Strong parties needed to entrench development and democracy

Development and democracy in Africa are on a collision course – and at a crossroads. Recent events in Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa demand a relook into the role of political parties in ensuring that democracy promotes, not undermines, development.

Ever since Deng Xiaoping spearheaded a new brand of thinking that combined socialist ideology with pragmatic market economy over 25 years ago — opening China to foreign investment and the global market and transforming it into one of the fastest-growing economies and pulling over 600 million people out of abject poverty — debate has revolved around the causal link between development and democracy.

Hitherto, this debate revolved around two intellectual planks. One view, associated with Bruce Mesquita and George Downs, is that economic liberalisation does not lead to liberal democracy (Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005). Simply put, development can proceed without democracy.

The second view, articulated by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, is that economic development inevitably leads to the deepening of democracy (Foreign Affairs (March/April 2009).

ECONOMIC GROWTH

In a word, economic growth creates an entrepreneurial middle class that inexorably begins to demand control over its own destiny, ultimately forcing even repressive governments to give in to democracy.

However, election-related uncertainties in Africa, as elsewhere, show that the link between economic development and what is generally referred to as liberal democracy is actually quite weak and getting increasingly weaker.

The single lesson learnt from Kenya’s “double elections” in 2017 is that liberal democracy has eroded gains made in development and imperilled future efforts to eradicate poverty. It is estimated that the country lost nearly Sh1 trillion by the end of December.

In recent months, African political thinkers have been rethinking the plight of the beleaguered Anglo-Saxon model of liberal democracy. 

They have turned attention to political parties as an alternative framework of anchoring development and democracy based on the idea of “democratic centralism” in which political decisions reached by a strong party formation (through its democratically elected bodies) are binding upon all members of the party.

ELIMINATE POVERTY

While still “looking West” for models of economic development, Africa is looking East for models to safeguard development, eliminate poverty and implement long-term vision of development such as Kenya’s Vision 2030.

They are inspired by China’s meteoric rise from a poverty-stricken Third World country to a superpower! China’s model of democratic centrism is increasingly studied as a possible option to ensure that uncertainties relating to elections and liberal democracy do not undermine the gains made in development and in fighting poverty and under-development.

On February 16, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s nine Cabinet Secretary nominees were sworn in to complete a 22-strong Cabinet expected to spearhead his Big Four agenda — manufacturing, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and food security — to underpin his development legacy. His Jubilee Party plans to create 1.3 million manufacturing jobs by 2022 and achieve a 100 per cent health coverage for every Kenyan.

To finish the war that Africa’s founding fathers declared on the “three enemies” after independence (ignorance, poverty and disease), Africa will need strong democratic and inclusive parties.

JUBILEE PARTY

In September 2016, Kenyatta launched the Jubilee Party of Kenya as a merger of 11 political parties as the largest political formation in Kenya since the defeat of KANU in 2002. This followed long study tours of the Communist Party of China and South Africa’s Africa National Congress (ANC) as parties based on the doctrine of democratic centralism.

On January 13, Kenyatta led a powerful delegation of his Jubilee Party to South Africa during the ANC’s 106th anniversary celebrations in East London. The delegation carried back home vital lessons from the ANC, Africa’s oldest party, which has ably managed two acrimonious transitions in 2008 and 2018 without endangering the security and stability of the continent’s most industrialised nation.

On February 14, the ANC proved its mettle as a guarantor of stability when Jacob Zuma resigned after the party told him to step down or face a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, paving the way for South Africa’s 4th President, Cyril Ramaphosa (65). The new President has a weighty task healing the nation, uniting and strengthening the ruling party to reverse Zuma’s legacy of scandals relating to corruption and state capture and reviving South Africa’s battered economy.

DESALEGN'S RESIGNATION

Similarly, the surprise resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn on February 15 as Ethiopian prime minister and head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) is testing the strength and resilience of the ruling coalition in one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies.

Desalegn’s resignation was seen as “vital in the bid to carry out reforms that would lead to sustainable peace and democracy” in a country rocked by months of ethnic-based violent unrest and political instability.

As in Zimbabwe, where the military linked to the powerful ruling party ZANU-PF  ousted Robert Mugabe as party leader and replaced him with his former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa in November, the removal of Zuma and resignation of Desalegn reveal the evolving role of party politburos and parliamentary caucuses in stabilising democracies.

In Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s resignation on November 21 2017, prior to impeachment proceedings in Parliament, has enabled the ruling Zanu-PF to re-engineer itself ahead of the April 2018 election and deepened its democratic centralism. As in Ethiopia, Zanu-PF has been responding to nationwide protests in July 2016 regarding economic collapse in the country.

OUSTED MUGABE

Finally, Africa’s fragile and anarchic opposition parties pose a major threat to democracy and development. The death of Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai (65) on February 14 has thrown a shroud of uncertainty over his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) less than three months after the army ousted Mugabe from power and ahead of a major election this year. In another sense, Zimbabwe signifies the failure of Western sponsored “opposition strategy” based on massive infusion of resources to the opposition. There is a need to strengthen opposition parties, increasingly in disarray.

In Kenya, the decision by the main opposition leader, Raila Odinga, to swear himself in as “people’s president” — parodied in his native Dholuo language as “kalongolongo (make believe) president”— has sounded the death knell for the NASA coalition.

Prof Kagwanja is former Government Adviser and currently Chief Executive of Africa Policy Institute