Toyin Adepoju,
About the history of Africans celebrating coups, I think that framing is too narrow. Africans celebrate regime change when the previous regime was a failed, dysfunctional, oppressive, and corrupt one. They have celebrated when military regimes have given way to elected civilian ones. They have also celebrated when civilian, elected regimes were overthrown by military ones. The fact that, often, the new regime is just as bad or worse than the previous one is not the issue. Rather, the issue is that the celebration is an expression of relief and the hope that the new regime would be better. When you've had it up to your neck with a terrible regime, any change is bound to elicit your support and cause you to celebrate. It is human.
Anyway, another interlocutor on Facebook raised the same issue of the long history of African celebrating coups, and I answered their query. I reproduce the exchange below:
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 5:05 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
But ...celebrating coups was long a tradition in Nigeria, perhaps with the exception of the Abacha coup...in his case, there was great jubilation, perhaps only in Southern Nigeria, when his demise was announced- an unforgettable experience- a stranger and I hugged in the street out of sheer joy, so great was the pressure he had exerted on the nation in his utter desperation to continue in power, even as a civilian through a mock election in which all parties had accepted him as a consensus candidate out of fear for their lives.Buhari has entered a similar level of almost absolute dislike, perhaps across Nigeria, with perhaps the only groups thinking otherwise being some Fulani thinking his Fulanocetricism serves their interests or those he has appointed into office.I see the jubilation at coups in Nigeria, some of which I've experienced first hand, as a demonstration of ignorance of what it takes to build a democratic nation.When critiquing forms of democracy, we need to be careful to specify exactly what we are doing.Are we critiquing a particular way of doing democracy or democracy of any type?This is critical so the discursive space is not taken over by totalitarianism, which is just round the corner, as evident in fragile democracies and even in the US, with the Trump example.I am not able to find a political system superior to democracy.ThanksToyin--On Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 22:33 Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:--hi mosesmy little piece on democracy got cut short when a friend showed up, so i had to send it incompleted.i am sorry if i expressed myself poorly. i am really sorry to incur your anger as i treasure your opinion.
to begin... i have two thoughts here:1.all people on earth want self-rule.maybe that is true, maybe not. i am guessing that people don't want to be ruled over but want to rule themselves, and to exercise rule fairly. i doubt anyone likes a rich fat cat to decide everything for them, while they suffer in poverty. maybe some people think this is natural and inevitable, but if they thought the rich person's wealth were at their expense, they would probably revolt, at least in spirit.
2.all people want a life. they want to be able to live and have a decent life, free from conflict war suffering and want. free to live well enough. that matters more than the type of govt.moses, i have heard you make that argument before, and i think it is true, but not enough. #2 by itself isn't enough if you feel you are being cheated in life by unjust people who exercise power over you. there was the "bourgeois revolution" in france, after all, in 1830.
the question is how your voice must be heard. my reference to the gathering under the tree was to an ideal of direct democracy, which can't accommodate the size of a national population, so it has to be representative of some kind. my reference to the states was simply to say, we in the states are far from having an equitable representative democracy, much farther from one-person one-vote that most countries, in fact have a better shot at.
you question whether point 1. is true, that most people want to be able to vote, for their vote to count as much as anyone else's. perhaps i think this is true and natural because i've lived with this as a natural concept, i.e., socialized to believe it. i don't think it would be different to think this in african states or elsewhere. the military coups are not expressions of people who are opposed to one-person one-vote, but against govts that are failing their needs, or that are lacking military support, and military oligarchs won't permit their wealth to be threatened by democratic states. The revolts in mali and burkina can be seen as disappointment in their govt, not an end to democratic forms of govt.
i do agree with your premise: "As you must have surmised by now, what I'm calling for is a self-critical and deconstructive reevaluation of the terms, concepts, buzzwords, and assumptions we take for granted as starting points and baselines for our conversation on democracy in Africa."i like the openness to thinking you are calling for. but i don't agree that universal suffrage is somehow suspect by being associated with a european and not african social patterns or history; i don't agree that a people who fought for their freedom were not fighting for the right to vote.maybe they want to question that right now, but i am skeptical. we can say everything is on the table: there is nothing in american style democracy that i think other countries should necessarily imitate. i did not mean to say that at all. there are good things we have, and bad things, but no one can say we have an equitable democratic system. if i say most people want some version of it, it is because i believe it goes along with wanting to be free to vote, to express their opinions, to support their political party. There is nothing intrinsically western in this desire.
but it has to go along with #2 as well, a life worth living.
the last point: western countries tie aid to human rights, unlike china or russia. is that a bad thing? i favor insuring human rights everywhere: no govt should have the right to torture its people, imprison journalists, etc. if aid is to be given, it seems right that the govt adhere to humanrights standards. if the govt giving the aid is itself an oppressive state, the state receiving the aid might have cause to grumble, but not cause to abuse its own people.
the problem is not tying aid to practices, it is the exercise of power that is really in question. should one state have the power to dictate to another? should one group of countries be able to do so? the coup in mali has been challenged by ecowas. many countries were invaded by regional forces of others, or called on troops of others, like mozambique calling on rwanda for soldiers, or somalia or sudan or car, all having foreign troops come in, in one guise on another. sometimes this seems like a foreign imposition, or worse, like russia's mercenary wagner group; sometimes it is much more positive, or might be, like uganda troops sent to the drc to stop the adf.i don't want europe or the u.s. imposing their notions of governance on african states. but i also don't want any foreign govt to go propping up repressive regimes, just to do business, like china in s sudan, or anywhere where there is money to be made.okay, this is what i might have said if i had finished the email. again sorry for a point that so angered you. but feel free to whack at any of these ideas, now...
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 2:34 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?"we are "relatively" democratic.every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."
Ken,
Let me register my strong disagreement with the premise, logic, and sentiment of the quoted excerpt from your post. Most Africans do not care if the US is relatively or absolutely democratic or even if it is not democratic at all. That is the business of the US. The US should be free to develop and evolve its own type of representative government, governing technique, and architecture of state.
But it seems that the US is not willing to allow other countries to evolve their own systems of governance and democracy, and is bent on arrogantly dictating to them how to be democratic. Unfortunately it works because the US has the purse strings and the leverage to blackmail and pressure poor, dependent countries to uncritically adopt liberal democracy, neoliberal economic reforms, etc.
This global "democratic tyranny" has become such an axiomatic creed that even a distinguished Africanist scholar and usually self-critical liberal like the great Kenneth Harrow does not have a problem and does not have the self-reflexivity to see the arrogant ideological certitude in a statement such as "every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."
Who gets to decide for Africans and their states whether a political unit is too big or too small for the kind of democracy that may work for them and that aligns better with their culture, society, and socioeconomic station?
How did you arrive at the false dichotomy that a critique of the calamitous failings of liberal democracy in Africa amounts to calling for a system of people sitting under a tree to give their opinion? And why do you presume, if not that you have been deeply socialized into the normative Western liberal mindset that the Western democratic tradition is the best, that voting is necessary for democracy to occur, and that people must vote in the sense of universal suffrage of one-man-one-vote in order to have the nomenclatural imprimatur of democracy?
As you must have surmised by now, what I'm calling for is a self-critical and deconstructive reevaluation of the terms, concepts, buzzwords, and assumptions we take for granted as starting points and baselines for our conversation on democracy in Africa. Africa needs a democratic autonomy that is unencumbered by assumptions such as the one inherent in your statement that "every nation must be like that"--that is, must mimic America's "relative democracy," a proposition which completely sidesteps the foundational question of what it means to be "democratic" as though that question is already settled.
--On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 12:59 PM 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--The truth is that the official advocates of democracy are oftenhypocritical. They went against a democratic Mosaddeghgovernment in Iran in 1953 in favor of feudalism; a democraticallyelected government of Arbenz in Guatemala, 1954; Brazil in 1964;and more recently seemed to prefer the TPLF, by no means democratic, against ademocratically elected government in Ethiopia. It turns out thatdemocracy is often just a word.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 1:15 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?Please be cautious: **External Email**
there is a new issue of the African Studies Review out (64:3).in it they have an "African Studies Keyword" and the word is Democracy. It was written by Nic Cheesemand and Sishuwa Sishuwa.
maybe this would bear on your reading of liberal democracy, moses.
my impression is that africans have been fighting for democracy ever since colonialism came. but what is democracy? i think of it as the people being self-governing, regardless of the model. it could be parliamentary, direct, indirect, representative etc.i am angry at the failures in the united states since my vote counts less than people in smaller states, a system set up by slaveowning states to enable them to country free northern states' greater population and urban centers.we are "relatively" democratic.every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote.
are autocracies better? i believe autocracies can function only by theboss paying off his army police bigmen supporters, at the expense of the people. it is not just.gotta goken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 12:08 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?--Toyin Adepoju:
In 2010 or thereabouts, there was a coup in Niger and Nigeriens trooped out to celebrate the coup. That was a shock to the "democratization" brigade, but some of us were not surprised.
Then it happened in Mali more recently and people celebrated.
It then happened in Guinea and the coup was celebrated with a massive street rally, the coup plotters mobbed as heroes.
The situation in Burkina Faso is fluid, and I haven't seen audiovisual evidence of how the people reacted, but I would not be surprised if there were/are celebrations there too.
Which means, we should pose the difficult question of why people in these countries are celebrating coups, which they should be protesting in an era of "democratization" and "democratic" normativity.
Could it be that the liberal democratic model uncritically adopted and implemented across Africa is dysfunctional and has failed to promote unity and security and to fulfill the cardinal promise the pro-democracy forces made in the era of democratization: that liberal democracy would produce economic development and accountability?
--On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 9:20 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it Africans generally welcoming these coups or armed men taking power by force whatever people think?
Toyin
--On Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 02:36 Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Are coups back? That may not be the right question. The right question may be, what's souring Africans on Western style democracy and making coups attractive and popular again? That question deserves a truthful answer, not an answer that uncritically reiterates the Washington Consensus and it's associated talking points and buzzwords about the imperative of "democratization."--
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 24, 2022, at 7:00 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--
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