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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Aug 12 2010 - 09:56:20 EDT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/54bca69e-a3e3-11df-9e3a-00144feabdc0.html Perfidious
donors betray Africa’s democrats
By William Wallis
Published: August 9 2010 20:43 | Last updated: August 9 2010 20:43
There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful about sub-Saharan Africa. Progress
towards more democratic rule, however, is no longer among them.
Anyone persuaded otherwise needs to take a hard look at recent elections and
revisit history for a reminder of the costs of stolen ballots and stifled
ambition. These can be heavy in countries where, for all the talk of an
expanding African middle class, people still tend to vote on the basis of
their ethnic identity.
Rwanda, which held elections on Monday, is a special case. It was always
debatable how much the outside world should push for political freedom in a
country recovering from genocide.
Western donors, led by the US and Britain, have mollycoddled President Paul
Kagame, encouraging the notion that Rwanda’s stability rests on him. They
have relied on his good will to get the timing right, in the hope that
political space will gradually open.
It should come as no surprise that the reverse is taking place. There are
few precedents of authoritarian rulers becoming more benign after 15 years
in power. Like other guerrilla leaders whose path to the presidency went
through the bush, Mr Kagame has proved ruthlessly effective in stabilising
and rebuilding his country. His credentials for presiding over the more
liberal environment needed if tensions are to be contained are less evident.
In this kind of instance outside pressure has proved necessary in the past.
Western pressure on client regimes played a central role after the cold war
in lending momentum to Africa’s political transition. Indeed, if democracy
could be measured by the number of elections taking place now then there
would be cause to celebrate already. This year voting will take place in 12
of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 states.
In this context it is tempting to think that even the most entrenched
autocracies are being cajoled into more liberal behaviour. Undoubtedly, in
the age of mobile phones and internet, it is harder to silence critics and
rob the central bank.
Yet far from reinforcing a virtuous circle of more accountable rule, a run
of recent polls, Rwanda’s among them, have instead challenged a commonly
held assumption: that the more elections taking place, the more democratic
and stable the continent becomes.
The arrival of China as a major influence in Africa, and with other emerging
nations, a source of finance and trade, has certainly diluted western
leverage. But western strategic considerations, in an era of international
terrorism and stiffening competition for markets and resources, have also
seen electoral fair play drop down the agenda.
The rhetoric has not followed, however, leading to a policy that looks
perfidious and silly. With one hand the US, the EU and other donors
encourage and finance elections. With the other, they routinely accept the
outcome regardless of how dubious the manner in which it is achieved.
In many cases voting simply adds trappings of legitimacy to a contemporary
form of one-party rule, in which incumbents use patronage, oppression and
control of electoral machinery to maintain power.
No doubt in Rwanda, where counting is under way, the process will be hailed
as orderly even though there was no competition. Mr Kagame’s real opponents
have either fled, been barred from standing or are lying low.
The results of earlier elections in Ethiopia, in which the opposition were
evicted from all but two seats in the 545-seat parliament, were no less
pre-ordained.
In both countries, as in much of Africa, western donors justify continued
support on the basis of their development record. In Rwanda this is
exemplary. The question is whether it will be sustainable as popular
frustration at the closed political environment grows.
In Ethiopia, the same is almost true but with a disturbing caveat. It is an
open secret that the double-digit growth of recent years is supported by
dubious statistics. Yet the same figures are bandied around by development
experts arguing that a trade-off between growth and civil liberties is
inevitable.
That sounds worryingly familiar to the case used to justify western support
for cold war clients. Are African desires for more accountable leadership
becoming subordinate again to the opinion of western donors and the
commercial and strategic interests of foreign businesses and powers? It is
to be hoped that pressure from electorates will ensure that if this is so,
it is only temporary. But it is a dangerous time for democracy in Africa.
In the past two decades, electoral transformations in countries such as
South Africa, Ghana and Senegal encouraged positive momentum across the
board. The opposite is true today. Before Rwanda this year, Sudan, Burundi
and Ethiopia all hosted deeply flawed elections with little or no
consequence for their relations with the outside world.
The leadership in other African countries where polls are looming will all
have taken note: going through electoral motions remains a prerequisite for
international acceptance. But there is no need to offer the real thing.
*The writer is the FT’s Africa editor*
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