Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on July 28, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Free and fair elections, accompanied by smooth transitions of democratically elected leaders, constitute one of the key pillars of democracy. The dawn of democratisation and advent of multi-party politics after the end of the Cold War in 1991, seemingly held great promise for Africa. However, in recent years, many elections in Africa have consistently become a source of violence. Electoral violence is threatening to become an intractable source of conflict on the African continent, making it hard for emerging democracies to consolidate their status as free democratic societies. Many remain largely autocratic or semi-democratic. African leaders are all too often not ready to relinquish political power, while political elites are ‘power hungry’ and use violence to skew the outcomes of elections in their favour. Hence, electoral violence is employed in order to manipulate civilian election choices and outcomes. Election violence is often deliberately used to target civilians, and in countries like Kenya involves inter-ethnic clashes. These “new wars” are fought unconventionally using ‘crude weapons’, (Kaldor 2013). Kaldor describes how these ‘new wars’ are fought as intra-state (within the state) wars in developing countries. Often, they are waged via state or county networks based on identity or ethnicity. The consequences of electoral violence include the destruction of property, reversed development, injuries, rape, death, internally displaced persons and refugees. Electoral violence persists despite attempts to contain it and measures to effectively manage these processes often prove to be inadequate. The study utilises an exploratory case study of Kenya during 2007-2008 Post-Election violence. The causes, the immediate steps that were initiated to mitigate violence and the reforms undertaken to generate peace structures and prevent future occurrences of post-election violence were explored. Forty-five participants representing involved citizens, negotiators and mediators were interviewed. The research was triangulated via the interview process, together with the use of primary document analysis and an extensive review of the literature. The data was analysed via the use of grounded theory. The research findings reveal that the causes of electoral violence are multi-faceted and multi-layered, with deep underlying issues. The causes include weak institutions, corruption, a non-representational electoral system, ethnicity and ethnic militia. Further causes include statelessness as experienced by certain groups, abuse of state resources and human rights violations. The role of political elites who withhold crucial information, thus denying the public the opportunity to make informed choices during elections was also found to contribute to electoral violence. Other information-related causes include biased media and sensational reporting. Findings also show that socio-economic issues such as poverty, unemployment, scarce resources and unmet basic human needs cannot be underestimated. Lastly, the causes of electoral violence included diverse interests of internal and external actors at play during elections. The findings revealed that although the Kenyan mediation process included the signing of a peace agreement, the root causes of electoral violence such as corruption, weak institutions, abuse of state resources and the unjust electoral system were not adequately addressed. A model for mediation for electoral violence which was explored and developed sought to build on the strengths of the Kenyan mediation process and address its inherent weaknesses, thus making this a significant contribution flowing from the study. The election model for mediation proposes certain key phases which include a pre-mediation process that will ensure a cessation of all hostilities; the mapping of the root causes of electoral violence and electoral reforms that provide resolutions that are acceptable to all the parties. Training of personnel at all levels of government to implement these reforms is also proposed. These measures can ensure the integrity and independence of electoral institutions from political manipulation. Training constitutes a crucial stage in the process of consolidating the emerging democracies. The model for mediation developed is therefore not only meant to mitigate electoral violence but is also intended to serve as a preventive measure. Many African states currently experience structural weaknesses similar to those that existed in Kenya before the 2007-2008 elections (and still persist). These fault lines include corruption, weak institutions, human rights violations, and lack of information. The proposed model for mediation which aims to counter these problems can thus be applied and adapted for implementation in Africa and globally. Several recommendations with implications for policy development are proposed to curb electoral violence. They include constitutional reforms, training of government and electoral officials and the introduction of a properly representational election system. This study, which focuses specifically on post-election violence, recommends further research investigating the pre-election phase, and ‘voting day’ causes of electoral violence for a more comprehensive approach to electoral violence research.

Competitive national elections can play a significant role in the consolidation process of developing and established democracies alike. Nevertheless, if not handled adequately, they have the potential to bring long-existing, existential conflict lines to the surface. This electoral conflict, becoming manifest in election violence, has the potential to shy people off from voting and negatively affect their attitude towards elections and democracy in general. The present study examined the ways in which violent electoral conflict affected the political participation and the personal attitudes towards democracy of ordinary Kenyan citizens. Kenya has experienced violent electoral conflict repeatedly since the re-introduction of competitive elections in 1992 and became one of its prime examples due to the devastating 2008 post-election clashes. In order to answer the research questions, 32 semi-structured interviews with 34 victims of electoral violence coming from four main ‘hotspot areas’ of the 2008 post-election violence as well as four expert interviews were conducted. The study finds that the experience of violent electoral conflict led to diametrically opposed reactions in the behaviour of political participation among respondents. About two-thirds of them indicated a change in their behaviour of political participation. With 33% of the respondents found to be “participating more”, this group even outnumbers its “participating less” counterpart (30%). This finding is rather surprising as the experience of electoral violence is usually associated with the tendency to shy off from political participation, not only in Kenya. Based on their attitudinal dispositions towards democracy in general and towards democracy in Kenya more specifically, as well as towards Kenyan elections, politics and politicians, a fourfold typology of Kenyan citizens was developed from the sample. It includes: the voting citizen, the resigned citizen, the passive citizen, and the active citizen. The voting citizen with no further interest in politics or political participation was found to be the most prevalent type of citizen in the sample. Attention needs to be taken towards the resigned citizen, which could, in case of further violent electoral conflict and the continuing marginalization of specific ethnic groups, cause a threat to the stabilization process of Kenya’s democracy. Contributions of this study were in designing a destination identity framework as well as in discovering the identity of the city of Nelson Mandela Bay. Directions for future studies include the possibility to conduct a qualitative study on place identity so as to obtain a more nuanced understanding of sub-identities in the city.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Africa has made tremendous progress over the past decades in its transition to democratic regimes. When evaluating the leverage such an enormous change has, and the haste Africa was in when making this change, the continent has been able to achieve a considerable amount of revision in their regimes. One fundamental aspect of a democracy is competitive Presidential elections. This has however shown to be a problem in Africa as many cases of violent elections have been reported on, with Nigeria’s 2011 elections being the latest example. The focus of this thesis is on the causal factors behind electoral violence in African democracies. More specifically, a comparative analysis of Kenya’s 2007 Elections and Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections is presented. The five possible causal factors under analysis are 1) free and fair elections, 2) international assistance, 3) political/electoral systems and 4) socio-economic factors and 5) ethnicity. Additionally, background information on the history of Kenya and Zimbabwe is presented. The research is conducted around the framework of one of the foremost African scholars in the field, Gilbert Khadiagala. His typology suggests two angles ‘In the first order of causes, electoral violence is the outcome of events and circumstances that emanate from broader political conflicts, particularly in societies that are beset by ethnic, communal and sectarian fissures. In the second category, electoral violence is a consequence of imperfect electoral rules; imperfections that allow some parties to manipulate elections through electoral fraud, vote buying, and rigging’ (Khadiagala, 2010:17). Next to this a discussion on Khadiagala’s fourth wave of democracy is analysed which proves of major importance for Kenya and Zimbabwe to prevent election violence. Not only because of the fact that the contemporary form of their democracies clearly show major flaws, but also because a democracy has proved to encourage socio-economic development. Firstly, the findings suggest that the people are fed up with stolen elections and they are demanding the free and fair conduct of elections. The use of violence is the means to express this ‘demand’. Furthermore, in both Kenya and Zimbabwe, the land occupation of colonizers caused the start of deep social cleavages and ethnic tensions. In Kenya it is concluded that the cause of violence was not purely the flawed election process, this was merely a trigger for underlying ethnic tensions. In Zimbabwe in turn, the violence was mainly sparked by President Mugabe’s government who used extreme means to gain votes. The system was highly manipulated and due to weak institutions and electoral rules, President Mugabe was able to rig the elections. The role of international assistance is discussed and proves to be of little influence towards election violence. In the case of Zimbabwe, no international observers were invited, in the case of Kenya, international observers were invited and present. In both cases violence broke out. The establishment of a stronger socio-economic society proves vital for the development of a democracy. The connection between ethnic, social and economic differences to the electoral system recognizes that further deepening and strengthening of the democratic institutions needs to become a reality in order to conduct more peaceful elections. The elections are far from free and fair and as a result of weak democratic institutions the possibility of rigging is created. With the underlying ethnic tensions and broader political cleavages, Kenya and Zimbabwe proved prone to violence. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Wanneer daar in ag geneem word dat Afrika onder moeilike omstandighede en in ‘n baie kort tydperk, beweeg het van meerderheid autokratiese state na demokrasieë, is dit regverdig om te argumenteer dat Afrika ‘n kenmerkende vordering gemaak het in die laaste dekades om ‘n demokratiese samenleving te berwerkstellig. Helaas, n fundamentele aspek van n demokrasie is die beoefening van gereelde en kompeterend verkiesings. Oor die jare is daar bewys dat verkiesings n problematiese aspek van demokrasie is in meeste Afrika state, meerderheid van verkiesings in Afrika is geneig om uit te loop in konflik en geweld. Dus is die fokus van die studie op die faktore wat bydra tot konflik gedurende n verkiesings tydperk in jong Afrika demokrasieë. Meer spesifiek sal daar n vergelykende studie gedoen word van die 2007 verkiesing in Kenia en die 2008 verkiesing in Zimbabwe. Die vyf faktore wat bydra tot konflik gedurende verkiesings is : 1) vry en regverdige verkiesings, 2) internasionale hulpvelening, 3) politiese en verkiesingsstelsels, 4) sosio-ekonomiese faktore, 5) etnisiteit, word elk bespreek. Ook word die agtergrond van beide die verkiesings in Zimbabwe en Kenia bespreek. Die teoretiese aspekte van die studie is gebaseer op die werk van Gilbert Khadiagala, n hoogs ge-respekteerde kenner op die gebied. Sy teorie veronderstel dat konflik plaasvind as gevolg van politiek konflikte en etniese verskille. Tweedens, beweer hy dat verkiesingskonflik n produk is van foutiewe verkiesingsstelsels, veral waar een groep die ander groep kan manipuleer en waar bedrog moontlik is. Langs dit is 'n bespreking oor Khadiagala se vierde golf van demokrasie ontleed en bewys dit van groot belang vir Kenia en Zimbabwe om verkiesings geweld te voorkom. Nie net as gevolg van die feit dat die demokrasieë duidelik groot foute toon nie, maar ook en meer belangrik, omdat 'n demokrasie sosio-ekonomiese ontwikkeling aanmoedig. Daar word gevind dat meeste mense eenvoudig keelvol is met ‘gesteelde’ verkiesings en dat hulle begin aandring op vry en regverdige verkiesings en konflik en geweld is die enigste manier om hulle wense te verwesenlik. Ook, in beide Kenia en Zimbabwe het kolonialiseerders n groot skeuring veroorsaak tussen verskillende etniese groepe in beide lande, wat vandag voordurende etniese spanning veroorsaak. In Kenia blyk dit dat dit die etniese verskille was wat gelei het tot die verkiesingsgeweld in 2007 eerder as foutiewe verkiesingsstelsels. In Zimbabwe was dit verkiesingskorrupsie en President Robert Mugabe se oneerlike wyse van stemme werf wat gelei het tot konflik. Dit is aangetoon dat die aanwesigheid van internationale hulp min invloed het op verkiesings geweld. In die geval van Zimbabwe, is daar geen internasionale waarnemers genooi nie en in die geval van Kenia, is daar wel internasionale waarnemers is genooi en was hulle daadwerklik aanwesig. In beide gevalle het geweld uitgebreek. Daar word gevind dat ‘n sterke sosio-ekonomiese sameleving belangrik is vir demokratiese ontwikkling van ‘n land. Verder word daar geargumenteer dat sterk en onafhanklik politieke en demokratiese instansies bevorder moet word ten einde meer vreedsame verkiesings te hou. Tans in Afrika is verkiesings ver van vry en regverdig, gesamentlik met etniese spanning kan dit n plofbare situasie veroorsaak soos bewys in Kenia en Zimbabwe.