Quality is the new story

By Gregory Mthembu-Salter

It is official. The debate has moved on. South African deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said it openly in her opening address to the International Conference on Sustaining Africa's Democratic Momentum, which ran from March 5^th-7^th at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, that Africa's democratic coming of age is old news. The new story, said Mlambo-Ngcuka, is the quality of this democracy.

So what is this story?

As told at the conference, the story is mixed. On the positive side, more African countries hold genuine multi-party elections then ever used to, and the technical management of many of these elections is improving. Although a relative newcomer to the scene, South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which was one of the co-hosts of the conference, has set the continent new quality benchmarks in this regard, commanding solid expertise and sufficient funding with no political strings attached. Although IEC chairperson Brigalia Bam and her fellow commissioners have been accused by some opposition parties of being too close to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) - a charge Bam rejects - the IEC has consistently displayed de facto independence from the South African executive. The IEC has also been able to lend valuable assistance elsewhere in Africa, most notably in recently concluded polls in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and before that, in Burundi.

Other African democratic positives include emergent South-South dialogue on deepening democracy, embodied at the conference by presentations from electoral experts from Latin America and Asia, far greater and more widespread awareness then before on the continent of the crucial importance of furthering gender equality in the electoral and democratic process, and an increased awareness from donors that their assistance must not be limited to election days only, but should rather be spread over recipient countries' entire electoral cycles.

Challenges

Yet massive challenges remain. There was consensus at the conference that healthy democracy needs political parties that are democratic, representative and trusted by voters, and – ideally – also requires other parties than just the ruling one to have a chance of winning come election time. Yet there was consensus too that the current African reality is far from that. Too many political parties on the continent are dominated by 'big men', lacking internal democratic structures and any discernible ideology beyond getting their leaders into State House. And even in countries where parties are in better shape, there is often a dominant-party system where it seems almost unconceivable for the ruling party ever to be defeated at the ballot box.

South African deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Photo: Mandla Zulu, RM Photography

Another democratic challenge is keeping ruling parties from tinkering with constitutions to their own benefit. It was agreed at the conference that constitutions, as the corner stones of republican democracy, should not be tampered with lightly, and that if they are to be changed at all, it should be as a result of inclusive, consultative processes. Yet throughout Africa this is widely ignored, with new presidents all too often altering the constitution to scupper their rivals and entrench their own grip on power, while at the same time facing down popular demands for constituent assemblies to take control of the constitution-writing process.

Perhaps the major challenge highlighted at the Sandton conference was how to make the connection between democracy and development real to African voters. Africa's autocrats always used to argue that multi-party democracy was an unnecessary luxury, wasting valuable resources that could be spent on development on political competition instead, and encouraging ethnic division via the multi-party system. The counter-argument has been that democracy unleashes the creative spirit of a people, who usually have a better idea of what constitutes their development than one-party apparatchiks, and at the same time opens the way for voters to mature beyond ethnic voting towards electing parties and leaders who have successfully made the case that they and not their rivals can advance both the voters' own narrow interests and those of the country as a whole. Yet delegate after delegate at the conference reported that voters in their countries are losing confidence in the ability of democracy to deliver development, with the result that fewer bother to register or vote, while cynicism about the democratic process is growing.

No return

Secretary General of International IDEA Vidar Helgesen
Photo: Mandla Zulu, RM Photography

Despite the cynicism, there seems little appetite among Africa's peoples for a return to old-school autocracy. Several of the continent's governments, however, have confessed themselves tempted by the so-called Chinese model, in which a strong central party stymies democracy but stokes the economy, encouraging massive growth rates that – so we are told – satisfies people sufficiently for them not to worry about their own lack of control over the political process.

Tempting as the Chinese model may be, several conference speakers were clear on its inapplicability in Africa. First, Africa's ruling parties lack the resources and capacity to impose the kind of hegemony exercised by the Chinese Communist Party. Second, now they have tasted the power of electing and deposing governments, it is not at all clear Africa's voters would be prepared to lose it in the name of democratic centralism. And third, African countries lack the basic ingredients for China's model of economic growth, including huge manufacturing capacity unconstrained by environmental considerations, a massive workforce and domestic consumer market, and the ability to sustain an undervalued exchange rate through the bulk-buying of US securities in order to keep exports competitiveness.

So, if the Chinese model is a chimera in Africa, what answer can African democrats give to hungry voters complaining they cannot eat democracy?

Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, HE Professor AO Konare
Photo: Mandla Zulu, RM Photography

One popular answer on offer at the Sandton conference was that it was the fault of international financial institutions, alleged to have imposed painful, failed economic models on African governments, resulting in “choiceless democracy”.

Yet there was some acknowledgement too that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have moved on from the state-slashing structural adjustment policies of the 1980s and 1990s. Having heard the barrage of criticism from African and international civil society that structural adjustment made African poverty worse, the Bretton Woods institutions now require borrower-governments instead to devise and implement effective Poverty Reduction Strategy Policies (PRSPs) arrived at through extensive consultative processes with their own populations before agreeing to debt relief. While the IMF may sometimes baulk at the fiscal deficits proposed by African governments as a result of their PRSPs, even when the money is intended for poverty reduction, a more common complaint these days from the Fund is that governments seek to spend too much on their military to the detriment of social services. In other words, perhaps African governments have more fiscal choices then they prefer to admit.

Civil society

The democracy and development debate will continue. Certain to play a key role will be civil society organisations, whom the conference agreed were indispensable for democracy, even though many delegates, and especially the politicians and state employees among them, clearly preferred to work only with those who were not too critical of formal politics. Whether civil society organisations prove amenable to such pre-conditions for their democratic participation seems doubtful, though here too the debate is set to continue.

Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa, Dr Brigalia Bam
Photo: Mandla Zulu, RM Photography

Lavishly organised, complete with Mandela video footage, choirs, drummers, a poet, a banquet and a panoply of freebies for delegates, including golf shirts, USB memory sticks and bead bookmarks, the conference bore some of the trappings of a jamboree. Yet beyond that, as pointed out by Vidar Helgesen, secretary-general of International IDEA, the conference succeeded both in flagging the key challenges to deepening the quality of democracy in Africa, and in creating the space for debate about the resolution of these challenges. These are valuable achievements, and if the continent's democrats can build on them the conference will have performed a valuable service.

Gregory Mthembu-Salter is an independent writer on African political economy based in Cape Town, South Africa

The views expressed here are the author’s own, and do not necessarily represent the views of International IDEA, its Board or its Council members.