Africa and the search for democracy.

Africa today, forty years after the independence of Ghana, the first on the continent, presents a picture which is at the same time enthralling and despairing. More the latter than the former, however. Fighting is on the increase throughout Africa as competition for political power continues unabated. There is a broad swath of instability and armed conflict on the continent, with all regions afflicted - from Sudan to Senegal, to Somalia and Sierra Leone, from Algeria to Congo-Brazzaville to Kenya and even to the unlikely Zambia. Military spending in sub-Saharan Africa remains high due to ongoing civil wars and the outbreak of new ones. According to the Military Balance, the 1997/8 report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the military budget of 'peaceful' Botswana makes it the fourth highest African defence spender after South Africa, Angola and Zimbabwe. (Botswana has a potentially violent dispute with Namibia over a small border island.) The list of trouble spots is endless.

This prevalence of conflict has created a new phenomenon in Africa: the projection of power by African states into neighbouring countries when they believed that their security interests were at stake. For instance, last May, Rwandan and Ugandan armies helped Laurent Kabila oust long-term dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in the neighbouring Republic of Congo, Angolans assisted former military dictator, General Denis Sassou-Nguesso, in overthrowing the elected government of President Pascal Lissouba last October, after a four-month civil war. In Sierra Leone, Nigeria has more or less intervened militarily to restore the ousted government of President Tejan Kabbah in the name of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Compared to the widespread condemnation that greeted Tanzania's invasion of Idi Amin's Uganda in 1979, these latest incursions have not generated criticism. This trend of outside interference appears to have increased with the weakening of African states and might continue as the ranks of failing states grow. Some analysts believe that this type of interaction, especially in central Africa, will ultimately lead to deeper integration as championed by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni who visualises the forging of a co-operative bloc in the region through conflict. Museveni, at last year's Edinburgh Commonwealth heads of government summit, advised Africans to stand up and fight if they are unhappy with their political lot. 'If you think you do not have democracy then you should fight for it instead of pinning your hopes on international organisations,' said Museveni who led a five-year bush war to topple dictatorship in Uganda.

The move towards democracy in Africa is currently suffering numerous setbacks with military force being used to supplant the expressed wishes of the electorate in most cases, while in others, people's wishes are just ignored as will be shown in this article which examines the numerous political hotspots in sub-Saharan Africa. Concentrating on two of the most turbulent regions - central and west Africa - we shall review events in the two Congos (Brazzaville and Kinshasa) taking into account the role played by Uganda, Rwanda and Angola, and the situation in the run-up to the Kenyan presidential elections. In the equally complex situations in west Africa, the political problems facing Sierra Leone will be examined in addition to the political impasse in Nigeria's transition to civilian rule in light of the avoidance action taken at the Edinburgh Commonwealth meeting.

Central Africa

Five years after losing the presidential election General Denis Sassou-Nguesso is back in power in the Republic of Congo. His long-time political rival, Pascal Lissouba, the democratically elected president, fled to Burkina Faso for refuge in October. In a swift offensive, Sassou-Nguesso's Cobra militia captured the capital, Brazzaville, and the second city, Pointe Noire after four months of fighting which left the country's infrastructure - already damaged from the conflict engendered by the disputed 1992 elections - in ruins. This is the first time a former African leader has taken power with the help of a private army. For 13 years, between 1979 and 1992, Sassou-Nguesso was president of Congo and ran it as a single-party Marxist state with the backing of the Soviet Union and Cuba. International and internal pressure for change forced Sassou-Nguesso to hold multi-party elections in 1992 in which he was roundly beaten to third place by Lissouba over two rounds. This resulted in serious clashes between the armed forces and militias of the political factions with fierce-sounding names like Sassou-Nguesso's Cobras and Prime Minister Bernard Kolela's Ninjas. The existence of these militias certainly compromised the chances of lasting peace in Congo as agreements to disarm them were never implemented, and they grew in strength.

The new round of conflict started last June when government security forces tried to disarm Sassou-Nguesso's militia ahead of the national election scheduled for the following month, partly because Sassou-Nguesso's political stock, which had been eclipsed by the dominance of southern politicians, was rising as a consequence of the government's austerity programme. After weeks of inconclusive fighting, a dramatic change was witnessed in Sassou-Nguesso's military fortunes early in October.

The balance of power was tilted by the intervention of the Angolan army, which had been funnelling weapons and logistical support to the Cobras in retaliation for Lissouba's support for the Angolan rebel movement, UNITA. Angola's direct military intervention was ostensibly to wipe out UNITA bases in Congo's Southern Region and those of the separatist movement in Cabinda. With the end of Mobutu's rule last May (his death four months later in exile in Morocco was met largely with indifference in the country he ruled for three decades) UNITA's leader, Jonas Savimbi, was forced to relocate his African office to Brazzaville and then to Pointe Noire - making Congo the launch-pad for invading Angola. The Angolan government initially denied involvement in the Congo civil war; however, President dos Santos congratulated Sassou-Nguesso on his victory, expressing hopes that their countries' co-operation and good relations will continue.

That the civil war in Congo-Brazzaville, which claimed over 10,000 lives, quickly assumed regional dimensions, sucking in neighbouring states, is the legacy of the recent military struggles in the Great Lakes region. The overriding reason for this regional interest in Congo, apart from the presence of UNITA, was because there were elements of the defeated Zairean army (FAZ), the rump of the conquered Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and the Hutu lnterahamwe militia, fighting alongside the two Congolese protagonists. This ensured the keen interest of the Rwandan, Congo-Kinshasa and Angolan governments - all of whom had played prominent roles in the alliance that overthrew Mobutu in Zaire. The ousted president's pleas to the international community not to recognise the new government went unheeded as former colonial master, France, appears reconciled to the return of Sassou-Nguesso, who promptly named a 33-member cabinet and promised to hold new elections soon, while seeking recognition for his government from neighbouring countries.

Over six months after seizing power, Laurent Kabila, the self-declared president of the DRC, appears not to be in control of his country: the sense of paralysis in all sectors of the economy deepens; this was compounded by the prolonged stalemate with the United Nations over alleged massacres of Hutu refugees that occurred during the seven-month uprising. Kabila obviously lacks the necessary experience to lead a nation, talk less of one in dire straits as DRC. This fact has been used in his favour: Kabila cannot be expected to quickly turn around a country which has faced decades of neglect within such a short time. But domestic opinion polls show that Kabila's popularity rating has plummeted since the euphoric days of the rebellion when he was seen as a symbol of much-needed change. But now that he is trying to govern a nation, people are judging him by his actions and not his promises, which included the establishment of democracy in Congo - hence the name change, which many say is the only thing that has changed. There is growing belief that Kabila is as bad as Mobutu, with his equally superficial style of leadership. The bad old laws are still in operation, the army's bad behaviour remains unchanged by Kabila's political re-education about the consequences of theft. Corruption and self-enrichment by officials continue to be an obstacle to economic recovery and reconstruction.

What is more Kabila has not shown the requisite skills to attract the much-needed short-term foreign investment. At a time when western governments seem prepared to make funds available as penance for their support for Mobutu, Kabila is exasperating would-be benefactors and friends, including South Africa's Nelson Mandela. It could be argued that this is because Kabila is being buffeted by two competing forces: meeting conditions set by the international community before aid can be provided, i.e. the implementation of political reforms and exposing human rights violations committed during the rebellion, and repaying neighbouring governments that supported his alliance which could be implicated in the human rights-abuse investigations. For one, the Rwandan soldiers, who assisted in the rebellion, remain the dominant force in eastern DRC where the uprising began and alleged massacres occurred. (Rwanda's predominantly Tutsi government has been suspicious of the UN since the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops during the 1994 massacre of ethnic Tutsi and Hutu moderates by extremists. The government argues that the UN was aware of the genocide plans and did nothing to prevent it, thus the UN should examine itself before investigating others.) Kabila's Rwandan backers appear to be losing patience with him because he fails to heed advice rendered.

Since assuming office last May, Kabila has reshuffled his government several times. The latest, unveiled in October, comprises 20 ministers - nine of whom are former exiles - and four deputies, with Kabila holding the defence portfolio as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Kabila is criticised for not including established political figures such as Etienne Tshisekedi, a prominent anti-Mobutu politician. In short, the Congolese are still waiting for the new life after Mobutu.

Meanwhile, parts of Rwanda were again plunged into violence as armed gangs identified by government officials as Hutu extremists raided the northern part of the country from last September. The new wave of violence is said to have been triggered by the return of the former Rwandan government soldiers (FAR) and their allies, the Interahamwe militia, who have been accused of trying to finish 'genocidal acts' they were prevented from completing in 1994. They are said to have taken advantage of the mass repatriation of Rwandan refugees from the DRC. And next door in Burundi, which is under a trade and transport sanction imposed by its neighbours in July 1996 in response to the coup that brought the current leader, Major Pierre Buyoya, to power, there have been armed confrontations between Tanzanian and Burundian soldiers, who are accusing the former of harbouring Burundian rebels. Relations between the two countries have become frosty over the past months particularly over the suitability of former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere as mediator in the Burundian crisis. This issue has polarised opinions in Burundi, despite Nyerere's involvement since the peace initiative began in 1996. For instance, the former ruling Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), which was toppled by Buyoya on July 25 1996 - three years after it won the country's first democratic elections - is pro-Nyerere while the Union for National Progress (UPRONA), the main opposition until its alliance with FRODEBU in 1994, believes otherwise. Tanzania is determined to continue leading the regional resistance against the military regime in Bujumbura; possible military intervention is not ruled out.

In Uganda, President Museveni, who has been faced with an array of rebellions in several parts of the country since coming to power in 1986 after a five-year guerrilla campaign, has agreed to grant amnesty to the rebel groups including the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by former choirboy Joseph Kony, which has been fighting the Ugandan army in the north around Gulu on the border with Sudan with the backing of the Sudanese government - in retaliation for Museveni's support for the separatist Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The Ugandan army is also engaged in another war against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) along the border with the DRC, while another group is fighting the government in the west Nile area. While Museveni insists that the rebel groups will be defeated, he agrees that there has been a lot of pressure for the amnesty to be granted. The government has introduced the amnesty bill to parliament, which is certain to become law but whether this will end all insurgencies is doubtful.

With the year drawing to a close, Kenya was once again stumbling towards an election with violent incidents erupting in the country's coastal regions, leaving more than a hundred dead and several injured. President Daniel arap Moi's government says it is ethnic violence, others see a devious pattern unfolding, with the government deeply implicated. The last time this election was held, a similar spate of violence mysteriously erupted in the Rift Valley - an opposition stronghold - in time to bolster Moi's re-election prospects. Shortly before the elections, Moi's ruling party Kenya African National Union (KANU) rushed through legislation requiring presidential candidates to receive only 25 per cent of the votes in five of Kenya's seven provinces. This ensured that ethnic tensions would split Moi's opponents, while Moi could win without obtaining 50 per cent of the total vote. (The opposition failed to agree on a single candidate, allowing Moi back with just 36 per cent.) It would appear that history repeated itself with the government orchestrating a campaign to keep Moi's 'successful' formula intact. Moi, one of the last 'African big men' - Africa's old leadership - since the demise of Mobutu, the 73-year-old president, who has been in power since 1978, won a fifth five-year term. [Contemporary Review will have an assessment of this election in the April issue.]

West Africa

In this region, violent conflicts also abound. Senegal is in the grip of a long-running secessionist struggle in the southern province of Cassamance, which began in 1982; the Liberia/Sierra Leone border continues to be unstable, with the possibility of upturning the fragile peace in Liberia; there are rumbles of social discontent in Ivory Coast and Guinea, linked to the wars in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia, which are potentially explosive. The 1994 ethnic war in northern Ghana briefly flared up again last October and political tension is rising in Togo, where President Eyansigbe Eyadema, the current longest-serving African leader (he has been in power for 30 years) schemes to obtain a fresh mandate in elections due by mid-1998, just as Nigeria's military leader, General Sani Abacha, seeks to transform into a civilian president in the junta-administered transition programme despite international criticism. Next door in Cameroon, President Paul Biya schemed to gain another seven-year term with a 90 per cent electoral win in last October's poll with the incensed opposition, who had boycotted the poll, promising vigorous civil disobedience in response. All of which points to a lack of solid democratic credentials in this region. Ten of the 15 current heads of government (including Sierra Leone) in west Africa came to power through coups.

Last May, Sierra Leone witnessed its third coup in five years as the rump of its undisciplined and unpredictable army overthrew the 14-month old government of President Kabbah. To great surprise, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) - as the junta christened itself - led by Major Johnny Paul Koromah, who was sprung from jail (awaiting trial for an earlier take-over attempt) by the coup-plotters, asked the rebel forces - the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - which it had been officially at war with since 1991, to join its government.

The coup was widely condemned by the international community, particularly the regional organisation, ECOWAS, which was divided between pursuing negotiations or using military force to restore democratic rule. Nigeria and current ECOWAS chairman, whose troops form the bulk of ECOMOG, the regional peacekeeping force stationed in Sierra Leone, favoured the military option. In the run-up to the 20th ECOWAS summit in Abuja, Nigeria, General Abacha expended considerable military and diplomatic energy to persuade other leaders to formally endorse military action. He was denied active support for a Nigerian-led assault on the Sierra Leone junta. However, the nature of the land and sea blockade, precipitated by the coup, was agreed as was a commitment to seek UN Security Council assistance to make the sanctions universal and mandatory. The UN resolution backing ECOWAS sanctions enabled the Nigerian-led ECOMOG to vigorously police the comprehensive embargo. This led to increased incidents of military confrontation between the AFRC soldiers and ECOMOG troops, resulting in many civilian fatalities.

The combination of the sanctions and the tactical military clashes led the AFRC to agree a peace deal on October 23 with the ECOWAS ministerial negotiation committee - comprising Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria - which called for an immediate cease-fire, disarmament and demobilisation from December, leading eventually to the restoration of a broad-based government headed by President Kabbah on April 22 1998. The peace plan, concluded in Conakry, Guinea, which also promised amnesty for the coup leaders and the release of RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, currently detained in Nigeria on gun-running charges, was widely hailed in Sierra Leone. Although the cease-fire appears to be holding, the peace plan has been rocked on several occasions. There is widespread scepticism that the junta would honour the six-month long plan. This view was confirmed when Major Koromah (who promoted himself Lt. Col. last December) called for the immediate withdrawal of Nigerian troops and a meeting to discuss the modalities for disarming combatants with ECOMOG in November, as outlined in the peace plan, was postponed. These incidents increased suspicions that the junta was building its forces for a massive attack on the peacekeepers before the disarmament process started.

This pessimism was bolstered by the tough stance adopted by Liberia's President Charles Taylor against ECOMOG. Taylor demanded that the troops should leave by December, even though ECOMOG's mandate under the provision of Abuja II Peace Accord runs till February 1998. Also in contravention of the accord, Taylor recruited and deployed 1,000 security agents along the border with Sierra Leone, many are suspected to be former fighters in his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). (ECOMOG is supposed to help set up the Liberian military and police forces.) This comes at a time when Taylor, who has been against the use of military force in Sierra Leone, accusing a former rival war-lord, Alhaji Kromah, of trying to destabilise Liberia by rebuilding his United Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO-K) forces which are allegedly fighting alongside anti-junta groups in Sierra Leone. There are suspicions that Taylor is not interested in peace in Sierra Leone for personal economic reasons. It is said that he will do all he can to ensure this, including supporting the military junta, particularly because RUF leader, Sankoh, is Taylor's protege.

The Conakry agreement was subsequently buried under increasing waves of armed skirmishes between junta forces and traditional hunter militias called CDF, on the one hand, and between the junta and the peacekeepers on the other. This degenerated into an all-out assault on Freetown by ECOMOG troops, which culminated in the violent overthrow of the junta in the first weeks of February.

Kabbah, a president without a country, who was singing the praises of Nigeria for its role in the crisis and for brokering the Conakry peace plan just before the Edinburgh summit, appealed to Commonwealth leaders (Kabbah attended the summit as a guest of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) to treat the Nigerian question with understanding. And despite the lack of progress on either human rights or governance issues as expressed in the suspension notice of 1995, the Commonwealth avoided imposing further sanctions immediately on Nigeria, giving Abacha's junta a further year's grace in which to complete a 'credible transition to civilian rule'. Only if Nigeria fails to reform along the lines of the Harare Declaration of 1991 by October 1 1998 - Abacha's promised handover date - will the organisation 'consider' specific sanctions such as an oil embargo, a ban on air and sporting links, the freezing of financial assets and foreign bank accounts of members of the junta and their families. Expulsion was still a remote possibility.

Some African countries indicated their dissatisfaction about the 'unfair' treatment meted out to Nigeria. Ghana, a member of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) - set up in 1995 in the wake of the 'judicial murder' of Ken Saro Wiwa by the Nigerian junta - has made it clear that it is unwilling to impose further sanctions because of its 'close relationship' with Nigeria. (Before the summit, Abacha paid an official visit to Ghana and Gambia to seek their support in Edinburgh, after which Rawlings visited Abuja to personally brief Abacha on the outcome.) It has been reported that Nigeria had granted west African countries generous crude oil terms, making them indebted to the military junta.

For pro-democracy activists and groups, both Nigerian and foreign, the summit was a 'disappointment' and a 'missed opportunity' which has dented the organisation's credibility because it purposely avoided controversy by promising possible future action. This contrasted sharply with the uncompromising stance evident in Auckland in 1995. Even President Mandela, incensed by the junta's insensitivity then, was in a conciliatory mood in Edinburgh - directly linked to the recent rapprochement between the two countries - partly because he was pre-occupied by a new 'priority' issue: the stalemate over the Lockerbie bombing, which is not strictly a Commonwealth issue. Mandela's request for an 'eminent persons delegation' comprising heads of state, rather than ministers, to negotiate directly with the Abacha regime, was rejected. In short, procrastination, delay and even betrayal, epitomized the summit for pro-democracy and human rights activists because Abacha had not made any appreciable progress towards democracy and good governance as demanded in 1995. The Commonwealth effectively endorsed Abacha's transition, warts and all.

The Commonwealth justifies its decision based on the formation and registration of five political parties - 'the five fingers of a leprous hand' as they have been tagged - and the holding of flawed local elections last March, as indicators of Abacha's seriousness, conveniently ignoring the fact that the whole thing is being teleguided by the junta or even that other elections have been postponed or that at such a crucial stage no politician - whether credible or not - has emerged as a presidential aspirant. In fact, it was during the summit that one of 'Abacha's parties', the Democratic Party of Nigeria, called on the dictator to be its presidential candidate, despite him not being a party member. The script seems to be playing itself out as other parties have adopted Abacha as the consensus candidate, effectively negating any elections. He did not even release any political prisoners in his last October 1 speech, including Chief Moshood Abiola, the detained winner of the annulled 1993 elections, as widely expected. Rather than release detainees, more people are being detained in the aftermath of the announcement of a foiled coup plot last December in which Abacha's deputy, General Oladipo Diya, was implicated and arrested along with eleven other senior army officers. They are currently awaiting trial. It would have been proper for the Commonwealth to have imposed some further sanctions just to ensure that as Abacha's transition train enters the home stretch, he is not tempted to welsh on his promise to hand over to a civilian government and not to himself as is being speculated.

One glimmer of hope in the region, however, is Ghana, where President Rawlings, whose second term ends in the year 2000, has strongly indicated that he is looking forward to life after the presidency - he is Ghana's longest-serving leader. He revealed that he is considering several options including his first love, flying. This is significant because it implies that, contrary to speculation, Rawlings will respect the provisions of the 1992 Constitution which limits presidential terms to two four-year periods. That Rawlings does not intend to hang on to power was further emphasised when, in October, he practically anointed his vice president, Professor Atta Mills, as his successor. This will probably ensure a smooth transition of power within the ruling National Democratic Convention in the run-up to the next election. If only other African leaders would borrow a leaf from such promising incidents of political maturity, currently few and far between, the myriads of continental conflicts might be diminished, if not totally eradicated and there would be no need for the multi-million US initiative for training African peacekeepers.

Dr Onadipe is Programme Associate at Conciliation Resources, an international non-governmental organisation working on conflict prevention and resolution.