Introduction

In her acclaimed speech ‘the Danger of a Single Story’, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie states that accepting one side of a story leads to ‘critical misunderstanding’ of issues, events and entities. As news of another disputed election in Africa, this time in Ivory Coast, whirled through the waves, discussions on the causes of governance maladies in the continent inevitably resurfaced. The BBC, CNN, AFP, the Economist, Aljazeera, New York Times, The Times, etc, proffered analysis and diagnosis of the electoral problems in  Ivory Coast. Zimbabwe and Kenyan elections, which were also disputed, came under the spotlight and were thoroughly reviewed to provide a pattern of behavior of the actors involved in these elections. Comparisons were made, Similarities identified, and conclusions were tendered.

The incumbent president Mr. Laurent Gbagbo (top) and the presumed winner of the recent disputed elections in Ivory Coast Mr. Alassane Ouattara (Bottom).

The overbearing narrative was that Ivory Coast’s story is an instantiation of the ‘big-men-who-won’t-go-away’ syndrome in Africa. It was concluded that the flawed models, which were used to address electoral fraud in Kenya and Zimbabwe, set a dangerous precedent of dictators who lose elections clinging to power through back-door negotiations and compromises. The key forewarning was that these precedents will mar the advent of democratic governance and peaceful transfer of power in the continent and therefore need to be checked before they become the norm.

According to these stories, incumbent President Laurent Gbabgo is an archetypal African ‘big man’, who lost an election but refuses to respect the will of the electorate; while the presumed winner, Alassane Outtarra, is a democrat for whom majority of Ivoirians voted for in a free and fair election. A closer look into the stories reveals the obfuscatory nature of Western media, which ignored important details that would have assigned different interpretations to many of the parameters and perspectives told about the elections in Ivory Coast. More importantly, it would have exposed the singleness of the storylines and the clear and present danger neo-colonial interests pose to political stability in Africa.

Ivory Coast’s contemporary history is closely associated with the career of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the county’s ruler from 1959-1993, and the indelible political and demographic legacy he left behind. Yet, media reports on the recent elections in the country did not adequately provide this critical historical background to the present political stand-off. An analysis of Ivory Coast which doesn’t take stoke of its modern socio-political history is incomplete and parochial. This article will provide a brief background on Ivorian politics, with the objective of illustrating the limitations of western media coverage of the country’s elections  and the influence of colonial interests in crafting not only African political orders but also in shaping African, and indeed global, opinions on key events that unfold in the continent.

The article’s main objective, however, is to analyze the role of international (exogenous) factors, i.e., neo-colonial interests, in Africa’s failure. This paper accepts that internal factors and actors such as Africa’s leadership flaws and foibles account for a large share of the continent’s governance malaise, but blames, to a great extent, the advent and existence of authoritarian regimes in the continent on western external interference. The article argues that Africa’s asymmetric relation with the West and the latter’s neo-colonial interest sits in the heart of Africa’s multiple challenges.

Françafrique: France’s Ivory Coast

Houphouet-Boigny was elected as the first president of Ivory Coast in 1960; the same year Ivory Coast declared its Independence. He represented Ivory Coast in the French National Assembly from 1946 to 1959, and was its Prime Minister in 1959 in the run up to Independence. Boigny was an ardent believer in the policy of Françafrique which advocated for the maintenance of close relationship between French colonies in Africa and France. He was also France’s instrument of loot and control in French-speaking Africa and beyond. France used him to thwart revolutionary movements in several African countries. He took part in coups against Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Mathieu Kerekou (Dahomey now Benin), Thomas Sankara (Upper Volta now Burkina Faso), and actively supported Moses Tshombe of Congo –the executioner of Patrice Lumumpa. Boigny financed Jonas Savimbi of Angola and worked with Apartheid South Africa.

Félix Houphouët-Boigny (18 October 1905 – 7 Dec. 1993), the first President of Côte d'Ivoire.

In 1957, Boigny rejected Nkrumah’s call for all African colonies to declare independence and lobbied French colonies to enter into a Franco-African community instead of opting for independence. Guinea became the only country that rejected the Franco-African community proposal with its leader, Sekou Toure, famously stating that his preference is "freedom in poverty over wealth in slavery". When the Organization of African Union (OAU) was formed, Boigny frantically campaigned against it, with the instigation of France, which opposed the formation of a pan-African union. He flirted with the idea of creating a parallel regional structure in West Africa before his plans were foiled by the rest of the region, which compelled him to go along with the OAU begrudgingly. However, all along he worked behind the screen to undermine the coalescing African voice of unity.

In Ivory Coast, Boigny adopted, not surprisingly, a system of economic liberalism “in order to obtain the trust and confidence of foreign investors, most notably the French”. “The advantages granted by the investment laws he established in 1959 allowed foreign business to repatriate up to 90% of their profits in their country of origin (the remaining 10% was reinvested in Ivory Coast)(1)”. Ivory Coast’s economy became a toy of French conglomerates. As he cynically lamented in his last years, the economy of Côte d'Ivoire experienced ‘growth without development’.  With such huge externalization of capital, it is not hard to see why the benefits of an average annual economic growth of 11-12%, which lasted for many years in the initial years, failed to trickle down to indigenous Ivoirians.

The natives were left to stare at unaffordable Five-star hotels and glittering Disco clubs as souvenirs of a mythical development under the inappropriately named ‘Ivorian Miracle’, which earned Boigny the mantle of the ‘sage of Africa’ from grateful France. ‘The Ivorian miracle’ also attracted many labourers from neighboring countries, chiefly from Burkina Faso, irreversibly changing the demographic make-up of the nation. By 1980, the migrant population accounted for a quarter of the total population of Ivory Coast. Today, nearly 40% of the population are of foreign-origin, and represent the Muslim North from where Alassan Outtara comes from.

In short, Boingy blindfolded Ivory Coast and allowed France to rape it, without any intermission, for over three decades. Today, France controls 45% of the Ivorian land from which Cocoa comes. In this day and hour, the buildings of the Presidency of the Republic and the National Assembly in Abidjan are leased from France. To give France’s avaricious control an undisturbed continuity, Boigny entrusted security and defence to french armed forces, who were given the mandate “to intervene at Houphouet Boigny’s request or when French interests are threatened”. 

Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Outtara

It was Laurent Gbagbo, not Alassane Outtara, who opposed Boigny’s puppet regime and French control of Ivory Coast; and suffered exile and arrest for it. Alassane Dramani Outtarra was a protégé of Boigny and is perceived to be a disciple of Francafrique policy. Outtarra, who worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a long time, was appointed as Prime Minister of Ivory Coast in 1990 by Boigny and served until 1993 in that capacity. In 1993, with Boigny ill, he assumed the functions of the President until the death of the dictator. In the funeral, Outtarra proclaimed that ‘Ivory Coast was orphaned’. Boigny died a rich man, his wealth estimated between 7-11 billion US dollars.

Boigny's successor, Henri Konan Bedie

Boigny's successor, Henri Konan Bedie, is the architect of the concept of ivoirité, which means ‘pure Ivorian pride’.Bedie, like Boigny, comes from the Christian and animist Baoule tribe from south central Ivory Coast. Bedie embraced this concept, in a populist move, to extract political advantage from growing ethnic tensions. According to Genocide Watch, the policy was aimed at “excluding ‘foreigners’ from participation in Ivorian political life and limiting their civil rights by subjecting them to deportations”. Bedie’s idea led to xenophobic attacks against the largely Muslim Ivoirians in the North.

In 1999, General Robert Guië overthrew Bedie and took power. He promptly organized an election in the following year, but barred Outtarra from running for presidency because of Outtarra’s Burkinabe origins. Mysteriously, the promoter of the ivorite concept, Bedie, is allied to the victim of the same concept, Outtarra, in the current stand-off. Bedie’s followers voted for Outtara in this election. Laurent Gbagbo does not support the ivorite idea, but Northerners accuse him of failing to stop discriminations against them. Only short-term political expediency can explain Bedie and Outtara’s rapprochement. The current confrontation is the legacy and continuation of these divergent views on issues of nationality, relationship with France and economic policies.

Election Stolen by Non-incumbent?

Laurent Gbagbo is not justified in refusing to accept the outcome of a process he voluntarily participated in. But his accusation of fraud by the opposition, strange and unseemly as it is, is not false. While Gbagbo’s south were put under strict rules, the rebels were allowed to organize an election, in which they were a participant, in the rebel-held North. Voter registration was done by rebels and Outtarra’s supporters, with heavy logistical support from sympathetic Burkina Faso. The United Nations did not fulfill its pledge to disarm and quarter the rebels. As election results come in, members of the Independent Electoral commission, the CEI, divided over the count, but ultimately announced the result from the Headquarters of Outtarra. Gbagbo’s allies, who control the Constitutional Court, annulled the results of several constituencies in the North and declared him winner. This is the events that led to the stalemate.

The vote-rigging by Outtarra’s side may not have been a game changer and he may have won because of the alliance he made with Bedie. It is hard to know. But the issue is that the process was compromised and Western media did not give this side of the story. The point is that colonial interests dictated West’s reaction in Ivory Coast elections, over and above genuine concerns for good governance. Both neighboring Gabon and Togo held sham elections in the last few years, but did not attract similar interest and condemnation. This is largely because the elections in Gabon and Togo continued the status quo, which is beneficial to France, by bringing progeny of former dictators to power.

Enter Zimbabwe: Black Empowerment and Land Reform

Robert Mugabe

One name the media never missed an opportunity to drag into the predicaments of Ivory Coast is Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe passed through a similar phase of contentious elections in 2008. It is widely believed that Mugabe lost the election to the opposition candidate, Morgan Richard Tsvangarai, a former trade unionist. Mugabe once hailed as the ‘wise man’ of Africa, by Britain, for his tolerant policies towards white Rhodesians (Zimbabweans), fell out with the former colonial master, after implementing a radical land reform policy. The reform programme confiscated land from White farmers and gave it to Blacks. From Independence in 1980 to 2000, 90% of Zimbabwe’s fertile agricultural land remained in the hands of 4000 White farmers. It is instructive to note that Mugabe was bestowed with the esteemed title of ‘Sir’, by the British Queen, even as he was carrying out vicious ethnic cleansing in Matabeleand in late 1980s, in what is infamously known as operation “Gukurahundi’ (wash out the chaff). Mugabe crushed rebellion by Joshua Nkomo’s Ndebele ethnic group.

Mugabe’s sweeping land reform policies could have came from an opportunistic political grandstanding to win over black votes at a time of plunging popularity, a genuine nationalist drive to correct historical injustices or a combination of the these factors. Which consideration weighed heavier is still debated. It is a long and complicated story, one which drags Britain and its failure to honor the Lancaster House agreement, in which Britain undertook to allocate funds for a voluntary land transfer deal, into the picture. Under this deal, white farmers would gradually cede land to blacks in return for monetary compensations. The emergence of an opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which instantaneously gained support from white Zimbabweans, is believed to have angered Mugabe, who thought he was kind to the whites, and did not appreciate their ‘ungratefulness’. The Whites were not happy with Mugabe’s insistence on land reform and wanted a more tolerant regime in his stead.

Whatever his short-comings, it is unfair to begrudge Mugabe of credit for Zimbabwe’s high literacy rate (90%), among the highest in Africa. The defiant octogenarian, who enjoys lambasting the West for his country’s ills, with characteristic clinched fist or as he calls it ‘the fist of duty’, is an intelligent and brilliant tactician. Uncle Bob, as his supporters affectionately call him, holds more than ten Masters Degrees in different fields of study and is a hugely charismatic leader with hypnotizing oratory skills.  For ten years, he outfoxed powerful enemies led by Britain and USA and survived; some say he has only managed to stay in power through brute force. It is a charge hugely exaggerated. He survived, largely, because he managed to garner the support of Southern African countries, by skillfully packaging himself as the front man of black resistance against White imperialists.

Zimbabwe paid a lot for the policies Mugabe adopted. But, whatever hardship Zimbabwe endured, the lies told by Western media about Zimbabwe’s land reform programme is exposed by researchers of note, from none other land than Britain. Professor Ian Scoons of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, published a book entitled “Zimbabwe’s land reform: Myths and Truths” in 2010. Professor Scoons is an authority in the field of agriculture and Food Security policy analysis. In the book, the professor “debunked five myths about Zimbabwe’s land reform which were propagated by Western media: (1) That land reform has been a total failure 2) That most of the land has gone to political "cronies"(3) That there is no investment on the resettled land (4) That agriculture is in complete ruins, creating chronic food insecurity (5) That the rural economy has collapsed”(2).

Professor Scoons argues that “it is important that the full pictures, with all its nuances, is known” and stated “what we have observed on the ground does not represent the political and media stereotypes of abject failure; but nor indeed are we observing universal, roaring success”(3). The point highlights the dangers of a single story especially when it is told simultaneously by different agents for a purpose. Admittedly, the 10-year study looked into a small sample of 400 households in the southern province of Masvingo, and hence, the scope of the research is too small to vindicate Mugabe’s assertions about the real beneficiaries of the programme at the national level, but the picture it came up with is in line with his statements that the land taken from whites were given to poor landless farmers and not to political cronies.  “The study found that about two-thirds of people who were given land in Masvingo were "ordinary" - low-income - Zimbabweans. These are the people Mr. Mugabe always said his reforms were designed to help”, The BBC said, while announcing the news of the outcome of the research.

PM Zenawi of Ethiopia

Ethiopia and Rwanda

While the West bemoans the death of democracy in Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast, it continues to fund Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who steal elections repeatedly. In 2005, Meles Zenawi’s police and army killed more than 200 Ethiopian student protestors, and arrested the entire leadership of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), the opposition party which won the election by a landslide.  In 2010, he ‘gained’ a bizarre 99% vote in an election widely regard as shambolic. Paul Kagame of Rwanda also declared himself the winner of Rwanda’s 2010 presidential elections with equally strange 90+ %, in a country his Tutsi tribe accounts for only about 10% of the population.

Meles Zenawi’s government continues to get financial and diplomatic support from the West despite stifling democracy and repeated allegations that his regime committed human rights violations against its own ethnic Somali population and civilians in the neighboring Somalia. Although evidences of his destabilizing role in Congo are well documented, Paul Kagame is supported by the United States. Far from exorcising these dictators, the West treats them as statesmen and invites them to international fora where matters of importance to the world community are discussed. Without external Western support, the two regimes in Ethiopia and Rwanda would have collapsed long time ago, as they are hugely unpopular among the majority of the people in their respective countries. 

The Concept of Free and Fair Elections in the Context of External Interference

A common impression created by western media is that elections in Africa are free and fair, if all parties can present their election manifestos peacefully and with equal opportunity; the polling process is conducted in an atmosphere free of intimidation; and an impartial electoral body oversees the process and announces the results without interference from contesting parties. However, no African election took place, in the last ten years, where colonial powers did not have a preferred candidate. Parties and candidates who can demonstrate that they are blessed by Western donors obtain an advantage over their rivals. This is so because the African electorate associates Western backing with inflow of western money from the Bretton Woods institutions – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Even in the rare instances where western backers do not fund their favoured parties, the expectation that these parties will get development assistance when they come to office skews the political playing field in their favour. That is why politicians in Africa are often keen to advertise their ‘link’ to powerful Western powers. Raila Odinga is a good example. Odinga sold the idea that the United States and European Union (EU) were backing him in the 2007 Kenyan elections, to a huge advantage. The political playing field is therefore never level in the presence of external interference.

The elusiveness of the concepts of fairness and freeness of elections in Africa in the context of Western interference is captured in a broader sense by the Cameroonian scholar Joy Asongazoh Alemazung.  In “Post-Colonial Colonialism: an Analysis of International Factors and Actors Marring African Socio-Economic and Political Development” published in The Journal of Pan-African Studies, on September 2010, Alemazung argues that “the disembedding of the democratic debate from within national borders and re-embedding within the international arena between national leaders and the Western powers” made African rulers unaccountable to their own people. This is so because they [rulers] “debate on their political future and stay in power with the international community/actors instead of negotiating with their own citizens.” This is why citizens under tyrannical leaders in Africa look to the West for salvation.

Conclusion

Africa’s big men are a problem. However, hardly an African dictator came to and stayed in power without the political and economic support of the West. Today’s rulers in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Egypt, Cameroun, Equatorial Guinea etc, owe their survival to protection of the West – The United States and its European allies. Meles and Kagame are today’s ‘big men’. It is western money which made them ‘big’. Mobutu Sese Seko( Congo), Omar Bongo (Gabon), Gnassingbé Eyadéma (Togo), to name few, are reminders of past dictators who enjoyed Western patronage. Alemazung identifies western economic interests, conditioned aid, and the consequence of cold war as the main factors that adversely affected Africa’s democratization. The Cold war is now over but is replaced by the “War on Terror”, with lethal consequences for African countries with Muslim populations and countries that share borders with countries with Muslim populations. For instance, US support for Meles Zenawi comes from this consideration; a consideration that perpetuated mayhem in Somalia.

While some African leaders may have confronted Western interests for patriotic reasons, the ubiquitous pattern is that dictators who fell out with their foreign handlers, for one or other reason, have used nationalistic posturing as  a ploy to stay in power. This leads to the question, why and when do dictators fell out with neo-colonial benefactors? The evidence from sub-Saharan Africa shows that it is either when these dictators try to appease a restive indigenous population, whose patience waned against leaders they see as mere gate-keepers of western capital; or when the Western backers attempt to change dictators whose preservation became politically too costly.

These permutations at times lead to a situation where a quasi-nationalist dictator and a puppet democrat contend for power. Zimbabwe is a classic example. The political and economic might of Western powers often makes the outcome of such contests easy to predict. Mugabe cannot win a free election in Zimbabwe; not because his majority Shona people dislike him, but because people are concerned with bread and butter issues and voting for him is voting for more isolation and sanctions from the West. The people will vote for Tsvangirai so that Western money comes into the country. It is a vivid reminder of how a hungry people work against its long-term interest for short-term gains and for temporary relief from punitive poverty. To the extent Gbagbo’s ouster is planned and pursued by Paris, it is reasonable to assume he stands for native interests more than his rival. The irony is that if Outtara comes to power, he has little option than to adopt some of Gbagbo’s nationalist policies if he wants to finish his term. And if he does that, Outtara can soon become France’s enemy.

ECOWAS backs Ouattara as Ivory Coast's president

Whichever way the Ivorian crisis is resolved, it will set a precedent. If the regional economic body, ECOWAS, and the African union go ahead with the plan of toppling Gbabgo by force, it will inform future course of action against rulers who refuse to leave power after losing elections. If this practice is owned by Africans, which is unlikely, it may usher Africa to an era of democracy and stability. The precedent can also be used by the West for sinister regime change agendas’. If the West can implement this model of removing ‘dictators’, without any selectivity, it may even be a positive step towards democracy in Africa, notwithstanding its inherent contradictions and dangers.

If, however, African leaders are manipulated by the West to topple leaders who are inimical to the West’s neo-colonial interests, and a dualistic approach is employed, the process heralds an institutionalization of neo-colonialism. If this is the case, Africans must rally behind leaders who oppose external interference that undermines their sovereignty. The choice is between undemocratic rulers who, for whatever reason, decided to own decision-making powers over their resources and puppet democrats who institute synthetic democracy but connive with exploitative foreigners. But the picture of who is with the West and who opposes it is not clear cut. It has a temporal dimension, with today’s Western ally turning tomorrow’s anti-Western ‘nationalist’. Meles Zenawi, irked by questioning Europeans, is already talking of ‘looking to the East’ and Brazil. Kagame is entrenching tribal hegemony in Rwanda under the cover of reconciliation and national healing, and is quick to revert to tales of ‘Rwandan genocide’ when queries are made about his undemocratic rule. There is a real risk, therefore, of dictators, who want to cling to power, hiding behind ‘nationalist’ rhetoric, while terrorizing their own citizens.

The sad paradox is that the same West, which takes a big share of the blame for the failures of democracy in Africa, also holds the key in democratizing Africa for the foreseeable future. Granted, Western interests would always inform Western interventions in Africa, but if a concerted advocacy and lobbying is made by African intellectuals, the West could potentially be pressured to revisit its two-faced and damaging policies towards Africa. An appeal to the conscience of Western taxpayers could bring about a change in the behavior of Western politicians, who need the votes of their electorate.  Leftist radicalism and slogan-chanting will not yield tangible results. In the long run, the solution for Africa’s problems lies in the hands of Africans. Africa can solve its problem when and if it achieves meaningful economic freedom and muscle and when it succeeds to democratize its present Pan-African and regional institutions and structures such as the African Union (AU) and regional bodies. This process will take a very long time; but it is evident that deep-seated African challenges will not be fixed quickly or easily.

From the foregoing discussion, it can be surmised that the over-hyped story of ‘African-big-men-who-won’t-go’ is simplistic and has many sub-plots to it. It is myopic to analyze prevailing African political challenges based on narrow interpretations of a consciously bigoted Western media. Elections alone can never answer unresolved African national questions which have to do with neo-colonialism, land ownership, economic disempowerment and deepening poverty. For this reason, the story of Ivory Coast’s elections should go beyond electoral fairness and freedom and has to deal with issues of sovereignty and genuine African political and economic independence.

Hinged to this big story is the issue of colonial borders and the rigid statutory strictures that prohibit redrawing these artificial national boundaries. This dogmatic practice has already led to several conflicts in the continent. The risks associated with redrawing these borders are big, as it can lead to instability in many countries. But, its maintenance hasn’t led to stability either. Institutions that deal with and arbitrate inter-State questions of self-determination and marginalization should be established to deal with civil wars and the growing trend of separatism.

Finally, it is a fad, these days, to dismiss the thrust of the arguments put forward in this paper as leftist delusions and the finger-pointing of sand-in-head malcontents who wish to externalize the causes of Africa ’s problems. One wishes it was as simple as that. The details provided above show that the existence of neo-colonialism and its toll on victim nations is not a conspiracy theory.

Muktar M.Omer
WardheerNews Contributor
E-Mail: muktaromer@ymail.com

(1) Wikipedia
(2) The BBC
(3) Ibid

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* The Big Man Syndrome in Africa: A Major Policy Challenge for Obama’s Administration

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