So the way to end campaign and election violence is, first, to grow the economy. Second, reduce income inequality and improve opportunities. Third, if you don’t have term limits, then don’t toy with conventional multiparty politics.
Between last week when The EastAfrican published the article “Violence looms large in Uganda campaigns”, poll-related violence has risen sharply in the Pearl of Africa.
Uganda has historically had violent elections, but this time round the country is probably going through the most brutal election of the President Yoweri Museveni era.
The campaign has also served up new absurdities. After opposition candidate Kizza Besigye went to a health centre in the north that is in a ramshackle state, and the images embarrassed the government, the nurses who showed him around were suspended. One local state official accused them of revealing state secrets!
To avoid further exposure of the depressing state of the country’s state-run hospitals, now when opposition candidates are travelling to an area where there is an eyesore, the police are deployed to seal them off so that they don’t go in.
Yet, not all is lost. The Uganda case is still a rich opportunity to understand why election violence happens, and can help those working to prevent it to experiment with policies that could work.
Broadly, in African countries that are quasi or actual multiparty democracies, the Uganda example tells us not all of them will transition to non-violent political competition, the way for example Zambia and Ghana seem to have done.
The source of this failure to transition seems to arise from several factors, prominent among which are economic growth, and, related to it, how the fruits of that growth are distributed. Or in the absence of economic growth and declining poverty, how the misery is shared.
Where wealth is not growing enough and reaching most people, the state remains a critical avenue of becoming rich either through corruption, or regulatory largesse — its ability to grant tax exemptions to businesses, for example.
But not all countries that don’t have violent elections in Africa are rich. However, if they are poor, then it is important that the government be seen to be dividing the little that is available fairly.
If the president and his government are sectarian, feeding mostly the ethnic group of the big man or his region, the opposition is likely to be more militant, and regime supporters more desperate to keep their man in power and to retain their privileges. They know the cost of being out in the political cold is too high, going by how much misery their man inflicts on people and areas that don’t support him.
These factors are a potent mix for violent campaigns. The absence of term limits in countries where there is otherwise some level of political competition is also dangerous. In Tanzania, you can wait for the president of the day to serve his two terms and leave.
In a country like Uganda, you have a president for life situation. Where there is no political sunset, the stakes get too high and deadly.
So the way to end campaign and election violence is, first, to grow the economy. Second, reduce income inequality and improve opportunities. Third, if you don’t have term limits, then don’t toy with conventional multiparty politics. If you want stability, then have a half or full dictatorship, and hold elections only as a sham. You won’t have any violence.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa. Twitter@cobbo3
