Is Africa experiencing democratic fatigue?
IT is dangerous to follow the Western prescription that military men are not good for a democracy. Which democracy? Whose democracy? The biggest recommendation this writer puts is that people should never substitute and eliminate their heroes and military men from the political menu, there are dire consequences to that.
This year 17 African countries, nearly a third of the continent’s 55, are going to hold elections, either parliamentary or presidential. Stakes are already high. There are “democratic expectations” many want to count on and fulfil.
Post-colonial Africa is experiencing challenges, yet it has solutions! Since the introduction of the so-called “multiparty democracy” from the last decade of the 20th century, internal political dynamics in African states have shifted immensely in most cases from general order to extreme chaos.
Through multiparty democracy, a system introduced by former colonisers, they sought to balance their political pressures at home and abroad as a reverberation of the victory of their western liberal democracy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ironically, in 34 years, the western liberal democratic system has not been the ideal for some African countries. It has made Africa stagnant at times, and in other areas, there has only been movement without progress.
What it therefore means is, for the greater part of Africa’s existence, the western liberal democratic system will not be an antidote for governance and democratic Africa.
For instance, since 1990, African countries that opened to the version of western democracy have had challenges of more cases of pre-election and post-election violence, divide and rule, societal mistrusts, voter apathy, contested election outcomes and an entrenched polarisation of society along political lines.
Those that have lost elections since then have always used the phrase “crisis of legitimacy” to massage their egos in loss.
Those that have managed to ensure a smooth-transfer of power under these prescribed democratic conditions also deserve praise to some extent, like in Liberia.
However, in other jurisdictions, those that are elected also find it extremely difficult to deliver public goods because the democratic system Africans were introduced to after attaining independence rarely speak to the social milieu of the African political setting.
But, what system did Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya use to provide public goods to Libyans that his country became an African envy? Col Gaddafi was assassinated by the western-sponsored terrorists because they said they were fighting to install democracy in that country.
Since 2011, Libya has been a slave market, unstable and a terrorist hub.
Even so, can Rwanda’s system be replicated elsewhere that nearly a generation after the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, the economy has been transformed and livelihoods improved?
The biggest takeaway this writer wants to articulate is that the western liberal expression of democracy through elections needs to be relooked at. It might not be now, but later.
To Africans, that version of democracy has proved to be unsustainable. It is everywhere to witness and testify.
Over the past two years, some parts of Africa have undergone seismic political transformations that have replaced democratically elected governments with people inspired and driven military governments.
The Sahel region in particular. In a space of three years, there have been a total eight military coups among Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger. Even so, in Gabon former President Ali Bongo was removed from power through a people-supported military putsch despite being declared winner of the August 2023 elections.
Last year in The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau coup plotters were arrested. This calls for new thinking patterns on what governance method should some African countries use unlike using the western democratic liberal expression through the ballot as one-size-fits-all.
Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic have also had their political fortunes spinning, to which western democracy has failed to cure.
These scenarios are pretty evident that something needs to be changed in terms of how some African regions are responding to the failure of the prescribed democratic life.
It is difficult to remove the military men in the political dynamics of western Africa and the Sahel region where France is being disregarded and despised by all leaders because of its neo-colonial overtures.
Because the West knows the best way to respond to their neo-colonial machinations is when a country’s military men are directing policy in governance, security and defence as a measure to counter western infiltration. The military men are always in the scheme of things politically, socially and economically.
George Washington of the US was a military general, even so, Britain’s Winston Churchill as an Admiral in the Royal Navy later became prime minister, that did not substitute his military career not did it take away his military experience in decision making in British democracy.
The political developments in Africa, in response to what democracy entails, need a rethink on whether the people are using the correct prescriptions or democracy in its sense has to be refined to suit particular regions.
When citizens lead popular uprisings that sweep military leaders to power, this can also be an indication on the failures of unrefined democracy.
There is no antidote for military coups. Even the African Union has failed to do so.
This is also not a new social contract when people endorse military assisted transitions, it is a reflection of responding to new realities.
What Africans need to do is reconsider how they want to fashion and shape democracy in an African sense.
The cases in West Africa and the Sahel have shown that the military can also be part of Africa’s democratic governance. Western expressions of democracy are now depreciating in value, belief and fundamentals of humanity.
Besides western liberal democracy, what else can be done? There is also room for Africans to form district, provincial, regional and national governance committees that oversee and administer developmental projects, governance and public affairs on agreed terms of rotation and life span.
It can never be correct that each year Africans go for elections which the West push and want to monitor, the continent is always judged on the standards of those that imposed a system they refined for over 200 years, yet Africa is expected to maintain the same standard in 40 years.
The profligacy and opulence that also comes with the elections are symptoms of commercialising the process at the expense of development. There has to be alternatives to the western democratic way.
Across the continent, what happens towards elections tells a new story on the need to restructure our democracy and democratic systems.
The experiment with the western liberal system has now taken long, and evidently, it is not giving desired outcomes because of a lot of interference by the West.
Picture a scenario where China and India, with combined populations of 2,7 billion people stick to the western lens of viewing democracy and voting, that might be chaotic if these two countries do not reorganise how they conduct elections.
In the hope to discuss the suitable mode of governance or democracy, it would be wise to leave out what is unwanted from what is borrowed from the West and apply what we can.
What is undeniable is that the benefits of western concepts are yet to register good progress because they are not originated and cut from the African cloth.