Peace talks won't solve the crisis in South Sudan. Africa-style
justice will.
After a power struggle between South Sudanese President
Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, plunged the world's
newest state into crisis in mid-December, the international community dutifully
mobilized to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. Right now, as
South Sudan slides toward open civil war, representatives from both sides are
engaged in direct, face-to-face talks in Addis Ababa. Unfortunately, however,
the international community is misleading Africa yet again. The track record
for face-to-face negotiation in post-colonial Africa -- and in Sudan itself --
is abysmal. Instead of trudging down the same, well-worn path toward failure,
South Sudan should look to traditional modes of conflict resolution to end the
current standoff.
More than 40 wars have been fought on the continent since
1970. Year after year, one African country after another has imploded with
deafening staccato, scattering refugees in all directions: Sudan erupted in
1972, Angola and Mozambique in 1975, and Ethiopia in 1985. Then came Liberia
(1992), Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1997), Congo
(1998), Ethiopia/Eritrea (1998), Guinea (1999, 2010), Ivory Coast (2001, 2005,
2010), Libya (2011), Mali (2012), and now the Central African Republic and
South Sudan.
Almost without exception, attempts to reach peace accords
have ended in failure. The most common modality has been the direct,
face-to-face negotiation between the warring factions -- a Western approach
often pushed by a well-intentioned international community. But this has seldom
worked in Africa.
Face-to-face negotiations only succeed when factional
leaders want peace or are forced to pay a price for the mayhem they wreak --
conditions that have rarely been met in Africa. More often than not, conflict
becomes profitable for warlords because it provides them with opportunities to
rape, pillage, and plunder natural resources. For rebel soldiers, their weapons
are often their livelihoods. Likewise, government soldiers sometimes live by
looting, since they are routinely unpaid by their cash-strapped governments.
Countless examples can be drawn from the wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone,
Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Conflict also gives national governments
a ready-made excuse -- "national security" -- to suspend development
projects, halt provision of social services, and keep their defense budgets
secret, thereby shielding corrupt dealings from scrutiny.
Face-to-face negotiations often reinforce these wartime
patterns by failing to dole out punishment for combatants. Often, militant
leaders are actually rewarded at the negotiating table, gaining the
respectability and influence that comes with international recognition. Back in
1993, the late Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed was transported in U.S.
military aircraft to Addis Ababa to take part in peace negotiations. The
spectacle raised Aideed's stature and bolstered his confidence in becoming
Somalia's next president -- only months before his forces killed 18 U.S.
Rangers in Mogadishu. In a similarly outrageous arrangement brokered by the
international community, the head of the notorious Revolutionary United Front
(RUF) -- which chopped off the limbs of everyone, including women and children,
who stood in their way -- was made Sierra Leone's minister of lands and mines
in 1999.
A related problem with direct, face-to-face negotiations
is that they often lead to the establishment of what are invariably termed
"governments of national unity" -- clumsy attempts to forge
power-sharing agreements between warring factions that have only just agreed to
put their weapons down. This, of course, defies common sense. How are mortal
enemies expected to cast all suspicion aside and blithely work together for the
benefit of all? Most of the time they don't, and conflict breaks out again
(See: Angola in 1992, Congo in 1999, Sierra Leone in 2000, and Ivory Coast in
January 2003). But it's not just that unity governments are destined to fail;
it's that when they succeed, they amount to blueprints for the joint-plunder of
the state. Ministerial and governmental positions are divvied up between
government and rebel leaders -- invariably igniting bitter squabbles in the
process -- and then the rent-seeking begins.
Making matters worse, African leaders seldom honor
agreements they append their names to, much less implement them in good faith.
During the Ivoirian crisis in 2003, for example, a peace accord was signed in
Ghana establishing a power-sharing deal between the government of President
Laurent Gbagbo, which controlled the southern half of the country, and rebel
groups that controlled the north and much of the west. But conflict soon
erupted over the distribution of cabinet posts, and Gbagbo flouted the accord
by refusing to spell out the powers he would cede to the opposition and only
funding the government ministries he controlled. Predictably, fighting broke
out again, threatening to reignite the civil war.
A similar script played out in Liberia during the civil
war that saw tens of thousands slaughtered, raped, and maimed between 1999 and
2003. At peace talks in Ghana in June 2003, President Charles Taylor, who had
been indicted for war crimes by a U.N-Sierra Leone court, pledged to step down
under a cease-fire his government signed with two of the rebel groups battling
his regime. The agreement called for Taylor's resignation and the formation of
a transitional government, composed of the government, rebels, and political
parties, among others. But within hours of signing the accord, Taylor's
government was backtracking on the question of his resignation. In the end, it
was only after an intense bombardment of Monrovia -- coupled with heightened
international pressure and an offer of political asylum in Nigeria -- that
Taylor finally resigned in August 2003.
More than 30 such peace accords have been brokered in
Africa since the 1970s -- and the track record has been appalling. Only
Mozambique's 1991 peace accord has endured, and even now it appears shaky as
clashes between the government and the rebel group Renamo have flared recently
over implementation. Elsewhere, peace accords were shredded like confetti even
before the ink on them was dry. The most spectacular failures occurred in
Angola (1991 and 1994), Burundi (1993), Rwanda (1993), Sierra Leone (1999),
Democratic Republic of Congo (1999), and Ivory Coast (2003). All collapsed
because face-to-face talks were marred by brinkmanship and broken promises.
Even where peace accords are successfully concluded and
unity governments are established, they are almost always short-lived. Angola's
unity government failed after six months in 1992. Congo's 2003 unity government
created four vice presidents but did not bring peace to the eastern part of the
country. Burundi's civil war flared up again in August 2003, despite the
establishment of a unity government brokered by former South African President
Nelson Mandela and Ivory Coast's 2003 unity government has proceeded in fits
and starts. Kenya's unity government has floundered since 2008; Zimbabwe's
since 2009.
Given this record, it is difficult to be optimistic about
South Sudan's current peace talks in Addis Ababa. Add to this the fact that the
South's 2005 power-sharing agreement with Sudanese President Omar Bashir failed
miserably and that Kiir and Machar have already tried a unity government, and
the third time looks even less likely to be the charm. Another unity government
simply doesn't make sense. Rebel leader Machar almost certainly won't agree to
a deal in which Kiir remains president, and Kiir is unlikely to resign. Nor is
there a clear military solution -- a bitter lesson from the post-colonial era
is that no African government has successfully put down a rebel insurgency.
But perhaps Africa's own indigenous conflict resolution
mechanism can offer a way out of the conundrum. The key ingredient in the
African method -- missing in the Western approach -- is engagement with civil
society. "When two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled upon and
hurt," goes the African proverb. African conflict resolution, then,
requires four parties: the two elephants, an arbiter, and the "grass"
(composed of all those affected by the conflict.) Just as it takes a village to
raise a child, so too does it take one to resolve a conflict.
In most traditional African societies, when two people
cannot resolve their differences by themselves, their case is taken to a
village chief's court for adjudication. The court is open and anyone affected
by the dispute can participate. Both parties are invited to make their case.
Next, anybody else who has something to say may do so. After all the arguments
have been heard, the chief renders a decision. The guilty party may be fined,
say, three goats. By default, his or her family is held liable. The injured
party receives one goat, the chief is given a goat for his services, and the
final goat is slaughtered for a village feast for all to enjoy.
The latter social event is derived from the African
belief that frayed social relations need to be healed -- the "grass"
restored. More importantly, the interests of the community supersede those of
the disputants. If they adopt intransigent positions, they can be sidelined by
the will of the community and fined for disturbing social peace. In extreme
cases, they can be expelled from the village. In other words, there is a price
to be paid for intransigence and for wreaking social mayhem -- a price exacted
by the victims. The current system of internationally-mediated peace talks, by
contrast, imposes no such punishment on the combatants.
Already, there is limited evidence that traditional
dispute-resolution mechanisms can work on a much larger scale. Indeed,
following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989, African traditional
methods were revived to sweep dictators out of power and transition to a
democratic order. In 1989, after unpaid civil servants went on strike and
demanded the resignation of Benin's military dictator, Mathieu Kerekou, a
sovereign national conference was called representing various political,
religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad spectrum of
Beninois society. The conference, chaired by Father Isidore de Souza, held
sovereign power and its decisions were binding on all, including the
government. It stripped Kerekou of power and scheduled multiparty elections
that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist rule. Similar inclusive national
conferences in Congo and Niger (both in 1991) brought dictatorships to an end
and set the stage for free and fair elections.
In South Africa, the vehicle used to make the difficult
but peaceful transition to a multiracial democratic society was the Convention
for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). It began deliberations in July 1991,
with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political parties and various
anti-apartheid groups. The government of F.W. de Klerk made no effort to
control the composition of CODESA. Political parties were not excluded, not
even ultra right-wing political groups, although they chose to boycott its
deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a "working consensus" on an
interim constitution and set a date for the 1994 elections. It established the
composition of an interim or transitional government that would rule until the
elections were held. Most importantly, CODESA's decisions were binding. De
Klerk could not abrogate any decision made by the convention -- just as the
African chief could not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting.
Instead of facilitating direct negotiations in Addis
Ababa, the African Union should serve as an arbiter between South Sudanese
civil society organizations, and political and religious groups. An interim
government should be set up -- headed by neither Kiir nor Machar -- and a date
set for elections. If the two leaders remain recalcitrant, they should be fined
proverbial goats for disturbing the social peace. By default, they should be
expelled from the "village" and handed over to the ICC for prosecution
for crimes against humanity. And just as the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) did to Mali when Gen. Amadou Sanogo seized power in March 2012,
the African Union should close all borders with South Sudan and impose an
economic blockade. When elephants have trampled the grass, they should not be
rewarded with additional stomping grounds.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
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