Democracy in Africa The Challenges and the Opportunities

Madam Speaker, Honourable Members of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen

No one called upon to address Members of Parliament of the new South Africa can do so without a sense of humility. Let me therefore begin by saying that in inviting me to address Members of the House you have, Madam Speaker, done me and the Commonwealth great honour.

I have met many of you under different auspices on different occasions outside this House but this is the first time I am meeting all of you as Members of Parliament of the democratic South Africa. My first care therefore must be to pay tribute to the countless South Africans, many of whom worked and waited for this dawn but did not live to see it. In particular, I would like to invoke the memory of Oliver Tambo whose courage and determination provided the inspiration and leadership to the struggle against apartheid, especially at a time when the odds appeared overwhelmingly against the struggle. I count it an honour to have known and worked closely with Oliver and Adelaide Tambo in those eventful years.

The steadfast resistance to apartheid united the world in support of the oppressed people of South Africa. But nothing became this country so much as the peaceful manner in which the transition from apartheid to a multiracial and multicultural democracy was eventually effected. The subsequent policy of national reconciliation has only added to that admiration.

When the Speaker invited me to address you, she also gave me a free hand in the choice of my theme. In the result, I have decided to address you on the challenges and opportunities of democracy in Africa. Since the choice of subject is entirely mine, I suppose I ought to say a word or two in explanation, if not in justification of the choice.

In the first place, since the Harare Heads of Government Meeting of October 1991, fostering democracy in its member countries has become a dominant preoccupation of the Commonwealth.

The second reason for my choice is that democracy is all the rage in the world today. Diderot, the great French encyclopaedist of the 18th century, once said that every age has its dominant idea. Our dominant idea on the eve of the millennium is democracy. In one version or another liberty has been a dominant idea in the world since the turn of the 18th century. But in all this period it has always had to contend with rivals. Thanks to the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, this is the first time in 200 years when as far as governance systems are concerned, democracy has been without a credible rival in sight. In that sense, we are all democrats now.

My third reason for choosing to speak on democracy in Africa is a more specific one. After the confusing starts of the early years of independence, African countries have embarked on a renewed search for democracy at the same time as the new South Africa has embarked on its own democratic vocation. What valuable lessons can they learn from each other?

Obviously, no two situations can be identical but to the extent that, despite its unique past, South Africa is endeavouring to build its democracy in the face of broadly the same challenges as those confronting other African countries - ethnic, racial, cultural and religious diversity - perhaps the experience of one will inform the efforts of the other.

And here I would like to quickly dispose of a fallacy. The strength and scope of the democratic upsurge in Africa has led some observers to attribute this development almost solely to external influences, especially pressure from the multilateral financial institutions and donor governments. And some, including especially within Africa, even claim that the upsurge is a matter of the West seeking to impose their governance system on African countries.

To such critics I say: Africa is not an island unto itself and therefore cannot be insulated from the master trends shaping the world. Besides, to go from this position and to explain the democratic movement in Africa as an importation from outside, is to deny the native roots of African history. It is to give a new lease of life to the old myth that African nationalism insofar as it was a search for freedom and democracy was of European introduction. Above all, it is to belittle or ignore the strong yearning for change which has been evident in Africa in the wake of the failure of the one-party states or military dictatorships to deliver on national unity, social and economic development, human rights and good governance.


The only major question which now needs to be settled is how to consolidate democracy and make it durable in all countries. This was a question which Commonwealth leaders addressed at their Harare Meeting of October 1991. The Meeting was clear on the merits of democracy as a system of government. It was equally clear that democracy could not take a standard or uniform format in all the member countries of the Commonwealth. It would have to take different forms in different countries to reflect national circumstances. But, it was agreed that whatever the national variations, a true democracy would be judged by the presence of a number of essential universal ingredients. These included the right of a people to choose freely the men and women who would govern them and to cashier them; the primacy of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary; freedom of expression and association; and the continuing transparency and accountability of government.

What Commonwealth leaders identified as the essential ingredients defining every genuine democracy hold good for Africa. Democracy in Africa will differ in its detailed arrangements from country to country; but if it is a genuine democracy, it will have to incorporate these essential ingredients.

Why these particular features? At the heart of any genuine democracy lies accountability. Where there is no accountability, there is really no democracy. It is society's insurance against abuse of office on the part of those who form the government at any given time. And accountability can only be enforced if the governed have the power to make or unmake governments.

Democracy is essentially about choice - choice of policies articulated by parties, and choice of personalities. This freedom of choice is meaningless without free elections. Free elections in turn entail freedom of speech and of association. Without freedom of speech, the appeal to reason which is the basis of democracy cannot be made. Without freedom of association, meaningful political parties are practically inconceivable because in the absence of freedom of association it is difficult for people to band together into parties and formulate policies to achieve their common ends. And none of these freedoms can be secured without the rule of law and an independent judiciary.

An independent and honest judiciary has an importance which cannot be overstated. Where the judiciary is either corrupt or incompetent, elections, accountability, fundamental human rights and all the other rights guaranteed by the constitution become in effect illusory. Democracy in such circumstances becomes illusory and other advances can either be overturned or crippled.

And in this connection, let me return to what I have already said: that there can be no genuine or durable democracy without genuine political parties. In saying so, I know that I am putting myself in direct opposition to a surviving school of thought which holds that genuine political parties in the present conditions in Africa are practically impossible and that the foreseeable future ought to lie in a no-party system of government of all the talents. According to this school of thought, in the absence of social and economic conditions of the type which exist in the old democracies in Europe and North America, African political parties are invariably either tribal coalitions or religious groupings or some other partisan formation with little or nothing to do with the national interest. In other words, political parties under the prevailing conditions in Africa will make for division and national retardation.

I understand where the advocates of the no-party system are coming from and I respect the sincerity of their convictions; but I do not share the underlying fear and pessimism. A no-party state can easily degenerate into a no-party dictatorship very much in the same way as the old one-party professed democracies quickly degenerated into one-party dictatorships. Nor do I accept that only a no-party government can lead to a government of all the talents as it is always possible to form governments of national unity even if the elections have been contested on the basis of separate party identities. Besides, I believe that it is possible for agreed national constitutions of pluralistic states to proscribe the formation of political parties on the basis of such potentially divisive factors as ethnicity, race or religion.

A viable democracy has to evolve organically. It has to evolve through civic education and no institution is better placed to perform the task of civic education than a political party. Inter-party rivalry within the law also contributes to the growth of freedom. Modern political parties provide the channels for peaceful competition between one set of ambitions and another. Political parties then are central to democracy; and since this has now been accepted in practically all of Africa, let me make a few remarks about the respective positions of ruling parties and opposition parties.

In a democratic order, the ruling party derives its mandate to rule from its success at free and fair polls. For a defined term, it has exclusive responsibility for governing the country but within limits, some defined and enshrined within the provisions of the constitution, others subsisting by convention. Because electoral majorities can and do come and go, no ruling party can plausibly claim to be the sole conscience and the sole embodiment of the will of the people, let alone their only prophet. Neither is the cause of democracy served by a ruling party claiming to be co-terminous with the state.

If these and other excesses are to be avoided, the restraints provided by the constitution will have to be supplemented by self-restraint on the part of the political parties. Majority parties must be allowed to rule but they must not rule in such a way as to appear to be gathering to themselves all power and influence within the state, thereby denying the rights of the opposition parties. How the opposition opposes, however, is equally important.

An opposition party is part of the institutional machinery of a democracy. A loyal and credible opposition is a boon to a country in a number of ways. As a party with an alternative programme for government, an opposition party serves as a peaceful channel for popular discontent. An effective loyal opposition is an effective argument against extra-constitutional means of gaining power and therefore a force for stability. To be effective and to remain true to the national interest, a government needs the stimulus of constructive and disciplined criticism to perform; and in a sustained way, that can only come from the opposition.

But, no opposition will confer legitimacy on the government of the day and the other institutions of state, or make for national stability, if it is not an opposition that is loyal to the interest of the country. And it cannot be a loyal opposition if its manner of opposing is utterly unprincipled or if it seeks to couple constitutionalism with a readiness to exploit unconstitutional means to gain power. If in their respective roles, ruling parties and opposition parties are to contribute to the greater good of their nation, they would need to cultivate a relationship based on mutual confidence. That confidence will enable them to agree on what aspects of the national interest transcend party divides and can therefore be legitimately withdrawn from inter-party strife and brawls as has been the case with the British Government policy over Northern Ireland.

Constitutions, judiciaries, political parties and related institutional frameworks are all vital for the functioning of democracy. But in the end, the point can never be stressed enough that democracy is no more than a system of government by men and women over men and women and, as such, requiring for its smooth functioning more than the provisions of a constitution. Equally necessary is the fostering of certain habits of mind and body of understandings between politicians and a general consensus within society at large about the legitimacy and efficacy of the democratic order.

Last year, I made an effort to contribute to the fostering of just such habits of mind and body of understandings between politicians across the party divides in Commonwealth Africa when I convened a Roundtable of Commonwealth African leaders in Botswana in February 1997. The Roundtable was in two parts.

The first part was a Preparatory Meeting of representatives of ruling and opposition parties for which you, Madam Speaker, were a universally acclaimed Rapporteur. The second was a Meeting of Heads of Government. The Preparatory Meeting proved to be a particularly interesting experience. For many of the opposition leaders, it was the first time they were meeting their counterparts in the governing parties of their own countries. The antipathies and suspicions were such that only under the auspices of the Commonwealth could they have met in the same room. Not surprisingly, some of the exchanges became sharp and heated from time to time. But it was good for them and good for democracy, and in spite of their differences they were able to agree a set of recommendations which were submitted to the Heads of Government session.

The fact that ruling parties and opposition parties came together was in itself significant. In a sense, it was mutual public recognition. By coming together in this way, opposition parties in effect conceded the ruling parties' right to govern, while the ruling parties for their part publicly recognised the opposition parties as legitimate players, subsisting not on sufferance but in their own right, and loyal to the state. And together they undertook to defend democracy. Never before had the cause of democracy in Africa had such an alliance in its defence.


No institution or set of institutions or arrangements can alone be said to secure freedom and make democracy possible without reference to local conditions. Every functioning democracy is in a sense a successful marriage between the universal ingredients of democracy on the one hand and local conditions, culture and history on the other. This is what gives every national democracy its peculiarities and imbues it with stability. The challenge for African countries is to bring their various traditional cultures into a meaningful working relationship with democracy.

At the time of African independence, it was always recognised that African countries could not fully come into their own without making their inherited cultures relevant to the purposes of reconstruction. But the difficulties in the way of pressing African cultures into service in this manner were not inconsiderable.

By the time of independence, Africa had undergone varying degrees of deculturalisation. The process first began with the arrival of Christian and Islamic missionaries whose overriding aim was to dethrone traditional African religion in favour of Christianity or Islam. And since traditional religion featured so pervasively in African cultural life, the attack on traditional religion became co-extensive with an attack on traditional African culture. Consequently, in the eyes of the Christian missionary and Islamic Teacher, there was little to commend traditional African culture.

This process of deculturalisation received a fresh impetus with the introduction of colonial governments on the continent. The French and the Portuguese in particular pursued explicit policies in this regard. These European colonial powers saw their presence in Africa as "civilising missions". French and Portuguese cultures were held up as the exemplars and assimilation into these cultures were set as the objective to which all colonised Africans were to aspire.

The deculturalisation of Africa was uneven. It was more pronounced in the colonial urban centres than in the countryside, and in the urban areas its focus was the educated elite. In the result, the greater part of Africa remained predominantly traditional, and in these areas traditional institutions centred around the clan continued to exist. But divested of real power by the colonial authorities, and weakened and emasculated by the other forces unleashed by the European presence, the residual clan was nothing like the original thing. It was transformed into largely ceremonial and nostalgic causes. Consequently, Africa at independence was full of broken cultural ends. Mending these broken ends as part of the process of democratic reconstruction is another of the challenges of nation-building in Africa.

In approaching this issue one thing must always be clear at the outset. Traditional Africa was not a liberal democracy, and no one pretends that it was. But then neither was the Athens of Pericles a model of liberal democracy. In both cases what mattered was not so much the form of the political arrangement in question as its content. In the case of classical Athens, "the point of democracy", as one authority has put it, "was the freedom which it made possible. It, and it alone, could and did enable the citizens to Athens to live in freedom ... to live as they collectively and individually chose for themselves." And "in thinking of freedom every citizen of Athens had a harsh and vivid contrast permanently in mind: the condition of slavery."

To live as they collectively and individually chose for themselves and to avoid a fate in slavery: these were also the ultimate purposes of government in traditional Africa, either in the phase of wars between tribes and clans or with the onset of the slave trade and the generalisation of insecurity. This point was succinctly put in 1892 by Chief Hendrik Witbooi, a Nama Chief from Namibia, when a representative of the Imperial German Government, Commissioner Göring, the father of Hitler's Göring, tried to convince him to accept German protection. "The duty of an independent Chief who governs his own people and country," Chief Witbooi said, "is to protect them personally against any danger or disaster."

Old Africa knew nothing of the exciting debates in which the founding fathers of the American Republic were engaged in the 1770s and which were subsequently to be published as the Federalist Papers. But traditional Africa would have appreciated the wisdom of those debates. It would have appreciated the advisability of ambition counteracting ambition; and it would certainly have appreciated the point that if men and women were angels, no government would be necessary. A study of traditional government in any part of Africa would disclose one fact - a healthy hostility against the concentration of power without accompanying checks and balances to control it, beginning with the position of the Chief.

No chief was a chief except by the will of his people. In many African societies this maxim was impressed upon the chief in the process of his installation and was in addition to the various mechanisms in place to ensure that the chief marched in step with the wishes of his people. It was one way in which traditional African governments founded sovereignty in the people.

In most cases, the Council of Elders was the Chief's advisory body; but it was more than that. As representatives of the constituent lineages or clans, the Council also doubled up as a parliament. And no chief could continue to disregard the views of the Council without running a real risk of deposition. In many cases, deposition entailed either suicide or exile, depending upon the nature of the misdemeanour.

Let me illustrate this point with an example from my own community of Obosi. As a senior Chief, I have a uniquely feathered hat, Okpu Nkata, in my house as part of my ceremonial regalia. But it is a hat which I have worn only once and that was on the occasion of my installation. Since then I have not worn it and my fervent prayer is that I should never again have to wear it. To wear it again would mean that I and the other senior Chiefs of the community have come to the conclusion that our King has committed a grievous transgression, as a result of which he is no longer fit to remain King and must either go into exile or commit suicide. The chief in traditional Africa might have appeared an all-powerful despot to the casual observer or passing stranger. In reality he was not, and could not have been, anything of the sort.

Sir Winston Churchill once said that the best way of governing states is by talking. Indeed, government by talking is one of the many definitions of democracy on offer. So it was in traditional Africa. Traditional African government was based on government by discussion. Indeed, if there is anything which characterised traditional African government, it was this habit of conducting business through discussion. What Guy Clutton-Brock said of traditional Nyasa society in Malawi was true of traditional Africa as a whole: "the elders sit under the big tree and talk until they agree". Whether the elders represented lineages or whole clans, the right of every elder to speak at the Council was unswervingly upheld. A Council session was an occasion for the utterance of much wisdom; and as has been said, the value of the freedom of expression lay for them in the possible aspect of the truth which it might reveal.

This has led to the misapprehension that traditional African society had little room for dissent. Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole point of the protracted discussions in the councils of elders was to ensure that the resulting action, if action was required, would be based on unanimity, or failing that, consensus, the nearest practical approximation to unanimity. This was important in societies constantly exposed to physical danger and all manner of insecurity, especially during the centuries of slave raids. What was proscribed was not dissent which had an honoured and guarded place but the persistent expression of divergent views after a decision had been taken, especially when such divergence could be disruptive and divisive.

What of justice, without which St Augustine considered government to be nothing but a band of robbers? Traditional Africa had no separate judiciary; but to its credit, it set the highest premium on justice and fair play. In many societies of the old Africa, the law was for all practical purposes an extension of ethics. That ethical position has been nowhere better formulated than here in South Africa with your concept of Ubuntu which teaches that our own humanity is possible only because of other human beings. De Tocqueville summarised the whole point neatly when he said that morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

British democracy has become the venerable system it is reputed to be because over the centuries it has evolved and been adapted to the genius of the British people. The strength of American democracy derives from the fact that the European transplant has been successfully adapted to the cosmopolitan conditions of the New World. And Japanese democracy is stable because it has come to terms with Japanese culture and history. Democracy in African countries will be neither durable nor vibrant unless it is made to come to terms with the cultures of its various communities. Only then will the genius of Africa be in a position to make its own original contribution to the practice of democracy.


Democracy is of course not a panacea. There is no pretence that it is a magic wand with which to wave away the multitude of Africa's problems. But the extensive fundamental restructuring taking place on the continent stands little chance of success without democratic governance. And of all the problems facing Africa today, none is probably as urgently pressing as nation-building. In a number of cases where the state structure has collapsed completely or where the divisions are such that the very survival of the state has become a perpetual emergency, it is literally a question of putting 'Humpty Dumpty' together again.

No nation can be built without a strong leadership and no leadership can be strong that does not command the respect of its people. To command the respect of the people, the leadership must have the moral strength necessary to tackle the national challenges of the hour. Let me illustrate this with an example. Rooting out corruption is a precondition for a successful democracy. But that can only be achieved by a strong leadership with the strength and moral authority which comes from unquestioned integrity. The only effective check on corruption is an effective system of accountability and only democracy provides such a check.

Over the years successive African governments have declared war on corruption. But for the most part it has been a phoney war, intermittently and half-heartedly waged and never really intended to disable the real culprits or put them out of business. The associated anti-corruption machinery which they devised were usually deliberately fashioned to trap only the small fry and to allow the bigger fish to swim free.

The war against corruption must now be both single-minded and uncompromising. Corruption has to be rooted out not because the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or any other donor agency or government says so, but because only with the eradication of corruption can the principle of linking reward to work be sustained - a principle so necessary to advance economic development and nation-building. Only under conditions of democracy which make for openness and transparency can one find the surest sentinels to stand guard over the public interest.

Democracy has an equally important role to play in the eradication of the evil of tribalism, or rather ethnicity, which I have called divisive pluralism. An African nation is almost by definition a multi-ethnic nation. Ethnicity, the fact that by and large people in Africa belong to different ethnic groups or tribes, is a fact of life - a fact well known here in South Africa. Ethnicity is particularly dangerous to national unity when it becomes a blunt instrument exploited by politicians in their quest for power. In addition to having entrenched state principles that proscribe ethnic politics, another way of averting this danger is to provide for power-sharing arrangements in the constitution in such a way that no particular ethnic group can feel permanently excluded from government.

Finally, let me turn to the challenge that economic recovery and growth poses to democracy in Africa.

At the beginning of this year, the United Nations Secretary-General published a report on the state of the world economy. The report carried the most welcome news of Africa's economic performance in recent years. According to the document, Africa's economic output rose for the fourth consecutive year in 1997, growing by an average rate of 3 per cent per annum. Of 38 African countries whose economic performance is closely monitored by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 15 achieved at least a 5 per cent growth rate; and of these, 11 countries reached 5 per cent or higher rates of growth. But significantly, the Secretary-General's report prefaced the African section with this question, Africa: will it sustain the growth impulse?

Sustaining the growth impulse - therein lies the challenge. Inevitably, meeting the challenge will have to take several forms. It will have to include investment in infrastructure and institutions; it will have to include appropriate fiscal policies; and it will have to include a change in the nature of international co-operation which addresses, among other pressing issues, the question of commodity prices. These are some of the basic issues which have to be addressed to sustain the growth impulse. But it would be wrong to believe that the task of reconstruction in general and the consolidation of the growth impulse in particular can be adequately tackled by addressing only these issues.

The growth impulse can hardly be sustained if we allow corruption to skew the relationship between effort and reward. It cannot be sustained if there is no effective accountability. Nor can we expect sustained economic growth over any appropriate length of period in a society where there is inherent instability because a section of that society feels that it does not belong, or perceives itself to be permanently excluded from an effective say in government. Where the state is the patrimony of a self-appointed elite in which everything in it comes and goes with its proprietors, there can be little scope for meaningful development. Only under the rule of democracy do African countries stand a fighting chance of effectively combating these evils and laying the basis for sustainable development. As one African intellectual has put it, the real problem in Africa is not merely to institute a developing economy but to pick up social bearings, revitalise humane aspects of African society, and entrench them within firm principles of social justice. That is what democracy is all about.

African leaders have always said, and rightly so, that the responsibility for the development of Africa lies with African leaders themselves. They have gone further than that; They have also said, to quote the language of the Lagos Plan of Action adopted by the special summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1980, that Africa's economic future lies in the adoption of a "far-reaching regional approach based primarily on collective self-reliance". The process of regional economic integration is envisaged to serve as the building blocks of an African Economic Community (AEC) to come into being in the year 2025.

African leaders are right in perceiving economic regionalism as the way of the future, especially when it has now become abundantly clear that "tropical agricultural commodities and metal ores are not the ticket to the future". Implicit in the adoption of economic regionalism, in the foundation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the other regional economic groupings which have sprung up, is a recognition of the fact that the post-colonial state has exhausted whatever potentialities it ever had to foster or spur sustainable economic development. 'Separate development' in which a Ghana or a Tanzania or even a South Africa remains hermetically sealed within its inherited colonial borders doing its 'own thing' and expecting to prosper, has had its day. On any view, these are very major policy shifts.

Africans may be poor and getting poorer, but Africa is not poor. Within the continent, Africa has all the resources - human, natural and mineral - it needs for its development, but these have been drained over the years to irrigate other economies. I also believe that there is enough trained manpower, if properly mobilised, to enable a sustainable economic take-off. The years of undemocratic governance combined with the onset of the economic crisis drove many African professionals abroad. Some are permanently lost to Africa but others will be prepared to return and contribute to the reconstruction of their countries. Good governance, including a guarantee of fundamental human rights, will be sufficient assurance to many of these African expatriates to return home.


Frantz Fanon once said that the period of foreign rule in Africa was the time when Africans were "the great absentees of universal history". That is plainly no longer the case. The success of the anti-colonial struggle has enabled Africa to resume its place in the community of nations and together with the rest of humanity is shaping world history. But if Africa is not to lose its place in world affairs in the coming millennium, it will have to set its house in order.

Meeting the democratic challenge is a large part of that process. If the present challenges summon forth the necessary vision and determination to entrench democracy in all African countries, the continent's future will have been assured. Then, and perhaps only then, will the African Renaissance about which the leaders of the new South Africa have rightly spoken so much, have been truly consolidated.

Cape Town Monday 1 June 1998