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Posted by Mukui Waruiru on November 01, 2007 (04 February 2008)
The ongoing violence in Iraq has caused observers to reflect on the
challenges of bringing democracy to tribal societies. Before the Iraq
War was launched in 2003, the Bush administration assured Americans and
the world that the removal of Saddam Hussein would result in the
creation of a peaceful, well-governed, and democratic society. But it is
now becoming clear that building a successful democracy is not as easy
as many Americans had assumed. Pure democracy is a system that works
well in particular cultures, and not all cultures are equally capable of
building harmonious democratic societies.
If the Bush administration had been interested in studying the track
record of democracy-building efforts in tribal cultures, they should
have studied the experience of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the
introduction of pure democracy 50 years ago resulted in disaster for the
people of the region. For the purposes of this article, I am
defining ‘pure democracy’ as majority rule under universal suffrage, in
which all citizens of adult age are guaranteed the right to vote in
national elections.
In 1957, Ghana became the first black African country to gain
independence from European colonial rule (Sudan gained its independence
in 1956, but it regards itself as part of Arab Africa, rather than black
Africa). The Prime Minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, had won an election
in 1956, campaigning on a platform of attaining immediate independence
from British colonial rule. Nkrumah had served as Prime Minister from
1951 to 1956, a period in which Ghana enjoyed internal self-government,
under the supervision of the British colonial governor in the country.
The governor had the power to veto decisions by Nkrumah that he felt
were harmful to the interests of the colony. This was the period in
which Ghana enjoyed the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity in its
history.
Two conservative Ghanaian politicians, J. B. Danquah and Kofi Busia,
opposed Nkrumah’s campaign for immediate independence. They wanted to
preserve the status quo, because of the stability and prosperity which
Ghana was enjoying. They preferred a more gradual path to independence,
in contrast to the campaign for rapid decolonization. Both men realized
that without the supervision of the British colonial power, Nkrumah
would turn Ghana into a dictatorship, and impose his deeply-held Marxist
beliefs on the Ghanaian people.
The opposition political party that was supported by Danquah and Busia
lost the 1956 elections, and Nkrumah was able to lead his country to
independence on March 6, 1957. The dire predictions of Danquah and Busia
came true, and in a couple of years, Nkrumah established Africa’s first
post-colonial dictatorship. Danquah was subsequently arrested and jailed
as a political prisoner, and he eventually died because of the terrible
prison conditions in which he was held. Busia fled the country in fear
of his life, and he returned to the country only after Nkrumah was
overthrown in a Western-backed military coup in 1966.
Most of the Black African nations that gained independence after Ghana
followed its path by establishing one-party dictatorships. Observers
soon began to describe the practice of democracy in Africa as ‘one-man,
one-vote, one-time’. In many of the cases, the winning political party
at the independence elections used its majority in the national
parliament, to pass legislation outlawing the existence of opposition
political parties. This left the ruling party with a monopoly of power.
This trend challenged the widely held notion that pure democracy leads
to more freedom. If anything, in many countries, Africans enjoyed
greater personal freedom and prosperity under colonial rule, than they
do today under independent governments. While opposition parties
have been permitted to exist in some countries in the last few years,
the oppressive habits associated with one-party dictatorial rule have
been hard to break.
In the 1960s, American conservatives were outspoken against the wave of
decolonization and democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa, that was being
pushed by the United States and the former Soviet Union. William F.
Buckley, in his book, Up From Liberalism wrote:
“We see in the revolt of the masses in Africa the mischief of the white
man’s abstractions: for the West has, by its doctrinaire approval of
democracy, deprived itself of the moral base from which to talk back to
the apologists of rampant nationalism….Democracy, to be successful, must
be practiced by politically mature people among whom there is a
consensus on the meaning of life within their society….If the majority
wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be the
indicated, though concededly the undemocratic, course. It is more
important for a community, wherever situated geographically, to affirm
and live by civilized standards than to labor at the job of swelling the
voting lists”.
Buckley tried to make the distinction between universal suffrage and
freedom, in his analysis of the conditions in the American South before
the passage of Civil Rights legislation, which he compared to colonial
rule in Africa:
“Does the vote really make one free? I do not believe it necessarily
does….Being able to vote is no more to have realized freedom than
being able to read is to have realized wisdom. Reasonable limitations
upon the vote are not recommended exclusively by tyrants or oligarchs
(was Jefferson either?). The problem of the South is not how to get the
vote for the Negro, but how to train the Negro – and a great many whites
– to cast a thoughtful vote”
Buckley was however careful to distinguish his position in opposing
universal franchise in the American South, from that of the southern
segregationists who advanced genetic arguments in opposing black voting
rights in the South:
“There are no scientific grounds for assuming congenital Negro
disabilities. The problem is not biological, but cultural and
educational”
Today, if one was to argue in favor of restrictions to the right to
vote, one would be labeled as an enemy of freedom. But, as we have seen
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and in much of Black Africa, democracy
does not necessarily lead to freedom. With hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis fleeing their country as a result of the violence that has
engulfed that nation, can anyone seriously suggest that Iraqis are freer
today than they were under Saddam Hussein? Are the nations of Zimbabwe
and the Democratic Republic of Congo freer today, than they were under
colonial rule?
The state governments that existed in the American South during the Jim
Crow era discredited the respectable and honorable Western tradition of
placing reasonable restrictions on who to allow to vote. Putting
restrictions on the vote using poll taxes, literacy tests, and property
ownership qualifications, has helped many Western nations to preserve
liberty and order for centuries. But Southern state governments in the
post-Reconstruction era applied such restrictions unfairly, in a manner
which was blatantly discriminatory on the basis of race. In the early
part of the 20th Century, Booker T. Washington called on black Americans
to work hard to improve their educational and economic status, in order
to more fully participate in the American political process. But by
denying educated and financially successful Blacks access to the ballot,
the state governments of the South destroyed Washington’s vision of
building racial harmony in America. As a result, divisive demagogues
like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have risen to prominence, and shape
the agenda on race relations in America today.
Universal suffrage is a very recent development in the West. Britain
attained universal suffrage only in 1928, when all adults over the age
of 21 were allowed to vote. A century earlier, voting in Britain was
limited to a tiny percentage of the adult male population. The Tories
held power from 1783 to 1830, a 46 year stretch that was only briefly
interrupted in 1806-1807. Charles Grey finally took over as a Whig Prime
Minister in 1830. He passed the Reform Act in 1832, which significantly
expanded the percentage of male citizens who were allowed to vote. The
1832 reforms gave one in five adult males the right to vote. The
property qualifications for voting were gradually lowered over the
decades, enfranchising more and more people, before they were finally
abolished in 1928. During this time, the educational, social, and
cultural level of the British masses was gradually raised, which enabled
a successful transition to majority rule without destabilizing the
social order.
In the United States, the founding fathers set out to create a
constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. At the time the
Constitution was adopted, half of the white adult male population could
not meet the property qualification for voting in elections. Because
women could not vote, that meant that only 25 percent of the white
citizens of the US were entitled to vote. The U.S. finally gained the
universal franchise in 1965, where adult citizens of both genders and
all races were given the right to vote. By this time, the majority of
American families were middle-class people who owned their homes—and
therefore, such a measure did not threaten the stability of the market
economy. Given that Britain and the US took so long to build
well-functioning democratic systems, it is unrealistic to expect African
nations to have set up successful democratic societies, given the high
poverty rates and the low levels of civilization of most of the
population.
Classical liberals have long said that one cannot build a free society
without putting in place a political system that protected property
rights. The 17th Century English philosopher, John Locke, asserted that
the prerequisites for a free society were the protection of life,
liberty, and property. Locke did not limit his definition of property to
material goods, but included as a form of property the ownership of
one’s labor. Twentieth century Communists understood that, by abolishing
private property through nationalization, they would completely strip
private citizens of their means of self-support and independence,
reducing them to the status of slaves. This led to a situation where
people living under Communism were completely dependent on the
government for their very survival, which allowed the government to
control every aspect of their lives.
With this understanding of liberalism, Ian Douglas Smith, the former
Prime Minister of Rhodesia, can be rightly regarded as Africa’s first
classical liberal revolutionary. In 1965, he led a revolution for
freedom, when he initiated the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI)
of Rhodesia from Britain. The UDI was intended to preserve Christianity,
freedom, and civilization. For that courageous action, Smith became one
of the most vilified men in history, and his country was subjected to
comprehensive United Nations economic sanctions in 1966. He was falsely
labeled as a racist and white supremacist. But, unlike the architects of
apartheid in neighboring South Africa, he has never supported claims
that blacks are inherently inferior. However, like Buckley, Smith
recognized that the low levels of education and cultural development of
most of the blacks, made the establishment of a successful pure
democracy a difficult undertaking.
In addition, there were numerous previous examples of failed attempts to
establish pure democracies in Africa, from Guinea and Ghana, to Nigeria
and Uganda, and there was good reason to expect that Rhodesia would
follow a similarly tragic path if the universal franchise was extended.
Facing a possible future of either a Marxist dictatorship or anarchy,
the Rhodesian leadership declared independence and prevented Britain
from imposing majority rule in the colony. The lives, liberty, and
property of people of all races in Rhodesia were preserved.
Smith was motivated by the desire to uphold the historical Anglo-Saxon
tradition of limiting the vote to that segment of the population that
would be able to use it responsibly. The Rhodesian UDI of 1965 was
modeled on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the
Rhodesians had great respect and admiration for America. However, the
Rhodesian admiration for America was not reciprocated, and the U.S.
joined the rest of the world in denouncing and isolating a friendly
country.
The Rhodesian government was unfairly compared to the segregationist
state governments of the American South, and to South Africa under
apartheid rule. However, Rhodesia did not have the rigid racial
segregation that characterized those two other systems of government,
and Blacks were allowed to vote in Rhodesian elections. Blacks were
allowed to have 16 seats in the 66 member Rhodesian parliament, while
whites held 50 seats. Voting was limited to those who could meet the
literacy and property ownership qualifications, just like in Britain and
the United States in the relatively recent past. Rhodesia was a limited
democracy, not a pure democracy.
It was expected that, with time, as black Rhodesians became better
educated and more prosperous, they would gradually gain greater
representation in the Rhodesian Parliament. Eventually, white and black
Rhodesians would share power in the Rhodesian Parliament, under a 50-50
arrangement. This position fell short of majority rule. But since the
whites had created and built the country, and were expected to pay a
disproportionate share of the taxes even in the future, this arrangement
seemed to be fair. Many white and black Rhodesians felt that this power
sharing model would prevent Rhodesia from becoming a Marxist
dictatorship like Nkrumah’s Ghana, or deteriorating into the chaos of
the democratic republics of Congo and Somalia. But the international
community would not accept anything less than black majority rule.
By the mid 1970s, Rhodesia had, proportionally, the largest black
middle-class in Africa, and it was growing rapidly. This was despite
the fact that Rhodesia was under U.N. economic sanctions, and the
government was spending vast sums of money waging a war against Marxist
terrorists, who were based in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia. Despite
those challenges, Rhodesia was a successful limited democracy, governed
by the rule of law, having independent courts, and a multiparty system
of government. The leader of the official opposition in parliament was
black, and he and other black members of parliament were able to openly
criticize Prime Minister Smith and his government for what they felt
were their shortcomings. This was in stark contrast to the situation in
the rest of Africa, where one-party dictatorial rule was the norm, and
criticism of the president was equated with treason.
In 1979, a power-sharing agreement between white Rhodesians and their
moderate black allies was arrived at. Free and fair elections were held
under universal suffrage, which led to black majority rule, but there
were strong guarantees put in place to protect white minority rights.
The new government was headed by the moderate black clergyman, Abel
Muzorewa, and he was committed to maintaining Rhodesia’s capitalist
system and its economic prosperity. However, Muzorewa’s government was
denied recognition by the West, and Rhodesia remained under U.N.
economic sanctions. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and British Prime
Minister James Callaghan, demanded new elections that would include the
participation of terrorist leaders who did not believe in the democratic
process.
New elections were held in 1980, and the Maoist terrorist Robert
Mugabe won the vote through appeals to tribal sentiment and by
intimidating rural voters in the Shona-dominated provinces. Mugabe was a
devoted student of Kwame Nkrumah, having lived and worked in Nkrumah’s
Ghana in the late 1950s, where he closely observed how his mentor
managed his government. Since 1980, Rhodesians (now called Zimbabweans),
have had less freedom than they ever had under Smith.
The economy of Zimbabwe gradually declined from 1980 to 1999. In the
year 2000, the Mugabe regime launched the infamous invasions of
white-owned farms that completely destroyed the country’s
agriculturally-based economy. Ironically, the Zimbabwean government
already owned millions of acres of land, which it could have
re-distributed to poor blacks, without touching the white-owned farms.
But Mugabe did not want a sensible solution to the land question. He was
driven by the desire to punish white Zimbabweans for supporting the
emerging opposition party, known as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
As anyone with knowledge of the situation in Zimbabwe knows, Mugabe
never had any intention of helping Zimbabwe’s poor, despite his rhetoric
on the issue. The black middle-class, which had thrived under Smith, has
now been almost completely wiped out. Just as the Bolsheviks of the
former Soviet Union enslaved the Russian people by abolishing private
property, Mugabe is now in the process of seizing privately-owned
business enterprises, just as he seized the white-owned commercial
farms. Instead of condemning Mugabe, corrupt African politicians view
Mugabe as some sort of hero, for his defiance of the West.
Out of concern for Africa’s future, I founded the African
Conservative Forum (ACF) in May, 2007. My organization seeks not just
the downfall of the Mugabe regime, but the complete dismantling of the
disastrous Marxist legacy that Nkrumah and Mugabe have bequeathed to
Africa. One of the major tasks that I plan to undertake is the
distribution of 10,000 copies of Ian Smith’s autobiography, The Great
Betrayal, to African legislators, civil servants, academics,
journalists, university students, diplomats and others. Individuals or
organizations that may be interested in assisting in this important
task, can contact me.
Reading Smith’s memoirs changed my life. His book helped to make me a
conservative. If African intellectuals were to get an opportunity to
read his autobiography, they would realize, as I did, that the true
freedom fighter from Rhodesia is Ian Smith, not Robert Mugabe. Once they
learn about the link between property and freedom, and how pure
democracy and political independence do not necessarily translate into
freedom, then they would get a true idea of what freedom is all about.
If there is any African leader who deserves a presidential library,
it is Ian Smith. His memoirs spell out how Africa can move forward to a
future of liberty and prosperity. It is often said that prophets are not
honored in their home countries. Smith can accurately be described as a
prophet, because he predicted disaster for Rhodesia once it came under
the control of the communist terrorist, Robert Mugabe. Many people
who opposed Smith in the past are finally coming to realize how right he
was. In the British Sunday Times newspaper of September 23, 2007, Judith
Todd, a left-liberal human rights activist who was one of Smith’s most
outspoken opponents in the 1970s, now admits that “Mugabe was rotten
from the start”.
Not surprisingly, the Marxist government of Zimbabwe viciously attacks
Smith’s legacy in the history books and in the state-controlled media.
But what is more difficult to understand is the reaction of the brave
men and women who make up the opposition to the Mugabe regime, whenever
the UDI era is mentioned. Zimbabwean opposition activists, both white
and black, make strenuous efforts to distance themselves from Smith, out
of fear of being labeled lackeys of the colonialists by the Mugabe
regime.
The minds of the Zimbabwean people have been so poisoned against Smith,
that it seems highly unlikely that he will receive the honor he truly
deserves, even if the opposition comes to power in the next general
elections scheduled for 2008. I often dream about building an Ian
Smith Library here in Nairobi, where I would be able to educate future
generations of African leaders about Smith’s admirable legacy. But I
guess, given the high cost of such a project, it will remain an
impossible dream.
In 1980, when Mugabe came to power, Rhodesia had a GDP per capita that
was comparable to that of Malaysia. Today, Malaysia is hailed around the
world as one of East Asia’s great economic success stories, and is a
newly industrialized country that manufactures goods of all sorts. Yet,
in 1980, Rhodesia had economic policies that were more business-friendly
than those of Malaysia, and a civil service that was far more honest and
efficient than Malaysia’s. Both nations are former British colonies, and
have a public service modeled on that of Britain.
Where would Rhodesia be today, if Ian Smith’s vision of power-sharing
rather than majority rule, had come to pass? I will try to hazard a
guess. Rhodesia would have experienced an economic boom without
precedent in Africa’s history, with impressive double-digit growth in
the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond. The white population would probably be
double what it was in 1980, growing from 250,000 to 500,000. This would
have been partly as a result of natural increase, because of the lower
costs of raising children in Rhodesia. Many of the hundreds of thousands
of Portuguese settlers who fled from the Communist revolutions in Angola
and Mozambique would have moved to Rhodesia. There would also have been
some immigration from South Africa, as well as from many Western
nations, attracted by Rhodesia’s pleasant climate and promising economic
future. All those whites would have brought useful skills that would
have benefited the country immensely.
Interestingly, the dynamism of the free market would have reduced the
racial disparities in land ownership in a fair and transparent manner.
This is because the rapid growth in manufacturing, tourism, and other
industries, would have led to many black workers abandoning their jobs
in the white farms for better economic opportunities in the cities. The
resulting rise in average black agricultural wages would have put many
white farms out of business, and some of the farmers would have been
forced to sub-divide and sell their farms. The newly economically
empowered blacks would have purchased plots of land for residential use,
or for small-scale horticulture.
If Smith’s vision had prevailed, Zimbabwe would have had a GDP per
capita equal to, or higher than, that of Malaysia. But the sad reality
is that Zimbabwe’s GDP per capita today is lower than that of Haiti. The
Caribbean nations of Barbados and the Bahamas are majority black former
British colonies, and they can provide us with a model of what the
future could have been in Rhodesia, if the Communists had not taken
over. Both nations have maintained the colonial tradition of
providing strong protections for property rights, and, today, both
nations have a GDP per capita higher than that of Malaysia.
My British and American friends often ask me to predict the future of
South Africa, and whether that nation will go the way of Zimbabwe. I am
often tempted to tell them what they want to hear – the
politically-correct answer that the situations in Zimbabwe and South
Africa are different, and that all is well in South Africa. But the past
record of the ANC does not give me much cause for optimism. During the
days of white rule, the ANC worked to mobilize black support by stirring
up anti-white hatred. The late ANC activist, Peter Mokaba, is credited
with creating the infamous chant, “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”. Not
to be outdone, the main rival of the ANC among the black radicals, the
PAC party, had its own rallying cry, “One settler, one bullet”.
As one can expect, the anti-white hatred that the ANC and PAC stirred
up during the era of white rule, did not dissipate with the coming of
majority rule. The ANC leadership blames all its failures on whites and
the supposed ‘legacy of apartheid’. There has also been an explosion in
the rate of violent crime, in which whites have been disproportionately
targeted, and which the ANC has shown an unwillingness to deal with.
Some 210,000 blacks and 40,000 whites have been murdered since 1994.
When he was challenged on his failure to tackle violent crime, the South
African Security Minister, Charles Nqakula, told his critics that if
they were unhappy with the conditions in South Africa they should leave
the country. His statement was widely understood as being targeted at
South African whites.
Blacks in South Africa enjoy one of the highest standards of living
in Africa. Yet the ANC blames whites for the poverty and landlessness of
much of the black population. The government of South Africa owns
millions of hectares, and is the largest land owner in South Africa.
Instead of offering this land to South Africa’s poor people of all
races, the ANC focuses on making the blacks envious of the white land
owners who produce most of South Africa’s food. The ANC plans to
maintain its hold on power for decades to come, by inciting racial
resentment against the white minority. There is a real danger that the
country may join the long list of failed democracies in Africa. Unless a
new generation of enlightened black leaders emerges in South Africa,
committed to promoting Christian values, property rights, and free
market economic policies, South Africa’s future looks bleak.
Mr. Waruiru, a native of Kenya, is the founder of the African
Conservative Forum, a Christian human rights and public policy
organization based in Nairobi. His website is
www.africanconservative.org
Source: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_failure_of_democracy_in_africa/
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