Democratic Election Challenges in Africa

When the first of wave of democratic transformation reached Africa during the 1990s, there was a great hope for change among the first few African countries which embraced it. From Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa, people thought that democracy would replace old colonial pessimistic governments. Some even thought that democracy would bring a new era of peace and stability to Africa. However, what many regular Africans never knew back then is that democracy is a messy process which sometimes appears worse than authoritative and authoritarian regimes that African countries have experimented several decades earlier.

Take the case of Zambia and Zimbabwe where leaders during the 1990s used the democratic institutions to solidify their regimes. In Zambia for example, president Fredrick Chiluba promised democratic transformation by promising good governance while at the same time used the same institutions to slowly eradicate most political oppositions particularly one he saw where threats to his dictatorial styled democracy. The same story is true in the case of Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Uganda and with mild exception to Tanzania where democracy was somehow prospering.

After almost 20 years of experimentation with democracy in Africa, little is understood about the role of democracy in Africa and how it works. The continent is in worse shape than what it was before the introduction of democracy with many countries plagued by civil wars and ethnic tensions as a result of falsified democratic elections. From the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and recently event in Post Ivory Coast election echoed the messiness of the so called democratic election in Africa.

It is becoming self evident that Africa has not either understood how the democracy work or that the government institutions among African countries are not ripe to sustain the kind of democracy that we see in the western countries. If the first case is true that Africans have not understood how democracy works, then there is a need to educate people on how the democratic processes work to ensure that people understand the work of this messy governing mechanism. And if it is true that institutions in Africa are not strong enough to sustain the nature of the democratic transformation, then there is a choice to be made whether to develop institutions that foster the kind of the democratic transformation that we see in the western countries. However, if it is impossible at this time for Africa to develop such institutions to deal with post election issues, then it is about time for Africans to push the pause button on the democratic pendulum to evaluate why the democratic processes have not work well on the continent of Africa since its introduction to the continent.