Viewpoint: How tribalism stunts African democracy
By Calestous Juma International development professor at Harvard University
27 November 2012 Last updated at 09:44 GMT
Africa's democratic transition is back in the spotlight. The concern is no
longer the stranglehold of autocrats, but the hijacking of the democratic
process by tribal politics.
Kenya's 2007-08 post-election violence revealed the extent to which tribal
forces could quickly bring a country to the brink of civil war.
The challenge to democracy in Africa is not the prevalence of ethnic
diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal
interests. It is tribalism.
There are those who argue that tribalism is a result of arbitrary
post-colonial boundaries that force different communities to live within
artificial borders.
This argument suggests that every ethnic community should have its own
territory, which reinforces ethnic competition.
The last 20 years of Somalia have shown the dangers of ethnic competition
and underscore the importance of building nations around ideas rather than
clan identities.
Much attention over the last two decades has been devoted to removing
autocrats and promoting multiparty politics.
But in the absence of efforts to build genuine political parties that
compete on the basis of ideas, many African countries have reverted to
tribal identities as foundations for political competition.
Leaders often exploit tribal loyalty to advance personal gain, parochial
interests, patronage, and cronyism.
But tribes are not built on democratic ideas but thrive on zero-sum
competition.
As a result, they are inimical to democratic advancement.
In essence, tribal practices are occupying a vacuum created by lack of
strong democratic institutions.
Tribal interests have played a major role in armed conflict and civil unrest
across the continent.
'Clever and calculating'
But the extent to which it blunts efforts to deepen democracy has received
little attention. This is mainly because much of the attention has focused
on elections.
According to US-based pro-democracy group Freedom House,
<
http://africanelections.tripod.com/electoral_democracies.html> 19 African
countries were considered electoral democracies in 2012, down from 24 over
the 2005-08 period.
These trends conceal the influence that tribal politics exerts on the
democratic process.
The many peoples of Africa
Most diverse countries:
* DR Congo: Population 72m; More than 250 ethnic groups
* Nigeria: 170m people, more than 250 groups
* Tanzania: 47m people; 130 groups
* Chad: 11m people, more than 100 languages
* Ethiopia: 91m people, 77 groups
* Kenya: 42m people; more than 70 groups
Most homogenous countries:
* Lesotho: 2m people; 99.7% Sotho
* Somalia: 10m; 85% Somali (divided into clans)
* Burundi: 11m people; 85% Hutu; 14% Tutsi
* Rwanda: 12m people; 84% Hutu; 15% Tutsi
* Swaziland: 1m people; 84% Swazi
* Botswana: 2m people; 79% Tswana
Source: CIA World Factbook, US state dept, Encyclopaedia Britannica, UN
It took Kenyan political parties nearly a decade to unite and defeat Daniel
arap Moi's regime.
Leaders of the different opposition parties were primarily focused on
pursuing their tribal interests rather than uniting around a common
political programme.
They in effect played into the hands of the government in power that could
divide them along tribal lines.
The opposition parties were unable to find common ground through coherent
party manifestos.
According to research carried out on Kenya by
<
http://www.aiu.edu/applications/DocumentLibraryManager/upload/stephenkajirw
w.pdf> Stephen Keverenge at the US-based Atlantic International University
in 2008, 56% of 1,500 respondents did not know that their parties had
manifestos.
The manifestos are generally issued late because much of the effort goes
into building tribal alliances.
The new constitution of Kenya seeks to address the issue of ethnicity by
ensuring that a president needs broad geographical support to be elected.
A winner must receive more than half of all the votes cast in the election
and least 25% of the votes cast in each of more than half of the country's
counties.
But tribal leaders are clever and calculating.
* Africa Debate <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nb3cn>
They are quick to dress in the latest fashion and co-opt emerging trends to
preserve their identities.
They buy influence and create convenient alliances, shopping for
international support in power centres such as London, Paris, and Washington
DC.
Their sole mission is self-preservation, with the side effect of subverting
democratic evolution.
For them tribal politics is a zero-sum game, so they are prone to using hate
speech and inciting violence.
Intellectual input
The way forward for African democracy lies in concerted efforts to build
modern political parties founded on development ideas and not tribal bonds.
Such political parties must base their competition for power on development
platforms.
Defining party platforms will need to be supported by the search for
ideas-not the appeal to tribal coalitions.
Political parties that create genuine development platforms will launch
initiatives that reflect popular needs.
Those that rely on manipulating ethnic alliances will bring sectarian
animosity into government business.
Whoever is elected as president will spend most of his or her time on tribal
balancing rather than on economic management.
Party manifestos are fundamentally documents in which parties outline their
principles and goals in a manner that goes beyond popular rhetoric.
They arise from careful discussion, compromise, and efforts to express the
core values and commitments of the party.
Building clear party platforms requires effective intellectual input,
usually provided through think-tanks and other research institutions.
Most African political parties lack such support and are generally
manifestos cobbled together with little consultation.
Tribal groupings see themselves as infallible but parties have to be
accountable to the people.
By stating a vision for the future, political parties provide voters with a
ways to measure their performance.
Forging platforms fosters debate within parties that transcends tribal and
religious differences.
'Road to doom'
Such debates are a central pillar of democracy.
Building modern political parties and associated think-tanks is, therefore,
the most urgent way to counter tribal politics.
Policy debate is a key element of democracy.
Specific manifestos would foster healthy political competition that would
force parties to distinguish themselves from each other.
Conversely, such debates would also help to illustrates areas of common
interest.
Indeed, it is becoming clear that issues such as infrastructure - energy,
transportation, irrigation, and telecommunication - and youth employment are
emerging as common themes in African politics irrespective of ideological
differences.
The predominance of such issues will select for pragmatic leadership over
ideology.
It is therefore not a surprise that African countries are increasingly
electing engineers as presidents.
In 2012 six African countries put engineers in top political offices.
This reflects the fact that at the local level, politics is primarily a long
footnote on demands for power, transportation, irrigation, and
communication.
Closely linked to these foundational concerns are demands for access to
education and health.
Political parties are unlikely to differ on essential points, but they might
offer different approaches.
So long as democracy offers the best chance for sustained growth and
prosperity, tribal politics must be replaced by genuine party platforms and
modern democratic institutions like think-tanks.
Otherwise Africa's road to doom will continue to be paved by tribal
intentions.
Calestous Juma is professor of the practice of international development at
Harvard Kennedy School and co-chairs the African Union's High Level Panel on
Science, Technology and Innovation - <
https://twitter.com/Calestous>
_at_calestous on Twitter.
Tribe or ethnic group?
By Basil Ibrahim, Nairobi-based political consultant
Those who oppose using the word "tribe" desire that African ethnic groups
are understood as similar to those elsewhere.
They want the complexity of these groups paid attention to, and are
attentive of the word "tribe's" associations with notions of backwardness,
atavism and superstition - its roots in colonial policies aimed at defining
African societies and making them legible for control.
They are attentive to the fact that the term is only used to describe their
cultural formations, of the fact that Western societies' cleavages would
never be defined as tribes.
They also reject the notions of fixity, of common ancestry that come with
the term "tribe", preferring the looseness of the term ethnic group, and how
this acknowledges internal differences of language, culture and descent, and
permits accretion.
Conversely, this, along with constant media use, may explain why many
African people continue to use the term "tribe".
Even with their fictive kinships, many Africans may prefer to establish the
bonds between them as based on common descent, as biological, than to
acknowledge the complex ways in which their present-day ethnic groups were
formed.
Related Stories
* Kenya village massacres raise fears of election violence
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19621246>
* African viewpoint: Blood and borders
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12336269>
* Nigeria: A nation divided
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12893448>
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Received on Thu Dec 27 2012 - 15:54:34 EST
