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April 15, 2010 by mytest3 and George Ayittey
What United States President Barack Obama said in his July 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, while remarkably accurate, was not new. In fact, his message confirms what some of us have been saying for decades, best sum marized in his words as: “Africa’s future is up to Africans…Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing…That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential…a responsibility that can only be met by Africans.” Africa’s destiny lies in her own hands and the solutions to her myriad problems lie in Africa itself—not inside the corridors of the World Bank or the inner sanctum of the Oval Office or the Kremlin. Moreover, Africa’s salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions and heritage.
“African Solutions for African Problems”
When Somalia imploded in 1991, African leaders blamed the ravages of Western imperialism and urgently appealed for international assistance. The UN Security Council, in Resolution 751, authorized the establishment of the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM). Due to the delayed arrival of peacekeepers and armed looting of relief food supplies, what began as a minor peacekeeping operation led to a deployment of 30,000 US troops to oversee and protect international humanitarian operations under the code name Operation Restore Hope. With this objective, US Marines and Rangers landed on Mogadishu beaches on December 9, 1992. But the mission, costing over US$3.5 billion, went awry. Following the deaths of 18 US Rangers, the United States pulled out of Somalia in 1993, and the United Nations followed a year later.
That disaster led me to coin the expression “African solutions for African problems,” which derives from two unfortunate phenomena. The first is the unnerving propensity of African leaders to seek foreign solutions to every crisis rather than look inside Africa for them. Second, though noble and well-intentioned, foreign solutions often do not fit Africa’s unique political and socio-cultural topography and have thus failed. Furthermore, foreign solutions often prove financially costly and take a great deal of time to implement.
Unfortunately, people have hijacked and misused the phrase “African solutions for African problems.” In the West, some interpreted it to mean that Africans needed no Western help and would solve their own problems themselves. In Africa itself, some leaders understood the expression to mean solutions crafted in Africa by African leaders or organization such as the African Union, rather than in Washington. However, both misinterpreted the true meaning. The real African solution is one rooted in African culture, tradition, and heritage, but not cut off from the rest of the world.
In law, Western jurisprudence focuses on punishment for the guilty. In contrast, the African notion of justice mandates restitution, forgiveness, and reconciliation to restore social harmony. Africans believe that when two people fight, the entire village is affected. Therefore, conflict resolution requires not just a settlement between the two disputants but also an effort to repair frayed social relationships. For example, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established after the dismantling of apartheid in 1994, based itself on this African tradition. If every white person, guilty of apartheid crimes, received punishment according to the Western notion of justice, few whites would remain in South Africa. Thankfully, the nation still enjoys considerable racial diversity.
In Rwanda, after the 1994 genocide which saw the slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis, the government found that the formal court system would never be able to try the 100,000 plus suspects. Such a process would have taken at least two centuries. To restore peace, reconciliation, and justice, the government turned to the traditional courts—gacaca. Over 200,000 gacaca judges were elected to hear the testimonies of members of each of Rwanda’s 9,170 cells (administrative units of about 200 people). After meeting on a patch of grass (the gacaca), judges identified the criminals. Culprits who confessed to lesser crimes and made amends to their victims obtained forgiveness. Resolving crises using methods rooted in African tradition and culture could have indeed saved the continent from many state failures.
The Evolution of the African Failed State
And yet, such African methods went largely unexplored. A careful study of Africa’s failed states reveals a disconcerting pattern. In nearly all cases, the crisis begins when one “educated” buffoon—civilian or military—assumes power and insidiously takes measures to entrench himself. He packs key state institutions, such as the security forces, judiciary, media, and the banking system, with members of his tribal, military, religious, or political group. Over time, government ceases to exist, instead being captured by a phalanx of unrepentant bandits. They use the state machinery to plunder their country’s wealth for themselves and to exclude everybody else. Eventually, this vampire state metastasizes into a “coconut republic.” Here, the rule of law is a farce. Bandits are in charge and their victims in jail. The police protect the crooks in power, not the people.
To maintain their grip on power, Africa’s despots resort to various tactics, including the brutal repression of citizens, the co-opting of opposition leaders with offers of government positions, and the playing of one ethnic group against another (a “divide and conquer” strategy). Eventually, a political crisis erupts, invariably triggered by manipulation of the electoral process. In fact, the destruction of an African country, regardless of the professed ideology of its leader, always begins with some dispute over the electoral process. Blockage of the democratic process or the refusal to hold elections plunged six African nations into civil war. Hard-liner manipulation of the electoral process destroyed Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Zaire. Subversion of the electoral process in Liberia eventually set off a civil war in 1989. The same type of subversion instigated civil strife in five other African nations in the 1990s. In Congo, for example, a dispute over the 1997 electoral framework flared into mayhem and civil war. And the annulment of electoral results by the military started Algeria’s civil war and plunged Nigeria into political turmoil.
A combination of two factors underlies all these crises. The first is the politics of exclusion and the second is the adamant refusal of a despot or the ruling elites to relinquish or share political power. Fed up with the rotten status quo, politically excluded groups mount rebel insurgencies to oust the tyrannical regimes. Nearly all of Africa’s civil wars—more than 40 since 1970—started this way. Many of these countries would have been saved had their respective autocrats been willing to step down or share political power. Rebel leaders do not seek to redraw artificial colonial boundaries; redressing historical wrongs is not in their interests. Instead, they head straight to the capital city and launch full-scale invasions because that is where power lies.
Once started, the war creates its own hideous dynamic and logic. It escalates, involves other African countries (such as in the Angolan, Liberian, and Congolese conflicts) and completely alters political discourse. The wars cause wanton destruction and gruesome carnage, projected onto screens worldwide by CNN—the “CNN effect.” Horrified, the international community calls for a cease fire and political settlement. Out of this may come a power-sharing arrangement between the government and rebel/opposition forces —often labeled as “Government of National Unity” (GNU). But GNU has seldom worked in Africa.
Essentially, GNU is a formula for joint plunder of the state. It often begins with bitter squabbles over the distribution of government posts. No one side is satisfied with what it gets. For example, the peace accord struck in January 2003 in France to resolve the crisis in Ivory Coast collapsed over a failure to allocate cabinet posts in a manner satisfactory to both parties.
Government supporters bitterly opposed the allocation of two key ministerial positions (interior and defense) to the rebel groups. At the March 2003 peace conference in Ghana, the rebel groups said they would drop their claims to the two pivotal cabinet positions in exchange for an assurance of the protection of the rebel leaders and the election of a prime minister acceptable to both parties, namely Seydou Diarra. However, the very next day chaos resurfaced in the country’s west as men attacked French peacekeeping troops and more civilians fled in search of safety. Only after major French pressure did President Laurent Gbagbo agree to concessions he would make to Diarra. The French had to send in more troops to enforce the cease-fire, as Gbagbo was reluctant to spell out the powers he would hand over to Diarra until France exerted massive pressure. On September 23, 2003, the rebels, calling themselves the New Forces, pulled out of the “national reconciliation government” set up in March, claiming they had been denied real power. Only a handful of ministries, all run by Gbagbo, had budgets. Similar squabbling over the distribution of posts led to resumption of hostilities in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone.
Satisfying each side’s demands results in an enormous expansion of the state bureaucracy. Zimbabwe’s current GNU has 64 cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, while Kenya’s has a staggering 96. Worse, African despots seemingly never honor agreements to which they append their signatures, or they may accede to the creation of a political post but deprive it of power or a budget necessary for it to function. The bleak fate of Liberian peace negotiations provides a key example of this phenomenon.
To end Liberia’s brutal civil war, begun in 1999, in which tens of thousands were slaughtered, raped, and maimed, peace talks were held in Accra, Ghana. Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, was at that time in The Hague on trial for crimes against humanity, but he pledged on June 17, 2003 to step down under a cease-fire agreement his government signed with two rebel groups battling his regime. Under that agreement, a transitional government was to be formed from Liberia’s government, rebels, political parties, and others but without the inclusion of Taylor. His defense minister, Daniel Chea, who signed the cease-fire in Ghana’s capital, affirmed the deal.
Mediators and observers in Accra were overjoyed as Chea shook hands with Kabineh Janeh and Tia Slanger, delegates of the two rebel movements that had seized more than 60 percent of the country. Representatives from the United States, the European Union, Nigeria, and Ghana all signed the agreement as witnesses. But within hours of signing the accord, Taylor’s government started backtracking on the question of his stepping down. Taylor spokesman Vaanii Paasawe insisted that the cease-fire was the only binding part of the accord and said that the Accra talks had clarified this. He differentiated between the cease-fire and the political considerations. Only after intense bombardment of Monrovia and international pressure, as well as an offer of political asylum in Nigeria, did Charles Taylor resign in August 2003.
More than 30 such peace accords have been brokered in Africa since the 1970s, with abysmal results. Only Mozambique’s 1991 peace accord has endured, while shaky pacts hold in Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Niger. Elsewhere, peace accords were shredded like confetti even before the ink was dry, amid mutual recriminations of cease-fire violations.
Even when peace accords are successfully concluded and a GNU is established, they are short-lived. Angola’s did not last for more than six months in 1992. In South Africa, former president de Klerk pulled out of the GNU after barely one year when apartheid was dismantled in 1994. Congo’s GNU in 2003 created four vice-presidents but did not bring peace to eastern Congo, especially the Bunia region. Burundi’s civil war flared up in August 2003 again, despite the establishment of a GNU brokered by former president Nelson Mandela, and Ivory Coast’s GNU established in January 2003 proceeded in fits and starts.
Sudan’s GNU, brokered in Kenya in 2005, barely lasted a year. After battling the tyrannical regime of President Omar al- Bashir of Sudan, the late John Garang of the Sudanese People Liberation Army (SPLA), decided to join a GNU. The agreement was supposed to foster peace by melding the SPLA with the ruling party, the National Congress Party, in a national unity government that would rule Sudan until multiparty elections in 2009. But within nine months, he had perished in a mysterious helicopter crash. Though the mystery was never solved, his widow blamed the Bashir regime. Six months later, the rebel movement, now called Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) abruptly pulled out of the national unity government, citing the ruling party’s failure to honor the terms of the Kenya agreement.
Following Kenya’s violent December 2007 elections in which 1,300 people perished, a peace deal was reached and a GNU created the following February. However, that deal has been floundering, and a tribunal intended to try those suspected of organizing the violence has yet to be created. Furthermore, Prime Minister Raila Odinga recently complained bitterly that he had been sidelined and excluded from major decision-making. In Zimbabwe’s GNU, President Robert Mugabe’s party attempted to grab all the key and important ministries; it was originally allocated 15 but seized 22.
The Real African Solution
Peace accords and the GNU idea failed because they use a Western approach: direct face-to-face negotiation. The African approach is different, and naturally, better suited to Africa. In crisis-resolution, the African tradition entails consultation and decision-making by consensus. When a crisis erupted in a typical African village, the chief and the elders would summon a village meeting and put the issue to the people. There it was debated by the people until a consensus was reached. During the debate, the chief usually made no effort to manipulate the outcome or sway public opinion. Nor were there bazooka-wielding rogues, intimidating or instructing people on what they should say. People expressed their ideas openly and freely without fear of arrest. Those who cared participated in the decision-making process. No one was locked out. Once a decision had been reached by consensus, it was binding on all, including the chief.
These village meetings are indigenous African political institutions and commonplace across the continent. Despite their distinct names in various parts of the continent, the basic principles and methods employed are the same. In recent years, this indigenous African tradition was been revived by pro-democracy forces in the form of national conferences to chart a new political future in Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, South Africa, and Zambia.
Benin’s nine-day “national conference” began on February 19, 1990, with 488 delegates representing various political, religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad spectrum of Beninois society. The conference, whose chairman was Father Isidore de Souza, held “sovereign power” and its decisions were binding on all, including the government. It stripped President Matthieu Kerekou of power and scheduled multiparty elections that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist rule.
Congo’s national conference had more delegates (1,500) and lasted longer, but when it was over in June 1991, the 12 year-old government of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso had been dismantled. The constitution was rewritten and the nation’s first free elections were planned for June 1992. Strikingly, before the conference, Congo was among Africa’s most avowedly Marxist-Leninist states, but in the national conference, radical political change occurred in a peaceful manner.
In South Africa, the vehicle used to make that difficult but peaceful transition to a multiracial democratic society was the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). It began deliberations in July 1991, with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political parties and various anti-apartheid groups. The de Klerk government made no effort to control the composition of CODESA. Political parties were not excluded, not even ultra right-wing political groups, although they chose to boycott its deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a “working consensus” on an interim constitution and set a date for the March 1994 elections. It established the composition of an interim or transitional government that would rule until the elections were held. More important, CODESA was “sovereign.” Its decisions were binding on the de Klerk government. De Klerk could not abrogate any decision made by CODESA—just as the African chief could not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting.
This is the African solution. It worked in Benin, Congo, and South Africa because it was not foisted on them by foreign or regional powers. These countries learned from the experiences of other African countries and crafted their own solution, based on their own African heritage. If it worked in these countries it should work elsewhere in Africa. Unfortunately, a different model—GNU—based upon a Western approach to power-sharing has been foisted on Kenya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe by the international community and regional powers. Disaster is inevitable.
http://hir.harvard.edu/refugees/an-african-solution
Africa continent will always remain 'dark' both figuratively and literally. 
