Let Ivorians solve their problems themselves

And while a few elites in Ivory Coast dominate the political process and use state power to accumulate personal wealth, the income of Mr Ordinary Person in the country has been declining steadily – today it is less than one third of its 1978 peak. There is therefore a big gulf between the economic and welfare interests of ordinary Ivorian citizens and those of their leaders. Yet Ivorian politicians have to go through competitive elections to gain and retain political power. How then do Ivorian politicians reconcile their interests with those of their disenfranchised electorate?

It is here that most democracy sloganeering in Africa misses the nuance of our politics. In the absence of a shared vision, the only unifying principle between elites and the electorate becomes identity – religious and ethnic.  The more the interests of elites and ordinary voters are divergent, the higher will be the tendency to appeal to identity. Nowhere in Africa is politics dominated by an entrenched elite class as in Ivory Coast and Kenya; and nowhere in Africa is politics as corrupt and ethnic-based as it is in those two countries.

Once one group of elites from a given ethnic community is in power, it indulges in a spree of anarchical grabbing of public resources. But this creates self reinforcing fears and temptations: The group in power will seek to accumulate as much as possible before they can lose it. The excluded elites now try to get power by hook or crook. But it would be wrong to imagine that this is to serve the ordinary person. It is to take their turn at the loot. This in economics is called the “tragedy of the commons.”

When the stakes are that high, so are the risks. The costs of losing power are big; so the incentive is to hold it at all costs. The rewards of getting power are equally bountiful; so the incentive is to fight to death for it. It becomes difficult to get a middle ground between competing elite factions. In the absence of a shared national vision between elites and their followers, identity becomes the unifying principle. As economic demands are pressed forward in ethnic terms, the state begins to split at its seams.

This is the actual dilemma electoral competition is presenting to us. In 2008, we saw it happen in Kenya; different elite factions organised their disenfranchised co-ethnics to kill and loot the other ethnic group after a disputed election. We also saw it in Zimbabwe later the same year; election results were disputed leading to violence. We are seeing it in Ivory Coast now. The alternative to such a stalemate has been to give each of these competing elite factions access to the state so that they can all have a chance to loot. Those afraid of violent contests for power in Africa this framework has worked with a measure of success in Kenya, less so in Zimbabwe. It has worked in Ivory Coast since 2007 and may be the best solution for now.

However, this is a temporary solution that only postpones the problem. The most effective response is to let the two sides tussle it out where it matters most – in a military confrontation. If you get a military victory by one side, you have the best chance of producing a more effective government. This is because military victory tends to destroy the loser’s organisation. As a consequence, the winner is able to mount relatively unified action and pursue meaningful reform without generating significant and destructive contestations from entrenched interests within the society.

I see no better way to destroy the entrenched corrupt elite interests in the body politic of the Ivorian state other than a protracted civil war. For war destroys old centres of power, discredits old forms of social control, undermines the legitimacy of old politics, etc. All these processes allow new and more enlightened forces to emerge and gain control. The most successful nations in Africa today – Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda and to an extent the early Uganda under Museveni – had all gone through this process of social shredding. It is this social shredding that Ivory Coast desperately needs.

Neither UN nor AU intervention is good for Ivory Coast. The best solution for that country is to allow Ouattara and Gbagbo to contest in the real court of effective state formation – the military. The winner will have to be the one who is able to organise people and mobilize resources to secure victory. Only an organisation with such capacity can reconstruct the Ivorian state. The UN and AU intervention may achieve short term humanitarian objectives. But this will most likely be at the price of disabling the mechanisms, however destructive in the short term, that can produce a durable solution.

amwenda@independent.co.ug