Ivory Coast: Time for France to Call it Quits

Thomas Jing

In 1960, when the Ivory Coast became independent from French colonial rule, Felix Houphouet-Boigny and his Parti Democratique de Cote d’Ivoire (PDCI) were swept to power in a general euphoria. However, as Martin Meredith has noted in his book The Fate of Africa, “the changes that occurred were largely ceremonial.” Most of the new leaders, especially those in French-speaking Africa, were more interested in “accumulating positions of power, wealth and status…than in transforming society.” According to him, “no one illustrated this sense of continuity, or the benefits derived from it, better than Houphouet-Boigny.” As far back as 1951, he had given signal of the neo-colonial era he was about to inaugurate.

“A new page has been turned,” he said. “On it let us write a resolution to make Africa the most splendid and most loyal territory in the French Union.”

Having served in seven successive governments in France, he returned to his country as the newly elected president and built himself a sumptuous palace that was to set the trend in French-speaking Africa in extravagant and reckless spending. “My God, anyone could live here – the Queen of England, President Kennedy. It makes me thrilled to be an Ivory Coast citizen,” an ecstatic and naive national had declared.

Such extravagance in a country still trapped in backwardness and underdevelopment seemed just one of the gaffes of the Ivorian leader at the dawn of independence. Many more were still to come.
  His reluctance to press for political independence, claiming “it was not the best solution for Africa,” led him to put more emphasis on the economy. The political bluff paid huge economic dividends in that “the French government paid a substantial part of administrative costs and provided subsidies for export crops.” So between the mid-forties to the late fifties, “more than 30 per cent of annual running costs were financed by France” as well as “vast sums…spent on roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and agriculture.”

Seemingly, counting more on French largesse than the ability of his government to deliver, he made a bet with Kwame Nkrumah when the Ghanaian leader paid him his first official visit as his country’s new president. He betted that in ten years, the Ivory Coast, by avoiding the road to independence, would be more developed than Ghana. In the murky world of African politics, where mirage is sometimes confused with water, most people would have concluded that he won. But any form of progress built on shaky grounds never last. “The whole thing has been hanging like it was a French thing in Africa,” laments Rwandan President, Paul Kagame.

Today, Nkrumah and Houphouet are no more; but still it is easy to determine whose policies had a lasting impact, since the two men each represented a facet of the old Chinese proverb of accepting a fishmeal or learning how to catch fish. While Houphouet-Boigny’s beloved Ivory Coast now teeters on the brink of chaos and disintegration, rocked to its very foundation by ethnic exclusion and war and even overshadowed by the stigma of genocide, Ghana has successfully weathered the storm of political turbulence and gone on, even as it continues its inexorable march towards the consolidation of democracy, to produce great scholars the likes of George Ayittez and a Nobel Prize laureate and statesman in the mold of UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

So where did the drift begin in the Ivory Coast that Kofi Annan has described as once “an island of stability in the region?” How did this country degenerate from the number one cocoa producer and the richest country in French West Africa to what one commentator says is “now, diplomatically speaking, one giant mess?”

From a traditional aristocratic background, Felix Houphouet-Boigny understood Africa and its concepts of accommodation and hospitality and knew how to use them effectively in the neo-colonial apparatus he inherited from the French from independence up until his death in 1993. A Christian from the Baule ethnic group in the south, his hold on power would have been tenuous if he had failed to accommodate the vast north and its enormous Dioula and Muslim population. Many now forget that it was during his reign in the seventies that the concept of “Ivoirite” was developed. It means “the state of being a true Ivorian.” Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Lane Hartill states that “the term manifests itself throughout all levels of society and is held up by many observers as a root cause of the country’s violent downward spiral…”

Obviously, its explosive content might have caused Houphouet-Boigny to pay no more than lip service to the concept, especially as his nation had already started to develop cracks along ethnic fault lines even while he was fully in control.  In Africa, few people are “true” natives and in a context where nobody belongs, then everyone belongs. The Baule, Houphouet-Boigny’s own ethnic group, was founded by Aba Pokou, a runaway Ashanti princess from Ghana (see The African Nation of November). In addition, the Berlin Act of 1885 simply formed African states by lumping tribes together, irrespective of whether they had something in common or not. These were the national realities that the OAU, the former pan-African body, endorsed as states in its charter when it came into being in 1963.

To this shaky foundation, pop tribalism. Accused of favoring members of his Akan group, “Africa’s wise man,” as the French loved to style Houphouet-Boigny, often responded by stating that he would rather have injustice than disorder. And to charges of corruption, he fought back with an African proverb: “Never look at the mouth of the person roasting peanuts!” The result was obviously a lousy state by the time he died.

In spite of all its weaknesses, the Ivory Coast was still rich, developing and stable. Having been in the political limelight for more than four decades, he had come not only to embody his country but constituted the clay that held it together.

Then the old “baobab” fell. Cracks that already existed in his party widened into gulfs. “Responsibility for the civil war now raging there (Ivory Coast) rests squarely on the shoulders of the current president, Laurent Gbagbo,” writes Cameron Duodu from London. Rather, the bulk of the blames should go to Henri-Konan Bedie, the President of the National Assembly, who took over the reins of power after the death of the old man but failed to maintain his political cocktail for stability. Long before Gbagbo came to power, Bedie and his collaborators had revived the concept of Ivoirite in the nineties and had used it to deepen the north-south divide by trying to stifle the political ambitions of former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara who hails from the north.
As Belgian sociologist, Benoit Schuer, has noted of Ivoirite, the practice is common with a “…political elite that wants power or is in power but has no legitimacy.” “In this case,” he goes on, “the elites are going to manipulate the spirit and mentality (of the citizens) and are going to develop a discourse, a rhetoric of them and us.”

All the same, by advancing the view that Ouattara was not a true Ivorian, Bedie was simply acting out the wishes of the French who tend to maintain insecure, docile and sometimes stupid men and ethnic groups in power to prey on their vulnerability and enhance their own interests.  Having won in the 1993 presidential election in which he had successfully sidelined his greatest competition, he was ousted from power six years later by army officers sympathetic to Ouattara.

In the aftermath of the coup, General Robert Guei became the new head of state. A soldier from the south, used by the coup plotters as a mere decoy from the real thing, he too developed big political dreams of his own as soon as he started to savor power. As it proved increasingly slippery, he dismissed the two most important northerners in his junta on accusation of a coup plot in a bid to tighten his grip on power. Gradually, he worked his way from a soldier to a civilian in order to be eligible for the presidency as he talked of plans to hand over power to a democratically-elected government. With the specter of Ouattara still lurking on the political scene, his own insecurity caused him too to unearth the claim that the ex-pm was a foreigner and so barred him from participating in the elections. Still, he lost to another southerner, Laurent Gbagbo, and was eventually chased from power by a popular uprising.

  With Gbagbo in power, instead of backing away from the concept that had so divided the country, he embraced it. This led to a mutiny of soldiers from the north in September 2002 and a division of the country as they now occupy the northern part, with their capital at Bouake. Dubbing themselves the New Forces, even as they sign treaties such as the Marcoussis agreement, the northerners are digging in for what some day must be a showdown. Mr. Chirac calls Gbabgo’s government a “questionable regime” and has stated that his administration will continue to maintain its military presence in the Ivory Coast “because we are fulfilling an international mandate supported by the whole of the African community.” Absolute nonsense, for this is the source of the problem. Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, styles French meddling a “disgrace.” And he is right. The French abandon their continent to come destabilize and cause misery and sufferings to people in Africa. And what does Obasanjo spend time doing? Squabbling over who should succeed him! Now, this is the real disgrace.

Comments

[Ma Mary]

Interesting body language.

[Supreme]

arrogant honkie