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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Mon Jan 10 2011 - 00:25:44 EST
IVORY COAST: Fair ballot or full bullet?
Tuesday, 04 January 2011 21:03 BlogS
http://www.zimpapers.co.zw/news-categories/blogs/987-ivory-coast-fair-ballot-or-full-bullet.html?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page
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<https://mail.google.com/a/umn.edu/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#>
The so-called electoral crisis in Ivory Coast hardly has any African Press,
any African perspective, to present it.
That includes its coverage by the media in Zimbabwe and Kenya, themselves
two nations whose electoral and post-electoral situations have been made to
read analogous firstly to each other, and secondly to what is happening in
that West African nation. The press in Africa (as opposed to African press)
has been playing bagpipe to the dominant western press, shunting to us
overbearing western voices. We are being fed on relayed reports from the
West, all of them fitting within the “big-man-who-wont-go-away” syndrome. It
is an old thesis, an old Western prejudice where African power in
contradistinction to western power is rated not by what it delivers or does
not deliver to the governed, but by what it does to protect western
interests and, yes, by how soon its renounced after a colour-less career to
the governed.
*MORE*<https://mail.google.com/news-categories/international-news/977-mediators-shuttle-between-icoast-presidents-to-end-crisis.html>
*Playing false AU card. *
Ivory Coast is not helped by puzzling voices, puzzling decisions, attributed
to the African Union. In all fairness, how does the AU appoint Raila Odinga
point-man on Ivory Coast, a man whose own country situation demands one such
a point-man, indeed a man whose own role in the bloody episode of electoral
Kenya is itself a subject of investigation? And with the care of a mighty
bull in a small china shop, he has gone about this assumed appointment with
fitting care and circumspection! Things are already breaking in the Ivorian
China shop and the bull marches on! But is this an AU decision on someone is
flying the kite? The AU should not allow itself to be taken advantage of.
Equally, how is Economic Community for West African States goaded into
making fulsomely radical statements prematurely? The first AU Summit for
2011 is coming in Addis in mid-January. That is where an AU decision on
Ivory Coast shall be taken, after a deliberate African debate. African
debate, not Western wishes projected through tin-pot persons who purport to
be African and leaders. As yet we have no AU position on Ivory Coast, only
abundant AU worries, African worries which we all should have for one
another as Africans. Not this cacophonous rash to be noticed by the West, to
ingratiate one’s country with the West. Much of all we have heard is cheap
saber rattling. I bet my last dollar, until after the January Summit of the
AU in Addis, we will not have an AU-sanctioned way forward on Ivory Coast.
Zimbabwe and Gbagbo
Which takes me to a myth-making falsehood which is being peddled with
respect to Zimbabwe. An impression has been created that Zimbabwe, alongside
Angola, has already recognized President Gbagbo. Well, she has not and let
that be noted by the lying press. Foreign Affairs which is only a phone call
away, tells me Zimbabwe stands to be guided by the January Summit I have
already alluded to. This is predicated on two basic reasons: the Summit will
produce an authoritative continental position on Ivory Coast; the AU has
always proceeded on the basis of deferring to the affected sub-region for a
cue, in this case ECOWAS.
Predictably, there will be a briefing from the Ivorian leadership and from
ECOWAS, possibly led by the three Presidents tasked to mediate on its
behalf. We may also hear from former President Mbeki. But ECOWAS will only
lead the debate; it will not necessarily conclude it. Full Summit will. That
is the AU way. It is highly unlikely that the AU will pick on an emissary
outside of ECOWAS, let alone of lower than head of state or former head of
state level. That discounts Raila, does it not? How would he relate to
Gbagbo, from the stool of premiership? It simply does not make sense, which
is why one cannot understand the media leaping at such planted folly.
Whipping boy
A bit of background to what is prompting unreflective responses recorded to
date. The Ivory Coast situation is being used to vindicate bilateral
relations between given African countries anxious to please and impress, and
their Western masters, principally France and the United States of America.
The UN and its impulsive Secretary General has not yet come into the
picture. It waits for a cue from the AU, never mind that much of the mess in
Ivory Coast owes to its monumental operational failures. You read a
destructive face-saving effort by Ban-ki Moon, an attempt to cover
monumental UN ineptitude by turning Gbagbo into a whipping boy.
*Fawning great tears, spittle*
Precious little that has been attributed to reacting African states is
prompted by an African wish to solve a problem afflicting an African
country. This is the real tragedy of the whole situation. And on this one,
you see a major qualitative difference between Southern Africa and the rest
of the African sub-regions. In SADC we do not yell to be heard, to impress,
to play toughie. We solve problems quietly, effectively, well away from the
West’s madding crowd. Additionally, the Ivorian situation has become a
convenient dummy to many unresolved national questions in given African
countries presently speaking the loudest, principally Nigeria, Kenya and
Zimbabwe.
Odinga and Tsvangirai’s stridency on the Ivorian situation project their
lingering wish for what they could not get in their own home situations.
Both are using the Ivorian situation to address their home situations long
after the door has been closed. In both instances, it is a bit of vicarious
action, real compensatory conduct by two men who feel deficient by
hindsight, who still dream for some associational miracle in the future.
Both are in a marriage they won’t wish for Gbagbo and Ouattara, well
thriving in it. It’s a bit of a triggered self-mourning, self-pitying,
conveyed with great tears and spittle of fawned bitterness by two men who
daily pray to their good Lord for so wonderful a day that must never see
sunset. The only trouble is when the world takes them too seriously.
The story of Savimbi, Hassan
The case of Angola and Southern Africa needs some background, more so to
help our “instant” or “here-and-now” media which seems to carry no memory.
Apart from apartheid South Africa and America, Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, the
UNITA man who plunged Angola into a vicious civil war from its very day of
birth in 1975 until his long-in-coming death in 2002, was in West Africa
supported by Ivory Coast’s late President Houghouet-Boigny, and Burkina
Faso’s Blaise Compaore (after assassination of Thomas Sankara by Compaore).
Indeed, Savimbi’s family would shuttle between Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso,
as he himself also would, each time the MPLA Government operations seemed
close to netting him in.
So strong was UNITA’s influence in Burkina Faso that Blaise Compaore created
a real faux pas for Southern African Heads of State (including President
Mugabe) in 2000 when he got UNITA and Morocco to jointly fund two AU Summits
held in that country. Morocco which left the then OAU way back over an OAU
resolution recognising the independence of Western Sahara, hoped for a
strong AU resolution against the Polisario Front which is struggling for
such an outcome in Western Sahara. On his part, Savimbi hoped Burkina Faso
would play a vital role in canvassing AU support in outflanking the MPLA
Government over resumed hostilities in Angola, all against a peace agreement
which Savimbi himself had trashed, to more bloodletting. It is thus not
difficult to understand Angola’s active interest in Ivory Coast,
particularly in checkmating Blaise Compaore and his designs on that country
which should never again be used to undermine its own security. Of course
Savimbi also had a strong foothold in Mobutu’s Zaire and one needs to keep
that picture in mind in understanding how the situation in that Ivory Coast
impacts Southern Africa.
*Internal settlement and Morocco*
But there is also another Southern African angle to it, this time with a
direct bearing on Zimbabwe. Morocco, itself a co-ally of both Ivory Coast
and Burkina Faso in backing Savimbi, was in 1979 a conduit of American CIA
money meant to help the late Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole win
the 1980 elections for our Independence. Both America and Britain did not
want to see Mugabe and his Zanu win that crucial poll. They preferred an
inclusive Government involving the internal settlement factor, possibly with
Zapu. In attendance when the CIA parcel was handed over to Muzorewa and
Sithole by Morocco’s King Hassan were CIA’s former Deputy Director and later
US United Nations Ambassador, General Vernon Walters, and Rhodesia’s CIO
Director General, the late Ken Flower. This is a little known part of the
Independence story.
*Tsvangirai and Morocco again*
Interestingly, this US-Morocco-Rhodesia axis is still alive to this day,
only with a new or renamed internal settlement player called MDC-Tsvangirai.
Among the recently leaked US documents is a November-December 2008 dispatch
from the US man in Rabat who confirms Morocco’s continued clandestine
funding of Tsvangirai and his MDC-T, in return for hoped for MDC-T
Government support on Western Sahara, against the Polisario Front, against a
long-standing AU resolution. The dispatch reveals that between November 29
and December 1, 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai was in Morocco ostensibly to receive
a prize from an NGO called Amadeus, which then was run by the son of
Morocco’s Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri. But Tsvangirai’s real reason
for making that trip was to secure more covert foreign financial support
from or through the Moroccan Government. We need to keep this factor in mind
as it has a bearing on Ivory Coast.
*Compaore and Chapter7*
Equally, when the UK and the US pushed for punishment of Zimbabwe under
Chapter 7 in the United Nations Security Council hardly two years ago,
Burkina Faso was among the few African countries then in the Security
Council, and whose vote was thus crucial to the defence of Zimbabwe.
Expectedly, Zimbabwe dispatched an envoy to Blaise Compaore who promised –
by hindsight promised duplicitously – to stand by Zimbabwe on the day of the
crucial vote, and in line with a standing AU resolution on the matter. But
on the crucial day, Burkina Faso went along with the aggressors, having been
promised handsome aid as recompense. Gentle reader, I am trying to
reconstruct the ecology of African states’ responses to what is happening in
Ivory Coast, as well as the sheer sub-regional interconnectedness of all
such responses against lived history and prevailing imperatives and
sensitivities.
*Caught flat-footed *
The public media from which much is expected, does not appear to have judged
this evolving story correctly, namely that it is neither remote nor foreign
to Southern Africa in general, and to Zimbabwe in particular. Quite the
contrary, the Ivorian situation has provided a crucial build-up towards
fresh round of more Zimbabwe lynching, Mugabe bashing, indeed for a more
determined attack on SADC and its view of conflict prevention, management
and resolution. Ivory Coast and Laurent Gbagbo have become alter egos of
“bad” Zimbabwe and “bad” Mugabe respectively, a twist that appears to have
caught the Herald flat-footed. Realising this turn of coverage, the Herald
sprang to the defence of Zimbabwe and the President, even then against the
background of weak editorial interest and sparse coverage of the story, much
of it received from the wires. Without a preceding localized coverage
build-up, Friday’s 31 December 2010 editorial on the matter sounded too
contrived, too extraneous to the daily’s news agenda.
Instead, the Ivory Coast story has been circumstantially localized for the
Herald, which then grappled to regain editorial control, in the process
revealing an utter lack of depth, information, and judgment. As shall be
shown, there is a lot that is comparable between the situation we have had
here in Zimbabwe, the situation which developed in Kenya, and what is
happening in Ivory Coast. It is not very helpful to sound reflexively
defensive; it is not very progressive to try and draw nuanced contrasts on
situations that are part of an overall African political ecology and,
because of that potentially are a basis for mobilizing a broad African
response to the challenges of colonialism in its present neo-colonial phase.
We need to acknowledge the same African seam to the problem bedeviling Ivory
Coast, noting both the sequential linkages with what happened in Kenya and
Zimbabwe, noting forward linkages with what might happen here during our
polls in 2011. All this not because these situations are inherently the
same, but all this because the same forces have contrived them, and seek to
profit from them.
*Relying on French news*
Firstly, how not to develop an African perspective. Much of what Zimbabwe
has got on the situation in Ivory Coast has to come from Agence France Press
(AFP) and Reuters, reaching us largely through Zimpapers. With what we have
gone through from 2000 until 2008 - no less than four Ivory Coast-like
electoral situations - I fail to understand why we think media systems of
meddlesome ex-colonial powers can give us clean news on situations similar
to what the BBC and the entire British media distorted here. Western power
is mediated and mediased and western media networks are partners in imperial
conquest. They have always been imbedded, always armed with the reflex of an
occupying power. We who used to tell the rest of Africa not to be misled by
the British and American media surely cannot ourselves rely on French media
for reportage on events happening in an ex-French colony that has chosen to
free itself?
Pervasive French interests
Let us take stock of French interest in Ivory Coast. Since Independence,
France has controlled Francophone Africa: from the infrastructure to the
bloc’s foreign reserves under the 14-nation Franc Zone. It does not matter
whether you are talking ports, airline, telephone, electricity, water and
even food, Francophone Africa operates French, buys French, eats French, and
unless matters drastically change, dies French! Boigny indentured Ivory
Coast to France at Independence, which is why France enjoys a stranglehold
on Ivorian industry, commerce and currency. A recent UN study showed that
France controls 45% of Ivorian land from which comes cocoa, Ivory Coast’s
main earner.
Even buildings of the Presidency of the Republic and the Ivorian National
Assembly are leased from France! You get a list of French conglomerates like
Bollore, Saga, SDV, Delmas, Bouygues, Colas, Total, France Telecom, Societe
Generale, CFAO-CI, etc, etc. Controlling the economic sinews of former
colonies has always been French policy from the days of pre-independent
Algeria. Then French control was mediated through three big entrepreneurs:
Borgeaud, Chiaffino and Blachette, with Borgeaud in the lead. “In Algeria,
one drinks Borgeaud, smokes Borgeaud, eats Borgeaud, and banks or borrows
Borgeaud,” ran a popular saying before Algeria rose in its freedom
rebellion. French presence in Ivory Coast is no less pervasive today, this
hour. That pervasiveness replicates itself in Ivorian politics, and in
military affairs with France maintaining a garrison in that country, an
intrusive one too! That this is one of the key issues to the present Ivorian
crisis is never reflected in the coverage of these Eurocentric networks.
*The democrat they will not acknowledge *
Like President Mugabe, Laurent Gbagbo made the mistake of pushing a
nationalist line against pervasive French interests, including re-possessing
national politics away from French tutelage and infantilisation. He sought
to create national institutions and national processes, all against this
French pervasiveness. French-educated, he fought Boigny on the side of
democracy and full African sovereignty, repeatedly going to prison for it.
During those days of his early struggles against the conservative,
pro-France Boigny regime, his present rival, Alassane Ouattara, was with
Boigny, loyally advancing the French ethos as desired by Boigny.
Ouattara’s political ambitions only surfaced after Boigny’s death. He had
joined the Boigny regime from a long stint with Bretton Woods institutions,
principally the International Monetary Fund where the had risen to the rank
of the second strongest men. To this day, he exudes the IMF ethos. It is
interesting that Ivory Coast under Boigny only started democratizing after
threats of financial sanctions from the World Bank and IMF, pressure which
in fact yielded the appointment of Ouattara himself as the country’s Finance
minister. It has turned out to have been a long-term strategic placement.
This association with the conservative Boigny, and with Bretton Woods
institutions, against the French-educated but more radical pro-democracy
forces led by Gbagbo is deliberately being underplayed to give Ouattara a
patina much brighter than that of Gbabgo. The irony of the whole debate is
that it is the condemned man who has done more to advance Ivorian democracy.
The only problem is he took it too far, well beyond what the empire
tolerates.
*The double outsider*
Inside Ivory Coast, Ouattara is viewed as an outsider, both in the sense of
being a thoroughbred Western technocrat, and that of being of Burkinabe
parentage. The issue of parentage is sore one in a region where
nation-states were carved against itinerant populations. Both negatives were
invoked against him by Boigny’s successor, President Henri Konan Bedie, when
he tried to run for Presidency. When Bedie was overthrown in a military coup
in 1999, Gbagbo and his supporters – not Ouattara - took the burden to
defeating the soldiers through mass action, in order to defend their
electoral victory of October 2000 against the military candidate, Robert
Guei, in order to rescue democracy facing the jackboot. Huge sacrifices were
made to bring this about, again another detail hardly emphasized in the
current Gbagbo lynching. Again, Guei, not Gbagbo, upheld the 100% Ivorian
parentage to block Ouattara from participating in the poll. That way, the
issue of national identity and presidential eligibility became entrenched in
Ivorian politics. It has become a real issue in Ivorian politics as we have
them today. It does not help to sweep all these real issues all to condemn
and oversimplify.
*Battle of faiths *
But identity in more ways than one. Identity also in the sense of religion.
Ivory Coast comprises Christian (largely Catholic) South and Muslim North.
Gbagbo is a Christian Southerner while Ouattara is a Moslem northerner of
Burkinabe parentage. There is a way in which the two presidential rivals do
actually personify the struggle of the two faiths, and how this as in many
other West African states, today threatens the unity of the West African
state. It is the same story with Nigeria, itself a strident voice on Ivory
Coast. It gets worse when both the Burkinabe and Muslim factors translate
into an unresolved land question in a country where cocoa fields define
welfare thresholds. All these potent factors are tucked beneath the
institution of the ballot which is expected to play adabracadabra!
*Ouattara’s coup*
After Gbagbo pushed out the military, he assumed Presidency only to be
rocked by an attempted military coup of 2002 that implicated Ouattara, the
French, Burkina Faso and a number of neighbouring states. While the coup
itself failed, it gave birth to insurgency in the North which left Ivory
Coast in a state of civil war which pitted the Moslem North against the
Christian South, Ouattara (in spite of his denials) against Gbagbo, even
though one Soro was viewed as titular head of that rebellion. Interestingly,
the 38-year old Soro sides with Ouattara in the current stand-off. Ceasefire
agreements largely failed between 2005 until about 2007 when a more lasting
peace deal was hammered, with the United Nations already involved under
Chapter 7. Gbagbo ruled Ivory Coast, with rebel-leader Soro as Prime
Minister, both enjoying yearly extensions until the poll of November 2010,
itself the subject matter for this write-up. In between, relations between
Gbagbo and France plunged from bad to worse, worse to worst, with the fatal
bombing of 6 French troopers and the subsequent reprisal bombing of the
entire Ivorian Airforce fleet being lowest point. It is not surprising that
Sarkozy leads the present charge against Gbagbo.
*Privileging the North to rig elections *
An important detail regarding the Ivorian situation is that while the peace
accords called for the demilitarization of the rebellious North and the
subsequent reestablishment of the authority of central Ivorian Government,
all in return for the many concessions Gbagbo had granted, the UN never
succeeded is disarming and quartering the rebels. Indeed, this turned out to
be a crucial factor during the disputed elections.
Administratively and electorally, the North became a no-go area for both
Government and other parties, except that of Ouattara and his rebels. Not
even the UN could oversee voter registration all of which was done by rebels
and their structures, well beyond the authority of the State and the
independent electoral commission called the CEI. This is what is at the
heart of the electoral dispute we read about today. The UN condoned a
situation where a rebellious part of Ivory Coast was left to organize
elections in which it was a participant. By contrast, Gbagbo’s South came
under strict rules for free and fair elections.
*Constitutional hierarchy*
Constitutionally, CEI is empowered to conduct a free and fair poll. It is
required to release results within three days from the close of the poll.
But the laws of Ivory Coast vests the last word in the country’s
constitutional court which immediately kicks in should CEI fail to deliver
results within the stipulated three days from an appropriate venue which is
understood to be its headquarters. Realising that the untoward had happened
in the North, the largely pro-French and pro-Ouattara CEI divided its final
verdict on the overall poll. Those in CEI who were pro-West, pro-France,
pro-Ouattara favoured a result that gave victory to Ouattara.
Those who were either neutral or pro-Gbagbo, and had witnessed the swelling
of ballot boxes in the North, well beyond registered voters, naturally
objected, with the result that three days passed without an announcement as
required by the constitution. It was a bitter affair, with one electoral
commissioner tearing the result in protest. Much worse, the challenged
result was announced from Ouattara’s hotel, not from CEI’s headquarters.
Clearly a deadlock had declared itself; clearly the electoral process had
undermined itself, which is how the constitutional court kicked in. The
constitutional court highlighted the anomalies in the North and awarded
victory to Gbagbo, The UN objected, western countries objected, with France
hurrying to recognize Ouattara as the new leader. Equally, West African
states were whipped into line by the West. It is as if both the UN and the
West had turned themselves into final arbiters in the whole process, indeed
had placed CEI above the country’s constitution and constitutional court.
That, in rough, is the outline of events which gave rise to a seemingly
strange situation where a sitting President alleges vote rigging by a
non-incumbent rival.
*Bush, Florida, Gbagbo, Ivory Coast*
Except this was a UN-supervised election. Except all parties went in knowing
fully the constitutional position and its institutional predicates. In all
fairness, how does one favour and uphold the verdict of CEI while deriding
that of the constitutional court, when both have well-appointed roles
founded in the same constitution? The Ivorian constitution, much like that
of the United States cedes authority to the courts once the electoral
administrator is disabled from arriving at a decision. That is how George W.
Bush won Florida and the Presidency of the US in America, was it not? Why
was that right for US democracy when it is so wrong for democracy elsewhere
in the world, including in an African country called Ivory Coast? And why is
the solution to the disputed ballot an ECOMOG bullet when it was not so in
the Florida case? What is so dangerous about Africa’s failed ballot to
deserve the bullet that the US is spared for similar failures?
*UN monumental failure*
How does the UN, itself the failed supervisor of the whole process, rise
above the same process in judgment? Indeed hurry to favour one result
against the other, and do so against its loudly proclaimed failure to
demilitarize the North in order to create even conditions for a national
poll? Who failed Ivory Coast, Gbagbo, or the UN? Who deserves to leave Ivory
Coast, Gbagbo or the effete UN? What deserves to come in, a fair ballot or a
full invading battalion. Congo in the early 1960s showed us how the UN can
in fact be used to suppress and even assassinate legitimate interests of a
people. Congo in Africa’s 1960s showed us how meddlesome colonial powers can
piggy-bag their sinister designs on a UN operation. Today, Ivory Coast shows
Africa yet again how the UN is no insurance against electoral rigging,
indeed against a destabilizing electoral process.
*The dirt beneath the ballot*
Above all, Zimbabwe, Kenya and today Ivory Coast show the world how the
ballot, however managed by whomsoever, can never cure or play panacea to
unresolved, deep-seated African national questions to do with
neo-colonialism, the land, economic disempowerment and deepening poverty
whether expressing itself as ethnic or faiths-based conflicts. Like
Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast is struggling to shake off an encumbering
neo-colonialism. Like Zimbabwe and Kenya, Ivory Coast is battling to resolve
an age-old land question. Like all of Africa, Ivory Coast faces daunting
odds in fending off external interference, in building integrity to
processes that are supposed to be sovereign and national. It does not help
when sister African states in exactly the same predicament pretend to look
better, dramatise a false and hypocritical outrage to an electoral failure
they themselves showed in more monumental, unsolvable proportions only
yesterday, indeed are set to demonstrate again less than a year from the
Ivory Coast’s UN debacle. That they have swapped national sovereignty for
blind and unconditional western goodwill does not make them any better, any
more superior than Ivory Coast, let alone entitle them to strut about, whip
in hand. Fortunately Nigeria – itself the only one with some capacity in
carrying such a whip – is bracketed by disabilities of a still-to-be-elected
leader, a history and prospect of very poorly run elections, and a polity
badly split by a religious conflict which is most susceptible to any
religiously resonant military adventurism within its backyard. Which is why
there will be no military adventurism in Ivory Coast. .
*Zimbabwe, the great target, prize*
As for Zimbabwe, a-ah the issue has never been about Ivory Coast. It has
always been about setting interventionist precedence on the continent, well
ahead of our polls next year. We are the big prize, which is why the Ivorian
situation must be appreciated as part of a common struggle we must wage in
solidarity against imperialism. Far from being a test of democracy,
elections on the continent have become an opportunity for wanton external
interference, for the West’s destabilization of unwanted governments which
dare say NO to imperialism. I really wish Zimbabwe, Kenya and now Ivory
Coast were about the BIG MEN of African politics who cannot leave the
national stage. Regrettably, these situations are about very small and quite
vulnerable men (for now they all are men) facing the BIG MEN of Europe and
America who won’t want to see Africa shake off imperialism to collect her
own DESTINY, untrammeled. That, to me is the real fight. Icho!
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