Statement by Dr Brigalia Bam
Honoured guests, It is indeed an honour to be here today and I wish to extend my gratitude to the organisers for inviting me to this forum. The concept of gathering African expertise to discuss this topic is an excellent development. More and more, we need to engage on these subjects rather than wait for progressive thinking to come from outside the continent. You have indeed chosen a theme that is close to every African’s heart. Our media are filled with images of wars and violence and elections-related disputes and conflicts all at the same time. I have spent a number of years fighting for democratic ideals and I have found myself on the side of managing elections so that voters can give expression to their rights to choose their leaders. Most recently Dr Ping had invited me to join him in the DRC where he was doing an election-readiness assessment. I have over a number of years seen many developments across the African democratic landscape and one of the things that I’ve become convinced about is that African countries are committed to democracy. Since the 1990s we have seen transformation in almost 50 different African countries, in what we now call the ‘third wave’ of democratisation. That optimism of the early 1990s became tempered over time, as scholars complained a decade later about the lack of “real change”. I am sure that history will repeat itself in this regard. While we are all now enthusiastic about the “Arab Spring”, in a few years time we will claim that little has changed. But this view is to deny a longer view of democratic change and also assumes that all countries are the same. Once we look at how countries themselves have taken on the democratic concept and applied it in their own contexts, I believe a different picture emerges; one that is uneven but still spells hope for the future. It is uneven because each country has developed its own processes on democratisation, showing that there is not a single way in which African democracy develops. The situation in post-conflict countries is that they face challenges that are unique and often have never been encountered anywhere in the world. When we look across the continent we see large populations of citizens that are fully enfranchised who actively participate in elections and in their democratic institutions. One of the biggest yardsticks by which ordinary people measure change in a country is when it is election time. Then the media and observers and political parties are active and all the stakeholders including the international community become more visible to ordinary citizens. Election periods provide a time when a vibrant discussion can take place within civil society to debate grievances and issues that are essential for the ordinary voters. Our news is flooded with stories about campaigns and programmes around the elections. Countries like Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo show us how elections can amplify broader issues on social justice, inequality and development in our democracies. Whereas the bad new stories carry long media attention, the good news stories disappear from our television screens quicker. Peaceful transitions through the ballot box in countries like Ghana, Zambia and South Africa enjoy only a fraction of public attention if one compares them with countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia. Democratisation does not take place overnight. It represents a much longer programme where we’ve seen the transformation of the Organisation of the African Union change to the African Union and develop a very progressive Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. Other regional bodies in Asia and the Americas are seeking to draft similar documents. The path to the Charter has however not been easy, as African countries have seen their fair share of security issues such as wars and coup d’etats coupled development challenges, poverty and lack of human rights. It has become well known that Africa as a region will fail to reach the Millennium Development Goals targeted for 2015. The inter-linkages of these matters has in recent times seen the establishment of the Global Commission on Democracy, Elections and Security in early 2011. The Global Commission aims to explore how the international community can address these issues more concretely in the coming years. However we can see that the pressures to succeed on the African continent in resolving the issues of ethnicity, religion, human rights, development and poverty is felt far more than any other region in the world. While our daily lives may be filled with negative impressions of democracy on the African continent, some scholars argue that multi-party elections have seen increased liberalisation and a deepening of democratic values across not only political actors but ordinary citizens as well. We are seeing; slowly in some cases, but very importantly; an increase in the level of tolerance of opposition of political parties in some countries and this is a very important development. Whereas some see elections as once-off instant democracy, my experience in elections has shown that this is a process that takes time. In my own country we saw elections in 1994 opening the door to a process of transformation that has been developing over many years. In the beginning the changes were all about the legal frameworks and institutions that required building. In those days it was the large institutions that were seen as the custodians of democracy. Ordinary citizens were perhaps more engaged with trying to understand the change, rather than rising to the defence of threats to democratic values. Over the years there has been an increase in the number of voices of people who have embraced our constitutional values and are willing to challenge decisions made by public institutions, whether it be the Executive or even bodies such as the Electoral Commission. We have in fact witnessed how more citizens have found their voice over time and are using it to defend their rights, whether fought for them or not under Apartheid. This is a message that I wish to bring: that an electoral tradition that has integrity and credibility opens the door for the increased fostering of democratic values and with it security. There are a few challenges that come with this ideal. Firstly, I want to talk about the challenges in developing institutions that manage elections. For them to have integrity and credibility themselves, they must be professional. It is not just good enough for them to be established in law, but they require a measure of independence in their operations as well as their structure. As relatively modern institutions of public service, they should be developed and nurtured as key institutions in every single democracy. Part of this professional development is the creation and sustaining of forums where electoral management bodies can come together. With any professional, belonging to organisational forums/bodies of your peers is critical for your own development. It is in these structures that elections can be discussed amongst professional peers and mutual challenges addressed. These forums help in the professional development of election management bodies. However, who funds such structures? Is it the international community? Does the money come from African coffers? And how regularly? When we look at overseas aid that comes to elections, it seems that it is still focussed on the electoral event. Though the electoral cycle; which speaks of a longer view of elections as a process; is commonly referred to, donors still seem to focus on the election day-related supported. This brings me to the second challenge; namely the development of citizens and civic education. After an election there is little assistance that is devoted to this critical area. Citizens need to understand their constitution, how it has been developed, the values contained in these documents and how constitution building can be strengthened. It enjoys attention during election time, but seldom afterwards. We see some of our countries have very open borders and we see constant migration of people from one country to the next. Where violent conflict is the order of the day, the influx of refugees pose challenges for voter registration and the conduct of elections. Special provisions need to be put in place to assist voters out-of-country or abroad and this right to vote needs to be protected and provided for. The impact of economic migrants or refugees fleeing conflicts impacts the local population as well. In South Africa xenophobic violence has shocked us to the core. African citizens attacking other African citizens speaks to a lack of development on one hand, but it also speaks to the fact that our citizens lack an understanding of each other. We need to invest far more into the civic education that develops all our people in understanding what it means to hold political leaders to account and how democracies function. This brings me to the issue of young people’s engagement in democracies. On the African continent we are told that we have the world’s youngest population on a regional level. Economists say we are a new market where their goods can be traded and sold. Africa is looked at in terms of money. Yet, we have an aging group of leaders that will require replacement one day. How are the young leaders of the future going to be schooled? And what calibre do we expect them to be? Increasingly young voters are going to make up our voter registers and our candidates lists. While we are seeing globally that voter turnout is decreasing slightly, what we are also witnessing is that the electorate is becoming younger. Will we only be relying on political parties and the media to school them in democracy issues? We need to invest much more in the education of our youth in matters of electoral democracy. The Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute represents one example of such an initiative and we need to see more of these programmes across the continent. The last challenge that I raise is the issue of gender in politics. We have a situation in many African countries where religion and culture seek to separate women as equals in politics. This, at times, is structurally built in, as some electoral systems exclude women, not on purpose, but in application. It is shown that special provisions or quotas are often the only means by which women’s participation in politics can be improved. Rwanda shows us that this is possible, but in too many African countries we see the opposite happening with women’s representation in political office dwindling. Countries like Kenya that are undergoing major change hold the promise of increased transparency and equality, but this requires more than words on paper. The present electoral systems that have been used need to be strengthened to allow for more inclusivity and representation of various groups such as addressing gender, ethnicity and religious issues in Africa. The two dominant systems used in Africa need serious debate to address power-sharing issues so that we tackle the intensity of electoral competition without it resulting in violence. First-Past-the-Post and Proportional Representation has served us well, but now is the time to start debating how these can be strengthened to address these African issues. And this is one of the major issues on the continent. We have lofty ideals and marvellous documents like the Charter. But we have still not ratified it and it will require brave governments to implement it once ratified. There are issues that the Charter holds as ideals, such as the issue of unconstitutional change of government or the manipulation of constitutions to retain power, that require dialogue to ensure that our democracies live up to the expectations of the Charter and ordinary citizens. We are seeing that repeated elections are good for African countries. We now need to invest more in those institutions like election management bodies, improved civic education especially to our young people and increasing equality along gender lines for society, both at the level of the legal framework and the level of ordinary lives. These are ways in which I believe ordinary African citizens’ lives can be touched to improve democracy in our respective countries.
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