The latter has reached alarming proportions in many countries. Corruption is rampant and pervasive. Private money that sponsors political party campaigns has proven to be a danger to democracy as the monied are able to buy governments in waiting ahead of elections – a phenomenon that often results in state capture by private interests with the result that governments become accountable to those who sponsored them to win power than the people. Private funding of political parties needs to be regulated.
All the above instances have led to massive civil society disengagement from the electoral process and the death of participatory democracy. Democracy should never be understood as simply voting every election cycle. It must involve continuous participation of the people in the manner in which they are governed.
International law guarantees the right of the people to, “take part in the conduct of the public affairs directly or through freely chosen representatives”. International Law also requires countries to hold, “genuine” and periodic elections. How many amongst us can attest to the “genuineness” of the elections we hold?
A democratic recession in our continent has been evident for decades and there are no signs that the situation is improving.
Democratic recessions suggest a reversal of democratic gains that may have occurred in the past decades, it is characterised by weakening of democratic institutions, the emergence of a big man syndrome. It entails the erosion of political accountability, conducting elections fraught with fundamental irregularities, rampant corruption, violation of human rights.
Research suggests that there has been a gradual decline of democracy in Africa with more than 15 active violent conflicts across the continent in 2021. The continent has moved from three democracies and 42 authoritarian regimes in 1985 to only 18 democracies, 19 authoritarian regimes and 13 hybrid regimes in 2015. The occasional occurrence of unconstitutional changes of government and military aided transitions account for much of Africa’s democratic recession.
One of the tools that can be used to halt and even reverse the democratic recession is constitutional building or constitutional review.
In the recent decades many countries have sought to review their constitutions, many of which were colonial inheritances. Countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Botswana- all with varying degrees of success. In other countries such as South Africa, Namibia and Kenya, people’s participation was put at the centre of the process. In other countries the constitutional review processes was infected with illegitimacy as politicians imposed their wishes on the citizenry resulting in constitutions that can hardly be called people’s constitutions. Best practice teaches that the best constitutional review process must genuinely be people-driven and involve all key stakeholders. A constitution that the people cannot proudly call their own is not worth the paper it is written on.
The above challenges, notwithstanding the picture is not entirely bleak. We, the people, can use tools at our disposal such as ACDEG, to demand that our government not only ratify, but execute the letter and spirit of the Act. Africa has an epidemic of bad laws that would fail a democratic index audit. Our governments record in ratifying regional, sub regional instruments is very good, but their record of domestication and implementation of that which they agreed is poor.
I conclude by commending Democracy Works Foundation (DWF) and its partners to remain resolute in promoting the values and dictates of ACDEG and urge them to be rooted among communities and roll out civic education programmes, using technologies and face to face community meetings.
The existence of the African Continent’s regional instruments has provided an opportunity for supranational accountability - and although these instruments have been allowed to gather dust and have sometimes served as vehicles for norm diffusion, the historical, political and socio-economic context and peculiarities of countries have led to a mixed bag in terms of democratic consolidation results.
*Hon Justice Professor Dingake is Judge of the National and Supreme Courts of Papua New Guinea and Residual Special Court of Sierra Leone. He is also President, Africa Regional Judges Forum on HIV and Human Rights. The preceding are his remarks delivered virtually for an event held in Botswana on May 19. This is the second and final part of his remarks
