Governance In Africa: Is Democracy Holding?

FROM Kenya it was Zimbabwe and from there we went to Ivory Coast before we moved on to Tunisia and finally Egypt.

In all these countries all is not well with regard to the governance of state.Kenya held presidential and national elections that came to be disputed after the announcement of the results were regarded as controversial at best. The incumbent president was believed not to have won the elections and the aftermath was marked by political infighting that culminated in a truce, which in turn created a government of national unity. But the uneasiness seems to be holding.In Zimbabwe there was virtually the same experience. The first round of the elections produced no outright winner and there was to be a re-run. One thing led to another and the situation became problematic. Political violence ensued and that culminated into a government of national unity. Again, the arrangement seems to remain shaky at best.The Ivory Coast presented a slight departure in two material ways. One, after the elections were announced, the incumbent fired the electoral commission and declared himself the winner, two, his rival also claimed victory amid international acclamation, albeit in the absence of independent national verification. The crisis continues and there seems to be no easy solution in the offing. As if this is not enough to keep the continent busy contemplating solutions, there came Tunisia and Egypt. In limited time, the head of state in Tunisia left the country and fate took over the arrangement of the new state, while in Egypt masses of people descended on the capital, Cairo, as well as a number of other cities, to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. The latter situation has kept the world guessing for the better part of the last two weeks or so.Tahrir Square is ablaze amid global consternation: what will happen and which way will Egypt go? It seems from reports that Egypt has not known democratic rule in the conventional, Eurocentric fashion and now the difficulty confronting the president is how best to proceed. From the experience of the last days it seems that President Mubarak will not unleash the armed forces onto the demonstrators while in the converse he does not seem to heed the supreme demand of the protestors. Therein lies the main contradiction: the protestors want the president to go, yet the president wants to rearrange the deck and hopefully steer the process of transition to whatever end. While there are contacts between the government of Egypt and some representatives of the extra-parliamentary groups, little is clear on what these contacts are to achieve as the goalposts remain diametrically opposite. And in the words of one of the delegates, the current talks are not necessarily negotiations. The governance of state in Africa seems to remain a serious challenge and even more, the question of democratic rule has threatened to stagnate at the theoretical level, rendering the exercise to something of a withering breeze. All these, in the final analysis, betray arrangements such as presidential term limitations and render them mere misnomers, as they can be formed and broken at will by whoever is running the state at a particular point in time. Perhaps Africa’s salvation will come when the continent has developed state governance institutions such as the legislature and judiciary that are strong enough to check wayward politicians.Otherwise, Africa shall continue to beg the problem for a solution.