The Politics of Reconciliation in West Africa

[caption id="attachment_9916" align="aligncenter" width="615"] Faure Gnassingbé, President of Togo, addresses the UN General Assembly in 2015. A commission was created to investigate the electoral violence surrounding the transfer of power to Faure Gnassingbé from his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma. Photo by UN Photo/Cia Pak, via Flickr. Creative Commons.[/caption]

As they transition from political regimes marked by violence, conflict, and human rights abuses, a number of West African countries attempted to follow South Africa's path toward transitional justice.1 One after another, they created reconciliation commissions in the hope of healing the wounds of the past. Togo set up the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission was set up in Togo in 2009, Côte d'Ivoire established its Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2011, and in January 2015 Burkina Faso created the National Reconciliation and Reform Commission, with a subcommittee of truth, justice, and reconciliation. Do these major initiatives from countries that have suffered severe violence reflect genuine political will to reckon with the past, or are they just an exercise in politics?

I focus on Côte d'Ivoire and Togo's commissions for the simple reason that they have already completed their reports and thus lend themselves to evaluation. Further, while Bishop Barrigah, president of Togo's commission, said "no truth commission is like another," it is also true that in Togo and in Côte d'Ivoire the commissions seem to have manifested the same weaknesses in similar ways, in spite of commendable efforts. While they initially raised much hope among the victims and within the nation, in reality "the truth" was quickly stifled by politics. In reconciliation commissions, the interests of politicians usually end up sidelining the interests of the victims, and usually, the fruits do not keep the promise of the flowers.

The Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission in Togo

The political transition in Togo, which began after the death of President Gnassingbé Eyadéma in 2005, was marred by violence related to the election of his son, Faure Gnassingbé. Faure Gnassingbé's win was rejected by many, and hundreds of Togolese lost their lives in post-election unrest. In the aftermath, a dialogue was initiated between politicians, resulting in a 2006 agreement which prescribed, among other things, the creation of a commission to help the Togolese break the half-century long cycle of violence, revenge, and mistrust that characterized the reign of President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, as well as the election violence set off by the transition. This proposal became reality in 2009 under President Faure Gnassingbé as the 11-member Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). Established as an independent body, the commission's presidency was entrusted to Bishop Nicodemus Barrigah-Bénissan of the National Catholic Episcopal Conference of Togo.

The TJRC's mission was to shed light on grave acts of political violence from 1958 to 2005, study the terms of appeasement and compensation for the victims, and formulate recommendations to the government on the fate of perpetrators of grave violations of human rights, on the measures to be taken to avoid similar acts of violence in the future, and, finally, on initiatives to address impunity and strengthen national reconciliation. Between 2009 and 2012, the committee made inquiries, collected 22,415 statements, held 523 hearings, and drafted a final report containing recommendations to guide the reconciliation process. The report was officially submitted to President Faure in April 2012 and was subsequently made public.

While some commended the courage of the commission in overcoming many obstacles to give voice to the victims and produce a set of recommendations which, on the whole, were deemed relevant, others were severely critical, claiming the commission failed badly in its mission. According to these critics, the hearings were systematically distorted by fear of the truth, especially in the unwillingness to name and bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2005 violence surrounding the replacement of Gnassingbé the father by Gnassingbé the son. Bishop Barrigah, president of the commission, acknowledged this weakness in his speech on the presentation of the official report to President Faure in 2012. Some believe that Faure Gnassingbé was poorly positioned to implement the recommendations of the commission, given that his father was constantly cited in many of the crimes discussed in the hearings. Recent events seem to prove them right. The implementation of the commission's recommendations has been left to the goodwill of the president, who may choose to retain only those recommendations that suit the interests of his regime. For example, Faure Gnassingbé was recently elected to a third presidential term though the commission's final report of the commission explicitly recommended institutional reforms to limit successive presidential terms to a maximum of two. The committee's recommendation was simply ignored.

The Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Côte d'Ivoire

Since the end of Côte d'Ivoire's 2011 electoral crisis, state and non-state actors alike have invested enormous human and material resources in various reconciliation initiatives. Almost five years after the crisis, it is worth revisiting the rhetoric and challenges of the reconciliation process through the work of the Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (DTRC). The DTRC was established by a decree of President Ouattara in 2011 to help Ivoirians reconcile after the post-election crisis that had seriously polarized the Ivorian society. The presidency of the commission was given to a well-known local political figure, Charles Konan Banny, who supported Ouattara in the election crisis. For many, entrusting such an initiative to a politician who was a member of the political alliance which brought President Ouattara to power was a major mistake at the outset. Ideally, the leader of a reconciliation process should be beyond any suspicion of partiality. From 2011 to 2014, the commission collected 72,483 testimonies, including 28,064 from women and 757 from children, according to the president of the commission. But, as in Togo, the phase of the hearings was torpedoed for fear of the truth and the public identification of the perpetrators.

In December 2014, the commission completed its report and submitted it to President Ouattara. In his speech at the official ceremony of the submission of the final report to the president, Mr. Konan Banny lamented the fact that the hearings were not broadcast, insinuating external interference in the commission's proceedings. The blocking of the broadcasting of the hearings strengthened the skeptics in their convictions that political interference with the commission's mission meant the basic conditions were not met for the commission to reconcile Ivoirians. In other words, the commission was not truly independent. Since the completion and presentation of the report, the head of state has been reluctant to release it publicly, in spite of several calls to that effect. Instead, on March 24, 2015, he replaced the existing commission with a new one, called the National Commission for Reconciliation and Compensation of Victims, and appointed a Catholic bishop to head it. Once again, the fate of the report and its recommendations seems to depend on the goodwill of the ruling president, who was, as in Togo, a party to the crisis. In fact, the fundamental error in Côte d'Ivoire was to pretend that the "winners" of the political battle of yesterday could effectively lead today's process of transitional justice.

Moreover, while reconciliation is not incompatible with justice, judicial proceedings that exhibit a lack of fairness can block a reconciliation process. This seems to be the case in Côte d'Ivoire today, where the approaches of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Ivorian judicial system have not helped the reconciliation process. More than five years after the end of the post-electoral crisis, the two courts have prosecuted only suspects of only one political camp, that of Laurent Gbagbo, the loser of the electoral crisis.2 At stake here is the independence of the International Criminal Court, which has recently come under severe criticisms from the African Union in recent years for targeting mainly African leaders. Some countries are considering withdrawing from the Court altogether, which, of course, is not the ideal solution.

Reconciliation processes require that the truth of violence be told, because it helps the victims heal. This is why most West African countries that have chosen to attempt reconciliation and transitional justice have failed. It is easy to forget that peace agreements between political opponents are not enough to reconcile citizens divided by political maneuvering. The hardest part of reconciliation after a crisis is often the slow and patient work in the field to reconcile conflicted communities condemned to live together. More inclusive approaches are needed, which require not only genuine political will, but also efforts to free processes of reconciliation from partisan political interference and promote fairness in post-conflict judicial proceedings.

Dr. Ludovic Lado is Senior Researcher at Centre de Recherche et d'Action pour la Paix (CERAP), a member of the Southern Voices Network, in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

1: James L. Gibson, "The Contributions of Truth to Reconciliation: Lessons From South Africa," Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (2006): 409–433.

2: After much criticism for not prosecuting his own allies, Côte d'Ivoire finally charged two senior ex-rebels in July 2015 who backed President Ouattara during the post-electoral crisis in 2011. The decision was made ahead of the October 2015 elections that Ouattara won to serve a second term in office as president. Was it a politically motivated decision? Only time will tell, when these pro-Ouattara actually stand trial.