WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488 Issue 6 (2004)

Kelechi A. Kalu

We must try to find out what it is that causes our cities to be so badly governed and what prevents them from being governed well.
-- Socrates in Book V, Plato: The Republic.

Introduction: The Basic Arguments

The problems of governance and political instability in African states are intractably rooted in the people’s view of their roles within the political system, their relationship to the state and the various contradictions between traditional and modern social, economic and cultural institutions. The partition of the continent into various states without regard to existing cultural, social, religious or national affinities of the various ethnic groups facilitated Europe’s exploitative project in the continent. This stifled pre-existing processes of selection (read: election) of leaders in various African communities and continues to stifle efforts at national development in the larger, contemporary state system. Consequently, rather than solve the problems of ethnic-based conflicts, the imposed state system in Africa continues to impede efforts at national integration in many states, but especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the consolidation of various ethnic groups into state structures similar to European states’ was aimed at improving labor and resource exploitation of the continent. The African states and their various institutional structures therefore enhanced the role of the imperial states in the international system without advancing the concepts of democratic governance and economic development in Africa. Furthermore, the colonial states in Africa were not only authoritarian by nature; they were designed as a hierarchical extension of the imperial states, which consequently entrenched European class structures and perspectives in the colonial African states.

These external and internal institutional structures continue their hegemonic control of politics and economic underdevelopment in various African states. The problem here is not the relevance of European views per se, but the perception of Africa as a new frontier populated by “weak” and exploitable people whose social formations were seen as inconsistent with the Europeans’ and therefore unacceptable. Using their educational system and religion, the colonialists imparted these perspectives to the colonized. Subsequently, post-independence African leaders whose interests are served by these colonialist institutions and therefore have had no need to reform and/or reconstruct them for the good of all, govern on the bases of those colonialist misperceptions. In theory then, the European standard of freedom became that by which African states’ political and economic performances and outcomes were measured following World War II. Decolonization processes across European colonial territories were also affected. These externally-induced processes left post-colonial African leaders searching for a proper approach to government relationships with civil society and the citizens. And, because the post-colonial leaders in some instances lacked foresight and in general were not in control of their nations’ policy destiny, that proper approach for governance is yet to be established. Thus, even in some instances like Ghana under Nkrumah and Angola under Augustino Neto where the search was promising, the alternatives to the colonialist system of governance were immediately aborted by European cold war-induced bifurcation of the international system into democratic/capitalist against socialist/communist alliances.

Consequently, the choice of self-governance within the context of well thought out economic development policies was compromised just like African leaders themselves in the East-West cold war rivalry. With the end of the Cold War, a new process, which for some began in the 1970s was accelerated and characterized by Huntington¹ as the “third wave” of democratic transitions in the early 1990s. Except for Grenada and Panama where transitions were externally imposed in each case by the United States, Huntington sees much of the third wave democratizations as internally driven by both the status quo and the opposition groups using such strategies as elections, negotiations, compromises, consensus and explicit agreements between reformers in the government and the opposition.² Thus, transitions from authoritarian to democratic governance are more likely to succeed when such efforts result from internal dialogues and struggles rather than from externally driven transition processes.

Clearly then, such transitions indicate that the stakeholders in a given state are in agreement that violence is not an option for contested ideas, policies and participation in democratic governance. Such expectations encourage pro-democracy movements across many African states to intensify already existing internal struggles for popular participation in governance. However, these efforts were not rewarded by either the international community or the autocrats in Africa as was more visibly demonstrated in the cosmetic responses from the international community and the silencing of the domestic groups in Nigeria following the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa in 1995. Given Huntington’s conceptualization of the dynamic processes that led to the third wave in much of the third world, except in Africa, the question becomes: what internal and/or external factors in the transitional states were absent in the non-transitional or aborted transitional states such as those in much of Sub-Saharan Africa? Contributors to this special edition of West Africa Review are of the view that to the extent that the African states retain colonially-imposed political institutions and apparatuses without reform (Mbaku), the march to constitutionalism and democratic consolidation will continue to be problematic; that effective democratic transitions in African states need to take seriously and embed traditional rulership and traditional political institutions (Agbese) within the context of ongoing constitutional and democratic transition processes; that the issue of ethnicity (Kalu), which continues to trump other identities in post-colonial African states is not inherently conflictual and therefore can be mitigated by an accountable leadership, transparent constitutional government and effective enforcement of law.

To effectively accomplish the foregoing requires an urgent attention to the role of violence (Soyinka-Airewele) in both the social formation of contemporary African political spaces and its impact on women, children and the psychological wellbeing of the people in a way that strategically reintegrates the previous antagonists into constitutional democratic politics. In this respect, empowering the media (Ogbondah) through constitutional provisions for freedom of the press and of expression is essential for realizing the goals of transparency and accountability in governance. However, members of the legal profession (Ihonvbere) as custodians and interpreters of the intent and spirit of the law must themselves be active, transparent and uncompromised in their public and judicial readings/interpretations of the law and actions of government officials, if democracy and constitutional governance is to thrive in Africa.

In light of the foregoing, (1) to the extent that African governments, scholars and citizens do not take initiatives to ensure that internally driven competing ideas about governance and development lead to public policies rather than externally imposed agendas; (2) to the extent that government and the citizens are unable to reconcile the complementary nature of state and civil society and, (3) to the extent that contested ideologies are not encouraged and welcomed, externally driven liberal democratic transitions in much of Africa will not in the end ensure consolidated democracy, political stability and economic development. Finally, it is inconceivable that any effective effort at institutionalizing democracy in Sub-Saharan African states will succeed without some form of constitutional conventions and national debates on the products of such constitutions before their adoption followed by an intensive effort at civic education that will inculcate and institutionalize the values of citizenship as prima inter pares relative to other identities.³

Notes and References

Citation Format:

Kelechi A. Kalu. “Constitutionalism, Governance and Democracy in Africa,” West Africa Review: Issue 6, 2004.

Copyright © 2005 Africa Resource Center, Inc.