The French Colonial Mind, Volume 1: Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial Encounters

14 Rigged Elections? Democracy and Manipulation in the Late Colonial State in French West Africa and Togo, 1944–1958

324 14 Rigged Elections? Democracy and Manipulation in the Late Colonial State in French West Africa and Togo, 1944–1958 alexander keese The enactment of voting rights for African populations was a watershed in colonial rule throughout sub-Saharan Africa after the Second World War.1 No one devised or enacted electoral reforms with quite the complexity or with such dogged persistence as the French. Nearly every year from the end of World War II in 1945 until the final, formal decolonization of Francophone black Africa in 1960, Africans under French rule were called upon to elect deputies. At the outset of this process voter numbers were severely restricted by criteria requiring evidence of literacy and individual service to the French state. But matters soon changed. For one thing, the second of these criteria applied, in particular , to colonial army war veterans, a vocal and increasingly influential constituency in numerous territories. Moreover, the group of persons enjoying the right to vote grew steadily until the territorial elections of 31 March 1957, the first that could be genuinely labeled “general” and “national.”2 The elections for the Territorial Assemblies in French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa held on 31 March 1957 were the first to elect representatives who would thereby wield genuine power of decision in some, though not all, areas of administration. These elections were also the first in which the electoral franchise was freed from any principles of exclusion such as literacy, fulfillment of military service, and so on, which had previously been the general rule. More impor- Rigged Elections? 325 tant still, the former practice of organizing voters on the basis of two electoral colleges was abolished. The first electoral college was typically reserved for French citizens, mainly Europeans, while the huge majority of the inhabitants of the colonies were confined to voting for the second electoral college—a form of de facto racial segregation. While the institution of voting rights for nonwhite populations of the French colonial empire had antecedents dating back to the eighteenth century, in sub-Saharan Africa the practice was, for many decades, restricted to the inhabitants of Senegal’s Four Communes.3 Mass democracy in the bulk of France’s West African territories remained unimaginable during the first fifty years after the establishment of the administrative “federation ” of French West Africa in 1895.4 The 1957 polls therefore marked a fundamental break with the past. To be sure, some old habits died hard, even after World War II. It is not surprising that senior colonial officials faced with a loss of authoritarian prerogative as a result of new electoral rules were reluctant to endorse the full-blooded application of democratic principles. Furthermore , continued manipulation of local electoral processes at the lower levels of administration, in the cercles and subdivisions, often remained feasible. This being said, we should bear in mind that French administrators ran increasing risks—to political stability and to personal career—in persisting with such methods. The voting bureaus were controlled by representatives of those on participant lists, and while it was theoretically possible to inscribe adherents of a favored party twice or to destroy some of the ballot papers during their transportation from the voting bureau to the headquarters of the administration, this was nevertheless complicated, and officials ran a high risk of causing scandal by doing so. At the end of the period in question, in 1958, so well apprised of their voting rights were local electors that administrative manipulation of the ballot was effectively out of the question.5 A final point to note here is that any presumption of continuing and widespread electoral manipulation in the final years of colonial rule in French West Africa necessarily implicates the emerging elites of African politicians. In fact, as is discussed below, in most cases it was neither practicable nor attractive for the French to intervene in the electoral processes newly instituted in their African territories. Administrators and the Colonial Mind after WWII 326 The reform decrees announced by General de Gaulle’s provisional government on 31 August 1945 dramatically altered one of the pillars of French rule in sub-Saharan Africa: differential voting rights for French citizens and colonial subjects. A major impetus for this reform was the fact that French politicians wanted to respond to the ideas and imaginings of liberation dominating French colonial minds following the end of Nazi...