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INSIDE AFRICA
Capitalism, Democracy and Stability in Africa by Prof. Ali Mazrui
Summary of this essay:
This is quite apart from the ambiguous role of US transnational corporations. Here again it is worth distinguishing between normative democracy and institutional democracy. Normative democratic concerns focus on issues like human rights and freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. Institutional democratic concerns include promoting the right to vote, the holding of free elections, the championing of political pluralism, and the presumed link between political liberalism and economic liberalism. Non-governmental American promotion of democracy in Africa is highly normative. It is often targeted at issues like detention without trial, freedom of the Press and such barbarities as the crude execution of Ken Saro Wiwa of Ogoniland in Nigeria in 1995. Increasingly, female circumcision has been denounced as "female genital mutilation" and a violation of human rights. On this issue the United States' government has joined forces since 1996. From then on, running away from the danger of female circumcision has become ground for political asylum, following the precedent set by a Togolese asylum seeker in 1996. Canada has also made running away from female genital surgery grounds for political asylum into the country. Some have seen such a development as the emergence of cultural asylum - to deal with cultural threats to human rights in other societies. The problem of where to draw the line between cultural imperialism and promoting cultural democracy is still persistent. African cultural nationalists protest that Western society, whose pressures on women to be slim create female eating disorders, and whose pressures on women to have artificially inflated breasts through implants create so many blood and skin disorders in women, are not the best qualified to throw the first stone at African conceptions of female legitimacy - even if both forms of sexism are reprehensible. The main ideological exports of the United States government, on the other hand, are first, market economics and second, liberal democracy. From the United States' point of view, the export of market-economics to the rest of the world is self-regarding. It is directly intended to serve theinterests of the United States. (This is to paraphrase John Stuart Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions). The export of liberal democracy is other-regarding. It is intended to serve the interests of the beneficiary state, at least in the first instance. The export of market economics, although clearly self-regarding, has been quite often the more candid and sincere. But the promotion of liberal democracy by the US government has often been selective, manipulative, moralistic and often hypocritical. Because the export of market economics is self-regarding to Americans, it has been pursued with greater vigour and greater consistency than the promotion of liberal democracy. Market ideologies have also been pursued and promoted energetically by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - while at the same time both the main Bretton Woods Institutions have insisted that their statutes did not allow them to promote democratic values. When I served on the World Bank's Council of African Advisors, I repeatedly asked the Bank to devise a calculus of democratic indicators by which an African country would be judged democratically before a loan was granted.
Vice- President Edward Jaycox of the World Bank repeatedly protested that
it could not be done. The United States has played a big role in universalising market ideologies in the 20th Century - but America's record in promoting democracy is mixed at best, and window-dressing at worst. But even if the United States is a vigorous marketeer in Africa and poor democratiser, is that necessarily a bad thing? Is it not conceivable that the greatest preparation for a liberal democratic order in Africa is learning the skills of capitalism? It is certainly true that all liberal democratic countries in the world today are capitalist countries - though not all capitalist countries are liberal democracies. All liberal donkeys are capitalist animals but not all capitalist animals are liberal donkeys. Is the fact that all liberal democracies are capitalist countries an accident of history or a logical necessity? I am prepared to believe that it is a logical necessity. For example, I am prepared to believe that it is not possible to have a pluralistic press independent of the government without advertising from the private sector. So a free press needs the existence of independent, powerful advertising interest in the economy. A free press needs some degree of capitalism - but the capitalism can be as contained as that of Denmark and not as reckless as that of the United States. If then the United States, the World Bank and IMF are laying the foundations of capitalism in Africa, are they also laying the foundations of democracy? In reality capitalism may be a necessary condition for liberal democracy, but it is not a sufficient condition. A number of other things need to develop before economic liberalism (i.e., capitalism) evolves into political pluralism (i.e. liberal democracy). It is therefore vital that the kind of market ideologies which the United States, the World Bank and IMF are imposing upon Africa do not stifle the emergence or growth of those other necessary conditions for liberal democracy in Africa. For example, if external infusion of capitalism would favour foreign capitalists and stifle local entrepreneurship, it would not serve its democratising purpose. There is an American innovation which is missing in Africa, has not been promoted by the United States, and which may be far more relevant for liberal democracy in Africa in the 21st century than many have realised. The missing American agenda is federalism. For the first half-century of postcolonial experience in Africa, the word federalism has been anathema almost everywhere in Africa other than in Nigeria. And in Nigeria federalism has been substantially negated by three decades of military rule since independence. State rights and human rights have been trivialised by military arbitrariness. Clearly federalism too is at best only a necessary condition for apluralistic liberal order and not a sufficient condition. What has been remarkable since independence has been, loosely, Africa's reluctance to seriously consider it as a solution to its tumultuous ethnic upheavals and, secondly, the United States' reluctance to sell federalism as part of the American liberal legacy. Indeed, Africa worked itself up into a condition of acute psychological denial. Loyalty to tribe was regarded as political pathology - in spite of the fact that such loyalties will remain part of Africa for at least another century. The Unesco General History of Africa even banned the use of the word "tribe" in all its massive eight volumes (including Volume VIII which I edited). Ignoring the salience of ethnic loyalties has cost Africa three to four million lives in civil conflict since independence.
On the other hand, some of the countries which have attempted to make
concessions to those loyalties have reduced the risks through the utilisation
of "ethnic arithmetic" as a principle of representation. In the 21st Century, should the United States consciously seek to export its expertise on federalism and the federal experience to countries trying to find ways of reconciling the imperative of unity with the reality of diversity in a democratic order? One country which could have benefited from a federal structure if it had been promoted early enough, and with enough inducements, was Sudan. This is not merely a federation between a northern region and southern region but a multi-state federation, re-defining both northern units and southern units. That may still be the answer, although there are some who would describe such a solution as "too little, too late." A new federal vision which is crying out for experimentation would help solve the problem of the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. It starts from the premise that Rwanda and Burundi are dual societies and not plural societies. Dual societies have a high propensity towards polarisation - as in the case of Greek Cypriots versus Turkish Cypriots, Catholics versus Protestants in Northern Ireland, Tamils versus Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Czechs versus Slovaks in the old Czechoslovakia, and Hutu versus Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi. Dual societies do not have enough political space for alliances and coalitions, and therefore not enough space for compromise and accommodation.
One solution for Rwanda and Burundi is to federate them with Tanzania and
make the Hutu and Tutsi part of a wider plural society. The separate armies for
Rwanda and Burundi, and for the Tutsi and the Hutu, would need to be
dissolved. Is there a precedent for this? The answer is yes. Uganda has Hutu and Tutsi of its own - only they pass under different names. The Ugandan Tutsi are called Hima, of whom President Museveni is one. The Uganda Hutu are called the Iru. On most issues in Uganda politics the Hima and Iru have rallied together under the collective name of Banyankole. In other words, in pluralistic Uganda, the Hima and Iru have had enough of political space to form alliances against the Ugandans. But in dualistic Rwanda and Burundi there has not been enough political space for compromise between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Federation with Tanzania would open up such possibilities. The United States should lead the way with inducements not only to Hutu and Tutsi, but also to Tanzania to make it worth Tanzania's while. Above all the United States should make available its immense experience - however troubled - in the constant give-and- take of the politics of federalism.
*Prof. Mazrui is one of the leading scholars on ethnology and
political sociology. He is an authority on Africa's politics and
collaborated with the BBC to produce the award-winning series, The
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