kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 4:21 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
Ken and Moses:
This is a good thread, but time is a thief that has stolen me and my time.
The obaship, as an idea and practice, must be about what you can extract from it as a philosophy of governance. You cannot reproduce it as it is grounded in a concept of city identity, far different from the idea of managing a plural society with over 300 groups with their organs.
I am from a city that rejected obaship, and substituted for republicanism.
I read the conversation not as a reproduction but more as an extraction.
Stay well.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 3:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
thanks to moses for returning to the issue of african democracy.
i think we can all agree that the ideal of democracy is rough, is going through rough times, in much of africa. while moses says it is too reductive to suggest that it cannot simply be seen as standing against autocracy, and while we can all agree that in many cases it is democracy in name only, while manipulative forces control the electoral process, it leaves me still troubled by the realities of autocratic rule. i think of kagame who is a strongman, and who crushes the conventional democratic institutions like a free press, an independent judiciary, and a just police force, still they hold elections periodically where he receives most votes. in contrast, the recent elections in the drc were close, contested, and if not totally fair, at least not autocratically determined.
it is very very hard for me not to see the way elections in the west are held in contrast to those in russia or china, or other autocratic states.
if i were a citizen in any state in the world, i would want to have the freedom to vote, and if a democratic process is not working well, would i then say, take away my participation and give it to the wiser, more just electors who stand above me. the original american model of the electoral college was flawed for that reason, and its flaws now haunt us.
but the yoruba model of the oba in the piece moses is cited is equallly troublesome to me. who is to judge the electors and guarantors of the oba? if the oba really embodies the people, as the article claims, then we have an example of rousseau's Will of the People, which is basically infallible. he claimed the revolutionary leaders needed no check, because they embodied that will....like the claims re the oba. but the lack of a competing authority meant the guillotine had no check. those who select or authorize the oba, if they are hereditary figures, not elected, are not answerable to the people, and that means they control the power of the state...and the oil wells. i don't see the philosopher-king model, or inherited ruler model, as free from the basic neoliberal capitalist flows of power. to the contrary.
i think france did the right thing in eliminating royalty and aristocracy and their privileges; the u.k. should have done th same.
i think the bolshevik ideology of the vanguard is its achilles heel, and destroyed the great glories of revolutions that were directed against wealthy elites, inherited power, and the ideologies that sustained them.
i don't write this so as to defend the failures of democracy in african states. i will confess i work with colleagues in amnesty international so as to try to prevent abuses of human rights, which entails defending the rights of people to freely debate their views on statehood and to vote freely, to hear a free press. i don't care if it is capitalist or socialist, those fundamentals should not be shifted onto an oba and his court or courtiers in trusting them to do a fairer job.
i wonder how the workings of botswana could be judged given the interplay of traditional rulership and democratic rights? i wonder if we could open this question by asked which states comparatively seem to be working best for the interest of the population as a whole, as opposed to those doing the opposite.
at that point i quit and ask those political scientists who actually try to measure this question, using whateve GINI charts or measurements they have, to opine. is it better to press for decentralized power vs centralized, so that we'd have swiss models instead of american?
who should get to decide when books are to be banned or not?
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 8:13 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
I don't want to resurrect our recent discussion and critique of the damage and problems of liberal democracy (with its emphasis on competitive, zero-sum, and majoritarian principles) in Africa, but this piece (linked below) by Ayodeji Ogunaike is the type of thoughtful, original, and transcendental critique we're talking about. This is where the debate is headed, decentering and historicizing liberal democracy and unearthing Africa-centered alternatives to it.
Perspectives like this reject and go way beyond the farcical and shallow binaries of democracy versus dictatorship, election versus selection, participation versus non-participation, singularity versus pluralism, etc, which do little to get us out of the ontological and programmatic conundrum of a fatally troubled liberal democratic practice in Africa.
The piece is part of our think-piece series being published on Africasacountry.com, with the edited volume to be published thereafter by UVA Press.
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