Africa: Disturbing turns in leadership
By Laurie Goering (Tribune foreign correspondent)
"Once
hailed as reformers who would help democracy take root in Africa,
some leaders on the continent are using the tactics of the dictators
they replaced to retain power."
December
14, 2005, (JOHANNESBURG) - Yoweri Museveni, who has been president
of Uganda for two decades, last month locked up his toughest
challenger in upcoming presidential elections.
Ethiopian
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government also last month arrested
political opposition leaders, charged them with treason and
shot dead 46 unarmed protesters who said the government had
rigged May parliamentary elections.
That
might sound like business as usual in Africa--except that Museveni
and Zenawi were once considered model African leaders, at the
forefront of a movement toward greater democracy on the continent.
Now,
however, as men once praised as reformers and visionaries step
up repression in nations from Uganda to Ethiopia to Rwanda,
Africans and Western aid donors are wondering how to halt such
democratic backsliding and find ways to avert it in other key
new democracies such as Nigeria.
"We've been fooling ourselves. We were romanced by these
guys," admitted Steve Morrison, director of the Africa
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington and co-author of a new report on U.S. policy toward
Africa.
Now
"they're turning toward state-directed violence and using
security services as blunt instruments of preserving control.
And we don't really have any ready answers," he said.
Democratic gains, losses
In many respects, sub-Saharan Africa has made remarkable progress
toward democracy in the past 15 years. More than two-thirds
of nations now hold elections, though not all of them are free
and fair. The African Union has condemned recent coups in places
like Togo and Mauritania, and leaders in nations such as Mozambique
to Kenya have voluntarily stepped down after reaching term limits
or left when they were voted out of office.
A
few nations, like Ghana, have become promising democracies,
with regular transparent elections, changes of administration
and growing reputations for good governance.
But
democratic reforms are looking increasingly weak in many of
the continent's most populous and important countries.
"There's
been a very dramatic shift, but there's also been a lot of regression
and a certain amount of fakery," Morrison said.
In
Uganda, Museveni--once hugely popular for bringing stability
after years of nightmarish rule by dictators Idi Amin and Milton
Obote--is now struggling to cling to power as Ugandans tire
of growing corruption, joblessness and what even Museveni's
chief adviser has called the president's reluctance to listen
to dissent.
Earlier
this year, Uganda's parliament agreed to abandon presidential
term limits and allow the 20-year leader to seek yet another
term in office. But Ugandan newspapers and opposition politicians
charge the vote came only after the president had paid off legislators
seen as increasingly corrupt and ineffective.
`Erosion' of institutions
Institutions "have been eroded. Parliament has been bought.
The courts are still doing their work but they have been overruled
and threatened," said Augustine Ruzindana, a leading opposition
parliamentarian whose seat Museveni's wife is now seeking in
the country's first multiparty elections, which are scheduled
for March.
In
October, Museveni's chief political opponent, Kizza Besigye,
returned from exile to contest the upcoming presidential election--and
was rapidly thrown in prison on treason and rape charges, which
he strongly denies.
In
Uganda, "democracy is getting narrower and narrower,"
Ruzindana said. Museveni "knows he can't win fairly so
he's trying to win by any means."
In
Ethiopia, opposition candidates did so well in May parliamentary
elections--the first in which they were allowed to actively
campaign--that they wrested most of the seats for Addis Ababa
and tossed out some long-serving Zenawi allies. The stunned
government quickly changed the rules of parliament to ban minority
parties from introducing legislation and declared the opposition
had won about 30 percent of parliamentary seats, less than it
believed it had taken.
When
protesters took to the streets of the capital, Zenawi's security
forces opened fire, killing more than 80 of them in protests
in June and in November.
Police
and soldiers also have arrested key opposition leaders, charging
them with treason for helping foment the uprisings.
Now
elections that were initially heralded as a "promising
step toward democracy" have "turned into the threat
of increased military-backed rule and further instability,"
warns a new Council on Foreign Relations report.
International
analysts also believe that democratic progress is at risk in
Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo is hinting he may
try to overturn that country's term limits and remain in office
beyond 2007, when he is scheduled to leave power.
The
problem, analysts say, is that democratic institutions remain
weak in much of Africa and that former military leaders--including
Obasanjo, Museveni, Zenawi and Rwanda's Paul Kagame--often have
a hard time making the transition to full democratic rule, even
if they have helped stabilize their once war-torn or chaotic
nations.
"Only
good leaders know when to leave," agreed Hippolyte Fofack,
a senior World Bank economist from Cameroon. "The strength
lies in institutions."
Elections outpace development
But "African institutions are still fragile," the
Council on Foreign Relations report said.
"Elections
have come faster than the development of responsible and effective
political parties, independent electoral systems, fully functioning
legislatures and independent judiciaries," the report said.
African
parliaments also are "racked by poor performance,"
in part because in places like Ethiopia, less than a quarter
of legislators have even a high school education, the report
said.
Western
aid donors, who provide more than half the national budgets
in countries such as Ethiopia and Uganda, also have been slow
to react to democratic backsliding, the report said, in many
cases because they feel they have no good political alternatives
to the men in power.
That
puts at risk not only African but also U.S. interests. Nigeria,
for instance, is Africa's largest oil exporter, and Ethiopia
remains a major ally in combating the growth of terrorism in
the Horn of Africa.
Nevertheless,
while Western nations push for improved democratic standards
in Africa, they also should remember that achieving them may
take time, said John Stremlau, head of international relations
at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
"It
took Europe a thousand years of tribal wars and two of the bloodiest
conflicts in history to get to the European Union," he
noted. Postindependence Africa "has only been in the business
for 40 years."
The
writer, Laurie Goering, may be reached for comments at lgoering@tribune.com
(Source: Chicago Tribune: Dec 14, 2005)
