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ELECTIONS in Africa are taken far seriously by citizens than previously thought. Academics may dismiss these as inconsequential, but Western powers do not, as they seek to use elections to promote their strategic interests. But as this article argues, what matters to Africans are local issues — justice, bread, freedom and African solutions to African problems.
That is the legacy of Thomas Sankara and other African patriots.
It is the argument of this article that future historians will wonder the extent to which the ICC indictments of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, Hon. William Ruto, then leading contenders for political high office in Kenya at the time, failed to influence the outcome of the elections in favour of western favoured political alliances in Kenya.
In the end, what was supposed to be the biggest trump card in their interventionist policy became the West’s Achilles heel.
Reflecting on popular choices at African Elections
The year 2013 will define the nature of elections on the continent. In 2013, Mali had a non-contested Presidential elect in the midst of a civil war.
In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe beat the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and returned to state house for five more years. In Kenya, HE President Uhuru Kenyatta beat his near rival, ex-Prime Minster, Hon Raila Odinga’s Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) to clinch a victory and become Kenya’s 4th President since independence. If this trend is repeated, opposition parties in Africa are in for more loses.
Election losers will always scream foul play without examining the reasons for their monumental failures at the ballot box. One factor which is already emerging is that political parties, especially, those deemed to be allied to the West, are performing badly at the ballot box (Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Angola are a few examples). The extent to which political parties use elections and electioneering to deal with social issues relating to shelter, food and social justice, instead of as a process of appeasement of the West, and the national ruling elites largely determines the outcomes. In fact, it is a widely acknowledged fact that political parties and groups allied to the West, will continue to lose elections at every juncture.
Commenting on Zimbabwe, Professor David Moore attributes Zanu-PF’s victory to a ‘Gramscian combination of forceful power and sly persuasion-the dialectics of coercion and consent’ (African Arguments, Royal African Society, August 15, 2013). Election losers also claim that incumbency is to blame, that an incumbent like HE President Mugabe is always likely to win elections in his country.
The incumbency theory is weak, almost to a fault.
It ignores recent examples in African history where incumbents have lost elections (eg Zambia under president Kaunda and Ghana under president Jerry Rawlings).
More than incumbency, a more compelling factor worth examining, especially the cases of Kenya and Zimbabwe, is the “coalition” arrangement forced on both countries and favoured by the West as a back door arrangement to get their supporters a piece of the cake. Coalition governments have now become a discredited phenomenon in today’s Africa, and politicians who seek power through a Western-led “coalition” arrangement are setting themselves up for failure.
In both Zimbabwe and Kenya, the lesser of the two principals took their eyes off the ball, as they sought political power and the advantages that come with occupying a high office in Africa.
Writing about the elections in Zimbabwe, and reasons for the overwhelming victory of President Robert Mugabe, Blessing-Miles Tendy noted that “Tsvangirai’s party lost sight of the need for rapid and comprehensive institutional reforms in the early years of power sharing” (Guardian, 5th August, 2013).
Kenya points to a different but disturbing direction for old colonial loyalties. How did HE President Uhuru Kenyatta manage, to emerge winner in spite of attempts by powerful Western nations and elites in Kenyan civil society to block him from power by “all means necessary”? Prior to the election, almost all the opinion polls had all along predicted a prime minster Raila Odinga victory.
Unlike other countries where Western Ambassadors operate below the radar, silent and circumspect, in the case of Kenya, Western Ambassadors were loud, abrasive, patronising and emboldened enough to openly state their preference for a particular presidential candidate.
They huffed, puffed and threatened sanctions against individuals and organisations which did not follow their neo-liberal narrative of Kenyan history and the possible outcomes of the March 4 elections.
The West, threats to democratic choices in Africa
The end of colonialism did not necessarily end Western thirst for African resources. African politicians and academics have long argued that to keep African countries underdeveloped, secure and ripe for exploitation, the West supported political dynasties, one party rulers, and dictators (eg Mobutu Sese Seko) and undermined those who failed to fall under their spell. For the West, democratic elections are used to guarantee a perpetuation of their neo-colonial interests; and the perpetuation of a society polarised into a privileged minority, and an impoverished majority — weak, underdeveloped, undermined and racked by civil wars. (Not any more).
In his acclaimed essay, “The Struggle for Democracy” Isa Shivji pointed points out that “the struggle for democracy is ultimately rooted in the life conditions of the people”, and not by the agendas of foreign funded NGOs and their foreign acolytes.
Yet, elections are being used as times for which Ambassadors of Western nations in Africa can leverage economic and political advantages for their countries, times in which the popular classes stand in long queues to vote for parties and candidates representing the interest of the West. As enticing as this may seem, the exact opposite is beginning to manifest itself on the continent.
As pointed out earlier, recent African history points to the fact that pro-western political parties hardly win elections on their own, except when they are part of a broader coalition for democratic change.
However, it is important to point out that being pro-west alone does not guarantee defeat at the polls. Several other factors must come into play.
The Western alliance in Kenya led a sustained campaign of intimidation, innuendo and blackmail from junior diplomats in Western Embassies and High Commissions. They recruited willing Kenyan and African accomplices in this mission.
Firstly, the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, who was then head of the AU Panel of Eminent Persons, jetted into Nairobi, with the usual fanfare, to ‘warn’ Kenyans that it was “not in their interest to elect politicians indicated by the ICC”.
The former UN Secretary General was closely followed by former US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton with a similar threat. They were closely followed by Johnny Carson, a former deputy Minister in the Obama administration, who warned Kenyans that electing people facing charges at the International Criminal Court will “have consequences”.
These threats were closely linked to the West’s obsession with indicting African leaders at their court called the International Criminal Court. Hence, the ICC did not only become a gigantic distraction, but an electioneering issue in the case of Kenya.
The pro-ICC lobby in Kenya, led by Western Embassies and some foreign funded and directed civil society supporters, did all they could to make the ICC an election issue, thinking it would weaken the Uhuru-Ruto Jubilee coalition. There was the feeling in some sections of Kenyan society, that the indictments had been engineered by a combination of civil society and some political interests opposed to the Uhuru- Ruto candidacy.
Some Western Embassies took umbrage at any attempt to question the role of the ICC process. The desperadoes in Western Embassies, having spent their tax payers’ resources on futile, empty and non-effective campaigns about the ICC as a transitional justice mechanism, resorted to threats, intimidation, and blackmail, to achieve their objectives.
Such acts of impunity failed to impress the Kenyan electorate. Increasingly, the CORD alliance, led by ex-Prime Minster, Raila Odinga, was seen as “proxies” for the West.
The ICC has become a weapon in the arsenal of the “political rehabilitation of imperial hegemony in Africa” what Isa Shivji refers to as the “moral rehabilitation of imperialism”.
It is my view that this has to be rejected for its neocolonial intentions, and also as a celebration of the emerging strong judiciaries in Africa. African judicial systems and non-state actors are equal to the task of ensuring justice for victims of unequal development, of violence against women and children, and against colonial abuse on the continent.
The Ugandan President, His Excellency, Yoweri Museveni did not mince words, when he congratulated Kenyans during the inauguration of the Uhuru Kenyatta Presidency: “I want to salute the Kenyan voters on one other issue — the rejection of the blackmail by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and those who seek to abuse this institution for their own agenda.” (Daily Nation, Thursday, April 11th, 2013).
In effect, Africans can no longer be expected to do the bidding of the West on every single issue. It is a salutary lesson for the West. As the renowned British journalist, Robert Fisk said in relation to the western response to the Syrian crisis: “what was amazing was the sheer audacity of our leaders (western) in thinking they could bamboozle their electorates with their lies, trumperies and tomfoolery”.
If Western leaders cannot do that to their electorates, Western ambassadors also failed to do that to Kenyans and Zimbabweans. — To be continued — Pambazuka
Online Reporter