Page 42 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 8

FEATURES

A cursory look at the political con-
dition in Africa today reveals four
types of regimes that are dominant
as far as the state is concerned. First,
a few countries including Ghana,
Botswana, South Africa, Mauritius
and Namibia could be classified as
liberal democracies with stable and
consolidating democratic frame-
brains in what came to be called the without questioning. While these works. Second, the majority of
‘brain drain’. external interventions have added countries could be classified as elec-
to Africa’s modern culture in what toral democracies whose democratic
Reinventing ‘Hope’ Nkrumah called a ‘triple heritage,’ credentials are stronger in relation to
In order to thwart the “Hopeless- it has also left a negative impact on the holding of regular elections while
ness” misconception portrayed by African intellectual capacity to think in between and beyond elections
The Economist, the current so- independently unlike, say, the Asian they suffer enormous democratic
cio-economic and social-political intellectuals and political leaders deficits. Such countries include Ni-
deficits on the continent must there- who have managed to retain strong geria, Niger Republic, Lesotho, Ma-
fore be faced squarely and their ori- linkages to their traditions and cul- lawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and
gins recognised if indeed we have to tures. Zambia. Third, few countries fall
move towards a new way of under- within the 'fuzzy' category that schol-
standing the impacts of our role in Given our present situation, what ars have referred to variously as grey
continental as well as global issues. does it mean to take seriously the zone democracy, ambiguous de-
It is indeed important to acknowl- thought that cultural politics and mocracy, pseudo-democracy, virtual
edge that it is through epochs that questions of culture, of discourse, democracy, electoral authoritarian-
we produce the contours and direc- and of metaphor are absolutely ism or liberalized autocracy. Coun-
tions of our thoughts and actions as deadly political questions? My argu- tries in this category have embraced
well as the orientations and episte- ment is that it is so. Indeed one oth- the political culture of regular mul-
mes, which fashion the way we look er reason why Africa is trailing other tiparty elections. The fairness and
at the past and relate it to the future regions is that the current crop of its freeness of the electoral contest is of-
through the present. That said, it has leadership has managed to corrupt ten questionable. The electoral gov-
always been the position of the pro- the very idea of ‘nation-building’ that ernance does not ensure procedural
gressive Pan-Africanist that freedom was the song of the first generation certainty and substantive uncertain-
and emancipation of Africa are tied of African leaders by creating polit- ty. Under this condition, the elec-
to the unification of the peoples of ical divisions based on ‘tribal’ dif- tion becomes a façade behind which
Africa. This position first outlined ferences, which were very much the authoritarianism thrives. Zimbabwe
by Kwame Nkrumah in the book, creation of colonial ‘divide and rule’ and Kenya fall under this category.
‘Africa Must Unite’ is still fresh ideologies of the imperialist powers. Fourth, some of these countries are
many decades later in the midst of a The current political elites in Af- affected by dictatorship, authoritar-
changing world. rica have bought into this ideology ianism, closed authoritarianism or
to their advantage, a heritage that unreformed autocracy. These are
Africa today is trailing the rest of has led to ethnic-cleaning and even countries that have not yet under-
the world because in part the Afri- genocides. In my view, we cannot gone political transition to multi-
can leadership has failed to mobi- continue to blame these calamities party democracy. Some of them are
lize communities along the lines of on foreign forces alone. African po- Libya, Angola, Democratic Repub-
a Pan-African agenda that informed litical and economic elites continue lic of Congo (DRC) and Swaziland.
the earlier phases of our political de- to play an active role as agents in ca- Rebuilding Africa’s Memory
velopment. This is due to its weak lamities that have bedeviled our con- On a hopeful note, Africa appears
ideological base, which instead of tinent. They have always blamed to be in a transitional political and
drawing from our rich cultural her- these problems on the ‘colonialists’ intellectual stage of reforming the
itage is instead wedded to Western and ‘imperialists’ while at the same ‘new’ Africa to the ‘old’ Africa. Cen-
ways of knowing and doing things time playing the role of executioners tral to this process of reformation
of our own communities. is going to be changing Africans’

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