Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Head to head: African democracy

Almost two decades on from the difficult birth of multi-party democracy in much of Africa, the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine asks whether the continent should be held to western standards of democracy?


PART 1: YES -BY KEITH RICHBURG


Keith Richburg is a former Africa correspondent for The Washington Post and author of Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa

The late conservative thinker, William F Buckley, writing in defence of segregationist Jim Crow laws in the United States, opined back in 1957 that democracy and universal suffrage should not be extended to American blacks because they were not ready for it.


Blacks, he said, were in essence too backward to be trusted with the right to vote.

"The question, as far as the white community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilisation supersede those of universal suffrage," Buckley wrote in his journal The National Review.

It is easy now to dismiss Buckley's 50-year-old musing as the outdated thinking of a right-wing racist and elitist.

But exactly how outdated is the view that certain people are not capable of responsibly exercising their right to vote?

Big man rule

It is a view I have heard more often than I care to recount, except these days it does not necessarily come from right-wing racists.

It's a view more often voiced in another form by despots usually as a justification for their own continued hold on power.

I heard it repeatedly as a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years while travelling around Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

I was lectured about "Asian values" and told how the tradition of Confucianism meant Asians favoured a paternalistic, authoritarian form of rule.

And in Africa I was told about the benefits of "African-style democracy," which sometimes meant "no-party democracy," as in Uganda.

I was warned about the dangers of unfettered democracy leading to tribalism, chaos, violence and worse.

Africans, I repeatedly heard, preferred "Big Man" rule, modern-day versions of old tribal leaders.

Consider the official Chinese view of the recent turmoil in Kenya, as evidenced by an editorial in the People's Daily, which normally touts the government line.

"Western-style democratic theory simply isn't suited to African conditions, but rather carries with it the root of disaster," the editorial said. This is just an excuse for a ruling elite to cling to power, and justification for repression of those who dare demand freedom, accountability and justice.

Yet serious academics, diplomats, journalists and others continue to perpetuate the nonsense that there should be different standards of democracy for different people and different countries.

Human values

As I travelled around Africa in the 1990s and watched Africans bravely struggling to overthrow entrenched dictatorships - usually without success - I often marvelled at their tenacity.

I talked to newspaper editors who had been in and out of prisons and who had had their offices ransacked by police and firebombed.

I met brave political activists who were beaten by government thugs and jailed.

And I went to college campuses in Nairobi, Kampala, Kinshasa and Lilongwe, and became even more aware that the things we all want - the right to vote, the right to choose leaders, the right to live free of government harassment and the freedom to read and to think - are not American values or European values or Judaeo-Christian values, but are human values.

For me, the greatest crime now being perpetuated by the West on Africa is the failure to hold Africa and African leaders to the same high standards of decency, morality, human rights and accountability that Western countries expect of themselves.

There are of course reasons for the double-standard.

Stability

First, there is guilt for centuries of colonialism and the sin of slavery.

And African despots - think Robert Mugabe here - have proven deft at playing on Western guilt, particularly since the West is easily cowed when accused of racism.

For these African strongmen, any question of accountability for aid money and how it is spent is immediately deemed a form of neo-colonialism and "interference" in an African country's internal affairs.

A Kenyan foreign minister once publicly derided a particularly outspoken American ambassador, Smith Hempstone, by calling him "a racist" with "the mentality of a slave-owner".

Second, with some countries that have experienced violence, there is a palpable sense of relief when the bloodshed ends and a measure of tolerance for the emergence of thugs and despots, as long as they bring "stability" to the country in question.

In Ethiopia, for example, Meles Zenawi has presided over an authoritarian regime that has jailed journalists and whose troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators protesting against election irregularities in 2005.

But it is often said, among diplomats and aid workers, that he has kept the country stable after the atrocities of Mengistu Haile Miriam's dreaded Dergue regime.

Uganda's Yoweri Museveni too has ruled his country autocratically, but he is still lavished by aid from the West mainly because he is not Milton Obote or Idi Amin.

Corruption

Finally, there is often the economic argument which holds that Africans are more concerned about development than democracy, and things like elections and a free press are luxuries that poor countries cannot now afford.

This argument might be more compelling if the dictators and authoritarians advancing it were actually presiding over improving economies.

But in too many countries, development has been paltry, while corruption has been rampant.

To say that Africans are somehow different, or not ready or enlightened enough to be held to the same standard smacks of racism.

It is a view that Buckley might have approved of 50 years ago. And one that too many African authoritarians, and their enablers, espouse today.

PART 2:  NO -BY REASON WAFAWAROVA

In modern society it is generally agreed that democracy is the best system of governance but, as even Aristotle admitted, democracy has its own shortcomings.

Many countries that have thrown off the yoke of colonialism are, by virtue of historical links, either trying their best or being coerced to adopt Western-style democracy.

For Africa, the fact is that this is not only unsuitable but also unworkable.

Since the fall of Western colonial empires began in the late 1950s, Africa has had a bumpy ride.

There was the rise and fall of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and the serial military dictatorships of Nigeria.

There were the spirited but ultimately unsuccessful socialist campaigns led by the likes of Mozambique's Samora Machel and Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara.

Then came the era of Western-propped dictatorships like that of Uganda's Idi Amin and Zaire's Joseph Mobutu and the dissident times of maverick radicals like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Libya's Muammar Gaddaffi.

But what stands out for me is the incompatibility of Western-style democracy with the internal dynamics of former colonies, which has led to many civil wars and secessions.

Dangerous

There are a few factors that make Western-style parliamentary democracy a facade at best in Africa.

Many African states are still struggling to become nations after the damaging imposition of colonial boundaries.

Without national unity it is futile to preach Western-style democracy in these countries.

It is best to first establish clearly what the various tribal groupings want collectively.

Some in the West argue that the idea of relative democracy - rather than a one-size-fits-all model based on the unique needs of various cultures - is damaging for international relations.

This is not the case.

Rather, it is dangerous for the spread of Western influence - and the Western concept of what exactly democracy is.

Secondly, accelerated economic growth has been proven to increase the role of governments in economic life.

This means African countries that seriously want to catch up with the West will inevitably have to run planned economies.

Significant government influence will be evident in the running of their economies.

Yet this is what Western-style democracies call a violation of property rights and governance by unsound policies.

But is it not a fact that if strong leadership does not take control of the means of production then imperial capital will?

Social values

Imperial capital, just like colonial capital before it, is for the benefit of the owners of the capital and not for indigenous populations.

Thirdly, democracy is not divinely inspired. Rather it is founded on human values, be they social, economic, religious or political.

Evidently the Western social order is not necessarily the same as that found elsewhere in the world.

As such, many people are simply not prepared to pretend to be Europeans in the name of so-called democracy.

The West cannot democratise the world on matters such as morality, culture and freedom.

These are value-based aspects of social life that vary from country to country if not village to village.

While there should be some form of uniformity in this, there is no evidence that a Western lead is what Africa needs.

On the contrary there is evidence that Western political influence in Africa has been more detrimental than useful.

Fourthly, democracy is supposed to be dependent on public opinion. Since the West wants to shape public opinion across the world, this naturally creates conflict and resentment.

Puerile

Africa has an opinion of its own and Africans have their own homogeneous aspirations towards happiness and prosperity.

They do not need Western aid in defining what happiness is.

It is the sometimes subversive interference in the internal affairs of African countries that undermines the democratic process on the continent.

The argument that the West cannot leave Africans killing each other is puerile.

One only has to look at how often Europeans have killed each other in the past, but also how they continue to kill people of various nationalities across the world today.

If Africa is allowed to shape its own public opinion free of interference there is no doubt that the African democratic process will develop faster.

The role of South Africa in potentially settling the Zimbabwean conflict is one good example.

Lastly, democracy is now viewed in line with human rights and the West seems to preach the primacy of individual rights over collective rights. African culture is a collective system that views the well-being of society as being fundamental to the well-being of the individual.

This is why there is a tendency to check individual freedom in the interest of peace and stability.

This is often interpreted as repression, yet in Africa it is about the maintenance of order.

Subsistence rights such as the right to land, food, life and shelter cannot be inferior to procedural rights such as expression, association and conscience.

Despite this, there are countless Western non-governmental organisations tirelessly fighting for the cause of procedural rights in African countries where poverty is threatening to wipe out entire populations.

Considering all these factors it is difficult to believe that Western standards of democracy - to which the world is subjected today - will ever in essence facilitate any form of meaningful democracy in Africa.

Source

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posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 4:18 PM