Africa is suffering a new bout of populism

As the adage goes, when the West sneezes, Africa catches a cold. Populism is on the march in the West, and Africa is suffering a new bout of populism.

As in Europe and America, the power of populism in Africa can prove to be unpredictable. In America, real estate developer turned reality TV star Donald Trump, whose strident populism has polarised the superpower, will be sworn in as the 45th President on January 20, next year. Last June, the British voted to abruptly exit the European Union, throwing Europe into a profound crisis.

As their European contemporaries, African populists share a deep hostility toward elites, mainstream politics, and established institutions. They project themselves as the voices for the “ordinary” persons and as the custodians of genuine patriotism.

Although the world’s populist fraternity is riding on legitimate economic grievances, cultural intolerance and a pushback against increased immigration, Africa’s populists share one core element with Trump’s campaign and Nigel Farage’s Brexit campaign: The narratives railing against “corrupt elites”.

This has given rise to the anti-corruption bent in populism. Africa has always been a target of anti-corruption populism. Globally, anti-corruption has always been laced with racism. “Everyone is corrupt in Kenya, even grandmothers,” screamed a disdainful title of an article in Foreign Policy Magazine. 

This rekindles memories of Mr Green, a fictional character in Chinua Achebe’s classic novel, No Longer at Ease, who brazenly claimed that: “the African is corrupt through and through,” adding that: “They are all corrupt”.

POWERFUL TOOL

Ahead of Kenya’s 2017 elections, anti-corruption populism has become a powerful ideological tool in the battle between rival elites. The vulnerability of the Jubilee Government to anti-corruption populism was palpable ahead of the Third Strategic Retreat in Sagana since Friday and ending today. 

Like the two meetings preceding it (the first in March 2014 at Mt Kenya Safari Club; the second in April 2016 at Rift Valley Lodge Naivasha), the Sagana retreat was largely framed by Jubilee’s obsessive focus on “development”.

Two sets of reasons explain why Jubilee is a sitting duck to the anti-corruption populists. First, the Jubilee power elite continue to hold an obsolete idea of governing as a linear process marked by two distinct phases: the “election phase” and the “governing phase”. An artificial dichotomy between development (as good) and politics (as bad) has undermined Jubilee party’s political capacity to defend itself against the upsurge of populism. It has also enabled the opposition to make a dramatic comeback after the March 2013 loss, to undermine government development projects and to run circles around it.

Second, Jubilee’s strategists have held a flawed view of the relationship between development and elections in polity. A senior civil servant in former President Mwai Kibaki’s administration once asked: “Tell me, why didn’t Kenyans vote overwhelmingly for the President in 2007 given his development record?”

This reminded me of General Jackson Kimeu Mulinge’s experience in the 1979 election in Kangundo. After enumerating to the voters the many public projects he had initiated in the area, they roared back: “Osa syonthe” (take all of them away).

LEGACY ISSUE

Development and elections operate on different logics. Development is a legacy issue; it is not an election-winning issue. Elections are never about economic success. Economic success does not automatically yield electoral victory. Governments with the best imaginable development records have lost elections to populists and demagogues. Despite starring economic success by Democrats (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), Al-Gore (2000) and Hillary Clinton (2016) lost to populist greenhorns.

Elections are about fear of uncertainty in the future and promise of freedom. In 1963, it was freedom from colonialism; in 2002 it was freedom from Moi-era tyranny (the “second liberation”); in 2007 it was “freedom” from “Kikuyu domination; and in 2013 it was about the International Criminal Court and threat of imperialism. 

As Trump has shown, rather sadly but clearly, power in liberal democracies belongs to populists and their ilk in opposition parties and in mobs in the streets, not technocrats brandishing statistics to prove experience or economic performance! 

While development will become critical after 2022 as Kenyatta’s legacy, 2017 will be driven by populism.

Jubilee is facing anti-corruption populism from two fronts.

The first front is ODM/CORD. Obviously, Jubilee’s success in economic development would spell doom for the opposition. ODM has avoided presenting its development blueprint, convinced that such a vision cannot deliver votes.

Populism is a more promising pathway to power. In March 2014, ODM adopted a “perpetual” or “permanent” campaign defined as a data-heavy and media-driven political strategy to counter Jubilee’s development impact and capitalise on real or imagined government failures.

SECURITY GAPS

In 2014, ahead of the failed Saba Saba Rally or Kenya’s “Arab Spring”, ODM exploited serious security gaps to project Jubilee as having failed to protect. After 2014, its strategists have resorted to a moral crusade on corruption as an ideology to win the elections.

Undeniably, some of Jubilee’s “get-rich-quick” bureaucrats have aided ODM’s perpetual campaign machine and increased the government’s vulnerability to anti-corruption populism.

ODM’s think-tanks have used audit queries raised by the office of the Auditor-General (OAG) to create in the media an impression of the mega corruption scandals. But Raila Odinga is a man under siege following widespread claims that ODM-controlled counties are involved in multi-million-shilling corruption syndicates and that he is maintained by money from counties.

The second front using anti-corruption populism to challenge Jubilee power is the so-called National Super Alliance (NASA). In many ways, the proposed alliance signifies the incomplete Moi succession in the Rift Valley after 2002.

NASA’s patent belongs to the Moi family. It is a coalition in which Kanu will survive and have sway. Its primary aim is to use its deep pockets to defeat Ruto in the vote-rich Kalenjin Rift Valley and hopefully replace him with a Moi scion or a Moi proxy as Uhuru’s Deputy after 2017.

In the do-or-die battle for the Rift Valley, anti-corruption populism is NASA’s sharp trident in the fight to oust Ruto.

Peter Kagwanja is chief executive officer, Africa Policy Institute.