FRANTZ FANON AS A DEMOCRATIC THEORIST

Abstract

CURRENT DEBATES and reforms around the issue of democratization in Africa will, hopefully, encourage the development of indigenous political theories favouring democratization in the long run. This essay is intended to emphasize that need by stimulating discussions around the ideas of one of the founding fathers of the African liberation movement, Frantz Fanon. Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925 and died in 1961. After studying psychiatry in France, he worked for a brief period in colonial Algeria where he joined the Algerian freedom fighters in their insurrection against French colonialism. A psychiatrist, social philosopher, journalist, diplomat and political activist, Fanon wrote four books1 dealing with national liberation, social reconstruction and self-reconstitution. His eloquent defence of violence by colonized peoples in the struggle for national emancipation attracted a great deal of attention. His defence contains several strands including the psychological strand implying that violence would result in a 'collective catharsis' that would free the oppressed from their inferiority complexes and degredation. The debates that ensued clouded Fanon's reflections on a number of serious issues: democratizing development, promoting national cultures or facilitating the emancipation of women, for example. Even though Fanon did not shed much light on certain detailed aspects of democratic politics electoral mechanisms, for example the corpus of his political writings is both compatible with and supportive of an understanding of democracy as a process in which individuals cooperate as free and equal participants in the demanding task of development and self-rule. Today we confront reordered global relationships. First, the Cold War has encled. Over thirty years ago, Fanon said, 'The Cold War must be ended, for it leads nowhere' .2 The end of the Cold War removes any excuse by national and international forces to compromise principle because of the fear of disturbing East-West loyalties. Second, popular revolts in Africa and elsewhere have shown that military power has become problematic as a tool of foreign policy and internal repression. Third, the nature, scope,