From Africa of States to United Africa: Towards Africana Democracy
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by KU ScholarWorks 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 __________________________ Ann Cudd (Chair) ___________________________ Anthony Genova ___________________________ Garth Myers ___________________________ Richard De George ___________________________ 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) ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ 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 1 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 2 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, 3 possessive individual over/against the community, whereas