The paper (below) was presented at the CD Africa Regional Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 22-23 November, 2004.

To learn more about the Community of Democracies, please go to: www.santiago2005.org.

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Africa Democracy Forum’s Analysis on Democracy in Africa and Recommendations to the Community of Democracies

The Africa Democracy Forum is a network of African democracy activists to consolidate democracy in Africa by providing opportunities for democrats to openly express their views while also acting as a platform for mutual support and the sharing of resources. Over 120 organizations and individuals working on democracy issues in Africa currently participate in the ADF activities.

The ADF recently organized an online discussion, through which the ADF members provided their analyses on democracy issues in Africa and recommendations to the Community of Democracies’ Africa regional dialogue and CD’s ministerial meeting in May 2005.

Based on the discussion and several workshops that the ADF organized in 2003 and 2004, this ADF paper focuses on three topics: Political Parties and Civil Society; Electoral Systems and Electoral Processes; and Security and Democracy.

Political Parties and Civil Society
On political parties and civil society, members of the Africa Democracy Forum (ADF) identified three main challenges:  weak political parties, particularly opposition parties; identity politics; and accountability and legitimacy with civil society.

Weak Political Parties and Intra-Party Democracy Democracy is “a form of political regime in which citizens choose, through competitive elections, the occupants of the top political offices of the state.”  However, many members of the ADF feel that there is little space for opposition political parties to compete in elections.  In countries like Uganda, opposition political parties are forced to conduct their activities within the limitations, such as the lack of freedom to assemble and associate.  In the meantime, one-party governments continue to enjoy international endorsement from established democracies, which promote multi-party democracy around the world.  If opposition parties have been inactive and forced to work within the limitation for decades, they have lost their capacity of organizing themselves and operating activities.  However, it is also important to note that in countries like Uganda, the one-party system was somewhat popular.  After a prolonged civil war in Uganda, for example, the one-party system has often seen as a way of unifying the people.

Practicing democracy within a party structure is one major challenge that Africa political parties face.  In order to consolidate democracy, it is important to practice democracy within a political party in the processes of electing a chairperson of a party, nominating candidates for elections, and developing a party platform.  Also, many political parties in Africa emerged from liberation movements or rebel groups (warring factions).  When liberation or independence were achieved, or when a civil war ended, those movements and warring factions turned themselves into political parties and sought to play an important role in the post-liberation, post-independence, and post-conflict political system.  However, because the nature of the liberation movements and warring factions are quite different from that of political parties in democracy, their capacity to operate as a political party has been very limited.

Recommendations to the Community of Democracies:
* To recognize the important role of political parties in building strong democracies,
* To assist struggling political parties in emerging democracies with technical assistance,
* To support civil society in Africa to raise an awareness of the need for and advantages of a multi-party democracy,
* To pressure the governments in Africa to develop a culture of the multi-party system and to open political space for opposition political parties, and
* To help facilitate discussions on the importance of intra-party democracy.

Identity Politics
Another challenge in democracy in Africa is identity politics.  Identity politics was defined as the political use of a collective group identity that instrumentalizes ethnicity or religion to mobilize some populations while excluding others from access to power and resources. In Africa, both political parties and civil society organizations often use this identify politics.  The common consequences of this have been increased conflict among groups (including armed violence, sexual assaults and rapes and even genocide).

Recommendation to the Community of Democracies:
* To assist in setting up fora to promote dialogue and solution-seeking among different groups, including women, youth, and other social groups, as well as more formally recognized leaders and traditional chiefs,
* To support social and cultural exchanges religious, ethnic, and other communities,
* To condemn all identity politicking and human rights violations, regardless of which side perpetrates these offenses, and thus preventing abuses to be carried out in a group’s name,
* To help African civil society organization to conduct an aggressive campaign for education on law, law-making processes, and human rights,
* To encourage African governments to de-ethnicize the composition of the military and other institutions of the state,
* To make more use of human rights instruments that relate to the prevention of discrimination on the grounds of identity, and
* To encourage African governments to promote not just tolerance, but the value of diversity using all levels of media.

Accountability and Legitimacy of Civil Society
The last few years have seen two trends proceed hand in hand: an unprecedednted expansion in the number and influence of NGOs around the world, particularly in Africa, and increasing challenges to their legitimacy and accountability.  These challenges come from governments, from sections of the media, intergovernmental organizations, and sections of civil society.  The responsibility of accountability cannot be discharged purely through a reporting framework, but should also encompass concrete mechanisms by which NGO decision makers can be held responsible for shortcoming.  It is important to address accountability as a means to preserve the trust invested in NGOs; however, it is also important to recognize the need to reconcile the strengths of NGO systems (namely, the ability to innovate and respond flexibly and rapidly) with accountability mechanisms that trend to slow down their work.  In making efforts to operate transparently, many NGOs in Africa faces particular challenges as follow:

* The difficulty of preserving independence in the context of civil war situation and during a period of political transition,
* Problems of flawed national registration requirements for NGOs,
* Proliferating numbers of NGOs, many of which are shells formed in response to either donor interest or are NGOs created by government or business interests, and
* The need to define just what constitute an NGO.

Recommendation to the Community of Democracies:
* To review national NGO laws in Africa that limit activities of genuine NGOs,
* To encourage international and national NGO coalitions to support national NGOs that are embattled and challenged within their national contexts, and
* To encourage African NGOs to engage more systematically with donors to set accountability targets and frameworks more effectively and to make donors more aware of the repercussions of their funding strategies.

Electoral Systems and Electoral Process
In Africa, corruption, fraud, and violence are associated with elections.  People also have a high level of cynicism and distrust toward politics and politicians.  These electoral grievances and dissatisfaction have played a key role in recent tensions and conflict in African countries, like Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zimbabwe.  If electoral fears and suspicions were eased, and people’s faith in elections increased, the national atmosphere would be improved, and democracy could emerge and be consolidated.

In order to address these fears and distrust, some ADF members suggest investigating a gap between the electoral systems and the reality of African society.  The current electoral systems in Africa fail to take into account four important social realities: poverty, illiteracy, economic domination by government, and diversity in languages, ethnicity, and religions.

ADF members also suggest that the main causes of electoral violence are a lack of transparency in the electoral process and insufficient voter education.  In addition, although there are electoral commissions in most African countries, their independence is often questionable.  The use of ethnicity and religion by political parties and candidates for their political gain also often contributes to electoral violence.  To prevent electoral violence, traditional leaders have played roles as negotiators.

Recommendations to the Community of Democracies:
* To provide support to African civil society organizations to study electoral systems in Africa and develop innovative ideas of how to accommodate the realities of Africa society in the electoral systems, 
* To monitor pre-election voter registration, campaigns, and party promises,
* To assist in generating dialogue among political parties,
* To encourage national electoral commissions in African countries to intervene speedily to stop election-related violence,
* To encourage African governments to implement codes of conduct signed by political parties,
* To empower domestic election observing and monitoring organizations and individuals, and
* To help local NGOs to expand public participation in the election process.

Security and Democracy
In Africa, there are significant challenges countries emerging from conflict face in building a democratic state while simultaneously building a peace process.  An important question the ADF members raised is which must comes first, peace or democracy?  Based on various experiences from South Africa, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan, in dealing with peace and democratic processes, it was evident that key to sustaining the processes are the structure within these countries, for example, civil society, judicial systems, and media.  Furthermore, peace and democracy are interdependent and should not be viewed in isolation from each other.  Moreover, key to both processes is inclusiveness, drawing in all actors.

Security should not be narrowly defined, and it should include human security.  Issues of security in Africa should include poverty, human rights violations, a threat of HIV/AIDS pandemic, and famine.  It is also important to recognize the importance of impacts of refugees on economic, environmental, and social issues in a host country.  These issues affect democracy in Africa.

Recommendations to the Community of Democracies:
* To recognize that democratic political institutions need to be built while a peace process occurs,
* To provide support and opportunities for civil society leaders in Africa to be trained to manage conflict and understand peace processes,
* To recognize issues of security in a broader sense, including poverty, human rights violations, famine, refugee, and impacts of HIV/AIDS pandemic on the population.
* To encourage governments in Africa to develop comprehensive regional agreement and solutions for their settlement and/or return, and
* To support initiatives that seeks to integrate the war-affected youth into their society.