African Worldview and the Question of Democratic Substance

Abstract

The list of failed or tottering democratic experiments in Africa is unparalleled in any other region of the world. In spite of the so-called second and third waves of democracy which blew over the continent in the 1960s and 1990s, respectively, it is pretty difficult to be optimistic about the prospects of democratic consolidation in Africa. With the possible exceptions of Botswana and South Africa, few African countries have made appreciable progress towards the consolidation of their fragile democracies. On the contrary, many African states have slipped back into authoritarianism through military coups or the constriction of the political space to one that is for all intents and purposes dominated by a single party. The opposition is emasculated as the ruling party mobilizes the state apparatus of violence to silence the vociferous sections of the latter, just as the civil society is rendered comatose with a combination of the stick and carrot. The international community is placated by the facade of competitive multiparty elections that are anything but free and fair. In short, the African continent is today strewn with “democracies” which exist in form but lack substance. These pseudo-democracies bring to mind the phenomenon that Fareed Zakaria describes as “illiberal democracies”. These are polities which do organize multiparty elections periodically but are characterized by the persistent violation of human rights and a brazen disregard for the rule of law.