Democratisation and Ethnicity in Kenya, Ghana and Zimbabwe

After political independence from their colonisers, many African states inherited democracies modelled on the Western conception of it. This model was based on multiparty elections. However, inevitably perhaps, multi-party democracy in many of these newly independent states ended up a still-birth. This is partially attributable to the multiple ethnic conflicts witnessed in these countries. Attempts in the late 1980s and early 1990s to democratise Africa did not result in the desired result of consolidated democracies in the Continent. Many countries soon reverted to personal dictatorship, others refused to even commence democratisation in the first place, while many others began democratisation but then stagnated resulting in what has been variously called “half democracies” or “hybrid systems” that are neither pure dictatorships nor full democracies.This led many scholars and observers of African socio-political organisation to re-examine the idea of democracy in multi-ethnic Africa, Kenya included. Nevertheless, in the last two decades, multiparty democracy has seen a rebirth in much of Africa although the state of democracy still looks gloomy.A primary concern within much of the literature is that the introduction of elections in multi-ethnic (or otherwise divided) societies automatically brings the numerically largest group(or coalition of groups) to power, creating permanent winners and losers. Further, it is argued that “in ethnically plural countries, nation-state building is faced with balancing aspirations and managing fear of groups in an attempt to create a modern state”. These arguments presented the beginning, but not the end, of wisdom in this research. The writer is concerned that even though some states have exhibited some level of success in democratisation, the fact that there seems to be permanent election winners and losers mocks the very pillars of democracy. This research argues that if Africa is to retain democracy as its mode of governance, a new model has to be invented, taking to account the very diverse ethnic sub-nations in its society In divided societies, it is common for the various ethnic groups to engage in constant struggles. These struggles are basically economic struggles for the ownership, distribution, and control of resources. Sihanya & Okello argue that therefore, “(ethnic) groups exhibit the desire to belong, but not be dominated.” This they refer to as “structural conflict,” a paradoxical situation where there is neither war nor peace. Indeed, ethnic divisions and struggles have proved a major impediment to attainment of stable democracy all over Africa. Recently, however, especially in Africa, these struggles have taken the form of political races for acquisition and control of state power. It is this latter form of struggle, which is the concern of this paper, for it threatens democracy and elections with extinction.Largely due to these economic and political (power) struggles, elective democracy in Africa seems to be a story of fractured, chaotic, sometimes violent attempts at civilised society. Therefore, military putsches, popular revolutions, election violence and fraud, as well as bad governance are common phenomena. In Kenya, almost each election since (re)introduction of multi-partism has witnessed violence and fraud, culminating in the 2007/8 post-electoral-violence. This has led to several manipulations of the original democracy model to form such variations as “grand coalitions.” Further, bad governance and maladministration are not strangers to Kenya’s political processes.