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Zanzibeijan: Culture and tales of two disputed elections
2005-11-12 08:32:04
By Ani Jozeni
What is the place of culture in how countries conduct their electoral exercises, and when disputes arise as to police interfering with the counting, is it thus a problem of police use, or rather of culture?
This is the kind of question that arises when experts start talking about the manner in which elections were held in one or other area, and many state authorities take up the cultural concept gladly. It removes morality for cultural diversity.
That was the precise tonality that one could hear from a representative of Azerbeijan, a country in the web of the former Soviet Union but with a culture not quite dissimilar to Iran, which also held elections recently.
There was widespread dissatisfaction with the manner in which it was conducted, and since it is an Asian or ’Eurasian’ country, the habitual refrain from criticizing African leaders was absent.
State Department criticism came a little later, not the first, as it was the case in Zanzibar.
When it comes to conducting state to state relations, there is a period of learning that seems to be on the way, where Africa will now be treated like a contractual party, or put differently, an adult.
Only when such view is evident shall it be that it is expected to follow the same rules as being demanded of others, not obtain the ’benefit of the doubt’ due to its culturally different outlook, or ’status.’ All difference is but inferiority.
In political culture as well as in culture generally, Africans or rather its political leadership have always felt elated and satisfied when they are treated as ’different’ from others.
They see the superficial refrain or in pointing out tribal habits of ’elders sitting under a tree, and talking till they agree’ which contrasts with argumentative democracy, as praise.
As a matter of fact it is a form of denigration, of an inferior civilization where only consensus is possible, as formal difference leads to chaos.
That background of what people think of a country or of a people, and thus how they judge its electoral processes, was being played out lately in two places.
There were elections and disputes about how they were conducted, with one difference - that in Azerbaijan the disputation was instant upon closure of the voting process.
In Zanzibar it was largely an afterthought; the US spoiled the broth after the fun had already started.
Surprisingly enough, there was no direct assertion as to ’culture’ in the manner in which the dispute came up, only that it forms part of the background.
It was an Azeri head of its official delegation to the EU headquarters in Brussels who insisted on taking account of the culture of the Azeri people in judging how the vote went.
A BBC interviewer kept raising the issue of culture or police; was it police action or just culture?
In what one may call a ’strict’ sense, there is factual truthfulness on both sides of the argument, the ’police’ problem and the ’culture’ problem.
It is true that governments send the police on polling booth errands but this does not happen by purely state-located mechanisms.
Surely the vast celebrations in Zanzibar municipality after the ZEC announced the presidential election results were a cultural phenomenon? Who among those joyous multitudes wasn’t aware of what their police was doing?
When one reads a placard like ’Mtu Kwao’ saying Maalim Seif had been caught sleeping in banana farm ….it shows a face of ’multipartism’ that is totally inimical with democracy.
What excites plebeian crowds of perhaps indigenous Africans, as different from Hizbu remnants from Pemba, is that their party remains in power. They have scarcely any interest in the scruples of democracy, of fair play, of representation.
That is why some of the criticism of the Isles polls shows a growing disenchantment not with ruling party habits but with multipartism itself. They claim that it is leading the country to conflicts and instability, in which case one-partism assured us of peace and harmony.
That much is now wisdom even in august circles at the University of Dar es Salaam, most of whom were caught dancing the ’mduara’ of victory when the US Embassy issued its statement, and have since backtracked, sullenly.
Were Zanzibar to have a spokesman at the EU headquarters that the BBC would decide to interview on the polls, it isn’t surprising he would make the same cultural argument.
It was for instance observable in a commentary in the ruling party daily, a senior editor writing that ’for having belittled the Zanzibar Revolution, Maalim Seif has been trounced for the third time.’ In other words it doesn’t matter if it was free and fair so long as this fellow who often mocks the Revolution has been floored.
That is why critics of globalization who at the same time claim to be democrats are always having one foot in water and another on the ground. It is the real non-democrats who insist that cultures are different and thus no one should expect any of our countries to organize a democratic election who stick to principle.
And this idea isn’t far from those who oppose globalization, as their stance on democracy depends on the seminar. Today pluralism was among donor requirements and then on another day it reflected popular struggles, but usually for ’participation.’
Whether Tanzanian (and Azerbaijan) elites will be a little shamefaced now and admit that election rigging is bad cannot be said. For once, we are still quite far from Kenya’s apparent progress, as its ’orange’ and ’banana’ groups indicate that were anyone to tamper with polls, there are conditions where a ’million man march’ would be set for the State House.
Days now seem to be gone when ethnic cleansing was being used as a polls weapon, viz, the way thousands of voters were made to depart from Zanzibar before the vote. It reduced the need to actually rig and that is why the poll nearly came to being accepted as ’free and fair.’
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