Chap. 4: Democracy for States: Africa

When we consider Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, in the same context of access to social and histo-cultural capital, we can see a rather different story. In Africa, the synergy and the social networking of people existed within the various communities and states that evolved, before colonization. Kings and Emperors drew on that social capital to establish the legitimacy of their power. To draw once more on the case of the Mali Empire, Sunjata Keita used the existent social networks to establish his power, and later on, the great Malian Empire. It is by calling the leaders – or Mansa – of all the Mandinka tribes, and proving himself to them, that he was able to assert his authority over the entire Mandinka nation. The social ties that existed between the Mandinka were served by the arrival of Sunjata, as he would be an opportunity for strengthening the social Capital of the Mandinka people[1].

Similarly, in the Kongo and Yoruba kingdoms[2], the strengthening and evolution of the society was linked to an increase in, and conversion of the social capital, often by conquest and assimilation of neighboring communities. This also contributed in increasing their histo-cultural capital, as they gained knowledge from the people they assimilated. In the end, all of these kingdoms and communities were able to generate a histo-cultural capital that they could draw upon. They developed religion, or in the case of Mali, assimilated one, or several. Sunjata Keita created in his court the position of griot, which will in later years be adopted by several West African kingdoms. This was the Royal oral historian, in charge of making formal oral accounts of major events in the kingdom, and passing them down to the next generations, increasing even more the histo-cultural capital of that people. The kingdoms generated principles of government, which emphasized more or less harmony within the society, and some participation. In comparison to the Western World that we studied above, the kingdoms in Africa seemed on a normal parallel process of development. An interesting example is found in Southern Africa. In his Speech from the dock in 1964, before being condemned to death by the Apartheid regime, Nelson Mandela gave a heartfelt account of the systems of government that predated the colonialists:

“We occupied the land, the forests, the rivers; we extracted the mineral wealth beneath the soil and all the riches of this beautiful country. We set up and operated our own government, we controlled our own armies and we organized our own trade and commerce. […] The names of Dingane and Bambata, among the Zulus, of Hintsa, Makana and Ndlambe of the Amaxhosa, of Sekhukhuni and others in the north, were mentioned as the pride and glory of the entire African nation... […] All men were free and equal and this was the foundation of government. [This] found expression in the constitution of the Council, variously called Imbizo, or Pitso, or Kgotla, which governs the affairs of the tribe. The council was so completely democratic that all members of the tribe could participate in its deliberations. Chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, all took part and endeavoured to influence its decisions”.[3] – Nelson Mandela

However, this path towards development was cut short by the successive invasions, and subsequent colonization of the continent, by the West. One of the main effects of colonization was the severing of the existing social ties, by bolstering such aspects as ethnic group affiliations, and using them following the “divide and rule”[4] colonial policy. The colonizing forces, technologically superior, racist and avid of the natural and human resources that Africa could provide, needed ways to maintain the African peoples at bay, and dependent on them. It was therefore necessary to destroy the sanctity of the social ties, in order to create the necessary havoc. The technological and military superiority that they enjoyed, allowed them to guarantee many of the leaders of the African peoples impunity, when these accepted to furnish slaves, from their own peoples, thus generating the first fatal blow to their own social order. This set a system in motion that will make it increasingly impossible for African peoples to tap into their social capital, as the colonialists increased their grip on every aspect of their lives.

The results of this process, in the 1920s, were flailing societies that had lost much of their social capital, and were in the process of attempting to recreate it. However, the oppressive situation of colonialism made it impossible, lest it be the will of the colonizers. The process of socialization was monitored and regulated by the colonizers, to mirror Western society and White people as a model of perfection, while maintaining and nurturing a system that promoted the inferiority of local society, culture and people. Several scholars, such as Bob E. White, Gail P. Kelly or P.S. Zanhernuk analyzed the effects of colonial Western education on African culture and societies. In reporting these effects, Zanhernuk wrote:

“Okoth concludes that colonial schools simply ‘brainwashed’ pupils in Uganda. Imperialism, Okoth asserts, concentrated on the process of negating the personality, identity and dignity of the colonised people. The motive was nothing less than to create a ‘zombie’ who would be dominated, manipulated, exploited and oppressed”[5]

Thus they were artificially created immature societies, where the only source of social and histo-cultural capital is from collusion with the colonizer, and acceptance of the credits and credentials that the colonizer is willing to provide. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo – then Belgian Congo – a black person was not afforded the least bit of consideration, or acknowledgment of their humanity, unless one received the status of “evolved”; thus several positions, stores, cities, buildings and courtesies were accessible only when one was granted “evolved” (understand “Westernized”, or as they said at the time, “whitified”) status by the Belgian colonizer. In this case, not only did the colonizer control the colonized people’s lives and capital in an exploitive, supremacist and nefarious fashion, but they also established a system where the colonized are expected to be grateful to the colonizer for allowing it to “evolve”. An interesting paradox.

Now it is important to acknowledge that colonial education did bring into the relationship some technological knowledge that the societies previously lacked. And the colonizers did not always purposefully destroy the culture. It often came from the lack of acknowledgement of their unconscious supremacist thinking. Gail Kelly writes about the French West Africa education system:

“School texts focused on Africa, not on France, and they described Africa, not France, and they described Africans—what they wore, how they dressed, how they prepared food, the kinds of housed in which they lived, and what kind of work they did. The language used quite often was one of cultural distance and the cultural outsider, referring to “the natives,” “the blacks,” or simply just
“them.” Sometimes texts deliberately distinguished the “native” from the student.”[6]

Colonialism therefore created a situation where the only route for elites to emerge and succeed was through assimilation into the new mainstream white culture, at the level decided by the colonial master:

[...] Learning French would help move Africans along the path to civilization by teaching them to love their own ancestry and France simultaneously...Even if Africans quickly forgot the French words they had learned at school, they would not forget the ideas they conveyed, ‘ideas that are our own and whose use endows us with our moral, social an economic superiority’ and that ‘will little by little transform these barbarians of yesterday into disciples and agents.’ [7]

An elite emerged from the colonial education process, but it was an elite that was fed Western Culture as the basis of their education, while simultaneously attempting to secure certain rights and liberties for its own people. It is to this uprooted, westernized elite that the colonial powers plan to leave the countries that are formed from the decolonization process.[8] In fact, decolonization was rarely a result of pure struggle, but rather the result of negotiations between the elite and colonial powers[9]. These elites constituted what can be formally named civil society. However they were a minimal amount, and were not representative of a people mostly under colonizer defined customary rules. As Olle Tornquist, from the University of Oslo wrote, “in many parts of Africa, […] the early ‘actually existing’ civil societies were primarily in urban areas. The rest, the subjects, were under customary rule; which, however, was integrated, refined and made use of by the colonizers.”[10] When we consider all the above, and observe the situation in Africa today, one must wonder if the source of those conflicts is not found in this detrimental beginning of international sovereignty and democracy. In any case, we have seen that Africans were put into a position, during the colonial era, where they could not benefit fully from their social and histo-cultural (and for that matter, economic) capital.

Having established the effects of colonialism on the abilities of the Africans to get the best out of their capital, one must consider the post-colonial era, and examine the states that emerged from the process. Because the process was often an elite-centered process, and the elite was such a minority, and because the elite were looking for Home rule and devolution in the fastest way possible, the result were the creation of client states, that were centered around the ambitions of the elite. The artificially disoriented population was maintained in its disorientation by the elites, with aim of achieving power. As Tornquist writes on, “much of the nationalist struggle was about deracializing the civil societies—whereafter the world of subjects was either governed through clientelism or ‘enlightened and developmental’ one-party states. Democratization among the subjects at the grassroots level was rarely even attempted.” In an informal interview that I conducted with Prof. Freddy Matungulu, former Finance Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and presently International Monetary Fund officer, about the current conflicts in that country, I asked the general question of the readiness of the Congolese population for democracy. Prof. Matungulu explained to me that before there is readiness of a people, there must be a cohesive people that are aware both of their existence as a people, and of what the system has in store for them. At independence, the vast majority of the population did not have a say as to what was going to happen in their country, and the notion of belonging to one nation was elusive, as it was a concept that was not reinforced in colonial times, and the fundamental laws were the making of legislatures co-opted by the colonizers. I would even go further, and assert that even today, in most Sub-Saharan African countries, outside of urban areas, the notion of a cohesive people – let alone a nation-state – is a rather intangible and illusive notion.

We must however backtrack a bit in our argument. It would be unfair from our part, to claim that all the leaders in Africa were not conscious of their state of cultural domination. The nationalist leaders of Africa did in fact acknowledge their state of powerlessness, at the All-African People's Conference in Accra, in 1958. At this Conference, the leaders denounced colonialism, and imperialism, and set forth the basis for a new movement: Panafricanism[11]. This movement was one that advocated a paramount union of the new African countries, as they realized that the situation did not allow these new states to be viable. The idea was – and still is – met with much criticism, especially in the West, due to the wide variety of civilizations and cultures that Africa has born. In his book, I speak of freedom[12], the main proponent of panafricanism, Kwame Nkrumah, who went on to be the first President of the Republic of Ghana, wrote the following:

Critics of African unity often refer to the wide differences in culture, language and ideas in various parts of Africa. This is true, but the essential fact remains that we are all Africans, and have a common interest in the independence of Africa. The difficulties presented by questions of language, culture and different political systems are not insuperable. If the need for political union is agreed by us all, then the will to create it is born; and where there's a will there's a way. […]We have to prove that greatness is not to be measured in stockpiles of atom bombs. I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind.
-Kwame Nkrumah

It is however a fact that these commendable ideas often remained at the level of the high elite and the leadership, except when they were used, in very diluted forms, as populist means to rally the people behind dictators. Now, from our previous study of ‘Western Democracy’, and its development, we know that it does not only involve leaders and elites, but also actively, freely and consciously participating people. In this respect, we can say, that Western Democracy did not have the prerequisites to work in most of post-colonial Africa.

During the cold war, the states in Africa often became clear clients of either of the super-powers, the United States or the Soviet Union. To maintain this client status, the states had to maintain often very brutal authoritarian ruling systems, which would guarantee their total control over the population. This often implied actively keeping the people in a state of ignorance, poverty and fear. The former colonial powers, benefiting economically and politically from the relationship, maintained these authoritarian regimes throughout the Cold War period. The regimes needed only to build on the administrative and governing systems inherited from the colonizers, aimed at enforcing domination and power. They often-established one party states, with powers heavily concentrated in the hands of individuals, named Presidents to maintain the illusive form a republican system. Because of the apparent failure of the Western Democratic system, these leaders could argue that the recourse to authoritarian rule was in fact recourse to African roots, thus adopting a populist discourse that guaranteed submission to the leader. As a parallel, they also insured the creation of their own spheres of interest within the population, by emphasizing on the divisive group identities favored during colonial times, such as ethnic or tribal allegiances[13], further undermining the possibility of nation building. Its own elite was now robbing the people of its social, histo-cultural and economic capital. The result of these policies were the continuation of the colonial policies, that managed to artificially and intentionally maintain scores of people in poverty, helplessness, ignorance and frustration, despite the availability of income generating natural resources. Furthermore, they intentionally maintained an artificial sense of perpetual and inescapable dependency.

When the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War ended, what scholars have called the third wave of democratization blew over the world, and several African leaders started to make concessions of control and power, as compelled to by the ‘people’. It is from then, and only then, that we can date the true beginning of the process for some sort of democracy, as it is the first time that the people had a say, and revolted – of their own volition – against the injustices of the regimes that the client states imposed on them. The implication behind this observation, is that if these countries must attain ‘Western Democracy’, as defined at the beginning of this paper, we must compare the situation in several countries in Africa nowadays, with the situation in France in 1789, or in the United States, in the formation years of their democracy. We must not forget that the process of democratization, while it started in those years for those countries, was a long process, with several reversals. The Reign of Terror regime (until 1794), the successive Napoleonic Regimes and the Restoration in France, were eras of suspended democracy. Similarly, it took a Civil War, a period of segregation laws, and a Civil Rights movement in the United States, for all-inclusive democracy to come to its present (and still not quite equal) condition. What this implies is that these African countries must be given room and resources to make small progressive steps towards creating, through education, a grass roots level constituency for democracy, as well as an elite that has an increased stake at the success of democracy.
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[1] Djibril T. Niane. Soundiata, ou l'épopée mandingue. Paris, Presence africaine, 1960
[2] Country Studies: Angola and Nigeria, U.S. Library of Congress, 1986-1998
[3] Mandela, Nelson R., Statement from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, 20 April 1964. (As found on the website of the African National Congress, http://www.anc.co.za/).
[4] Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa, in The Invention Of Tradition 211, 248 (Eric Hobsawm & Terence Ranger eds., 1983).
[5] P.S. Zanhernuk, African History and Imperial Culture in Colonial Nigerian schools, in Africa, 68, no. 4. 1998, 486
[6] Gail P. Kelly, “Learning to be Marginal: Schooling in Interwar French West Africa,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting on the French Colonial Historical Society 11, 1987, 302
[7] Alice K. Conklin, “Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in Term? The Case of France and West Africa, 1895-1914,” American Historical Review 103, no. 2, 1998, 429
[8] Crawford Young, The African Colonial State In Comparative Perspective, 199 (1994).
[9] See La Table Ronde de Bruxelles,
[10] Törnquist, O., Popular Development and Democracy: Case Studies with Rural Dimensions in the Philippines, Indonesia,and Kerala. (2002) Occasional Paper from SUM, No. 3, viii+150 pp.

[11] All-African People's Conference: Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism, Accra, December 5-13, 1958, in All-African People's Conference News Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 4 (Accra: 1959), pp. 1-2
[12] Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1961), pp. xi-xiv
[13] Julius O. Ihonvbere, The “Irrelevant” State, Ethnicity, and the Quest for Nationhood in Africa, 17 Ethnic And Racial Studies 42, 54 (1994).