If you cannot touch it, you can definitely feel it; and if you cannot feel it, you can certainly smell it.
Yap, folks, we might be in September but the 2023 elections are already beckoning.
In this part of the world, elections are consequential and often preceded by campaigns that are inexorably hot, heavy and heady, because politics by its very nature is brutal business that transacts existential and bread-and-butter issues.
But due to disproportionate focus on politics, including undue and often irrational expectations on electoral outcomes, the results are usually anti-climactic for some and very divisive.
This is hardly surprising, as our righteous colonisers somehow managed to convince us that elections are an indispensable rite of democracy, which is supposedly a flawless system of governance designed to bring us political salvation.
Sixty-five (65) years after Ghana became the first African country to gain Independence, we are still waiting for salvation.
Conversely, all that elections have observably succeeded to do is divide communities into belligerent and intolerant political tribes that would rather burn down the entire village — and with it collective interests — rather than live through the reign of perceived political adversaries.
Elections, therefore, become needlessly adversarial and unsurprisingly unproductive.
Last week, Bishop Lazi had an interesting conversation with a vivacious and bubbly lady from the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho, which is due to go to the polls on October 7.
She seemed to be exasperated at the prospect of going through the rigmarole of yet another election season she views as ineffectual in changing the material circumstances of the Basotho people.
“What Lesotho needs is someone like a dictator who whips everyone in line and moves the country forward,” she shockingly opined, catching the Bishop off-guard.
It is understandable.
With a population of just over two million, Lesotho, just like Israel, which is set to hold its fifth elections in less than four years in November, has gone through three elections in the five-year period between 2012 and 2017, and far from uniting its people, elections have divided them asunder.
Even after the triumph of the All Basotho Convention (ABC) over the Democratic Congress in the 2017 elections, divisions still persist.
Over the past five years, Lesotho has had two prime ministers.
King Letsie III recently declared a state of emergency to allow parliament, whose term ended on July 14, to convene and pass electoral reforms pushed by SADC before the polls.
But even with this package of electoral reforms and the European Union observing elections for the first time in history, ordinary Basotho feel they have seen this ineffectual political pageantry before.
Knife Edge
Ordinary wananchi in Kenya, where the Supreme Court is set to make a ruling on Raila Odinga’s presidential election petition tomorrow, might probably also feel the same.
Elections in Kenya, including the recently held August 8 plebiscite, have often delivered nothing more than deep divisions that are punctuated by regrettable episodes of gratuitous violence.
Even as election results were being announced at the Election Centre on August 15, chairs were being lobbed as missiles at political rivals while fists were occasionally traded in a festival of violence that has become synonymous with political contestation.
We shouldn’t forget that the outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta and president-elect William Ruto were once arraigned at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Netherlands ostensibly for fanning post-election violence that claimed the lives of 1 200 wananchi and displaced 500 000 others in 2007.
It gained Kenyatta the infamous distinction of being the first sitting Head of State to be charged with crimes against humanity by the ICC.
Charges against Uhuru and Ruto were, however, dropped in 2014 and 2016, respectively, but not before a diplomatic furore, as African countries threatened to withdraw en masse from the “Caucasian Court”.
Worryingly, there is an inescapable feeling that although Kenya’s Supreme Court verdict might resolve the obtaining political dispute, it will not heal the deep-seated divisions in the East African country’s body politic.
In the unlikely result that a re-run is ordered, some in the Odinga camp are naively pushing a fatuous idea for the polls to be supervised by the United Nations.
As Bishop writes this, the country is on a knife-edge.
Rumblings
There are similar rumblings in Angola, where former rebel movement UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola)’s Adalberto Costa Junior is disputing the outcome of the August 24 elections that declared MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) candidate Joao Lourenco the victor.
The opposition is now calling for an international panel to review the vote count, citing discrepancies between the commission’s count and their own tallies.
And like in Kenya, there are fears the dispute could escalate into violence.
Angolans have lived through 27 years of bloodletting before, which ended when UNITA founding leader Jonas Savimbi was killed on February 22, 2002.
Zero-Sum Game
Election disputes are not peculiar to Africa.
In America, Donald Trump has not yet conceded losing the disputed 2020 elections.
In fact, post-election violence by Republican party supporters, who besieged Capitol Hill on January 6 last year to overturn election results they believe were rigged, claimed five lives.
In this part of the world, the unintended result of bristling contestation in politics, which is compounded by meddlesome Western countries seeking to influence election results through sponsoring preferred parties and candidates, has been to divide people into belligerent political tribes that are determined to militantly wage gladiatorial fights that most often than not result in mutually assured destruction.
It reduces elections to a zero-sum game that fails to deliver for the people, the majority of whom continue to live in poverty. Little wonder most founding fathers of post-colonial African states considered one-party political systems similar to the Beijing Consensus as viable alternatives that could better save and serve fledgling states.
This, they reasoned, could eliminate rancour and toxicity, and concentrate energies and focus on nation-building projects. This also seems to be the reasoning behind Ghanaian Professor Kwasi Wiredu’s treatise titled “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity”.
In it, the philosopher, whose work has largely contributed to the conceptual decolonisation of African thought, argues that contrary to popular opinion on democracy as a sine qua non of human rights and sustainable development, Africa’s political salvation cannot come from the presently known model of majoritarian democracy.
He quotes Zambian founding father Dr Kenneth Kaunda as saying: “In our societies, we operated by consensus. An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be reached.”
He also quotes Julius Nyerere once remarking: “The elders sit under the big tree, and talk until they agree.”
We all know that former president Cde Robert Mugabe also once pushed for this system.
You see, the problem with majoritarian democracy is not so much about the elections in and of themselves, but the paralysing divisions in the post-election polity that undermine cohesion and unity, which are critical for development.
In most cases, the losers, who would have invariably run on a toxic campaign to cast their rivals as evil, find it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with their opponents after the elections in the national interest.
But Hebrews 13:17 counsels us: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.”
Romans 13 verse 1 adds: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.
“The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
This is why Douglas Mwonzora’s consensus-based philosophy of rational disputation is not only reasonable but wise.
And this is why ED, being the wise leader he is, extended an accommodative hand to the young Nelson Chamisa after winning the 2018 elections.
“I once again reiterate my call for peace and unity above all. Nelson Chamisa, my door is open and my arms outstretched, we are one nation, and we must put our nation first,” tweeted ED on August 24, 2018, adding: “Let us all now put our differences behind us. It is time to move forward together.”
But Chamisa, obviously politically misreading the magnanimous gesture as weakness, spurned at the offer.
It might turn out to be the worst decision he has ever made in his political career.
Back then, there was even talk of creating an officially designated post of Leader of the Opposition in line with our Commonwealth parliamentary democracy.
ED is a sworn believer in unity and cohesion, and this is why he came up with the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) as a platform to forge consensus for nation-building.
Get the Bishop right: There is nothing wrong with robust political contestation, but there is everything wrong in subordinating the national interest to parochial selfish political goals and ambitions.
From what we are seeing and reading from the by-elections that have been contested from 2018 to this weekend (in Bulilima), there is no way the opposition would wrest power from ZANU PF.
By and large, the ruling party has been able to not only retain its council and constituency seats but to win from the opposition in areas such as Nyanga, Bikita, Epworth and Mutasa South, among other areas.
This is an ominous sign.
It is time Triple C rethinks its post-election strategy.
Development and prosperity should be the common totem of political parties, notwithstanding how deep their differences are. And there is always a heavy price to pay for political rancour and discord.
This is why French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, whose real name was François-Marie Arouet, once remarked: “I would rather be ruled by a lion than by a hundred rats.”
Considering the strife that has been plaguing Tripoli in the past 11 years ever since the death of Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011, ordinary Libyans will definitely agree with Voltaire.
Bishop out!