“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Winston Churchill’s words are pertinent today as the world digests Donald Trump’s stunning election victory to become the 45th President of the United States of America. It is ironic that this unlikely outcome of a democratic process has resulted in serious inquisitions of both the operation of democracy and the collective wisdom of American voters who chose Trump to take the most powerful office in the world.
Many observers around the world are pondering the meaning of a Trump presidency. Many are worried, but some have received it well. In Russia, they are pleased with the outcome – they seem to prefer the devil they don’t know to the more familiar figure of Hillary Clinton, a long serving member of the Washington establishment. In the European Union, there’s some concern and caution but the Far Right parties are taking encouragement from Trump’s success. In the UK, Nigel Farage of UKIP who went to the US to lend his support to Trump, sees it as yet another success against the establishment after the stunning victory of Brexit in June this year.
No electoral process attracts as much global attention as does the US presidential election. Its position as a leader of the free world and its self-appointed role as a lecturer of democracy across the world means its own democratic processes are closely watched and judged around the world.
Yet while the US presidential election is a global spectacle, the actual election, like everywhere else, is a local affair. It is decided not by world opinion but by the local opinion. Ultimately, therefore, it is the opinion of Americans that counts, not the views of the millions of outsiders who follow the election with keen interest. And as this election outcome has shown, there is a big gap between general world opinion and American opinion on its choice of President.
There are lots of outsiders who are shocked and disappointed by the outcome. Few outsiders had given Trump a chance or wanted him to win, not least because of his brand of politics which they found repulsive. During the campaign, Trump was crude, rude, arrogant, misogynistic, racist and generally vile. Who could vote for such a man? How did he end up as a candidate of the most powerful democracy in the world? People asked these and more questions, dismissing Trump’s chances as they thought no rational American voter who choose him. But their mistake was to think that their perceptions of Trump were shared by American voters. On the contrary, however vile Trump appeared to the world, his language and message found a receptive audience in many American homes – particularly the white working class Americans, who form the bulk of the voting population. It is mainly those people have voted Trump into power, leaving the watching world utterly confounded.
Americans might wonder why the rest of the world is bothered by its choice of President. The reason is that most people hold the US to high standards largely because, over the years, the US has presented itself as a beacon of democracy and the standard-bearer of democracy, often lecturing others on its virtues and wise decision-making. So when the US holds its own elections, people want to see whether it lives up to its teachings. For most of them, Trump was a disastrous candidate and they never gave him a chance. It is hard for them to understand how a nation as advanced, sophisticated and powerful as the US can elect a man of Trump’s character to be its President. After this performance, it will be harder for the US to lecture others on democracy and wise decision-making.
But this is also where the global clashes with the local. The fact of the matter is was an American election and Trump was not campaigning to lead the free world. The election was local, not global. The only interests that mattered were US interests. The only issues that mattered were internal issues affecting US citizens. Trump knew this and he spoke their language. His populist message was built around an imagined reality of an isolationist America in which Americans were free to do as they pleased and did not have to care much for what happened elsewhere in the world. He spoke the language of protectionism which alienated and worried most outsiders but resonated with the white American working class voters.
It is also important not to isolate the US election from the current wave sweeping through Western politics. It’s not surprising that Trump referred to the US election as “Brexit Plus Plus Plus”. He was, of course, referring to the Brexit vote at the EU referendum in June this year, when the majority of British voters elected to leave the European Union. Like the Trump victory, the outcome shocked the rest of the world. Yet Brexit should have provided some mental preparation for what was to come in the US election. Brexit was an anti-establishment reaction which set Britain on a path to isolation from the EU, a retreat from the multilateral agenda that has dominated international affairs in the last few decades. It signalled a new era of isolationist politics, anti-establishment sentiment and retreat from multilateralism. It was seen as a revolt of the working class against elites. Brexit campaigners tapped into a nationalist and populist sentiment. Trump’s campaign was built on a similar template. He portrayed himself as the outsider who was fighting the Washington establishment. The media reinforced this by mounting a concerted attack on him. The fact that senior Republicans abandoned him did him no harm at all. In fact, it only worked to his advantage. To his supporters, he was a victim of the establishment.
First Brexit, now Trump in two of the world’s oldest democracies, it would be unwise not to take notice of a growing, if still undefined, trend. We are in an era where the post-World War 2 order is undergoing readjustment and the effect of these changes will soon become apparent. It’s not surprising that Far Right parties in Europe feel emboldened by Trump’s success. The era of political correctness when politicians said the right things even if they did not mean them may be coming to an end. With Brexit and Trump’s success, voters are demonstrating their true colours, beyond the politically correct rhetoric favoured by the establishment. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s position is not safe either, despite her long success as Chancellor of the EU’s biggest economy. Her open-door policy towards Syrian refugees seems to be backfiring. Trump exploited the anti-immigrant sentiment in the US. It played an important part in Brexit and it is a big issue in Europe.
What then for Africa? What does Trump’s victory mean for the world’s poorest continent?
The fact of the matter is we don’t know at this stage because Trump has not spoken much about his African policy. When he gave his foreign policy speech in April this year, the entire continent of Africa did not feature. It is hard to tell what his thoughts are. What we do know, however, is that he is emphatically inward-looking and intends to pursue protectionist trade policies. He has threatened to tear up NAFTA, an important trade agreement in North America. If he follows up on his protectionist threats, he could tear up the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the trade deal which gives preferential treatment to certain African exports to the US. Trump has promised American workers that he will raise trade tariffs to protect their jobs and AGOA could be chopped and if it does, African countries presently benefitting could suffer.
But will Trump pursue the interventionist policies of the US in the name of democracy and human rights? Trump has promised to look after US interests’ first and to be more inward-looking. Whether this means a departure from the interventionist policies pursued by George W Bush and Barack Obama remains to be seen. George W Bush’s presidency was very interventionist. He vehemently pushed the regime-change agenda in various countries, including Zimbabwe, under the auspices of promoting democracy across the world. The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), which imposes targeted sanctions on members of the Zimbabwean regime, was passed during Bush’s presidency. Obama has periodically renewed the measures during his presidency, with the US refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the Zimbabwean elections.
Ironically, ZIDERA was co-sponsored by Hillary Clinton when she was a Senator, which means her loss to Trump will not be mourned in Harare. It remains to be seen whether Trump will do anything differently in relation to Zimbabwe. Some members of the Zimbabwean regime seem to be taking comfort in the fact that Trump is a new character and may pursue a different and less interventionist approach compared to Clinton, whose colours they already knew. Yet they risk celebrating too soon. Trump is unpredictable. He might decide that countries like Zimbabwe are too small and not worth the trouble. Or he might decide to use them as examples of his hard-line, no-nonsense approach.
Interestingly, his views on gay marriage resonate with those of conservative elements in Africa. Authoritarian figures like Mugabe and Museveni have vehemently resisted the Western push for African countries to embrace gay rights. In Trump, they will have a new ally at the White House. Trump has also expressed unconventional views on torture, indicating his support for “enhanced interrogation”. His views on banning Muslims from the US and his misogynistic attitude towards women suggest a man who has little regard for human rights. Will the promotion and defence of human rights feature much on his foreign policy agenda? Unlikely. This may please those who abhor US interventionism, but it will also be good news to a vast array of dictators who have always resisted what they regard as US interference in domestic affairs. Civil society groups and others who have benefitted from US support in the past may suffer as the US under Trump retreats into its isolationist shell.
In the end, the world has to come to terms with the fact that this outsider who was never given a chance is going to be the leader of the most powerful nation. The essence of democracy is that people have the right to choose their leaders. For better or worse, the wisdom of the people is based on the magic of numbers – he or she who gets the majority of the figures that count wins the contest. In the US case, the founding fathers thought the electoral college system and not the popular vote would be the best system to choose a leader. This is why Hillary Clinton is the fifth candidate in US history to win the popular vote, but to lose the Presidency. It is preposterous to say Americans have made the wrong choice. That is their choice which reflects their local politics. They have made their choice in accordance with a system that has been used 44 times before. People around the world might not like it much, but Americans have made their choice and now they must live with it.
After Brexit and now the US election, some people have been expressing doubts over the wisdom of democracy. The frustrations are understandable. Democracy looks evil when it produces unpalatable results. But until another system to select leaders and govern is found, democracy remains the best avenue we have at present. We must simply come to terms with the fact that fairly conducted elections sometimes produce results that we don’t like. But we must learn to embrace the outcomes and move on, as long as the process is free and fair. This is where countries like Zimbabwe fail. The election process is riddled with unfairness and malpractices that affect legitimacy. When a candidate loses, it is hard to concede. Sometimes, the incumbent refuses to accept defeat. In 2008, Robert Mugabe lost the election to Morgan Tsvangirai. The establishment decided it was an unpalatable outcome. For six weeks, they manipulated the results in order to give Mugabe a second chance. Then they unleashed violence upon the people to retain power. In the US, on the other hand, realising that the dream was over, the establishment’s candidate, Hillary Clinton picked up the phone and conceded defeat to her less-fancied rival. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it had to be done. The election process could not be faulted. That, right there, is the difference between a mature democracy and others.
Still, however disagreeable a Trump presidency might be to some, it is a credit to the democratic process that the US is getting a new President after a hotly-contested election in which there was no state-sponsored violence, no rigging, no gross electoral malpractices, results were announced timely and transparently within 24 hours and the process of transfer of power is already under way in accordance with constitutional rules and conventions. There are important lessons to learn for fledgling democracies. Spare a thought for the citizen of Zimbabwe. For 36 years the country has had only one leader. Robert Mugabe has been Executive President since 1987 and in 2018 when he will be 94, he intends to run again for the umpteenth time. A Zimbabwe born at independence in 1980 and has never been out of the country does not know what it means to have a new President after an election. When it does happen, it will be a completely new experience.
waMagaisa
Easy Sunday Read: We were each neighbour’s keeper