Richard Dowden, writing in the new issue of Prospect, argues that the latest round of electoral failues in Nigeria, Kenya and now Zimbabwe shows that western-style “winner-takes-all” democracy is not suited to African states. Competing ethnic and linguistic groups, arbitrary borders—the legacy of colonial rule—and a lack of democratic tradition create an climate unsuited to electoral systems in which one group takes complete power at the expense of others. What is needed instead, suggestes Dowden, is a new, “African” democracy, perhaps one that approaches a form of proportional representation in which all groups are accorded a seat at the top table.
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Interesting article!
The article identifies a real problem for any system that sets out to produce a representative ruling body.
The arguments against the winner takes all apply just as much to western democracies. My represaentative in parliament feels no responsibility to me as I voted against him.
This is why the low poll figures are a real indication of the failure of our system. We need a new system as much as Africa does.
This article condenses the universal problem , not only in Africa, but the Middle East as well.
There is a need for proportionate representation. As with Human Rights , We should all have fair say in parliament.
The problem with Western Democracy is that it is a supression of the minority. This is is contary to the true democracy.
Dear Richard
This article will be but an addition to examining the burning issues of failures that have driven the african nationalities away from unitary and centralised governments. A case in point is the Kampala military regime, a typical new breed that too have not only failed to maintain the territorial integrity of the state it occupies on befalf of its friends, but have failed to help its friend pacify the near and far territories. The thrust of representation at the table i.e.to have a look in on what has to be shared must go further to suggest that it must control the sharing of resources and power. I suggest that you revisit this article and include ’self-determination’ as a particular and specific simultenous equation in the argument.
This is possibly the most regressive article on African governance I have read in a long time. As an African, properly, a Ghanaian, I have had to live with outsiders prodding us all over the place and declaring this and that piece of our polity wanting, but this takes the cake. There is nothing mysterious about one-person, one vote. Africans get it and embrace it – even to the point of death, as the brave people of Zimbabwe have recently demonstrated. We also know that if we were to buy into this union-government/government of national unity (rejected by Ghanaians in the late 70’s when a military dictator tried to impose it on us through a spurious referendum) concept we will end up with an even worse consolidation of cozy elite kleptocrats who will just simply pass the cake around in their small circles. There is nothing going on in Africa that more democracy, more strengthening of the laws, more transparency won’t cure. Already the fledgling efforts in Ghana toward more openness are receiving quite a bit of affirmation from other Africans by stripping away the excuse that all Africans are like that.
Until his untimely death, Mwanawansa was leading the charge to deny Mugabe seating at a summit for heads of state in Cairo due to the undemocratic nature of the second round of elections. If more Africans were emboldened to support such efforts, and they surely will in increasing numbers, the days of the Mugabes and his ilk will be numbered.
The efforts of Ghanaians and Zambians clearly indicate that we want to move forward, not backwards.
Please support this effort, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
Thank you.
Dear Richard,
This is a very interesting article and I hope that african politicians will learn from this factual analysis.
There is a place call Somaliland (unrecognised Internationaly) and there are lessons that can be learn.
Somaliland: A Beacon of Success in Africa
Thanks
Yasin Abdi
As the article confesses, Africa is not different than other countries in which a feudalistic socio-economic structure results in fragile democratic facades and corrupt, authoritarian interiors. This is how it is everywhere where the middle class is small and the vast majority live as peasants. It has nothing to do with colonial history: if it did, African politics would be as unique as its history, which it is not. Like a lot of writers about Africa, Dowden is fooled by the surface details of politics into making generalizations about cause that make no sense.
The great question hovering over Africa is whether there is any political system that can deliver a relatively painless transition into the modern world. Strong executives only inflame tribal divisions. Weak executives create chaotic and vulnerable polities ripe for disintegration. Unifying symbols, like monarchies, are lacking. Federalism founders on boundary disputes. And, most importantly, the culture (traditional culture, not specifically “African”) is one in which law has no secure place and impunity is the highest civic value.
Wishing for democracy in Africa is no more productive than wishing Africa could be isolated from the rest of the world (the counterfactual underlying post-colonial theories). The culture won’t change and the politics won’t change until the socio-economic structure of Africa changes.
14 September 2008
The Logical Consequence
of the
2008 Summer Olympics
in Beijing, China
No one can deny that the 2008 Summer Olympics symbolized a crucial dividing point for the world at large—more so than the South Ossetia tragedy—and was the priming set off to sanction the political, economic and social revolution that will horror-strike the worn-out status quo of Judeo-Christian “Democratic†Capitalism with us for more than some centuries. This diffusion will be accomplished “without firing a shot†as the Chinese forward motion brings to reality, drop by drop, with abundant doses of Capitalism’s very own medicine, the nightmare of John Kenneth Galbraith: the success of Capitalism is its demise! We must all bow to the ingenuity of the Chinese people and their unwearied and clever leaders. I cite one, Sun Tzu: “Therefore, the skilful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthily operations in the field.†In other words, as empire-watcher Rudyard Kipling was once keen to make note of, centuries-old governmental conglomerates do not go out with a big bang, they depart with a whimper. The Chinese are well aware that the West is not consuming to possess; it is possessed to consume! And the Chinese ersatz Capitalism is at the ready to furnish all the junk that is demanded of them. When Hong Kong law-making officials visited the Chinese mainland to gripe about the pollution drifting from southern China to the ex-British possession, Chinese bureaucrats told them flat out: “Stop ordering all this useless crap!†With true Milton Friedmanish panache, post-Olympic fervour was heralded with a 10% upsurge in wholesale prices for the People’s Republic of China’s items for consumption. One world, one dream! Everyone is doing it, n’est pas? “If you give them enough rope, they will hang themselves,†speculated Karl Marx. And that is exactly what they are doing! Western political and economic hegemony is on the wane.
The principal purveyors of political, economic, cultural and social policy extending heavy-handed rule over foreign countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, The Netherlands, The DisUnited Kingdom, and their kingpin, The DisUnited States of America—now find themselves challenged as never before notwithstanding their often turbulent histories. Having lost any perception of authority and/or authenticity, these Concocters of Consent, their consent!, these Rulers of the Truth, their truth!, these Proponents of Judeo-Christian “Democratic†Capitalism, their capitalism!, now have their backs against the wall. Vicious societal agitation against them, duplicitous oligarchic socialists (olisocists), is rampant throughout the world. Uncertainty is a certainty. Foreboding is the order of the day. It is as if a grand conflict, a universal war (World War III/Universe War I) is looming in the inner selves of people—still again! Is an Armageddon between The Haves and The Have-Nots in the offing? A super clash, to outdo all the others, set on its deleterious course centuries ago? Who is going to redeem Western Culture? Who is going to pull The Old World out of its nosedive? Who is going to call the tune for The New Europe? Who is going to skipper us through our Sea of Hypocrisy? John S McCain III? Barack Obama? A paedophilic Pope?
For every action there is a reaction. Have you thought about the atrocities committed against indigenous Canadian children? Hundreds of thousands of aborigines have! Have you thought about the criminal colonization of vast parts of Africa by the French? Hundreds of millions of Africans have! Have you thought about the millions massacred in the Soviet Union by the Germans and Italians? Millions of Soviet families have! Have you thought about the disgusting occupation of Libya by the Italians? Colonel Gheddafi has! Have you thought about the rape of Nanjing by the Japanese? The Chinese have! Have you thought about the millions of Hispanic natives slaughtered by the Spanish? The Venezuelans and the Colombians have! Have you thought about the Indonesian killings perpetrated by the Dutch? The Indonesians have! Have you thought about the worldwide imperialistic control actuated by the British? At least the Indians have! Have you thought about the bombings, which have exterminated millions all over the world, by the Northamericans? The Europeans, the Southamericans, the Asians, those in the Middle East have!
Oh, my dear, wretched Western Civilization, how could you have been so haywire for so many centuries? There is not a crevice in any part of this world into which the blood spilt from your self-righteous violence has not seeped. On each and every one of the continents millions upon innumerable millions close their hearts to your debaucheries, and they crawl into themselves in disgust and foreboding endeavouring to find, in desperation, a reason to believe that this Life has a semblance of Beauty and Promise and Goodwill that has never been allocated to them suffering, starving, solicitous, saddled, sagging, sapped, scared, schizoid, shackled, shamed, shattered, skewered, slighted, soused, sordid, spooked, squashed, stigmatised, strapped, submerged, subordinated, supplanted, systematized…. Will you please tell me who do you think you are hoodwinking rummaging around so? The whole of humanity? A very big part of it? The largest part of it you can get your mitts on?
Oh, despicable, pitiable Western Empire, Land of the Setting Sun, Caldron simmering in hungering desperation to regain the smacks of the Past. You seek to lunge ahead on the energy of Your logic and hopes not yet lionized. You call upon Your histories to lend strength to Your fantasies. You coil up hard on Your proud self wrinkled and weather-beaten. You struggle to nurture new flowers on the dry rot of Your haunted memories. Your youth, sniffed upon by strapped canine squads, rape-hate in Your stadiums striped with electronic rejoinders to press softly-pliant, gaily-tinged plastic buttons. Your elderly curl their ways to bankrupt health ministries where physicians fool with forms and fill in football pools. Your neighbours to the East—brazen, sordid—yank towards You roughly extracting for exacting theirs craved for. You, Western Civilization, sit pickled—soused in the juices of Your scummy heretofore. Your dabblers in politics set flags unfurled and their powers shame—shame!—this Our world.
Oh! Miserable Western Civilization, Your Past just does not want to pass,
does it?
Authored by Anthony St. John
Casella Postale 38
50041 CALENZANO FI
Italia
11 September 2008
* * *
inspite of all that and oher comments frican leaders and their supporters continue to push the continent further down. probably we need a new wave of leader democracy