Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - There Are No Dogmas For the Practice of Democracy

Dear moses, i read your thought piece, in which you say you don't wish to romanticize the past in africa. You describe the pre-colonial days as having as systems of governance the following traits: "They were variously founded on consensus, inherited authority, or sacred, religious, and ancestral ordination. What they all had in common was legitimacy, the basic idea of a leader, group of leaders, or a political configuration being accepted as representing the will and interest of a people at a particular time. Not only did these precolonial forms of African democratic practice possess the key ingredient of legitimacy; they had in-built mechanisms of accountability, participation, and checks and balances. Moreover, there were procedures for addressing post-selection grievances and managing the occasional crisis of succession and leadership failure."

I wonder why this is not romanticizing. If it was consensus, i wonder how that accounts for conflicts. You are the historian, so i rely on you to affirm the claim that brother did not kill brother to obtain the throne, as you can read in various epics like Sundiata. Epics are just legitimizing praise singing, not history; but i can't imagine consensus as you describe without the enforcement of the ruling clan/family/lineage. 

You say representing the will of the people: is this the same as Rousseau's ideal that the revolutionary leaders embodied the will of the people, therefore obviating the need for opposition. That opens the way to the vanguardism, which also was rule without limits. 

What were the checks and balances, if not also grounded in power? How might they differ from american checks andbalances which are fundamental to democracy? Is voting not a mechanism for participation? Should it be reformed, do you think? Or ditched?

All these are questions: i do agree with your plea that local roots of governance not be ignored. But again i wonder how that differs from british conservativism as opposed to french revolutionary thought? Mean 18th c.

Lastly, african history was marked by european ties, both for the good and the bad. The bad was slavery and colonialism, and i'd all neocolonialism. These systems had complicity among african peoples, but also, and most importantly, resistance. Shouldn't that function as part of any indigenous element, as it did in s africa's forging a constitution when freeing itself from apartheid?

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2022 9:45:15 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - There Are No Dogmas For the Practice of Democracy

 

Here (below) is a link to my think-piece in the series from our conference on democracy and religion in Africa. It was published this morning on Africasacountry.com as part of the series. Every week, a new think-piece is published in the series.

https://africasacountry.com/2022/11/there-are-no-dogmas-for-the-practice-of-democracy

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