Алистер Смит - The Dictator's Handbook - Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

Robert Mugabe is likewise a master at keeping his coalition off-balance. He was elected president of Zimbabwe in 1980 following a negotiated settlement to a long civil war. The struggle against the white-only rule of the previous Rhodesian regime was led by two factions that crystallized into political parties behind their respective leaders: Robert Mugabe’s ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union). Initially, Mugabe preached reconciliation:

If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally with the same national interest, loyalty, rights and duties as myself. If yesterday you hated me, you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you. . . . Draw a line under the past.... The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequalities that must never find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against white.11

A naïve observer might have thought that Mugabe planned to bring ZAPU elites into his winning coalition. That might have made sense at the outset, but once ZANU’s power was consolidated there would be no reason to keep ZAPU loyalists around. And once Mugabe’s power was consolidated, he’d have no need to keep some of his old friends from ZANU around either.

Mugabe also reached out to many in the white community, and particularly former leaders and administrators, to help him run the country. Many whites who had feared the transition, began to refer to him as “Good Old Bob.” Mugabe needed their support. He could not run the country without them and he needed to know where the money was. In this he was greatly assisted by the international community. They pledged $900 million during his first year. However, once he was ensconced in power, Mugabe’s attitude changed.

In 1981 he called for a one party state and began arresting whites, saying “we will kill those snakes among us, we will smash them completely.” Mugabe was even harsher towards his former comrades in arms. He forced Nkomo out of the cabinet and sent a North Korean trained paramilitary group, the Fifth Brigade, to terrorize Matabeleland, Nkomo’s regional stronghold. As one ZANU minister put it, “Nkomo and his guerillas are germs in the country’s wounds and they will have to be cleaned up with iodine. The patient will scream a bit.” The operation was called Gukurahundi—a Shona word that means, Wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains. Many veterans from the fight against white rule resisted. In retaliation Matabeleland was effectively sealed off and 400,000 people faced starvation. As one of Mugabe’s henchmen, a brigade officer, stated, “First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your cattle, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children and finally you will eat the dissidents.”12

Mugabe needed the assistance of ZAPU fighters to defeat white only rule. He needed the assistance of white farmers and administrators and the international community to find the money to solidify his control over the state. Only when he was entrenched in power did “Good Old Bob” show his true colors.

Democrats Aren’t Angels

As we all know, the victor writes history. Leaders should therefore never refrain from cheating if they can get away with it. Democrats may have to put up with real and meaningful elections in order to stay in power, but it shouldn’t be shocking to see that whenever they can, they’ll happily take a page out of Lenin’s book. There’s no election better than a rigged one, so long as you’re the one rigging it.

The list of tried and trusted means of cheating is long. Just as quickly as electoral rules are created to outlaw corrupt practices, politicians find other means. For instance, leaders can restrict who is eligible and registered to vote and who is not. In Malaysia, under a system known as Operation IC, immigration is controlled so as to create demographics favorable to the incumbent party. New York City’s infamous Democratic Party machine, Tammany Hall, acquired its Irish flavor by meeting and recruiting immigrants as they left the boat, promising citizenship and jobs for their vote.

When leaders can’t restrict who is eligible to vote or else are unable to buy enough votes, they can use intimidation and violence to restrict access to polling places. North Indian states, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, experience “booth capture,” where party supporters capture the polling place and cast every eligible voter’s vote for their party.

Cheating does not stop once ballots are cast, of course. Leaders never hesitate to miscount or destroy ballots. Coming to office and staying in office are the most important things in politics. And candidates who aren’t willing to cheat are typically beaten by those who are. Since democracies typically work out myriad ways to make cheating difficult, politicians in power in democracies have innovated any number of perfectly legal means to ensure their electoral victories and their continued rule.

One counterintuitive strategy is for leaders to encourage additional competitors. This is why some states have so many political parties, even though only one really wins. The conventional wisdom about America’s two-party system tells us that fringe parties allow for a more vibrant and responsive government. But even in multiparty states, there are always leading parties—you have to ask yourself whether the leading parties would allow the fringe parties to exist if they weren’t somehow serving their interests.

Tanzania’s parliament and presidency are perennially controlled by the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM), even though as many as seventeen parties routinely compete in Tanzania’s free and fair elections. The CCM government actually provided campaign financing, as we would expect, in an opaque way, to small parties until quite recently, thereby encouraging them to compete and divide the opposition vote. This makes it easier for the relatively centrist CCM to win. Although the CCM wins a large percentage of the vote, all it needs to win is one more vote than the second largest party in half the parliamentary constituencies. That turns out to mean the CCM needs much less than 10 percent in most districts. The number of supporters a party needs affects the kinds of policies it pursues. In those constituencies in Tanzania where an opposition party generates lots of votes, the CCM needs to appeal to many voters and therefore generally provides better health care, education, and services. In constituencies where the CCM needs fewer votes, cash transfers, such as vouchers for subsidized fertilizer, are more common.13

Multiparty democracy provides a similar means for one or two parties to dominate governments in democracies from Botswana to Japan and Israel. There is more to representing the people than just allowing them to vote, even when the vote is done honestly.

Designated seats for underrepresented minorities is another means by which leaders reduce the number of people upon whom they are dependent. Such policies are advertised as empowering minorities, whether they are women, or members of a particular caste or religion. In reality they empower leaders. That a candidate is elected by a small subset of the population reduces the number of essentials required to retain power. At a very basic level, electoral victory in a two-party parliamentary system requires the support of half the people in half the districts; that is, in principle, 25 percent of the voters. Suppose 10 percent of the seats were reserved for election by one specific group that happens to be geographically concentrated (such as gay voters in the Castro in our earlier account of Harvey Milk’s election in San Francisco). To retain half the seats in parliament, the incumbent party need only retain 40 percent of the regular single member district seats, which is readily done with just over 22 percent of the vote. So by focusing on districts in which the privileged minority is prevalent, a party can reduce the number of votes it requires by 12 percent.