We should Africanise democracy

The ritualistic peaceful transfer of power in the United States eternally reminds us of Africa’s perennial inability to effect voluntary and peaceful power transfer. Former freedom fighter turned emotionless dictator Robert Mugabe is such a case. He is so full of himself so much so that he considers his own personal ego as more important that the humanitarian crisis the draconian tentacles of his dictatorship has done to emasculate Southern Africa’s former food basket into another African basket case. There are the grandmasters of the game like the late Mobutu Sese Seko, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, Lansana Conte and the living, Muammar Gaddafi and Omar Bongo in whose countries it is almost treasonable to speculate about the end of their rule. So is it just so built up in our genetic make up, this apparent inability to learn from our past mistakes? Right from the ancient Athenian democracy where the criteria for choosing citizens for office was merit and efficiency and not wealth, the idea of democracy has evolved over centuries into different forms like parliamentary democracy practiced in Britain or the multiparty democracy practiced by many African countries. In Africa, democracy can well be described as fledging, because in its present form, it is simply a colonial introduction to countries that became independent. Traditional African kingdoms had varied forms of government from the outright despotic to aristocratic administrative styles. These kingdoms had uniting socio-cultural factors like tribe, or were conquered areas. The scramble for Africa and subsequent colonisation destroyed traditional administrative structures and replaced them with oppressive, manipulative but unsustainable ones like divide and rule and indirect rule. At independence, colonialists were only interested in leaving an influence by ensuring the home country’s type of government was directly extended to former colonies. Considering that post colonial African countries were amalgamations of different ethnic groups with no uniting factor except “the nation”, democracy was bound to be a rocky journey. N o wonder politics in many multi-ethnic countries is defined by political parties based on tribes. As much as democracy is a good thing, Africa needs to develop its own brand of democracy that can accommodate the unique challenges that the continent faces like extreme poverty and underdevelopment. Western style democracy cannot work if citizens cannot read or write, or if they care more about where their next meal is going to come from than whoever is going to rule them. Professor Ali Mazrui writes that Democratisation needs to be planned; it calls for a sense of direction and specific stages towards fuller implementation of its agenda. He blames various societal factors like ethnic rivalry, regional disparities, gender inequalities and weak national political culture as some of the threats to viable African democracy. Therefore democracy has not failed in Africa. Europe and America have had time to develop their Greek form of democracy into their own local conditions while Africa, forcefully divorced from its own form of government, forced to fight for its freedom and with independence, suddenly finds itself in a global environment where imported democracy is prevalent but is not in tandem with African society. How are we Africans going to divorce politics from tribe without denigrating the individual identities which are closely linked to culture, customs and hence tribe? How can we convert ethnic groups into a positive political force instead of a negative one? These are the questions our political theorists should be burning the midnight oil about. Contact: kelviod@yahoo.com