaville), a dispute over the 1997 electoral framework flared into mayhem and civil war. Finally, the military's annulment of electoral results by the military started Algeria's civil war (1992) and plunged Nigeria into political turmoil (1993). Watch Zimbabwe which holds elections next month (March).

To end the political crisis in Kenya, the U.S. has called for direct talks between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader, Raila Odinga. But each has dug in their heels. Various mediators, including President John Kufuor, Chairman of the African Union, Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate, made no headway. A “government of national unity” (GNU) has been proposed in a power-sharing arrangement but GNU has never worked anywhere in Africa where it was tried; not even in South Africa after the dismantling of apartheid. Its failure often stems from the dissatisfaction with the positions the parties get, which invariably leads to resumption of hostilities. Fortunately, a better solution exists.




After international and diplomatic pressure is brought to bear on Ivory Coast, combatants are in Paris to negotiate and reach a peace accord. But caution should be in order.

Peace accords are essentially a blueprint for joint plunder of the state. A "government of national unity" (GNU) is often proposed to "bring the rebels or opposition forces into the government." A certain number of ministerial or government positions are reserved for rebel or opposition leaders. Remember Foday Sankoh got Minister of Lands and Mines at the 1999 Lome Peace Accord? But nobody is satisfied with what they got at the peace talks. Inevitably, resentment linger and incessant squabbles erupt over which side got what -- squabbles which lead to resumption of conflict again (Angola in 1992, Congo in 1999, and Sierra Leone in 2000).

More than 30 such peace accords have been brokered in Africa since the 1970s with abysmal success record. Only Mozambique's 1991 peace accord has endured, while shaky pacts hold in Chad, Liberia, and Niger. Elsewhere, peace accords were shredded like confetti even before the ink on them was dry, amid mutual recriminations of cease-fire violations. The most spectacular failures were: Angola (1991 Bicesse Accord, 1994 Lusaka Accord), Burundi (1993 Arusha Accord), DR Congo (July 1999 Lusaka Accord), Rwanda (1993 Arusha Accord) and Sierra Leone (1999 Lome Accord). All collapsed because they adopted the Western approach to conflict resolution.

The cornerstone of this approach, often foisted on Africa by well-intentioned Western donors, is direct face-to-face negotiation between warring factions. It works if factional leaders want peace or must pay a price for the mayhem they cause -- assumptions, which grotesquely confute reality. Fact is, violence is “acceptable” to opposition leaders because it allows their supporters to vent their frustrations and anger against a government which has failed them, hoping that such government can be overthrown.

The violence also gives the government an excuse ("national security") to suspend development projects, provision of social services and keep its defense budget secret, thereby shielding padded contracts to cronies from scrutiny.

Africa's own indigenous conflict resolution mechanism provides a better approach.

After a month of violence, it must be recognized that the crisis in Kenya is beyond the capabilities of Mr. Kibaki and Odinga to resolve. It has morphed into ethnic cleansing and, as such, it is for all Kenyans to resolve -- not just Kibaki and Odinga. In fact, if this were an African village and two recalcitrant combatants refuse to make peace, BOTH of them would be expelled from the village. Remember these African proverbs:

• When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt.
• When two people fight, the entire village is affected.
• It takes a village to raise a child. Therefore it must take a village to resolve a crisis.

In this context, it would be useful to review how we resolved crises in our own “African way.” When a crisis erupts in an African village, the chief will convene a village meeting and put the issue before the people. It would be debated until a consensus was reached. Once reached, all in the village, including the chief, were required to abide by it. Hence, the term “sovereign consensus,” meaning nobody could flout the will of the people. In recent years, this indigenous African tradition has been revived by pro-democracy forces in the form of "national conferences" to chart a new political future in Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Congo, Malawi, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia.

Benin's nine-day "national conference" began on 19 February 1990, with 488 delegates, representing various political, religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad spectrum of Beninois society. The conference, whose chairman was Father Isidore de Souza, held "sovereign power" and its decisions were binding on all, including the government. It stripped President Matthieu Kerekou of power, scheduled multiparty elections that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist rule.

Congo's national conference had more delegates (1,500) and lasted longer three months. But when it was over in June 1991, the 12-year old government of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso had been dismantled. The constitution was rewritten and the nation's first free elections were scheduled for June 1992. Before the conference, Congo was among Africa's most avowedly Marxist-Leninist states. A Western business executive said, "The remarkable thing is that the revolution occurred without a single shot being fired . . . (and) if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere" (The New York Times, 25 June 1991, A8).

South Africa used the same vehicle: the Convention for a Democratic South Africa or CODESA. It began deliberations in July 1991, with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political parties and various anti-apartheid groups. The de Klerk government made no effort to "control" the composition of CODESA. Political parties were not excluded; not even ultra right-wing political groups, although they chose to boycott its deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a "working consensus" on an interim constitution and set a date for the March 1994 elections. It established the composition of an interim or transitional government that would rule until the elections were held. More important, CODESA was "sovereign." Its decisions were binding on the de Klerk government. De Klerk could not abrogate any decision made by CODESA -- just as the African chief could not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting. [In 2004, Afghanistan also revived an ancient tribal conclave (loya jirga) to transition to democratic rule.]

Clearly, the sovereign national conference is the vehicle to defuse political crises in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. It is an “African solution to an African problem.”

 

Related article: Why Kenya Imploded

__________________________
 
The writer, a Ghanaian, is the President of the Free Africa Foundation
and a Distinguished Economist at American University, both in
Washington, DC. He is the author of Africa In Chaos and Africa
Unchained.

 

 


 

   

 

 

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