Contenu du sommaire : La démocratie en Afrique

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Africa has experienced a new phase of democratic transition. In most African countries this process has led to the adoption of new constitutions, establishing a democratic system whose fundamental features are the acceptance of pluralism, of political opposition and the guarantee of fundamental rights and liberties. This democratic renewal has also been characterized by the gradual establishment of the rule of law and the organization of competitive elections opening the way to a real political alternative in several countries. Significant progress has been made in numerous African countries, yet there are still many obstacles. There have been ill-prepared or rigged elections which have led to violence and have put a halt to the democratic process and the dialogue between the different political actors. In order to stay in power, certain heads of State have modified the constitution or misused some institutions (notably the Parliament), thereby calling into question the principle of the separation of powers. In addition, the persistence of armed conflicts and the resurgence of coups d'état in certain countries have undermined the democratic transition.

In Africa as elsewhere the relationship of democracy and tradition is historical, even more so since the former has been “invented” and bureaucratized in the colonial context. Both the holders of authoritarian power and democratic entrepreneurs have been able to resort to democracy because it is politically polysemic. But it is above all at the local level that the elections, the process of decentralization, the organizations of civil society and the chiefdoms created by the indirect colonial administration have established a critical relationship with tradition through the social conflicts they trigger, in particular those launched by women and the young.

It is undeniable that the juridical and institutional framework adopted by African democracies is characterized by many resemblances and similarities with regimes elaborated outside of the continent. In this age of globalization, far from being an African specificity imitation, or what is called imitation, is or has become one aspect of a broader and more complex phenomenon, i.e. political and institutional standardization, with which it has been confused. At a time when the problem is not so much to define what form of democracy would suit Africa but rather to know how the democratic process chosen by African states can be strengthened, the priority should be to take into account the various strategies of invention of democracy and to identify, on a case to case basis, the forms and conditions of the development of democracy in the various contexts and environments in which it is expected to develop.

In Africa, democracy and justice are two concepts that coexist in an ambiguous logic. Indeed, their implementation is constantly confronted to choices between the universalist norm and the idiosyncrasies of the continent. However, whatever the option taken, justice will play a decisive role in the advent of democracy.

Keeping its distance from discourses about the possibility or impossibility of democracy, this article tries to show that today Africa is not confronted with a single rigid exterior model, i.e. “imported democracy”. It can choose from a variety of models that it can adapt taking into account particular constraints. This situation might be puzzling for the outside observer but it does not necessarily lead to the imposition of pure authoritarianism on the long term. Over a century, different conceptions of democracy have appeared, corresponding to particular circumstances such as colonial dependency and under-development, which form a number of strata whose accumulation offers a frame of reference.

Africa is a continent known for its numerous crises and wars which have triggered massive transfers of population, often to refugee camps, but also for numerous violations of rights or liberties whose victims are ordinary citizens and political leaders. Yet, it was only twenty years after their independence that governments belatedly adopted, on 28 October 1981, an African Charter of the rights of man and peoples, whose main characteristic is an attempt to reconcile regionalism and universalism with regards to human rights. The paper analyzes some of the theoretical and conceptual problematics raised by this Charter, together with the perspectives regarding the rights of man at a time when a process of democratization of political regimes has been engaged for a number of years in African countries.

Constitutional justice is an integral part of constitutionalism, a system whose purpose is to supervise the power of the government and to protect the liberty of the governed. In Benin, such a mission is fully assumed by the constitutional judge, since the Constitution grants him that competence but, more importantly, since every citizen has the right to appeal to him either directly or because of the potential anti-constitutionality of any law, administrative decree, court ruling, or any attitude that is detrimental to fundamental rights.

A panoramic observation of elections in French-speaking black Africa reveals a frightful drift which has undeniably erased the progress of the new constitutional order initiated in the 1990s. One can only hope that this trend corresponds to the electoral choice of one particular political clan and that it will not last as long as the Roman Empire ! As a consequence, it is necessary to try to lift off the curse that seems to have been attached to elections and according to which they are either manipulated by those who pretend to support them or supported by those who seem to betray them (one often hears that mass slaughters or assassinations reinforce the value of elections in French-speaking black Africa, among other things). This might be the only possibility for the political or democratic transition initiated in the 1990s to reach completion and to make sure that the much expected democracy in black French-speaking Africa becomes a reality instead of remaining a pipe-dream.

While multi-party systems and elections have rapidly become generalized in Africa, political successions and transfers of power remain rare. This is due to the specific political history of the continent, characterized by a strong personalization of power. Paradoxically, transfers of power seem possible almost exclusively when successions are announced, which confirms the persistence of the personalization of power.

The forms taken by political competition in Africa are not linear, but African countries are being trained with difficulty to the practice of electoral litigation. The importance of litigation varies according to different countries for a number of reasons, notably the differentiated mobilization of political actors and public opinion in support of electoral litigation as well as the development of litigation according to the different types of election. The problem of irregularities and frauds remains recurrent. Electoral litigation implies the existence of multiplicity of national actors and can follow either the legal or the political path.

What is the state of democracy in South Africa fifteen years after the first elections of 1994 ? While often presented as a model, South-Africa is experiencing contradictory tensions. Its political and judicial system has radically broken with the past and may be seen as a success with regards to the protection of fundamental rights, the balance of power and the integration of legal pluralism. On the other hand, the gradual exit from the transition period has brought to light intense political struggles within the ANC ruling party, and these struggles are jeopardizing the balance of power. In addition to these political difficulties, the existence of many social problems requires a heightened vigilance to make sure that the foundations of the fragile South-African democracy are not put into question.

Paraphrasing Cocteau about love, one could say that in Africa, there is no democracy but only proofs of democracy. But they are more and more numerous and the new forms of the economy, which are more information-based, better integrated to global exchanges, more dependent on sophisticated fiscal and economic policies require a broadening of the norm of the law, the professionalization of politics, an opening towards the African diasporas, the sanction of public administrators and a priority to actions fighting inequalities. It is not excluded, therefore, that 2009 might mark the beginning of a period when democracy will become one of the essential factors of African economic development.