Diversity, Social Justice, and Inclusive Excellence: Transdisciplinary and Global Perspectives

20: African Relational Democracy: Reframing Diversity, Economic Development, and Society-Centered Governance for the Twenty-First Century

CHAPTER TWENTY African Relational Democracy Reframing Diversity, Economic Development, and Society-Centered Governance for the Twenty-First Century* SETH N. ASUMAH Introduction Major sociopolitical changes have taken place in Africa in the aftermath of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and the new emergence of globalization. The decolonization period and the postcolonial discourse are submerged in the politics of uncertainty. Forces from within and without have remained inevitable in shaping the nation-states of Africa and their relationships with the people of the continent. Decolonization, quasi-colonialism, coups d’état, praetorianism , transnational agencies, international terrorism, poverty, environmental issues, predatory regimes, and vampire governments have all brought demanding questions and challenges to the assumed authority of the nation-state, the nature of African diversity, and the process of democratization. The euphoric prognosis about the benefit of self-governance, African socialism and democracy subsided during the immediate decolonization period in the 1960s and 1970s. The postindependence period has witnessed the pendulum of a political power swing back and forth from civilians to soldiers in politics, and from authoritarians to totalitarians, who sometime refuse to leave power even after they have been voted out by the general populace. What are the meanings of these forces to the essence of democracy in Africa? 405 406 Seth N. Asumah Procedural and Relational Democracy In the balance of this chapter, I argue that the democracy project in Africa is confronted with irrepressible challenges because Western procedural democracy, as a measure, is socioculturally different from African indigenous political cultures; unless the African people are willing to reframe new relational democratic models that will combine diversity and indigenous political cultures of Africans with the best democratic values and practices from the West to promote and sustain democracy, develop new economic measures in order to improve the human condition, and promote the efficacy of their own polities, the democracy project in Africa will succumb to failure-prone policies and actions of predatory regimes to the detriment of democracy itself—which could be lethal for the continent in the twenty-first century. To understand the process of democratization and the institutions that sustain democratic entities, one has to know what democracy is and what it is not. The term democracy is a neologism, which is derived from the Greek word demokratia. Its roots are demos—for people, and kratos—for the rule of. So, literary democracy means rule of the people and by the people. Direct democracy would therefore require participation from the totality of the general populace. Such an idea is workable in small organizations, villages, and small group settings, but it is nearly impossible to exercise direct participatory democracy in modern complex societies. Why? The size of the modern nation-state and the population that should have full participation in elections and decision making that affect the lives of the people would not function properly in participatory democracy. Most nationstates are therefore left with representative democracy, which is quite a deviation from the ancient Greek-style democracy. It is neither epiphenomenal nor anachronistic to discuss multicultural democracy in Africa in the twenty-first century. The colonial period did not prepare Africans sufficiently for democracy, and it emasculated and bastardized the indigenous political institutions of Africans. Decolonization itself left Africans with new powerless nation-states that were disorganized by cultures, ethnicities, traditions , precepts, and norms. Political communities with weak democratic foundations were the results of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 that carved out artificial entities to satisfy the greed of European colonial powers (Davidson, 1983, p. 3). It is ironic, one may argue, that a byproduct of European cultural imperialism—representative democracy—has gained universal coinage in the postcolonial era, which is now indispensible to governing multicultural, multieth- 407 African Relational Democracy nic, and multiperspectival nation-states of Africa. For that matter, multicultural, multiethnic, or relational democracy is an idea whose time has come. Relational democracy transcends the levels of the “procedural” concept of democracy, which places emphasis on process. Relational democracy refers to the idea that all humans share equal value, deserve equality in opportunity, respect, and participation in the life and direction of the society in which they reside. In this perspective, representation is genuine and reflective of the diversity of the populace, their culture, and the institutions that are embedded within the culture. The people’s engagement and connection with their representatives are primordial, constant, and continuing. The political arrangements in relational democracy are not limited...