Viewpoint Côte d’Ivoire


“Why is the UN entrenching former colonial powers on our continent?”, asks the former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, in this piece which he originally wrote for the American magazine, Foreign Policy. He says the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General took the extraordinary decision to exceed his mandate in Côte d’Ivoire by declaring who had won the presidential election, contrary to his tasks as detailed by the Security Council. This positioned the UN Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) as a partisan “faction” in the Ivorian conflict, rather than a neutral peacemaker. Africans can and should take the lead in resolving their own disputes.


Thabo Mbeki What the world got wrong in Côte d’Ivoire


Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara. For this reason, and of strategic importance, it was inevitable that this electoral contest would decide the long-term future of the country. Everybody concerned should have


T


probed very seriously the critical question: Would the 2010 elections create the condi- tions that would establish the basis for the best possible future for the Ivorian people? Tis was not done. Rather, the international community


insisted that what Côte d’Ivoire required to end its crisis was to hold democratic elections, even though the conditions did not exist to conduct such elections. Tough they knew that this proposition was fun- damentally wrong, the Ivorians could not withstand the international pressure to hold the elections. However, the objective real-


34 | June 2011 New African


HE SECOND ROUND OF THE 28 November 2010 presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire pitted two long-standing political oppo- nents against each other, Laurent


Thabo Mbeki (middle) with ex- President Laurent Gbagbo (left) and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro (right) before the elections


ity is that the Ivorian presidential elections should not have been held when they were held. It was perfectly foreseeable that they would further entrench the very conflict it was suggested they would end. Te 2002 rebellion in Côte d’Ivoire di-


vided the country into two parts, with the north controlled by the rebel Forces Nou- velles, which supported Alassane Ouattara, and the south in the hands of the Gbagbo- led government. Since then, Côte d’Ivoire has had two governments, administrations, armies, and “national” leaders. Any elections held under these circum-


stances would inevitably entrench the di- visions and animosities represented and exacerbated by the 2002 rebellion. Te structural faults which lay at the


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