Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa: Lessons from Country Experiences 0275975061, 9780275975067

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--—>1—ifin—wwiinniimur«>iwainmimimmii munmw 4 (3), 61. When Banda was hospitalized for a shrunken brain” in South Africa, the leaders of the UDF and AFORD sent messages wishing him well and a speedy recovery. Such moves, well intentioned and good in themselves, also convinced the public that Banda might, after all, not be that bad. 16/ “Malawi’s Banda survives brain surgery, but elections?” Africa Report, May-June 1994, (3): 3. The South African elections of April 1994 played a role in galvanizing Malawians to register and vote or be left out of the monumental political changes in the southern Africa region. '7.■ ^°"iehow’ Banda had 8iven the impression that he was not directly (even indirectly) responsible for the human nghts abuses, though he managed to grab about half of the nation’s economy for himself. The blame was put on his associates, John Tembo and Cecelia a zamira, who were regarded as the real rulers of the country especially in the last years of MCP rule This argument is not really tenable. Banda was a clever and very foxy dictator who knew how to fax” the opposition and protect his own tracks.

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Malawi

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18. Aside from the “executive” vice presidency, which Chihana demanded for himself, he also wanted seven other ministerial portfolios, including agriculture, justice, works, and supplies; a 43 percent quota of deputy ministers as well as quotas of parastatal and diplomatic positions. For a party that came a distant third, these were rather ridiculous demands. Chihana knew that the demands were selfish; hence, it insisted that such a deal not be made public. The UDF demanded that any deal had to be made public, and disagreement on this and other issues scuttled possibility for an initial deal. 19. It is interesting to note that even the UDF rejected any form of cooperation with the MCP. It was prepared to run a minority government rather than forge an alliance with the MCP. In fact, following the elections, the MCP had suggested that a national government made up of representatives from the three parties be set up. The UDF dismissed this request with contempt. Of course, Muluzi tried to accommodate some demands from Banda and even made some concessions such as that he could remain in the presidential palace. Fie even wanted to visit Banda at the palace. Banda not only moved out of the palace but refused to welcome such a visit from the new president. 20. Van Donge, 1995, 249-250. Van Donge’s argument that financial considerations were not primary in this new friendship is rather weak. The fact that the church had urged them to unite is no excuse for the personal financial benefits that went to Chihana rather than to the party. As well, it would have appeared that the best alliance would have immediately been with the UDF, thus combining the north and the south, and with both “attacking” the center, they might have made inroads. The only evidence provided by van Donge to reach the conclusion that “[Tjhere seemed therefore to be more real affinity between AFORD and MCP than between AFORD and UDF, despite the fact that the latter two emerged in opposition to MCP,” is a television interview in which Chihana attacked the UDF! See Van Donge, 1995, 250. 21. Venter, 1995, Malawi: The transition to multiparty politics. In Democracy and political change in su-Saharan Africa, edited by John Wiseman. London: Routledge, 179. Even after the pact was dissolved when Chihana formed a new pact with the UDF, the MCP was able to argue that by forging the pact with it in the first place, AFORD showed that the MCP was a reformed, open, democratic, and acceptable party. During the alliance, an AFORD member was elected speaker of parliament, and both partners shared the two-deputy speakership. They also used their new majority to vote themselves into powerful committees in parliament. 22. This new alliance between AFORD and UDF disproves the view by van Donge that the “main difference in public dispute between AFORD and UDF however was not so much their regional base as the fact that UDF’s top leadership contained many people who had been prominent in MCP” (Venter, 1995, 252). If this is the case, how did Chihana manage to forge an alliance with the MCP itself and openly campaign for people to respect Banda? How did the AFORD leader suddenly manage to forget the presence of these former MCP persons in the UDF after a cabinet position was created for him? The fact is that Chihana wanted a political position, and as soon as he got it, all other considerations were abandoned. This is not unique to Chihana; it is the bane of most contemporary prodemocracy movements in Africa. 23. It is possible that by forging an alliance with the MCP, the UDF became thoroughly marginalized in parliament. This certainly prompted Muluzi into making far-reaching concessions to AFORD to lure it away from the alliance with the MCP, to the extent of creating an unconstitutional position of second vice president. Yet, if that was the AFORD strategy, the cost had been too heavy for the prodemocracy front. Whatever the end result, it demonstrated crass opportunism and the emphasis on raw power at the expense of deepening the democratic struggle. At the end of the day, neither the UDF nor the MCP will have any

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respect for Chihana and the AFORD. 24. See Malawi—army commander killed. Africa Research Bulletin, April 1-30, 1995, 11829. The murder forced President Muluzi to postpone his scheduled trip to Kuwait. In late April, Lieutenant-General Owen Muluni was promoted to the rank of general and made commander of the army. 25. See J. Ganthu. 2002. Government: Greatest violator of freedom of expression, Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), March 25, 2002; R. Jamieson. 2002. Risking dictator¬

ship. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), April 1, 2002; and J. Ganthu. Bishops take gov¬ ernment to task. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), April 1,2002. 26. Laying a foundation for dictatorship. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), April 8,

REFERENCES Ganthu, J. 2002a. Government: Greatest violator of freedom of expression. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), April 1. Ganthu, J. 2002b.Bishops take government to task. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), Aprl 1. Ham, M. 1993a. Loosening the reins? Africa Report 38 (1): 29-31, Ham, M. 1993b. Malawi—Banda’s last waltz. Africa Report 38 (3): 17-21. Ham, M., and Mike Hall. 1994a. Malawi: From tyranny to tolerance. Africa Report 39 (6): 56-59. Ham, M., and Mike Hall. 1994b. Building democracy: Interview with President Bakili Muluzi. Africa Report 39 (6): 60-62. Jamieson, R. 2002. Risking dictatorship. Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe), April 1. Kalpeni, E. 1992. Political development and prospects for democracy in Malawi. Trans Africa Forum 9(1): 34. Meldrum, A. 1994. Malawi—new actors, same play? Africa Report 39 (4): 52-54. Van Donge, J. K. 1995. Kamuzu’s legacy: The democratization of Malawi African Af¬ fairs 94 (375): 227-257. Venter, D. 1995. Malawi: The transition to multiparty politics. In Democracy and politi¬ cal change in sub-Saharan Africa, edited by John Wiseman. London: Rout-

ledge.

11

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

ROGER SOUTHALL The existence of free and regular elections, openly functioning opposition par¬ ties, an independent judiciary, and lively—often highly critical—media testify to the correctness of the classification of contemporary South Africa as a democ¬ racy. Indeed, the democracy that was implanted in South Africa following the first universal suffrage election in 1994 is recognized as having replaced racial dictatorship by a state that is underpinned by a constitution that is one of the most advanced liberal democratic instruments in the world. Nonetheless, there is a growing critique, emanating from both liberal and radical quarters, that sug¬ gests that the status of this democracy is being increasingly challenged by a very identifiable shift toward authoritarianism by the African National Congress (ANC). Indeed, from these perspectives, it is argued in effect that the ANC is now marching South Africa along a road to an “illiberal democracy,” if not to an all too familiar African despotism. In this chapter, I argue that, while both the liberal and radical critiques point to both structural flaws and worrying developments in South African democ¬ racy, they overestimate the extent to which the ANC as the ruling party is able to impose itself upon South African society. Indeed, in line with arguments that I have put forward previously, I propose that democracy in South Africa is in a state of perpetual and dynamic contestation that revolves around three funda¬ mental issues: first, the tension between democracy and dominance of the politi¬ cal arena by the ANC; second, the incipient clash between democracy and con¬ stitutional liberalism; and third, the capacity of the state to counter apartheid social deficits (Southall 2000). The view put forward here is that these three contestations remain central to any analysis of the condition of democracy in South Africa and that while there are undoubtedly many negative and disturbing trends, the overall picture is contradictory and far from uniform. In short, it is proposed that while South African democracy is developing with numerous im¬ perfections, it continues to exhibit a “basic, rude strength” that bodes relatively well for the future.

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Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

THE CRITIQUES OF SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOCRACY: PARTY DOMINANCE AS AUTHORITARIANISM The idea of the ANC having become a dominant party, that is, one that is dominant electorally and that thereby dominates state policies and institutions without significant challenge, is as old as South African democracy itself. This author, for instance, suggested the shift to a racially unrestricted electoral sys¬ tem, alongside the adoption of a relatively centralized constitution and a stress on fiscal centralism, combined to replace the dominance of the National Party (NP), which had ruled South Africa since 1948, by that of the ANC (Southall 1994). However, while the emphasis within this interpretation was upon the ANC s new dominance as a product of the transitional settlement, more recent analyses characterize it as inherently authoritarian and heavy-handed. The liberal critique, as articulated by Giliomee, Myburgh, and Schlemmer (2001), argues that although South Africa has achieved a formal democracy in that regular elections are held, there is no uncertainty of electoral outcome as the ANC is guaranteed victory in all but a handful of lower-order elections. As a result, the government is no longer adequately accountable to the electorate, while the persistence of racial voting patterns also means that minorities are becoming increasingly marginalized. Meanwhile, the ANC has embarked upon a radical project of “transforming” the state and society. This entails both the elimination of the distinction between party and state and an attempt to enforce demographic representivity” on all institutions in both the public and private spheres. This proceeds by the delegitimation of non-African opposition, in par¬ ticular the liberal, mainly white Democratic Party (DP), as “racist” or as “de¬ fense of white privilege,” a strategy that further entrenches racial division. A not dissimilar argument is pursued by Dale McKinley, who was expelled from the ranks of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 2001 for being openly critical of its leadership for having backed the ANC’s collaboration with international capital upon the basis of the liberal-democratic transition arrange¬ ments of 1994. (The SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU] are bound together with the ANC in a “Tripartite Alliance” that groups the principal “forces of liberation” together.) According to McKinley (2001), the ANC’s “historic compromise” with capital has flown in the face of the most widely held view among the supporters of the Tripartite Alliance that insists that the capture of political power must be linked to a fundamental attack on the entrenched economic and political interests of capital in order for there to c

* m,eamngfUl Iiberation' Instead, what has happened is that the ANC and CP leaderships have abandoned the revolutionary aspects of their parties’ programs. Although the ANC adopted the redistributionist Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) to mobilize popular support in 1994, this was replaced by the neoliberal, precapitalist Growth, Employment and Redistribution Prof aTK(?EtRu 1996 0nce the ANC’S hoId 0n P°wer was secure- Spearheaded by Thabo Mbeki even before he became president in 1999, this was matched by an increasingly disciplinarian and conspiratorial approach to alliance politics Internal democracy has been crushed, and the alliance is now subject to an en-

The Contested State oj Democracy in South Africa

279

forced unity employed to prevent debate about ideological and strategic alterna¬ tives. ANC elites continue to fashion a radical-sounding rhetoric of “transfor¬ mation,” yet the reality is that this is only obscuring the defense of the status quo and the interests of an emergent African bourgeoisie. I have argued elsewhere that these characterizations of the ANC in power are unidimensional (Southall 2001b). Consequently, rather than our relying on such “strong” versions of the dominant party thesis, I have proposed a “weak” version that takes on much that both rival commentaries say yet also recognizes the limits that the ANC faces in imposing its authority. This approach shares a common starting point with both the liberal and radical commentaries in ac¬ cepting that the ANC, for historical reasons, enjoys a “natural” majority among the electorate and that—notably under Mbeki—it has embarked upon a project of centralizing power that has at times blurred the boundaries between the party and the state. Furthermore, it is accepted that the ANC has very often employed racial rhetoric that aims at delegitimating the opposition (cf. Mare 2001). Nonetheless, even if such tendencies are worrying, it is argued that they tend to be countered by a number of factors. These include, first, an acknowledgment that the government’s drive to centralize authority flows in part from a desire to impose fiscal discipline upon the nine provinces and to curb corruption. Second, it is argued that the multiracial, multiclass nature of the ANC renders it a broad church, which makes it a site of struggle between a variety of ideological per¬ suasions and political practices. In particular, in this regard, the ANC is the his¬ torical embodiment of twin legacies. On the one hand, the traditions of disci¬ pline draw upon the experiences of exile, when the perils of its organization outside South Africa required hierarchy and secrecy, both of which were trans¬ lated into a Leninist-style “democratic centralism” borrowed from its alliance with the SACP and support from Moscow. On the other hand, the ANC was simultaneously a movement of the people and the leader of an alliance of orga¬ nizations of the oppressed, an aspect that found its ultimate expression in the mass struggles inside South Africa, which did so much to undermine apartheid. Often inchoate, this tradition was nonetheless centered on a philosophy and practice of participatory democracy that found its foremost expression in the strands of trade unionism that culminated in the formation of COSATU in 1985. Overall, therefore, this “weak” version of the dominant party thesis suggests that these contrasting traditions are at perpetual odds with each other. It is therefore from this perspective of the ANC being a “weak” dominant party that the principal challenges to South African democracy are visualized.

DEMOCRACY VERSUS THE ANC? Any balanced assessment of democracy in South Africa must recognize the diversity of its foundations. These include the lasting impact of the colonial lib¬ eral tradition (for all that it was racially constrained) in inspiring mass aspira¬ tions to basic political rights for all citizens; the entrenchment of the idea of multiparty politics (even if participation in its practice was barred to the majority

280

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

of the population on racial grounds); and, some would add, the disjuncture be¬ tween politics (dominated by Afrikaners) and economics (dominated by English-speakers), which lasted at least until the early 1970s and which set limits to the concentration of power in state hands. (For all that apartheid South Africa was a highly authoritarian state, retrospect demands that we endorse Adam’s [1971] early insistence that South Africa was never totalitarian nor, as Giliomee [2001] insists, as tyrannical as the Eastern European dictatorships.)1 Nonethe¬ less, it remains incontestable that the main impetus behind the attainment of democracy was provided by the Congress tradition of popular resistance to ra¬ cial domination headed by the ANC, and which embraces the heritage of both the internal and external wings of the liberation movement, even if the present democracy is, in some considerable measure, simultaneously an outcome of the balance of power now between the (white-dominated) capitalist economy and the (black-dominated) state, which produced its reflection in the negotiated set¬ tlement of 1994. It is therefore highly tendentious now to make any suggestion that, having been the harbinger of democracy, the ANC might be in the process of becoming an obstacle to its realization. However, this is the argument that is now being put forward by the critics of the ANC. It is precisely because their analyses are far from trivial that the whole issue of “ANC dominance” needs to be thoroughly considered. The starting point of any critique of the ANC-in-power is the fact of its electoral dominance. This is now so well established that there is no need to rehearse the story of South Africa’s two postapartheid elections in detail. Suffice Say that the ANC won resounding victories at the national level in both 1994 and 1999, having taken 62.65 percent and 66.36 percent of the vote, re¬ spectively, in a poll conducted according to the national list system of propor¬ tional representation (PR), thereby sweeping nearly two-thirds of the 400 seats in the National Assembly. These results were matched by outright victories for the ANC in six of the country’s nine new provinces in the 1994 election (with .7 percent triumph in a seventh) and in seven (with a two-thirds majority in six) in 1999. In both elections, the two provinces that escaped the ANC were k WIZU!xi^ata! and Western CaPe‘ Similarly sweeping triumphs were recorded by the ANC in local government elections in 1995 and 2000. ANC electoral dominance is an outcome of an electoral process that, while tar from perfect, has matured very considerably since 1994 (when, although the result was “fair” insofar as it recorded overall popular opinion, the result had to be negotiated between the ANC and the [Zulu ethnically oriented] Inkatha Free¬ dom Party [IFP] in the interests of peace and stability). Although there remain concerns that various factors (such as the ANC’s alleged favorable treatment by e South African Broadcasting Corporation and its deployment of various state resources) advantage the ruling party, most commentators argue that the Inde¬ pendent Electoral Commission (IEC), the statutory body that runs the elections has succeeded in running successive elections that have been, generally speak¬ ing, free and fair according to the generally balanced rules that have been laid down (Lodge 1999; Southall 2000).2 The ANC’s standing therefore rests, fun-

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

281

damentally, upon its being supported by a significant majority of voters. Most certainly, the large proportion of these ANC voters are African, yet surveys in¬ dicate that—while the ANC is still viewed as the party of liberation—the voting choice of the South African public is increasingly governed not by any preoccu¬ pation with ethnicity and race but by class and economic considerations and careful assessment of party performance and programs (Lodge 1999; Mattes and Piombo 2001). Fundamentally, therefore, ANC electoral dominance is produced and reproduced afresh at every significant election, as a result of its popular pre¬ eminence, via a process that accords with the basic tenets of democracy. Even so, even if the ANC’s dominance is a wholly understandable outcome of South Africa’s history and political demography, that selfsame dominance poses se¬ vere challenges to the functioning and quality of democracy, not least in the structural and political limits it sets on the opposition and the latter’s capacity for exacting accountability.

Constraints on Opposition The starting point for any analysis of the nature of the opposition in South Africa is reference to its fragmentation. The national-list PR electoral system was adopted by the antagonistic elements that negotiated South Africa’s democ¬ ratic transition precisely because it maximized the opportunities for representa¬ tion. While demographic and political minorities recognized that the ANC, as representative of the majority of the population, would be guaranteed an elec¬ toral majority corresponding to its popular vote, they were simultaneously as¬ sured by the fact that they themselves would secure a proportionate voice at both national and provincial levels. Hence it was, for instance, that in 1994 the Zuluethnic IFP—which right up till just a few days before the election was declining to take part in a contest that it knew it would lose—was prevailed upon to par¬ ticipate not least because, although it would be heavily outgunned at the national level (where it subsequently took just 10.54 percent of the vote), it reckoned to record itself as the majority party in KwaZulu-Natal (where after tense negotia¬ tions during vote-counting it was awarded 50.4 percent of the vote and hence leadership of the provincial government, which it formed in uneasy coalition with the ANC). Correspondingly, while the NP had by now braced itself for the concession of majority rule, it correctly projected itself as the principal repre¬ sentative of the white and colored minorities at the national level (where it gained 20.39 percent of the vote) and as the majority representative in the West¬ ern Cape (leadership of whose government it now assumed). However, while the reward of this dedication to representation was electoral and political inclusive¬ ness (which, importantly, was backed up by a provision in the transitional 1994 constitution for the right of parties gaining more than 10 percent of the vote to enjoy proportionate representation in governments of national and/or provincial unity), the cost was the fragmentation of the opposition, which in 1994 shared some 37 percent of the vote (at the national level) among 6 parties before in 1999 splitting just over 33 percent among as many as 11 parties. To put it differ-

282

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

ently, by 1999 an increased number of opposition political parties were sharing a diminishing cake, with declining prospects of their forming a united or coherent challenge to the ANC. The problem for the opposition is that they are divided by history, ideology, orientation, race and ethnicity, and aspiration. Equally important, they have proved divided over what the role of an opposition should be (Southall 2001a). These different tensions have been dramatically illustrated by recent events that have seen the collapse of the hitherto most ambitious plan to forge a united challenge to the ANC. As previously indicated, a key dimension of the transitional deal was a con¬ stitutional provision enabling parties securing more than 10 percent of the popular vote in the national or provincial elections to participate in government at a relevant level. Most importantly, this resulted after the first democratic election in 1994 in the NP (or the New National Party, or NNP, as it was soon to become) joining the ANC as a junior partner in a coalition in which the IFP also participated. The resultant symbolism of former antagonists joining together in a Government of National Unity (GNU), with NP leader and former president De Klerk serving as a deputy president under president Mandela, was vital in giving assurance, both domestically and internationally, about the viability and stability of the new democracy. However, strategically wise though this arrangement was, it posed the dilemma to both the NNP and IFP about the nature of their role, for they both claimed to be not only partners in government but parties in opposition. The dilemma proved considerably more acute to the NNP than it did to the IFP. For its part, the IFP was happy to stress the African nationalism that it shared with the ANC and thereby to secure its control over KwaZulu-Natal while maintaining a profile at national level (where its leader, Mangosutho Buthelezi, served as minister of home affairs). On the other hand, while many in the NNP were keen to embrace Mandela’s bid for national reconciliation while retaining an important foothold in power, many were also deeply suspicious about the ANC’s distributionist agenda, most particularly its plans for affirma¬ tive action and black empowerment (which many in the colored community saw as a double-edged sword). The result was the adoption of an ambiguous strategy of “constructive opposition” that sought to balance continued participation in government against criticisms of government policies and actions. However while the NNP’s kid-gloved approach to the ANC may have played an important role in helping to stabilize the new democracy, it did not go down well with many of its supporters in the country, who contrasted it adversely with the strat¬ egy of robust opposition” to the government adopted by the small, but highly energetic and articulate, Democratic Party, led by Tony Leon. The result was the steady drift of support away from the NNP toward the DP and the decision bv the NNP to quit the GNU in 1996. This followed the promulgation of the “final” constitution, which had been hammered out by parliament acting as a Constitu¬ ent Assembly, as agreed under the terms of the 1994 “interim” constitution which had been negotiated by largely unelected delegates who had enjoyed no

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

283

popular mandate. Nonetheless, tough though the postelection negotiations often were, many of its supporters felt by now that the NNP had done too little to de¬ fend minority rights. Hence, the “no-nonsense” approach of the liberal DP, which attacked the government frontally for its various failings, began to appeal increasingly to white conservatives. The NNP’s departure from government therefore represented a bid to shore up its eroding foundations. This tactical retreat was turned into a rout in 1999, when the NNP’s vote in the national election plummeted from its 1994 level of 20.39 percent to just 6.87 percent, a performance that was rendered even more catastrophic by the remark¬ able increase in the vote of the DP, from 1.73 percent to 9.55 percent, a result that allowed it to replace the NNP as the official opposition.3 Hugely demoral¬ ized throughout the country, the NNP was subsequently further weakened by a visible drifting away of its support during the months that preceded the holding of local government elections in December 2000. This was most dramatically expressed by the conclusion of significant numbers of nationally and locally prominent party activists that the NNP was in terminal decline and that if they were to be able to continue in politics, then it was time to switch to a party under whose wing they could hope for a worthwhile reward in terms of influence, pa¬ tronage, or electable position. Hence, the NNP, weakly led and apparently im¬ ploding, was in no condition to resist the overtures of the DP, which under the aggressive Leon was arguing the need for a strengthened opposition. The result was the decision by the NNP to join the minor Federal Alliance (led by Louis Luyt, an apartheid-era business magnate) in combining with the DP into a new Democratic Alliance (DA), and to fight the forthcoming local government elec¬ tions under that label, with the intent of merging into a combined political party in time to fight the next general election as a single entity. (Complete merger was ruled out at this time because of a clause in the constitution that required members of the national and provincial assemblies to resign their seats if they changed their political parties.) Yet, events were to demonstrate that the forma¬ tion of the DA was more of a takeover than an alliance, and it was not to be long before the NNP was struggling to reestablish its identity. Initially, the DA performed well. Parrying taunts from the ANC (and some other parties, such as the Pan-Africanist Congress) that it was “reracializing” South African politics by grouping the principal white-supported parties to¬ gether, the DA performed remarkably strongly in the local elections, taking some 22 percent of the votes (against the DP’s and NNP’s combined total of 16.4 percent of the votes in the previous general election), albeit in a low poll of 48 percent. Although this resulted in the DA winning control of only a handful of local authorities around the country, it did secure the important plum of Cape Town, whose running it now determined to render a model of good governance. For the moment, the future for the DA looked bright, not least because it could claim considerable support among the colored community, while Tony Leon was simultaneously making determined campaigning efforts to establish foot¬ holds among African voters who were disaffected with the ANC. However,

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Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

what initially looked to be a surprisingly viable enterprise soon fell foul of its constituents’ different philosophies, ambitions, and party traditions. Historically, the DP and NNP had been bitter enemies, the former (and its predecessor parties) having fought vigorously against successive NP govern¬ ments from within the parliamentary arena. No love had been lost between them, in a fight in which the DP’s assault on apartheid, based on both political and economic liberal principles, had been portrayed by the NP as disloyal to South Africa (hence, by implication, to whites), dishonest, and, indeed, anti-Afrikaner (even though the DP had been able to claim support from leading liberal Afri¬ kaners). Following the formation of the alliance, it was scarcely surprising that many members of both parties were uneasy about lying in the same bed to¬ gether, not least because the long experience of the DP in opposition seemed to equip that party to play that role so much more effectively than the NNP, whose long years in government had seen its internal politics revolve around position and patronage rather than principle and ideas (Kotze 2001). Nor did it help that, after the formation of the alliance, it emerged that the NNP was heavily in debt4 and that its leader, Van Schalkwyk, was almost totally overshadowed and usu¬ ally tactically outmaneuvered by, Tony Leon. Hence, rumblings were soon to be heard from within the NNP that decisions within the alliance were being taken by a small DP caucus around Leon, that NNP views were being ignored, and that the DP leadership was both politically and intellectually arrogant. There was also considerable discomfort among the NNP hierarchy about the DP’s robust style of opposition, which Van Schlkwyk was later to portray as damaging to his party’s supporters, whose interests were not well served by antagonizing the government.5 Hence, the NNP was soon looking for a way out of the trap it had sprung upon itself. The opportunity for breaking the alliance was provided by an incident that threatened the shaky power base of the NNP in the Western Cape. The basic arrangement that had governed the selection of DA candidates in the local gov¬ ernment elections in 2000 had been that the DP and NNP would nominate can¬ didates in proportion to the strength of the two parties locally. Hence, when the DA had won Cape Town, the NNP had emerged as the stronger of the two par¬ ties and had placed its own candidate, Peter Marais (a leading and highly flam¬ boyant colored), in the key post of mayor. For his part, Marais was an ambitious politician who was intent upon building his own base independent of the DA leadership. Hence, he pursued a highly populist strategy, which among other things, embraced a proposal to rename two of Cape Town’s most historic streets after Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk and to put this to a local informal ref¬ erendum. All might have gone well if he and his cronies had not been caught attempting to rig the poll, an instance of manifest “bad governance” by a leading representative of a new political formation that was making the fight against alleged ANC corruption in government one of its major political platforms. This was too much like insubordination for Tony Leon, who rapidly instigated inter¬ nal party proceedings, which led to Marais’ dismissal from the post of mayor. But Marais fought back and challenged Leon in court, won over a technicality,

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

285

was reinstated as Mayor and then resigned immediately. Having beaten Leon in court, he was also reinstated in the NNP (from which he had also been dis¬ missed) and now began to lead a crusade to take the NNP out of the DA and into alliance with the ANC. This was enough to begin a process of logrolling, and Van Schalkwyk and the NNP leadership swiftly decided to join Marais in jumping ship and hopping aboard a life raft now offered to them by the ANC. The latter now envisioned the prospect of forging an agreement with the NNP that would not only fracture the most convincing vehicle of opposition but open up the opportunity of its securing joint control of the Western Cape government and the Cape Town and various other municipal councils. The ANC and NNP proceeded to reach an agreement that would see the two parties cooperate at the three different levels of government: the NNP might be offered a post or two in the national cabinet, while the two parties would coa¬ lesce to take control of both the Western Cape and the Cape Town City Council, with the NNP retaining the post of premier in return for the mayorship of Cape Town going to the ANC. This scenario began to unfold when Peter Marais was nominated as premier and proceeded to announce a new provincial cabinet in which the 12 posts were distributed evenly between the two parties,6 and the DP was forced into opposition. However, the unscrambling of the egg was considerably more complicated at the municipal level, where members of the NNP were prevented from leaving the DA by a clause in the constitution that required members of legislative bod¬ ies who changed political parties to resign their seats. This arrangement had been adopted in the constitution in 1994 to provide guarantees of political sta¬ bility by making it impossible for incumbent governments to purchase member¬ ship from the opposition benches in the manner that had proved so destructive of political integrity in other African countries during the early independence era (Mazrui 1969). This so-called antidefection clause now worked against the NNP in that, under the terms of the alliance with the DP, all its municipal councillors throughout the country had been elected under the banner of the DA, which now meant that they could not withdraw from the latter without resigning their seats. For the moment, therefore, this left the DA in the driving seat, where it con¬ trolled municipalities, not least because it was pressing potential defectors to declare their hands by now forbidding dual membership of the DA and other political parties. Even so, the DA was by now scheduled to lose control of Cape Town and some other municipalities, for in 1996, when revising the constitution, the Constituent Assembly had reasoned that in the future there might be good reason to allow legislators to change political parties and had accordingly quali¬ fied the antidefection clause by a provision that stated that an act of parliament might be passed to allow members to leave the parties under whose banner they had been elected without losing their seats. This created a strange situation whereby the new constitution might be amended on this point by an ordinary act, rather than one that had to go through far more complicated, established procedures. Consequently, although the move smacked of expediency, the na¬ tional government proceeded to press ahead with floor-crossing bills that would

286

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

provide legislators with a window of 21 days to change parties without penalty, with further constitutional amendments that would enable local councillors to change parties and retain their seats being scheduled for early 2002. In the event, this has run into objections from the IFP, which fears that many of its own coun¬ cillors in KwaZulu-Natal might cross over to the ANC. Nonetheless, it is ex¬ pected that the changes will be pushed through in the near future, with the result that control of quite a few municipalities throughout the country will change hands.7 Even if its deal with the NNP enabled it to take joint control of the Western Cape, the tie-up was not a universally popular move within the ANC. Not unex¬ pectedly, there was considerable criticism that any linkage between the party of liberation and the party of apartheid smacked of cynical opportunism, while many on the left (who were already at odds with the government over its pursuit of its free market economic policies) feared that it would strengthen the right wing of the ANC at the expense of the influence of the Tripartite Alliance, the arrangement that bound it to COSATU and the SACP.8 Meanwhile, there were also some signs that a renewal of its connection with the NNP might alienate the IFP, whose leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was becoming increasingly estranged from Mbeki and who complained that too little was being done to forge a recon¬ ciliation between his party and the ANC from the national down to the grass¬ roots level.9 The full ramifications of the recent reshuffling of the party cards are not yet evident. Nonetheless, there are a few pointers. First, the ANC-NNP linkage has demonstrated the immense obstacles to the formation of a coherent opposition to the ANC. The ANC, as the dominant party, possesses immense resources of position and patronage that it can deploy to undermine tendencies toward unity among its opponents. Second, for all that it has now declared itself more a part¬ ner in government than a party of opposition, many argue that—even though Van Schalkwyk may obtain a cabinet post—the NNP is finished as a party of national significance. From this perspective, while the NNP may entrench itself as a vehicle for “colored conservatism” in the Western Cape, its feeble showing as an opposition suggests that it will fare little better electorally if it now be¬ comes a supine ally of the ANC. Third, while Tony Leon remains by far the most formidable of the ANC’s opponents, the implosion of the DA (even though it will retain that name) has severely damaged his reputation and perhaps fatally compromised his capacity to consolidate the opposition via linkages with other political parties. Finally, as argued by Habib (2001), although the ANC and NNP leaderships have proclaimed their linkage as a step forward to the promo¬ tion of a nonracial politics, it would seem, in converse, that their cohabitation is more likely to entrench the idea of South African political parties as representing distinct racial blocs. In short, the structural inability of the principal party or parties of opposi¬ tion to serve as a viable alternative government to the ANC underwrites the lat¬ ter’s dominance and any incipient tendency toward authoritarianism that accom¬ panies it.

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

287

Dominance as Authoritarianism? The liberal and radical critiques of the ANC argue that it is attempting to extend its domination over all major aspects of society and to suppress internal and external debate of its performance and policies. In contrast, it is argued here that although the ANC leadership has indeed attempted to extend its control over both the party and its external critics, it has enjoyed only partial success and, like many another democratic government, has come up against constant limits. Since the assumption of national leadership by Thabo Mbeki, there has been a concerted attempt to further centralize power, tighten fiscal controls, and im¬ pose political discipline upon the ANC and the provinces. The impetus behind this bid would seem to derive from, first, a technocratic concern to achieve effi¬ ciency in the face of multiple problems of administrative and bureaucratic inca¬ pacity in government. Second, it results from a worrying tendency to shield the presidency and the person of Mbeki himself from political attack. In part, this acute sensitivity to criticism flows from Mbeki’s own personal dilemma, for as a highly intellectual and rather private man, he has had the unenviable task of suc¬ ceeding Nelson Mandela, who had by 1999 become a global icon and whose massive stature was buoyed up by the warmth, humor, and openness of his pub¬ lic persona. Nonetheless, Mbeki’s own background was also very much that of the party insider, the pragmatist and “fixer” whose principal concern was always to “make things work.” Hence, while the wellsprings of his government are far from being inherently oppressive, the chemistry of Mbeki’s personality, prac¬ tices, and challenges has resulted in an authoritarian impulse residing at the heart of the political and administrative machinery of government. Siren cries about the emergence of an “imperial presidency” under Mbeki are exaggerated, for the office of the presidency remains a relatively modestly staffed body that serves a very necessary coordinating function for a government that works through the line ministries and Mbeki’s own personal relations with individual ministers.10 Recently, for instance, there has been the announcement of the appointment of a new unit to support the presidency by providing logisti¬ cal backing to Mbeki and former president Mandela. Yet rather than being placed within the presidency itself, this new unit will fall under Lindiwe Sisulu, the minister of intelligence, an arrangement that attempts to combine efficiency with political loyalty.11 Meanwhile, in contrast, the passage of a much-needed bill designed to reform the immigration system has been stalled for years rather than months because of Mbeki’s testy relationship with Buthelezi, who, while anxious to maintain an IFP presence at the center of power, has found his authority within the Ministry of Home Affairs severely circumscribed by the presence of an ANC appointee as his most senior official. Overall, therefore, Mbeki’s presidential authority is exercised through the cabinet, the senior min¬ istries (notably finance), and collective discipline in a manner that is much more reminiscent of contemporary Britain (where there is an ebb and flow of power between prime minister and ministers according to the character of the former) rather than, say, a Kenya or Zimbabwe, where power is centered exclusively upon the personality of an authoritarian ruler.

288

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

However, for all that Mbeki has exercised power wholly constitutionally, he has—rather like British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair—sought to drive through policies that are unpopular with key vested inter¬ ests (not least many of the ruling party’s own supporters) by imposing presiden¬ tial authority and disallowing debate over sensitive issues rather than by at¬ tempting to rule by consensus. This can be illustrated most fulsomely by refer¬ ence to the Mbeki government’s dogged adherence, against mounting discon¬ tent, to its controversial strategies on both the economy and AIDS. However, while its often high-handed manner has been at the core of arguments that the government has become authoritarian, the more cogent point is that in practice, it has had to make significant adjustments to its more controversial policies in order to respond to a diversity of criticisms and pressures from within its own camp as much as from the formal opposition, the media, and civil society. The government’s economic policy, GEAR, is designed around a very strict fiscal conservatism, on the one hand, which seeks to maintain firm control over national finances, and, on the other, Scrooge-like limits on social spending that have had alarming consequences for the delivery of some social services (from basic health care to welfare and pensions), the major impact of which has fallen upon the ANC’s own supporters among the poorer segments of society. When combined with the adoption of a homegrown privatization strategy, the encour¬ agement of private medical and educational initiatives, a reduction in tariff and nontariff barriers to force South African industry (heavily protected under apart¬ heid) to compete globally, and, not least, an easing of foreign exchange control, GEAR has represented a determined, neoliberal attempt to boost economic growth by constructing an attractive platform for foreign investment. In the event, while there has been constant economic growth under the ANC, the rate of expansion has been far lower than is objectively required to provide for the realization of urgent social needs. Worse, GEAR has seen the loss of nearly a million formal sector jobs (as industry has tooled up to meet global competition) and has failed to attract significant foreign capital (which, inter alia, is scared by regional instability and the dangers presented by South Africa’s traumatized social fabric (violence, AIDS, etc.). It is therefore scarcely surprising that, as discussed by McKinley (2001), the ANC government has run into major prob¬ lems with COSATU, the SACP, and many of its own followers, who accuse it of having abandoned the economically expansionist and socially redistributionist platform on which it was originally elected in 1994. Although disagreements within the Tripartite Alliance were plastered over during the 1999 general election, they were to escalate thereafter. Most notably, these culminated in increasingly vocal protest by the trade union movement against GEAR, disputes between government and public sector unions over wages and restructuring plans, COSATU’s objection to projected changes in labor legislation, its launch of an antiprivatization campaign (which enjoyed SACP support and culminated in a mass, one-day demonstration strike in early 2002), and, not insignificantly, COSATU’s discomfort with the government’s approach to the crisis in Zimbabwe (where Mugabe’s bid to cling to power has

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

289

featured violent harassment of presidential challenger Morgan Tsvingirai’s trade union-backed Movement for Democratic Change).13 All this fueled widespread speculation that grassroots feeling was building up within COSATU in favor of a breach with the alliance and the launch of a leftist opposition party. Although more level-headed operators within the ruling party somewhat ingenuously dis¬ missed such tensions as no more than the vigorous debate that had always gone on inside the liberation movement (Jordan 2001), the national executive com¬ mittee of the ANC accused elements of the COSATU leadership of “counter¬ revolutionary” and “ultra-leftist” plans to launch a party of opposition, and Mbeki himself subsequently followed this up by accusing COSATU of conspir¬ ing with international left-wing forces to topple him.14 Meanwhile, tensions within the ANC and between the ANC and COSATU were also greatly heightened by the government’s highly controversial response to the AIDS crisis. By 1999, the Department of Health was estimating that some 4.2 million people out of South Africa’s 44 million population were infected by HIV, while other estimates (notably by the Actuarial Society of South Africa) predicted that the figure would reach 6 million by the end of 2000. A further estimate saw 17 percent of the population being HIV positive by 2006, with average life expectancy dropping from 57 between 1996 and 2001 to 50.3 be¬ tween 2011 and 2016 (with Africans by far the most adversely affected popula¬ tion group) (SAIRR 2001, 58). However, rather than responding energetically and imaginatively to what was simultaneously an economic and social crisis, the government was paralyzed by the failure of ministers, MPs, and policymakers to stand up forthrightly to Mbeki’s own personal adherence to the view, pro¬ claimed by a very small minority of AIDS “dissidents” but roundly rejected by the international medical community (and most other African governments), that HIV does not cause AIDS, which they argue instead is a product of poverty. Despite mounting evidence that HIV does cause AIDS and Mbeki’s own sub¬ jection to international criticism and ridicule, the president’s bizarre view (which he apparently originally sourced from surfing the internet) has continued to impede the adoption of a rational and energetic approach to the epidemic. At the time of writing of this chapter (early 2002), this has resulted in massive tur¬ bulence within the ANC and open revolt by some provinces against a key plank in government policies. The nine new provinces were created under the transitional constitution of 1994 as a deal between the NP and IFP and the ANC. Basically, whereas the former had favored federalism, the ANC had sought the creation of a unitary constitution. In the event, the carving out of the new provinces was a compro¬ mise in that while they provided an element of devolution and offered protofederal tendencies, the new governments were provided with very few exclusive powers. They could be overruled by the national government where policies clashed in most major spheres, they were primarily transmission belts for the implementation of national policy, and they were overwhelmingly dependent (for over 95 percent of their budgets) upon the central fiscus. Subsequently, the autonomy of the ANC-led provinces has been curbed by the determination of the

290

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

ANC national leadership to prevent the emergence of regional baronies (notably by the top-down appointment of provincial premiers and central intervention in provincial party disputes) (Hawker 2000) and, most of all, by the imposition of strict spending limits by the Ministry of Finance. While this latter has been vital in curbing a notorious tendency on the part of some provinces to spend well beyond their budgets as a result of a mixture of fiscal mismanagement and inca¬ pacity and corruption, it has also resulted in provincial governments becoming the butt of popular discontent at the often brutally imposed cutbacks in social services and widespread failures in “delivery.” However, it is the national gov¬ ernment’s AIDS policy that has now brought several of the provinces to the verge of open revolt. While Mbeki’s personal doubts about the link between HIV and AIDS have seriously impaired the response to the disease, the latter has also been shaped by the government’s concerns that the costs of dealing with it will blow its conser¬ vative financial strategy off course. Consequently, the government’s position, as articulated by health minister Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is that, given limited resources, policy focuses primarily on education and disease prevention measures, alongside more effective treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. However, while the medical community, AIDS activists and researchers, COSATU (which sees the impact of HIV/AIDS on the shop-floor), and the me¬ dia have given these latter thrusts a warm welcome, they have become increas¬ ingly outraged by the government’s stubborn determination to adhere as much as possible to an early decision that it will not provide antiretroviral drugs, such as azidothymidine (AZT), through public hospitals, despite medical evidence that these slow the pace of the disease and that, in particular, they significantly reduce the risk of transmission of HIV. Most recently, this has developed into a long-running battle between the government and its AIDS opponents over the supply of nevirapine, the latest drug on offer to prevent mother-to-child trans¬ mission. For its part, although there is almost universal international acceptance of the effectiveness of nevirapine in controlling mother-to-child transmission, the government has chosen to project the view that while its immediate effec¬ tiveness may be proven, there is not sufficient evidence to guarantee that its longer-term effects may not be toxic and dangerous. Hence, rather than making the drug universally available, it will allow it to be provided only at nominated research sites in all the different provinces where its impact in both the immedi¬ ate and longer term can be monitored. Only after such research has been prop¬ erly conducted will the government even contemplate universal and general pro¬ vision. For their part, the government’s opponents have accused it of a multitude of sins. The reluctance to provide the drugs is regularly related to Mbeki’s re¬ fusal to accept majority medical opinion on the indissoluble connection between HIV and AIDS and to a misplaced belief that universal provision of the drug would be unaffordable. (AIDS researchers and activists claim, in contrast, that its provision would prove much cheaper in the long term than the cost of having to treat and care for a larger number of AIDS patients.) But worse, the govern-

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

291

merit’s policy is widely damned as condemning thousands of mothers and babies to an early death and as an attack on citizens’ right to life as guaranteed by the constitution. This resulted in early 2002 in a successful challenge to the official policy by the Treatment Action Campaign in the Pretoria High Court, which proceeded to order the government to make the drug universally available. Pub¬ lic opinion was only more inflamed by the government’s decision to appeal the judgment and hence to stall any change in policy. What has compounded a mounting crisis have been the government’s ef¬ forts to deflect criticism by maintaining party unity through discipline. The vast body of ANC politicians have proved reluctant to endanger their careers by tak¬ ing issue with established policy, while cabinet ministers have kept their heads down and Tshabalala-Msimang, herself a medical doctor, has been pilloried for her failure to repudiate the president’s odd beliefs openly. However, with the ground beginning to give way beneath their feet, and as the ANC becomes the butt of increasingly open criticism from both its other partners within the Tri¬ partite Alliance, key players within the party have begun to distance themselves from its policy. This has now resulted in a major debacle that has pushed the ANC’s credibility to the limit and could have severe consequences for its popu¬ lar standing in the not so distant future. Following an attack by home affairs minister Mangosutho Buthelezi upon government AIDS policy and his announcement that KwaZulu-Natal (which has the highest rate of HIV prevalence in the country) would now proceed to give nevirapine to all pregnant women, whether or not they could be tested for HIV, the ANC premier of Guateng, Mbhazima Shilowa, made a similar announce¬ ment. This was widely viewed as a blatant challenge to the government, not least because Shilowa (previously secretary-general of COSATU) is a close as¬ sociate of Mbeki, although another view that was floated was that, in fact, Shilowa had thought he was acting in line with the most recent adjustment in government policy, which was that provinces could extend the rollout of nevaripine to pregnant women to the extent that they had the capacity to do so. However, although a review of what the other ANC provinces were doing sug¬ gested that a number of them were in practice subverting the national govern¬ ment’s policy quietly (by, inter alia, increasing the number of sites at which nevirapine is on offer and labeling it “research”), Shilowa’s challenge was not to be tolerated. Tshabalala-Msimang announced that Shilowa’s stance was contrary to national policy, and he was soon to be badgered into issuing a statement that he had been misinterpreted by the media. This, in turn, resulted in a frontal at¬ tack upon the health minister by COSATU secretary-general Zwelinsima Vavi, who now accused her of putting politics before people and undermining the na¬ tion’s determination to tackle AIDS. Further criticism of the government fol¬ lowed from both the SACP and certain ANC health sector activists. Meanwhile, the government’s bad press was massively increased, first, by the Mpulamanga provincial government’s dismissal of a hospital superintendent for insubordina¬ tion after he allowed a volunteer organization to facilitate the provision of free antiretroviral drugs to rape survivors and, second, far worse, after Nelson Man-

292

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

dela was quoted as implicitly criticizing the government by declaring that there was too much debate about AIDS and not enough action. The former president, however, was rapidly prevailed upon by the ANC’s top executive structure, the National Working Committee, to retract his criticism, resulting in his subse¬ quently issuing a statement that the government’s policy toward AIDS was the “best in the world” and that he would not again comment upon HIV/AIDS with¬ out first consulting the ANC. Even so, there seems little doubt that Mandela’s interventions are intended to shift government policy, which he sees as both morally and politically dubious.15 Despite last-ditch efforts by the party hierarchy to maintain uniformity, it is becoming increasingly apparent that ANC policy is collapsing under the weight of hostile popular opinion, growing uneasiness among powerful players within the party and its partners in the alliance, and, not least, doctors, who are in¬ creasingly claiming that medical ethics dictate that they defy the government. For all that the “dominant party” has sought to impose its controversial AIDS policies, these are being repudiated by society. Yet, importantly, this is the case more generally, for just as the government is being openly challenged on HIV/AIDS, so it is being compelled to adjust its approach to the economy in order to placate its critics within COSATU. As tension between COSATU and the ANC increased toward the end of 2001, the trade union movement started calling for the holding of a national summit on economic reconstruction that would involve all elements of civil so¬ ciety. This would focus on the identification of alternative economic strategies to GEAR and would call together all those groupings whose principal concerns were to address the needs of the poor. While hostile elements within the ANC projected this as an attempt by COSATU “ultraleftists” to set up an antigovern¬ ment popular front, this interpretation was publicly repudiated by leading COSATU unions, which simply affirmed that the summit was designed to ad¬ dress the economic problems (a rapidly depreciating currency, low growth and investment, massive job losses, poverty, and widening societal inequality). Given a cool response from both business and government, the idea of the sum¬ mit was put on hold. However, this was only after two of COSATU’s major affiliates (the National Union of Mineworkers and the South African Democratic Teachers Union) had made open suggestions that it was time to look around for alternative alliances. The COSATU central executive committee subsequently pulled back from any overt clash with the ANC, by pronouncing that while there remained major differences with the party, these were not sufficient to warrant a split. Yet COSATU also warned against the danger of the ANC losing its working-class support by aligning itself with conservative forces and called upon its member¬ ship to redouble their efforts to influence ANC policies. This was followed by a high-level meeting with the ANC in late January 2002 in which the differences between the two organizations were debated, and both made a commitment to seeking a new consensus on economic growth, in part through the holding of a national growth summit (at which business, government, labor, and civil society

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

293

would meet together). While government insisted that the essentials of GEAR would remain in place, it was declared that there was plenty of scope for debate on both principle and detail and the forging of a “social accord.” Linked to a similar detente between the leaderships of the ANC and SACP (which had itself become increasingly marginalized), the shift toward reconciliation within the Tripartite Alliance appeared to herald a softening by the government of its neo¬ liberal approach to the economy and its quiet acceptance of the necessity of paying greater attention to the needs of its mass constituency. As expressed by Jeremy Cronin, deputy secretary-general of the SACP, there was renewed rec¬ ognition of the Tripartite Alliance as a source of stability and hence as a plat¬ form for growth.16

“DEMOCRACY” VERSUS CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERALISM? South Africa’s transition was guided by competing, although overlapping, conceptions of democracy. First, there was a heritage of consociationalism, which argued that in a racially divided society, majoritarianism should be con¬ strained by an emphasis within the state’s institutions on guarantees of minority representation and protection. Second, there was the anticolonial, antiapartheid stress on democracy as majority rule. Third, there was the liberal argument in favor of a constitutional state under which citizens’ rights, both individual and collective, would enjoy protection against arbitrary and dictatorial assaults by government. The transitional constitution of 1994 and the final constitution of 1996, not surprisingly, embedded elements of all three approaches, if only be¬ cause, as with any negotiated instruments, they represented the outcome of a bargain between competing forces, none of which were capable of imposing any single vision upon their opponents. Nonetheless, the dominant party thesis either implicitly or explicitly suggests that the ruling party will utilize its political weight, granted by its majority status, to cast aside or erode constitutional limi¬ tations in order to impose its will upon minorities. I argue that although this process is very uneven and that in vitally important ways constitutional protec¬ tions against government intrusions are working, there is an identifiable thrust by the ANC government to undermine or displace legal or constitutional obsta¬ cles that are placed in its way by its appeal to the need for “transformation.” This argument is pursued, most particularly, by reference to the government’s stance on the crisis in Zimbabwe and the role of standing committees in parlia¬ ment.

The ANC and Zimbabwe Under apartheid, South Africa was subjected to a regime of white minority racial domination and hierarchy. It followed necessarily that the struggle for democracy was simultaneously a struggle for racial liberation of the black ma¬ jority from race-induced inequality, humiliation, and poverty. In formal ideo¬ logical terms, this explicitly racial aspect was subordinated within the ANC to

294

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

the idea of national liberation, under whose umbrella the subordinated demo¬ graphic components of the South African nation (Africans, Indians, and col¬ oreds) joined together with white democrats in a nonracial struggle against apartheid. Even so, for all that the ANC’s commitments to nonracialism remain one of the great triumphs of the victory against apartheid, not least because they provided an inclusive notion of a South African nation that eased white accep¬ tance of the transition, the national question has remained intractable and con¬ tentious. Historically, the major cause of division was that between Africanism and nonracialism, with the former tendency resenting alleged domination of the national liberation movement by the racial minorities (an interpretation that led to breakaway from the ANC by the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1959). In the present era, there are significant echoes of that tension embodied within the project of ‘transformation” in the way that it is presently conceived as the idea of the state seeking to drive the bid for all the major institutions of society to become demographically representative, that is, that their composition, govern¬ ance, and leadership should reflect the racial composition of South African soci¬ ety. Such a notion simultaneously carries within it the idea of decolonization, for although the South African liberation struggle had recognized that South Africa (as defined since union in 1910) was not a colony, it was proposed that its settler origins defined it as subject to internal colonialism and hence that in fighting apartheid the ANC and its allied organizations were engaged in the same strug¬ gle against colonialism that had been undertaken by the fellow national libera¬ tion movements in other parts of Africa. Many of the unresolved tensions embodied in almost all of these ideas have found their expression in the ANC’s approach to the present crisis in Zimbabwe arising out of Robert Mugabe’s bid for reelection as president and his controver¬ sial program of land reform. This, of course, has seen Mugabe’s government engage in a policy of forced seizure and/or compulsory purchase of the farms of numerous white settlers and their redistribution to his supporters. Meanwhile, he has pursued his reelection through a campaign of manifest and well-documented deployment of wide-scale violence and harassment against his opponent for the presidency, Morgan Tsvingirai, and anyone brave or foolhardy enough to sup¬ port the latter and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Having erected a regime founded upon patronage and deeply entrenched corruption, Mugabe s dismal stewardship has reduced the Zimbabwean economy to a state of shambles and its people to the verge of widespread starvation (Moore 2001). The crisis in Zimbabwe has had a major deleterious impact upon South Af¬ rica and is widely believed by analysts to have played a major part in the pre¬ cipitous decline in the value of the currency, the rand, in the last months of 2001. The reasons are several: the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy will greatly diminish its capacity to serve as a major importer of South African goods, the economic crisis has caused thousands of Zimbabweans to flee to South Africa; and the political instability and uncertainty generated by the Zim¬ babwean crisis throughout the region are widely regarded as having deterred investors and to have damaged prospects for South Africa, merely because of its

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

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proximity. Finally, there is widespread suggestion that the continued existence of the Mugabe dictatorship will undermine hopes for the success of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), of which Thabo Mbeki is a principal author and champion, because of potential donors’ insistence that eco¬ nomic renewal must be accompanied by African commitment to good govern¬ ance. Despite the major implications that the Zimbabwean crisis hold for South Africa, the South African response has been badly split along party lines in a manner that has widened racial polarities. On the one hand, the DA—and much of the press—has come out in favor of unambiguous and open condemnation of Mugabe and for use by South Africa of its economic and political muscle to sanction his behavior. Indeed, the DA ran a poster in 1999 that postulated starkly that “SA without the DA = Zimbabwe,” a statement whose subliminal text suggested that white opposition was necessary to keep black despotism at bay. On the other hand, various spokespersons for the PAC have come out openly in Mugabe’s support. Meanwhile, for its part, the ANC government, not without some good cause, has opted for a policy of quiet diplomacy that, sup¬ posedly, seeks to put pressure upon Mugabe without either humiliating him or driving him into further acts of irrationality, while simultaneously seeking to assure South African whites and investors that Zimbabwean-style land seizures will not occur in South Africa. Yet, even if the ANC’s foreign policy has been guided by realpolitik, its reluctance to challenge the implementation of the Zim¬ babwean land reform program frontally, despite its dubious legality and its de¬ scent into political cronyism, seems based upon sympathy with what Mugabe insists is a continuing national liberation war (the “third Chimurenga”) against colonialism, as also of Africans against whites. However, what has been most controversial has been the reluctance of the ANC to acknowledge Mugabe’s abuse of both human rights and electoral procedures (in both the 2000 parlia¬ mentary and the 2002 presidential elections). Indeed, in this context, ANC rep¬ resentatives have regularly chosen to identify the Mugabe regime as “democ¬ ratic” simply by formalistic reference to its having “won” the 2000 parliamen¬ tary election, despite citation by numerous international observer bodies that the elections were neither free nor fair and, interestingly, despite developing support from COSATU for Tsvingirai (who has emerged out of the Zimbabwean labor movement and enjoys its backing).17 To be sure, the ANC’s reluctance to con¬ demn Mugabe has been at one with the position of its partners in both the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and, as previously indicated, it has had to act cautiously so as not to make the situation in Zimbabwe worse rather than better.18 None¬ theless, there is widespread concern that in having failed to act far more deci¬ sively over Zimbabwe, the ANC has not only favored expediency over principle but also squandered an opportunity to demonstrate its own commitment to de¬ mocratic values. Ironically, therefore, while at one level the ANC has vigorously countered any suggestion that Zimbabwe is merely showing to South Africa’s its own future, at another level, its ambiguous stance over democratic basics in that

296

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

country has inevitably raised suspicions that it, too, might be prepared to rear¬ range the constitutional furniture to retain its hold on power if it were to be faced by a seriously competitive electoral challenge. Suffice it to say, its recent response to embarrassing developments in parliament have not been promising.

The ANC and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) One of the major achievements of the democratic transition was to trans¬ form South Africa into a constitutional state, that is, one in which the executive is bound by a set of constitutional norms and procedures. Among the most ef¬ fective of the new constraints was the parliamentary committee system. Under apartheid, the parliamentary committee system had been weak and ineffective, but after 1994, it was overhauled and strengthened so that it would be able to make a major contribution to lawmaking and oversight. Cognizance was taken of reforms that strengthened committee systems in parliaments of both established and new democracies elsewhere, and the National Assembly was rapidly equipped with some 27 portfolio committees (one for each of the 25 government departments, plus one on private members’ bills and one for the RDP) and the upper house with 11 select committees (nine of which broadly corresponded to clusters of government departments) and a number of Joint Committees comprising members from both houses, including the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA). As well as being provided with cer¬ tain powers to initiate and prepare legislation, the committees were given pow¬ ers to summon people to give evidence, receive petitions and submission from interested persons or institutions, and, most importantly, monitor, investigate, and make recommendations concerning the government’s legislative program, budget, or departments. Political party representation on committees was pro¬ portional to their representation in parliament, and committee chairmanships were similarly distributed among the parties proportionately. While in practice the effectiveness of the different committees varied con¬ siderably according to the capacity of the chairpersons, the skills and dedication of the members, and the availability of scarce resources and logistical backup, committees soon began to develop a reputation for performing as the enginehouse of parliament by refining legislation and demanding accountability of ministers and their departments. Much of this reputation depended upon the fact that many committee members were willing to relax party rivalries and to act across party lines, and some ANC chairpersons were prepared to be tough with their own ministers. Parliamentary committees seemed to provide an arena in which individual members of parliament, from both houses, could exercise a degree of independence in the national interest without running afoul of party discipline. Although observers were forced to qualify this judgment as a result of the pressures exerted by the ANC upon its members of the portfolio commit¬ tee on health to maintain party loyalty when the then minister of health, Dr. Nkosazama Zuma, appeared before that body to answer questions about the

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

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Sarafina scandal in 1995 (in which some R14 million allocated for a play on the dangers of HIV/AIDS was found to have been incorrectly awarded, misman¬ aged, and misspent), there was nonetheless widespread agreement that—despite lapses and inefficiencies—the new committee system represented a major ad¬ vance along the road to parliament exercising effective oversight over govern¬ ment (Calland 1999, 29-36; Nijzink 2001). Unfortunately, however, the parlia¬ mentary committee system has now received a major blow to its emerging reputation by recent developments surrounding SCOPA. Prior to 1994, SCOPA was constrained by the obsequiousness of its NP majority to their political masters. However, thereafter it began to develop in a courageous and nonpartisan manner, not least because, in keeping with prece¬ dent, it was chaired by a member of the opposition. The committee was also served by some other outstanding individual members drawn from across the party spectrum, and it was not long before, in the words of Andrew Feinstein (2002), an ANC MP and member of SCOPA, it became the “embodiment of meaningful oversight.” The theory was simple: SCOPA should operate in a consensual, nonpartisan manner because unlike other parliamentary committees it does not discuss mat¬ ters of policy, only financial management. The political affiliation of ministers or civil servants is of no consequence in determining whether financial regula¬ tions have been transgressed or not. Operating under this informal code and backed by the commitment to this approach of the first two ANC chief whips, the committee played a critical role in identifying (and refusing to authorize) inappropriate expenditure and ensuring efforts were made to recover as much of such expenditure as possible. However, as Feinstein goes on to elaborate, “the manner in which the ANC has handled the arms deal imbroglio has brought this to a juddering halt.” The origins of the arms deal referred to go back to 1995-1996, when the Ministry of Defense conducted a strategic defense review. It subsequently came up with a “force design” that was presented to parliament as little more than a wish list, for as the ministry itself conceded, such massive funding as would be required to implement it was unlikely to be available. However, although par¬ liament did not approve increased defense expenditure, the government entered into transactions to buy submarines, corvettes, helicopters, trainer jets, and fighters in a deal with various multinational corporations that amounted to R32 billion. In September 2000, the auditor-general produced a report on the pro¬ curement process, which in turn formed the basis for a report by SCOPA that was finalized in October 2000. But between the finalizing of the arms¬ purchasing contracts and the September 2000 auditor-general s report, reports appeared in the press that alleged close links between Chippy Shaik, defense acquisition chief, Joe Modise, the minister of defense, and a firm that had won a lucrative contract in the deal. Later reports indicated that the auditor-general s report had uncovered evidence that proper procedures had not always been ob¬ served and, further, that Keith Mokoape, a director of Armscor (a parastatal arms manufacturer) and former head of the ANC’s intelligence department,

298

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

seemed set to make a fortune out of the deal. When other disturbing allegations followed, SCOPA called for an inquiry into the deal (whose cost was eventually to mushroom to over R60 billion as a result of the decline in the international value of the rand), and asked specifically that Judge Willem Heath’s special investigating unit (into corruption) be involved (as it was the only investigating body that had the power to rescind state contracts if it found that the state had been the victim of any skullduggery). Yet, in the event, the Heath committee was excluded, and the joint investigation was undertaken by the auditor-general, the director of public prosecutions, and the public protector.19 When the joint investigating committee eventually reported in late 2001, they cleared the government of any wrongdoing but uncovered a string of pro¬ cedural irregularities as well as apparent corrupt dealings and improprieties by a number of highly placed officials (who by now were subject to various criminal investigations). Not least because the whole affair had become a major embar¬ rassment to government (whose claim to economic competence had been se¬ verely compromised by the escalating rand cost of the deal), the report—which had been scrutinized by President Mbeki before it was presented to parliament under apartheid-era legislation that gave him powers to censor it in terms of national security was repudiated as a whitewash by the opposition parties, a number of whom walked out of parliament in protest when it was presented.20 However, by this time, opposition parties had become thoroughly disillusioned by the manner in which, they argued, the ANC had sought to block SCOPA’s own efforts to investigate what they regarded as a major scandal. Gavin Woods, an IFP member of the committee and greatly respected for his intelligence, integrity, and efficiency, had become chairman of SCOPA in July 1999. He, thereafter, became highly regarded for his leadership and for putting national above partisan interests. However, after SCOPA decided in late 2000 to launch its own investigation into the arms deal (which was the largest single item of public spending by the government), he found that the work of the committee became increasingly compromised by political intervention. In two reports that he later released after his resignation as chair of the committee in February 2002, he cited interventions that led to the exclusion of the Heath unit from the joint investigation committee, interventions by cabinet ministers and senior ANC office bearers that affected the committee’s work, and interventions that affected the committee s relationship with the joint investigations team and SCOPA’s own interrogation of the latter’s report. He described how intense political pressures had been exerted upon ANC committee members to discour¬ age the committee’s involvement in the arms probe and how the ANC had packed the committee with loyalists to ensure that it got its way. As a result, Woods argued, SCOPA had fallen far short of meeting its obligations to the public in querying the arms deal, and its final report upon the probe by the joint investigating team had been substandard and shallow. He himself posed pene¬ trating questions of the joint investigating committee, asked how it was that not a single politician was subject to serious criticism, and took the cabinet to task for its “astounding” failure to challenge serious deviations that had been made

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

299

from proper tender practices. He also claimed that he had made strenuous efforts to persuade committee members and party whips to allow the SCOPA to get back on track but that the ANC and NNP (by now in bed with the former) had ignored his appeals and had dismissed his protests that the committee had be¬ come unduly politicized. SCOPA’s investigation into the arms deal had been blocked and his own leadership undermined, and it was in these circumstances that he had felt compelled to resign.21 The high quality and detail of Woods’ reports constituted a massive indict¬ ment of the government’s mishandling of the arms deal.22 Furthermore, the ve¬ racity of their content was testified to by Andrew Feinstein of the ANC, who had chosen to resign from both the committee and parliament in August 2001 after having fallen victim to intense party pressures for persistently calling for impartial and comprehensive investigations. In the ultimate analysis, the saga appears for the moment to have inflicted massive damage upon the reputation of the committee system and upon the authority of parliament itself. As Business Day (February 13, 2002) opined, “If Scopa is forced to continue operating in a partisan way, it may as well not exist at all.” Unfortunately, the ANC’s own position seems to be that of one of its sup¬ porters, who in a letter to another newspaper has deplored the hue and cry over SCOPA: “The voice of the majority has spoken, and the rest can take a running jump. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?”23 Yet, such an impoverished view of democracy rides roughshod over competing democratic traditions and points dangerously in the direction of a Jacobin, Mugabe-style politics, in which the rulers appropriate to themselves the right to define who and what constitutes “the majority.” Democratic politics in South Africa remain, as yet, far away from such a sticky end, for unlike in Zimbabwe, the media remain free to criti¬ cize, the judiciary remains strenuously independent, civil society is increasingly flexing its muscles, and there remain important constitutionally ordained bodies (such as the Gender and Electoral Commissions) that are widely recognized as fulfilling their obligations to support and sustain democracy. Nonetheless, the SCOPA affair has been traumatic and represents a major blow directed by the ANC as a dominant party against the entrenchment of South Africa as a consti¬ tutional state.

DEFICITS VERSUS DEMOCRACY? An important school of thought argues that, for all the wonders of the tran¬ sition, South Africa lacks the structural requisites for sustaining democracy in the long term: economic development is unlikely to keep up with population growth, political advances are likely to be undermined by social stresses (such as HIV/AIDS), and the wars and social turbulence of the wider region will pro¬ vide an environment in which it will be difficult for democracy in South Africa to take deep root. Democracy may be popularly demanded, yet realism suggests that it is more likely to be damned. This sort of perspective tends to be endorsed by analyses that view the ANC as embarked upon a course that will see its dominance extinguish or emasculate

300

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

effective opposition, subsume the state under party control, and subordinate the constitutional rights of minorities to its whim. This is the path that has been fol¬ lowed by national liberation movements that have assumed power in neighbor¬ ing countries such as Namibia and Zimbabwe to the severe detriment of democ¬ racy, while more generally, as indicated by bodies such as Amnesty Interna¬ tional, human rights abuses remain rife throughout SADC, whose member gov¬ ernments seem more determined to ignore criticisms than right wrongs.24 Meanwhile, the recent disputed election in Zambia and the ongoing postelectoral crisis in Zimbabwe add fuel to the argument that, as far as southern Africa is concerned, the third wave of democracy has pretty well ended. These concerns are only amplified by analyses that propose that long-term economic prospects are severely compromised by such factors as the massive formal unemployment rate (some say as high as 45 percent), skills shortages, and inadequate foreign investment and suggest that growth is unlikely to attain and sustain the social needs of an expanding population. Such fears appear to underlie the calculations of many whites, considerable numbers of whom have chosen, or are choosing, to emigrate. It is, by definition, extremely difficult to counter long-term gloom by a short-term counterargument (although in recent public pronouncements Presi¬ dent Mbeki has made a valiant effort at doing just that).25 Basically, this line of argument proposes that, while South Africa continues to face enormous prob¬ lems and miserable legacies from the past, the government is getting much more right than wrong and that, overall, the country is making substantial progress in tackling social deficits. Although the rate of economic growth has been nothing like that which is required to leapfrog South Africa into the league of industri¬ alized nations, it has been continuously positive since 1994, inflation has been contained, official revenues increased and the national debt has dropped, and a platform has been laid for rapid development in the future. Delivery of basic services (water, sanitation, electricity, etc.) to the mass of poor South Africans has occurred at a steady rate, and, likewise, the proportion of national income going to black South Africans is also increasing. Linked to these indicators is the fact that the ANC is overseeing a process of black empowerment that, by pro¬ moting the rapid growth of a black middle class, is providing the basis for de¬ mocratic depth. Meanwhile, although the wider region remains unstable, South African investment in Africa is growing apace and hence laying a foundation for the future growth and development as envisaged by NEPAD.26 This sort of debate, which in essence revolves around assessments of the government’s performance relative to the challenges it faces, does not invite a ready resolution (not least because the entire question of the relationship be¬ tween democratic prospects and economic growth remains an extremely vexa¬ tious one). Yet even if the government’s own position were to be accepted, im¬ portant questions remain as to which groups in society are the principal benefi¬ ciaries of its rule and what implications this might have for democratic stability and consolidation. In this regard, there is an increasingly urgent argument de¬ veloping that proposes that, even if democracy in South Africa is becoming in-

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

301

stitutionalized and stable, its benefits are highly unequally distributed and that, in essence, there is a drift toward a “new apartheid” in which the government’s policies are working to exclude the very poor (of whom there are very many) not just from a better life but from the very basic means of existence. From this per¬ spective, the pursuit by government of “neoliberal” economic policies, most notably its strategy of encouraging the partial (or “creeping”) privatization of the provision of public services (notably phones, electricity, and water) is inherently contradictory, for the inability of the poor to pay for these services is leading to disconnections, service cuts, and even eviction of people from their homes. As argued by Patrick Bond, for example, privatization provides no link between the “public good” and the “economic good,” and what is emerging in South Africa is a form of “class” and “geographic” apartheid in which the rural poor are being denied basic services, while in the “privatized city,” the poor are becoming clustered together in low-income ghettos that are likely to become the breeding grounds for a future, volatile social upheaval.27 For the moment, although the ANC is hemorrhaging support,28 there is no political alternative to which the masses can turn. However, in response to threats to their livelihood, ordinary township dwellers are turning again to the organizations of civil society, which after entering a period of decline after 1994, are now flexing their muscles in a 29 bid to defend their members against the ravages of a profit-driven democracy. Whatever the specifics, most critics would agree with radical voices that the key problem confronted by democracy in South Africa is the issue of whether it can meaningfully incorporate the poor. Three major coping strategies seem to appear increasingly regularly in public debate. First, economic liberals (whether outside the ANC or within) argue the urgent need for the relaxation of labor laws in order to promote a more flexible and investment-friendly labor market. This would erode a widening gap that is opening up between the employed and unemployed. This, they say, is protected by COSATU (which is therefore viewed as no friend to the poor), which ce¬ ments the relative privilege of its members by maintaining its political alliance with the ANC. However, if that political connection could be broken, it would open up the prospects of divisions of class rather than those of race moving to the center of South African politics, thereby opening the way to the forging of a more conventional capitalist democracy (e.g., Kane-Berman 2002). Second, radical critics of the government argue increasingly that COSATU should indeed break away from the ANC, whose neoliberal strategies are in¬ creasing unemployment and thereby undermining the position of the working class, and forge a new social alliance with civil movements and organizations that are fighting for the rights of the poor. Such an alliance could underpin the formation of a new political party in opposition to the ANC and constitute a force for the adoption by government of a more inclusive and redistributionist economic strategy. Democracy would be strengthened by the emergence of an opposition party that, because it would be able to capture sufficient mass sup¬ port, would challenge ANC dominance by emerging as a genuine “alternative government” (Habib and Taylor 2001).

302

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A third perspective is perhaps more challenging, yet more cogent than ei¬ ther of the previous two. This is the argument that, while a class alliance be¬ tween COSATU and social movements remains an option, there can be no automatic assumption that it would translate itself into a viable political opposi¬ tion or, indeed, provide a basis for coherent civil society pressure upon govern¬ ment. It argues that there are numerous cleavages among the poor and that these can be exploited as much by authoritarian as by radical forces. Hence, while the trade union movement could become a central component of a wider class-cumpolitical challenge to ANC policies that unduly favor the rich and middle classes, this would occur only under conditions and through adoption of strate¬ gies that would link the formally employed to the unemployed, the housed to the homeless, and the urban masses to the rural pool in a politically viable commu¬ nity of interest. Perhaps more likely, so it is argued, is that the logic of the shift to a “new apartheid” is that large numbers of the poor would choose to opt out of formal politics altogether, thereby providing an alienated pool of humanity awaiting mobilization by antidemocratic elements, whether they be local war¬ lords who dominate townships or more extensive, reactionary political move¬ ments. It is not for nothing, so such critics say, that the government is putting massive resources into development of a new, computerized, identity card (ID) system that would cover the entire population.30 While this would most certainly facilitate the more efficient delivery of government services (by enabling indi¬ viduals’ health status eligibility for housing, welfare and other benefits to be registered on the card), it would also massively boost the state’s capacity for social control (as IDs would also collate fingerprints, photographs, tax informa¬ tion, criminal records, etc.). While government insists that the introduction of a computerized ID system will be matched by appropriate privacy safeguards, worried critics allege that it could be hugely abused by government and effec¬ tively replace, update, and reinforce the hated pass law system that was the ac¬ companiment of the race classification system under apartheid. The state would increase its capacity to dominate society, and the vision of limited government would fade away.

CONCLUSION: SOUTH AFRICA’S IMPERFECT DEMOCRACY In any assessment of the state of South Africa today, it is vitally necessary to stress the obvious: overt, legalized race domination has gone, a form of de¬ mocracy has replaced autocracy, and the country is in plain common-sensical terms an immeasurably more decent, more just and more humane place to live, despite the chronic violence and poverty that continue to afflict large sectors of society. The testing point for this observation is that, quite simply, no critic who adheres to civilized values would want, if given the choice, to revert to the South Africa of the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s. As argued by this chapter, democracy in South Africa is highly uneven, and judgments as to its quality and potential vary widely, yet, for all its imperfections, it represents a massive advance upon what went before.

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

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Yet it is imperfect. Discounting some of the more extreme interpretations of the ANC as a dominant party, this chapter has argued that the ruling party’s dominance has been effectively extended by the collapse of the first major at¬ tempt at forging a united opposition, yet simultaneously its limits have been demonstrated by the government’s need to backtrack on major aspects of its policy, notably in regard to HIV/AIDS and its commitment to its neoliberal eco¬ nomic strategy. To be sure, these latter movements are denied (like most gov¬ ernments, the ANC prefers to dress up its policy changes in the guise of consis¬ tency with the past). Nonetheless, they demonstrate that—for all that the ANC has most certainly tried to close down internal debate (within the party and within the Alliance more generally)—its success in so doing has been rather limited. Tendencies toward authoritarian discipline compete inside the ANC with those of a more democratic nature, and neither can claim victory. Perhaps fortunately for democracy, internal (and indeed, intra-) party politics in South Africa remain too messy to be tidied up into neat categories. Considerably more worrying than developments in the narrow party politi¬ cal sphere are those that have seen the ANC rub up against the constraints of constitutionalism. Most explicitly, this has been demonstrated by the govern¬ ment’s clampdown on the autonomy of the Standing Committee of Public Ac¬ counts in parliament. Whether this has been to obscure a huge lapse in the gov¬ ernment’s economic competence or to cover up disturbing evidence of emergent corruption and cronyism, the outcome has been such as to bring the ANC’s commitment to transparency right into the open. Indeed, the assault on SCOPA could have long-term consequences for the ability of the legislature to exercise restraint over the executive and unless, repelled in the future, may go down as a major marker in the decline of an important aspect of South African democracy. Meanwhile, of almost equal concern has been the reluctance of the ANC and government to take an unequivocal stand in favor of electoral democracy in Zimbabwe. While there are many reasons that one national liberation movement is likely to stand shoulder to shoulder with another, many will view the symbolic support that has been extended to the Mugabe regime by the ANC as indicative of the fact that the latter might itself resort to unscrupulous tactics to secure electoral victory if it was itself subjected to a serious challenge. By its failure to condemn outright the gross manipulation of the Zimbabwe election by the Zim¬ babwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the ANC has itself missed a major opportunity to signal its commitment to democracy to both its domestic and global audiences. Despite such uncertainties and those posed by enormously adverse social and economic conditions, democracy in South Africa remains vibrant in terms of debate and potential alternatives. There are no clear indications, as yet, as to what particular path the country will pursue in the future. However, the good news is that the predictions of the forthcoming death of South African democ¬ racy, as made by some of the more gloomy prognoses about ANC dominance, seem grossly exaggerated.

304

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

NOTES 1. Giliomee argues that apartheid, in its origins, was by no means wholly antidemo¬ cratic, for alongside its demand for racial domination were other elements that espoused republicanism, populism, socialism, and cultural autonomy, albeit overwhelmingly for Afrikaners. It is clearly an important task for Afrikaner intellectuals to rescue and eluci¬ date the progressive elements in their history without, at the same time, avoiding ex¬ plaining how these became subordinated to racial dominance and reaction. It goes with¬ out saying that historians of South African liberation will do well to embrace nuance rather than an unquestioning (African rather than Afrikaner) nationalist triumphalism. 2. There exists considerable disquiet, among certain opposition quarters and some commentators, about the provisions of the Public Funding of Represented Political Par¬ ties Act, which while according public money to parties according to the proportions in which they are represented in legislatures (hence in practice favoring the ANC), imposes no regulations on parties’ ability to receive, and report receipt, of business and foreign funding. 3. The nomination of the second largest party in the National Assembly as the offi¬ cial opposition and its leader as leader of the opposition (with extra rights, salary, and allowances) is a legacy of the Westminster system. However, there was no leader of the opposition during the era of the GNU, as F. W. de Klerk was a member of the govern¬ ment in his capacity as vice president. 4. Amalgamated Banks South Africa (ABSA), a bank whose origins were inter¬ twined with the NP in power, was compelled to reveal to its shareholders in late 2001 that it had had to write off a R6 million loan to the NNP after the 1999 election. 5. Van Schalkwyk is quoted in Business Day (December 3, 2001) as follows: “For the DP opposition is a calling. Opposition is in their genes. They see opposition as a goal in itself. They live to be opposition. For us opposition is only something to achieve a goal.” He stated, further, that NNP supporters were poor and middle-class people, who unlike many (i.e., richer) DP supporters, were not immune to government failures. 6. Announcing the new Western Cape cabinet, Office of the Premier, Media Re¬ lease, December 5, 2001 (http://westcape.wcape.gov.za/premier). 7. Party loyalty placed in context, Business Day, November 20, 2001; Parties face game of musical chairs, Mail & Guardian, March 8-14, 2002. 8. Left divided on ANC-NNP marriage, Mail & Guardian, November 9-15, 2001. 9. IFP “uneasy” over ANC rule, Mail & Guardian, November 2-8, 2001. 10. On the machinery of the presidency, see Democratic governance—a Restruc¬ tured presidency at work, (www.gov.za). 11. Spy Unit for Mbeki, Mail & Guardian, February 22-28, 2002; Support unit will beef up presidency, Business Day, February 22, 2002. 12. The mystery of Masetlha, Mail & Guardian, March 15-21,2001. 13. Diary of deteriorating relations, Mail & Guardian, January 24, 2002. 14 For example, ANC offensive against “far left”, Mail & Guardian, October 26November 1, 2001; A “tendency” to displease the ANC, Mail & Guardian, November 19-25, 2001; Thabo cries “plot’ again,” Mail & Guardian, January 18-24, 2002. 15. On provincial positions on dispensation of drugs, see ANC closes ranks, All the president’s provinces, Mail & Guardian, February 22-28, 2002; ANC blasts Shilowa over AIDS drug policy, Business Day, February 21, 2002. On Mandela’s position, The muzzling of Madiba, Mail & Guardian, March 1-7, 2002; and Behind Madiba’s zig-zags, Mail & Guardian, March 8-14, 2002. On Mbeki’s position, see Only Mbeki can clear up Aids Confusion, Sunday Independent, February 24, 2002.

The Contested State of Democracy in South Africa

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16. Business cautious on economic Codesa, Mail & Guardian, October 26November 1, 2001; COSATU calls on affiliates to influence ANC, SACP policy, Star, November 6, 2001; COSATU drops notion of a breakaway, Star, November 22, 2001; ANC and Cosatu reconcile, Mail & Guardian, January 25-31, 2002; Communist Party leaders focus on solidarity, Business Day, February 19, 2002; A bond not easily broken, Mail & Guardian, February 1-7, 2002. 17. Mbeki . . . persists, most recently in the ANC’s weekly Website “letter from the president” in proclaiming that Zimbabwe’s government has been “democratically elected.” Also recently, Dr. Pallo Jordan, an ANC MP and former minister, said the ZANU-PF government had been “returned to office in an election judged to be accept¬ able by the international community . . .” [Yet such views are] contradicted by evidence on the ground, by opinion polling, and by many observers sent by other countries, in¬ cluding the European Union, and two American political foundations, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Mr. Lome Craner, president of the IRI, said ‘of the 90 elections IRI has observed in 40 countries since 1984, Zimbabwe’s is the worse we have ever seen’” (Kane-Berman 2001). 18. To be fair, there is some considerable unease within the ANC’s natural constitu¬ ency about the ambiguity of its stance toward electoral democracy as displayed by its stance on Zimbabwe. Hence, for instance, Brigalia Bam, the head of the South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission and a member of the official South African Observer Group in Zimbabwe, has openly repudiated the statement by Sam Motsuenyane, the head of the mission, that the election was flawed but “legitimate.” Indeed, given the wide¬ spread international rejection of the legitimacy of the election, the ANC is currently scrambling to deny endorsements of the election that were earlier attributed to Mbeki. These, we are told, were a “mistake.” See More South African observers break ranks over legitimacy of Zimbabwe poll and Mbeki scrambles to tame Mbeki, Sunday Independent, March 17, 2002. 19. The arms deal in brief; Mbeki thought to have used apartheid legislation to vet investigators’ report, Mail & Guardian, November 16-22, 2001. 20. More a cock-up than a conspiracy, Mail & Guardian, November 16-22, 2001. 21. Work on arms deal was blocked, says Woods, Business Day, February 26, 2002. 22. Probing questions asked of report on arms deal, Business Day, February 27,

2002. 23. Elle Wieghorst, from Durban, in Mail & Guardian, March, 8-14, 2002. 24. Human rights abuses rife in SADC countries, Sunday Independent, January 22,

2002. 25. Let’s change negative perceptions about SA by just telling the truth, Sunday Independent, March 10, 2002 (citing Mbeki from the online publication ANC Today). 26. For a useful overview, see The state of the nation, SAIRR, Fast Facts, January

2002. 27. “The new apartheid?”, Mail & Guardian, February 15-21, 2002. 28. Membership of the ANC is reported as having fallen from 300,000 in 1999 to 89,000 in early 2002. ANC party membership drops sharply, Mail & Guardian, March 15-21,2002. 29. Charlene Smith, Civil resistance is building again, Mail & Guardian, February 1-7, 2002. 30. From dompas to smart card, Mail & Guardian, February 22-28, 2002.

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

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REFERENCES Adam, H. 1971. Modernizing racial domination: The dynamics of South African politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Calland, R. ed. 1999. The first five years: A review of South Africa’s democratic parlia¬ ment. Cape Town: Idasa. Feinstein, A. 2002. We can all prepare for the death of SCOPA: The last rites have been read. Mail & Guardian, March 1-7. Giliomee, H. 2001. Granda, what did you do during apartheid? Frontiers of Freedom, First Quarter: 25-30. Giliomee, H., J. Myburgh, and L. Schlemmer. 2001. Dominant party rule, opposition parties and minorities in South Africa. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Habib, A. 2001. No short-cuts to non-racialism. Business Day, November 2-8. Habib, A., and R. Taylor. 2001. Political alliances and parliamentary opposition on post-apartheid South Africa. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, ed¬ ited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Hawker, G. 2000. Provincial leadership in the ANC: The South African provinces, 1994-99. The Journal of Modern African Studies 38 (4): 631-650. Jordan, P. 2001. A tradition of internal debate. Mail & Guardian, November 2-8. Kane-Berman, J. 2001. Blind eye shames us still. Fast Facts 5 (May). Kane-Berman, J. 2002. Atypical workers may have to become typical. Fast Facts 9:

2000. Kotze, H. 2001. A consummation devoutly to be wished? the Democratic Alliance and its potential constituencies. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Lodge, T. 1999. Consolidating democracy: South Africa’s second popular election. Jo¬ hannesburg: Electoral Institute of South Africa and Witwatersrand University Press. Mare, G. 2001. Race, democracy and opposition in South African politics: As other a way as possible. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Mattes, R., and J. Piombo. 2001. Opposition parties and the voters in South Africa’s gen¬ eral election of 1999. Democratization 8 (3): 101-128. Mazrui, A. 1969. The tensions of crossing the floor in East Africa. In Violence and thought, edited by A. Mazrui. London: Longmans, Green, and Company. McKinley, D. 2001. Democracy, power and patronage: Debate and opposition within the African National Congress and the Tripartite Alliance since 1994. In Opposi¬ tion and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Port¬ land, OR: Frank Cass. Moore, D. 2001. Is the land the economy and the economy the land? Primitive accumu¬ lation in Zimbabwe. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 19 (2): 253-266. Nijzink, L. 2001. Opposition in the new South African parliament. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. SAIRR (South African Institute of Race Relations). 2001. South Africa Survey 2000-2001. Johannesburg: SAIRR. Southall, R. 1994. The South African general elections of 1994: The remaking of a domi¬ nant party state. The Journal of Modern African Studies 32 (4): 629-656.

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Southall, R. 2000. The state of democracy in South Africa. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 38 (3): 147-170. Southall, R. 2001a. Opposition in South Africa: Issues and problems. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Southall, R. 2001b. Conclusion: Emergent perspectives on opposition in South Africa. In Opposition and democracy in South Africa, edited by R. Southall. London and

Portland, OR: Frank Cass.

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12

Eritrea’s Aborted Democratization

KIDANE MENGISTEAB INTRODUCTION At the time of its formal independence in 1993, Eritrea’s future seemed bright. The country emerged from its 30-year-long liberation war with a unified and highly motivated population. Its leadership was also widely viewed to belong to a small group of new and enlightened African leaders who appeared to be poised to avoid many of the mistakes of the older generation of African leaders. The Eritrean leadership was, for example, hailed for involving the population in the crafting of the country’s constitution. The participation of civil society seemed to signal a good start for establishing a democratic system of governance. To the surprise of many observers, six years after its ratification in May 1997, the Eritrean constitution remains unimplemented, and the country’s de¬ mocratization process has come to a grinding halt. The once-respected leader¬ ship is now accused of authoritarian rule, violations of human rights, and sup¬ pression of the press (Amnesty International 2002). This chapter explains why Eritrea, which registered notable initial progress in drawing a seemingly democ¬ ratic constitution, has so far failed to implement the constitution and why the country’s democratization process is in crisis. The chapter has four parts. The first part briefly discusses the structural obstacles constitutionalism and democ¬ ratization in Africa face. The second part examines why Eritrea was able to project a promising start to democratization by allowing the participation of the population in the drafting of its constitution. The third part outlines some sig¬ nificant omissions of the Eritrean constitution. The fourth part explores possible explanations of why the constitution remains unimplemented and why the coun¬ try’s democratization process has been derailed.

STRUCTURAL OBSTACLES TO DEMOCRATIZATION Democratization in Africa faces a number of impediments. The nature of the African state and the inability of civil society to reconstitute the state are among the key structural obstacles. As an overarching organization of all citi-

310

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

zens, the state is ideally expected to have an organic relationship with the com¬ munity of citizens and to be an agent of their empowerment by advancing broad social interests. While few states in the world fully meet these expectations, the failure of the African state is particularly striking. The agenda of state-building is in crisis, as manifested by the collapse of some states and the widespread chronic regional, ethnic, and religious conflicts and gross violations of human rights in many others. The institutions of governance are fragmented, with the modern state relying on imported institutions detached from the cultural values of society while the populations in rural areas, in particular, continue to adhere to traditional institutions. Africa’s economic development process is also in cri¬ sis as the state has failed to integrate the modern enclave sector and the tradi¬ tional sector. African states have, for all practical purposes, surrendered the re¬ sponsibility of charting development strategies to technocrats in the international financial institutions. It has also become increasingly clear that the models charted by the financial institutions have failed to reverse Africa’s economic ills, including its internal fragmentation and its marginalization from the global eco¬ nomic system. The tragic conditions prevailing in countries, such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Somalia, and Liberia, are the most obvious examples. Advancing the interests of the African population was of little concern to the colonial state, whose primary mission was to exploit Africans and subjugate their interests in order to advance the interests of those who controlled the state in the colonizing countries. When direct colonialism became untenable in the post-World War II era, the African state was created, in most cases, through deals between the departing colonial powers and the African nationalist leaders. As a creation of the colonial state, the postcolonial state largely preserved the characteristics of the colonial state, including the socioeconomic structures it inherited. Like the colonial state, it remained largely detached from the cultural and institutional roots of society. As Ake (1990) notes, the detached African state suppresses expressions of social interest, and by engaging in political re¬ pression, it unleashes hostile forces and in many cases operates under siege of such forces. Globalization has intensified the extroversion of the African state and un¬ dermined further the limited sovereignty and control that it was able to muster following decolonization in the 1960s. Debt-ridden and in severe need of capi¬ tal, African countries have been unable to resist liberalization policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and donor coun¬ tries. African states have been forced to adopt policies of state disengagement from economic activity and other capital-friendly policies of deregulation even when aspects of these policies are incompatible with African realities and detri¬ mental to African social interests, including state-building, transformation of marginalized regions, ethnic groups, and social classes, including the peasantry. The inability of the African National Congress (ANC) government in South Af¬ rica to implement significant policies of income redistribution, including land redistribution, in order to rectify the gross inequalities left behind by the apart-

Eritrea's Aborted Democratization

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heid system is a good example. Zimbabwe’s inability to implement meaningful land reform is another example. Furthermore, with globalization, there has emerged a regime of economic governance with a transnational legal system and supranational world trade, finance, and banking organizations. The international rules that hold together the unfolding global regime are authored, guided, and dominated by organizations, such as the Group of 7, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel¬ opment (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the IMF, the World Bank, the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, and the International Or¬ ganization of Securities Commissions. Since the influence of African countries on such organizations is rather minimal, the more policy decisions are trans¬ ferred from the state to these organizations and their technocrats, the less Afri¬ can countries are able to chart their own strategies of development that are com¬ patible with their realities. Under conditions where society and the state are disconnected and public policy is dissociated from social need, constitution-making and democratization face formidable structural obstacles. A state that is politically, economically, and culturally detached from its citizens cannot be expected to be an agent of de¬ mocratization and to produce a constitution that is rooted in the institutions and cultural values of society and that facilitates socioeconomic development and social justice. An extroverted state, which behaves as a private club of an elite or a segment of the population, is instead more likely to impose upon the popula¬ tion a constitution that projects the interests of the elite and preserves it through authoritarian means. We now examine why the Eritrean state facilitated the in¬ volvement of the public in drafting the country’s constitution only to prevent its implementation.

THE ERITREAN CONSTITUTION In March 1994, a 50-member Constitutional Commission, whose members represented a cross-section of the Eritrean society, including its nine ethnic groups, was established to draft a constitution for the country. Soon after its formation, the commission organized extensive instruction of the public on con¬ stitutional issues with the aid of over 400 specially trained teachers (HabteSelassie 1998). During the process of drafting the constitution, it conducted wide-ranging public debates on various issues, including structure of govern¬ ment, level of decentralization, electoral system, political pluralism, judicial independence, and human rights. It is difficult to determine to what extent the involvement of the public affected the content of the constitution, especially since its language and land tenure provisions are rather unpopular. Nevertheless, the consultations that took place, including the spirited public debates on the first draft, were important in promoting constitutionalism in the country. A number of factors account for Eritrea’s ability to involve its population (with the exception of the remnant groups of the Eritrean Liberation Front [ELF]) in the making of its constitution. One such factor is the nature of the Eri-

312

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

trean state at the time the constitution-drafting process commenced. Like most African states, Eritrea was carved out by colonialism. However, unlike most African states, the Eritrean state that was formed in 1991 is not a creation of the imperialism of decolonization. Its 30-year liberation struggle was waged against an African state, Ethiopia, and Eritrea’s nationalist leaders did not have to strike deals with colonial powers about what kind of state they would create, at least at the time of the country’s independence. The long struggle for independence had also advanced state-building and unity among the population, perhaps more than most African countries. Differ¬ ent ethnic and religious entities in the country were united by the struggle for independence. The martyrs of the armed struggle, for example, represent a pow¬ erful unifying symbol in the country. Moreover, active popular participation in the armed struggle fostered the emergence of a state organically more connected with its constituencies than most African states. At the time the constitution was drafted, the Eritrean state and political elite were relatively less extroverted and less detached from the general society and its cultural values and traditional institutions. There were also little apparent cleavages within the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), which led the independence movement about the front’s commitment to democratic governance. The EPLF in its Second Congress held in 1987 pro¬ claimed its commitment to a democratic governance with civil liberties, toler¬ ance to divergent views, multiple parties, and elections. In its National Charter, which was ratified in its Third Congress, held in 1992, the EPLF again reaf¬ firmed its commitment to political plurality and declared that the formation of political parties should be encouraged since participation of the population can¬ not be fully realized without political organizations. The popularity of the EPLF, which brought independence among a popula¬ tion that has endured hardship under different colonial rulers, also raised the level of tolerance of the population for any shortcomings of the regime. The Eritrean constitution was thus drafted under conditions of little cleavage be¬ tween the state and society and within the governing front. The relative advan¬ tages that Eritrea enjoyed—a state that is less detached from its constitu¬ ency—enabled the country to involve the population in the making of its con¬ stitution. It was also expected to enable the country to develop a state that fos¬ ters culturally relevant institutions of governance and an appropriate develop¬ ment strategy. The rare opportunity Eritrea enjoyed at its independence and at the time of the drafting of its constitution, however, was not because the population had control over the state or over the EPLF. Rather, it was mainly because the front was successful in organizing the population through cells that operate under its directives. Many of the civil organizations in the country, including women’s, youth, and workers’ associations, were, in fact, organized by the EPLF and often run by its cadres. With time, of course, it is natural for divergence of interests to emerge be¬ tween the new elite and the population. As the honeymoon of independence

Eritrea’s Aborted Democratization

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faded, the population’s level of tolerance to some of the regime’s policies also waned. As plurality of interests and views emerged among the Eritrean society, the regime’s control of civil organizations facilitated the suppression of dissent¬ ing voices and the derailment of democratization as the population lacks inde¬ pendent organizations to resist. The regime’s control over civil organizations has also led to the softening of the constitution in terms of controlling possible transgressions by the state. A brief discussion on some of the most important shortcomings of the Eritrean constitution follows before we discuss why the government has failed to implement the constitution.

LIMITATIONS OF THE ERITREAN CONSTITUTION In addition to involving the public, the Eritrean constitution is written in a language accessible to the general population and is framed in a concise and general manner, leaving detailed interpretation to the country’s highest court, which has the sole jurisdiction of interpreting the constitution. However, it was written at a time when the country’s government enjoyed very high popularity and before the honeymoon of the hard-won independence had faded. As a result, the constitution manifests characteristics of a prenuptial agreement written when in love, as it leaves some important contentious issues unattended or poorly at¬ tended. One important issue that was not addressed by the constitution was the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice’s (formerly the EPLF) engagement in business activities, which creates a number of problems. The boundary between state assets and the ruling party’s assets is not clearly demarcated, creating con¬ flict of interest problems as there is no mechanism for preventing the govern¬ ment from bending rules and regulations in favor of the party’s business activi¬ ties. It also raises doubts about the government’s commitment to transparency and accountability (Government of Eritrea 1997). A political party’s economic dominance also creates other fundamental problems. It has the potential to make the party financially autonomous of the population. Such autonomy, in turn, may contribute to making the party unre¬ sponsive to citizens’ concerns and even encourage it to cultivate a system of patronage. Economic power of one political party is also likely to make entry of other parties into the market of politics difficult. Moreover, it is likely that the oligopoly that the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice’s (PFDJ) concerns have formed in some sectors of the economy, including the construction industry and tourism, would have adverse impacts on the health and development of the country’s economy by preventing competition. The constitution makes no refer¬ ence to the party’s engagement in business (i.e., profit-making) activities when it was patently clear at the time of the drafting of the constitution that general guidelines governing the sources of assets of political organizations were badly needed. Article 18 of the draft law on formation of political parties and organiza¬ tions, which was drafted with the authorization of the National Assembly in its 13th session, limits sources of assets of political parties to payments and contri-

314

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

butions by members, contributions by Eritrean sympathizers, and assistance from the government. The constitution’s omission in this regard could have been corrected by this article. However, the National Assembly in its 14th session (January 29—31, 2002) put aside indefinitely the draft law on the formation and legalization of political parties, claiming that the majority of Eritreans do not support the need for political parties at the present time. The constitution also left some important issues, such as the formation of political parties and election laws, to the Legislative Assembly with little guid¬ ance. With the resolution of the 14lh session of the National Assembly, the gov¬ ernment has officially declared its intention to disallow the formation of political parties. Even if the government reverses this decision in the near future, there are no constitutional provisions that would prevent the PFDJ-dominated Na¬ tional Assembly from framing the laws governing party formation in a way that would make it difficult for new parties to emerge and to compete effectively. Some of the conditions required of founders of political parties by the nowdefunct draft law on formation of political parties were, for example, rather stringent. Article 6.5 (a and b) of the draft specifies that at least two-thirds of the founders originate from at least five ethnic entities and that followers of each of the two dominant religions in the country, Islam and Christianity, be represented by at least one-third of the founders. Such conditions may make obtaining ap¬ proval to form political parties rather arduous. It is unlikely that the assembly in its present form would draft more liberal laws on formation of parties than the ones that it suspended. Another important omission by the constitution relates to the land question. Since the country s independence in 1991, all land has come under government control. Absence of a land market or any other effective mechanism of alloca¬ tion of urban land has paralyzed the country’s housing industry (Mengisteab 1998). Every city and town in Eritrea faces a serious housing shortage. Alloca¬ tion of urban land through government officials has proved to be too slow in addressing the problem. It is also highly likely to create a fertile ground for cor¬ ruption. Moreover, the land the government is distributing among business firms, commercial farmers, urban dwellers, and Eritreans in the diaspora is coming from the holdings of peasants and nomads. The government has not paid any compensation in the form of land or cash to the peasants whose lands it has confiscated, although the 1994 land reform proclamation stipulates fair and ade¬ quate compensation (Government of Eritrea 1994). The constitution again is silent on the government’s land policy, which unfairly expropriates land from peasants, undermines urban development by instituting inefficient allocation of urban land, and criminalizes many urban dwellers who have built houses through underground land transactions. The constitution simply adopts the gov¬ ernment’s land policy, which vests ownership of all land in the state (see Article 23 no. 2 of the constitution). The foregoing analysis shows that the Eritrean constitution has significant omissions that can undermine its potential to democratize society and to facili¬ tate development with social justice. The constitution’s failure to provide guide-

Eritrea's Aborted Democratization

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lines for a workable land tenure system, to disallow the engagement of political parties in business activities, and to provide some guidelines about the freedom to organize political parties so that the government does not hinder the process are all serious limitations capable of undermining the relevance of the constitu¬ tion. However, they are also flaws that can be corrected by amending the con¬ stitution. The more difficult challenge has become implementing the constitu¬ tion. The next section of the chapter focuses on the question why the govern¬ ment has failed to implement the constitution after facilitating its drafting.

FAILURE TO IMPLEMENT THE CONSTITUTION Over six years after its ratification, in May 1997, the Eritrean constitution had yet to be implemented. One year after the constitution was ratified, the country faced another war against Ethiopia, and, justifiably, once the war broke out, safeguarding the country’s independence took precedence over implement¬ ing the constitution. There is, however, no apparent reason that the constitution was not implemented between May 1997 and May 1998. It has also been almost three years since a peace treaty was signed between Eritrea and Ethiopia ending the war. Yet, it is not evident that the government is ready to implement the con¬ stitution. By deciding not to allow the formation of political parties, the National Assembly in its 14th session for all practical purposes suspended the implemen¬ tation of the constitution. There are also a number of other indicators that the government is not serious about implementing the constitution. One is the sus¬ pension of the free press by closing down all private newspapers in the country since September 2001 and the detention of several journalists. Another indicator is the detention without trial since September 18, 2001, of 11 of the 15 senior members of the National Assembly and the ruling party, who demanded the im¬ plementation of the constitution and accused the President of suffocating the free exchange of ideas by behaving in an autocratic manner. The dissidents, who are known as the Group of Fifteen (G-15), were high-ranking leaders during the liberation struggle, and several of them were cabinet ministers and military lead¬ ers before they expressed their dissent. The remaining three of the G-15 are in exile, while one has recanted his position and rejoined the government. The government has also detained student leaders, business leaders, and several eld¬ ers (shimagle), who attempted to resolve the differences between the president and the detained members of the National Assembly through mediation in ac¬ cordance with the country’s traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution (Am¬ nesty International 2002). The national election that was scheduled to take place in December 2001, was scrapped and no new date has been set so far. By resorting to such repression, the Eritrean government has joined many other governments in Africa in turning politics into warfare, as Ake (1990) per¬ ceptively noted. The repression has also unleashed the rise of forces hostile to the government and has threatened to undermine the population’s unity, which was cultivated during the 30-year armed struggle for independence.

316

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

The reasons for this surprising turn of events in the country are difficult to understand. There are, however, a number of plausible explanations. One im¬ portant factor is the difficulty the front is facing in transforming itself from an instrument of liberation to one of democratic governance. As noted, the EPLF in its Second Congress held in 1987 proclaimed its commitment to democratic governance with civil liberties, tolerance to divergent views, multiple parties, and fair elections. In its National Charter, which was ratified in its 1992 Third Congress, the EPLF again reaffirmed its commitment to political plurality and declared that the formation of political parties should be encouraged since par¬ ticipation of the population cannot be fully realized without political organiza¬ tions. Despite these pronouncements, 12 years after independence the PFDJ (successor to the EPLF) remained highly centralized and secretive. No doubt, these characteristics served the front rather well during the liberation struggle. They are, however, incompatible with democratic governance, which requires open and transparent institutions. Despite professing democracy, the front seems to be unable to shed its old characteristics. Another plausible factor that helps explain the abortion of the country’s democratization process is the nature of the EPLF. As a liberation front, the EPLF, like many liberation fronts in other parts of the world, was a mass organi¬ zation, which embraced people who ascribed to different political and economic philosophies while they shared the goal of liberating Eritrea from Ethiopian co¬ lonialism. As a mass organization, the movement was often characterized by competing tendencies for democratization and centralization. At times, during the armed liberation struggle, these competing tendencies erupted into violent infighting. At the time of the drafting of the constitution the tension between the two tendencies appeared to have subsided, although the front’s policies mani¬ fested continued inconsistencies. As noted, the front’s pronouncements pro¬ jected commitment to democratic rule while at the same time it continued with the expanding of its control of economic assets, centralization of the economic system, and concentration of power. With the delay in the implementation of the constitution and the government’s mishandling of the war with Ethiopia, how¬ ever, the conflict between the two tendencies came to the open. The September 2001 purges and arrest of many senior members of the party, who demanded immediate implementation of the ratified constitution, represent the attainment of an upper hand by the forces of centralization. The institutional arrangements created in postindependence Eritrea also seem to have contributed to the reversal of the front’s stated commitment to de¬ mocratic principles and to the derailment of the country’s democratization proc¬ ess, as suggested by Pool (2001). With independence, a gradual concentration of power in the hands of the president has taken place. The president, who is com¬ mander in chief of the armed forces, is also chairman of the National Assembly and secretary-general of the party (PFDJ). He also chairs ministerial meetings. As Pool (2001, 172) notes, the presidential office also has functions paralleling ministerial ones in the spheres of economy, security, and foreign affairs. By the time the drafting of the constitution was completed, the president had consoli-

Eritrea's Aborted Democratization

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dated a power structure that did not require him to consult with anyone since there is no other institution that controls or balances his power. Even the Na¬ tional Assembly could not meet without the president’s approval. One of the sources of the conflict between the president and the G-15 was that the president refused to call the National Assembly for its regularly scheduled session. There is thus little doubt that the new power structure and concentration of power have led to the reversal of the EPLF’s stated commitment to democratic governance with civil liberties and multiple parties. The removal of the G-15 from the politi¬ cal scene has sealed this reversal, although the rhetoric remains the same. A related factor is the PFDJ’s inability to tolerate political differences and its disposition to deny civil liberties to groups it dislikes even when such groups do not pose a serious challenge to it. The PFDJ did not face any credible threat to its hegemony from any political organization over the decade of the 1990s. In the absence of real threat there is hardly an explanation why it did not legalize political organizations following the 1993 referendum and formal independence of the country. Yet, it continued to deny the small political opposition groups (splinter groups from the ELF) the right to operate in the country. The recent detention of the members of the G-15 also shows the PFDJ leadership’s inability to tolerate political differences. The firing of the country’s chief justice for pre¬ senting in an academic conference a paper that criticizes the government for weakening the independence of the judiciary through interference by the execu¬ tive and by operating the Special Court that reviews even the rulings of the regular courts is another example of lack of tolerance on the part of the govern¬ ment. Another possible explanation is that the PFDJ leadership may be deter¬ mined to preserve the hegemony of the PFDJ, despite the EPLF’s pronounce¬ ments in the past that it was committed to a multiparty political system. In an April 12, 2001, interview with Voice of America’s Scott Stems, the president expressed that, in his view, elections and the presence of multiple parties are not related. This view suggests that at least some members of the PFDJ, including the president, are inclined to maintain a single-party hegemony, following the example of Uganda, by disallowing the emergence of political parties. This proposition is supported by the suspension of the draft laws for the formation of political parties and retention of the election draft laws by the National Assem¬ bly, which met after the removal of the G-15. The 1998-2000 war with Ethiopia has also contributed to the derailment of the democratization process in Eritrea in at least two ways. In one respect, the continued tensions between the two countries and the unsettled nature of the border dispute have given the government the pretext to delay the implementa¬ tion of the constitution. It is also possible that the PFDJ believes that, consider¬ ing the continued threat of war with Ethiopia, demarcating the boundaries needs to come before the emergence of political organizations. In another respect, the war did not go in favor of Eritrea, and critics point out that the government’s suppression of the free press and other civil liberties is in part to prevent scrutiny of how poorly the government conducted the war.

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Not surprisingly, the government continues to claim that it remains com¬ mitted to democratic rule and that constitutional rule is only delayed due to mitigating circumstances, such as the war and continued tensions with Ethiopia. Such a claim is, however, not credible, especially in light of the government’s rampant human rights violations. It is possible that, under pressure from donors, the PFDJ may in the near future reduce its conspicuous assault on human rights. It may even conduct sham elections as is often done by many African govern¬ ments. It is, however, unlikely to implement the constitution, subordinate itself to the rule of law, and institute genuine democratization. Such steps would re¬ quire fundamental changes in several areas, including land tenure policy. They also require removing the party from engagement in business ventures. There is, so far, little indication that such policy changes are in the horizon. In any case, the recent repressive developments in the country, such as the closure of private newspapers and the detention of dissenters, have erased the view that the PFDJ government is an agent for democratization. The widespread confidence Eritreans had in their leadership has largely dissipated. The organic relations between the state and society that prevailed in the country following its independence have also been replaced by rapidly growing rift between the state and society. The absence of space for legalized political opposition, where po¬ litical struggle can take place peacefully, has also created conditions for in¬ creased oppression and human rights violations by the state. The country’s fu¬ ture, which a decade ago appeared to be bright, has dimmed significantly.

REFERENCES Ake, C. 1990. The case for democracy. In African governance in the 1990s: Objectives, resources, and constraints, Working papers from the Second Annual Seminar of the African Governance Program, Atlanta, Georgia: Carter Center of Emory University, March 23-25. Amnesty International. 2002. Eritrea: Worsening human rights crisis. Amnesty Interna¬ tional Index: AFR 64/001/2002. Government of Eritrea. 1994. Proclamation 58/1994 (Land Proclamation in Tigrigna). Asmara: Government Printer. Government of Eritrea. 1997. The constitution of Eritrea (Ratified by the Constituent Assembly on May 23, 1997). Asmara: Government Printer. Habte-Selassie, B. 1998. Creating a constitution for Eritrea. Journal of Democracy 9: 167-174. Mengisteab, K. 1998. Eritrea’s land reform proclamation: Acritical appraisal. Eritrean Studies Review 2: 1-18. Pool, D. 2001. From guerrillas to government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Oxford: James Currey; Athens: Ohio University Press.

13

Land Reform and Zimbabwe’s Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance SAM MOYO INTRODUCTION The escalation of violence and conflict over land and economic development in Zimbabwe since 1996 reflects the crisis of the country’s slow transition from minority rule and uneven development. Independence in 1980 was not followed by significant transformations in the critical domains, which would have en¬ hanced the ability of all relevant stakeholder groups (including, especially, indi¬ viduals and groups that had been discriminated against, marginalized, and pushed to the economic and political periphery) to participate fully and effec¬ tively in economic growth and development. Post-1990 promises of economic growth in an expanding global economy have failed to reduce poverty and im¬ prove the living standards of most Zimbabweans. In addition, existing institu¬ tional arrangements have produced major political and economic contradictions, which the state has attempted, during the last several years, to deal with through market liberalization. In an effort to deal with existing inequalities in the distri¬ bution of environmental resources, especially land, the state has undertaken a radical intervention program that has produced major conflicts. Of course, severe inequalities in the distribution of land and the conflicts associated with it are not unique to Zimbabwe. In recent years, such conflicts have emerged in Latin America, Asia, and other African countries. In particular, during the early to mid-1990s, there was a resurgence in the forceful occupation of land by dispossessed, landless masses, many of whom, like indigenous groups in southern Mexico, claim that these lands were illegally seized from their an¬ cestors by invading Europeans (see, e.g., Petras 1997, 17-47; Borras 1998). While local and national differences may be observed, these movements share common grievances arising from unresolved land questions (more broadly, agrarian questions). They share also a common location in the development

320

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

dialogue as “rural poor” and as subject to welfarist “rural development” pro¬ grams, and they share their effective exclusion from a “civil society” that con¬ forms to the “proper” procedure and content of “oppositional” politics in accor¬ dance with the liberal formula. This formula values independent civic organization, where independent means dissociation from the state, not donors; multiparty democracy, at a time when political parties can no longer differ in their substantive (neoliberal) poli¬ tics; and respect for the rule of law, defined by private property, independent judiciary (meaning bourgeois), and “free” press (meaning private). The liberal formula deployed worldwide in the 1990s has been readily adhered to by the national bourgeoisie and has co-opted organized working-class politics. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, along with deepening poverty and proliferating rural violence over the last two decades, there have emerged both organized and spontaneous rural movements, outside the “civil” framework, seeking to transform inherited property regimes, as well as national policy¬ making processes (Kay 2000). The academic debate over transition, transformation, and democratization has been distorted by the exclusion of land and agrarian reform and rural move¬ ments. In the 1980s, the liberal mainstream was preoccupied with demonstrating the urban biased, captured, and corrupt nature of the indebted postcolonial state in order to justify the authoritarian implementation of economic liberalization (Bates 1981; Lai 1997). Rural politics, especially land politics, were thereby submerged (Moyo 1995). In the 1990s, the liberal mainstream repositioned itself to the realities of “the lost decade,” seeking to accommodate the rise of popular protest by fitting the latter into the mold of liberal democratic civility. Yet, rural politics continued to be brushed aside, for the new theory of democratization became synonymous with regime transition, defined as the replacement of the one-party political system with competitive, multiparty elections. Indeed, throughout the quarter century, negligible attention was paid to the diversity of rural politics, organized and unorganized, low- or high-profile, armed or un¬ armed. Where it was, it focused on the civil type or tended to espouse the eco¬ nomic/welfare functions of the organizations that emerged to supplement the withdrawal of the state. Meanwhile, social movement theory proliferated, but under the banner of identity politics” it managed to displace class-based movements, especially rural ones, from national and global politics, at best treating them as local cul¬ tural manifestations, subject to no “grand theory,” analytically unconnected, and politically unconnectable. Thus, James Scott (1985), in one of the most impor¬ tant contributions to rural politics, suggested that rural movements are destined to be localized and dispersed, exhibiting “everyday forms of resistance,” and avoiding open confrontations with wealthier classes and the state (Brass 1991). Social movement theory at the global level has not fared better; so far it has been oblivious to the political import of rural movements, even when it has set out to theorize working-class politics (Rupert 1995, 658-692; Cox 1999; Bern¬ stein 2000). The few and notable exceptions are generally by students of agrar-

Land Reform and Zimbabwe s Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance

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ian relations who engage with global issues. It is therefore necessary to recover the significance of the land question within the transition and to explain the reemergence of liberation movement style politics and the import of extralegal rural politics such as land occupations in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Zimbabwe has not, historically, had an organized civil society that has made radical demands for land reform or land redistribution. Under colonial rule, the land cause was led by the liberation movement and in the 1970s was pursued by means of armed struggle. In the postcolonial period, the civil society groupings that have existed have been predominantly middle-class and with strong inter¬ national aid linkages that have militated against radical land reform, while for¬ mal, grassroots organizations have tended to be appendages of middle-classdriven civil society organizations. The rural operation of civil society within a neoliberal framework has been characterized by demands for funds for smallproject development aimed at a few selected beneficiaries. This state of affairs is evident throughout rural Africa, and in Zimbabwe in particular it has left a po¬ litical and social vacuum in the leadership of the land reform agenda (Moyo 2001,2002). It is within this strategic vacuum that the elite in the ruling party, the Zim¬ babwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), first engineered the early land occupation movement around 1980, then engineered its gradual de¬ mobilization since 1984, only to remobilize the movement in the late 1990s through the agency of the liberation struggle and veterans of the latter. Histori¬ cally, the government instigated or controlled the resurgence of the land occu¬ pation movement by insisting that ZANU-PF, as the people’s government, would be the only one to effectively address the land question on their behalf (Moyo 2000a). It was, however, in 1997, after a shift in power occurred within the ruling party and the war veterans took center stage, that the land redistribu¬ tion initiative was brought back to the center of the development debate, now couched in the more popular discourses of nationalism, liberation, and economic empowerment. The leadership vacuum in civil society, together with the neoliberal policy framework, which failed to deliver either land or economic development, has generated centralist and commandist models of land redistribution. On the one hand, the salient land demands of Zimbabwe’s African elite within both the rul¬ ing and opposition parties, made within a liberal electoral and human rights framework, have avoided the fundamental issues of economic restructuring and redistribution of resources. On the other hand, the stagnation of the economy has enabled ZANU-PF to maintain an emphasis on the historical injustice over land redistribution and, through this, continued to dominate the rural vote. The adoption of a centralized method of compulsory land acquisition on a massive scale was instigated in 1997 by war veterans, who are few in number and in terms of their political base but whose cause has a broad rural social basis and potential for mobilization. In this sense, the land occupation movement that emerged was politically organized but socially grounded. It might be instigated centrally, but it is differentiated by the many different pulses driving it, includ-

322

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

ing varied local interests of war veterans, traditional and other leaders, and in¬ formal community organizations. It is this broad social base, constituted by the existing economic hardships and marginalized political grievances, that has been mobilized toward the so-called Third Chimurenga, a process viewed as com¬ pleting the unfinished struggle for independence. Land occupations have been an ongoing social phenomenon in both urban and rural areas of Zimbabwe, a process that began before independence and has continued to this day. They represent an unofficial or underground social pres¬ sure used to force the authorities to recognize existing inequalities in land distri¬ bution and make redistribution to achieve equity a priority in public policy and hence a critical part of the country’s transformation. The 2000-2001 land occu¬ pations mark the climax of a longer, less public, and dispersed struggle over land, under adverse economic conditions that have been exacerbated by the on¬ set of liberal economic and political reform.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMIC CONTEXT A historical and political-economic framework is necessary to understand how the evolution of racial inequalities and uneven development define the struggles for land in Zimbabwe and shape the nature of the country’s gradual transition. Such analyses need, however, to be contextualized within the rubric of popular demands for social justice and equity rather than subsumed by neo¬ liberal political and market-based notions of governance and rule of law, which propose trickle-down and welfarist poverty reduction approaches to a problem that requires major structural change. Settler colonialism and land expropriation are at the root of Zimbabwe’s land and transformation problem. Cheap African labor, made possible by colo¬ nial institutions, was used to transform the colonial economy and support the interests of the white farmers, who then relied on the implicit and explicit sup¬ port of the police, the judiciary, the white parliament, and white technical ex¬ perts to protect their absolute power and control over land. Furthermore, the alienation of African lands to white settlers was accompanied by racial segrega¬ tion, in, for instance, the educational system, which condoned white supremacist ideologies. The white missionary administrators and landowners recast long¬ standing ethnic diversity into deep hostilities and segregation. Subjugation of traditional leaders (chiefs, spirit mediums), including the promotion of Christi¬ anity, led to divide-and-rule tendencies, which proved critical in the European control of land and minerals, such as diamonds and gold. Colonial policies of subjugation, land expropriation, and discrimination based on race are important determinants of the land-ownership patterns and agricultural practices that exist in most of southern Africa today. During the colonial period, white settlers developed large-scale commercial farming, while Africans were forced into subsistence farming on peripheral lands that were of¬ ten incapable of supporting the people. After independence in countries such as Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, not sufficient effort was made to trans-

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form the economy, including its associated institutions (especially property rights in land), and bring about a dispensation that would have effected a system of equitable distribution of land and other resources. As a consequence, Africans in these countries remain, as they were during the colonial period, landless and continue to practice primarily subsistence agriculture. Although during the last few years, some nominal efforts to integrate black elites into large-scale farming through affirmative action programs have been undertaken in the region, largescale commercial farming remains dominated by whites in terms of landownership, value of production, and the “social status” associated with it. To date, policy on land reform in southern Africa remains oblivious to in¬ ternational mainstream agricultural economics, which argues that smaller-sized farms tend to use their land more productively, in terms of higher unit yields and the use of labor. The trend based upon self-exploitation of domestic labor in peasant households, particularly of female and child labor, that has led to im¬ pressive performance by African owners of small farms in Zimbabwe has not adequately convinced many policymakers (especially in the West) of the pro¬ ductivity and viability of the small-scale African farmer (Weiner, Moyo, Manslow, and O’Keefe 1985; Moyo 1987). The belief in the greater efficiency of large farms has also been a key constraint to progressive land policy in non¬ settler states in the region. In the 1980s, land reform policy in many southern African countries promoted a few indigenous capitalist farmers, drawn from senior politicians and civil servants, retirees, and other formerly nonagrarian indigenous businesspeople. Once again, macroeconomic and agricultural policy regimes ensured that various resources such as credit, foreign currency, and in¬ frastructure were mainly allocated to both white and indigenous large capitalist farmers. The effects of such preferential resource allocations were wrongly taken to imply that large-scale farming was more effective than smallholder farming. This had the effect of legitimating the expansion of large-scale landholdings and discouraging land reform, even though growing land-ownership imbalances were exacerbating land shortages, land degradation, and rural pov¬ erty. The project of subjugating Africans continues to be defended by the dis¬ courses on environmental aestheticism (ecoculture, ecotourism), which now claim to preserve primordial African cultures as part of the image of the African wilderness. Thus, ecotourism allows a nominal number of resources to trickle into the landless black communities, while the bulk of benefits of land control rests with external financiers and safari operators. Furthermore, through socalled transboundary peace parks involving two or more countries, global capital has found an avenue for land expropriation in the context of foreign direct in¬ vestment. Whites, as individuals and through multinational companies, have been predominant in the control of the economy, including agriculture, manu¬ facturing industry, and tourism as well as commerce. Income distribution patterns in Zimbabwe reflect white privilege in a sea of massive rural and urban poverty in African communities. Most Africans have no access to a sustainable wealth-generating base outside agriculture, and the high

324

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

unemployment levels exacerbate the demand for land. Urban areas remain rela¬ tively segregated between black and white residences, while the latter have their own social enclaves of separate schools, hospitals, country clubs, and so forth. This segregation tends to underlie some of the violent conflicts over land and land-use rights in Zimbabwe.

ZIMBABWE’S EXPERIMENT WITH NEOLIBERAL TRANSFORMATION The prospects for economic transformation, democratization, and egalitar¬ ian land reform in Zimbabwe diminished as a result of the change in policy thrust from socialism to neoliberalism. The latter was formalized in the Eco¬ nomic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) of 1990, though the policy shift occurred gradually over the period 1987—1996 (Moyo 2000b). The external im¬ position of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) by means of policy-based lending reinforced broadly undemocratic policy-making practices and contrib¬ uted significantly to the evolution of a land policy that was elitist in nature, di¬ rected from the center and paid no attention to the needs and specificities of ru¬ ral populations. The imposition by the World Bank and IMF of SAPs on African countries in the 1980s was rationalized on the grounds of a perceived political and eco¬ nomic crisis in the continent. The development and implementation of these programs, however, were undertaken without the full and effective participation of the relevant stakeholder groups. For example, Zimbabwe’s ESAP policy was adopted without effective consultation with the majority of the populace, espe¬ cially labor, small farmers, and small business (Mkandawire 1995). However, big business, white farmers, and a nascent black bourgeoisie, represented by the Indigenous Business Development Center (IBDC), were adequately consulted and, in the end, supported the resultant ESAP. The latter did not address issues that were of critical importance to the alleviation of poverty, especially in the rural areas. In fact, the ESAP failed to deal with the far more important issue of the redistribution of land. Instead, more emphasis was placed on the balancing of the various capitalist interests, including especially the needs of white farm¬ ers, foreign capital, and indigenous elites, many of whom were aspiring to be¬ come large-scale farmers and entrepreneurs. For some time, the struggle between local white and black capital over mac¬ roeconomic policy reforms overshadowed issues of redistribution and state in¬ tervention in land markets. But black capital sought its place in a predominantly white elite business system, not least in commercial farming. Indeed, the first victim of the liberal policy shift was the land question itself. The indigenization lobby appealed for the deracialization of the ownership base of commercial farmland, with the support of white farmer organizations, technocrats, and many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which altered the eligibility criteria for access to land from “landlessness” to those of “capability” and “productivity,” the neoliberal global development paradigm. Meanwhile, the economic reforms

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implemented benefited mainly the current white large-scale landowners, offered little new investment to the black smallholders and did nothing to redistribute land, water, and infrastructures. The reemergence of land reform on the agenda in the mid-1990s in Zim¬ babwe marks the current phase of a dialectic relationship between peasants, government, and global institutions. The failure of SAPs to live up to their rural development promises has forced the land question to resurface as a legitimate item on the poverty reduction agenda of the World Bank, while, at the national level, the same failure has made demands on the ruling party to redeem its lib¬ eration promise. The years 1997 to 2000 were characterized by economic collapse that ush¬ ered in a new period for land reform defined by political and economic crisis. A series of confrontations between organized civil society and the state were wit¬ nessed throughout the 1990s. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) led these, but significant independent contributions also came from middle-class workers, in particular doctors and nurses (Yeros, forthcoming). The latter were quite distinct from a whole range of other labor confrontations, for they spelled a break in the social contract between middle class workers and the ruling party. The land designations and pension disbursements resulted in capital flight and the withholding of funds on the part of donors, bringing about an economic free-fall, as well as new economic policy issues. The costs of Zimbabwe’s inter¬ vention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict exacerbated the economic crisis and generated broader political criticism locally and, more criti¬ cally, internationally. The years 1998 and 1999 saw the retreat of the govern¬ ment of Zimbabwe (GoZ) from its neoliberal policy thrust. Given Zimbabwe’s colonial legacy, the long-standing conflicts over the land question translate into intense electoral political competition, which in turn is marked by polarization between land reform radicalism and conservative land transfer strategies. Before the June 2000 parliamentary elections, ZANU-PF leaders were calling for a speedy reclamation of land from white farmers and instigated as well as supported the land occupations, while leaders of the oppo¬ sition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) called for a transparent, but not concretely defined market process of land acquisition. The opposition MDC and its supporters were deemed by many Zimbabweans as sellouts to the former colonial masters, given their alleged receipt of financial assistance from white farmers and businesses and from civil society organizations linked to donor funding. The MDC accused the ruling party of giving land to its cronies and of making the land issue a monopoly of ZANU-PF in spite of the latter’s alleged failure to resolve the issue in 20 years. The opposition movements that have emerged since the late 1980s in Zim¬ babwe have had very narrow political interests. All of them have made some valid demands for democratization, within a liberal electoral and human rights framework, but have failed to include in their agendas wider demands for redis¬ tribution of resources or economic restructuring. The collapse of the economy and the resultant opposition to ZANU-PF have not as yet yielded a truly social

326

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

democratic movement for political and redistributive social rights based on a more complex understanding of movements such as the land occupations. Rather, what has emerged is a protest movement focused on the urban areas, seeking to overthrow the President, and demanding less corruption and reversal of short-term economic problems, such as high prices for basic commodities. As such, ZANU-PF has been able to continue to hold sway over the rural vote by maintaining an emphasis on correcting historical and colonially-imposed imbal¬ ances. In the 1980s, public policy emphasized land reform to redress past land al¬ ienation by promoting equal access to land for the majority of the indigenous people with the hope of creating political stability in land property rights. At the same time, land reform was also aimed at achieving economic growth by re¬ ducing the size of land-holdings per individual and allocating land to diverse beneficiaries that included the landless, former refugees, war veterans, the poor, and former commercial farmworkers. Land reform, therefore, was implemented for the objective of promoting national self-sufficiency, focusing on food secu¬ rity and general agricultural development. It was also intended to enhance laborintensive, small farmer production so as to optimize land productivity and re¬ turns on capital invested. After an initial, accelerated process of land reform in the 1980s, when 3 million hectares of the targeted 8 million hectares were redistributed to almost 70,000 families, the pace slowed down, targets were not met, and the problems of equity and racial bias in capital and resource ownership markets once again became starkly obvious. By 1997, about 800 African commercial farmers hold¬ ing about 10 percent of the large-scale commercial farmlands had emerged, against 4,000 whites holding about 10 million hectares. The government had expected to redistribute 50 percent of the white-controlled land, but 5 million hectares of this remained to be transferred. Over the last 20 years, it has become clear that land reform is not an event but a process that depends on the policy framework in use. As shown later, three distinct phases in Zimbabwe’s land reform, which reflect both a shift in government policy and resource allocation and changing economic and political processes, have influenced land reform in the country. Internal pressure applied on government by farmers’ unions, technocrats, and even academics had always encouraged a conservative position, until de¬ mands by war veterans in 1997 for the compulsory acquisition of 1,471 farms created new momentum for radical land reform. A temporary reprieve, from the radical demand for massive land transfers, arose during the Donors’ Conference in 1998, which called for a gradualist approach. This was shaky, as it had no guarantees. The opposition movement did not back the radical land reform agenda but instead reiterated donor calls for transparency, poverty reduction, rule of law, and macroeconomic stabilization as the basis for land reform. This had the effect of further radicalizing ZANU—PF and the government of Zim¬ babwe, leading to some rural communities taking direct action through farm occupations by 1998.

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The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWA) came in full support of the occupations and called for further occupations as a way of demonstrating the need for land. This shift toward informal politics in the rural areas is not in any way “essential” peasant politics but interacts dy¬ namically with formal policies and its exclusions. The lack of representation of small farmers, the rural poor, and the landless in land reform policy formulation, which is assumed to be organized mainly through constituency politics and dominated by the ruling party and the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), created space for the war veterans’ mobilization. The ZFU membership is also widely differentiated, and policy is dominated by an elite of “capable” farmers whose demands are for freehold land for productive purposes and are far from repre¬ senting the majoritarian black farmer demand for land, which seems to be more realistically reflected in “informal” land occupations. At the same time, most NGOs grew out of the social welfare and emergency relief traditions, which did not address structural issues. Middle-class and racial minorities lead them and focus on political and civil rights, not social and eco¬ nomic rights and social justice based upon redistribution. There is a common middle-class belief in the myth that the poor degrade land and that the largescale commercial sectors use land efficiently. In addition, the middle class places more emphasis on schemes to “protect” land and to “educate” the peas¬ antry on sustainable land use than on land redistribution to achieve a more bal¬ anced and socially equitable allocation of resources. Generally, NGOs serving rural and the wider society structures have been and remain a reactionary force rather than an agenda-setting one in terms of land reform. LAND REFORM AND MARKET LIBERALIZATION The ESAP program reshaped Zimbabwe’s land question substantially. Emerging from it were new forms of land-ownership structures and social rela¬ tions of production among the landless, workers, and large-scale and small farmers. The ESAP also affected private agrarian market agents and the state itself as a result of the liberalization of land and commodity markets. This in turn led to new trends in the sociopolitical organization and policy advocacy among various farmers and interest groups. ESAP saw a highly differentiated supply or land use response among a diverse range of land users and/or landowners owing to changing opportunities presented by new export-oriented mar¬ kets. These developments shaped changes in land policy and alliances, which represent the different and unequally endowed social constituencies competing for land. SAP-oriented policies since 1984/1985 led to a gradual redefinition of Zim¬ babwe’s land question through the promotion of a qualitatively increased and intensifying rural economic differentiation among varied landholders and re¬ gions. Such differentiation is a result of the diversification of land use, labor management and commodity marketing, as well as of increased commercial crop and natural resources marketing, including sub-contractual systems of farm production, increased foreign financing of exports, and imports-induced tech-

328

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

nological change during the 1990s. The emergence of new markets (including improved access to the global economy) for the products of rural land and natu¬ ral resources and the resultant land use conversions, particularly toward ex¬ tended field crop exports, wildlife management, horticultural export cropping, livestock exports, and other tourism-related land uses, were key consequent trends. The class, racial, and regional differentiation processes of these agrarian changes are fundamental to understanding contemporary land reform policy making, increasing rural poverty and the politics of economic nationalism and indigenization. The SAP-type (1985-1989) and ESAP (1990-1997) reforms promoted land use diversification, especially toward exports through introducing new forms of financing and marketing of commodities derived from land. The profitability of new land uses, on the one hand, and growing poverty, on the other hand, influ¬ ence the structure of demand for land. The land rights of the rural majority poor continue to be eroded by elite white and black large-scale land owners who le¬ gitimated this inequity through the promise of dynamic economic growth based upon new land uses claiming to be productively superior to land uses established prior to ESAP-type reforms. Salient changes in the land use systems and underlying social relations of production, especially regarding intensified demand for land and its use, shifted the organization of agriculture. Horticulture provided for more intensive land use, and high returns on relatively small areas of land by many more farmers and workers in any agroecological location given the right inputs or technology. Economies of scale to land use in terms of farm size were diminishing for high value-intensive farming, thus also reducing the importance of controlling mo¬ nopoly capital to purchase large farms. Wildlife production encouraged exten¬ sive land use on larger sizes of marginal lands with reasonable financial returns. Increasing returns to wildlife ranching raise the margins at which productive land use can be undertaken and shift the demand for land from prime natural regions toward the more marginal regions where animals mostly thrive today. Remoteness from infrastructures and towns and the retention of given natural resources typical of remote areas add value to marginal lands. However, it is the changing financial and economic values and benefits that accrued to various individual and state landholders during the 1990s, through changing land and related market parameters (including commodity, financial, and inputs markets), that precipitated changing demands by various interest groups for policy reforms in the macroeconomic, sectoral, and land-related pol¬ icy arenas in order to achieve alternative export-oriented land uses. In contrast, the major change in land and agricultural policy objectives during the 1980s was to increase smallholder participation in markets and to diversify the range and value of agrarian markets. By and large, the colonial and 1980s agrarian policy framework had con¬ solidated an institutional bias toward oligopolistic agricultural markets. Follow¬ ing the removal of official racial discrimination in most agrarian and capital markets at independence, the macroeconomic strategy during the 1980s and ac-

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tually existing agricultural sector markets tended to favor big players or farmers with long-standing historical performances as opposed to smaller farmers. For instance, foreign currency was allocated mainly to large farmers with a given production history to purchase imported, large-scale farm machinery. Thus, preESAP land use patterns were conditioned by allocations of foreign currency to enhance import substitution and export earnings. While the new ESAP policy changed the foreign currency factor, which had driven land use changes, it did not change the policy framework with regard to the allocation of land, water, and infrastructure among potential users by markets or the state. Consequently, financial markets were also distorted by this uneven structure of assets and pro¬ ductive capacities. Agricultural export diversification noticeably began around 1983, through large farmer initiatives supported by piecemeal government export incentives. The large-scale commercial farms (LSCF) had historically focused production on the export of tobacco, sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, and domestic urban wagegoods. However, post-independence international market exposure and contin¬ ued preferential state support to large farmers from 1980 to 1990 were critical to agricultural commodity diversification. Policy incentives for new agricultural exports encompassed foreign currency allocations, financial and transport subsi¬ dies, and wider institutional support toward the greater integration of Zim¬ babwe’s previously isolated agrarian economy into global markets. From the point of view of large-scale farmers, economic liberalization was intended not only to improve their earnings from tradable exports but also to expand their opportunities to realize and retain foreign currency earnings so as to improve their capacity to import inputs and to externalize their savings through export retention schemes and various export subsidies. The removal of restrictions on the remittance of dividends by foreign investors and the liberali¬ zation of foreign borrowing for export agriculture also improved the opportunity for agricultural export production through external financing mechanisms. But such ESAP policy benefits have yet to reach small-scale farmers or to engender greater competitiveness and efficiency within Zimbabwe’s heterogeneous land economy. Since black elite farmers also benefit from these new exports, the in¬ centive to promote redistributive policies in terms of land and state support to the peasantry has also been limited. A greater part of formerly marginal lands in Communal and LSCF Areas, and state-owned lands (parks, forests, and reserves), as well as formerly underu¬ tilized lands in the entire country, but particularly in the LSCF and state lands, became attractive for new commercial uses. In the mid-1980s, the GoZ tourism and wildlife policies began to encourage these alternative land uses through for¬ eign currency retention schemes for game exporters and tourism operators. These changing use values also generated greater competition for control and access to land and conflicting perspectives on their values to Zimbabwe society. Policies that promote non-agricultural land uses have accrued over 35 years. But they were consolidated into a liberal market framework only over the last 10 years. The key conceptual, ideological, and economic basis of this changing

330

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

policy direction has been the extent to which privatizing natural resources for individual benefit was economically, nationally, and ecologically sustainable. Changing global environmental perspectives and aid also played a key role in promoting this policy shift. The increases in horticultural exports in Zimbabwe are closely related to the externally driven marketing of inputs and outputs to the agrarian sector. The 1990s saw an increasingly market-oriented land policy with diverse implications for various constituencies. New forms of finance for agrarian change and land use such as the role of national and global credit distribution toward new exports, in relation to investment in new technologies, materials and equipment, and expertise are important aspects of the emerging land policy and the context of current struggles for land. Zimbabwe’s peculiar racial and class basis of land policy making and the co-optation strategies used by the state and markets to marginalize land reform, as well as the conservative influences of international forces on domestic economic and land policy, have reconstructed the land question mainly through the legitimation of new export land uses as the most beneficial focus for Zimbabwe’s development in a globalizing world. The new political economy of land is therefore over the contest of this development strategy and the continued inequitable land control that it has reinforced. A trend of change in the macrospatial character of Zimbabwe’s land use patterns emerged. Improved markets for wildlife ranching and horticulture had begun to reshape traditional values ascribed to land in terms of their agroecological potential. Indeed, spatial analysis of the evolution of new land uses at the macrolevel led to a definitive change in the patterning of the use of Zim¬ babwe s land, in relation to its control (ownership or mere use) among various categories of landholders and particularly in relation to the geographic variation of Zimbabwe’s currently existing stocks of natural resources (especially wildlife and woodlands). While the distribution of soils and rainfall quality and the his¬ torically evolved availability of infrastructure (roads, towns/roads, dams and energy) across Zimbabwe remain influential for intensive land use patterning, remoteness previously associated with rejection because of presumed lowquality land has also become a defining parameter for the new land use regimes. Since the new land uses require different kinds of land, such as extensive woodlands for wildlife and irrigated lands for horticulture, the sites of land struggles also change geographically. The pressure for survival among the poor increased, and the increased scope for accumulation among elites grew. In¬ creased export-oriented production and related social differentiation under ESAP thus broadened and intensified the demand for access to land and the de¬ mand to participate in new higher-value land uses. However, only some of the more powerful social forces gained substantial access to land, while others in¬ formally access land in piecemeal fashion. It is this expanded demand for land during ESAP that defines the ideological struggles for land reform policy. New land uses during Zimbabwe’s SAP era grew differentially. Large-scale farmers engaged in these new land uses on much larger areas than small-scale farmers, leading to differential benefits among the farmers. Even among Afri-

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cans, the elite have entered the new land uses more rapidly. About 50 percent of the LSCF farmers engaged in the new land uses, although they combined this with other land use enterprises. Among Communal Area farmers, the maximum number of households involved in the new land uses amounted to 10 percent of the Communal Areas. State agencies such as the Forestry Commission and District Councils in¬ volved in wildlife reinforce the land policy orientation toward export land uses. Thus, the state in collaboration with civil society actors promoted the rapid con¬ version of Communal Area land into wildlife uses. NGOs engaged in promoting new land uses, particularly horticulture production, which mainly relies on the local markets, and small holder participation in wildlife land uses. But middle¬ men and commodity subcontracting in horticulture and wildlife sectors played a critical role in co-opting small-scale landowners through a system of support services provision. A major transition in the structure of land control, use, and struggles thus emerged from ESAP, leading to major shifts in the organizational framework of the state and civil society in relation to land and agrarian resources. A variety of types of land user and related private sector interest groups, mainly divided be¬ tween those that represent white, large-scale formal sector hunters, market agents, and farmers and those that represent African (indigenous) smaller-scale and more informal land user sector activities emerged. Similarly, rural-based NGOs grew with sharp racial and class divisions. The high-profile NGOs en¬ gaged in policy influence tended to be externally and to some extent white dominated, while the mass and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and popular NGOs are black and rural-based. The substantive basis for this organizational differentiation reflects the his¬ torical, but continued racially unequal, structure of ownership, control, and ac¬ cess to land and other rural productive resources, as well as of control over capital and commodity markets. In fact, at the national level, representation in the different economic lobby organizations varies racially. The black organiza¬ tions tend to canvass a wider population base, particularly of the small-scale farmers in “Communal Areas,” and to seek policy support from urban workers, while the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) and other sectoral farmer associa¬ tions represent a smaller, white population in LSCF areas. Within this spatial and institutional framework of policy lobbying, most black NGOs claim to ar¬ ticulate the development and policy requirements of the rural poor, a constitu¬ ency that various NGOs and the state compete to influence. These differences are reflected in differing values held on land control and use, as well as in the nature of land reform policy changes sought by the various organizations. This multiplicity of, and division among, interest group organizations re¬ flect a long political history dating to the colonial period, when most of the white policy lobbies were consolidated. Many studies of SAP reforms and land policy processes, however, tend to give superficial recognition to this racial and class differentiation of land user associations and consequently to the politicaleconomic interests that underlie and inform the evolution of land policy in Zim-

332

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

babwe. Moreover, there are exceptions and overlaps in the membership and in¬ terests of lobby organizations, which caution us against an oversimplified ap¬ proach to the racial and sectoral categorization of interest groups. Thus, local LSCF associations include large-scale multinational and Zimbabwean conglom¬ erates, which occupy dominant, vertically and horizontally integrated positions in the economy. The new political economy of the land question has an important spatial and territorial dimension. Zimbabwe’s land base had, prior to 1980, been divided in terms of territoriality or simply spatially according to three main criteria. The first criterion is, agroecological through criteria (natural regions) of the potential cropping intensity of land under rain-fed conditions. State planning structures and academics retained this spatial framework or organization in land policy discourses. The second criterion is administrative in terms of districts and pro¬ vincial governance zones whose boundaries reflect colonial ethnic symbols or metaphors of power, such as the presumed “tribal” power configuration (Mashonaland, Manicaland, etc.). These administrative regions underlay a structure of indirect rule, through particular chiefdoms under white district ad¬ ministration, rather than in a transcultural politicoadministrative spatial frame¬ work. The third criterion is through “land tenure” categories denoting the spatial partitioning of land according to race, tribal community, and state control and use of land. Unequal tenure structures yielded Zimbabwe’s current spatial mo¬ saic of land allocations under freehold, leasehold, communal, and state forms of tenure. Since the 1970s, there has been tremendous growth, escalating during the mid-1980s, of water technologies, new, more intensive methods of crop produc¬ tion, new types of crops (especially horticulture), new animals to husband (wildlife and ostriches), new markets (tourism, hunting, leather skins, lowcholesterol meat, flowers, etc.), and new forms of marketing commodities in a globalized world. Deregulation of domestic markets and trade since the mid1980s merely enhanced these new “opportunities.” Altogether, these changes provided an impetus for the spatial and territorial reconfiguration of land use and land values, as well as the restructuring of political and economic struggles and conflicts over land control and access to it. The value of land, which had previ¬ ously been considered suitable only for wild animals and “evicted” blacks whose land had been alienated right up to the 1960s, in the peripheral perimeter of Zimbabwe, where most Communal Lands are, has changed especially since the late 1980s. New land investors, black and white, multinational and domestic, elite and local communities, were all found to have gained interest in wildlife land uses and land control in these “marginal” zones, while continuing the struggles for prime agricultural lands, through a variety of land-accessing strate¬ gies. But there were pockets of resistance to wildlife programs and an uneven capacity among small and large, black and white, state and community land us¬ ers to capitalize upon the new land uses and markets. The power struggles that emerged from this restructuring of land uses pose critical queries about the practice of local government as well as land policy and

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the legitimacy of not only LSCF or private land holdings but also various state organs. For instance, since the late 1980s, the Forestry Commission has become notorious among local communities, which suggest that its so-called resource sharing public rhetoric is aimed at reinforcing the land shortage and alienation problems for its own beneficial entry into the new land use. On the other hand, some analysts (e.g., Murombedzi 1994, 1997) have viewed the Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) program as a new state instrument of recentralizing development management through the creation of community organizational structures that become subservient or de¬ pendent on the state. Thus, in those “economically marginal” areas where the state, as well as, to a lesser extent, NGOs and donors, had little direct control over communities, because they were isolated by poor infrastructure and social services, and slow economic growth, a form of “recolonization” had begun through wildlife management and the growing tourist markets, within a global market context. However, the “recentralization thesis,” which rests on broad notions of community autonomy and local control (Murombedzi 1992), tends partly to be somewhat idealistic not merely in its search for decentralization but also in promoting a string of autonomous but weakly resourced community structures led by traditional authorities. But the territorial reconfiguration of various land tenure categories reflects a form of expanded reintegration of small-scale farmers and poor communities into the “new” land-based markets, which carry the day during this era. Thus, tourism, environmentalism, and related markets have created a new land frontier in Zimbabwe’s perimeter, and various stakeholders—local, district, provincial, national and international, private, state, NGO and community—are engaged in land struggles over the newly found land frontier. “Exploration” for new forms of biodiversity and methods of their economic and social exploita¬ tion, touting “indigenous technical knowledge” as virtuous, is a regular aspect of “technical assistance” and “research” in these “outer” and “buffer” zones, in¬ volving local and international NGOs and research organizations, various mul¬ tilateral agencies, and private firms. The frontier is being opened with question¬ able “participatory approaches to sustainable development,” which became the buzzword of government, NGOs, donors, and the private sector, in a land zone now cleared of tsetse flies with donor funding. The evidently powerful national land struggle of the day remains the ideol¬ ogy of “indigenization” or “affirmative action.” This essentially argues against a racially determined legacy of privilege and relatively better capacities to exploit Zimbabwe’s land resources within the framework of the new commodity and capital markets, arising from growth in tourism, environmentalism, and global¬ ization. At the ideological level, the new land uses have generated a distorted form of cultural determinism, wherein it had been argued by white-led NGOs and experts, as well as some middle-class blacks (see, e.g., Bullard, Taylor, and Johnson 1998; Muzvidziwa et al. 1999; Hasler 1993; Hasler 1995; Sibanda 2001) that blacks are not interested in the environment and that they have a wrong attitude toward nature and wildlife. Numerous narrow and culturally de-

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Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

terministic academic responses to this essentially racial ideology have attempted to “prove” the efficacy of black or “indigenous technical knowledge systems” (Matowanyika et al 1995). But instead these discourses have shown a narrow new “anthropology” that not only idealizes local systems of natural resources management but also neglects the fundamental material struggles in the new political economy of land. As it has been argued elsewhere, land alienation, the ruthless conscription of local labor for the development of state and private plantations, and compulsory soil conservation measures (Bullard, Taylor, and Johnson 1998) predicate black attitudes to environmentalism. The politics of land indigenization has thus seen a shift from interest in the entry into large, commercial farming per se (see Moyo 1995), toward their orga¬ nized interest in capturing the most lucrative land-based export markets such as tobacco, horticulture, ostriches, timber, wildlife, and nature-based ecotourism. One of the strategies associated with this is that middle- to large-scale black land users should gain state support for black empowerment, through redistributing white-held land and associated resources, within a framework of autarky from, or of parallel development alongside, the minority, white-dominated land mar¬ kets. However, linkages between small black farmers and the LSCF and the large formal private sector have grown through interactions involving market¬ ing, finance, and technology (e.g., inputs such as seeds, chemicals, ostrich birds, guns, surveying, etc.) in the horticulture, ostriches, and wildlife sectors, as they have become in the tobacco and oil seeds land use subsectors. The politics of “linkages,” financed by private sector agencies, tends to be seen as a counterstrategy to radical land redistribution and land occupation and poaching movements. Growing racial conflict over land and related markets is based upon both concrete grievances and competition over resources, as well as control of the ideological terrain of the land question. Zimbabwe’s fiscal crisis of the 1990s merely reinforced the importance of competition for land and natu¬ ral resources because most blacks consider these to be an indigenous and “natu¬ ral” good. The growth of diverse markets in wildlife resources and related land use has led to increasing conflicts in the privatization of wildlife and the artifi¬ cial creation of wildlife markets.

LAND REFORM IDEOLOGY AND TRANSITION Zimbabwe’s recent politics ovqr land reform epitomizes the resurgence of long-standing, liberation-style politics, based on anticolonial, anti-imperialist, and white minority resistance, in a society polarized on racial and ideological lines. Land occupations, for instance, represent the idea of seizing power, which had not been gained in 1980, consolidating sovereignty, and achieving “eco¬ nomic liberation. Notions of land “seizures,” however, replaced terms such as “land nationalization” or “expropriation without compensation” in national dis¬ courses. The international media represented compulsory land acquisition as well as land occupations as a land “grab” by elites, to emphasize the negative political action of the ZANU-PF and the war veterans. As in the 1970s libera-

Land Reform and Zimbabwe’s Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance

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tion struggles, the prominence of middle-class leadership in the land reform process in the state, as well as war veterans’ agencies, was crucial in shaping the so-called land revolution. It is reported that some local politicians, businessmen, and intellectuals may be cashing in on the land occupations and even gaining access to land targeted for the poorer members of society. These broadening forms of participation and conceptualizations of land oc¬ cupations also reflect the emergence during late 2000 of a certain level of politi¬ cal alliance between the state and various national and local social forces in op¬ position to what is seen as international conditionalities against land redistribu¬ tion in defense of narrow racial interests in land. The intensive land occupations that Zimbabwe experienced are not generically new since they have consistently accompanied or influenced government efforts to acquire land in the past, whether this be on the market or through compulsory procedures. There are im¬ portant similarities and a few differences between various phases of land occu¬ pations, which need thorough analysis. However, there is a need to analyze them in relation to the two other instruments of land acquisition—market acquisitions and compulsory acquisitions—that interact with occupations in a politically de¬ termined manner. The amendment of the constitution and the Land Acquisition Act on this matter reflected a major formal effort to challenge the imposed rules on colonial land property rights, in response to popular pressures that land occupations have brought to the debate. Over the last 20 years, land occupations have traversed various land tenure categories: white-owned commercial land, state land, and communal lands (Moyo 2000b). Land occupations grew extensively during the late 1980s in the Zambezi valley frontier zones (Murombedzi 1994). State lands have remained a soft target for occupations for years, especially in Matebeleland and in Manicaland, where forest and parks are predominant. Thus, although land occupations have been on the national development and social rights agenda, most civil society organizations, formal political parties, and the private sector have paid scant attention to them. The character of the occupations has changed slightly, but their essence has remained the same. The first phase of land occupations can be termed one of “low-profile, highintensity” occupations. These occurred throughout the country, from 1980 to 1985, while a parallel process of “accelerated” land resettlement financed mainly by British funds was initiated to formalize some of the occupations, and to assuage parallel land pressures. These early land occupations were led by landless communities inspired by war veterans, the ZANU-PF, “dissidents” in Matebeleland, and other leaders, such as the spirit mediums. They were tacitly supported by ZANU-PF and the Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) structures. Local “squatter” communities made themselves beneficiaries by occupying mainly abandoned and underutilized land, most of which was in the liberation war frontier zone of the Eastern Highlands. This “community-led” occupation approach saw the central government come in to purchase such lands at market

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Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

prices, thereby formalizing the occupations in what came to be known then as “normal intensive land reform.” The period between 1985 and 1996 witnessed what we can call in relative terms normal low-intensity occupations.” They took place in the context of dwindling resources for continued land resettlement and economic liberaliza¬ tion, which resulted in many people losing their jobs in urban areas and the mines. During the 1990s, landless communities increased “illegal” occupations of land and poaching of natural resources in private, state, and “communally” owned lands and in urban areas. Thus, the occupations cannot be claimed to have been spontaneous. Zim¬ babwe hosts a facile debate, which oversimplifies the question of spontaneity of land occupations vis-a-vis politically mobilized occupants. Rarely have occupa¬ tions been spontaneous, since they were mostly planned through either the lib¬ eration movement, local MPs, or party structures. While the intensity of political support to the occupants may differ in form between the 1980s and 1997-2000 period, the substance was similar. Even when the state practiced extensive evic¬ tions of “squatters” during the 1985-1993 period, they turned a blind eye and used kid gloves on the many other squatter cases. This led landowners to attempt their own evictions, which were even more brutal than the state’s. The severe drought during the 1991-1992 farming season led to extensive commercial farm retrenchments, adding to the pressure on communal area land resources. During this period, the state had a legal framework to resolve the land question through compulsory land acquisition but did not succeed in using the instrument. The grounds for severe conflicts were created during this time, as captured in recent research on new land uses in the Mashonaland provinces. The last phase of high-intensity and high-profile land occupations began in 1997. In September 1997, about 30 high-profile, community-led land occupation approaches seemed to emerge, and isolated land occupations occurred, with the explicit aim of redistributing land from white farmers to landless villagers and war veterans. Then, a new wave of high-profile, and high-intensity land occupa¬ tions arose, from a handful in February to just below a 1,000 cases by 2000. The scale and form of land occupations in Zimbabwe have been the subject of a propaganda war in the media. The current round of land occupations can be analyzed in terms of various dimensions of their intended effects, which are pursued either individually or through groups. These varied intentions also reflect the perspectives and goals of different “wings” of the ruling, party from the extremists seeking outright “re¬ possession” of the land by physical seizure to the more “liberal” middle-of-theroad leaders seeking merely to demonstrate the right of Zimbabweans to com¬ pulsorily acquire the land. Nonetheless, these basic dimensions show the com¬ plexity of the process, which has first a political (partisan and nonpartisan, electoral and nonelection orientated) framework and objectives and is then so¬ cially grounded by invoking existing sentiments in favor of land repossession based upon grievances over historical injustices.

Land Reform and Zimbabwe's Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance

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The question of who is involved in the current occupations has been a sub¬ ject of cynical debate in which the prime focus has been to minimize the impor¬ tance of both the war veterans’ leadership and the level of their capacity to hold widespread occupations. Thus, unlike other participants (e.g., the army and the government) in the current occupations, children, youth, and women are said to have been cajoled, paid, or even forced to join occupations. As a result, the oc¬ cupations have been characterized as either contrived or farcical or narrowly instrumental for electioneering. However, the fact that the farmworkers and people from communal areas, including those on resettlement waiting lists, have joined the occupations to enhance their chances for resettlement has not been properly analyzed. Thus, the organic and deep-seated local pressures for land reform and even anger from past injustices and deprivation are underestimated in this critique. One of the major contestations in the Zimbabwe land occupations debate is the degree to which they have been led by a homogeneous command structure under a single ZANU-PF leadership linked to military chiefs and the head of state. Empirical observations show that parallel to the many high-profile, cen¬ trally orchestrated, war veterans-led occupations of 2000, there were numerous occupations that emerged from more diverse organizational formations and in¬ terests. Such interests would include some provincial governors who are seen to be more militant in terms of land reform (Mashonaland North, Mashonaland Central, and Manicaland), specific independent branches of the ZNLWA, indi¬ vidual MPs, and other traditional leaders. In many cases it would appear that the ZNLWA came to hegemonize locally initiated occupations. We need to add to this complex evolution of the land occupation movement the pervasive criminal and opportunistic aspect, in which individuals, claiming to be war veterans or members of the ruling party, used the occupation move¬ ment to intimidate farmers to extort money, poach wildlife and firewood, or assume sharecropping rights on farmers’ crops or even used pieces of land for their own cropping activities. This suggests that the land occupation “move¬ ment” is less easily managed than might be expected by both ZANU-PF leaders and their opponents who expect them to control it. Within this context, the “radical” elements of ZANU-PF, who have proactively supported land occupa¬ tions, have the burden of justifying the land occupation movement in the context of sporadic and wanton violence and lawlessness, which undermine the growing social base that had been mobilized around land occupations after the early 2000 period when occupations had been dominated by war veterans. We have seen in this context that both ZANU-PF and the state have fol¬ lowed behind the land occupation movement and tried to co-opt and contain it as in the past within the framework of the evolving land acquisition program.

LAND REFORM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSFORMATION What can be learned from Zimbabwe’s recent experience concerning the importance of social movements that are differentiated and adopt different

338

Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa

strategies is that, while their roles and actions might be contradictory, they can also provide some progressive movement on issues such as democratization and land reform. However, this can also produce negative feedback in the form of violence and the abrogation of civil rights. In Zimbabwe, it can be expected that the negative consequences will be relatively short-term, as against the long-term benefits of assuaging historical grievances and addressing a problem that has been neglected for 20 years by a model of reconciliation, which did not include justice or reparation. One general lesson concerns how a formal policy can evolve and be refined over a very short period after having been static over the longer term (20 years in this case). There have been great shifts in Zimbabwe’s land policy since the mid-1990s, particularly the last 5 years, which have seen the policy debate moving to more radical options because of the failure of negotiations, and, in¬ deed, even shifts within this more radical policy movement. The major implica¬ tion is that most of the players are pushed to attempt land transfer within a legal framework of compulsory acquisition, even if this is done under threat of nonlegal action. Such transfer is now being discussed in terms of a much larger scale and a far greater pace. There are a number of positive implications of the current land occupations. First, the delivery of land to the rural and urban poor will significantly enhance their ability to participate more gainfully in the economy. This reinforces the social and economic basis for democratic growth, by the interests of a larger segment of the population wanting to defend the new regime. The economic benefits will form the basis for more positive and participatory rural and agrar¬ ian policy formation. Second, land transfer will weaken the hegemony and segregation of the current advantaged white minority. It challenges the current conditions and in¬ adequate rights of farm laborers, questions the injustices perpetrated against them by landowners, and raises the issue of their rights to land (Moyo, Ruther¬ ford, and Amanor-Wilks 2000). The recognition of the need to address what happens to farmworkers has brought to the fore the bogus defense of farmwork¬ ers rights by commercial farmers and some NGOs favoring the status quo and exposed this form of enclave politics. Third, land transfer will make the agricultural sector more efficient by hav¬ ing many more people engaged in producing for the economy. Used concur¬ rently with the downsizing of landholdings, land acquisition and resettlement will increase the involvement of more indigenous blacks on smaller commercial farms. If all these commercial farmers adopt more efficient methods, they could produce more than in the past on the land available to them (Weiner, Moyo, Manslow, and O’Keefe 1985). Fourth, the Zimbabwean experience echoes that of the Chiapas in Mexico, where informal and new types of movements have captured and maintained space for themselves in which they are recognized and able to undertake direct negotiations with large-scale farmers and the state (Petras 1997). Such associa¬ tions involve urban and rural people, including the poor, elites, and traditional

Land Reform and Zimbabwe’s Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance

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leaders, from given districts where land has been designated for compulsory acquisition and/or is already occupied. They are numerous but informal. They have developed their own rules. But their ideology is commonly anticolonial and against white racism, based on combining self-reliance with surplus production and sales. They seem to gradually circumscribe the power of traditional authori¬ ties in local government (Martin 2001). Fifth, the occupations have confronted bad past and present race relations by forcing intensive interaction and discussion between whites and blacks in different roles. They have also raised the issue of the different values placed on the deaths of blacks and whites, particularly as reflected in international media coverage, and challenged the notion of reconciliation without truth, justice, and reparation. Sixth, there has been broad participation in the call for restitution, by tradi¬ tional leaders, spirit mediums and others who are beginning to reclaim their historical rights to land and resources on the basis of its sacred or cultural value in addition to its productive potential. Seventh, the demand for land of the Zimbabwean population has been brought to the attention of the international community, including neoliberal NGOs. The media have been both a recipient and a source of such information, although their heightened interest at the moment has tended to increase the im¬ pression that this is a situation that has only just arisen. The confrontation has brought the role of the British into the spotlight and shifted the perception of land reform from that of a development issue to one of restitution and justice. The positive outcomes just outlined, however, are all necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for democratization. Past studies have all predicted that inadequate land delivery would precipitate violent confrontations in the future (Herbst 1990; Alexander 1993). Policymakers and white farmers did not take such predictions seriously as they continued their laissez-faire attitude toward land reform. Notwithstanding this observation, the widespread occurrence of violence, including its impact on the 2000 parliamentary elections, has been the most negative effect of the land confrontation, causing the abrogation of physi¬ cal safety and threat to political participation. There has been an instrumentalization of violence, although the scale of it has been exaggerated and it has been wrongly made the focus of the whole land reform issue. In fact, compared to rural and urban violence in South Africa, Ire¬ land, or Brazil, the level in Zimbabwe has been quite low. Any level of violence is bad for democracy, but there has not been any examination of the extent to which the violence in Zimbabwe is incidental to a broader anger and wider un¬ democratic culture. Violence has increased in response to economic decline and poverty, so that the land occupations cannot be seen as the main or only insti¬ gator. A more careful assessment of the exact scale and causality is needed, in¬ cluding the offshoot of opportunistic criminal acts such as cattle rustling, extor¬ tion and pilfering of farm produce, and work stoppages. The fact that the occupations have, in some cases, been violent needs to be understood in terms of the real animosity between the occupiers and those ele-

340

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ments of government that are seen not to be serious about land reform. This is a long-standing and endemic grievance. There is no doubt that land occupations have generated, in certain localities, unwillingness to participate in the electoral process. There is also evidence that farmers and farmworkers as well as opposi¬ tion youth have been the source of some electoral violence in rural areas in which pitched battles have been waged sporadically. Indeed, the death of two of the four commercial farmers and some farmworkers killed in the context of land occupations resulted from prior attacks on ZANU—PF youths, although the up¬ per hand in such violence has belonged to the latter. The land occupations movement also has to be seen in the context of deep division in ZANU-PF over the strategy of land acquisition, with a growing segment rejecting not just market but also legalistic compulsory acquisition be¬ cause of their history of failed implementation, in favor of land seizures and occupations as a strategy. In this vein, we have seen a different movement in which certain elements of the ruling party seek to halt occupations, preferring a focus on compulsory acquisition methods, in combination with negotiated land transfers based on dialogue with farm owners. It is this divergence of views and split in the command structure that explains, to a large degree, some of the un¬ derground and uncontrolled violence and lawless aspects of the occupations. The violence associated with the recent occupations and leading up to the 2000 election is suggested by some analysts and opposition leaders to have en¬ abled the ruling party to maintain dominance over the rural electorate. This dominance has always existed anyway in some rural areas, but the mobilization for land reform tended to countervail any mobilization by the opposition. It has been argued that opposition party structures were undermined, but the degree to which these actually existed outside of small towns is yet to be fully demon¬ strated. The few existing studies of this tend, however, to underplay the strength of ZANU-PF in most of the rural areas and appear to teleologically follow the postconstitution referendum triumphalistic analysis, which overestimated the growth of the rural MDC structures in communal and farm areas outside of the larger rural and periurban centers where the MDC structures grew out of exist¬ ing ZCTU structures. This is an area that calls for more rigorous research. The land occupations have so far failed to correct the inherited injustices of the justice system and property laws in an orderly fashion. By encouraging, rather than evicting, the occupiers and by premature resettlement of people on farms where the legal processes of compulsory land acquisitions were not com¬ plete, the government has overridden, instead of corrected, the legal system. In one perspective, the government has broken its own “rule of law.” However, the land occupations and “fast-track” resettlement, including the litigation that took place in the Supreme, constitutional, and administrative courts, have highlighted the debate on the relevance of the existing property rights structures and the laws that defend them. The Supreme Court’s judgment of December 2000, giving the government six months to sort out the land issue, represents a recogni¬ tion of the need for change and the injustice of the current situation.

Land Reform and Zimbabwe's Troubled Transition to Democratic Governance

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The changes to the Land Acquisition Act can be seen as signs of an attempt to find legal means of land reform, even though it is difficult for a neoliberal justice system to deal with such major problems of public interest. The intro¬ duction of the new Rural Occupiers Act of 2001 also shows the government’s effort to legalize the process of occupations, while the legal transfer of land pro¬ ceeds. The rushed legislative changes, which might appear democratically facile, have brought to the fore the importance of a historical jurisprudence problem over property rights that requires special legal activism for it to be resolved.

CONCLUSION Zimbabwe’s transition from colonial rule based upon peripheral capitalist development, which began in 1980, is far from complete and remains charac¬ terized by fragile state structures and weak democratic institutions that have led to both progressive change and repressive rule. The past legacies of minority and racial dominance, disarticulated economic structures, incomplete agrarian reform, unequal social services, and a weak industrial policy in a context of harsher global environment have limited the transition. In countries such as Zimbabwe, where the land question remains unresolved and where a large proportion of the mainly rural population depends on the land and natural resources for their livelihood, employment and wealth accumulation, land and agrarian reform toward an equitable and democratic regime are crucial for any successful transition or transformation of society. It is crucial to recog¬ nize that addressing the land question in terms of contemporary equity and his¬ torical social justice is an essential parameter within which broader political reform and democratization questions must be addressed and economic trans¬ formation can ensure. The focus on liberal political rights in contemporary de¬ mocracy movements, which forms the basis of Zimbabwe’s more than 20 years of transition, has tended to neglect deep-seated social and political contradic¬ tions of Zimbabwe society, including the endemic contradictions of economic development. It is self-evident that the neoliberal, developmentalist model and structure of civil society organization, dominated both financially and technically by devel¬ opment and human rights NGOs, have been unable to address the pressing problem of land reform because of their general disconnection from the informal rural and urban social movements that have, over the years, pursued land occu¬ pations, resource poaching, and all sorts of underground strategies to gain access to resources and other rights. The result of this is that the land reform processes, especially the land occu¬ pation movement, have been hegemonized and controlled by war veterans and the ruling party. The latter has also demobilized land reform at various points in alliance with middle-class interests within the state, opposition parties, and NGOs, only to co-opt it as it reemerged during the major postindependence po¬ litical and economic crisis that escalated in 1996 and 1997.

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It is polarizing and futile to simplify democratization in such a way that the idea of changing government is privileged over and above the content of change. The idea of physically restructuring land and property relations is one example in which the historical unfolding of the process might seem to force change in authoritarian ways, and yield a framework for future democratization. It is clear that the absence of the social and institutional infrastructure necessary for pro¬ moting true and widespread democratization in rural Zimbabwe is a major bot¬ tleneck, which compounds the weak strategy of civil society and opposition movements. The lopsided racial access to information, education, physical re¬ sources, and political experience in handling the contradictions of social democ¬ ratic is yet to be redressed. Therefore, much of the negative fallout from the recently aggressive land reform process, including its use for short-term political gain, has to be weighed more seriously against the potential longer-term transformation and specific gains in the broader democratization process, of creating space for awareness and participation in the basic social struggles hitherto dominated by formal state structures and urban-dominated civil society organizations. Indeed, one of the major lessons is that the neoliberal policy framework of transition is being ac¬ tively challenged, even if with crucial short-term distortions.

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Index Abacha, Sani: death of, 113; international notoriety, 238; misrule of, 114, 117, 118; political parties, 126; transition politics, 115,116, 118-119, 121, 122-123, 124,128 Abacha for Peace and Unity (AFPU), Nigerian civic association, 123 Abiola, M.K.O.: bail for, 123; detention of, 128, 136 n.2; industrialist, 117; Nigerian presidential elections, 113-114 Abubakar, Abdulsalam, transition politics, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 128, 137 n.16 “Active boycott,” 103 Adedibu, Alhaji Alamidi, 123 Adua, Shehu, Yar’, death of, 118 Advanced democracy, 101, 109 Africa: during colonialism, 1-2, 18, 23; corruption problem, 69; current status, 1, 6-7, 17, 19, 21-22; debt relief, 158; and democratization, 85-86, 125-130, 141-143, 197, 217; economic underdevelopment of, 42; governance goals, 4, 17; poorest countries, 158-159; post¬ colonial state, 3-4, 18-19, 86 African Confidential, on Chiluba, 69 African Economic Treaty (AET), adoption of, 13 African National Congress (ANC): AIDS crisis, 288, 289, 290-292, 303; centralization of, 287-288; and COSATU, 292-293, 301-302; income redistribution policies, 310-311; political practices, 282, 285, 286, 299-300; and SCOPA, 296-299; and South African

democracy, 277, 278-279, 303; and Zimbabwe crisis, 288-289, 294-296 African Rally for Progress and Solidarity (Benin), 164 African state: and civil society, 155— 156; constitutional process, 22-25; democratic transition, 7-15, 17, 39-42; democratization obstacles, 309-310; Independence goals, 3, 18-19; institutional reform methods, 31-38; missed opportunities, 20-22; new dispensations, 7; post¬ independence policies, 4-7, 19, 30; as post-colonial state, 3-4, 310; rethinking role of, 236 African Union (AU), 13 African values: African constitutions, 23, 24-25; during colonial era, 18-19; governance structures, 17 Agbantou, Saidou, 166 Agricultural economics, land redistribution, 323 Ahmed, Alhaji Datti, 129 AIDS, and democratization, 12; impact of, 11; Mbeki policy, 288,289, 290-292, 303 Ake, Claude, 142, 221 Akinrinade, Alani, 122 Alao, Alhaji Arisekola, 123 All People’s Freedom Alliance (Liberia), 203 All Peoples Party (APP) (Nigeria), 127 Alliance Cameleon, 172 Alliance for Democracy (AD) (Nigeria), 120, 127 Alliance for Democracy (AFORD): leadership of, 274 n.12; Malawi

352

Index opposition, 253, 254, 258; and multiparty elections, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260-262, 273 nn.3, 4; Muluzi government bribe, 268269; post-election politics, 263264, 270, 275-276 nn.20, 21,22, 23

Alliance for Patriotic Re-orientation and Construction (APRC) government: human rights violations, 189, 195 n.9; legitimacy of, 180; legislative elections, 183 Alliance for Patriotic Re-orientation and Construction (APRC) party, 1996 presidential elections, 183 Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (AFDL), 219, 231,232, 234 Alliance pour la Democratic et le Progres (Benin), 172 Alliance pour le Redressement du Cameroun par la Conference Nationale Souveraine (ARCCNS), 1992 election, 93, 96 Alternance, democratization project, 144,168-169 American Colonization Society, Liberia, 199-200 Americo-Liberians: colonial period, 199-200; military period, 205; state expansion, 201-202; state formation, 200 Amnesty International, Banda regime, 250 Amoussou, Bruno, presidential elections, 166, 169, 171 Anglophones, in Cameroon, 88 Apartheid system, 14, 24; deficits of, 277,299-300 Apithy, Sourou-Migan, Benin, 32, 146 Appeasement democracy, 104, 109 Appointed officials, Nigerian ethnic groups, 132 Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC) (Gambia): democratization project, 182; economic development, 188-189; establishment of, 179; human rights violations, 184-187;

infrastructure development, 187; international sanctions, 181-182; 1996 presidential elections, 180 Armee nationale congolaise (ANC): engagements of, 228-229; and Mobutu regime, 228-230, 231 Ashu, Peter Oben, 106 Asiodu, Phillip, 120 Assembly of Patriotic Forces (APF) (Cameroon), 96 Association for Better Nigeria, civic association, 122 Association Law, Liberia, 199 Association of Gambian Journalists (AGJ), 185 Authoritarianism: African, 141; Gambia, 184 Awoyo, Jean-Roger, 164 Babangida, Ibrahim: regime of, 113, 117; transition politics, 115, 116, 118,121-122, 123-124 Babatope, Ebenezer, 117 Bah, Hamat, 190 Bako, Alhaji Sabo, 131 Banda, Aleke: during Banda regime, 245, 246; Malawi multiparty elections, 256, 257; Muluzi government, 268 Banda, Hastings Kamuzu: Church condemnation of, 250-251; international condemnation, 249250; legacy of, 273 n.6; and multiparty elections, 255-262; opposition to, 251-255, 274 n.14; post-election alliance, 263-264; regime of, 243-248; trial of, 266 Banda, Richard, 272 n. 1 Banking and Financial Services Act, Zambia, 67 Barclay Plan of 1904, Liberia, 202 Barry, Ebrima, 189-190 Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, globalization, 311 Bayero, Alhaji Ado, 118 Behanzin-Poletti, Theophile, 163 Beleveridge, John, 272 n.l Bell, Manga, 108 Bello, Bouba, 96, 97 Bemba people, ethnic policies, 71

Index Benin: democratic consolidation, 152— 154, 156; democratization critique, 168-169; economic conditions, 157-160; Kerekou reforms, 149; legislative elections, 164; Marxist-Leninist policy, 147148; multiparty democracy, 143; national conference, 31; 1996 presidential election, 165-167; 2001 presidential election, 169172; political transformation of, 32-39, 40 Benin National Builders, 166 Best, Kenneth, 184, 194 n.2 Birindwa, Faustin, 227 Bittaye, Musa, 185 Biya, Paul: and Cameroon democracy, 85-86, 89, 109; constitutional reform, 99-102; electorialism, 9192, 95; French support, 29, 99; 1996 elections, 96-98; 1997 presidential election, 103; opposition to, 87-91; Qui sont-ils speech, 89, 90, 109 Blah, Moses, 210 Bobb, Momodou, 186 Bojang, Abdouli, 186 Boley, George, LPC, 209 Bond, Patrick, 301 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, Malawi multiparty referendum, 254 Brigades Mixtes Mobiles (BMM), 98 Bryemah, J. Kormah, 207 Bugeaud, General, on property rights, 2 Burkina, reforms in, 149 Buthelezi, Mangosutho: and AIDS crisis, 291; and Mbeki, 287 Bwanali, Edward, UDF, 256 Bwanausi, Harry, MDU, 255 Camara, Assan Musa, GPP, 190 Cameroon: constitutional reform, 89, 90-91,99-102; democratization of, 39-40, 85-86, 108-110; development aid, 29; ethnic violence, 44; human rights abuses, 105-107; 1992 elections, 93-94; parliamentary system, 26;

353 presidential elections, 96-98; post¬ colonial constitution, 24 Cameroon Democratic Union (CDU): legislative elections, 102; multi¬ party system, 88; presidential elections, 96, 103; Tripartite Agreement, 90 Cameroon National Union, 86 Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM): legislative elections, 92-93, 94, 102; in multiparty system, 88; resignations from, 91; in single¬ party system, 86; Tripartite Agreement, 90 Cape Verde, multiparty elections, 40 Capital, Zimbabwe struggle, 324-325 Capitalism, in Zambia, 62 Caucus for National Unity (CNU), 72 Ceesay, Ebrima, 184 Ceesay, Ousman “Koro,” 186 Ceesay-Marraneh, Kumba, 185 Central African Republic, multiparty elections, 40 Chakuamba, Gwandu, 246-247 Chakuamba, Gwanga, 259-260, 274 n.13 Cham, Mamat Omar, 186 Cham, Momodou C., 185 Chaziya, Lynda, 245 Cheru, Fantu, on copper industry, 51 Chibwe, Ephraim, MMD, 55 Chidiac, Michel, 165 Chigawa, Manken, 267 Chihana, Chakufwa: financial affairs, 273 n.10; Malawian opposition, 253-254, 258, 272 n. 1; multiparty elections, 255, 257-258, 259, 262, 273-274 n.l 1; post-elections, 263-264 Chikwaka, Jasiman, MMD, 73 Chiluba, Frederick: election of, 62, 65; ethnic policies, 71; ideology of, 63; MMD, 55, 56, 59; opposition to, 78-79; political tactics, 72, 73, 74; regime of, 40, 66-67, 69, 72, 76, 80-81; and repressive tactics, 73, 74-78 Chipimo, Elias, MMD, 53-54, 55

354

Index

Chirac, Jaques, on African democracy,

86 Chirwa, Orton: death of, 254; and Mafremo, 251; MCP, 244; newspaper story on, 259 Chirwa, Vera, 252, 254, 259, 261 Chisanga, Patrick, 54 Chisha, Edward, 70 Chitala, Derrick: corruption scandal, 69; ethnic policies, 71; purge of, 73; ZADECO, 72 Chiume, Harry, AFORD, 258, 274 n.12 Chiume, Kanyama: CSR, 251,255; MCP, 244 Chiwanga, David, 245 Chongwe, Roger: corruption scandal, 69; MMD, 55, 65, 73; purge of, 73 Christened Action Front for Renewal and Development-Alafia (FARDAlafia) (Benin), 162, 164 Christian Council of Malawi (CCM), Banda regime, 251 Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), Banda regime, 251 Ciroma, Alhaji Adamu, 131 Citizenship, and democratization, 141 Citizenship law, Benin, 164-165 Civic education, DRC, 235 Civil associations, Nigeria, 122-123 Civil rights: liberal democratization model, 198-199; political democratization, 198 Civil rights score, methodology, 198 Civil service: Benin, 36, 162; and democratization criteria, 42; Gambia, 194-195 n.6 Civil society: and democratic consolidation, 160-162; democratic transition theory, 115, 145; and democratization, 134— 135; in liberal democratization model, 199; in Liberia, 203-204, 205; in Malawi, 243, 246; as necessary condition, 155-156; obstacles to, 309; in Zimbabwe, 320,321,325 Civil society perspective, democratic transition, 115, 117 Cohen, Herman, 89, 227

Cold War: budget subvention, 28-29; impact of end, 28, 58, 117, 121, 217,219, 220-221 Colonialism: in Africa, 1-2, 18, 23; and commerce, 2; European objectives, 18; in Liberia, 199— 200; post-World War II, 1-2; in Zimbabwe, 322-323 Commercial Farmers’ Bureau, 53 Commercial Farmers’ Union (Zimbabwe), land policy, 331 Committee for National Consensus (CNC) (Nigeria), 126 Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), 333 Communal lands (Zimbabwe), land policy, 329, 331,332 Communist Party of Benin, 33, 162, 164, 167-168, 174 n. 17 Competition and Fair Trading Act, Zambia, 67 Congo (Brazzaville), national conference, 31 Congolese Rally for Democracy (CRD), 219 Congress for a Second Republic (CSR), Malawi, 251,255 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU): AIDS crisis, 290, 291; and ANC, 292-293; formation of, 279; and GEAR, 288; poverty reduction, 301-302; Tripartite Alliance, 278, 286, 288289, 293; and Zimbabwe crisis, 295 Consolidated Fund, Ghana, 43-44 Constitution: Eritrea, 309, 311-318; Gambia, 182-183; Malawi, 244, 254, 267-268; South Africa, 282283, 289-290 Constitutional Court, Benin, 164-165, 171 Constitutional liberalism, South Africa, 277,293 Constitutional Review Commission, Zambia, 74, 75 Constitutionalism: African state, 8; in Cameroon, 89, 90-91, 99-102; in the DRC, 235-236; as a military

Index restraint; 43-44; in Nigeria, 125— 126; and SCOP A, 296-299; in South Africa, 293 Constitutions, formation of, 22-28 Consultative Committee, Cameroon, 99, 100-102 Cooper industry: MMD Manifesto, 61; in Zambia, 51-52, 68 Corruption: African state, 14, 69; Banda regime, 37, 244; and democratization, 10; and economic underdevelopment, 42; in Malawi, 268-269; in Nigeria, 123-124; and urban elites, 4 Cote d’Ivoire, parliamentary system, 26 Coulon, Christian, 144 Current des Forces Progressistes (CFP) (Cameroon), 91 Cuttington University College Student Association, Liberia, 203 Dahirou, Sali, 104 Dahomey. See Benin Daisalla, Dakole, MDR, 93 Dambazau, Alhaji Lawan, 133 Dankoro, Soule, 165 Darboe, Ousainou: arrest of, 185; 1996 presidential elections, 183; 2001 presidential election, 190, 191, 192; UDP, 180 Dasuki, Alhaji Ibrahim, 118 De Souza, Isidore, 38, 146 Debt relief, economic reconstruction, 158 Decolonization, consequences of, 22; and European colonists, 23, 24; process of, 18 Defense of the Republic (MDR) (Cameroon), 93, 94, 102 Degeno, Lucien, 165 Deleza, Waddson, 257 Democracy: ANC role, 277, 278, 279293, 299-300, 303; Arab linguistic origin, 109; Benin, 152-160; MMD Manifesto, 60; and post¬ colonial urban elites, 4; prerequisites for, 155 Democracy movement, Cameroon women, 107-108

355

Democratic Alliance (DA): South Africa politics, 283-285, 286; Zimbabwe crisis, 295 Democratic and Social Christian Party (PDSC) (DRC), 228 Democratic Party (DP) (South Africa): and DA, 283-284, 285; early strategy, 278; party politics, 282, 283 Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN), 126 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): authoritarian rule, 40; corruption in, 69; ethic violence, 44; and Kabila revolution, 232-233; lessons of, 234-237; and national dissolution, 219-220, 224-232; and political reform, 217-219, 221-222; and Zimbabwe intervention, 325 Democratic transition, theories of, 115117, 145,219-220 Democratization: African states, 7-15, 17; criteria of, 41-42, 85, 115, 143-144; and external forces, 2829; Gambian post-coup, 182-184; internal pressures, 29-31; lessons of, 42-45; liberal model, 198-199; Nigerian challenges, 125-130; Nigerian positive signs, 130-134; recent past, 39-42, 141-142; world support, 236-237; Zimbabwe land reform, 338-341 Denton, Abou, 186 Deutsch, Karl W., 117, 124 Dibba, Modou, eviction of, 186 Dibba, Mustapha, 190 Diouf, Abdou, 144, 168 Diversity, Growth and Poverty Reduction in Cameroon, World Bank, 98 Diya, Oladipo, 123 Djagoue, Kouessan, 161 Doe, Samuel: overthrow of, 205-206; regime of, 205-206, 208, 213 Dokie, Samuel, 207 Donors’ Conference, Zimbabwe, 326 Dorothee, Sossa, 170 Dossou, Robert, Benin, 36-37

356

Douglas, Tonye Graham, 120 Drammeh, Yaya, 189 Drought, Malawi, 248, 249 Duplessis, Maurice, 122 Dynamique interne pour la Dignite du Prevenu, 106 Eboua, Samuel, 105 Economic development: Chiluba regime, 66-68, 69; and democratization, 10, 142, 159; MMD Manifesto, 60-61; and statism, 20-21 Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), Zimbabwe, 324, 327-334 Ecumenical Council of Malawi, Banda regime, 251 Education: AFPRC expansion of, 187— 188; Benin reforms, 38; MMD Manifesto, 61-62 Eigen, Peter, 103 Ekindi, Jean-Jacques, Cameroon, 9697 Ekwueme, Alex, 120, 136 n. 10 Elah, Francis, 120 Elected officials, Nigeria, 127-128; 130 Election laws: in Cameroon 92, 95; Eritrean constitution, 314 Elections: ANC dominance, 280-281, 283-284; Banda regime, 244; in Benin, 151; democratization criteria, 40, 91; in liberal

Index land redistribution, 323; new dispensations, 7 Eritrea: democratization obstacles, 309-311; draft constitution, 311315; leadership crisis, 11; military restraint, 43; suspended constitutional implementation, 315- 318 Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF): centralization of power, 316- 317; draft constitution, 312; National Charter, 316 Ernest, Ebrima, 184-185 Ethiopia: Eritrean war, 315, 317; government collapse, 28; leadership crisis, 11; military restraint, 43 Ethnic conflict: consequences of, 44; in the DRC, 226; in Malawi society, 243-244; in Nigeria, 129; in Rwanda, 230 Ethnic diversity, and democratization, 9-10 Etiebet, Don, 120 European Community: Banda regime, 249; development assistance policy, 29 European Economic Community, Benin, 34 European Union (EU), and trade, 12 External debt. See Foreign debt Faal, Pa Modou, Gambian repression, 185

democratization model, 199; in Liberia, 206, 209; in Malawi, 253— 254, 255-262; Malawi

Falae, Olu, 120, 122, 129-130 Faseun, Frederick, 122 Faulkner, T. J. R., 202

referendum, 254-255; in Nigeria, 113-114

Federal Charter Commission (FCC): and Abacha regime, 128;

Electoralism, Cameroon, 91-98

democratic steps, 130-131, 132133

Elites: African constitutions, 22-28, current status, 1; post-colonial state, 3-4, 17

Feinstein, Andrew, 297, 299 Fika, Alhaji Adamu, 131

Emergency Powers Act, Liberia, 204 Enahoro, Anthony, 122

Firestone Agricultural Workers’ Union, 208

Entrepreneurship: governance structures, 17; Independence goals, 3; post-colonial goals, 4 Environment: and democratization, 1011; Independence goals, 3; and

Foncha, John Ngu, 100 Foreign debt, African states, 14, 28, 310 Forestry Commission, Zimbabwe land policy, 331,333

Index “Formal democracy,” 115, 130 Forum for the Promotion of National Stability (FPNS), Nigeria, 123 Foucault, Michel, 145 France: African policy, 173 n.2; and Benin government, 33, 34, 173 n.2; and SNC, 150; Tripartite Talks, 89 Franco-African Summit, attack on, 165 Francophones: African constitutional process, 25; Cameroon hegemony,

88 Freedom House: Benin’s rating, 169; Gambia’s rating, 193; survey, 198,

212 French Fund for Cooperation and Development (CCCE), Cameroon, 98 Front for Democracy and National Unity (FDUN) (Benin), 164 Fukuyama, Francis, 117, 128-129, 134 Gabon, authoritarian rule, 40 Gadama, Aaron, 245 Gambari, Ibrahim, 125 Gambia: international sanctions, 179, 181-182; legislative elections, 179, 183; military coups, 179, 180, 181-182; post-coup democratization, 182-184; presidential election, 179-180, 190-193 Gambia Bar Association (GBA), 185 Gambia National Army, Nigerian training, 181 Gambia People’s Party (GPP), 190 Gambia Worker’s Union (GWU), 185 Gaye, Baboucarr, 189 General Sani Abacha Foundation for Peaceful Execution of the Transition Program (GESAM), 123 Generation Action Progress, Benin, 162 Ghana: military influence, 9; military restraint, 43-44; multiparty elections, 40; reforms in, 149 Glasgow, Edwin, 272 n.l Globalization: African response to, 13; and African state, 310,311;

357

democratic transition, 117; and economic underdevelopment, 42; and Zambian economic crisis, 5253 Gourevitch, Philip, 230 Governance theory, variants of, 156— 157 Government of National Unity (GNU), South Africa, 282 Gramsci, Antonio, 90, 147 Grand-pas-du-Millenaire, 105-106 Grassroots Democratic Movement (GDM), (Nigeria), 126 Green, Deborah, 222 Grey, Earl, on property rights, 2 Gross, Jean-Germain, 198 Group of Fifteen, Eritrea, 315, 316 Group of Study and Research on Democracy and Social Development in Africa (GERDDES-Africa), Benin, 166 Growth, Employment and Redistribution Program (GEAR), ANC, 278, 288, 292, 293 Guinea, parliamentary system, 26 Gwede, Focus, 246 Haidara, Sadibou, 185-186 Hall, Mike, 245,271 Halperin, Morton, 236 Ham, Melinda, 245,271 Hapunda, Frederick, 57-58 Hausa-Fulani people: ethnic tension, 129; in Nigeria, 115; transition politics, 119 Havel, Vaclav, 88 Health care, modern Africa, 11 Heath, William, 298 HIV/AIDS: and democratization, 12; impact of, 11; Mbeki policy, 288, 289,290-292, 303 Houngbedji, Adrien, 164, 166, 169, 171 Huband, Mark, 227 Human capital, 42, 43 Human Development Index (HD1): Benin, 158; and democratization, 144; Gambia, 180-181 Human Poverty Index (HPI), Benin, 158-159

358

Human rights: and democratization, 13-14; Independence goals, 3; MMD Manifesto, 76; Muluzi government, 265-266, 270-271; new dispensations, 7 Human rights abuses: Banda regime, 243, 244-247, 250, 266, 274 n.17; in Benin, 165; Buhari junta, 118; in Cameroon, 105-107; in Eritrea, 309, 315, 318; in Gambia, 182, 184-187, 189-190, 193; in Liberia, 198, 203,205-209; Muluzi government, 272; in Nigeria, 122, 128; and SADC, 300; in Zambia, 76-78 Human Rights Commission, Nigeria, 133 Human Rights Committe, Benin, 166 Human Rights Watch, Liberian report, 198, 208 Humanism, Kaunda ideology, 57, 58, 62 Hume, David, on divine monarchy, 95 Igbo people: ethnic tension, 129; in Nigeria, 115 Independence struggle: consequences of, 22; goals of, 3 Independent Electoral Commission (IEC): Gambia, 191, 192; South Africa, 280 Indigenous Business development Center (IBDC), ESAP, 324 Industrial and Labor Relations Act, Zambia, 67 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), South Africa, 280, 281,282, 286 Institutional organization: during colonialism, 1-3, 19; and democratization, 41-42; indigenous structures, 7; national conferences, 31-38; and post¬ colonial state, 8-9, 17 Insurance Companies (Cessation and Transfer) Act (Zambia), 67 Interim Committee for a Democratic Alliance (ICDA), Malawi, 253 International financial institutions (IFIs), and democratization, 142,

217, 220

Index International Monetary Fund (IMF): African assistance, 6-7; and Benin government, 34, 37, 153-154, 159; ESAP, 324; and globalization, 311; and liberalization policies, 310; and Malawi economic crisis, 248; MMD Manifesto, 63—64; policy reforms, 28-29; and Zambian economic crisis, 52, 58 International Organization of Securities Commissions, globalization, 311 Islam, in Nigeria, 113 Jahumpha, Balia, dismissal of, 185 Jakande, Alhaji Lateef, 117 Jallow, Omar, Gambian repression, 185 Jammeh, Kemeseng, 192 Jammeh, Yahya: assassination attempt, 185-186, 195 n.8; criticism of, 188; future prospects, 193-194; and Gambian constitution, 182183; human rights violations, 186; infrastructure development, 187; 1996 presidential elections, 179— 180, 183; opposition to, 189-190; PIEC, 182; seizure of power, 179; 2001 presidential election, 190— 193 Janha, Abou Sara, 186 Jaquatte, Jane, 236 Jatta, Sedia, 184, 190 Jawara, Sir Dawda: exile of, 186; overthrow of, 179; regime of, 180-182, 194 n. 1; return to Gambia, 193-194 Jehovah’s Witnesses, Banda regime, 246,266 Johnson, Roosevelt, ULIMO-J, 209 Joseph, Richard: on democratization, 223; tripartite model, 220 Judiciary Autonomy Act (Zambia), 76 Juwara, Waa Lamin, Gambia, 185 Kabila, Joseph, 233 Kabila, Laurent: assassination of, 233; attempted overthrow of, 232-233; evaluation of, 234-235; and Rwandan government, 232;

Index seizure of power, 219, 230-231, 234; Western support, 237 Kadzamira, Cecilia, 266, 274 n.17 Kagame, Paul, 234 Kalenga, Henry, on MMD, 56 Kaleso, Peter, 260, 274 n.12 Kalima, Chuulu, MMD, 73 Kalua, Kamlepo, Malawi, 262 Kanyanaya, George, UFMD, 255 Kashita, Andrew, MMD, 55, 59 Kasonde, Emmanuel: Chiluba regime, 67, 71; and NP, 72 Kasum, Alhaji Abdulkarim Olola, 130 Kaunda, David, 247 Kaunda, Kenneth: control of press, 77; defeat of, 64-65, 66; deportation plan, 74-75; ethnic policy, 70; political reemergence, 73-74, 83 nn.46, 47; pro-democracy opposition, 52, 53-59; road accident, 76-77; Zambian rule, 40 Kaunda, Wezi, “Zero Option,” 78 Kavindele, Enoch, 58, 73 Kebbeh, Abdoulie, exile of, 186 Kebbeh, Momodou, Gambia, 184 Kenechuku, Chikeluba, Gambia, 185 Kengo, Leon, DRC, 227-228 Kenya: corruption in, 69; multiparty elections, 40; single-party system,

6 Kenya African National Union (KANU): defeat of, 30; and Malawi MCP, 260 Kerekou, Mathieu: Benin democratization, 32-33, 34, 35, 36-37, 38, 40, 144-145, 154; and Benin press, 161; concession of, 151; economic conditions, 159; 1996 election, 153, 165-167, 174 n. 18; regime of, 147-149, 167— 168; seizure of power, 146-147; and SNC, 150; Soglo reprisals, 165; 2001 election, 169, 170, 171, 172 Kibaki, Mwai, Kenya, 40 Kieh, George Klay, Jr., 205 King, C. B. D., 202 Kleenex Parliament, 93 Kodock, Augustine, UPC, 93, 94

359

Kouandete, Maurice, 146 Koukpaki, Clotaire, UCR, 167 Kromah, Alhaji, LURD/ULIMO-K, 209,210 Kurdish refugees, 222 Labor movement: Banda regime, 245; Malawi multiparty elections, 257258; Malawi, strikes, 252, 253; Muluzi government, 265; Zambian economic crisis, 52, 53, 57 Land, Eritrean constitution, 314-315 Land Acquisition Act (Zimbabwe), 335,341 Land Acts of 1975 (Zambia), 61 Land occupations movement, Zimbabwe, 336-337, 341-342; world-wide, 319 Land redistribution: African state, 14; social movement theory, 320-321 Land redistribution movement, and ESAP, 327-334; Zimbabwe ideology, 334-337; Zimbabwe policy, 14,311,325-334 Land Survey Act (Zambia), 61 Language policies, 9, 14 Large debat, 99, 109 Large-scale commercial farms (LSCF), Zimbabwe, 329, 330-333, 334 Latirafo, Charles, 164 Law, liberal democratization model, 199 Law Society of Zambia, Constitutional Review Commission, 75 Leadership, constitutional structure, 25; modern Africa, 11,41 Leahy, Thomas, 263 Legal Resource Center, Malawi, 252, 254 Legal system: and colonialism, 1-2; and democratization, 14, 17 Legitimacy, definition of, 22 Lemarchand, Rene, 232 Leon, Tony: DP leadership, 282, 283, 284, 286; and Marias, 284-285 Lewanika, Akashambwata, NP, 72 Lewanika, Inonge, NP, 72 Liberalization, Malawi factors, 248255

360

Index

Liberia: civil war, 40; during colonial period, 199-200; future prospect, 211-212; human rights abuses, 203,205, 206-209; military/“milivian” period, 205; multiparty elections, 40; PDI, 204, 205; during political liberalization, 203-204, 212; presidential elections, 206; during state consolidation, 202-203, 212; during state expansion cycle, 201— 202; during state-formation, 200201; transitional government, 210 Liberia: A Country Human Rights Report, 198, 206 Liberia: Human Rights Developments,

198 Liberia Peace Council (LPC), 209, 210 Liberian People’s Party, 205 Liberians United for Reconstruction and Democracy (LURD), 209 Liberty Laws (Cameroon), 85, 88 “Liberty Spots,” 88 “Liberty Square,” 97-88 Living Our Faith, 250 Lomasney, Kristen, 236 Longwe, Aaron, 258, 260 Lozis people, ethnic policies, 71 Luchembe, Mwamba, coup attempt, 58 Lugard, Lord Frederick, 2, 18 Lungu, Malani, 244 Lusaka Cease Fire Agreement, DRC, 233 Machel, Samora, death of, 248 Madagascar, multiparty elections, 40 Maga, Hubert, Benin, 32, 146 Majority rule, South Africa, 281,293 Malaria, health care system, 11 Malawi: current conditions in, 266267; economic crisis, 248-249; liberalization factors, 248-255; multiparty elections, 40, 254-262; Muluzi government, 265-272 Malawi Congress Party (MCP): on AFORD, 258-259; attacks on, 253; and Chihana alliance, 263264; end of political monopoly, 254; establishment of, 243, 244; expulsions from, 246-247; and

multiparty elections, 255, 260, 262, 273 n.3; and Muluzi government, 268-269; post¬ election politics, 264, 268-269, 275-276 nn. 19-23; power of, 254 Malawi Democratic Party (MDP), 255, 262; Malawi Democratic Union (MDU), 251-252, 255 Malawi Freedom Movement (Mafremo), 251 Malawi National Democratic Party (MNDP), 255 Malawi Peoples Party (MMP), 251252 Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP): disarming of, 254-255; establishment of, 243; and multiparty elections, 262, 263; and Muluzi government, 267; Operation Bwezani, 270 Mali: democratic consolidation, 153; national conference, 31, 89 Mandela, Nelson: on AIDS crisis, 291— 292; apartheid dismantling, 249; and Kaunda reemergence, 74; and power transfer, 40, 41 Mangwazu, Tim, 255 Marais, Peter, Cape Town, 284-285 Market system, rejection of, 20 Masheke, Malimba, UNIP, 56 Massok, Mboua, 105-107 Matenje, Dick, 245 Mauritania, parliamentary system, 26 Mauritius, multiparty elections, 40 Mbaku, John Mukum, 15 Mbakwe, Sam, 117 Mbeki, Thabo: and ANC, 278-279; arms deal, 298; NEPAD, 295; presidency of, 287-288, 289, 290; and South Africa, 40, 41 M’bembe, Fred, Zambian press, 77 Mbikusita-Lewanika, Akashambatwa, MMD, 55 Mbye, Fafa, dismissal of, 185 Mbye, Sheriff, arrest of, 186 Media: in Benin, 160-161; democratization criteria, 42; in Eritrea, 309; in Gambia, 182, 184185 189, 192-193; in Liberia, 203,

Index 207-208, 209; in Malawi, 245246; Muluzi government, 270271; in Nigeria, 128; in Zambia, 77-78 Mexico, land redistribution, 319, 338 Mhango, Bazuka, 254 Military: in Benin, 33, 173 nn. 6, 7; constitutional process, 26-27; democratization criteria, 42; in DRC, 219, 228-230; and economic underdevelopment, 42; in Malawi, 270, 276 n.24; and Malawi referendum, 254-255; new dispensation, 7; and Nigerian democratization, 132; post¬ colonial role, 4, 9; restraint of, 4344; in South Africa, 297 Military coups: in Benin, 146; failed Zambian, 57, 58; in Gambia, 179, 180, 181; in Liberia, 205; in Nigeria, 136 nn. 4; outlawing, 43 “Millennium message,” 85, 109 Minister of territorial administration (MINAT), Cameroon, 95-96 Mitterand, Francis, development assistance policy, 29 Miyanda, Godfrey, ethnic policies, 71 Miyanda, Samuel, on 1991 elections, 65 Mobutu, Sese Seko: and ANC, 229230; human rights abuses, 14; and political reform, 217-219, 221222; regime of, 224-227, 234; Rwandan civil war, 230; self¬ exile, 219; Western support, 228229,237 “Mobutu or chaos,” 222 Modise, Joe, 297 Moi, Daniel arap: Banda regime, 247; Malawi MCP, 260; single-party system, 6 Mokoape, Keith, 297-298 Monou, Yves Edgar, 162 Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), civil war, 209, 210 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) (Zimbabwe), 294, 325, 340

361

Movement for Justice in Africa (Liberia), 203 Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD): Chiluba regime, 40, 6669, 72, 76, 80-81;and Constitutional Review Commission, 75; corruption in, 69-70; critique of, 63-64, 80; and ethnic policies, 70-72; formation of, 55-59; ideology of, 63; Manifesto, 59-62, 76, 77; media repression, 77-78; Mwanawasa regime, 68, 70, 79; 1991 elections, 64-65; opposition to, 72-74; popular resistance to, 78-79; post1991 elections, 73; 2001 election, 79 Movement for Progress (Cameroon), 96 Mozambique, Banda regime, 248, 249 Mpakati, Attati, LESOMA, 251 Mpande, Mathius, purge of, 73 Mugabe, Robert: international condemnation, 295; and Kaunda’s reemergence, 74; and South Africa, 288-289, 294-295 Mukwita, Anthony, Zambian press, 77 Mulele, Tom, MMD, 73 Mulemba, Humphery, 59, 72, 77 Multiparty democracy: in African, 142-143; in Benin, 143; Malawi elections; 255-262; Malawi referendum, 254-255; Zambian support for, 54-59; Muluzi, Bakili: multiparty elections, 255, 256, 257, 262; post-election politics, 263, 264; and Zambia, 83 n.50 Mumba, Newstead, NCC, 72 Mun’gomba, Dean, 71,72, 73, 75-77 Munthali, Machipisa, 266 Musakanya, Valentine, multiparty democracy, 54 Museveni, Yoweri, 234 Mushota, Remmy, MMD, 55, 83 n.49 Muslim community: Banda regime, 251; Malawi multiparty elections, 256 Mwaanga, Maliko, 70

362

Index

Mwaanga, Vernon: drug-trafficking,

National Party (NP): early role, 278,

69, 71; MMD, 55,59 Mwanakatwe, John, 77 Mwanawasa, Levy: corruption scandals, 69; election of, 68, 70; MMD, 55, 59; regime of, 72, 79 Mwanbira, John, 260 Mwape, Bright, 77

297; establishment of, 72; ethnic policies, 71 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 205-206,213 National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) (Kenya), 40

Mwila, Benjamin, ZPR, 72, 83 n.50 Mwila, Simon, 73 Nabulyato, Robinson, MMD, 59 Namibia: land redistribution, 14; pro¬ democracy pressures, 29 National Center Party of Nigeria (NCPN), 126 National Citizens Coalition (NCC), 72 National Commission, Benin, 37 National Commission for the Final Counting of Votes, Cameroon, 97 National Commission to Implement the Structural Adjustment Program (CNSAPAS), Benin, 35 National Committee on Devolution of Powers (NCDP), Abacha regime, 128 National Consultative Committee (NCC), Malawi, 256 National Convention of Forces (NCF), economic reconstruction, 157 National Convention Party (NCP) (Gambia), 190 National Coordination of Opposition Parties, Cameroon, 89 National Democratic Institute, Cameroon, 96 National Democratic Party of Liberia, 205 National Election Commission of Nigeria (NEC), 121, 126-127 National Electoral Commission (NEC): Benin, 170, 171; Malawi, 256 National Human Rights Commission, Cameroon, 88, 105 National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Gambia, 184, 185, 189, 192-193 National liberation, ANC program, 293-294

National Reconciliation Committee (NARECOM), Abacha regime, 128 National Reconciliation Party (NRP) (Gambia), 190 National Referendum Committee (NRC), Malawi, 256 National Republican Convention (NRC), Nigeria, 114 National sovereign conference: benefits of, 38-39; Benin, 31-32, 38, 149150, 173 n.9; Cameroon, 89 National Union for Democracy and Progress (NUDP) (Cameroon): appeasement democracy, 104; legislative elections, 93, 94, 102; presidential elections, 96, 103; and multiparty system, 88; and Tripartite Agreement, 90 Natural disasters, economic underdevelopment, 42 Ndi, Ni John Fr, 87, 96, 97, 98 New Dimensions, Nigerian civic association, 123 New National Party (NNP) (South Africa): and ANC, 286; and DA, 283-284, 285; electoral rout, 283; and GNU, 282-283 New Partnership for African Economic Development (NEPAD): adoption of, 13; and black empowerment, 300; Mbeki role, 295 Newspapers: Gambian, 184-185, 189; Zambian, 77-78 Ngulube, Matthew, corruption scandal, 69 Nguza Karl-I-Bond, 225-226 Nianlofo, Joseph, 164 Niger, national conference, 31 Nigeria: corruption in, 69, 123-124; democratic consolidation, 152; ethic violence, 44; military influence, 9; multiparty elections,

Index 40; North-South dichotomy, 114115, 118-120; power transfer overview, 113-114; restraint of military, 43; Second Republic’s constitution, 26-27; transition strategies, 121-124; Western response, 222 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), transition politics, 122 Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC), transition politics, 122 Njie, Ousainou, Gambia, 185 Njoya, Adamou Ndam, Cameroon, 9697 Nkole, Max, purge of, 73 Nkumbula, Baldwin, 76 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs): land policy, 331,333; land redistribution, 327 North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), 12 Northern Elders Forum, Nigeria, 122 Norway, and Banda regime, 249 Notre Cause Commune, Benin, 172 Nouvelle Generation, Benin, 172 Nqumayo, Albert Muwalo, 246 Nsenga people, ethnic policies, 71 Nuisance Law, colonial Liberia, 199 Nujoma, Sam, 74 Nwobodo, Jim, 120 Nyakutembe, Elias, on regional politics, 71-72 Nyerere, Julius: liberal democracy, 99; on single party system, 6, 21 Nyong’o, Peter Anyang’, 152 Obasanjo, Olusegun: administration of, 133-134; transition politics, 114, 118,119, 120 O’Brien, Donald, 144 Observatory for Electoral Activities, Benin election, 170 Oil: Nigerian dependence on, 127; Zambian dependence, 52 Okar Coup, Nigeria, 136 nn. 4 Old Whigs Party, Liberia, 201 Olumilua, Bamidele, 123 Operations Villes Mortes (Operation Ghost Towns), SNC, 89

363

Opposition, strategic elite perspective, 116 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): globalization, 311; pro¬ democracy policy, 29 Organization of African Unity (OAU): abandonment of, 13; and Banda regime, 247; Mugabe condemnation, 295 Ottou, Emah, Cameroon elections, 96, 97 Our Common Cause party (Benin), 164 Owona, Joseph, Cameroon draft constitution, 90-91 Pan-African Union for Democracy and Solidarity (UPDS) (Benin), 163, 174 n. 17 Parti de la Renaissance du Benin, 172 Parti du Renouveau Democratique (PRD) (Benin) 172 Parti Republicain du Benin (PRB), 163-164,166, 167, 174 n. 17 Partie democratique du Benin (PDB), 167 Partie du renoveau democratique (PRD) (Benin), 164 Pasinye, Laurent Monsegwo, 225 Paso, Sam, 268 Patriotic Opposition, Cameroon elections, 96 Peaceful coexistence: African state, 6; colonial period, 1-2, 18; democratization lessons, 45; and governance structures, 17; Independence goals, 3; new dispensations, 7, 10; post-colonial goals, 4 Pelletier, Gerard, 122 Penn, Guy, 92, 96 Penza, Ronald, 69, 73, 83 n.50 People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS) (Gambia), 190 People’s Democratic Party (PDP) (Nigeria), 120 People’s Party (Liberia), 202

364

Index

People’s Progressive Party (PPP) (Gambia), 181, 190 Pepple, Ama, 131 “Permanent transition,” 121 Phiri, Mannaseh, ZNBC, 78 Phiri, Masautso, Zambian press, 77 Phiri, Mlombwa, death of, 273 n.8 “Police rule of law,” 87 Political Bureau, Benin government, 33,34, 35,38 Political democratization: definition of, 198; variables of, 198 Political Democratization Index (PDI), methodology, 198 Political parties: in Benin, 161-162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 172; in Cameroon, 88; and democratization lessons, 44; in the DRC, 218, 224, 225, 227, 228; in Eritrea, 313-315; in Gambia, 180, 181, 190; in Liberia, 200-201, 202-203, 205, 206; in Malawi, 243,244, 251-252, 255; in Mozambique, 248; in Nigeria, 114, 120, 122, 126-127; in South Africa, 278, 280, 282, 283 Political rights: Liberian repression, 208-209; and political democratization, 198 Political rights score (PRS), methodology, 198 Political system: goals for new, 22; and single-party rule, 6, 21-22 Popular Front for Democracy and Justices (PFDJ) (Eritrea): human rights abuses, 318; intolerance of, 317; role of, 313, 314

“Poverty Alleviation,” Malawi, 268, 270,271 Preparing Benin’s Future, 166 Presidency: reinforced powers, 25; West African countries, 26; Zambian constitution, 74 Presidential Committee on Dialogue (PCD) (Malawi), 256 Presidential Council, Benin, 32 Presidential fiat, institutional reform, 31 Press, Eritrean repression, 309. See also Media Preventive Detention Act, Banda regime, 244-245 Private property, MMD Manifesto, 61 Privatization: African state, 14; MMD Manifesto, 61; Mwanawasa regime, 68 Privatization Act, Zambia, 67 Progressive Alliance of Liberia, 203 Progressive People’s Party (PPP) (Liberia), 203, 212-213 Property rights, 2, 10-11 Provisional Electoral Commission (PIEC), Gambia, 182 Public Affairs Committee (PAC), Malawi elections, 256 Public sphere, Nigeria, 128 Racial liberation, ANC program, 293294 Rally of Liberal Democrats (Benin), 168 Rassemblement pour la Democratic et le Developpement (RDD) (Benin),

161

Popular Movement for the Renewal (PMR) (DRC), 218

Ratsiraka, Didier, Madagascar, 40 Rawlings, Jerry, Ghana, 149

Popular Movement for the Revolution (MPR) (DRC), 218 Popular sovereignty, Nigerian

Reconstruction and Development Plan, ANC, 278 Redd, Alex, Liberia, 207

democratization, 125-126 Porte, Albert, 203

Referendum, Zambian multiparty, 57, 59

Postal Services Act, Zambia, 67 Poverty: in Africa, 158-159; in Benin,

Reformation Party, Liberia, state consolidation, 203 Regionalism, African state, 14 Reinforced presidencies,

158-159; and democratization, 10, 30; in, Gambia, 180-181, 188; in South Africa strategies, 301-302

constitutionalism, 25

Index Religion: and the African state, 14; Eritrean constitution, 314; Liberian repression, 208; Malawi repression, 250-251; MMD Manifesto, 62 Republican Party (Liberia), 201 Resistencia Nacional Moyambicana (RENAMO), and Banda regime, 248,249,263 Resource allocation: governance structures, 17; Independence goals, 3; new dispensations, 7; post-colonial goals, 4; urban elites, 4 Ressentiment, 88

Revised Sedition Code, Liberia, 204 Rewane, Alfred, 124 Richburg, Keith, 234 Road accidents, Zambian politics, 7577 Roberts, Gabriel, IEC, 191, 192 Roman Catholic church, Banda regime, 250-251,253 Roye, E. J., 201 “Rule of origin,” 125 Rural Occupiers Act, Zimbabwe, 341 Rwanda: leadership crisis, 11; Mobutu regime, 230, 231-232; Western response, 222 Sabally, Saihou, 186 Sabally, Sanna, 185-186 Sacred Union of Radical Opposition (SURO): DRC opposition, 218219, 220, 221; failure of, 222,228, 234; leadership of, 224-226, 227; program of, 223-224; Sagnia, Sidia, 183 Saine, Pap, Gambia, 184-185 Sallah, Halifa, Gambia, 184 Sallah, Ousman, 186 Sampa, Chitalu, 83 nn.49, 50 Sangala, John, 245 Sankanu, Baboucarr, Gambia, 185 Sankara, Thomas, Burkina reforms, 149 Sankareh, Ebrima, Gambia, 184 Sanneh, Nymasata, 185 Santon, Roshi, MMD, 73

365

Sao Tome, elections, 40 Sar, Samsudeen “Sam,” 186 Sata, Michael, 70, 83 n.50 Savage, Abdullah, Gambian repression, 184 Sawyer, Amos, 203, 205 Schatzberg, Michael, 234 Seade, Elliot, 189 Securities Act, Zambia, 67 Senegal: coup in, 168; multiparty elections, 40; parliamentary system, 26 Shaik, Chippy, arms deal, 297 Shamwana, Edward, multiparty democracy, 54 Sharia, and Nigerian legal system, 126, 129-130, 133, 134 Shilowa, Mbhazima, 291 Shinkafi, Alhaji Umaru, 120 Sierra Leone, multiparty elections, 40 Sikasula, Rankin, UNIP member, 56 Sikatana, Mundia, MMD, 55 Silwamba, Eric, purge of, 73 Singhateh, Edward, 186 Single-party system: African state, 6, 21-22; in Cameroon, 86; in DRC, 217; in Eritrea, 317; in Liberia, 203; in Malawi, 244, 247; Malawi referendum, 254-255; and MMD Manifesto, 59; in Tanzania, 6; Zambian opposition to, 53-56 Sisulu, Lindiwe, 287 Skin pigmentation, Liberia, 200-201 Social Democratic Front (SDF) (Cameroon): establishment of, 87, 88; legislative elections, 102; 1997 presidential election, 103; Tripartite Agreement, 90 Social Democratic Party (SDP) (Nigeria), 114 Socialist League of Malawi (LESOMA), 251 Soglo, Jean-Claude, 165 Soglo, Nicephore: and Benin democratization, 38, 40, 144-145, 154; and civil society, 160, 161, 162; interim government, 151, 156,157-158,159-160; 1996 election, 166-167; political

366

repression, 165; seizure of power, 146; 2001 elections, 169, 170— 172; technocrat, 163-164 Somalia: government collapse, 28; Western response, 222 Sondashi, Ludwig, MMD, 59 Songlo, Rosine, PRB, 163, 164 South Africa: apartheid policy, 14; as a contested democracy, 277; democracy in, 277, 278, 279-293, 299-300, 302-303; democratic consolidation, 152; democratic opposition, 281-282; and land redistribution, 14; leadership crisis, 11; multiparty elections, 40; national conference, 31; pro¬ democracy pressures, 29; restraint of military, 43; youth policy, 13; Zimbabwe policy, 288-289, 294296, 303 South African Communist Party (SACP): AIDS crisis, 291; and GEAR, 288; Tripartite Alliance, 278,286, 288, 293 South African Development Community (SADC): human rights abuses, 300; Mugabe condemnation, 295 South African Human Rights Foundation (SAHRF), Banda regime, 250 Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council (SATUCC), Malawi elections, 257, 258 Southern Leadership Forum (SLF), formation of, 127 Sovereign National Conference (SNC): in Benin, 149-151; in Cameroon, 89-90; in the DRC, 224; French role, 173 n.9; in Togo, 31, 150 Soviet Union: and African dictatorships, 28; and Benin government, 33; and Cold War policies, 42-43, 58 Sowe, Badara, Gambia, 184-185 Soyinka, Wole, 122 “Squatter” communities, Zambabwe, 335-336 Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA): arms deal

Index investigation, 298-299; and government repression, 303; role of, 296-298 Statism: consequences of, 5-6, 20-21; development model, 5, 20 Sterns, Scott, 317 Strategic elite perspective, democratic transition, 115-116 Structural adjustment loan (SAL), Benin, 35, 36 Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), in Benin, 34-36, 37 Student Unification Party (Liberia), 203, 207 Subjectship, democratization, 141 “Substantive democracy,” 115 Sugar Corporation of Malawi (SUCOMA), strike against, 252 Supreme Court on War Crimes, Sierra Leone, 210 Takembeng, reenactment of, 107-108 Tambajang, Fatoumata, 185 Tanzania: reform pressures, 30; single¬ party system, 6 Tatah, John Nformi, 94 Taylor, Charles: election of, 206;

human rights abuses, 206-209, 213; and NPFL, 205-206; resignation of, 210 Tchoungui, Andze, MINAT, 95, 102 Telecommunications Act, Zambia, 67 Tembo, John: Banda government, 245, 260, 262, 263, 274 n.17; Muluzi government, 266, 270 Tembo, Paul, 73 Tevoedjre, Albert, 164, 165, 166 Third Chimurenga, 322 “Third wave of democratization,” 197, 205,213 Tinubu, Bola, 122 Togo: authoritarian rule, 40; national conference, 31, 150 Tolbert, William, regime of, 203-204, 208, 212-213 Tonga people, ethnic policies, 71 Torh, James, Liberian repression, 207 Town and Country Planning Act, Zambia, 61

Index Trade: colonialism, 2; modern Africa, 12-13

367

Transition Implementation Committee (TIC), Abacha regime, 128

Uganda: leadership crisis, 11; multi¬ party elections, 40; restraint of military, 43; youth policy, 13 Unaogu, Laz, 126

Transition to Democratic Governance

Union des Federalistes Republicans

in Africa, The: The Continuing Struggle, 14-15

Transparency, Cameroon, 103-104 Transparency International (TI), Malawi, 268 Treatment Action Campaign, AIDS crisis, 291 Tripartite Agreement, Cameroon, 90, 91 “Tripartite Alliance,” South Africa, 278, 286, 288-289, 293 Tripartite Talks, Cameroon, 89-90 True Black Man’s Party (Liberia), 201 True Liberian Party (Liberia), 200-201 True Whig Party (Liberia): military period, 205; political liberalization, 203, 212; state consolidation, 202-203, 212; state expansion, 201-202 “Truth commission,” Malawi, 266 Tshabalala-Msimang, Manto, 290, 291 Tshisekedi, Etienne: administration of, 230, 231; and SURO, 224-225, 226,227-228 Tsvingirai, Morgan, Zimbabwe, 288— 289,294,295 Tuberculosis, health care system, 11 Tubman, William V. S., regime of, 202-203,208,212 Twe, Didhwo, 203 “Two-turnover test,” 143, 154 Udenta, Udenta O., 127 UDF: Malawi multiparty elections, 255, 256-257, 260, 261, 262, 273 nn.4, 5; Muluzi government, 265, 271-272; Muluzi government bribe, 268-269; post-election politics, 263-264, 275-276 nn. 1923 UDF Young Democrats, 272 UDI, Muluzi government, 265, 270

Independants (UFERI), DRC, 225 Union des Populations du Cameroun

(UPC): legislative elections, 93, 94, 102; multiparty system, 88 Union for Change (Cameroon), 96 Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) (DRC), 227 Union for the Republican Cause (UCR), 167 Union pour la Democratic et le Progres Social (UDPS), DRC, 224

United Democratic Congress (Nigeria), 127 United Democratic Party (UDP): Gambian opposition party, 180; and 1996 presidential elections, 183; and 2001 presidential election, 190 United Front for Multi-Party Democracy (UFMD): Malawi multiparty elections, 255; Malawi opposition, 251-252, 252-253 United Kingdom, Banda regime, 249, 250-251 United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO-J), civil war, 209 United National Development Program (UNDP 2000), African poverty, 21 United National Independence Party (UNIP): ethnic policies, 70, 71, 82-83 n.43; extralegal opposition, 78; on multiparty democracy, 54, 55; and 1991 elections, 64-65, 66; opposition to, 56-59; revival of, 72-74, and ZCCM pension fund, 52 United Nations: Malawi multiparty referendum, 254; refugee support,

222 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), HDI, 144, 158, 180-181

368 United Nations Joint International Observer Group (UNJIOG), Malawi elections, 262 United Nigerian Congress Party (UNCP), 126 United Party for National Salvation (Nigeria), 127 United People’s Party (Liberia), 205 United States: African dictatorships, 28; Cold War policies, 42-43; foreign policy, 29, 222-223 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 272 n. 1 University of Benin, democratic consolidation, 161 University of Liberia Student Union, 203, 207, 209 University of Malawi, student opposition, 252 University of Zambia (UNZA), students opposition, 58 Van Donge, Jan Kees: on Banda’s legacy, 273 n.6; on Malawi elections, 255, 257, 258, 264-265, 275 nn.20, 22; on Zambian elections, 64, 65, 79 Van Schalkwyk, NNP, 284, 285, 286 Vavi, Zwelinsima, COSATU, 291 Velvet Revolution, 87 Venter, Denis, 248, 252, 271-272 “Virtual democracy,” 115, 235 Visa policies, African state, 14 Wade, Abdoulaye, seizure of power, 168 Walubita, Kelly, MMD, 55 West Africa, parliamentary system, 26 Whitehead, David, 253 Wina, Arthur, 55, 59, 72 Wina, Nakatindi, drug-trafficking, 70 Wina, Sikota, drug-trafficking, 70 Wiwa, Ken Saro, 222 Women: under Banda regime, 243, 247; in Cameroon resistance, 107— 108; current status of, 12; and democratization lessons, 45; and democratization pressures, 41; in the DRC, 236; in the MMD Manifesto, 61-62

Index Wood, Gavin, 298-299 Wood, Michael, 272 n.l Woodroffe, Jessica, 158 World Bank: African assistance, 6-7; and Banda regime, 247, 248, 249; and Benin government, 33, 34, 35, 153-154,158, 159;changed policies, 269-270; and ESAP, 324; and globalization, 311; and liberalization policies, 310; MMD Manifesto, 63-64; policy reforms, 28-29; report on Cameroon, 98; and sub-Sahara Africa report, 35; and Zambian economic crisis, 52, 58 World Trade Organization (WTO), globalization, 311 Yoruba people: ethnic tension, 129— 130; Nigerian ethnic group, 115; transition politics, 119-120, 123 Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), Nigerian civic association, 123 Zafy, Albert, Madagascar, 40 Zaire: ethnic tensions in, 70-72; human rights abuses, 14; national conference, 31. See also Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Zakzaky, Ibrahim, 129 Zambia: authoritarian rule, 40; constitutional reform, 74-76; corruption scandals, 69-70; economic decay, 51-53; human rights abuses, 76-78; infrastructure problems, 68-69; 1991 elections, 40, 64-65 Zambia Airways, privatization of, 68 Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU): ideology of, 63; 1991 elections, 65; opposition to Chiluba, 79, 82 n.33; single-party opposition, 53, 57 Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM): MMD Manifesto, 61; pension fund, 52; privatization of, 82 n.35

Index Zambia Democratic Congress (ZADECO): ethnic policies, 71; opposition politics, 72, 73 Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC), 77 Zambian Republican Party (ZPR), 72 Zambian Revenue Authority Act, 67 Zimbabwe: colonial era, 322-323; DRC intervention, 325; economic crisis, 51, 52, 53 325-326; election dispute, 300, 303; and ESAP land policy, 324, 327-334; income distribution patterns, 323-324; land occupation movement, 336-337, 341-342; and land redistribution, 14,311,325-334; land redistribution impact, 337-341; land reform ideology, 334-336; post-independent government, 319; pro-democracy pressures, 29, 5365; and South African

369

government, 288-289, 294-296, 303 Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front (ZANU-PF): electoral manipulation, 303; and occupation movement, 321-322, 325, 326, 337, 340; land reform ideology, 334 Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), opposition leadership, 325 Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), land occupation, 327 Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWA): land reform ideology, 334, 335; land occupation, 327, 337 Zingani, Willie, 260 Zinsou, Emile-Derlin, Benin, 32, 146 Zulu, Gray, UNIP, 58 Zuma, Nkosazama, 296

About the Contributors OSITA G. AFOAKU received the Ph.D. degree in Political Science from Washington State University. He holds a joint faculty appointment in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and African Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to his current appointment, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. His works have appeared in the Western Journal of Black Studies, The Journal of Conflict Studies, and the Journal of Third World Studies. His research interests include U.S.-African/Third World relations, UN Security Council reform, democratization, sustainable development and human rights in Africa. ‘KUNLE AMUWO, has, since April 2000, been Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of the North, South Africa. From 1997 to 1999, he was the Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria's premier university. He was, between 1988 and 1990, the Sub-Dean (Undergraduate Affairs) of the Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan as well as the National Secretary of the Nigerian Political Science Association. Professor Amuwo is well published in the areas of comparative politics and administration, civil-military relations, international political economy, and Francophone Africa. He is the senior editor of Federalism and Political Restructuring in Nigeria (1998) and coeditor of The Nigerian Military and the Struggle for Democracy in Nigeria: The Abacha Years, 1993-1998 (2001). He has also authored General Babangida, the Military and the Civil Society in Nigeria: Anatomy of a Personal Rulership Project (1995) as well as Confronting the Crisis of the University in Africa: Nigerian Academics and Their Many Struggles (1999). He is presently working on a manuscript-length work titled The Nigerian Military and the Nigerian Democratic Project. JULIUS O. IHONVBERE is President of the African Center for Constitutional Development in Lagos, Nigeria and Special Adviser to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on Policy and Programs Monitoring. Previously, he was Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and Program Officer in the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation in New York City. His research interests are in state-civil society relations, demilitarization, democratization, structural adjustment, globalization, and human rights in the developing world with special interest in Africa. His articles have appeared in numerous international journals, including Aj'rica Toady, The Journal of Modern Aj'rican Studies, International Politics, International Journal, Asian and African Studies, World Development, and the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. His recent books include Nigeria: The Politics of Adjustment & Democracy (Transaction Publishers, 1994); Economic Crisis, Civil Society and

372

About the Contributors

Democratization: The Case of Zambia (1996); Africa and the New World Order (1998);

(with Timothy M. Shaw) Illusions of Power: Nigeria in Transition (1990); (with John Mukum Mbaku) Multiparty Democracy and Political Change: Constraints to Democratization in Africa (1998); (with J. M. Mbaku) The Transition to Democratic Governance in Africa: The Continuing Struggle (2003); and Labor, State, and Capital in Nigeria's Oil Industry (1999). He is the recipient of the first Mario Zamora Memorial Award from the Association of Third World Studies, Inc. VICTOR ADEFEMI ISUMONAH is Professor of Political Science at the University of Ibadan and a specialist on Nigerian and African political economy. He has published extensively in refereed journals on transition politics in Africa. He is currently researching several aspects of Nigeria’s troubled transition to democratic governance. NANTANG JUA has worked as Charge de Recherche in the Institute of Human Sciences in Yaounde, Cameroon and taught at the University of Buea. Presently, he is Maitre de Recherce in Cameroon’s Ministry of Scientific Research, as well as Assistant Coordinator of Ethno-Net Africa. During this period, he has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the African Studies Center in Leiden, the Netherlands; Senior Fulbright Scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.; a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts; and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has contributed several articles and book chapters in the areas of international political economy, social transformations, and state construction. Presently, he is working on a book on social transformation and democratization in Cameroon. GEORGE KLAY KIEH JR. is Chair of the Department of Political Science at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia. His research interests are in conflict and peace studies, American foreign policy, international organizations, political economy, and African politics. His research has appeared in such journals as Journal of Peace Research, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Studies in Conjlict and Terrorism, Social Science Journal, Arab Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies.

He is the author of Dependency and the Foreign Policy of a Small Power (1992) and Ending the Liberian Civil War: Implications for United States Policy towards West Africa (1996) and coeditor of Zones of Conjlict in AJrica: Theories and Cases (2002). He and Professor Pita Ogaba Agbese have just completed a book project on the military question in West Africa. JOHN MUKUM MBAKU is Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, and Associate Editor (Africa), Journal oj Third World Studies. He is also President of the African Educational Foundation for Public Policy and Market Process, Inc. He has previously taught at the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University. His present research interests are in public choice, constitutional political economy, trade integration, intergroup relations, and institutional reforms in Africa. During 1994-1995, he served as the President of the Association of Third World Studies, Inc. He is the author of Institutions and Reform in AJrica: The Public Choice Perspective (1997) and Bureaucratic and Political Corruption in Africa: The Public Choice Perspective (2000); editor of Corruption and the Crisis of Institutional Reforms in AJrica (1998) and Preparing Africa for the Twenty-First Century. Strategies for Peaceful Coexistence and Sustainable Development (1999); coeditor (with Julius O. Ihonvbere) of Multiparty Democracy and Political Change:

About the Contributors

373

Constraints to Democratization in Africa (1998); (with Mwangi S. Kimenyi) Institutions and Collective Choice in Developing Countries: Applications of the Theory of Public Choice (1999); (with Pita Ogaba Agbese and Mwangi S. Kimenyi) Ethnicity and Governance in the Third World (2001); and (with Julius O. Ihonvbere) The Transition to Democratic Governance in Africa: The Continuing Struggle (2003). KIDANE MENGISTEAB is Head and Professor of African Studies and Political Science, Department of African and African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University. He teaches courses on international relations theory, global political economy, political economy of developing areas, African politics, international economics, and ethnic conflicts in the Third World. He has published extensively on African political economy. His latest book is a coedited volume titled, Globalization and the Dilemmas of the State in the South (1999). SAM MOYO is Director of the Southern African Regional Institute for Policy Studies and Associate Professor of Agrarian Studies at the University of Zimbabwe and an expert on land issues in southern Africa with specific interest in Zimbabwe. He is also Vice President of the Executive Committee of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He has researched and published extensively on Zimbabwe’s controversial compulsory land acquisition program and has provided significant input into policy on land in the country. He is the author of several books on economic nationalism and democratization in Zimbabwe. ABDOULAYE S. SAINE is Associate Professor of African Studies and International Political Economy at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He has published widely on the military, human rights, and democratization in The Gambia and West Africa. ROGER SOUTHALL is Executive Director, Democracy and Governance, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria. He was formerly Professor of Political Studies, Rhodes University. He has also taught in universities in Lesotho, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has published extensively on African and South African politics and is editor of The Journal of Contemporary African Studies.