Democracy Held in Captivity in Togo (corrected)
--Dr. O.
As these populist eruptions in Togo illustrate, the masses of Africa are yawning for democracy as it should be practiced--a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Instead of a democratic dispensation, what exists in Togo for well over a century is a hijacked democracy, a dispensation whereby a group of the elite of society, using the coercive instruments of political power, have captured and held in bondage, the apparatus of governance, effectively suppressing the aspirations of the people for "a democracy by the people." All this falls in line with my working theory, namely that it is fallacious to argue that democracy is not suitable for Africa or that democracy has failed Africa; rather, the facts on the ground demonstrate that a selfish generation of African elites, across the continent, and with a few exceptions, has hijacked and captured the reigns of political power, using a rhetorical strategy that's dishonestly clothed in the language of democracy, while at the same time, subverting and crushing the aspirations of the people for a truly democratic and accountable system of governance.
A key symptom of such fake democracies is their lack of accountability to the people based on the fact that they did not derive their stranglehold on the machineries of governance from the people--that is, they are not governing with the mandate of the people. Given the fact that they don't have the people's mandate to govern, they live in fear and thus tend to look outwards and seek "protection" from external neo-colonial powers with whom they are in cohort for the plundering of African natural resources.
For the sake of Africa's social transformation, and in order for Africa to regain control over its destiny and its natural resources, this class of selfish elites has to give way. It is apropos to recall that this sort of subservient leadership dislodgement had to take place within the African Diaspora in post-2nd World War America upon the return of African American soldiers who had fought in Europe to help liberate Europe from Hitlerism. These emboldened veterans fanned out in the community with their liberated and invigorated sense of self and sense of their constitutional and civic rights. They consequently helped to raise the consciousness of the masses of the African descendants, who, in turn, rose up against a class of their leaders who were subservient to the dehumanizing and inferiorizing dictates of the Jim Crow social system of racial separatism that held sway within the United States prior to the desegregation of America—a desegregation that was brought about by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, including the landmark 1954 Desegregation Decision of the Supreme Court in which the High Court ruled that racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional. In the wake of that 1954 Supreme Court Desegregation Decision, the Diaspora witnessed an emboldened drive for freedom from Jim Crow mandates, such as Rosa Parks' famous refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat for a white passenger. During the Jim Crow era in the USA, particularly in the southern United States, African descendants were required by law to enter public transportation through the backdoor, and to give up their bus seats if required by a white passenger. These strings of local ordinances exemplified the application of the instrument of the law for a people's mass subjugation. But in the wake of these Rosa Parks' types of emboldened mass consciousness, the African descendant communities began to dislodge their own internal Booker T. Washingtonian leaders who had been conditioned to live with the white majority-dictated Jim Crow system of social separatism, which in practice meant inferior social facilities for African Americans. My main point here is that without dislodging the Jim Crow-minded leaders within their midst, the African descendant communities would not have taken the bull by the horn in terms of their community mobilizations and organizing, their street activisms, their acts of civil disobedience, their mass protests, etc. that collectively came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
It was this movement that transformed America from a Jim Crow society that it was before such legal reforms as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Equal Housing Act ushered in the current era of de jure racial integration in the United States against the backdrop of the 13th Amendment (1865), the 14th Amendment (1868) and the 15th Amendment (1870) to the United States Constitution.
As African descendants did in the Diaspora, the masses of Africa on the continent have to rise up and dislodge the class of compromised, neo-colonial elites that have been in leadership in places like Togo, whose counterparts can be found across the regions of Africa. Without dislodging these compromised leaders who work hand in gloves with neo-colonial external powers to plunder the natural resources of Africa, and to keep Africa from living up to its potentials, Africa cannot move forward with the sort of social transformations that its masses have been craving for, for decades on end. We must first dislodge the internal enemy before we can reposition ourselves to take our rightful place in the comity of nations on this earth. Like the 2nd world war African American veterans, it behooves this generation of Africans who have experienced the West in its multifarious dimensions to take back their reinvigorated sense of self to the continent for the mass mobilization that is necessary for dislodging the class of selfish African elites who have held Africa by its throat all these post-colonial decades.
--
Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vokafor@emich.edu
https://www.emich.edu/aaas/faculty/v-okafor.php
https://www.facebook.com/DAAASEMU/
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
"I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior, and his [or her] intentions. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth." -- Malcolm X.
Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vokafor@emich.edu
https://www.emich.edu/aaas/faculty/v-okafor.php
https://www.facebook.com/DAAASEMU/
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
"I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior, and his [or her] intentions. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth." -- Malcolm X.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Victor Okafor <vokafor@emich.edu>
Date: Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - togo-constitutional-crisis-protests/
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Show quoted text
Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vokafor@emich.edu
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
"I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior, and his [or her] intentions. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth." -- Malcolm X.
On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 12:56 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
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