Kwesi Kwaa Prah
Director:The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society
Cape Town
Keynote
Address; Sustainable Development, Governance and Globalization:
An African Forum for Strategic Thinking Towards the Earth Summit
2002 and Beyond Conference. Nairobi, Kenya. 17 - 20 September
2001. Appears in; Sustainable
Development, Governance, Globalisation; African Perspective.
Heinrich Böll Foundation. Nairobi. 2002.
Introduction
The notion of strategic
thinking for states or conglomerates of states foundationally
assumes an understanding of the ingredients of enlightened self-interest.
By implication, it is goal-directed and oriented towards the
achievement of stability, growth, peace and prosperity. A useful
way of looking at strategic thinking is to regard the notion
as the way a given social system organizes the achievement of
its understood and rational set of societal missions. As we
very well know, theory and practice are not always historically
symmetrical. Only too often, great plans flounder at the level
of implementation, or are only partially successful.
The best strategic formulae should have built-in flexibility,
so that revisions and change can be made without undue disturbance
of the developmental trajectory of the state or states concerned.
This point cannot be overstated. Strategic formulae should take
into consideration the capacity to respond and adapt to changing
scenarios, an ability to cope with emerging contingencies, absorb
and contain shocks and surprises, overcome discontinuities and
sudden changes in social reality, stay on strategic course with
great tactical flexibility.
Generally, strategic thinking commences with an identification
of broad guiding principles, a set of priorities, or a hierarchy
of concerns which advice policy and practice of the state. Such
principles tend to be more firmly adhered to than the more short-term,
tactical and flexible approach to everyday policy decisions. The
best strategic approaches should structurally provide scope for
the simultaneous pursuit of alternative scenarios or the implementation
of parallel policy objectives.
Perhaps, in Africa, in our life-time, no other leader has been
as emphatic as Julius Nyerere about the need for self-reliance
in our developmental endeavours. The fact that not much has been
achieved in this respect, that it has hitherto been more voluminous
rhetoric than an idea which has yielded palpable benefits, does
not detract from the fact that it is an ideal which is as true
today for Africa as it has ever been. It is an ideal which needs
to be better and more effectively translated from theory to practice.
In essence, self-reliance means that the mainstay and sustenance
of African development exertions should be primarily constructed
on what we have and what we know, than indiscriminative or free-wheeling
borrowing from external sources which are often only putatively
well-meaning or eleemosynary. Fortunately, the validity of this
ideal has been extensively vindicated by the experience of a half-century
of failure, in which Africans in search of the Promethean fire
of development have been lost in the woods, and have been inordinately
inclined to resort to unrestrained mimicry of western approaches,
paradigms, values and unambiguous begging for ostensibly altruistic
aid. This latter has in reality translated into a grovelling dependence
on monetary crumbs and paltry largess offered in a carrot and
stick fashion of shifting conditionalities by the powers which
control the Bretton Woods institutions.
When following the
1st World War, after the Peace of Versailles, Keynes in his
Economic Consequences of the Peace warned the allied powers
of the possible effects of the terms of the peace on the vanquished,
many thought him intellectually extravagant. His views visit
us again trenchantly, with respect to the way in which Africa
has been kept for so long on her knees. Keynes wrote that; “
... Men will not always die quietly. For starvation, which brings
to some lethargy and a helpless despair, drives other temperaments
to the nervous instability of hysteria and to a mad despair.
And these in their distress may overturn the remnants of organization,
and submerge civilization itself in their attempts to satisfy
desperately the overwhelming needs of the individual. This is
the danger against which all our resources and courage and idealism
must now co-operate”.(1) I am no prophet of doom, but the
sensible should know that when Africa, like the legendary Samson,
begins to bring down the structures in which she is economically
and socially imprisoned, the effects may not make for good order
for all. The initial portents of disorder and generalized war
are all around us on this continent. The writing is on the wall,
for those who can read. Years ago, at the beginning of the independence
era, Richard Wright in his Black Power wrote that, “ ....
Western man,..... has got it into his head that his handling
of coloured peoples is just and above all criticism. Only his
way of life is perfect. Only he has the God-given right to determine
and guide the evolution of mankind as he thinks fit. He is convinced
that his mere presence on this earth is a great blessing for
those less fortunate than himself. He is not willing to make
any real concessions in the name of justice and peace and freedom”.
The recent behaviour of the United States and her close allies
at the Durban United Nations sponsored World Conference on Racism,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is on this score revealing.
The US and her close allies refused to attend the conference
at the right level, against the judgement of over 90 percent
the human community because they objected to the inclusion for
discussion, the equation of Zionism with racism, and also
objected to the suggestion that there is need for reparations
for slavery and colonialism. They came in belatedly at a lower
governmental level only to pull out again when they could not
have their way. The US government has displayed, at the beginning
of the 21st century, a type of arrogant self-righteousness for
which they may be judged harshly by history. The acknowledgment
of the evil of slavery is, sooner or later, bound to come, if
only because humanity in the future cannot go forward together
without it.
The African Conundrum
I have recently said
elsewhere that, In this day and age, at the beginning of the
21st century AD, which some of us call “the African century”,
or even more grandly the commencement of the 3rd millennium;
it is often, considered to be in bad taste, or worse still,
intellectually suspect, to suggest that colonialism and neo-colonialism
as heritage have been the derivative inhibiting factors affecting
recent efforts of Africans to move forward in social advancement
and development. The thesis is that decades after the end of
the colonial era, and with Africans supposedly in control of
their own affairs, it is too easy to put the blame for
African failure on outsiders. Certainly, as Africans, we should
take responsibility for our own failings; bad, inept, corrupt,
inane, dictatorial and undemocratic practices have been the
hallmark of life in almost all African post-colonial states.
But everything that is happening in Africa is not under the
control of Africans. We do not control the prices of the commodities
we sell on the global markets, we do not have any real say in
the setting of the prices at which we buy from the developed
world. Despite the endless propaganda trumpeted from the west
about free markets, the reality for us is that most markets
for the things, largely agricultural, which we can produce cheaply
and easily are closed to us. The European Union is the supreme
case in point. What we face are quotas, tariffs and cartels.
For Africa, free trade remains a pie in the sky. The minerals
we produce in abundance are controlled by western capital from
source of production of the raw materials, their sale, and destination
of sale, with no value-added at source. Our economies are
perpetually under siege through pernicious and unequal trade
practices managed by the West and the related Bretton Woods
institutions. These latter institutions have become de facto
parallel governments in many African states. With stagnating,
shrinking economies and diminishing resources it is not difficult
to see (without condoning this) why the elites in Africa become
so prone to corruption, pilferage and looting of the state.
What I am saying is that, a concert of internal and external
forces are responsible for the current societal malaise in Africa.
But the deep structure of our malaise is largely entangled with
the general impact of the colonial experience. While the west
introduced modern techniques into pre-colonial and pre-industrial
Africa, putting Africa on the road to modernity, it also distorted
the autonomous nature of the processes of African development.(2)
Any strategic conceptualization of Africa’s future trajectory
would need to confront these realities as points of departure.
But when that has been said, it is important to point out that
the albatross of this heritage, around our necks, is hardly a
justifiable reason to throw our hands up and behave as if we are
therefore incapable of finding solutions to our problems. We cannot
go on, in perpetuity, off-loading the lion-share of blame on our
erstwhile masters. By the same token we cannot expect our salvation
to come from the same sources which for over five centuries steadily
benefited from and exploited our resources and our humanity, in
more ways than one. Our relationship with the west does not literally
date from yesterday. It is over a half-millennium old, and there
is little reason to think that the fundamental character of this
relationship has suddenly, in our lifetime changed. If this is
the case, some of us would like to understand how and why.
The ideologues of “Afro-pessimism”, yesterday and today,
frequently place corruption, graft and mismanagement at the top
of the list of reasons why Africa is not making headway in the
development endeavour. Too often we hear the charge made that,
we fritter all the Aid money extended to us. Some of this is only
too true. But we also know that in the post-colonial era there
has been more capital outflow from Africa to the West, than the
other way round. We know that in the international economic order
in which we find ourselves, we spend more on debt repayments than
we have or get for development purposes. We are in short, literally,
at the mercy of our erstwhile masters, in other words, we are
hardly our own masters. The question is, how can Africans change
this lot? How can we become our own masters in our own backyards?
What sort of strategic thinking will ensure this?
Towards Modernity
There is a rich but
disenchanting history to African post-colonial attempts at development. A
good point to start an analysis of this history would be the
late 1950's. These attempts went hand in hand with theoretical
paradigms rooted in both sociological and philosophical contexts
of Africa and the Western world. With the hindsight of
this history, it is possible to say without fear of controversy,
that at both the theoretical and practical levels not much success
has been achieved. In as far as the search for workable
development paradigms are concerned, the experience of the last
fifty years reveals the record of a number of key models and
conceptual arguments. These theoretical approaches to Third
World development have been dominated and orchestrated by western
scholarship. In that sense, most of these ideas have reflected
western concerns about African society viewed from the vantage
point of economic and social assumptions current in industrial
capitalist society. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and
its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, alternative paradigmatic
varieties for Third World development were also offered. The
most important one of these was the theory of the “non-capitalist
road to socialism”, which was, in fact, a flat-footed justification
for state capitalism. These in their turn, assumed the correctness
of the Soviet economic and social model, and offered paradigms
which did not run counter to the global political and economic
interests of the Soviet system. While the Eastern European scholars
maintained a more or less uniform approach for the period under
discussion, with slightly different emphasis as the period unfolded,
western-dominated scholarship suggested more dramatic paradigmatic
shifts, and moved away from an initial American-dominated scholastic
enterprise to a more diffuse western inspiration.
Western post-2nd World War development theory can be historically
identified and periodized as a three-phased phenomenology. At
the receiving end of the invention and moulding of Africa, we
have come through the hegemony of the Modernization theorists
of the 1950s and 60s, the Dependencia and Neo-marxian paradigms
of the 60s and early 70s to IMF Structural Adjustment and Neo-liberal
packages of the late 70s and 80s.
During the first period, Modernization theories predominated.
In their various forms and formulations, they shared theoretically
and philosophically one central feature i.e. structural-functionalism.
This latter idea saw societies as harmonized and integrated systems,
in which parts, as either social or cultural traits enjoyed specific
functionality in a more or less equilibrated whole, which was
in turn, more than a simple sum total of the parts. With its emphasis
on structural equilibrium and harmony/integration, it underplayed
the factor of change and ultimately presented an ahistorical construction
of society in which the concerns of 'the here and now' were more
important than 'where we are coming from' or 'where we are going
to'. Conflict as a notion was minimized in this model, and the
social system was in terms of conflict largely seen as a tension-containing
and tension-managing mechanism. The functionalist paradigm in
its early and various forms, included older social scientists
as diverse as S.F. Nadel, Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski,
Meyer Fortes, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. For these, social transformation
in non-western societies involved 'acculturation', 'detribalization'
and 'social change'. Herskovits suggested that,
The word acculturation,
which best designates studies of this sort, has a respectable
history, and by 1928 it had attained such ethnological currency
that Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defined it as “the
approximation of one human race or tribe to another in culture
or arts by contact”. This was revised in the most
recent edition (1934) to read “the approximation of one
social group of people to another in culture or arts by contact;
the transfer of cultural elements from one social group of people
to another” and, in addition to the adjective accultural
listed earlier, the verb forms acculturate and acculturize
were added - “to cause or induce a people to adopt the
culture of another”. In 1936 the New Standard Dictionary
defined the term as “the imparting of culture by one people
to another”. The word is still peculiarly American,
however international the interest in the study of changing
cultures may be; though it has been used by a few German students,
the British have consistently preferred to employ the compound
term “culture-contact”. This is recognized by
the editors of the New English Dictionary who, in their supplement
of 1933, append the designation “U. S.” to their
definition - “the adoption and assimilation of an alien
culture”.(3)
It is only in more recent times that many observers have come
to understand that, the so-called “acculturation” process
has invariably for the colonized implied ethnocide, that is, the
direct or indirect cultural effacement of the colonized and their
assimilation into the culture of the colonizers. The warning of
Simone Weil has too often been lost on western minds. Writing
during the closing stages of the Second World War as a member
of the French Headquarters under General de Gaulle in London,
she wrote that:
For several centuries
now, men of the white race have everywhere destroyed the past,
stupidly, blindly, both at home and abroad. If in certain
respects there has been, nevertheless, real progress during
this period, it is not because of this frenzy, but in spite
of it, under the impulse of what little of the past remained
alive. The past once destroyed never returns. The destruction
of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. Today
the preservation of what little of it remains ought to become
almost an obsession. We must put an end to the terrible
uprootedness which European colonial methods always produce,
even under their least cruel aspects.(4)
For the first two
decades of African independence, the modernization theorists
dominated the scene. The leading lights amongst them were predominantly
American and their numbers reflected emergent US interest in
Africa. Indeed, I have made the point that, what became African
Studies (USA) as we know it since the mid-fifties arose out
of Cold War considerations during the period of African independence.
This was when David Apter, Immanuel Wallerstein, J.S. Coleman,
Rosberg, Gwendoline Carter and others first achieved prominence.(5) On
the basis of their historical assumptions, writing during the
period, Claude Welch had this to say;
Analysts of development
frequently dichotomize between traditional, agrarian societies
and modern, industrial societies. The distinctions extend
to all aspects of daily life. In traditional societies,
a man’s position is largely determined by his birth; social
relations are strongly influenced by kinship, caste, clan, or
ethnic considerations. In modern societies, more stress
is laid upon a man’s achievement and his potential than
upon his ethnic background; social relations depend to a greater
degree upon universalistic norms (applicable to all individuals)
than upon ascriptive norms (applicable to a single person on
the basis of his family background). Social mobility in
modern societies tends to be relatively high, but far more limited
in traditional societies. Occupational differentiation,
while relatively simple and stable in traditional societies,
becomes far more marked in modern societies, with the specialization
of labour and the development of complex, bureaucratized organizations. Modern
societies are based upon the prevalence of associations (interest
groups, trade unions, and the like) that are functionally specific
and not dependent upon ascription; traditional societies lack
such associations, since custom and social rand dictate a person’s
position in most interactions. In the social sphere, accordingly,
modernization involves shifts from ascription to achievement,
from ethnic group to association, from psychic and physical
immobility to empathy and social mobility. Diverse populations
are integrated; the “fatherlands” of the various social
groups coalesce, through various means, into a “nation”.(6)
How such reified binary thinking could survive for so long is
anybody’s guess. One thing we can however say is that despite
the popularly acclaimed abandonment of the intellectual pomp and
circumstance of Victorian social evolutionism, and its replacement
with “cultural relativism” (the idea that cultures and
societies are not better or worse, rather they are different)
during the second decade of the 20th century, the vestiges and
residues of assumed western superiority lingered on in the modernization
theories of the mid-20th century. If the Victorian western thinkers
saw the rest of humanity as being in social evolutionary rungs
below them, climbing in the same one-track direction they had
covered, the modernization theorists implicitly suggested that
modernity was as the westerners did. “Do as I do, and you
will modernize”. W. W. Rostow with his well-known stages
of economic growth was the archetype of this thinking, while S.
N. Eisenstadt, David Apter, J. S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg
and their intellectual progeny popularized these theories with
reference to Africa. Modernization theorists reduced the process
of modernization ultimately to attitudinal considerations which
implicitly, mimicry and copy-cat approaches would ensure.
If as I suggest the road to modernity is not simply an exercise
in attitudinal changes, I am not arguing that the quest for modernity
does not include attitudinal changes. My contention is that
the requisite or attendant attitudinal changes result from socio-structural
revisions which in turn promote or prompt attitudinal changes. In
other words, attitudinal changes which must accompany transformations
towards modernity are more consequences of socio-structural transformations
than the causes of modernity.
Many of us in reaction to modernization theories drifted comfortably
to Marxism and related neo-Marxian paradigms like the Dependencia
and Centre-Periphery theories of the late-60’s and early-70's. Like
a religious confession, Marxism provided ready answers and
for some it was also a sentimental counterpoint to the suffocating
western political culture on which we had for so long been fed. This
sentimentalism led some into the embrace of either Soviet, Albanian
or Chinese state-sponsored Marxism. The embrace of such state-sponsored
orthodoxy and hack Marxism was not only intellectually deadening
and uninspired, it was also in part understandable as the postures
of people who could not intellectually stand on their own feet. Often
we heard the legitimate warning that Marxism should be understood
in the context of the concrete conditions of African society,
but for many this went into one ear and promptly left through
the other without further reflection of the meaning of this injunction.
The scientific merits of Marxism were lost in the recitation of
catechism, chapter and verse. Too many of us failed to put Marxism
to creative and independent intellectual use. Our predecessors
like George Padmore and Richard Wright had fled the terrain of
state-sponsored Marxism but had not been able to cross over to
the independent turf of the Amilcar Cabrals, Joseph Schumpeters
and Gramscis of this world. Wright and Padmore explained in passionate
texts the grounds of their divorce from the credo to which they
were formerly so loyally wedded. For Wright it was a god that
failed, while Padmore saw salvation more in Pan-Africanism, a
god crafted in the image of the African. But if the disillusioned
marxists of the previous generation retreated with guns blazing,
too many of our generation simply abandoned ship with no explanations.
As soon as the edifice of the Soviet Empire crumbled many fair-weather
friends surreptitiously turned-coat.
Two decades ago new concepts and buzzwords were added to the
older ideas of African development and modernization. Included
in these new concepts was the idea of “sustainable development”. It
was largely launched by Northern Europeans, and particularly favoured
by Scandinavian development agencies. As an idea, it made
a great deal of sense to many people, especially in a world then
increasingly concerned about the limitedness of natural resources,
the fragility of the environment, and concerns about how to ensure
that development reaches the grassroots of society and preferably
emerges as a bottom-up process. In 1987, the World Commission
on Environment and Development defined sustainable development
as “development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs”. The first Earth Summit, called the United National
Conference on Environment and Development (Unced), was held in
Rio De Janeiro in 1992. It paved the way for the concept
of sustainable development as a workable aim for everyone around
the world. It’s the source of the phrase ‘Think
global, act local’. Rio’s major achievement was
Agenda 21, a thorough, broad-ranging programmed of actions demanding
ways of reaching global sustainable development. And Again
here hopes have hardly matched with unfolding realities. The
ideas in themselves remain laudable, but the methods for engaging
ideas to social practice of an efficacious kind have remained
overwhelmingly elusive. In a world where, poor countries steadily
experience deteriorating terms of trade in relation to the rich,
where despite the endless verbiage expended in favour of free
trade Africa countries find themselves shut off from markets where
their agricultural produce would provide needed revenue, sustainable
development as an ideal becomes a latter-day myth of Sisyphus.
Sustainable development implies manageability of the development
process. It emphasizes the fact that, at heart, development
must be driven by a sufficiently autonomous internal dynamic. It
is therefore not applicable to situations in which development
is simply understood as growing GDP and GNP figures driven by
increased mineral-wealth extraction. Classic cases of this
in Africa would be Botswana and Gabon. In the case of Botswana
extraordinary mineral-wealth in diamonds has created a semblance
of affluence and social prosperity which is not grounded in the
technological culture of the people. Today, Botswana is roughly
estimated to be worth in excess of 7 billion US Dollars held as
United States government bonds. For a country with a total
population of 1.3 million people, in Africa this represents enormous
wealth. But evidence suggest that the prosperity facilitates
a consumerist lifestyle with little technological infrastructure
which is learnt and reproduced in the culture of mass society. The
case of Gabon is also illustrative, with tremendous oil-wealth,
for decades a superficial veneer of prosperity has shrouded the
society. Underneath this epiphenomenon, poverty, illiteracy
and disease continue to trap the majority of the population in
backward life circumstances in the rural areas. The logic
of sustainable development imposes the requirement that it has
to be self-reliant. Simply restated, sustainable development
cannot be premised on resources from outside, which for a variety
of reasons cannot be confidently relied upon.
The idea of sustainable development requires that in Africa we
treat the environment and the resources we have with greater care
and less extravagant usage than has hitherto been the case. Some
of the extravagance in usage is not due to our immediate needs,
but arise more out of the need to have earnings for primary products
from the international market. The mistakes of the present
include in some parts of the continent wanton environmental degradation,
excessive deforestation in places like Guinea, Liberia, Ivory
Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon, The Congo and Angola. In the Sahel, desertification
is encroaching southwards at a rapid pace. Fossil fuels are
being extracted on an ever-expanding scale, although chemical
emissions are nowhere near the levels we see in the developed
world. From the Sene-Gambia to Namibia the fishing grounds
of Africa have been heavily depleted of stock by trawlers from
Europe and the Far East. Only South Africa is able to hold
this process in check. The coast of East Africa is equally
denuded of fish. Africa’s heritage of diverse and unique
wildlife has suffered greatly as a result of the wars, poaching
and mismanagement. All this is weakening the environmental capacity
of Africa to sustain development. Some of this damage may
soon be irreparable and could in the long run upset the ecological
balance on the continent. There is need for greater environmental
management; the reduction of expenditure of irreplaceable resources;
and the replacement of replaceable resources. But all of
this requires good, transparent and accountable governance. Governance
which enjoys the confidence of the governed. Governance which
carries with it probity and openness.
Famine, hunger, war
and disease in Africa has been aggravated by the emergence of
a catastrophic HIV/AIDS pandemic. This latter is threatening
the very fabric of African society. These realities are further
interrogating our ability to successfully confront the challenges
of sustainable development in Africa. This is all happening
in a global context in which increasingly the economic, political,
social and cultural affairs of societies are generally no longer
under the control of single countries. The global village
has become a reality to reckon with, in both its positive and
negative implications. African countries need to develop
new perspectives and new paradigms which are more realistic,
and which draw more primarily on autonomous cultural, social
and economic inspirations. I am signalling here the importance
of issues attendant on the challenges of the present. A
relocation of priorities and visions needs to be constructed
which will strengthen democratic governance and emancipatory
ideals whilst providing a more achievable economic scenario
for contemporary Africa. I would also like to point out
that political Pan-Africanism is the viable formula for creating
a plausible framework for African political and economic advancement. In
Claude Ake’s posthumous publication, The Feasibility of
Democracy in Africa (2000) he makes the useful point that democracy’s
relationship to development in Africa should be more instrumental
in value than consummatory.(7)
I have elsewhere drawn attention to the fact that :
The civil wars in
post-colonial Africa have been testing the political assumptions
and foundations of the post-colonial state. The Nigerian
civil war, the Ethiopian civil war and the Eritrean independence
struggle, the Sudanese, Liberian, Senegalese, Sierra Leonean,
Somali, Angolan and Mozambican civil wars have all raised the
problems of regionalist and ethnic factors in the structural
arrangements of post-colonial state. How are has a unifying
state, copied from the European nation-state model, permitted
the existence of localist sentiments in democratic organization? This
structural shortcoming of the post-colonial state has been largely
accountable for the tensions and conflicts we have seen and
continue to see. Phenomena like the Mati Miho movement
in Ghana, Kabaka Yekka in Uganda, Inkatha in South Africa, Oduduwa/Yoruba
state designs and the Ewe unity movement all demonstrate the
structural inadequacies of the post-colonial state. Unless
these historical and cultural counterpoints to the structure
of the post-colonial state are opened up to allow for the accommodation
of democratic institutions which respect cultural and ethnic
diversity, the road to peace in Africa is likely to be fraught
with internecine conflict. This can be achieved under
wider pan-Africanist structures which, while recognising the
realities of the heritage of the post-colonial state, endeavour
to create cross-border institutions of cultural, economic and
social relevance, in such a way that they enhance democratic
expression, the cultivation of civil and collective rights of
cultural groupings., and wider African markets and production
units, without pandering to territorial balkanisation or Bantustan
solutions. The celebration of diversity under a common
African unitary institution appears to be the realistic approach
to ethnic, regionalist and localist conflicts in Africa. Herein
also lies the route to an African renaissance, the institutional
development of labour and capital across borders.(8)
Democracy, Globalization, Myth and Reality
In our times no political
credo has achieved as much prominence as the idea of democracy. Its
pre-eminence is so overwhelming that no government can afford
to be regarded as standing outside its frame of reference. It
has become a political idol in whose shadow everybody swears
allegiance. From the most open and humane democratic societies
to the most cruel and authoritarian systems, the political leadership
swear by the democratic ideal.
We need to be reminded that as recently as the 1930's and early-40's,
in the heartland of Europe leaders like Mussolini and Hitler could
openly declare their rejection of democracy. Since the Second
World War such rejection of democracy has been practically unheard
of. We need also to bear in mind that democracy is not a
rigid formula cast in stone, translatable to all societies in
exactly the same way. Democracy in the western world, in
Greece, where it is supposed to have originated in classical times,
was a system which tolerated free men and slaves in the same social
political order. In the United States until the late-60's
in some parts of the country people of African descent were openly
excluded from the franchise. I very well recall the civil
rights marches in Northern Ireland where in the 60's British subjects
still protested the inequity of the political dispensation for
Loyalists in contrast to Republicans. Can we forget that
in most parts of the western world the extension of the franchise
to women is less than a hundred years old.
In Africa universal adult franchise has come as part of the package
of independence. Indeed, it is this particular institution
i.e. the universal adult franchise which defines the structural
political basis for the independence transformation. To the
common folk it was enshrined in the slogan “one man, one
vote”. The point is that, democracy must be understood
in specific historical and sociological contexts. What is
democratic today may tomorrow appear undemocratic, or inadequately
democratic. What may appear to be democratic in one country
may not be sufficiently democratic in another. In a sense,
democracy is historically incremental and each generation of humanity
deepens and expands the frontiers of its institutional relevance. Too
often, in Africa the democratic ideal has been dogmatically tied
to western paradigms. The specificities of African history
and culture have tended to be missed in our attempts to design
and formulate relevant democratic institutions and practice.
In recent years, an important fallacy we have had to camp with
is the equation of democracy with neo-liberal approaches to economy
and trade. Its cutting edge has been the idea of privatization
and free trade. In practice privatization has tended to represent
the sale of what can be regarded as “family silver”
to international or transnational capital. The effect of
such policies has been to denationalise the economies of poor
countries to colonial type scenarios. Free trade has meant
for us the opening up of our domestic markets to the products
of the industrialized world and the stifling of whatever nascent
industries there may be in our countries. At the same time,
tariff barriers and closures prevent the markets of industrialized
countries from being accessible to the produce of poor countries. In
other words free trade and privatization have become in practice
coded language for the maintenance of economic dominance over
poor countries. The justification of all this is given with
the excuse of globalization. We are told that globalization
is inevitable and so we must all learn to make the best of it,
sink or swim.
Globalization in fact is not as new as many would want to argue. In
our younger years we described it as imperialism. The true
story of globalization is the story of the expansion of the west. As
a process, it is centuries old and has gone through successive
stages of early to late mercantilism, industrial capitalism, monopoly
capitalism and contemporary trans-national finance capitalism.
Each stage has further integrated the economy of the west and
the rest of us. The technological revolution which we have
seen over the past century has practically shrunk the world to
the communications proportions of a village where 150 years ago
it took six months to do a journey, today the same journey takes
less than half a day. The world is increasingly being unified
in terms of its social, economic and cultural lives but we need
to remember that it is a world in which some are much more equal
than others. Globalization has not eradicated or even ameliorated
the conditions of backwardness, poverty and disease in which the
overwhelming proportion of humanity especially in Africa have
to live with. The apologists of globalization suggest that
it has something for us all. I beg to differ. What globalization
has for us is incorporation in various frames of inferiority into
a world dominated by the metropolitan interests of high capital.
Globalization is inhibiting the celebration of local cultures
and histories. When we are told that latter day laissez faire
principles of the free market are the answers to our conundrum,
in practice, at each step, we discover that the free market is
a free market for those who control it, and the freedom of the
market is given only by those who are the masters of the market. In
a way it all becomes semantic exercises in which the meanings
of the paraphernalia of neo-liberal economic language is more
generous than what is experienced on the ground.
There is a new word doing the rounds in the debate around globalization. This
is globalphobia. This newly crafted term is meant to describe
the outlook of those of us who reject the comfortable wisdom of
the world’s rich and mighty, that globalization has something
for the wretched of the earth. We cannot and do not simply fear
globalization. That is hardly enough. Fear, consternation or theoretical
rejection are inadequate reactions to the reality of globalization.
We cannot wish away globalization, threatening as it is. But if
we must live with it, somehow we must make it work for us, or
perhaps more modestly, make it less threatening. We should not
allow the process to simply bury us like gullible and unwitting
victims in its bowel.
Concluding Remarks
What do we do under
these circumstances? For a start, Africans need to realize
that not one single country in the entire post-colonial experience
of a half century has been able to make a sustained economic
development trajectory. Stagnation and retrogression has
been our lot. Implicit in this is the lesson that we need
to work together, and the earlier the better. Pan-Africanist
approaches to society and the future of Africans, provide the
only meaningful basis for sustainable development in Africa.
If we seriously organize and work together as a historical,
cultural and economic unit we will be better able to stand our
ground in protecting and developing our interests. Such a formation
should not be intellectually constructed in opposition or hostility
to others, but rather in favour of our enlightened self-interest. Being
pro-African does not, or should not, make us anti-others. The
principle of unity needs to be consequently translated with
regards to the flow of capital, capital accumulation and labour
in and between African countries. A Kenyan businessman should
be able to link up with a South African, Zimbabwean, Congolese,
Motswana or Nigerian to create really big and competitive capital.
Closely allied to this is the reasoning that sustainableAfrican
development should be premised on African cultural and linguistic
characteristics. Development is not effected by a purely technicist
set of operations. Sustainable development takes place in a socio-cultural
context within which technical inputs are systematically accessed.
Language and culture are the matrices and vehicular forms in which
development endeavours are meaningfully undertaken. If development
in Africa is to be achieved, then this has to be inaugurated in
the languages of mass society. All development efforts would need
to be constructed in the cultural and linguistic usages of the
masses. This does not only guarantee a democratic approach to
development, but also ensures that development efforts are integrated
into the cultures and languages of Africans. Modern knowledge
in this way builds on the indigenous knowledge of Africans and
assures that, the aptitude and creativity of Africans are enlisted
for African development.
Are we supposed to
wait until the day all Africans speak English, French and Portuguese
in order for development to become the cultural property of
mass society? Of course not. In any case even if this was possible,
as I have frequently argued, the day this happens all Africans
will cease to be Africans and become English, French or Portuguese.
I do not think this is either desirable or remotely realistic.
My parting shot to you is that, no sustainable development in
Africa can be achieved without the uncompromised use of African
languages. Indeed, the key to African development is the use
of African languages.(9)
Notes
1. See, John Maynard Keynes.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace. General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. New York. 1920.
P.212.
2. See, K. K. Prah. Culture, the Missing Link in Development
Planning in Africa. Paper Presented at the Roundtable Discussion
on; Mainstreaming Human Security and Conflict Issues in Long-term
Development Planning in Africa: A New Development Paradigm? Accra,
9th-10th July 2001. Appearing in conference proceedings edited
by K. Karikari. Media. Foundation for West Africa.
3. Melville J. Herskovits. Acculturation. The
Study of Culture Contact. (First published in 1938.) Peter
Smith. Gloucester-Mass. 1958. Pp. 2-3.
4. Simone Weil. The Need for Roots. Prelude to
a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind. Routledge &
Kegan Paul. London. 1952. P. 49.
5. See, K. K. Prah. African Scholars and Africanist Scholarship.
Paper Presented to the University of Zululand and at the Anthro/Soc.
Dept Seminar. Published in CODESRIA Bulletin. November 1998
6. Claude E. Welch Jr. The Challenge of Change: Japan
and Africa. In Herbert J. Spiro (ed). Patterns of African
Development. Five Comparisons. Prentice-Hall. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J. 1967. Pp 64-65.
7. Claude Ake. The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa
(2000). CODESRIA Book Series. Pp 75 -80.
8. K.K. Prah. African Renaissance or Warlordism? In,
African Renaissance. Malegapuru William Makgoba (ed). Mafube,
Cape Town. 1999. P. 53.
9. In a recent write-up by Julienne du Toit on the
scheduled Earth Summit 2002 (Johannesburg Earth Summit), she informs
us that : “Organisers are expecting between 40 000 and 65
000 delegates and observers to descend on Johannesburg from 2-11
September 2002. These will include more than 100 heads of
state, representatives from close to 200 countries, all types
of citizens’ groups from business and industry, scientists,
indigenous people, trade unions and several thousand journalists.
..... The short, dramatic answer is : how to ensure quality
of life for all people and not destroy Earth at the same time. The
delegates will look at how far we’ve come since the Earth
Summit ten years ago in making development sustainable (not very
far, one suspects). They will also be looking at broad issues
- questioning the very way we live, produce, consume, do business,
reach political decisions, an d interact with each other and our
planet. ..... Literally, we will be making decisions that
may make life less comfortable for ourselves, so that generations
unborn have a viable future. Other issues include peace,
stability, security and governance, respect for democracy, human
rights and equitable access to natural resources. The gathering
will also have to consider fully the impact of revolutions in
technology, biology, global trade and communications that have
changed most of the world since 1992....” Julienne du
Toit. Wild Things. In, Sawubona Magazine (South Africa). September
2001. P. 24.
