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Ballots vs. Bullets in Kenya and Zimbabwe
Briggs Bomba | July 9, 2008
Editor: Emira Woods
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The world’s attention has been riveted in 2008 by election crises in Africa, first Kenya, and now Zimbabwe. In both cases, challenges remain in converting electoral victory to political power. Can a victorious opposition come to power in the face of an obstinate incumbent? This question is particularly relevant when the incumbent regime controls the coercive apparatus of the state and the opposition only has the ballot in its corner. In the battle of the ballot vs. the bullet, can there ever be a fair match?
Historically the answer has been no. But new developments on the democratic front in Africa in the last decade have strengthened election support and monitoring by key regional bodies, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU). In 2004, SADC adopted “Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections” aimed at “enhancing the transparency and credibility of elections and democratic governance as well as ensuring the acceptance of election results by contesting parties.”
The “African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance”adopted by the AU in 2007 promised to, among other things, “promote the holding of regular free and fair elections to institutionalize legitimate authority of representative government as well as democratic change of government.” These developments have strengthened the electoral process on the continent, creating the space for opposition parties to compete fairly. At a minimum, international supervision through these protocols compels sitting governments to desist from outright repression and undemocratic practices.
Vibrant Civil Society
Another significant development on the African continent is the emergence of a vibrant independent civil society focused on democracy, human rights, and social justice. In fact, the SADC and AU protocols would not count for much if not for civil society pressure on African leaders to abide. In both the Zimbabwean and Kenyan election crises, civil society played a key role in documenting, exposing, and transmitting human rights violations. In addition, the advent of the Internet and other modern communication tools shrinks time and space, making it possible to build instant global people to people communication and solidarity links. Consequently, incidents that would blow away unnoticed in the past, now invoke global outrage.
Weak National Democratic Institutions
Both the cases of Kenya and Zimbabwe expose the weaknesses of national democratic institutions, particularly those mandated to oversee the conduct of elections. In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, like its Kenyan counterpart was exposed as partisan in favor of the incumbent regime. In both countries the judiciary offered no recourse as the judicial bench is routinely “staffed” by government loyalists. A key challenge therefore is how to evolve robust democratic institutions as a lasting foundation for an enduring democracy and social stability. Key elements of a fully functioning democracy are an independent and impartial electoral commission, an independent judiciary, and a democratic constitution. Regrettably, these conditions don’t always hold in countries emerging from a colonial past.
Nonpartisan security forces are also critical elements of a democratic state where people choose their leaders freely. In Zimbabwe the army, the police, and secret services merged seamlessly with the violent campaign machinery of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Unity Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF). In Kenya, the police stood in President Kibaki’s corner and brutally massacred hundreds of opposition activists in protests that followed the disputed election. The lessons of Kenya and Zimbabwe underscore the importance of professionalizing the army, police, prison services, and secret services so that the security forces are not party operatives. This is particularly daunting for countries like Zimbabwe, where former liberation movements are in power and their allied armed wings have been integrated into national security forces. There tends to be partisan loyalty amongst these “war veterans,” their allies, and affiliated parties.
International Intervention
Both Zimbabwe and Kenya raise the question of the role of the international community in resolving internal conflict. Clearly, in circumstances of weak democratic institutions, a victorious opposition must rely on more than the ballot to secure power. In the case of Kenya, unlike Zimbabwe, the opposition used mass mobilization and threats of total economic paralysis to leverage its power and ultimately compel the sitting government towards a negotiated settlement.
In Kenya, the United States, Britain, the AU, and other players in the international community played a key role in brokering the power-sharing deal that stopped Kenya from plunging into the abyss of political chaos. While the political settlement in Kenya succeeded in stopping violence, the key question remains unanswered — how to ensure the unhindered transfer of power to the true winners of the election. The deal currently holding Kenya together is an inferior solution that will only be meaningful if immediate steps are taken to ensure that the will of the people is respected in the next election.
International mediation in Kenya was made easier as key players in the international community had access to and leverage with leaders from both sides of the crisis; and the local actors were not irreparably polarized. This is a key difference with Zimbabwe, where political polarization is acute and Western powers have no diplomatic access to Mugabe. Mugabe’s response to Britain’s “school yard” isolationist diplomacy has been to throw his toys and act like he just does not care.
The role that the United States can play in Zimbabwe is undermined by the Bush administration’s lack of international credibility, partly because of the discredited Iraq war; and outright hypocrisy where the United States embraces favored dictators such as Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Pakistan’s Musharraf while preaching democracy in Zimbabwe. These discrepancies make statements about democracy in Zimbabwe ring hollow and provoke questions about the real motives of U.S. foreign policy.
SADC and the AU, equipped with relatively new principles and protocols, are limited in their actions by the poor human rights record and electoral practices of many of the present leaders. The precedent already set by failure to take a firm stance against members such as Sudan for gross human rights abuses and Ethiopia and Nigeria for outright electoral fraud, limits the extent of what African leaders can do now. Mugabe is already exploiting this Achilles’ heel, effectively paralyzing the AU by arguing that others have been allowed to get away with worse crimes. Thus, while there is a growing voice of “concern” by African leaders, the response falls far short of the moral outrage conditions on the ground demand.
The 14-nation strong SADC is in the best position to influence developments in Zimbabwe. The region completely landlocks Zimbabwe and as such wields a big economic muscle. But more importantly, SADC does have a history of direct intervention in trouble spots. In 1998 South Africa and Botswana sent troops to Lesotho as part of a SADC mission to crush a coup and “restore democracy” following controversial elections in that country. In 1997, Mugabe, in a position then as SADC’s Chairman of the Organ on Security and Defense, led Angola and Namibia in a military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The key question is how to balance intervention by all the international players — SADC, AU, UN, and Western powers. The UN’s role is tough as its original mandate involved conflicts between and not within nations. Western powers, particularly the United States and Britain, have thrust themselves forward ahead of all the other players in Zimbabwe in ways that are not always helpful given the region’s colonial past and Western corporate interests. Unilateral actions by Western countries often compromise the position of democratic forces on the continent, as they face accusations of being Western puppets. African leaders in a new era of African renaissance do not want to appear to be taking orders from the West. This is not to say that the West has no role to play — international action must be directed through existing African institutions and the UN.
In countries like Zimbabwe and Kenya, bolstering African institutions and pressuring them to uphold their protocols on human rights, elections and good governance is the best path to democracy. A true solution to the current political crises in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the continent is strengthening the ballot, and amplifying regional and continental peace making through the AU and SADC.
Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Briggs Bomba is Associate Director for Campaigns at Africa Action. He is from Zimbabwe.
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Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies.
Recommended citation:
Briggs Bomba, "Ballots vs. Bullets in Kenya and Zimbabwe," (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 9, 2008).
Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5356
Production Information:
Author(s): Briggs Bomba
Editor(s): Emira Woods
Production: Erik Leaver |
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Netfa Freeman |
Date: Aug 24, 2008 |
| This comparison between the situations in Zimbabwe and Kenya is clearly superficial and crude. First of all, manipulated ethnic tensions between the Kikuyus versus the Luo and other groups were at the center of the Kenya situation. There is no such factor in Zimbabwe.
Bomba misleads readers about the situation in Zimbabwe by implying that there was "a victorious opposition" in the presidential elections but the Zimbabwe constitution requires a candidate to gain over 50% of the vote to be victorious and neither MDC-T's Morgan Tsvangirai nor ZANU PF's Robert Mugabe did so in the March 29th election. Furthermore, the candidate receiving the most votes in the required June 27th run-off was Robert Mugabe. I know the author; Bomba is counting on readers to accept the false premise that the run-off was uncontested due to Tsvangirai declaring that he was pulling out two weeks before the voting. However, while he did announce this claim to the public, he never followed procedures for it and announced it after the deadline required by the electoral guidelines. Therefore, his name still appeared on the ballot. Not to mention that his party still participated and accepted victory in two provinces that also held as part of the run-off. That is NOT an uncontested election. The whole thing was clearly a charade by a candidate (on the instructions of his Western masters) who wasn't confident he'd succeed in the run-off.
Bomba rhetorically asks, "In the battle of the ballot vs. the bullet, can there ever be a fair match?" while he omits the FACT that the MDC-T has the full assistance of the most powerful (and violent) forces in the world on its side, imperialism. Because Zimbabwe's situation is completely dissimilar to Kenya, Bomba's rhetorical questions should be more like the fact-based questions of journalist/author Stephen Gowans in his well researched article, Zimbabwe At War: "Should an election be carried out when a country is under sanctions and it has been made clear to the electorate that the sanctions will be lifted only if the opposition party is elected?
"Should a political party which is the creation of, and is funded by, hostile foreign forces, and whose program is to unlatch the door from within to provide free entry to foreign powers to establish a neo-colonial rule, be allowed to freely operate?
"Should the leaders of an opposition movement that takes money from hostile foreign powers and who have made plain their intention to unseat the government by any means available, be charged with treason"?
Being Zimbabwean, maybe Bomba also doesn't understand that such a situation would not be even remotely tolerated in the US. Leaders of any party in the US having the type of relationship with foreign governments like the MDC has with the UK and US would be vilified and imprisoned for treason.
In Kenya, however, the US and UK are not engaged in their regime change shenanigans and feel comfortable that their Africa interests there are safe with either Kibaki or Odinga in power. They even extended premature congratulations to Kibaki on his electoral victory having to rescind it two days later once aware of discrepancies in the results. In Zimbabwe on the other hand both the US and UK have been obsessed with the outcome of elections since 2005, which they've consistently condemn as marred even before they take place. This has only been because the victory prospect for their favored MDC didn't look good.
Bomba also misleads readers by acknowledging that SADC adopted "Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections" aimed at "enhancing the transparency and credibility of elections and democratic governance as well as ensuring the acceptance of election results by contesting parties," while failing to point out that Zimbabwe was the first SADC member country to implement these guidelines in 2005 and that observers from SADC missions have approved Zimbabwe elections in compliance with them.
Bomba also wants to bolster faith in the development of an "independent civil society" in Africa, but facts relevant to this warrant skepticism on this issue, particularly of how "independent" it is. For instance the fact that the imperialists governments have used civil society organizations for decades to implement immoral foreign policy objectives by funneling funds and directives to them. One source is a very revealing article by a former CIA agent Philip Agee, called Terrorism and Civil Society As Instruments of US Policy In Cuba. In this article he points out that 1979 events in several countries, including Zimbabwe, was the impetus for the US to create the American Political Foundation for exploring ways to exploit "civil society" in other countries for their own ends. Agee goes on to explain how this began setting the policy agendas of the USAID and led to the formation of the National Endowment for Democracy.
In so many words Bomba accuses the judiciary in Zimbabwe of being dominated by "loyalists" but if this were true Tsvangirai would be in jail right now for his plot to carry out a coup on the government and assassinate Mugabe. And one could list a host of other judicial rulings that have favored the opposition in ways that completely refute this assertion.
Bomba's article is rich with accusations against the Zimbabwe government but none are substantiated. In one paragraph he clearly uses incidents in Kenya to vilify Zimbabwe. He makes an unsupported assertion that the Zimbabwe "army, the police and the secret services merged seamlessly with the violent campaign machinery of the ruling (ZANU PF)". Then he switches to mentioning incidents in Kenya where the "the police stood in President Kibaki's corner and brutally massacred hundreds of opposition activists in protests that followed the disputed election." This is a slight of hand for readers to assume incidents similar to those in Kenya also took place in Zimbabwe around the elections when nothing of the sort was ever even reported. It is instructive here to note that while the post-election death toll in Kenya reached to around 1500, there haven't been more than 100 post-election deaths in Zimbabwe and the police there have publicly challenged the opposition accusers to produce evidence that even all of those killings took place. The opposition has to this day failed to do so.
The only difference between Kenya and Zimbabwe the author identifies is also not exactly true. Bomba says in "Kenya, unlike Zimbabwe, the opposition used mass mobilization and threats of total economic paralysis to leverage its power ..." But the opposition in Zimbabwe DID attempt a mobilization of this sort in April 2008, only to fail in getting "mass" support. In fact the imperialist's own propaganda apparatus, Voice of America (VOA), which consistently favors the opposition even admitted that the strike "was largely ignored by Zimbabweans, most of whom reported for work Tuesday" [VOA, April 15, 2008]. This is not the first time people ignored such calls. The opposition in Zimbabwe, including the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions often call for strikes that go "largely unheeded".
There are so many contradictions in Bomba's article that it would take at least another two pages to address them all. I suppose this is because his ideological premise flawed. That is a premise ignoring the nature of US, UK interests and policy in Africa, as he makes bizarre references to "leverage" and "diplomatic access to Mugabe". He says, "Mugabe's response to Britain's 'school yard' isolationist diplomacy has been to throw his toys and act like he just does not care." What diplomacy is he talking about? The US and UK have made it perfectly clear that they want nothing short of regime change in Zimbabwe and that they would not rule out military invasion to do it. There is nothing diplomatic about that. This is not some unfounded accusation by Mugabe. They are public pronouncements by the US and UK themselves.
Bomba sees the US' lack of international credibility as undermined merely by practices of the Bush administration instead of the history and nature of US imperialism and its domestic oppression. What about the fact that, like Rhodesia the US is a settle-colony, which to this day disenfranchises indigenous people? What about the fact that there is police repression of African (Black) and Latino people AND political repression of social justice activists? There are over 150 political prisoners in the US, many imprisoned long before Zimbabwe got its independence. The US' electoral process disenfranchises people of color. Bomba also lessens criticism of US foreign policy to "a discredited Iraq war" and "embracing favored dictators," but ignores the multitude of crimes beyond a Bush administration, such as other military invasions, overthrowing democratically elected leaders and fueling devastating wars. This list includes Korea, Cuba, Congo, Ghana, Vietnam, Angola, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Afghanistan, and the list goes on and on.
I cannot relate to why Bomba completely ignores US, UK and EU destabilization efforts against his own country in the form of pervasive economic sanctions designed to strangle his country into submission, covert operations using political provocateurs, and sophisticated propaganda that perpetuates misinformation, half-truths and outright lies against Zimbabwe. None of these things apply to Kenya, nor is any of it a secret with a little research. A foreign policy truly in focus cannot ignore such things. |
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