Dancing kwasa kwasa in the African Bush

There was one moment during President George W Bush’s recent visit to Africa that grabbed my imagination. It was the sight of the leader of the world’s most powerful nation dancing kwasa kwasa to some African rhythm. My initial reaction was wow! Welcome to Africa Mr President and its good to see that you are enjoying it quite a bit! And for a moment I even imagined that with all those fancy moves President Bush, who is due to leave office at the end of the year, could be a worthwhile candidate for the presidency of the much muted United States of Africa.

For all the misery and suffering that the continent has endured and continues to endure, there is still one thing that it retains in significant abundance – its rhythm and dance. From Cape to Cairo, Africa is one big music and dance party. Go to any country on the continent and if you are important enough to have a large welcoming party, you can bet there will be young scantily dressed things doing their thing on the tarmac to the accompaniment of drums, horns, marimba and other exotic musical instruments. If you are not important enough but have the courage of some sort, you could visit any of the shanty towns which are often mistaken as cities and towns dotted around the continent and you can be sure to come across a gathering or two of our citizens whiling away their time gyrating to some music of some sorts.

This is Africa for you - a land of magnificent sights and even more wonderful sounds. Yet somehow behind the bonhomie there lurk real big and daunting challenges and even greater potential and prospects. I suspect that George Bush’s visit was less about tackling the challenges than it was about exploring and exploiting the opportunities. The Americans are well aware that Africa is there for the retaking, well sort of. After the euphoria and disappointment of independence, Africa has began to offer itself, maybe not as a colony but certainly as a partner state, to those who are willing to become its friends. So far the Chinese have been quick to take the bite and are doing decent enough business across the continent in such interesting spots as Sudan.

While the economic and fellowship support from China has largely been welcomed by Africa, more so as it comes with very little or no strings attached, there remains deep seated suspicion on the motives of the Chinese benefactors in the short term and significant doubt about the long term benefits of the relationship. After all, its not just the business that they are getting, but the Chinese are also becoming a strong political influential force. They are making many good and bad friends on the continent and have become something of big brother to the continent on the international stage. The failure of the international community to force change in Darfur has been largely attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the Chinese unwillingness to apply pressure on Sudan. The Chinese have upped the stakes in Africa, not only by laying claim to a significant base of mineral resources, but by providing financial aid and political support to partner countries.

The attitude of China seems to be not to let the little matters of human rights get into the way of the real big matters of commerce and industry. This would not be such a bad idea if the commerce and industry also helped to develop the African economies. Unfortunately and at least for the time being, the benefits accruing to Africa are not that evident. Thus it is in Africa’s interest to keep its options open and continue to court friends from far and wide. To help their cause, the Americans are realising that it is not in their long term interest to let China have a free run on the African continent. In my view, the Americans want to engage Africa not just to neutralise the Chinese influence but in order to gain the following advantages.

Firstly, there are economic rewards to be realised from Africa. Africa provides both a vast market for goods and services generated in the US and a great source of raw materials to power its economic development. Trade agreements such as African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) are intended to facilitate the entry of African manufactured products into the American market but, by the same token, open a wide avenue for the American goods to enter the African markets. With Africa’s teaming population, it is not difficult to imagine the prospects and opportunities for marketing goods and services to the continent.

The second benefit which the Americans seek to gain from Africa is improved security. The very controversial idea of Africom is premised on protecting American security interests much more than it is about promoting stability on the continent. The Americans need to site their military bases in Africa in order to create the capacity and capability to respond quickly to security threats emanating from Middle East. It does not take a lot of reasoning to appreciate that American military bases on African soil will significantly enhance the former’s response time to any security threat emanating from the Middle-Eastern or, indeed, the former Soviet regions.

The third benefit for the Americans will be to establish a sphere of influence to promote its democratic principles and ideals. The US missed out on the partitioning of Africa jamboree and although they had small pockets of influence in countries largely occupied by former slaves, Liberia and Sierra Leone, they were left out of the larger chunks of Africa where the British, French and Portuguese held sway. These colonial influences were swept away by the independence movements of the sixties through to the eighties. The resultant influence vacuum was filled-up by the manoeuvrings of the super power during the cold war but these relationships never really gained any significant traction because they were very opportunistic, circumstantial and short-termistic in nature. To a large extent Africa continued to drift in isolation within its own sea of crises caused by civil wars, dictatorships and the AIDS pandemic.

Much of the interest which remained on Africa was dictated by limited and specific economic interests such as the exploitation of oil resources and precious minerals. Only in the period leading to the millennium transition, the late nineties and early two thousands, was some interest in Africa rekindled. The interest took many forms but was predominantly premised towards economic development, charity and humanitarian aid. The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) which is an African-led initiative and the Tony Blair inspired Commission for Africa represent some of the more visible and broad attempts to positively influence events in Africa.

The current moves of the US can be viewed as an attempt to counter the gains by the Chinese. I think the question which begs for an answer is whether the US should be welcomed to Africa or it should be eschewed. Historically, the Americans have shown more altruistic motives in their interventions especially in Europe where they joined the fight to repel Nazism and, in the aftermath of the war, provided financial resources (through the Marshall Plan) to rebuild Western Europe.

The US is a rich and powerful nation and it can, with sufficient political will, make real and positive contributions to the improvement of the situation in Africa. In this regard, it is my view that American interests in Africa should be encouraged. In the circumstances, a bit of kwasa kwasa dance in the African bush by President Bush may not be misjudged exuberance.

Why President Obama will be good for Africa

The ongoing primary elections in the United States of America are being described as the most exciting in many decades. Much, if not most, of this excitement can be directly attributed the performance of one man – the 46 year old Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. To say that this second generation African American has electrified the election in a way which has never been witnessed in US election history is, perhaps, to put it quite mildly. As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have really followed with keen interest the progress of the primary elections in America, although I have always been fascinated by this democratic phenomenon from a very early age.

What has made this race for the Whitehouse different and exciting is that it has, for the first time, defied if not shuttered all political logic and conventional wisdom. Going into the primaries, there were a few “truths” and “certainties” about the 2008 US elections. The first was that the next president of the US will be a Democrat. This truth was informed by the sheer incompetence and high unpopularity of the serving Republican government of President George W Bush. There was little doubt and, even less, debate that come January 2009, a Democrat would be sworn in as President of the world’s most powerful nation. The other truth and dead certainty was that that person would be the former first lady of the US, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. After all, the lady had pretty well spent her whole life preparing to be the first female president of the great nation.

Given these almost certainties, the 2008 elections were considered as less of a contest than a coronation of Mrs Clinton as the 44^th President of the US. In so doing she would have registered a large number of very unique records – the first female president, the first former first lady to be become “The Man”, etc. Unfortunately no one told that to the Senator from Illinois who had come into prominence when he lighted up the Democratic Convention in Boston in July 2004 with a stump speech that left many delegates on their feet applauding for more. Within two years he was elected to the US Senate and in another short while, he decided there was another and higher call to duty and he threw in his hat into the presidential ring. Not many gave him a chance and some felt that he was there to just make up the numbers.

Not any more. After scoring an upset and impressive victory in Iowa, Senator Obama has gone on to win primaries in many more states across the US and he is now considered the hot favourite to clinch the Democratic Party nomination. Senator Obama has galvanised public interest in the presidential elections in a way no other politician has done before him. He is doing to the American politics and to the presidential race what Mohammed Ali did to boxing, what Micheal Jordan did to basketball, what Tiger Woods has done to golf and what Lewis Hamilton is doing to Formula 1 motor racing. He has torn the form book to shreds and redefined the political landscape in a manner which is both wonderful and awesome. Wonderful in the sheer brilliance with which he has got the American people to believe in his vision and project and awesome in the manner he is grinding his opponents into the ground.

It may be too early to say, but the world would be better advised to start preparing to deal with a president of the US who is non-white. I prefer to use the term non-white rather than black because I think that is a more accurate description of Senator Obama’s demographic classification. Here in Africa, a person of Obama’s background would not be classified as black. In my country, a person of mixed parentage would be called a coloured. But I do not think that this presidential race is about colour and Obama has done very well to steer himself clear of such stereotype issues. Obama’s rallying call has been about change and, implicit in that call, is a challenge to the US to break with its past – good and bad – and move forward in a new and probably better direction.

That is the message that is desperately needed for Africa and this makes me believe that a President Obama would be a very good thing indeed for Africa. There is little doubt in my mind that Africa is regressing at a rapid and alarming pace and, so far, no one seems to have a solution to the problem. In the past two months there have been two major international incidents – the first being the elections crisis in Kenya which has seen hundreds of people killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes and the other being the attempted overthrow of President Idriss Déby in Chad by some rebels. President Déby has, with a little help from his French friends, been spared for a little longer while Kenya, with a great help from many friends from all over the world, is still struggling to find a solution to its quandary.

These are the latest additions to an already overcrowded state of misery and suffering in many other countries on the continent including in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Zimbabwe. The continent is bleeding badly and is in desperate need of real and practical measures to resolve its problems. The world at large has claimed that Africa’s problems should be solved by the Africans themselves. This is both erroneous and too simplistic an approach to the problem. Africans have consistently proved themselves to be incapable of resolving their problems and, to the contrary, have proved very adept at compounding those problems. The African Union has failed to assert any degree of moral authority and leadership on events taking place on its soils and regional bodies such as SADC, ECOWAS, etc have not been any more successful.

Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian author, has averred that the problem of Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) is one of bad and incompetent leadership. Africa has too many leaders who have overstayed their welcome and ground their countries to abject poverty through corruption and poor policies. There is very little renewal or “change” taking place as those in power continue to entrench themselves and those in need (the poor) continue to multiply. An Obama presidency represents a significant opportunity and hope for Africa. As a non-white president, Obama will probably confirm what is already known – that there is nothing inherently and intellectually inferior about the African race. It will confirm that leadership incompetence is Africa is more about the individual leaders themselves than about the African race generally.

An Obama president will provide the first ever opportunity for America and, indeed the world, to make the call on Africa’s bad leadership without being accused of racism. Until now, any criticism of Africa by the US and other developed countries has been quickly dismissed as being motivated by racist and imperialistic tendencies. With President Obama in the Whitehouse, that will become too lame an excuse. Apart from that, the youthfulness of President Obama will make it that much more difficult to relate and empathise with the current and antiquated stock of leadership on the African continent. This will provide a motivation and impetus for the emergence of a new breed of younger and more zestful leaders on the continent.

I am highly optimistic and excited about the prospects of an Obama presidency in the US. But I do recognise that there remain immense obstacles and dangers lucking on his relentless march to the Whitehouse. There is still the wild but possible prospect that some crazy lunatic may physically eliminate him from the race as happened to Robert Kennedy those many years ago or has so recently happened to Benazier Bhutto in Pakistan. There is also a possibility that Mr Osama bin Laden may decide to lend a little help to Obama’s campaign, as he did to John Kerry’s effort in the last elections, thereby handing over the presidency back to the Republicans. Many, I suspect, will not wish any such misfortunes on Senator Obama.

Simba Makoni – Zimbabwe’s saviour or Mugabe’s decoy?

In a country in which there has, for a long time, been very little or no good news, the announcement this week by the former Zimbabwean minister of finance, Dr Simba Makoni, that he will contest the upcoming elections as an independent was quite exhilarating. However it was hardly a surprise, after so much speculation in the preceding weeks that he would do so. If there was anyone who was surprised, it was probably the man with whom Dr Makoni will lock horns in the contest, President Robert Mugabe, who he had met in a private but much publicised tête-à-tête two weeks previously.

It is early days yet to decipher and clearly understand what strategy Makoni has to unseat the man who has been on the hot seat for 28 years - all of Zimbabwe’s life as an independent country. Many before him have tried and failed. The first real challenger to Mugabe’s power was Edgar “Two-boy” Tekere, the maverick politician who broke out of Zanu-PF famously declaring that, under Mugabe, democracy in the party and the country was in the intensive care unit. He formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement and in 1990 contested the presidential elections which he lost to Mugabe. After many years of turmoil within his party and within his personal life, he rejoined Zanu-PF only to be expelled again after the publication of his best-selling biography which was somewhat unflattering to Mugabe’s leadership credentials.

The next serious challenger to Mugabe was Enoch Dumbutshena, the former chief justice of the country who led his new party, The Forum Party, in a contest against Mugabe in 1995 and, not unexpectedly, lost the competition. Justice Dumbutshena was a popular, humble and honourable man who could have been trusted to rule the country in a fair and just manner. But he was no much against Mugabe’s slick and well oiled election machinery and his failure to unseat Mugabe ensured that he would be consigned to the dustbin of history. After Dumbutshena came, we all now know, Morgan Tsvangirai, the astute and articulate former trade unionist who, with his colleagues cobbled up the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999 which nearly won the 2000 parliamentary elections. The MDC was the first party since the country’s independence to give Zanu-PF a serious run for their money and there is widely held belief that the party won the contest but were rigged out of their victory. In the presidential elections in 2002, Tsvangirai went head to head with Mugabe in the presidential election and “lost”. (I place “lost” in parenthesis because the results were highly disputed and questionable.)

Without doubt Tsvangirai is a popular and savvy politician who could have as easily lead the country back to prosperity but, like many of us, he is not infallible. I suspect that he may have made some errors of judgement which allowed his party to be split into two factions. As a consequence and with Tsvangirai’s credentials under scrutiny, the MDC is likely to present a weak and fractured opposition to Mugabe in the forthcoming elections. The split opposition vote will allow Mugabe a reasonably clear run for re-election. Enter Simba Makoni. The one thing that is certain about politics is that it is a game of opportunism and there is indeed an opportunity for Makoni to make himself a national hero. With the MDC in near shambles, Makoni may present the electorate with the only credible and realistic option to unseat Mugabe.

Zimbabwe is a country which is yearning and desperate for change and the leadership trophy is there for the taking by anyone brave enough to stand up to Mugabe and present himself as a serious contender. Makoni comes in with a number of real advantages. He has the experience emanating from his tenure as a government minister and as the executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community. He is what one would call an “insider” who has been privy to the workings of national governance and international diplomacy. I would add that he is well connected to the national, regional and international “power grids” and could, if he won the election, move very quickly to restore Zimbabwe’s standing within the international community.

Makoni is clever and articulate (you do not earn a PhD by being dumb!) and can make a persuasive case to the electorate and to whoever cares to listen to him. He understands economics, having been a minister of finance. He has worked with youth organisations, as a former minister of youth and sports. His SADC experience has burnished his internationalist credentials. But most importantly, he has the endorsement of the man whom he seeks to replace. He was sacked as minister of finance by Mugabe and that is as a big an endorsement as one could ever get in the current scheme of things in Zimbabwe. The conventional wisdom in Zimbabwe is that in a free and fair election just about anyone can run and win against Mugabe. Makoni is certainly not just anyone.

Having made the case for Makoni’s participation in the forthcoming elections let me, for a moment, look at the downside of his mission. The first thing is that his entry is bound to raise a lot of suspicion in the minds of many about his motives and sincerity. The fact that he met with Mugabe in a private session a few weeks before his announcement raises the spectre that some kind of deal could have been cut. It is quite possible that Mugabe could have encouraged Makoni to run in order to split the opposition vote. Mugabe knows very well that the more opponents there are in the contest, the better his chances are of retaining power. Of course Mugabe would be taking the risk that the opposition could decide to coalesce around Makoni thus making him a real and potent challenger but I suspect that that is a risk a very desperate Mugabe would be prepared to take. I would also expect that if a deal was indeed cut, Mugabe would have ensured that there were adequate safeguards and guarantees to protect him.

The second disadvantage which Makoni will face will be the limited time left for him to put together an election machinery which will deliver to him the desired results. A period of less than two months is simply too short for anyone to launch a credible campaign in a national election. There is a possibility that a lot of homework may have been done before the announcement and that structures may already have been secretly put in place. But I doubt this very much. Mugabe has over the years strengthened his intelligence capacity and services to the extent that nothing big or serious is likely to happen within the country and his party without him getting to know about it. And when he does, he acts with ruthless efficiency to weed out the miscreants as Professor Jonathan Moyo and others involved in the abortive Tsholotsho saga will readily testify.

The MDC had barely seven months to organise and prepare for the 2000 parliamentary elections. But they were bringing with them a whole national trade union organisation. Apart from a few and as yet unknown disgruntled elements within Zanu PF, Makoni has no known such organisation and machinery and he wants to pull off a win in a presidential election with barely two months left on the calendar! That is a real tall order, even running against a widely unpopular and thoroughly discredited opponent like Mugabe. Makoni will have to work his socks off every hour and minute of the remaining days to the election and pray very hard for divine intervention if he is to make any mark on the plebiscite.

Finally, Makoni has not yet shown how and whether he can stand up to the Mugabe’s intimidation and disruption tactics. As an insider and having lived all his political life sheltered under the Zanu PF umbrella, he is most certainly untrained and inexperienced in fending off the poisonous arrows and barbed spears which will undoubtedly be spewed towards him by the massive Mugabe propaganda machinery. He may have shown that he has the balls to stand up to Mugabe, but can he sustain the challenge in the face of adversity? How he handles himself in the next two months will determine whether he will become a hero and saviour of the Zimbabwean people or whether he will be regarded as a decoy for yet another Mugabe grab for power.

Elections in Zimbabwe – contest or no contest?

Last week’s announcement of 29 March 2008 as the date for elections in Zimbabwe should have come as a welcome relief to many but it almost certainly didn’t. You would think that with a leadership that has presided over the collapse of a country’s economic and social infrastructure, that has survived by brutalising its own people and which has demonstrated a propensity for making wrong policy decisions, the citizens would be so fed up that they could not wait for the next election to throw out such bad leaders. But this is Zimbabwe and the rules of common sense do not apply here.

President Robert Mugabe, against all the protestations and pressure of the opposition which had sought a postponement to enable better preparation for the event, has decided that he cannot wait any longer to have his mandate confirmed and extended by his loyal and committed subjects. He has decided that the time to hold the elections is now and he is convinced and confident that he will be re-elected. The question of whether the lections will be free and fair is not material nor should it be allowed to stand in the way of his unbridled lust to hang on to power for life. The issue that the people who he rules over are suffering daily mostly because of his government’s misplaced, ill-conceived and ill-considered policies is of no consequence.

One would have thought that the whole point of holding elections is to choose a leader who can make lives better for his people - a leader who will lead the country to prosperity and development and who will leave the country in a better and stronger position for future generations. Mr Mugabe has been at the helm of the country for 28 years and he has very little if any success to boast of. Under any real democratic conditions he would have long been shown the door by the electorate but he has survived because he knows how to manipulate the election system in his favour.

His strategy for manipulating elections has three main components. The first is to intimidate the opposition though brutal force and violence which are perpetrated through the machinery of the state such as the army, the police and the intelligence units and his party’s elements including the war veterans and the youth league. The opposition parties are restricted from campaigning widely by beatings, torture and murder of their candidates, officials, agents and supporters. Zanu-PF has declared certain areas as “no-go” areas for the opposition and ensured that only their candidates are allowed to campaign freely in such areas. Mugabe has even boasted of his degrees in violence and these credentials are likely to be in full evidence during the forthcoming elections.

The second strategy has been to bribe the voters. Small and large favours are doled out to anyone who are willing and prepared to deliver their votes to him. In a country which is now suffering from the highest levels of poverty and deprivation, there is unlikely to be a shortage of takers of Mr Mugabe’s political and economic trinkets. If bribery fails, he resorts to blackmail. Where people have not accepted bribes have been blackmailed by being denied support and services. In times of food shortage, as are prevailing at the moment, opposition supporters are denied food aid and access to other public services. To a population that has been utterly brutalised and demoralised, both bribery and blackmail are very potent weapons of cohesion.

Mugabe’s third strategy has been the use of propaganda. No effort has been spared to drum up support by churning out misleading, false and other self-serving messages mainly through the public owned media. The state owned television, radio and newspapers have been comprehensively deployed to hype government’s successes and programmes and to undermine the opposition. Enemies have been cleverly invented to blame for each and every failure of government. Foreign powers, the opposition, poor weather, the dead and the living have, at one time or another, been trumpeted as the instigators of national misfortunes and perpetrators of evil misdeeds against the country.

And to make absolutely sure that nothing will go wrong, the forth strategy has been to subvert and manipulate electoral agencies and other institutions which are responsible for administration of the elections. The electoral supervisory bodies have been compromised to ensure that constituencies are unfairly demarcated, that voters’ roles are in shambles so as to be easily manipulated and that the whole electoral process is as biased against the opposition as possible. Law enforcement agencies such as the police and the army have been used to harass the opposition and make it as difficult as possible to freely campaign. Even the judiciary has been compromised to ensure that they do not give judgements that are not favourable to Mr Mugabe’s government.

In such circumstances are there any chances that the opposition will win the election? I doubt it very much and hence I can quite understand why the opposition should contemplate boycotting the forthcoming elections. In the absence of the constitutional and other guarantees which they sought for a free and fair election, the opposition in Zimbabwe have got no chance in hell of unseating Mr Mugabe. That notwithstanding and against all good reasons, it is important that the opposition participates in the forthcoming elections. I say this because of a number of reasons.

Firstly, there is a very good chance that Mr Mugabe has called the elections in anticipation that the opposition will boycott them which would give him a clear and unopposed run. By refusing to succumb to the boycott bait, the opposition will make it difficult and painful for Mr Mugabe to retain power. He will be exposed to some form of competition, notwithstanding its weaknesses, which will force him to confront the issues which impinge on his credibility and suitability to continue in office. If he is going to steal the elections, as he no doubt must if he is to remain in office, then the theft will be openly exposed and the whole world will see him for what he is. The world will be watching and Africa will be watching too and Mr Mugabe may just realise that he cannot snort a cock on the outside world without further hurting himself.

Secondly participation will be an act of hope and faith. By not participating, the opposition will have consigned the nation and it’s suffering people to the deepest abyss of hopelessness and despair. Zimbabweans are desperate for some form of hope that there will be an end to their suffering. Any act which rekindles or restores that hope, no matter how small or desperate the act, is a source of comfort and cause for celebration for the suffering masses. The opposition feel that participating will legitimise Mr Mugabe’s hold on power and one cannot argue against this logic. But that is the risk they have to take. If they do not participate they are taking the even greater risk of becoming irrelevant and obsolete.

Finally, and this is the real clincher, there is a chance that against all odds – against the intimidation, the bribery and blackmail, the propaganda and the sword of the state machinery – the opposition will win the election. The people of Zimbabwe have suffered so much that they may turn out in overwhelming numbers to vote for change and no amount of rigging will be able to alter the vote. And if Mr Mugabe decided to subvert the will of the people they will react with such passion and courage which will make the country totally ungovernable, much as is now happening in Kenya. Which will be a real pity.