Africa needs dialogue on a non-violent opposition

Revolutions are rational enterprises in which non-violence has worked better than violence. This is the main point of Blueprint for Revolution (2015) by Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of Otpor – a student movement in Serbia that had been instrumental in the non-violent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Expectedly, the Atlantic Magazine recently named Popovic “the secret architect of the Arab Spring”.

Africa’s Opposition parties and social movements have felt the impact of Popovic’s new revolutionary strategies, which are aided by the spread of communication technology in the age of globalisation.

But they have not heeded his advice on eschewing violent action and strategies.

In Kenya, three people died and several police officers and civilians reportedly injured in the Opposition’s protests to forcibly remove the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission from office.

The Opposition has temporarily suspended its anti-IEBC protests, but violence casts a dark shadow over the security of democracy.

In recent decades, the strategies of Africa’s Opposition parties reflect two distinct phases in the post-Cold War liberal order.

First is the third wave of democratisation, which started with Namibia’s independence in 1989 and the demise of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

At this stage, deepening democracy through elections and decisions in national legislatures was the main strategy of African Opposition parties.

The endgame was a “loyal opposition” that seeks to hold the executive to account while remaining loyal to the source of the Government’s power.

There has been strong oppositions in countries like Senegal, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya, although the pace of democratic progress remained slow and Africa’s multiparty systems weak.

This phase was characterised by three Opposition strategies.

The first was democratisation from above where governments capitulated to external and internal pressure for reforms.

KIEV MODEL

The Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) established by the Kanu regime in 1997 is the best example.

This pact gave representation to Opposition parties in the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) while bringing in some laws that enhanced its independence.

However, its independence remained a point of contention, which would trigger the 2008 post-election violence.

Democratisation from below was the second strategy, which saw the rise of Africa’s civil society and pro-democracy social movements.

The final strategy consisted of internal or civil wars, accentuated by the post-1989 global setting that dramatically enhanced the role of armed movements and induced their leaders to conquer state power by violent rather than non-violent means.

As Denis Tull and Andrea Mehler cogently argue in their article: The hidden costs of power-sharing (African Affairs, July 2005), power sharing agreements to end civil wars reproduced insurgent violence.

During the second phase after 2000, African Opposition parties have moved stridently from peaceful pro-democracy strategies to violence-prone strategies.

Kenya’s Opposition has moved through two stages.

The first stage, from 2000 to 2007, dominated by Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in 2005, was inspired by the Orange Revolution Ukraine where the main opposition party claimed that the run-off vote in the 2004 presidential election was marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and direct electoral fraud.

The Ukrainian model of pouring thousands of demonstrators to the streets of Kiev to win power has inspired African oppositions to contest elections, thus turning polls into the foremost cause of deaths and instability.

ODINGA'S STRATEGY

After 2010, the strategies of African Opposition parties are inspired by the “Arab Spring” protests.

Africa’s Opposition parties are now part of complex formations that draw in externally funded NGOs and benefit from the diplomatic, financial and logistical backing by Western missions.

The agendas of these Opposition amalgams, however, vary. The more moderate parties focus on ratcheting up pressure on the incumbent to make certain policy changes.

The more radical make attempts to bring down the political system in its entirety.

After 2000, the salient feature of Opposition protests is the call for international intervention to either manage elections or use military means to remove governments from power.

In Ivory Coast, Aya Virginie Toure, who organised thousands of women in numerous protests across the country, compared the Ivorian civil war to the 2011 Libyan civil war and called on the international community to remove Laurent Gbagbo from power.

Independent electoral commissions are centres of do-or-die struggles involving ruling and opposition parties.

Today, the social media is awash with postings on how Raila outfoxed the Kibaki men to gain control of IEBC before the March 4, 2013 elections.

Gaining firm control of the IEBC and the newly created Supreme Court was the cornerstone of his 2013 presidential election strategy.

His overwhelming majority in Parliament and contacts in the Committee of Experts enabled him to influence the drafting of an IEBC law so tight that only a revolution would remove it.

As Prime Minister and co-principal in the Grand Coalition Government, Raila was effectively the incumbent and the man in the driver’s seat.

Raila appointed a majority of the IEBC commissioners from his party, ODM.

FUTURE CHANCES
He used the MoU he signed with the Muslim community ahead of the 2007 elections to appoint a large number of Muslims as IEBC commissioners.

Among them was Issack Hassan, the chairman of IEBC. He managed to have five out of the nine commissioners affiliated to his ODM party. 

The Kibaki men openly protested Raila’s appointment of James Oswago as IEBC chief executive officer. They argued that it was in bad taste to have one principal in the coalition selecting both the IEBC Chairman and the CEO.

However, Raila stood his ground and Kibaki allowed him to personally select the CEO and Chairman.

However, Raila’s political coalition crumbled and, with it, his control of IEBC. In 2013, he was outnumbered and out-gunned by a Kikuyu-Kalenjin détente.

If this détente holds together in 2017, Raila’s mathematical chance of winning is slim.

Prof Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute.