Fatima Maada Bio, the first lady of Sierra Leone, is rapidly making a name for herself among young Africans as a champion of continental development and a fierce opponent of interference by “big brother”, a term she prefers to describe rich countries exploiting Africa’s resources.
Her recent interview with a European media organisation has gone viral, especially among the young generation of the continent’s inhabitants — mainly in West Africa — who identify with her message that without outside interference, countries like Sierra Leone have enough natural and human resources to feed themselves.
But it is the other important point she makes in that interview that is of interest to this editorial. Any country that does not have peace, she says in the interview, cannot develop.
For a country like South Africa where relative peace and stability has been our reality for much of our first 30 years as a democracy, it is easy to take such a statement for granted.
Yet looking back to the recent history of many sister countries making up the continent, we can attest to the fact that many of them have had their development and potential prosperity delayed over the decades as a result of social upheavals and other forms of violent conflict.
Peace therefore is something we should never take for granted. We should always do all in our power to ensure that it is maintained, especially in times of elections where campaign rhetoric may raise the political temperature to uncomfortable levels.
It is in this context that the police in KwaZulu-Natal, historically the most volatile of the republic’s nine provinces, have announced that they would be deploying at least 17,000 cops to ensure peaceful elections.
This deployment will cost the taxpayer about R40m and, as provincial police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi rightly pointed out, that is not cheap.
Speaking at a gathering of political parties convened by the Independent Electoral Commission, Mkhwanazi complained that — 30 years into democracy — the province still has “low-, medium- and high-risk” polling stations because of the behaviour of political parties.
“The high-risk voting stations are as a result of people who don’t want to tolerate each other, people who violate each other’s rights as contained in the constitution,” Mkhwanazi said.
Having to redirect police resources to maintaining peace during elections means that the already overstretched service has little resources to tackle other forms of crime.
“Please give us space, we have a lot of criminals out there that are raping, stealing and robbing people. We should be focusing on those and not policing those that have a right to go and vote because the right is for everyone,” he told politicians.
It is indeed sad that the police commissioner has to make such a plea to political parties and leaders who should know better.
But the rhetoric of some of the parties in the province — some of which have sought to question the IEC’s impartiality without any credible justification — is causing Mkhwanazi and many others concerned about the future of our country to have reason to be concerned.
We join the police commissioner, and many others who have done so, in calling on political parties and their supporters to conduct themselves in a manner that will ensure a peaceful and credible election on May 29. No blood needs to be shed just because some parties are disappointed by the will of the people.
As we have seen in all the general elections we have held since 1994, peace and respect for the rule of law lead to polls whose outcomes are universally accepted — regardless of who the ultimate winner is.
And the resultant peace, as Fatima Maada Bio reminds us, is a necessary condition for the economic growth and development we all yearn for.
