AFRICA POLITCS: Chapt. Four

THE ROLE OF MEDIA

The Emergence of Media Pluralism:

Almost without exception, and as an integral part of the pressures for the opening up of the political space, the monopoly on media ownership exercised by the state was broken during them 1990s through the licensing by governments of private newspapers, radio stations (mostly FM stations), and television stationery doads were also made by digital satellite broadcasters and private internet service providers. Apart from representing a radical departure from the situation that prevailed previously, the development marked a new and important element in the promotionof political pluralism, governmental accountability , and popular participation (see Olukoshi, 1998; Fardon & Furniss, 2000; Hydén et alii 2002).The Efflorescence of Associational Life: Across Africa during the course of the last one and half decades, there has been a massive growth in the number and range of civil associations active in various spheres of life at the local, national, sub-regional and continental levels. Mostly set up as non-governmental organizations, they were seen by many as symbolizing the re-birth and vitality of civil society and, therefore, critical tothe unfolding process ofdemocratization on the continent. Equally importantly, the civic associations were seen by some scholars as central to the ememergece of new political actors in Africa, actors who, by the fact of their insertion in the civic arena, played the critical role of underwriting the African democratic transition and, thus, contributed to the dawn of a new era in the affairs of the continent (Chazan, 1982, 1983; Bratton, 1989; Diamond, 1994).The Demise of the Last Vestiges of Colonial Rule and Institutionalized Racism in Africa: The persistence of (settler) colonialism in the Southern part of Africa and the institutionalized racial discrimination that went with it constitute the most important challenge to African nationalism and its agenda of the total liberation of the continent from foreign domination. Beginning with the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 and culminating in the 1994 national elections in which the black majority in South Africa participated for the first time, the end of colonial rule and the collapse of formal apartheid unleashed new political forces and possibilities in the countries concerned; within Southern Africa and in the rest of Africa; thisdevelopment also unleashed new processes and alliances. If there was a perception that the unfinished business of national liberation prevented African countries from giving full attention to the challenges of overcoming their underdevelopment and dependence, the end of colonial rule and apartheid was interpreted as marking the end of an important phase in the history of the continent and the beginning of a new one in which concerns about African unity and development would pre-dominate.

The Revival of Regional Cooperation and Integrade Effort: There was a marked increase, in the period from the beginning of the 1990s, in the tempo of activities designerd to promote sub-regional cooperation and integration in Africa both as an important exercise in its own right and as a building block towards pan-African economic unity. At the same time, new efforts were made to strengthen continental-level governance as evidenced, among other things, by the enabling of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the outlawing by the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU) of the unlawful seizure of power and the exclusion from the counsels of the continental body of all governments installed other than by lawful means, the intensification ofefforts at promoting pan-African conflict resolution mechanisms/peace-keeping instruments, and the transformation of the OAU into a new African Union(AU) complete with a pan-African parliament, a pan-African judicial system, and a reinvigorated commission.The Changing Nature of Inter-State Relations: African countries attained independence in the 1960s on the basis of the inviolability of the boundaries they inherited a strict non-interference in the internal affairs of one another. These principles were, by and large, respected for some 30 years; in the 1990s however, they began seriously to be questioned and challenged in the wake of the crises that engulfed the Great Lakes region of the continent and which culminated in the invasion and occupation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by armies from several African countries. Armed conflicts in a number other countries, most notably Liberia and Sierra Leone, further eroded the principle of non-interference as sub-regional peace-keeping efforts were undertaken in the face of the actual or imminent collapse of central governmental authority. The position is now broadly established that government involved in the massive and gross violation are not entitled to enjoy the principle of non-interference in the affairs of their countries.

The Politics of Transitional Justice:

During the course of the 1990s, as part of the unfolding reform of political systems, various programmes were introduced to revisit the impact of the immediate authoritarian past with a view to establishing what happened, who had responsibility and what corrective measures could be taken in order to achieve national reconciliation.

The first major experiment in this regard was undertaken in South Africa withits Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); various adaptations of the TRC model and/or principle were subsequently developed by several other countries, particularly those emerging from periods of violent conflict and prolonged military rule. There was also an experiment in Rwanda withthe Gatchacha or community-based system of tackling and overcoming the legacy of the genocide which the country suffered.

An Increased United Nations Role in African Governance:

The context of the 1990s also featured new developments in the political system connected to an increase in the profile of the United Nations family of organization in the domestic governance processes of African countries, particularly those emerging from protracted conflicts. There were various dimensions to this increased profile but perhaps the most prominent are the international war crime tribunals that were established primarily on the ideology of discouraging impunity and sending a strong signal to political actors about the need to respect human rights and internationally established rules of conduct in situations of violent conflict and war. The most evident and visible dimensions of change inAfrican countries tell a substantial part of the story about the shifts that are occurring in the political systems of the countries of the continent. However, as far as they go, they only cover the obvious processes of change. Other less visible or measurable but nevertheless powerful dimensions of change which deserve to be factored into analyses but which have not been sufficiently taken into account include the fact that there have been significant demographic shifts in African countries which add up to project children and the youth into a position of much greater prominence. With well over 50 per cent of the population of Africa made up of children and the youth - a reason for which Africa is nowadays described as the «youngest» continent - a gradual but inevitable generational shift is occurring at several levels at the same time in the political system. The youth vote is perhaps the most important, easily recognized aspect of this development, but there is also theemergence into positions of leadership of a generation of politicians who did not directly experience colonial rule and were not directly part of the nationalist anti-colonial coalition.

The implication of this shift for the agenda of politics is one area which remains under-researched beyond the early, self-serving references made in the late 1980s/early 1990s in some western foreign policy circles to the emergence of a new set of renaissance leaders in East Africa, the Horn, and Southern Africa. By contrast, the impact which youth alienation and disaffection - often connected to prolonged unemployment could have on the stability of African polities has attracted the attention of scholars and policy intellectuals concerned with developing alternative interpretations of the conflicts that resulted in the collapse of central governmental authority in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. What is now referred to in some of the literature as the Youth Question in African politics constitutes an important dimension of change which speaks the core of the political system, including the process of constitution and renewal of citizenship, the social contract within which citizenship is articulated, the politics of representation and the legitimacy of government and state (Abdullah & Bangura, 1997; Abdullah, 2003; Mkandawire, 2002; Sesay, 2003). Also critical to the changing frame of politics in Africa is the rapid rate of urbanization taking place across the continent and the intensive internal population migration associated with it. As with the demographic shifts taking place, urbanization and internal population flows would seem to be challenging many of the assumptions and structures on which post-colonial political governance was built. In addition to the obvious rural-urban reconfiguration that is occurring, there is also the growing politics of «settlers and «natives», the revival of competing ethno-regional/socio-cultural networks, the proliferation ofurban gangs/armedmilitias/neighborhood vigilante groups, the spread of intolerance and xenophobia which also finds expression in policies that are hostile to «non-natives», the increased challenges of social inclusion and service delivery for a rapidly growing urban population, the massive expansion of the boundaries of the informal sector and informal networks, and the spread of a new religiosity that ranges from the syncretic to the puritanical. The many different questions ssociated with the process of accelerated urbanization have been refracted into the political system in the form of contestations around issues of citizenship, individual and group rights and entitlements, the role of the state and the nature of its political and policy capacities, the content and reach of social policy, the secular status of the state, and the entire spectrum of urban governance (Sesay,2003; Mamdani, 2001; Mkandawire, 2002). Post-independence politics in Africa was fashioned within the framework of the nationalist anti-colonial struggle that gathered steam in the period after the Second World War.

The agenda of the anti-colonial nationalist coalition that ushered African countries into independence constituted the kernel of the social contract on the basis of which policy -political, economic and social - was developed; almost without exception, a central role was reserved for the public sector in what has generally been described as the state-led or state interventionist post-colonial model of accumulation. It was a model of accumulation which came with its own structure of incentives -of rewards and penalties to which the players in the polity responded formuch of the period it lasted, namely, the first two decades ofindependence.

The collapse of the state interventionist model in the course of the 1980s and the efforts at replacing it with a «free» market-based framework also translated into the alteration of the incentives system in the polity. However, the impact of this development for the patterns of politics have not been seriously researched beyond the early efforts which, heavily ideologically-driven by a one-sided pro-market partisanship, were limited to suggestions that the market-based system would produce a new middle class which, drilled in the competitive ways of the market, will pioneer the African transition to a new era of (true liberal) democracy. This perspective was connected to the view that the emergence of a vibrant civil society, defined as essential to sustainable democratization, was the flipside of the free market system - as much as liberal democracy itself.

The important question of the ways in which the collapse of the state-ledmodel of development, the prolonged socio-economic crises which African countries have experienced and the externally-driven efforts at market reform have produced a new incentive structure and redefined the normative boundaries of politics remains insufficiently researched beyond anecdotal observations.

The various dimensions of change that have impacted on the pattern of politics in contemporary Africa have been the subject of competing interpretations to which we will return fully in this essay. The key point which is worth keeping in mind at this point is the fact that the dominant methodology that consists of seeking to establish a balance sheet of progress and regression has hardly been helpful in enabling students of contemporary African politics to capture the nuances of change. Often taken in isolation, rather than in their inter-connectedness, and frequently treated episodically rather than as part of a broader historical flow, the various elements of change are also routinely assessed without an adequate attention to the context within which they are unfolding. A first step towards redressing the prevalent analytic gaps in the study of contemporary Africa necessitates a discussion of the context within political change is being fashioned and unfolded.