FIRST WORD
MAL/29/19
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Marketing Africa
02 MAL29/19 ISSUE
On Democratic Debacle
A
t independence a travesty took place in most African
countries that has dogged our respective governments for
ages and a solution does not seem to be in the offing as we
stumble from one problem to another in trying to run the countries.
The colonialist did not leave willingly and in fact in most African
countries they had indicated that a hundred years was necessary
to train the native to run the countries, which was a nice excuse to
deny them the necessary exposure.
Had colonialism been an exercise of a benevolent transfer of skills
from one race to another then we would have had a shared vision
and we would have had a natural transition from one group to the
other as education and skills were learnt.
In fact that is what the missionary promised when they were
recruiting Africans to their version of God and the duped African
actually saw the missionary as his ally in the quest for modernization
and progress. They converted in droves.
It was also the missionary who convinced the African that a cardinal
tenet of Christianity was obeying the law, never mind that it was
imported and alien, hence helping the administrator take control
of their land by taking control of their minds. A better future was
beckoning.
The missionaries set up the schools to ostensibly bring the native to
par with the colonist. They introduced a curriculum that was foreign
but cleverly ensured that their children had a separate curriculum
that raised them to be the masters of a ‘backward’ local.
Those that did see through the ruse and resisted were confronted by
superior technology in the form of guns that would and were used
effectively to exert compliance. On the sidelines were the settlers
that began to acquire our land and conscript the African into slave
labor disguised as training.
Fortunately there were many good newcomers that had struck out
into Africa with a genuine desire to improve the lot of the African
driven by religious favor and an unshakable belief that all men were
indeed created equal in the eyes of God. To them slavery was evil
and ungodly.
These abolitionists were able to begin the fight for the disgruntled
native and actually sponsored locals to agitate for their rights. They
even sent Africans abroad to colonial headquarters to present their
petitions to the rulers and demand for their independence.
So the group of mainly young men that had been recruited into
schools was soon also being exposed to liberation politics as they
were able to read world history for themselves and many were
influenced by the militant socialist propaganda that was sweeping
the globe.
In Kenya, another problem was festering on the sidelines. The
colonist had brought in Indian laborers to build the railway, they had
finished the job and many chose to remain and therefore presented
a pool of skilled laborers, clerks and traders that the colonist could
use to run the colony.
The colonist had to find a way to keep the
three groups apart and an elaborate color
bar system was introduced to keep races
apart. Soon the Indian was also unhappy,
albeit in a foreign land and he too started
agitating for freedom, not for the African
but for themselves.
Faced by a common disgruntlement, the
Kenyan African and Indian struck an
accord that was able to put a great deal
of pressure on the colonial government to
grant equality but those sentiments were
equally vigorously resisted by the white
settlers who wanted to maintain their
privilege and status.
By a unique set of political circumstances
that took place in the 1950s and 1960s,
most African countries found themselves
suddenly independent. The countries were
in transition yet the necessary skills to run
a government had not been acquired.
Anybody that could speak English and
had more than rudimentary ability to
read and write suddenly found themselves
in charge of a country’s administrative
structure with no clue on how it run
and hostile settlers who moved out en
masse for states that guaranteed white
supremacy.
Those that remained to oversee the
transition insisted that African countries
adopt democratic ideals to run the
countries yet they had not practiced
democracy but imperialism when they
were in charge. No wonder we have
struggled with democracy – it had never
been tested locally.
So Africans found themselves running
so called democratic entities that
were theoretical in nature and had no
foundation in local realities. Democracy
was not based on existing African values
or traditions and was imposed in cahoots
with an educated elite who were not
traditional leaders in the first place.
A conflict between the new democratic
order and the traditional was inevitable
and the only way the new class of leaders
could hold on to power was by going back
to the colonial powers that had installed
them to ensure that they survived.
That is why the nascent independent
African states were bedeviled with
instability and revolutions as competing
groups, depending on what perception
they adopted sought to unseat the
incumbents. The army also soon learnt
that power was up for grabs.
The democratic principle of separation of
powers was also anathema to Africans as
a ruler traditionally had absolute power
and the idea that his authority could be
questioned by any other center of power
was ridiculous to them.
To make the system work for the sake
of the sponsoring past colonial power,
the President simply run the parliament
through party machinations and of course
rigging and he appointed his cronies to
the judiciary and was effectively above the
law.
So we had a broken administrative system,
run by unqualified people based on
cronyism not merit, the perfect spawning
ground for corruption since what the
holder of power needed was good old cash
to buy legitimacy. Politics was the road to
riches and politicians hang onto power for
dear life, literally.
In the free world the richest men are
rarely politicians, people make their
money and then delve into politics to give
back to society. In the African scenario
the opposite is true; you get into politics
to get rich by raping your country. It is not
public service but self-service.
Rather than admit that we adopted a
foolish and unworkable system, every
time we have a political hitch we call for a
referendum to fix imaginary issues. It does
not matter for how long you fix the engine
of a car without wheels, it will never run.
When will we admit that democracy
sponsors corruption and maintains thieves
in power?