Lost in Democracy: “An Analytical Inquest into Africa’S Difficulties with Democracy and the Prospects of Finding Alternative Systems of Government That May Work Without Hitches.”

By Frisky Larr

Lost in Democracy is an expos on Africas difficulty with democracy. It examines the indigenous systems of government that existed in different parts of the continent prior to the arrival of explorers and colonial adventurers in the continent as well as the introduction of the western sociopolitical systems. It compares African leadership with leaderships in other parts of the world with similar colonial experiences and identifies the problems posed by global powers protecting strategic interests in Africa. It also identifies the strength and weaknesses of democracy in the continent against the backdrop of all such difficulties as well as the up and down sides of the primordial African indigenous systems. It concludes with suggestions of possible alternatives to the current unworkable systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524665555

Frisky Larr

Frisky Larr is a German-based Radio/Television Journalist with several years of working experience as a Freelance Radio Journalist in different regions of Germany. Four years of studying Radio/Television Journalism at the University of Ankara in Turkey was followed by a master's degree program in the combined study of Communication Science, Political Science and Social Psychology at the Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany. Besides authoring several articles on burning political issues in several Nigerian dailies at different points in time since 2006, Frisky Larr currently writes for several reputable Nigerian media outlets. He is also the author of "Nigeria's Journalistic Militantism" and "Africa's Diabolical Entrapment".

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© 2016 Frisky Larr. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/17/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6554-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-6555-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Intro: (Poem written by Audrey D. Simmons)

Chapter 1 Governments in Africa before Colonial Intervention

Ancient Egypt

The Ancient Benin Kingdom

The Ancient Zulu Kingdom

Chapter 2 Areas of Post-Colonial Changes in Africa

Lessons from the Ancient Benin Kingdom

Specific post-colonial changes

Religion:

Education:

Political Structures:

Social Transformation:

The Military

Chapter 3 How Democracy fares in Africa

Violent Power Grabs and the Role of Corruption

Organized Military

The Power-Grab-Phenomenon

Hanging on to tradition

The Role of Corruption

Power of the Machete

Africa’s Version of Democracy

The Singapore Example (Lee Kwan Yew)

Chapter 4 Africa: Which Way Forward?

Neocolonialism

Lack of Indigenous Point of Reference in Democracy

Neocolonialism and the Inherent Mechanisms for Failure

The Rawlings Phenomenon

The Liberian Antithesis

The Toxic Mix of Factors

The Way Forward

Theoretical Alternatives

The Monarchy

Traditional and Democratic Models

Constitutional Military Intervention

The Devil’s Alternative

Conclusion

Reflections: (Poem by Audrey D. Simons)

Footnotes:

Bibliography

Annexes

Annex 1 Constructive Military Intervention: The Turkish Example!!

Annex 2 Black people less intelligent? May be, if Nigeria was the prototype!

Dedicated to my daughter Winnie-Osayi

Intro: (Poem written by Audrey D. Simmons)

Eve

The first woman stood dark and proud

In the middle of the world,

Her blue black shine unblemished

She was midnight Black

The kind of Black that only the first woman can possess.

Black was the first and only Beauty,

Before the long walk to the not yet formed continents,

Before the evolutionary adaptions,

Before the accommodations to your environment,

She stood, Blue Black

With her midnight hour shine,

We forget that Black was the first and only beauty

Black gave birth to the world

(Hobby Poet and Writer of Short Stories, Audrey D. Simmons – Professional Sign Language Interpreter – is a London-based British-Jamaican. Her first Poetry Collection I Looked Over My Shoulder and Saw the Sun Rise was published in 2001. Revised e-edition available since September 2016. Her Collection of Short Stories will be released in early 2017)

Preface

The constraint of not being a highly exposed political personality is, often, obvious on occasions like this. Occasions, in which one finds the need to express a political opinion that one considers to be of immense relevance. It is like a little stone dropped in the sea from the sideline of a busy sandy beach. It stirs the water for a split second while the tiny wave spreads over a minimum range. Throwing a huge and weighty stone in the waters from the vantage point of a huge depth, however, is guaranteed to cause quite a stir.

Such is the political benefit of being a highly exposed personality. Public statements of political relevance often cause a stir. They do not disappear unnoticed. Not so, the words of the ordinary man who has no cameras and microphone lurking in the dark. His words are said. They are hardly heard. They are hardly noticed.

Thank goodness, the social media has changed a bit of that in our modern world. Leaders now gauge the public mood with a rough scan of sentiments reflected on the public media. Yet, the words disappear on the long run. Not so, the words eternized in a written work. They outlive the writer. They outlive the contemporary reader.

That is what I had in mind when I set out to eternize my thoughts on the serious problem of finding a workable political system in Black Africa. Not many give this issue a serious thought. After all, it is easy to identify the problem in the mindset of the greedy African, who, often wants to get rich overnight. We hardly remember that the notion of corruption and stealing of public property was unknown to the traditional regency of African empires and kingdoms. The King was divine. The economy was cashless. There was nothing to steal. It all started with the colonial system of government.

We agitate for secessions and plunge ourselves into more untold hardship and believe firmly, in the sanctity of our actions with like-minds driving us on in the toxic mix of nationalist emotions. We hardly take the time to examine the imposition of a foreign system of government on our societies as a possible cause of our existential incompatibility.

We have no institutional think-tanks to guide our governments. Foreign governments dictate to us, what is best for us and we believe beyond redemption that we have no alternative to democracy as a political system. They enslave us with loans, aids and other gratifications that our leaders exploit. Yet, we have icons and informed minds who can organize and unite under an intellectual umbrella to advance ideas and opinions to guide the continent into real independence. They do not tell us, what we can salvage from the past and fuse with the present to reinforce our indigenous status and identity.

I have, therefore, taken a trip back in time to the type of governments we once had in Africa. I have offered a picture of the governments we have today and the problems we have practicing democracy. I have explained why the system of government we practice, encourages regional division and secession agitations and finally provided a vision of what can be done differently

A lot of our potentials are yet to be exploited.

I had all these thoughts in mind and they were so important to let them go undocumented. I know I do not have the requisite public exposure to lend my words the weight of instant public attraction but I nurture the dream that my views will outlive my own existence and that it will, one day, find its way to the minds of those that matter, who will steer the continent in the right direction.

Frisky Larr

CHAPTER

1

Governments in Africa before Colonial Intervention

Midway through my secondary school education in Nigeria, I once had the privilege of being taught English language by a Russian teacher. Nigeria was ruled by a military government back in the days. One day, my English teacher, whose name I have long forgotten, asked us, in one of our English classes, to define democracy. That’s pretty easy everyone seems to have thought. Government of the people, for the people and by the people the class answered almost in unison. Little did we know at the time, that this phrase, which today, is generally accepted as the next best, but imperfect definition of democracy, was authored by former American President Abraham Lincoln. In a two-minute speech at the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, President Lincoln rounded up his brief speech with the hope: that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (¹)

My English teacher went one step further. She asked us if we thought we were practicing democracy in Nigeria. She wanted us to debate in English and improve on our spoken English.

Spontaneously, everyone in the class, with a few exceptions, seems to have agreed that the military government cannot be equated with a democracy. After sampling opinions – with some students making bold to say No, this is not democracy – the Russian lady summed up the debate in the following words: The present government in Nigeria is a government of Nigerians, run by Nigerians and for Nigerians and is, therefore, a Nigerian democracy.

I do not think, in hindsight, that she had much choices of definition!

At that tender teenage, however, we accepted what we were taught and had not yet developed the depth of wisdom and knowledge to probe deeper. Even though the reasoning sounded logical, something still appeared weird about that conclusion to very many of us. We could not quite figure it out. Today, like me, several classmates who remember this day in our English language classes in the third grade, should have known a lot better.

Born into the world of western civilization and education, everyone learns, through the days of his/her life, to sing praises of democracy as the best possible system of government in our contemporary world. I am no exception. Given the stakes though, I am tempted like very many others, to say Rightly so too. Tempted.

Yet, the eyes see troubled spots all over the world, grappling with the challenges of making democracy function. As the self-imposed gatekeepers, albeit not originators of the system, the United States of America, the Community of European nations – for short, the Western world – generally uses the stick and carrot approach to entice and coerce smaller and weaker nations into embracing the system as the only acceptable form of government. Low-interest loans, grants, and other inducements are often, employed as instruments of marketing this system of government that seems to function in the western world without meaningful constraints. Where inducements fail though, brute force is often, employed largely as a pretext to disguise other arguably, inordinate ambitions, and unilateral benefits accruing to the perpetrators.

In the end, the world in its present form of political diversity (with a few exceptions, such as Saudi Arabia and other absolute monarchies) simply does not have the choice to consider any alternative system to democracy in the face of the stick and carrot pressure applied by the western world. The notion that democracy is simply the one and only political system of government that can never be subjected to any debate, has probably, stifled potential efforts in the scientific world, to investigate and explore possible alternative systems against the backdrop of serious challenges in several countries outside the political western hemisphere. Else, it is difficult to explain the absence of intense efforts in this field with the aim of exploring easier alternatives to fit different traditional and cultural models in different societies.

Is there truly no alternative to democracy? The examples of Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Bush-proclaimed Axis of Evil readily come to mind in this context, leaving the general hypothetical understanding that democracy is the only universally indisputable, unassailable and workable system open to serious questions.

Many scholars and learned men of the academic world, largely agree that democracy offers more practical positives than negatives in the imperative appreciation of the system’s imperfection. It gives the governed the feeling of belongingness. It allows the losing minority to hope for another day, in which its cause may still prevail. In other words, the elements of imposition and oppression are less visible under the magnifying glass of scientific scrutiny. Yet, the decision of the majority does not always sail through. It is not always right nor is it always logically tenable as the drive of the United States of America towards the invasion of Iraq in 2003 irrefutably proves. The then President of the United States, George W. Bush, enjoyed approval ratings that stood in excess of sixty percent in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and even soared to 76% a day after the invasion began.(²) Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force in a clear malfunction of the systemic mechanism of checks and balances that ended up perpetrating precisely what it was designed to prevent. The installation of justice, equity and balance of operations was sacrificed. The fear of overwhelming public opinion, as uncovered by sampling, was simply debilitating and intellectually misleading. Today, the rest is history. Yet, this is not an isolated case, in which the purported minority is left helpless and at the mercy of the majority revealed by sampling, watching injustices and oppression play out in a highly revered system.

Without straying into further details, many observers advance the notion that Turkey today, under the overtly religious-leaning leadership of President Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, is, arguably, one good example of such systemic anomalies, in which voters may be easily manipulated in an attempt to displace the will of the people and entrench a self-serving drift towards the controlled imposition of a personal will. Writing for the renowned Turkish daily Sözcü on August 02, 2015 under the title Democracy or Tayyıp, political analyst Bekir Coşkun(³) made clear references to the complex manipulations that followed the inconclusive parliamentary elections of 2015 in Turkey, which robbed the President’s party the absolute majority to amend the constitution for the introduction of a Presidential system of government and concluded that the concept of democracy and President Tayyıp Erdoğan are two opposite polarities that do not match. These manipulations are largely, suspected to have impeded the subsequent formation of a coalition government in the days of negotiations that followed the outcome of the elections. As a consequence of this failure, another parliamentary election was rescheduled barely 6 months after the inconclusive first attempt with the hope that the President’s party will secure the required majority in the next round, thus leaving the sour aftertaste of refusal to accept unfavorable results and continuing to use the instrument of elections until the desired result is achieved. It is needless, highlighting the heightened frustration that descended on the camp of the opposition when the President and his ruling party finally succeeded in this project. Yet, the democratic system as it stands was actually designed and conceived to prevent precisely this sense of marginalization that is defined by the refusal to accept the will of the people for a legislative period. Alas, the President succeeded in rejecting and re-enacting the will of the people by convening and winning follow-up elections with a resounding majority. Questions were then, asked by probing minds, on why the concept of democracy remained so unassailable in the generally informed understanding of politics when the system was so open to such willful manipulations. Are there truly no alternatives to this system that can function much more equitably and judiciously from region to region, from culture to culture? Are there no alternatives at all?

Of course, the world has known different forms of governance from primordial times to the age of rocket science. From Empires to Kingdoms, from Fiefdoms to Sultanates, from the Cast system to Theocracy, systems have varied in different regions of the world. In Africa too.

From the regions around the River Nile through the River Niger and down to River Limpopo, Africans have always had a common denominator in the systems of government that grew with them from the start of time. From Ancient Egypt in the North, through the Ancient Benin Kingdom on the west coast down to the Zulu Kingdom in the South of the black continent, the central player was the paramount king. A supreme leader that dictated the pace and form of political manifestations, as well as religious perceptions and development! It was the absolute monarchy. The concept of god-king meant a reverence for the perceived supreme representative of God on earth, whose pronouncements were unassailable.

In other words, the creation of governance in the black continent did not wait for the coming of the white man and colonial adventurer. Political entities with organized statehood existed in Africa. Of course, with strengths and weaknesses! Functional systems were found in place and intact by exploring adventurers of subsequent imperialist acclaim, who penetrated the scattered trading posts deep into the jungles of Africa in search of markets to revamp their own saturated domestic scene. The ensuing competition and scramble for territories and colonial subjects in Africa between European forces, was one ancillary impact of the coming of foreign groups of explorers into Africa. It finally culminated in the signing of a treaty in 1885, following the Conference of Berlin to regulate the scramble.

Following the close observation of the lifestyle of the Black African and the resultant proclamation of primitivity and savagery as the major character of the Black African culture that the Europeans met, the need to re-educate and re-born the African was conceptualized in the calculations of western missionaries and ambitious colonial governors. One source reports that King Leopold II of Belgium, who had founded the International African Society in 1876, invited the renown Welsh explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, in 1878, to join him in researching and civilizing the (African) continent(⁴)

The basic interaction with the natives of Africa was primarily in the form of trade, which was often, accompanied by missionary activities as one segment in a chain of measures to civilize the continent. It, finally, culminated in the political models of indirect rule and direct rule and the policies of assimilation, etc. that were practiced by the major colonial powers (Britain, France, Portugal etc.). Today, a large part of Africa is left in the shape and form that was designed mainly, by Great Britain and France and a few other colonial powers, in the respective regions of their influence before leaving the individual countries into different forms of pseudo-independence. This will be further explained in detail as this discourse progresses.

The common denominator that the so-called independent countries (left behind by the colonial powers) shared between them, was the ambitious system of government that required the implementation of western values as the prized asset of the process of civilization – DEMOCRACY. It is an open secret that democracy in black Africa has hardly gone beyond