Africa Misunderstood - Journalists often miss the pointJan 23, 2006

Africa

Dumisani Nyoni

These writers, journalists and thinkers that don’t really understand Africa, but like to think that they do, and then go on to show their inability to grasp what’s going on through their writing, really annoy me. If I didn’t believe that debate, dialogue and discussion were by far the best way of learning and bringing about change, I would ask them all to put their pens and cameras down. But debate is informative so let it be …

Did you see Simon Robinson’s article in the European version of Time magazine? I have pasted a copy of it below my comment. A friend of mine mentioned in his blog that he thinks it’s a good article on Africa. I’m disappointed. The idea that democracy is simple, in a place as complex and as torn apart as Africa is just a shallow idea. Living here, I see every day, the levels at which democracy and governance are so hard to make function in a continent like Africa. The leadership needs and requirements to make Africa succeed a very much different to what a western country would need. I agree that there is largely a void of such skills that you end up with people resorting to a totalitarian approach as the ‘easiest’ way to deal with things in the absence of those competencies. Let me elaborate:

To run an African country must be complex. I don’t claim to ever know how to run one, or that I will ever do so some day. No way! But you have to deal with several key factors in a very deep way:
• A history of oppression and abuse
• Tribal tensions that were engineered to keep people fighting each other – and they do not go away over night
• Poverty, and the pressures it puts on people to acquire and hold on to resources to stay out of poverty [those resources often go hand in hand with (political/military) power]
• Cultivating a culture of democracy

I could probably write a long thesis on these points, but I won’t!

You can’t reduce the leadership challenges of Africa to just ‘leaders’ and institutions. Institutions can be manipulated, no matter how strong they are. Look at the institutions in a ‘strong’ democracy like the US. Are they not being manipulated … ? I think so! I also think that for the most part, American people at large are like a frog in a pot of boiling water and will only notice that the water’s getting hot when it’s too late.

Anyway, back to Africa, I read the article below by Simon Robinson and he just makes Africa sound so simple, and by virtue, its people stupid and powerless … it’s disgusting. Here are my objections with his perspective:

1. Statements by leaders like Clinton of praising African leaders when they don’t really understand Africa set the wrong tone. You get mad men like Museveni being made to look like models of what the rest of us should aspire you. Forget that for the most part, Museveni had suspended democracy in Uganda. Even now as he allows it to make a come back, he’s not tolerating any opposition. Yet you’ll find the noise being made against him to be really a slap on the wrist. If Mugabe had put the opposition leader in jail before an election, imagine the outcry and reaction and action [sanctions etc] from the ‘west.’ The noise would be so loud, your ear drums would pop!

Yet putting the Musevenis on pedestals reinforces what they do and their tactics and ways of sucking up to the west as the way forward if you’re to stay in power, and have the world’s big shots back you!

2. You also have to understand the underlying motivations in Africa and in African society and politics. It is not always as simple as saying people want to stay in power. That’s true in some cases, but there are many other reasons for it too … some of the issues that these ‘leaders’ put on the table are bona fide, important issues that need to be addressed, but then again addressing them is not always in the interests of big business, western foreign policy and other excuses. So they are brushed aside and the leaders are just brashed as power hungry and their cases are made illegitimate. The inconsistencies are amazing. It’s pick and choose. So as partners in developing democracy in Africa, the west often makes itself irrelevant because of how they will treat the same situations in country by country with such colossal differences.

Again, allow me to make comparisons between Zimbabwe and another African country – Kenya. Zimbabwe had a constitutional referendum in 2000 which the government lost. The president in Zimbabwe, as in Kenya, accepted the result, did not suspend elections or his cabinet or people’s right to meet. Yet Zimbabwe’s elections a few months later in which people voted and the government wasn’t overthrown, were called ‘unfree and unfair.’ Kenya’s president has, in my eyes, responded very undemocratically to the whole referendum thing. Today they decided that attending opposition rallies was a threat to national security. No one’s really bothered about asking Kenya to behave herself. So if you’re a politician in Zimbabwe, you take those cautions you receive when you ban opposition rallies as just ‘unfairness and bias’ against you. So it doesn’t help to foster that culture of democracy. Your influence as a partner is zero because you’ve shown such inconsistency in reacting to similar breaches of democratic processes.

With all due respect, constitutional issues in many countries just confuse things. People almost never vote on the constitution presented. They use the occasion to show the sitting government the finger. Constitutions are complex documents and their drafting, such complex and delicate processes that you can't assumt everyone will understand the legal implications of a document that lawyers themselves disagree so much on their natures and interpretations. Look at the recent examples of Zimbabwe, Kenya, France, the Netherlands … so for Robinson to look at the constitutional process in Kenya and use it as a benchmark for measuring democractic process - - hogwash!

3. By the way, Mr. Robinson, the opposition in Zambia last won an election in the early 1990s. since then, they have NOT won an election. That opposition became government and has stayed in power ever since. So please don’t get your facts confused. They once again show how much you don’t understand what you’re really talking about. You’re almost as bad as those people who point to Botswana as a model of African democracy! Ha!

4. Robinsons once again gets it wrong. Look at his analysis of Zimbabwe in this paragraph:

“Take Zimbabwe. Even five years ago, the country boasted one of the best judiciaries in Africa. Voters could make their voices heard, as they did in 2000 when they rejected a new constitution backed by President Robert Mugabe. The independent press was amongst the feistiest on the continent. Over the past few years, though, Mugabe and his henchmen have bludgeoned the opposition into near submission, rigged elections, closed down the independent press and forced most of the country's best judges into retirement. Mugabe, once hailed as a great new African leader himself, has proved more powerful than his country's institutions. “

First of all, the judiciary that was in place in Zimbabwe was still largely a white judiciary from pre-Independence days that protected a very conservative agenda that was not in the interests of most Zimbabweans. The same people who had legislated to maintain and uphold apartheid in Zimbabwe were somehow amongst the “best judiciaries in Africa.” When they disagreed with the government, and left, or ‘were forced out,’ and replaced by capable black Zimbabwean judges, our judiciary is suddenly not credible? Because it doesn’t just rule in favor of white minority or foreign interests… ? when was the last time Robinson was in Zimbabwe, or bought a Zimbabwean independent newspaper? Who is he kidding? There are still independent newspapers in Zimbabwe that are very critical of the government in many ways. We’ve never had private TV or radio. Even in the good days. So there’s no benchmark there.

One newspaper was closed down in around 2002, for refusing to register with the regulatory authority. Every other paper registered and is still in business. Yet we are told that all the free press has been shut down. Again, another lie that western media likes to promote. I am not saying journalists here write have all the freedoms in the world and it’s an easy environment to be a journalist. Not at all. But again, there’s reasons for that, and if people understand those reasons, they can make meaningful contributions to addressing those problems. Not advocating for sanctions or punishments to fix things. That never works. But those that don’t understand end up writing trashy generalizations about Africa like Mr. Robinson just did. my question is, how would he like to see the judiciary in zimbabwe therefore ... ? full of old white judges who are good at matters of the law [Zimbabwean trained black judges are just as good and competent, and don't always agree of rule in favor of the government], and yet want to rule in contra to the interests of the majority of citizens? it cannot work. not in Africa. not in any country. (there's a reason why the appointment of supreme court judges in the US is such a hot issue ... )

5. Finally, why are these journalists [Michael Wines of the NY Times fame, as well as Rachel Swans and many others who write for different newspapers as the “Africa specialists”] always dodging the core real issues affecting democracy and good governance and good living in Africa. The issues haven’t changed for over 500 years – the desire to have and control those resources that flow out of Africa. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that democracy in Africa is by and large corrupted by the need to access and control those resources. Often in arrangements involving parties on both sides of the equation. But it’s much, much easier and more acceptable to write about failed leadership and weak institutions. It keeps the dogs of the scent. And it keeps us obsessing about voting for the next loser in Africa and missing the real point. Once you raise the topic, you’re labeled an out of touch nationalist who isn’t in touch with the needs of today’s Africa – modern democracies, run by western educated technocrats [if I hear of the fact that Liberia’s new president studied at Harvard just one more time, I’ll throw my TV out the window!] focusing on building institutions and leadership! Blah!

Good leaders and institutions are important yes. But also understanding the underlying, fundamental issues is important as is having the guts to be fair and objective in dealing with the governance challenges in Africa across the board, not in isolated cases country by country while we pretend that other villains are the “hope for our continent’s future!”


ESSAY

Africa's Game of Follow the Leader
Why strong institutions matter most when once promising politicians start to fail

By SIMON ROBINSON

Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005
For brutal honesty on the causes of Africa's woes, it's hard to beat Chinua Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria. Written during the country's rowdy 1983 election campaign, the book, just 68 pages long, is an outpouring of frustration at Nigeria's problems. You only have to read the contents page to tap into Achebe's angst. The author — best known for Things Fall Apart, a powerful work of fiction that almost half a century after its release still tops lists of Africa's greatest novels — uses blunt prose to deliver the message in Trouble. Chapter headings telegraph his views: "False Image of Ourselves"; "Social Injustice and the Cult of Mediocrity"; "Indiscipline"; "Corruption." Achebe lays out his case in the book's very first sentence: "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership."

Many Nigerians agreed, and Africans across the continent reached similar conclusions about their own countries. Which is why, in the mid-1990s, when a new generation of leaders emerged, Africans dared to hope that things could finally be changing. People like Issaias Afewerki in Eritrea, Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia promised a new style of leadership that focused on building economies and democratic nations instead of shoring up their power by force and ensuring that they and their friends got rich. When President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he touted this generation as Africa's great hope.

The reality has rarely matched the hype. Within months of Clinton's visit, Rwanda and Uganda had invaded Congo, and Eritrea and Ethiopia had gone to war with each other. While some leaders — notably Museveni and Zenawi — still did enough to remain darlings of Western donors, even they have now begun to slide. In Ethiopia, Zenawi has sent troops onto the streets to stop opposition supporters protesting the results of a general election last May. In Uganda, an increasingly dictatorial Museveni announced two weeks ago that he will run for office again, following Parliament's decision to scrap term limits that would have forced him to retire. That long-expected bulletin came just days after his main opponent was thrown in prison on charges — vehemently denied — of treason and rape. Demonstrations have been temporarily banned.

So, Achebe's lament still holds true, then? No. Fixing Africa was never as simple as changing its leaders. And that's why the fall from grace of Museveni and Zenawi may prove a positive thing, even if they hurt their own countries in the short term. It's a reminder, especially to Western countries that invested so much in Africa's new leaders, that strong institutions are far more important than personalities. Good leaders can turn bad if they stay in office long enough: faults become obvious; people compromise to hold onto power; supporters get frustrated with the inevitable slow pace of change. It's not just Africa. There are plenty of erstwhile supporters of Tony Blair who would be happy to see the back of him. The same goes for one-time fans of Jacques Chirac and George Bush. A key difference is that the institutions in the countries those men lead — parliament, the judiciary, the press — are bigger than any one person and counterbalance the worst excesses. That's still not a given in Africa.

Take Zimbabwe. Even five years ago, the country boasted one of the best judiciaries in Africa. Voters could make their voices heard, as they did in 2000 when they rejected a new constitution backed by President Robert Mugabe. The independent press was amongst the feistiest on the continent. Over the past few years, though, Mugabe and his henchmen have bludgeoned the opposition into near submission, rigged elections, closed down the independent press and forced most of the country's best judges into retirement. Mugabe, once hailed as a great new African leader himself, has proved more powerful than his country's institutions.

There is progress, of course. Kenyans last week rejected a new constitution backed by lackluster President Mwai Kibaki — elected just three years ago in a wave of reformist zeal — because of concerns that the proposals vested too much power in his office. (Kibaki promptly sacked his entire Cabinet.) Voters in Ghana, Senegal and Zambia have all elected opposition parties since the turn of the century. Such peaceful shifts prove that institutions in some countries are becoming strong enough to survive change and are not merely dependent upon, or at the mercy of, whoever sits in the presidential palace. Ethiopia and Uganda are also vastly better off than they were before Zenawi and Museveni took power; the backsliding hasn't wrecked all the good work the men have done. But their tainted legacies are a lesson. "A leader's no-nonsense reputation might induce a favorable climate but in order to effect lasting change, it must be followed up with a radical program of social and economic reorganization," writes Achebe in The Trouble with Nigeria. In other words, good leaders are good, but strong institutions are even better.