Why African elites often emulate Western ways

Editor, RE: “What happens to a decolonised mind?” (The New Times, August 31). Lonzen Rugira puts his finger tantalizingly on the nub of the democracy deficit in many an African country and its link to our still colonised minds. Unfortunately, he does not explore this link and the servile terrain in which it thrives as much as I wish he had. In Mr Rugira’s book – as in mine – democratic legitimacy of both decision-making and overall governance of any social collective or polity can only be conferred by the degree of involvement and proportion of members of that polity who are involved in their own processes of governance and to what extent they really benefit from the management of their public affairs. The higher the involvement, usually the higher the benefits, and therefore the greater the real democracy which must never be reduced to empty rhetoric but which must instead be easily measured from the obvious positive outcomes for a large proportion of the individuals comprising the polity and for the concerned society as a whole. The problem with today’s democracy in many of the countries on our continent (and to a much lesser extent elsewhere in the so-called developing world) is that democracy has been reduced to periodic electoral rituals that are intended to confer “international” legitimacy (in reality recognition from the so-called liberal democracies of the west, but even then only if those elections result in their preferred outcome) rather than as a continuous expression of popular will and citizens’ continuing involvement in the major decisions that determine their collective and individual welfare. I say so-called liberal democracies because these days in the west, ordinary citizens have very little say in the major decision-making that determines their fundamental interests. It doesn’t matter that the electoral calendar works like a well-oiled Swiss timepiece. No matter whom they elect, they all govern for the powerful, well organised special interest groups who fund their campaigns. The ordinary citizens have very little say on the setting of public policy and benefit least from those policies. Not surprisingly, therefore, most western electorates have now disengaged from electoral politics to the extent that less than half of eligible voters now bother to cast their votes because they believe all their systems, whether political, economic or judiciary, to be rigged in favour of certain well-connected interest groups. In summary, African elites may wish to emulate western ways. But this may be less because they think western ways to be superior, but more because they too, like their western counterparts, would like to retain systems that are rigged to maintain their positions as a privileged interest group. Both our elites and their western counterparts (and frequently their mentors and sponsors) have symbiotic relations, and maintain their power and privileges at the expense and on the backs of their respective ordinary citizenry. Both also have an interest in making it difficult, if not impossible, for those who want to upset the systems they find so lucrative for themselves. Mwene Kalinda

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Why African elites often emulate Western ways