African Excursus on Democracy

‘One serious danger, which looms large for democratizing Africa, is the daunting task of operationalizing the principles and values of democracy in historical conditions that are markedly different from those of the established liberal democracies.’Claude Ake, in 1996 asked the question: `Is Africa Democraticizing? Through an earthshaking cum intriguing continental survey, He analysed the socio-political contradictions that inhibits African Democratizing efforts. Little wonder he proclaimed in another work that what Africa is democratizing is underdevelopment.Democracy is not new in Africa, most precolonial African society were Democratic in nature . what’s new is liberal Democracy. This liberal democracy to some extent vitiates the African notion of democracy; for liberal democracy – as we know it today- is knotted with Adams Smith’s gospel of`laissez faireism’. African concept of democracy as exemplified in the Igbo precolonial administration; bequeathed every matured citizen (both male and female) the right to participate in the government of their society. It was a government by demos and for the demos, both in spirit and in operations. What separate it from the mode of democracy peculiar to Athenians of Greek city state is the concept of `consensus. While all issues in Athenian city States were settled through voting, in Igbo precolonial society, decisions were always product of negotiations and consensus. Consensus was an instrument used by precolonial Igbo society to shut the door of Pandora’s box of political schism and kerfuffles that characterized our today’s politics. A perusal into Achebe’s `Things Fall Apart’ will offer a perfect illustration of this fact. No doubt some African pre-colonial governments were highly centralized and undemocratic.The destruction of African social organizations started with slavery – which did not only instill inferiority complex in us but also drastically affects our innovatory prowess and population – and culminated into colonialism which not just underdeveloped Africa but finally integrated her economy into the world capitalist system. This integration knotted African States on the pole of perpetual dependency.For colonialism to thrive in Africa, the colonialists introduced anti Democratic and self-serving government against the back-drops of moribund African governments. These governments instilled in us the culture of nepotism and ethnicity, corruption and religious politics which offer a perfect descriptions of today’s African politics.The rise in the Western engineered campaign for democracy started after the fall of Berlin wall in 1989. The collapse of the wall acted as a catalyst that trigger the chains of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the cold war, the capitalist and communist blocs fought their proxy wars in Africa as they fight to foist their ideology on Africans. At last, The capitalist bloc won. Using the Britonwood institutions’ financial instrument, the Western Powers virtually forced Africa and other developing countries to adopt their liberal Democratic ideology.This type of democracy is highly electoral oriented. The concept of popular representation lies only in people participating in an already rigged election. Even in a free, fair and credible election, this `Domocracy does not mean and cannot mean that the people actually rule in any obvious sense of the terms, `people’ and `rule’ . Democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them(Schumpeter 1978:284-5). This observation by Schumpeter clearly brought home the actual meaning of `Western Democracy’.

*this was published in the Daily Times newspaper dated: Monday, December 15, 2014