Africa’s stamp on elections

These works emphasised dangerous risks that had to be taken to start and sustain dialogue with each individual to raise their political awareness by criticising elements which underlined his/her suffering, poverty, and lack of progress; and what he or she must do in struggle with others to open the way to a better life in […]

These works emphasised dangerous risks that had to be taken to start and sustain dialogue with each individual to raise their political awareness by criticising elements which underlined his/her suffering, poverty, and lack of progress; and what he or she must do in struggle with others to open the way to a better life in future. There was focus on giving knowledge to the victimised individual in order to raise the power inbuilt in him or her for combat to achieve revolutionary change. Cabral and Che Guevara praised the ability of the awakened rural poor to become combatants in guerrilla armies built painstakingly under secretive conditions.
Colonial dictatorship ignored and suffocated community opinion; while liberation struggle had to be secretive while believing in the underground survival and tenacity of community wishes for justice. This focus on political education of, and actions by, the individual was adapted by Obama’s campaign team through the use of internet to transmit political messages urging turning frustrations over existing socio-economic and political realities of the United States and local conditions into participating in raising voters for Obama’s platform. Unlike rich corporate donors, Individuals were urged to contribute small financial contributions – 12 dollars – to the campaign war chest.
 The team’s internet access was more direct than traditional knocking on doors of families to distribute campaign leaflets. It added creative energies to a rich American tradition of individuals volunteering to promote community causes.
The ‘’Yes We Can’’ campaign was against a new virus against ‘’free and fair elections’’ in northern United States. Critics had increasingly condemned battering minds of voters with floods of expensive television advertisements by mega-rich candidates. The truism that a lie repeated long enough will start being  regarded as truth  turned viewers’ heads into ‘’idiot boxes ’’, thereby, severely undermining rational choices by voters.   Clever psychologists injected into advertisements codes which aroused racial prejudices; titillate anti-women and anti-immigrant prejudices to whittle down ‘’freedom of thought’’ necessary for focusing on policy options offered by contesting politicians.
The ‘’one party states’’ in the southern United States had, for decades, thrived on lack of ‘’free and fair elections’’.  Tests of reading skills; physical attacks; using police dogs to frighten voters from registration or casting their votes, and gerrymandering of constituency boundaries had been used to prevent African-Americans from participating in ‘’free and fair elections’’. Fanning up fears of blacks indulging in jamborees of raping white women, were used to rouse rejection of ‘’liberal’’ candidates who supported socio-economic benefits for African-American communities.
Amilcar Cabral insisted that people support concrete measures which will improve their lives. The Obama campaign focused on reversing the withdrawal of scholarships and grants to college students; bringing back jobs lost through American companies relocating factories to China, Korea and other Asian countries. Obama also emphasized financing industrial inventiveness by Americans; forcing companies to stop polluting rivers; ending climate change   destroying homes through hurricanes, tornadoes and abnormal amounts of snow increasingly paralysing transport and schools.
Cabral, Neto and Guevara did not tolerate opponents of their political power because they met their combatants with death; not dialogue and debate. Where the revolution won universal popular support, the dynamic of ‘’multi-party elections’’ became irrelevant. Mwalimu Nyerere circumvented dangers of this political condition to accountable governance by inventing ‘’democratic one-party’’ elections. Its peculiar rules included: the party insisting that in each constituency two to three members of the party present themselves as candidates; present their campaign appeals at the same time to assembled members of a constituency; forbidding bribery, secret campaigns, and use of ethnic, religious or racial to appeal for votes. The electoral process became schools for the intellectual development of voters since candidates were required to clearly indicate choices they would follow in specific policy issues; as well answer rebuttals by other contenders.
In Namibia, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria the practice of voters lining behind candidates emerged for different reasons. In Kenya, opposition parties saw it as a tool for intimidating and punishing those who openly supported anti-government candidates. In Nigeria, military officials claimed that it combated loss of public faith in fraud-infested secret ballots. In Namibia it was a tool for shaming politicians who had betrayed goals of the liberation struggle and returning power to the people. In Nigeria, the anti-corruption agency introduced the notion of preventing corrupt individuals from contesting elections. It introduced into the electoral process Uganda’s tool for monitoring corruption in government agencies.  
Africa’s rich record of investing creativity in administering elections has been treated with arrogant silence by government officials, NGOS and ‘’election observers’’ from countries with dirty records in upholding ‘’free and fair elections’’. This has diverted energy from creative integration of Igbo, Dinka, and Balante notions of ‘’chi’’ in electoral contests to ensure legitimacy; tools like youths shaming corrupt elders through the ‘’mbatarav’ in Tiv communities; and ‘’regicide’’ by leaders who have betrayed people’s welfare among Jukun and Yoruba communities.  Africa must give and not take lessons.