What's the Use of Honest Elections in Africa?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Rigged elections have been the bane of Africa.  Often it’s not even subtle, the election stealing. But elections there must be, in our age.  The route to legitimacy, even for authoritarians, is to be elected, by hook or by crook, again and again and again. 

But there’s a change in the air.   Maybe decades of promoting democracy have had an impact. 

The election in Ivory Coast a few months ago was considered by international experts to be free and fair.  Unfortunately, the sitting president refused to step down and the country descended into a kind of civil was that wasn’t quite confined to the capital. 

More recently Nigeria held a presidential election that outside observers considered to be miraculously well conducted.  When the results were posted, however, riots broke out in the northern part of the country.  People died.  Property was destroyed.  The locals couldn’t believe the election hadn’t been rigged—and besides, even if it hadn't, the wrong man, a Christian, not a Muslim, had won---and it was arguably a Muslim's turn. 

But let's not lose sight of this: despite long-standing misgivings to the contrary, African countries can hold elections that stand up to scrutiny.  What’s more, in the case of Ivory Coast, something most unusual happened.  Other African countries, including Nigeria, as well as the U.N., insisted that Alassan Ouattara was indeed the wholly legitimate winner and should be inaugurated forthwith.  Before this mandate could be enforced, many lives were lost.   But  a very important precedent has been set.

How discouraging!  Honest elections aren’t good enough to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.  Something else is needed, something like trust, which presents us with an interesting Catch 22.  In sub-Saharan Africa, all too often, North-based Muslims don’t trust South-based Christians to govern evenhandedly and vice versa.  But without experience of unbiased government the trust can’t be built.

Trust is especially hard to build when election campaigns specialize in fanning the flames of sectarian and/or tribal hatreds in order to consolidate vote banks.  

Now mistrust of the stranger and the outsider is an all but universal human trait, but it can be mitigated.  Larger loyalties can be propagated, although a shared nationalism is a solution more easily proposed than achieved—and, unfortunately nationalism gone rabid may substitute external enemies for internal enemies. 

Meanwhile, at this point the onus is on Goodwill Johnson in Nigeria and Alassane Ouattara in Ivory Coast to set a few precedents when it comes to good governance.  If Johnson favors the South and Ouattara favors the North, the legitimacy conveyed by a clean election will be gnawed away by valid charges of sectarianism, sectionalism. tribalism, etc.

And then there’s the problem of pervasive graft and corruption—but that’s another story for another day.