6 the only immediate course open to them is to vote. Here it is pertinent to point out that the past two major elections have been widely repudiated, and subject to legal challenges, even though few of these challenges have been resolved in the past 5 years. So there must be questions about whether voting still has salience for the ordinary Zimbabwean citizen, and whether the narrow focus on elections is an appropriate solution to the Zimbabwe crisis. Does democracy hinge mainly upon elections, and will elections provide both the necessary and sufficient conditions for the consensus that is needed for a modern democracy? Elections clearly provide both the validation for a particular regime to govern, as well as underpinning the legal basis for the structure of the state, but, as Carothers has so eloquently pointed out, states and regimes can govern way short of the conditions that might describe a democracy7. In Africa, the most frequent case is that countries display “feckless pluralism” – with competitive elections, alternating regimes, but little substantial development, either economically or socially – or “dominant power politics” – with entrenched elites, weak opposition, rigged or unfair elections, and again little in the way of social justice. Zimbabwe would seem to epitomize the latter characterization, but Zimbabwe is not alone in this. As Bratton has argued, much of Africa is governed by what might be termed “liberal autocracies”: Covering more than half the continent’s countries and over two-thirds of its population, liberalized autocracies derive their ethos from previous military and one-party arrangements, now adapted for survival in a more open environment. Leaders in these systems may pay lip service to basic political freedoms, for example by allowing token opposition. But they govern in heavy-handed fashion, typically placing strict limits on the independent press, civic organizations and political parties to the point even of imprisoning their strongest opponents or barring them from contesting elections. As evidenced by recent multiparty contests in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Kenya (before 2002), elections are nominally competitive but are seriously flawed by ethnic conflict and the fact that the opposition can never win. At the extreme, as in Chad and Liberia, elections are the only available antidote to violence: voters calculate that the best prospects for peace lie in voting armed strongmen into office, and granting them hegemonic power, rather than allowing them continue to prosecute a civil war. Even once-democratic regimes, like Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe, may slide back into these forms of autocracy due to power grabs by a military or civilian elite8. Guinea Bissau, Gabon, Kenya, Central African Republic, Gambia, Togo, Ethiopia, Cameroon, and Zimbabwe fall into what Bratton terms Competitive Liberal Autocracy, whilst Burkina Faso, Comoros, Congo – Brazzaville, Uganda, Mauritania, Chad, Guinea, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Equatorial Guinea are described as Hegemonic Liberal Autocracies. Elections do not seem to move these states much along the road to “deep democracy”. So what do Africans and Zimbabweans actually want and need? It does seem from all the Afrobarometer surveys that they want both freedom and development. As we saw above, they desire freedom, although they are becoming pessimistic about getting it, but, surprisingly, several other Afrobarometer studies have shown that they are hopeful about the social and economic future, even if their current circumstances show increasing hardship9. Examining this relationship, between freedom and development, John Gay has recently tested the thesis put forward by Amartya Sen, that development requires freedom10. Sen puts forward the argument that development requires 5 types of freedom11, and, in Gay’s words, these can be briefly described as follows: 7 Here see Carothers, T (2002), The End of the Transition Paradigm, Journal of Democracy, 13:1, 5-21. See Bratton, M (2004), State building and democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Forwards, backwards, or together? Working Paper No.43, AFROBAROMETER. 9 See here Afrobarometer (2004), Africa’s Unemployment Crisis: Evolving Public Attitudes, Briefing Paper No.10; see also Afrobarometer (2004), Lived Poverty in Africa: Desperation, Hope and Patience, Briefing Paper No.11. 10 See here Gay, J (2003), Development as freedom: A Virtuous Circle? Afrobarometer Paper No.29. 11 See Sen, A (1999), Development as Freedom. New York: Random House. 8 IDASA: Zimbabwe at the Cross-Roads: Views of Zimbabwean citizens on democracy and transitional justice.