Rethinking Democracy in Africa

Godfrey Onah & Matthew Kukah

Like men in a stupor, African leaders are staggering through the labyrinthine paths of democracy, oscillating between hope and despair, chasing the promises of democracy that are now at best, a will-o-the-wisp. To imagine where we are now is to forget where we have come from. Talking about democracy in Africa right now is fatuous, akin to a man laying a foundation and inviting the village to come and admire his beautiful house. Africans feel thoroughly distraught and wonder which gods they have offended. The elite stare sheepishly at how the dreams of yesterday have turned into nightmares. They sneer at their foibles and complicity yet, while deriding their conditions and engaged in self-flagellation, they expect some kind of a deus ex machina. Like a child who has blotted his copy book, the Nigerian elite search for alibis and engage in weaving conspiracy theories and sing lachrymal tunes as to how the texture of democracy is foreign to African culture. We continue to side step the difficult but inevitable questions, namely, why is democracy not delivering for Africa?

Could we truly say that after independence we were on the democratic path while building a country on the rump of feudal states foisted on us by a hurriedly departing colonial state when both systems along with the military were antithesis of democracy? Human history is about human beings attempting over time to work out systems that would permit them to live together in peace and harmony as much as possible and for as long as possible. Some of these systems have been very simple, others less so. Yet, in all of this, each group tried to work out its own system of government, based on its own cultural, geographical, social and historical realities, and borrowing what it found useful in the experiments of other groups.

The Nigerian political elite has never really seriously committed itself to understanding the intricate dynamic fabric of our different, competing and even conflicting political and socio-cultural world views. We have had assumptions about the models of liberal democracy, rule of law and other prescriptions of what constitutes democratic culture. Before and after independence, we have had series of Constitutional reviews, constantly searching for workable models to take our people out of the state of nature where life has remained, nasty, brutish and short. 

Nigeria, nay, Africa, was victim to some of the most barbaric exploitation by Arab invaders and European slave traders. These inhuman experiences threw Africans into a furnace and left behind our perpetual fault lines of violence that have rendered Africa a continent permanently on the burner of violence. Our identity violence continues to mount, wars over arbitrary boundaries persist. Ironically, the most richly endowed countries and communities today remain the most combustible environments, riddled with violence, poverty and squalor. 

Against this backdrop, Africans continue to wonder, why has democracy delivered so little to us?  The former colonial masters sit smugly on iron horses of racial arrogance and wonder why Africans have been unable to fix their problem after independence. Our local elite have memorized some of these lyrics and engage in self-abnegation, often believing that indeed, something must be wrong with us as a people. This ahistorical view of the world is perhaps our undoing. Africa’s unwillingness to take a historical view of where we have come from, to interrogate the assumptions of the models we have adopted have led to a level of cynicism and self-defeatism. To be sure, our purpose in this piece is to argue that there is need to rethink our assumptions about Democracy and its redeeming futures. The idea is not to negate the fine principles of Democracy, but to ask that we become more modest in our expectations of the deliverables of democracy as a system of governance.

Although we seem to have been sold to the idea that democracy is desirable for Africa, we want to interrogate this position and argue that democracy is riddled with contradictions and distortions. We will argue that the assumptions that it is the weapon of choice for delivering on good governance is an illusion. In our view, words hardly correspond exactly to the concepts which they are meant to express. Secondly, concepts and the terms that express them have different histories, and it often happens that with the passage of time a term comes to be applied to a concept with which it originally had nothing to do. We Africans have always tended to take democracy and its claims as a given, a kind of sacred text with unquestionable cannons. In doing this, we fall into the temptation of ignoring the historical, cultural phenomena that have signposted democracy through the centuries. 

Modern Western democracy has various sources some of which go back to the ancient times. Most prominent among these were the classical Greek city-states (especially Athens) and the republican tradition of Rome. Equally important was the teaching of the Christian Gospel on the equality and freedom of all human beings as children of God redeemed by Jesus Christ. Medieval Italy also had model city-states while in some other parts of Europe, like in England and Sweden, vast monarchies and aristocracies introduced the practice of representation which was later to become a permanent feature of democracy. The writings of philosophers like John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel and many more provided the theoretical basis for some of the important elements in the system. The American and the French Revolutions emboldened the common people and were praised by some philosophers. These philosophers imagined a world that could improve human security and happiness. The American founding fathers drew   inspiration of the value of the individual and his freedom from John Locke. He provided the anchor for the theory of freedom and the pursuit of happiness. 

We argue therefore that the growth of democracy in Europe was the result of the inspiration of these philosophers. The development of their thoughts helped us to understand that quest for a better life is the precondition for the development of Democracy. Thus, some of the prerequisites include but are not limited to; high literacy rate and higher education for more persons, a large and influential commercial or industrial middle class, dispersion of political and economic resources among the population, higher living standards for more persons, consciousness of basic human rights founded on the dignity and equality of all the citizens, a virile and stable civil society, some form of cultural homogeneity or at least non-segmented cultural heterogeneity, and the rule of law, are regarded as prerequisites for democracy in a modern state. Facing the mirror, how do African democracies measure on these scales? 

Thus, rather than seeing democracy as an end, a terminal point we can reach, we should see it as a goal, a destination, a shifting kaleidoscope with enough elasticity to accommodate the dreams of different generations. Yes, there are civilizational and economic thresholds that could make us claim that some democracies have reached some irreversible points, but as we can see from the rise of illiberalism and nationalisms elsewhere, there is no firm mast on which we can nail our colours with confidence. Thus, our notions and assumptions about democracy often produce incoherence and dissonance in practice. For example, democracies claim that they govern on behalf of the people. However, the world over, and indeed since the beginning of time, these democratic governments have often been against the people. The possibility of new elections is often presented as a proof that democracy works, but in essence, these cyclical rituals enable citizens to merely replace one set of clowns and liars with another. Often the differences are marked by a change of the jerseys among the thieving elites but not in the measurable conditions of a majority of the people. 

In democracies, the political party has been recognised as an association that offers candidates platforms for competition and takes care of the interest of groups of citizens. In reality, though, political parties are elitist clubs that pursue only the interests of those who provide the huge finances needed to run them. Parties are usually hijacked by their powerful financers, usually financiers and entrepreneurs who see the entire nation and even the whole world as business firms or markets. Since modern democracies are run by political parties and political parties are run by the rich, modern democracies are, in effect, plutocracies. The persons who actually direct the affairs of state are often not overtly politicians. They are often called, cabals, mafia or godfathers who use the politicians as their puppets. The politicians give their patrons tax exemptions, the law makers ensure that the laws favour private business. These elites keep a tight leash on the bureaucracy and agencies of government.  These private sector actors often claim that; government has no business in business, but in reality, they believe that; business has business in politics!

It is necessary to remember that when a name is given to thing, it often becomes a label which circumscribes the thing, removing from it the dynamism and the possibility for change which it would otherwise have had. Besides, a thing may become so appealing that its name gets to be applied lightly to other things in an attempt to confer on them the same appeal, at least nominally. In the end, the name ends up indicating so many things that it indicates nothing at all in particular. This is our dilemma with democracy today. 

We therefore maintain that the democratic spirit is indispensable for their survival as nations. Some of the fruits of this democratic spirit and ethos are care, brotherhood/sisterhood, kindness, generosity, care for the weak, the stranger and the environment, among many others.  In our view, the issue of governance in Africa, as elsewhere, cannot be reduced only to the question about who should govern. In the end, even when the best govern, but do not govern well, or when the people rule, but do not rule well, the problem of responsible governance in Africa will not have been solved. Governance must give us our humanity. 

Finally, we agree with Aristotle who said: “The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many, are perversions.”

• Onah and Kukah are the Catholic Bishops of Nsukka and Sokoto Dioceses