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Africans! “Our destiny is largely in our hands. If we find, we shall have to seek. If we succeed in the race of life it must be by our own energies and our own exertions. Others may clear the road but we must go forward, or be left behind in the race of life. If we remain poor and dependent, the riches of other men will not avail us. If we are ignorant, the intelligence of other men will do but little for us. If we are foolish, the wisdom of other men will not guide us. If we are wasteful of time and money, the economy of other men will only make our destitution the more disgraceful and hurtful”.
Frederick Douglas
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INTRODUCTION:
The Problem, And The Theoretical Framework
“The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.”
Hannah Arendt
AFRICA, – “the Jungle,” “the Dark Continent,” “the underdeveloped,” “the developing,” “the poor,” “the undeveloped,” “the Wretched of the Earth,” “the white man’s burden” (Schreader, 2000: 94). These are some of the most popular appellations of the Continent that remains the question mark on the globe. Quel dommage!
To the European, and maybe until only yesteryear the history of Africa began with David Livingstone, just as that of America began with Christopher Columbus.
Historians have long observed the changes in human existence and have labelled it ”Revolution.” They, like Victor Hugo, believe that revolution is the larva of civilization.
The theme of this essay, in retrospective, is “the Revolution that was not”, and the obvious implication is a bit unsavoury. History is passing Africa by. Africa is the last continent of the “Third World” tocome to independence. She is the deepest sunk in political and socio-economic backwardness. She has the most appalling problems and yet revels in the most effusive optimism.If anything, to my best knowledge, for the most part she is wallowing in an endless web of misery and despair. It is a continent of mass poverty but the obsession of the ruling groups is with luxuries and/or petit power plays. The leaders who came to power mouthing the rhetoric of change faced the critical poverty of their countries with frivolity and fickleness (First, 1972: 9).
Those who are convinced that the Africans are unfit to rule themselves, that the empire opted out of Africa too quickly and that the continent was bound to go back into decline after the premature granting of independence, only succeeded in muddling the issue. The colonial era was a period of swindle and cupidity and these, any theory of conspiracy will reveal to the enquiring discerning eye.
In Marxian analysis, the Great Depression of 1929 should have triggered a war of liberation for the colonised people everywhere. When the opportunity was aborted, however, the imperialists decided not to be caught napping, especially not in the shadow of their Nemesis, Communism. They decided to disengage coolly, and cunningly transferredpower to stooges and collaborators who were to perpetuatethe horrors and depredations of their masters.
It is not only fitting but also therapeutic to give African politics a FRANK and PITILESS analysis. Such an analysis will help us understand the position and behaviour of African countries in International Relations. Are they pretending in the international arena, or are they wholly integrated into it? For the purpose of analysis, the institutions and instruments of government the
Imperialists handed their colonies at independence, defies description, from the point of view of constitutional history. The net effect was the creation of little ”de Gaules,” little ”King Leopolds” and the replicas of Westminster on a continent as ravaged as its mosaic appearance would allow.
The supposition that the colonial period was a period of tutelage of barbarous Africans by the ’civilised’ West is highly flawed and objectionable. It is an uncomfortable naiveté. The haste with which the imperialists engaged and disengaged belies this assertion. In the words of Sir Andrew Cohen, a former colonial governor and former head of the British Colonial Office, the debauchery was planned and expedited out of premonitions of a debacle. ”Britain needed a new colonial policy for Africa. She should recognize that successful cooperation with nationalism was the greatest bulwark against Communism. The transfer of colonial power need not be a defeat but a strengthening of the Commonwealth and the Free World” (First, 1972:42).
1.1. COMMENTS ON METHODOLOGY
This thesis will proceed within the framework of a redefinition and challenging of theories and assumptions in view of the dyadic nature of the analysis. The key questions that guides this study can be grouped under five main headings:
1)Socio-political modernization and socio-political decay. Is Modernization a Westernization process? (This formulation of the empirical problem is coeval with the belief of the notion or law of inevitable progress).
2)The traditional web of social existence and societal order.
a)What kind traditional institutions existed in pre-colonial Africa?
b)What was the authority and legitimacy of the institutions?
c)Was there democracy and accountability in Traditional African societies?
3) How did the traditional institutions changed under the impact of Colonialism?
4) The transfer of power in colonial Africa – how was power transferred from the British colonial governors to African elites?
5) Is there any ideology -- intellectual renaissance – in African politics?
This analysis is crucial if the dilemma of African “independence” and the problems that came with it can be discussed honestly. The situation is parallel to a case of Hamlet without the Prince -- a farcical drama.
The chosen case study is Ghana (the old name ‘Gold Coast’ is used interchangeably) and the reasons for the choice are manifold. The choice of the case study is influenced largely by the following reasons:
1)The socio-political history of Ghana, especially its relationship with Europe, which spans a period of over five centuries. Its unique historical experience affords a clear insight into the dynamics of modernization.
2)The plethora of secondary sources – based on the fact that Ghana is the first country that achieved independence – at least in a formal sense -- in sub-Saharan Africa.
3)Finally, the fact that I am an African (though not a Ghanaian) and thus partially familiar with the African political and social phenomena which I aspire to understand and explain.
This paper is not by any means exhaustive, and for obvious reasons its many drawbacks are unavoidable, and therefore it may be found wanting in some respects. In many respects, it is a relative exercise in contemporary history of Africa, yet there is no distinct systematic chronological basis for such an exercise. A further shortcoming is the use of secondary materials for the case study. Here again this cannot be held to be a weakness in view of the lack of proximity to the primary sources. However, in the main, it offers multiple critiques of the many conceptualizations from economic determinism to historical realism. Thus it is a modest effort to reconstruct a conceptual framework for the analysis of politics in the mal-developed area—sub-Saharan Africa. The chosen method in this thesis is comparative, descriptive, analytical and argumentative.
Finally, I write this thesis not to nag nor to whine, but to prod. Thus, I am keenly aware of many repetitions throughout the work, unavoidable because of comparative methods used, and others for emphasis – which may have turned out to seem over-emphasis. I am hopeful that this humble effort would contribute to some illumination of the problems of socio-economic and political modernization in this part of the “Third World”.
Now, fasten your seatbelts as we cruise into “Africa’s Political Decay.”
1.2. TOWARDS A CRITIQUE OF THE ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES
“Third World” politics presents the discipline of international relations, and even the international relation scholars for that matter, with a great challenge -- a challenge that, according to Professor Riggs (1967:317), ”we are indeed only numbly beginning to appreciate.” These challenges and problems, it is hoped, may some day lead to a restructuring of the whole discipline.
In so far as political theories and ideologies – that is, an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation -- are concerned, there are none. Only a barrage of speculations and hypothesis has been advanced.Apter (1967:viii) puts it aptly: but ”the events are confusing. Our research ideas are similarly untidy. Quite often we are as much imprisoned in our concepts as the political leader is in his rhetoric.”
The trend then, for all international relations scholars (particularly those interested in African politics) is to tread cautiously and to avoid overzealousgeneralizations. As the most quoted scholar in African Studies, Thomas Hodgkins (Apter, 1967:viii) poignantlyputs it,
our profound ignorance of African History, our lack of comprehension of African attitudes to the contemporary situation, our remoteness from the ideas of revolutionary democracy, the distortions in thinking produced by the colonial mythology--- these, I would suggest, are good reasons for doubting whether we are likely to have any sensible contributions to make to a discussion of the direction of social and political change in post-colonial Africa. Such questions are best left to the Africans.
Touche!
Dr. Harris, in the preface of his book ’Studies in African Politics, 1970, seemed to have concurred with this view, as he remarked, ”seen through a number of diverse topics, Africa’s problems can best be understood, if not solved, in African terms without reference to norms and conceptions derived from other sources.”
For an African analyst however, these prospects are not reassuring: Schooled in Western norms and concepts, he can but grope in the dark in the dearth of Western political theories and ideologies to guide him.
An interesting problem one encounters in utilizing some models of political analysis is the unsavoury discovery that in Africa politics is not policy-making. Political power is equated with acquisitive power. When for instance the ”Elite model” is used, the answer to the question, ”who has power?” or ”Who rules?” appears anomalous. Power lies without rather than within the country. It is sad.
The grotesque nature of the situation is not only unnerving but also irksome. Jean-Paul Sartre (Fanon, 1971:7), gives some relief though when he said:
…the European elite undertook to manufacture a native elite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with red-hot iron with the principles of Western culture; they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words, Parthenon! Brotherhood! And somewhere in Africa or Asia, lips would open…thenon!!…therhood! It was the Golden Era.
Of late, however, efforts have been made towards a normative approach to the political problems in developing areas and it is to these approaches I owe a debt of gratitude. The first approach is reflected in Kenneth Organski’s book, ”Stages of Political Development.” He fails to provide a theory of stages in political development. He is rather concerned with a set of problems (crises) faced by developing countries (Riggs, 1967:33). These problems are mostly socio-economic and they are preferred to any other, for, like Marx (1913:11-12) said: ”It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but on the contrary, it is their social existences which determines their consciousness.”
Organski reached the conclusion that there are essentially four stages of development:
1)political unification,
2)industrialization,
3)national welfare, and
4)abundance.
During the first stages, national governments gain effective political and administrative control over their populations and territories. Without such control, all policies designed to encourage economic growth through industrialization are bound to fail (Riggs, 1967:332). However, the Organski model is not without its shortcomings. The first stage of political unification (described by Lucien Pye as the crises of identity, legitimacy and penetration) is said to have been achieved by pre-modern European societies but that non-Western societies are still struggling with this stage of development. What is not pronounced is the historical evidence (like the one given for the second stage--industrialization), of the means utilized in achieving these ends. A glaring obfuscation of such genre is an indictment of the entire model, and for that matter all approaches in the Development Theory are equally blighted.
What they succeeded in blurring is the relevance of the means, and when, especially in this instance, it is the hub of the problem. The task of political unification demands a totality of efforts if “stability” and “orderly” change is intended. Hence the need for a totalitarian ideology. In retrospect, the Western bourgeois system, and for that matter any other system that ever succeeded in scaling this hurdle, did so only under the aegis of an ideology as totalitarian as it was mobilizing in kind. Where else can one put the import of the eerie Catholic Inquisition in the achievement of unanimity in pre-modern Europe? Or can it be argued that Augustinian theology, Lutheranism, Calvinism and later Puritanism, appearing in various phases of cultural changes in the West, were all totalitarian in content and scope, their other-worldly-outlook notwithstanding?
The emphasis on ”westernization” in the non-Western world, therefore, becomes a byword for a superimposition of culture. For, what inheres in this blatant and inveterate phenomenon is nothing short of the foisting of alien cultural practices on a people with a totally different cultural and historical background. In the main, this cultural superimposition is considered innocuous, yet its impact is so grotesquely repugnant to even the naive observer. It is the onus of the ”political decay” immanent in the “Third World.” Is not the index of politics in these areas the quintessence of cupidity of political actors?
If we are to understand Western democracy as a response to the challenges of the allocation problem (in tandem with the peculiarities of Western European circumstances), tallying with the third and fourth stages of national welfare and abundance in Organski’s model, then its superimposition on non-European cultures is deviously anachronistic. Thus, is not the nauseating pre-emption of the scarce resources in the “Third World” by political actors, in itself a distribution process of a sort? It is indeed the acme of the westernization process.
However, in hindsight, when the dynamics of modernization are viewed as ”technological” change rather than ”cultural”, the cross-cultural transmission of the Industrial Revolution is given wings. It is in this sense that Lenin’s contribution to Scientific Socialism becomes monolithic.
The paradox thus expressed elsewhere that “modernization can thus be seen as something apart from industrialization—caused by it in the West but causing it in other areas,” is as abstruse as it is hollow. Almost invariably, the tragedy of cultural superimposition, in the exogenous change process, is illustrated vividly by the case study, Ghana. In the absence of a highly disciplined revolutionary party, committed to the initial tasks of political unity, unification and ceaseless participation, political action assumed the shape of a sordid debauchery. Flung down the gauntlet the nationalist party all but withered overnight.
During the second stage of economic development, i.e.,the industrial revolution, governments have to make possible the accumulation of capital, which can only be done at great social cost.Organski believes that historically speaking, three different patterns of government have proven successful in solving the problems of industrialization: the bourgeois (that is, Western Democracy), the Stalinist (Communism), and the Syncratic (Fascists) (Riggs, 1967:33).
This view is upheld by Professor Pares, who said: ”If they (the liberated peoples) insist on building their own capital the hard way, like the Russians, they will certainly have to resort to dictatorship—perhaps Communist dictatorship—since no other form of government can easily oblige the peasant and the worker to tighten his belt for the sake of the future” (Harris, 1970).
Pye’s approach tallies with Organski’s, especially the first stage of unification, namely, the crises of identity, legitimacy and penetration (Riggs, 1967:333).
In any case, however, it is David Apter’s complex but intriguing theory of stages and alternative paths of political development in the larger framework of modernization that provided the beacon light for this analysis.
The net effect is the eclecticism permeating the paper. The pre-occupation with a critique of theories is due to the cue from Samuel Huntington’s essay on ”Political Development and Political Decay”. In it he argued that what is going on today in the third word should frequently be characterized as a process of decay rather than of development (Riggs, 1967:334).