Events in Kenya raise the question: why is democracy failing to deliver real economic development in Africa? There is a question of whether, even, what is practiced in most African countries (periodic rituals of flawed “elections”, marked by much rigging, the dominance of behind- the-scenes vested interests, tribal solidarity versus issues and vision-based campaigning and voting, disempowered and uneducated electorate, etc) is truly democracy.
Or is it the model we use – multiparty, “one-man-one-vote”? There are many questions, and we need to confront the reality that, beyond hollow rituals, democracy is not working in Africa. But then, the military and their coups did not deliver development either – unlike what happened in Asia or even in Latin American countries like Chile under Pinochet. In those climes we had dictatorships that had an executed clear economic vision, with success, even as a shift to democracy was still seen as more ideal, and happened ultimately in countries like South Korea and Indonesia and Chile.
If we say democracy is freedom, is a man or woman who is dirt-poor and hungry truly free? I don’t pretend that I have the final answers, but we must confront the powerful facts of our reality in our continent and reason together towards solutions.
This tendency to avoid confronting the fundamentals of our existence – for example, should we organize our countries along ethnic divisions in a formal sense in the hope that it will bring more stability? – is something we we must confront, and overcome. But then look at what happened in Ethiopia, where they have practiced “ethnic federalism” with the regions having a right of secession, with the recent ethnic conflict there, successfully mediated by ex-Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others. Africa! We must rise one day.