Democracy on Trial in Africa

Abstract

Africans visualize Western democracy as being "on trial" with respect to its ability to extirpate racism in southern Africa and in the United States, its willingness to al low Africans freely to determine their own social and economic goals and means for attaining them, and its capacity for mak ing adequate technical and financial assistance available in com petition with the Communist countries. The West feels that African states are in danger of sacrificing liberty to the pursuit of equality and that the burden of proof is on them to demon strate that the one-party states now prevalent can be "demo cratic," that civil liberties will be restored where they have been abridged in the case of emergencies, and that "African socialism" will not slide over into doctrinaire communism. Af ricans are sometimes accused of "abandoning" democratic pre cepts and practices bequeathed to them under colonialism. No colonial power ever tried to govern democratically. The new nations are involved in "experiments in democracy" for the first time. Some of their special problems may demand special political measures. It is probable that, as literacy levels rise and political conditions become more stable and if, and when, sustained self-generating economic growth takes place, some of the democratic values never known to the Afri can masses as well as some of those known to leaders but sacri ficed to achieve national unity and rapid modernization will emerge.