Towards Africana Democracy

326 Pages·2008·1.21 MB·English

by  Public Computing Services

FROM AFRICA OF STATES TO UNITED
AFRICA: TOWARDS AFRICANA DEMOCRACY

By

Pelle Darota Danabo

B.A., Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
M.A., University of Kansas, USA

Submitted to the Department of Philosophy and
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the degree of Doctorate in
Philosophy

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Ann Cudd (Chair)

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Anthony Genova

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Garth Myers

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Richard De George

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Tom Tuozzo
The Dissertation Committee for Pelle Danabo
certifies that this is the approved version of the following
dissertation:

From States of Africa to United Africa: Towards
Africana Democracy

Committee:

__________________________
Ann Cudd (Chair)

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___________________________

___________________________

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I
ABSTRCT
Pelle Darota Danabo
Department of Philosophy, May, 2008
University of Kansas
Since Western Liberal Democracy’s philosophical, cultural, and value
foundations are radically different from that of Africa and based on post-disciplinary
approach and review of the vast literature on theories and philosophies of democracy,
the dissertation proposes and argues for Constitutional communitarianism and
Africana democracy as alternative and complementary path towards democratization
in Africa. When almost all its conditions are lacking in Africa, liberal democracy
cannot easily be transferred and rooted nor should it be enforced as a weapon of
political conditionality unless the call for democratization is a disguised cry for
recolonization. Also, since liberal democracy is Newtonian politics at work with
adversarial and inquisitorial opposition running rampant at its core, the future of
humanity rests no less in transforming and reforming liberal democracy itself as in
democratizing illiberal societies and tyrannical polities

II
DEDICATION

To Ato Awol Mamo, Ato Negash Alemu, Fisseha Haile (PhD, Psychology) Samson
Mebrhatu (PhD, Psychiatry), and W/o Nigist G/Hiwot for they symbolize what is
possibly humane.

III
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank all those who believed in me and supported
my education. Special pride of place goes to those who did everything to educate me
without having the opportunity or the means to do so for themselves: my parents,
siblings, friends, and my elementary school teachers: Ato Wolde, Ato Gaasa, Ato
Bekele, and Ato Worku. I cannot thank enough my friend, brother, and colleague,
Girma Taye Beshah. I am also thankful to Daguush T; Getachew T; Engineer Moges
A; Dr Girmachew A; Ato Betre B; Yeshihareg K; Asnaketch H; Alemayehu K; Desta
S, Yoseph G. I am deeply grateful to the University of Kansas and the Department of
Philosophy for the generous support I received to pursue my graduate studies. I would
like to thank all my professors for their wisdom, consummate teaching, and guidance.
Special place goes to all members of my dissertation committee for their time,
leadership, and support. Professor Ann, I am deeply grateful for your rereading of
my drafts, your great advice, and the spirit of friendship you extended to me
throughout my years of study and the dissertation. It demands Weilian and/or
Wittgensteinian courage to face strangers for what they are, to break the silence
in between, and to comfort them. Thank you. My adored professors - Tom, Genova,
and DeGeorge; there is something “unsayable” and “unshowable” about you and I
thank you very much for the difference you made in my life and as a student of
Philosophy.
Pelle Darota Danabo

IV
Table Content
Abstract P. ii
Dedication p. iii
Acknowledgment p. iv
Introduction p.1
Chapter 1: Reflection on the Philosophy of Democracy: what is it? P. 8
Chapter 2: The Liberal Traditions of Thought and Practice: Reflections on selected
Foundational instances of WLD p. 74
Chapter 3: Reflection on indigenous Africana values p. 99
Chapter 4: PanAfrican Grounding of Africana Democracy p. 124
Chapter 5: Towards Constitutional communitarianism and Africana Democracy:
Constitutive values, principles, and institutions p. 176
Bibliography p. 260
V
Introduction
Africa of today is constitutive of what V.Y. Mudimbe calls an African,
Muslim, and European or what A. Mazrui identifies as the indigenous, the Arabic,
and the Western heritages. From the Eastern to the Western; from the Northern to the
Southern corners, one can observe these confluences and imprints alive and thriving:
the Indigenous, the Christian, the Islamic, and the Judaic; or, the African, the Arabic,
the Semitic, and the European. From the Western African Ocean (the now Atlantic) to
the Eastern African Ocean (the now Indian), Africans have a shared history and
values that unites them more than those that divide them as some try to convince us.
Africa is our common ancestral home, it is our common country. Whether one refers
to the system of communal councils or earned leadership or the Palaver tradition or
the Chieftainancy system or the traditional Shura System, one is dealing with a
culture and tradition where the need and necessity for public deliberations and
consented-consensus has always been its indigenous and constitutive hallmark.
Even more, there are historical facts and brutal truths that unite us as Africans
than anything else: our shared and collective suffering and afflictions in the history of
the modern world. We are the burden bearers of the organized crimes, the injustices,
and the inhumanities of the modern world: We were/are deeply afflicted, wounded,
abused and raped; we were subjugated and dehumanized together no matter what our
localities, our regions, our ethnicities, religions, our resistances, and our gallantry; we
were browbeaten as Africans; sold and shipped away as Africans; colonized and
degraded as Africans; indebted and went through the hellish and unjust shock
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therapies as Africans; infested and infected with all sorts of man made and natural
diseases and disasters as Africans. In short, we were/are the targeted. Thus, our
shared suffering and affliction is no less important than our shared culture and
geography in uniting us as Africans from one corner to the other.
Philosophically, Africans are responsibility/duty-based than rights-based
societies; politically, they work around consented-consensus than majoritarian
decision making procedures. Whatever and how ever expressed, there are aspects of
Africana-ubuntu in allover places in Africa, no matter where our emphasis focuses
on. Africans value life, community, generosity, sharing, spiritual union, mercy,
forgiving, personal as well as communal healing and moral restoration. In Africa, the
restoration and mending of the health of communal ties is no less important than
retribution and balancing of the scales. It is in the light these back grounds that the
project of liberal democracy should be seen ad evaluated against.
Given these backgrounds, there are a number of reasons why one should take
a second thought on the possibility and feasibility of liberal democracy in Africa.
There are questionable assertions/claims about WLD, both in theory and in political
practice: for instance, the entrenched and unresolved tension between the liberal and
the democracy conjuncts in the liberal democracy pair; equating liberal democracy
with democracy in general; infusing understanding of democracy with liberal ideas
and assumptions; conceiving democratization as liberalization; and framing an
argument for democracy in terms of an argument for liberal values such as
unconstrained individual freedoms, rights, liberties, and the free market. Whether this
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relation of identity is correct and universalizable is questionable, to begin with. There
are different conceptions of democracy all of which have useful things to say about
what a democratic polity should be and liberal democracy should be understood as
one among possible models, the viability of each depending on the socioeconomic
and cultural contexts to which it is to be applied. Since cultural/philosophical
considerations should be constitutive part of the democracy project, the cultural
particularity of liberal democracy should not be ignored also. Thus, thoughtless and
arrogant attempts to universalize liberal democracy as the end goal of world history is
both self defeating and imperialistic at its core. That is why the reflection on whether
it is possible to transplant and integrate liberal democracy in Africa becomes an
attractive philosophical investigation in of itself.
In the light of this, here are some reasons/reservations why an uncritical
attempt to universalize liberal democracy may fail to bear fruit with detrimental
consequences for both the imposer and the importer under illiberal socioeconomic,
philosophical, and cultural circumstances.
To state some: WLD is founded on the conception of human nature that is
either (only) expressive of the essence of Western humanity or else extremely
exaggerated, even out rightly wrong. It is founded on a pessimistic, one-dimensional
conception of humans as brutish and selfish beings; it is a rights-based democracy
that gives precedence to individual rights with little or no appreciation of groups’
rights, group cohesion, and societal integration, since it is believed that group rights
violate the equal rights and worth of persons. WLD privileges the atomistic,
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possessive individual over/against the community, whereas humans are individuals
embedded in social relations, values, and norms; it is founded on and evolved through
all kinds of violence and wars, genocides, ethnocide… It is grounded on centuries old
global structural and human violence: slavery, imperial conquests, colonialism,
unmitigated resource wars and holdings. WLD is a child of racism or grew along with
racism both at home and abroad. It is enigmatic as to how and why a project of
Enlightenment meant to enshrine the noble ideas and ideals succeeded in sanctioning
its antithesis on perceived and encountered “others.” WLD is based on distinctions
like public/private, political/personal, and public/non-public reasons. Such
distinctions are deeply rooted in the Enlightenment tradition. Similar in spirit is the
distinction between the public and the nonpublic. As the argument from the public-
private distinction rejects government interference in decisions that are properly
personal, so does the public/nonpublic distinction demand that laws, policies, and
judicial procedures be articulated through discourse that is properly public.
Furthermore, there is an undemocratic and elitist side to WLD, which stands in
contradistinction to the definition of democracy as ‘rule of, by, and for the people’
and which is clearly manifested in the tension between the democracy and the liberal
divide in the liberal democracy union. Given these features and limitations, Liberal
democracy cannot be an option as a democratic future for Africa. Thus, the choice of
democracy and a democratic path should not be mistaken for and equated necessarily
with a liberal democratic course (of course, the importance of the knowledge of the
liberal ways and its constitutional models to other countries is beyond dispute).
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