Democratic Revival in Africa: is it Sustainable?
2017
When African countries gained independence, politics was hailed as the
instrument, par preference, to promote national development. Nkrumah’s wellknown paraphrasing of a biblical text, ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom, and
everything else will be added unto ye.’ sums up the perception prevailing in
the first decades of African independence. In the same vein, John Mukum
Mbaku says: ‘Many Africans looked at independence as an opportunity to rid
themselves of the despotic and exploitative colonial state and establish
governance and economic structures that maximize their values, enhance the
participation of popular forces in national development, and improve the
peaceful coexistence of ethnic and other social groups’ (1999: 299). Many
Africans had seen a bright future for themselves after independence: freedom
from oppression and persecution, a higher standard of living, respect for
human rights, and participation in the decision-making processes from which
they had been kept out during the colonial rule. These hopes and aspirations
vanished into the thin air, as democracy had a short span of life in Africa after
independence, thanks to the self-seeking leaders who inherited power from the
colonial masters. The situation went on deteriorating so much so that a stage
came when the African people started feeling that the state had become
irrelevant to them for all practical purposes. The post-independence rulers of
Africa, both civilian and military, hijacked the state and used its structures and
resources for self-aggrandizement, to fill their private coffers with ill-gotten
money, and to entrench themselves in the seat of power. During the national
liberation struggle, the African leaders had made tall promises and shown to
the African people a rosy picture of the future but, once power was in their
hands, they forgot all their promises and the lofty commitments that they had
made to their people. Instead of having even a glimpse of what they had
expected from their own rulers, what the African people faced was, in the
words of Mbaku, ‘suffocation of civil society, poverty, corruption, political
violence and destructive ethnic conflict, civil wars, famine, unmanageable
external debts, public malfeasance, marginalisation of rural peasants and many
other ills that have significantly impeded the ability of Africans to improve
their living conditions during the last several decades’ (Mbaku 1999: 301).
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