I've seen elections hijacked or stolen outright, elections canceled, elections bought and elections that have proved to be essentially meaningless. African autocrats are proving far more entrenched, far more brutal and far more adept at the manipulation of state machinery than their Eastern European communist counterparts. In country after country, even oppositionists demonstrate themselves to be grasping, quarrelsome and in most cases incapable of running things if they ever do manage to make it to power. Politics in Africa is about lucrative spoils and fresh opportunities for corruption, and much of opposition politics across the continent consists of an out group wanting its turn at the feeding trough. It's become a cliche to call tribalism the affliction of modern Africa, but, unfortunately, my years of covering African politics has convinced me that it is true.
Tribalism is a corrosive influence impeding democratic change and development.
One well-educated Kikuyu woman, a secretary working for a foreign news agency, told me she would never vote for the man then considered the lead opposition candidate, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, for the simple reason that Odinga was a Luo, and Luos, you see, traditionally do not circumcise. For want of a circumcision, an election was lost. Moi was reelected with barely a third of the vote, in a split field that saw two Kikuyus dividing the Kikuyu vote and Odinga winning Luoland. Even in places where opposition parties have managed to overcome the odds and win power in democratic elections, the results so far have been mixed. In Zambia's case, the 1991 election of Frederick Chiluba was supposed to herald a beginning of a new democratic era.