Are coups back?

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Toyin Falola

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Jan 24, 2022, 8:00:01 PM1/24/22
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Moses Ochonu

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Jan 24, 2022, 8:36:52 PM1/24/22
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Are coups back? That may not be the right question. The right question may be, what’s souring Africans on Western style democracy and making coups attractive and popular again? That question deserves a truthful answer, not an answer that uncritically reiterates the Washington Consensus and it’s associated talking points and buzzwords about the imperative of “democratization.”

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On Jan 24, 2022, at 7:00 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 24, 2022, 9:38:16 PM1/24/22
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my difference with you moses is calling democracy western style. i understand your argument, and am not defending yesterday's political forms. but i don't believe it is a question of something western any more, if it ever really was. and the coups always come from the people with guns who have a financial interest in controlling the state so as to control the economy.
the people in burkina must be desperate: 1.5 million now internally displaced. the govt and state failed. no place else to turn to.
your questioning of democracy as europe or america want it is legitimate since it is always changing, anyway. you prefer consensus to winner takes all. well, that's open to a good discussion, really, over what agreements are possible. now with the conflicts, we couldn't be at a greater remove from that.
anyway, more food for thought
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2022 8:34 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 24, 2022, 10:20:15 PM1/24/22
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Is it Africans generally welcoming these coups or armed men taking power by force whatever people think?

Toyin

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 25, 2022, 1:05:41 PM1/25/22
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Toyin Adepoju:

In 2010 or thereabouts, there was a coup in Niger and Nigeriens trooped out to celebrate the coup. That was a shock to the "democratization" brigade, but some of us were not surprised.

Then it happened in Mali more recently and people celebrated.

It then happened in Guinea and the coup was celebrated with a massive street rally, the coup plotters mobbed as heroes.

The situation in Burkina Faso is fluid, and I haven't seen audiovisual evidence of how the people reacted, but I would not be surprised if there were/are celebrations there too.

Which means, we should pose the difficult question of why people in these countries are celebrating coups, which they should be protesting in an era of "democratization" and "democratic" normativity. 

Could it be that the liberal democratic model uncritically adopted and implemented across Africa is dysfunctional and has failed to promote unity and security and to fulfill the cardinal promise the pro-democracy forces made in the era of democratization: that liberal democracy would produce economic development and accountability?

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 25, 2022, 1:17:11 PM1/25/22
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there is a new issue of the African Studies Review out (64:3).
in it they have an "African Studies Keyword" and the word is Democracy. It was written by Nic Cheesemand and Sishuwa Sishuwa.
maybe this would bear on your reading of liberal democracy, moses.

my impression is that africans have been fighting for democracy ever since colonialism came. but what is democracy? i think of it as the people being self-governing, regardless of the model. it could be parliamentary, direct, indirect, representative etc.
i am angry at the failures in the united states since my vote counts less than people in smaller states, a system set up by slaveowning states to enable them to country free northern states' greater population and urban centers.
we are "relatively" democratic.
every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote.

are autocracies better? i believe autocracies can function only by theboss paying off his army police bigmen supporters, at the expense of the people. it is not just.
gotta go
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 12:08 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 25, 2022, 1:59:49 PM1/25/22
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The truth is that  the official advocates of democracy are often
hypocritical.  They went against a democratic  Mosaddegh 
government in Iran in 1953 in favor of feudalism;  a democratically
 elected government of Arbenz in Guatemala, 1954; Brazil in 1964; 
and more recently seemed to prefer the TPLF, by no means democratic, against a
democratically elected government in Ethiopia. It turns out that
democracy is often just a word.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
 

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Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 1:15 PM

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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 25, 2022, 2:36:55 PM1/25/22
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"we are "relatively" democratic.
every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."


Ken,

Let me register my strong disagreement with the premise, logic, and sentiment of the quoted excerpt from your post. Most Africans do not care if the US is relatively or absolutely democratic or even if it is not democratic at all. That is the business of the US. The US should be free to develop and evolve its own type of representative government, governing technique, and architecture of state.

But it seems that the US is not willing to allow other countries to evolve their own systems of governance and democracy, and is bent on arrogantly dictating to them how to be democratic. Unfortunately it works because the US has the purse strings and the leverage to blackmail and pressure poor, dependent countries to uncritically adopt liberal democracy, neoliberal economic reforms, etc.

This global "democratic tyranny" has become such an axiomatic creed that even a distinguished Africanist scholar and usually self-critical  liberal like the great Kenneth Harrow does not have a problem and does not have the self-reflexivity to see the arrogant ideological certitude in a statement such as "every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."

Who gets to decide for Africans and their states whether a political unit is too big or too small for the kind of democracy that may work for them and that aligns better with their culture, society, and socioeconomic station? 

How did you arrive at the false dichotomy that a critique of the calamitous failings of liberal democracy in Africa amounts to calling for a system of people sitting under a tree to give their opinion? And why do you presume, if not that you have been deeply socialized into the normative Western liberal mindset that the Western democratic tradition is the best, that voting is necessary for democracy to occur, and that people must vote in the sense of universal suffrage of one-man-one-vote in order to have the nomenclatural imprimatur of democracy? 

As you must have surmised by now, what I'm calling for is a self-critical and deconstructive reevaluation of the terms, concepts, buzzwords, and assumptions we take for granted as starting points and baselines for our conversation on democracy in Africa. Africa needs a democratic autonomy that is unencumbered by assumptions such as the one inherent in your statement that "every nation must be like that"--that is, must mimic America's "relative democracy," a proposition which completely sidesteps the foundational question of what it means to be "democratic" as though that question is already settled.

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 25, 2022, 4:33:35 PM1/25/22
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hi moses
my little piece on democracy got cut short when a friend showed up, so i had to send it incompleted.
i am sorry if i expressed myself poorly. i am really sorry to incur your anger as i treasure your opinion.

to begin... i have two thoughts here:
1.all people on earth want self-rule.
maybe that is true, maybe not. i am guessing that people don't want to be ruled over but want to rule themselves, and to exercise rule fairly. i doubt anyone likes a rich fat cat to decide everything for them, while they suffer in poverty. maybe some people think this is natural and inevitable, but if they thought the rich person's wealth were at their expense, they would probably revolt, at least in spirit.
2.all people want a life. they want to be able to live and have a decent life, free from conflict war suffering and want. free to live well enough. that matters more than the type of govt.
moses, i have heard you make that argument before, and i think it is true, but not enough. #2 by itself isn't enough if you feel you are being cheated in life by unjust people who exercise power over you. there was the "bourgeois revolution" in france, after all, in 1830.

the question is how your voice must be heard. my reference to the gathering under the tree was to an ideal of direct democracy, which can't accommodate the size of a national population, so it has to be representative of some kind. my reference to the states was simply to say, we in the states are far from having an equitable representative democracy, much farther from one-person one-vote that most countries, in fact have a better shot at.

you question whether point 1. is true, that most people want to be able to vote, for their vote to count as much as anyone else's. perhaps i think this is true and natural because i've lived with this as a natural concept, i.e., socialized to believe it. i don't think it would be different to think this in african states or elsewhere. the military coups are not expressions of people who are opposed to one-person one-vote, but against govts that are failing their needs, or that are lacking military support, and military oligarchs won't permit their wealth to be threatened by democratic states. The revolts in mali and burkina can be seen as disappointment in their govt, not an end to democratic forms of govt.

i do agree with your premise: "As you must have surmised by now, what I'm calling for is a self-critical and deconstructive reevaluation of the terms, concepts, buzzwords, and assumptions we take for granted as starting points and baselines for our conversation on democracy in Africa."
i like the openness to thinking you are calling for. but i don't agree that universal suffrage is somehow suspect by being associated with a european and not african social patterns or history; i don't agree that a people who fought for their freedom were not fighting for the right to vote.
 maybe they want to question that right now, but i am skeptical. we can say everything is on the table: there is nothing in american style democracy that i think other countries should necessarily imitate. i did not mean to say that at all. there are good things we have, and bad things, but no one can say we have an equitable democratic system. if i say  most people want some version of it, it is because i believe it goes along with wanting to be free to vote, to express their opinions, to support their political party. There is nothing intrinsically western in this desire.

but it has to go along with #2 as well, a life worth living.

the last point: western countries tie aid to human rights, unlike china or russia. is that a bad thing? i favor insuring human rights everywhere: no govt should have the right to torture its people, imprison journalists, etc. if aid is to be given, it seems right that the govt adhere to humanrights standards. if the govt giving the aid is itself an oppressive state, the state receiving the aid might have cause to grumble, but not cause to abuse its own people.

the problem is not tying aid to practices, it is the exercise of power that is really in question. should one state have the power to dictate to another? should one group of countries be able to do so? the coup in mali has been challenged by ecowas. many countries were invaded by regional forces of others, or called on troops of others, like mozambique calling on rwanda for soldiers, or somalia or sudan or car, all having foreign troops come in, in one guise on another. sometimes this seems like a foreign imposition, or worse, like russia's mercenary wagner group; sometimes it is much more positive, or might be, like uganda troops sent to the drc to stop the adf.
i don't want europe or the u.s. imposing their notions of governance on african states. but i also don't want any foreign govt to go propping up repressive regimes, just to do business, like china in s sudan, or anywhere where there is money to be made.
okay, this is what i might have said if i had finished the email. again sorry for a point that so angered you. but feel free to whack at any of these ideas, now...

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 2:34 PM

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 25, 2022, 6:50:02 PM1/25/22
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see attached for chart of african poll on democracy, country by country

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 5:35 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 
from the african studies review piece on democracy, the claims about popularity of democracy in africa are shown here:
i can't seem to get a copy of the chart. will try in a minute w screen shot. the summary is that democracy is strongly preferred, as stated below.
this is african studies review, 64:3, sept 2021:719.
like people around the world, wish to “assert their own agency” (Mwangi
2014:94).
Popular Attitudes toward Democracy
After years of living under unresponsive authoritarian governments that
failed to engage meaningfully with their citizens, African societies demon-
strate a strong desire to be able to choose their leaders. Nationally represen-
tative surveys carried out by the Afrobarometer group between 2016 and 2018
in thirty-five countries find that strong majorities prefer democracy to any
other form of government in every state surveyed except for the small
monarchy of eSwatini (Figure 1). It is important to note that the Afrobarom-
eter sample does not include some of the most authoritarian states such as
Rwanda and is therefore not fully representative. However, the survey does
cover a number of highly authoritarian countries including Gabon, Togo,
Figure 1. Support for democracy in Africa 2016–2018 (%) SOURCE:
Afrobarometer (2019)
Senegal
Nigeria
Niger
Namibia
Malawi
Botswana
African Studies Keyword: Democracy 719


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 3:42 PM
Screenshot 2022-01-25 at 17.36.02.png.pdf

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 25, 2022, 6:50:02 PM1/25/22
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kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 3:42 PM

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:04:31 AM1/26/22
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Ken

I apologize if I came across as angry. I didn't mean to. I was just expressing a strong opinion in disagreement with your point. 

I would caution against pushing the Afrobarometer survey findings. As you know, the result of any poll or survey depends on how the question is framed, and indeed when I looked beyond the numbers to the question posed, matters became clearer. Social scientists say you can make quantitative data say what you want it to say. Some people call it lying with data. 

In the case of this survey, is it not predictable and obvious that in 2021/22 if you ask people generically on any continent if they prefer democracy to autocracy they would say they prefer democracy? Support for democracy, as a generic construct, would of course come out ahead of autocracy. But that is a false dichotomy, a deceptive framing, a methodological sleight of hand. 

For one, it is a predictable testament to the triumph and normativation of the Western paradigm of liberal democratic supremacy, which is itself a function of the West's political-economic dominance, marked by the globalization of the ideology of political and economic liberalization. 

Secondly, when you ask about specific things, instead of "democracy" as a generic lump sum, you will get a completely different result. For instance, if you asked Africans the hypothetical question of whether they prefer a dysfunctional, corruption-nurturing, and impoverishing democracy to a stable, peaceful, and perhaps even mildly developmental autocracy, you'd be surprised by the results. Do you believe that if asked if they prefer the current "democratic" chaos or a return to Ghadaffi's autocratic but stable rule, they would prefer the former?

This is 2022. We live in a post-cold war world of Western liberal democratic dominance, and after almost thirty years and billions of dollars spent on global pro-democracy propaganda and foreign policies that helped create a political world in which democracy seems both the norm and inevitable. Even at that, with all these factors, and even with the prejudicial framing of the question, the percentage of support for democracy, generically, in Africa is a rather thin majority, which is significantly down from its peak in the 2000s. Clearly, there is a growing disillusionment with liberal democracy and its idea of voting and elections, a phenomenon further illustrated by widespread continental voter apathy (with only 29 percent voter participation in some elections).

And it is not simply that "democracy" has failed to deliver an improved life, although of course that is a major factor. In many cases, liberal democracy, which is messy and expensive, has drained the resources of these states--in both licit and illicit ways. It has also resulted in costly and dangerous political gridlocks that have threatened the sovereignty of several nations. And then, of course, under the guise of democracy, autocrats have used the very rules of that democracy (the idea of elections as the conferrer of legitimacy) to perpetuate themselves, often with the complicity of foreign Western actors, in power and take away the ability of citizens to kick out unpopular leaders.

Western countries, with their decentralized structures, political and legal institutions, and robust economies can bear and weather the costs and constraints of the dysfunctions and messiness of liberal democracy. Not so for poor countries whose poor citizens are impatient and want things to work, decisions to be taken quickly, and governments to govern with alacrity and decisiveness. In many cases, liberal democracy constrains these possibilities, and Africans look nostalgically to the days of military autocratic rule when, whatever other problems existed, there was no political impasse or gridlock and when decisions, good or bad, were quickly taken.

I would not cite the ECOWAS condemnation of these coups. They don't tell us anything other than 1) the ECOWAS leaders are anti-coup because obviously they don't want to to toppled and want to discourage their own army from thinking of staging a coup; and 2) they want to please Western donors and remain on the right  side of the so-called "international community" and its Western-influenced consensus on "democracy." As we have seen from the celebrations that followed the coups, the decision of ECOWAS and the anti-coup disposition of African leaders are in direct conflict with the reactions of the citizens of the countries experiencing coups.

Another point: It's true as you said that Africans fought for voting rights in the era of democratization (1990s/2000s), but the leaders of that movement were small groups of middle class professionals funded from and by the West. Regular Africans, many unlettered and rural, followed the lead of the urban pro-democracy elites and got swept up in the pro-democracy excitement and expectational frenzy of the time. 

Most importantly, as I have argued elsewhere, they were promised many alleged dividends of democracy, which got them excited, and which promised to make their lives significantly better than their lives were under military and one-party rule while giving them a voice and making the government more accountable. 

In other words, Africans were willing to give liberal democracy a chance, to try it out and test the hype. They were desperate for development, accountability, improved living, and dignity. They were desperate to exit poverty and enter prosperity. And those who sold liberal democracy promised that "democracy" would cure all these ills, that all the people had to do was come out and participate and vote. They did that, and have done so for almost thirty years, and they can see clearly that liberal democracy is not a catalyst of development, prosperity, stability, and accountability.

That, in a nutshell, is what you're presenting here uncritically and ahistorically as Africans fighting for the right to vote and for democracy. In their minds, more than the abstract elements of democracy, they were, as they had been promised, voting to make their lives better, a gambit that has not panned out in a continent in which time is a luxury because of the depth and scope of personal and national challenges and aspirations.

Thirty years later, Africans are souring on democracy for understandable reasons. They realize they have been duped, scammed. And they're changing their minds, as anyone in the same situation would do.

You see, Africans are not as rigidly ideological when it comes to politics and systems of government as you Westerners tend to be. Theirs is no abstract commitment to a system of government. If a particular form of government they supported and even fought for in the past, which was fraudulently imposed on them on false premises, fails to live up to the tangible and intangible promises attached to it, they're not afraid or too proud to walk away from it and to even embrace a system of government (military rule) they once rejected and fought against. Their view of political systems is that whatever system is adopted has to respond to their needs and be aligned to their aspirations and peculiar realities.

I think that this quality of pragmatism and non-ideological flexibility is something to be admired and praised, and from which Westerners and their doctrinaire and almost creedal allegiance to liberal democracy can learn. 

Deceived and manipulated or not, the fact is that Africans supported liberal democracy in the 1990s and early 2000s. Now they've seen how not only chaotic and dysfunctional it is but also how, in extreme cases, it can destroy the very fabric of the state and render it too weak to respond to challenges while ballooning corruption. They then say, no, this is not what we signed up for; this is not what we were told democracy would produce. We want stability and some peace and a government that can take quick, decisive measures. If that government is a military one that sweeps away the politicians and suspends the constitutions then so be it. That's strategic, pragmatic, and non-ideological thinking on their part.

Finally, I restate my strong disagreement that elections are necessary for democracy--democracy in the generic sense of the word. You can have democracy through selection, through inherited authority, or even, as is the case in Iran, a religiously sanctioned supreme authority that delegates or reserves authority. You can also have a democracy without multiple parties or without parties at all, let alone multiparty elections.

You can have accountability, representation, legitimacy, and participation--the four cardinal principles of democracy--without holding increasingly meaningless, expensive, destructive, and in some cases war-triggering elections. If some countries come to this conclusion, then let them devise and nurture their own kind of democracy along those lines. If some African countries want to pursue these four tenets of democracy through periodic elections--with or without parties--then let them do that. If some want to have selections or gradations of selection processes, let them have that as their own iteration of democracy as well.

To begin from a premise that periodic voting and elections are what makes a country democratic is again to valorize, reify, and even fetishize the Western liberal model we should be critiquing, and which is even failing in the West. Elections are, at best, elitist contraptions that give the illusion of popular legitimacy and at worst are expensive rituals for political elites to acquire and keep power at the expense of regular folk.
 



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Gloria Emeagwali

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:04:31 AM1/26/22
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Ken

This not up to date. Since 2018 Covid19 
has wreaked havoc, and the Jihadists 
have terrorized millions. The major reason 
for  support in Mali , Guinea, and Burkina
Faso is disillusionment at the weak civilian 
governments and the duplicity of France.
The soldiers decry the lack of weapons to fight and protect themselves  and the 
civilians empathize with them.



Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:05:35 AM1/26/22
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But ...celebrating coups was long a tradition in Nigeria, perhaps with the exception of the Abacha coup...in his case, there was great jubilation, perhaps only in Southern Nigeria, when his demise was announced- an unforgettable experience- a stranger and I hugged in the street out of sheer joy, so great was the pressure he had exerted on the nation in his utter desperation to continue in power, even as a civilian through a mock election in which all parties had accepted him as a consensus candidate out of fear for their lives.

Buhari has entered a similar level of almost absolute dislike, perhaps across Nigeria, with perhaps the only groups thinking otherwise being some Fulani thinking his Fulanocetricism serves their interests or those he has appointed into office.

I see the jubilation at coups in Nigeria, some of which I've experienced first hand, as a demonstration of ignorance of what it takes to build a democratic nation.

When critiquing forms of democracy, we need to be careful to specify exactly what we are doing.

Are we critiquing a particular way of doing democracy or democracy of any type?

This is critical so the discursive space is not taken over by totalitarianism, which is just round the corner, as evident in fragile democracies and even in the US, with the Trump example.

I am not able to find a political system superior to democracy. 


Thanks

Toyin

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Toyin Falola

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:18:19 AM1/26/22
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Moses and Ken:

The implosion of the Sahel is long in the making; so no surprise. It is like expressing a surprise were Biya to be overthrown today. It is long overdue.

I cannot lay my hands on the document, but I was part of the conversation in Egypt that concluded that we cannot define democracy to exclude putting food on people’s table. This was well circulated.

Any government that cannot deliver security, including food security, ensure poverty eradication, put the energy and skills of young men and women to productive use, is a failure, irrespective of what you call it.

TF

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 26, 2022, 6:43:56 AM1/26/22
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Frightening:

"Not so for poor countries whose poor citizens are impatient and want things to work, decisions to be taken quickly, and governments to govern with alacrity and decisiveness.

 In many cases, liberal democracy constrains these possibilities, and Africans look nostalgically to the days of military autocratic rule when, whatever other problems existed, there was no political impasse or gridlock and when decisions, good or bad, were quickly taken."

Moses Ochonu

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 27, 2022, 6:22:39 AM1/27/22
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hi moses
thanks for your long, considered response.
i am tempted to try to respond point by point, but the idea defeats me, and in the end feel i am more in the position of the amateur confronting the expert. certainly it is not my field of expertise, except that we all participate in a public field where non-expertise opinions are often welcome.

you want to challenge established ideas, and i agree with that as a principle.
but the established ideas you take on are, at time, imputed to groups (you call these groups Africans or Westerners), and i don't agree with that portrayal of people as a single entity.

when i look at most countries in the world today, i believe the populations are divided into two major groups, at least, with minor offshoots. i don't know why that is the case. but let me try it:
--Often it is simply a party in power opposed by those out of power. some might want to see this opposition in identity terms. for instance, when i grew up it was white anglo-saxon protestants who represented the dominant ruling group, and their opposite numbers included sort of "everybody else." that started to change, with presidents, with the catholic kennedy.

 anyway, the real major opposing groups in the united states, when not put into racial and ethnic terms, is left/right, or liberal/conservative. you will find jews split into liberal/conservative; also black people or hispanic are split in that fashion; etc.
--if you go to europe the same split occurs. in s africa there are similar splits, with the anc holding forth for one idea of progressive politics, and coalitions of others opposed.
--you continually refer to the ideal of a western liberal democracy as representing one pole, and another as presumably autocracy, although you develop a series of models based on 4 criteria that offer different possibilities. here are the four criteria for governance: accountability, representation, legitimacy, and participation--
you call them "the four cardinal principles of democracy" and that they can be accomplished without necessarily holding destructive elections.
"If some African countries want to pursue these four tenets of democracy through periodic elections--with or without parties--then let them do that. If some want to have selections or gradations of selection processes, let them have that as their own iteration of democracy as well."
--but the word that i would object to in this line of reasoning is not simply the binary democracy/autocracy, but also capitalist/non-capitalist.
you use "liberal" democracy as holding to a model of elections as the essential western element and flaw. and you rightly point out how often it is in relatively failed states or highly imperfect ones, where the people are discontented or miserable, that this ideal of democracy fails.
--but for me we live in an order in which the role of capital, the controls of capitalism, the workings of global capitalism, work against the interests of the majority of people, and in favor of the interest of the owners of capital, the shareholders, the money investors, the profit makers and profiteers. it is global neoliberal capitalism that holds us in thrall, not liberal democracy. and the "liberal" side is actually neoliberal capitalism.

you posit westerners as a broad category who espouse a political order that has become naturalized for them. all true. but you exclude the radical divisions of all western states that could be seen much more clearly along economic lines, as republicans vs democrats in the u.s. echo pro-capitalist sentiments vs pro-public sentiments. i am not expressing that clearly, because it isn't really socialism, but we could use the neologism of socialism as representing social democracy and set that against the conventional liberal democracy you evoke--what i would call dominant capitalism.

similar processes are true in africa, where the group "africans" you cite as wanting this or that are described unproblematically as a unified entity.
not so.
i don't want to go on, for fear of being too long. but simply put, i believe the large proportion of african people who sought freedom after colonialism wanted not only the foreign boot off their neck, not only their own people in charge, but also a better life. when the new states turned to dictatorships, the "suns of independence" turned into repressive, disappointing regimes for many. what was the disappointment in? the failures of rule that generated fear and oppression, not freedom. the struggle for a good life always mattered; no one was ever happy with a regime, under democracy or not, that could not put food on the table. but a sense that your four ideals were being observed, accountability, representation, legitimacy, and participation, never disappeared for long. (i lived in cameroon for 2 years in the 70s, and people were really afraid to hold forth publicly on any political view)

if you want to call that democracy, as an ideal, that's fine. if you want to say, let the people determine how to achieve these ideals, no one would complain. but unless you describe mechanisms that people can debate, both sides free to speak, it won't be a real discussion.
as for my own personal views of the ideal, i would begin with socialist values that must serve the needs of the people, and a non-autocratic  system permitting the 4 ideals you cite for political processes.
i don't believe that an autocracy will accomplish any of those 4 things in the long run, even if it can better accomplish the goals of food on the table in the short run. this was the real dilemma for gramsci when he asked why the proletariat voted for mussolini, turning away from the communist party. in the end, they hung him upside-down till he died, and rebuilt their lives along socialist democratic lines....(for a while)
as for elections--that could be the subject for another set of exchanges. i certainly don't believe in elections for their own sake: often systems are warped to avoid permitting people to participate meaningfully)
thanks for the discussion.
ken


kenneth harrow

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michigan state university

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Moses Ochonu

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“I cannot lay my hands on the document, but I was part of the conversation in Egypt that concluded that we cannot define democracy to exclude putting food on people’s table. This was well circulated.

Any government that cannot deliver security, including food security, ensure poverty eradication, put the energy and skills of young men and women to productive use, is a failure, irrespective of what you call it.“—Falola


I rest my case. That is the rational, self-interested and pragmatic position of Africans, which causes them to celebrate coups against civilian “democratic” governments and autocratic military and civilian governments, and at other times to enthusiastically fight for and participate in multiparty electoral democratic contests. On the surface the celebration of coups may appear as ignorance of democracy, as Toyin Adepoju claims, or even as a form of ignorant nihilism, but I would argue that it is a radical, pragmatic, existential political flexibility, which is at variance with the abstract, ideological, political commitments of Westerners, which leads them to a mindset of democracy for democracy’s sake. Africans have no patience for democracy as its own reward, and they say rightly that if democracy (or any other type of governing technology for that matter) cannot give us peace, stability, food, and other basic needs, we have no use for it and must embrace something new no matter repugnant that something new is to the Western world, the international community, and ECOWAS/AU leaders. The West can and should learn from this pragmatic African political disposition and temper its ideological fanaticism and arrogant certitudes regarding democracy. But then again, as Gloria stated earlier, the West is not even as democratic as it claims and uses it merely as a rhetoric to accomplish its foreign policy goals in poor countries.


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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 27, 2022, 2:12:11 PM1/27/22
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Toyin Adepoju,

About the history of Africans celebrating coups, I think that framing is too narrow. Africans celebrate regime change when the previous regime was a failed, dysfunctional, oppressive, and corrupt one. They have celebrated when military regimes have given way to elected civilian ones. They have also celebrated when civilian, elected regimes were overthrown by military ones. The fact that, often, the new regime is just as bad or worse than the previous one is not the issue. Rather, the issue is that the celebration is an expression of relief and the hope that the new regime would be better. When you've had it up to your neck with a terrible regime, any change is bound to elicit your support and cause you to celebrate. It is human.

Anyway, another interlocutor on Facebook raised the same issue of the long history of African celebrating coups, and I answered their query. I reproduce the exchange below:


But coming to the issues you raised Prof. Moses Ochonu, I wish to ask: Has there been a lot of coups in Africa right from the 60s, which the people did not troop out to the streets to rejoice at first?
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    Moses Ochonu
    Onyemaechi Ogbunwezeh My brother, the short answer to your question is no. However, the period after 1960s was/is understood as the period of one-party rule and of postcolonial dysfunction and disappointment, marked by autocratic rule supported by Cold War adversaries/superpowers, a lack of growth and development, and a general stagnancy. Post-cold war democratization was sold fraudulently and on false premise to Africans/Africa as a cure for these ailments. The pro-democracy funders of the West and their local agents claimed that democratization would solve the problems of autocracy, accountability, poverty, underdevelopment, etc. That was the 1990s. About thirty years later, tell me which of these 419 promises has panned out from our adoption and practice of Western liberal democracy? We were scammed, pure and simple.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfO4AX5EJ6Q-TFYpnLL_9D5v0zyuGiUYfg%3DRoVhR%3DdMG7A%40mail.gmail.com.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 27, 2022, 2:12:28 PM1/27/22
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i made the same point in my posting on jan 25. i wrote:
to begin... i have two thoughts here:
1.all people on earth want self-rule.
maybe that is true, maybe not. i am guessing that people don't want to be ruled over but want to rule themselves, and to exercise rule fairly. i doubt anyone likes a rich fat cat to decide everything for them, while they suffer in poverty. maybe some people think this is natural and inevitable, but if they thought the rich person's wealth were at their expense, they would probably revolt, at least in spirit.
2.all people want a life. they want to be able to live and have a decent life, free from conflict war suffering and want. free to live well enough. that matters more than the type of govt.
moses, i have heard you make that argument before, and i think it is true, but not enough. #2 by itself isn't enough if you feel you are being cheated in life by unjust people who exercise power over you. there was the "bourgeois revolution" in france, after all, in 1830.

i'd add that this motivation (#2) doesn't necessarily enroll all the people.
the trumpists tried a coup on jan 6th, and trump tried to play on people's discontent, many with their jobs. but others opposed them. the people celebrating in the streets of ouaga might not represent all the burkinabe. one picture tells 1000 words, but what is the 1001st word?
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 

“I cannot lay my hands on the document, but I was part of the conversation in Egypt that concluded that we cannot define democracy to exclude putting food on people’s table. This was well circulated.

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 27, 2022, 4:18:52 PM1/27/22
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Democracy takes time to mature.

Not appreciating this may be seen as the reason why Nigerians celebrate  a military take over of a democtratically  elected govt.

Thanks

Toyin

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 27, 2022, 4:18:53 PM1/27/22
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so here is another factor, on a par with people's need for food:
security.
let;s say: leadership, be it democratic or autocratic, military or civilian, must satisfy people's need for
--food
--safety
--self-realization, meaning freedom to express themselves.

the latter could be by a vote, or a voice in a ruling council, or its equivalent.
Burkina Faso is the latest country to experience a coup in a region where democracy had seemed entrenched.


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 8:09 AM

Moses Ochonu

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Jan 27, 2022, 8:47:34 PM1/27/22
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Africans don’t have the time and luxury to wait for democracy to mature, whatever that means. They’re dying in the hands of Mr. democracy and you’re asking them to keep dying while democracy matures, whenever that is.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 27, 2022, at 3:18 PM, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 27, 2022, 8:47:35 PM1/27/22
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Ken,

I think you and I are working off of two starkly different experiential and conceptual framings regarding democracy. That's the reason we don't see things in the same way.

Take your understanding of democracy. Whereas I want to decenter, pluralize, and provincialize it, you seem to want to singularize, universalize, homogenize, and reinscribe its claim as a settled ideal. Our two positions are opposed, and that's okay. 

Perhaps if I grew up in the US and was socialized to look at democracy in the same abstract and universal way that you do, and perhaps if you grew up in Nigeria and were socialized into more pragmatic and existential perspectives on politics and political aspirations. If this were the case, I could see things from your perspective, and you from mine, but alas, as things stand, we seem to be writing past each other.

The other seemingly irreconcilable disagreement is your insistence on maintaining the unhelpful ideological and abstract binary of democracy versus autocracy, which is straight from the Western liberal taxonomic toolkit that does not align with how things actually manifest on the ground in African countries.

In many African countries, including Nigeria, many elected "democratic" administrations are more autocratic than regimes that were or are labeled autocratic by Western observers simply because they did/do not hold multiparty elections.

The current "democratic" regime of Buhari in Nigeria has been more autocratic, in several respects, than the Abacha regime, the poster regime for autocracy and tyranny in the Western framing of Nigeria's recent political history, which tends to fetishize the abstract discourse of human rights to the exclusion of existential redistributive imperatives. Buhari has jailed more journalists, raided more media houses, arrested and detained people arbitrarily and extra-judicially, and has violated the Nigerian constitution more than Abacha did. And yet it is an elected civilian democratic government, considered unsuitable for the label "autocratic" in the binary language of Western liberal political discourse.

You know the situation with elected "democratic" governments in Cameroon, Mali, Guinea, B/Faso, The Gambia, Senegal, etc. These were/are regimes baptized with the moniker of "democratic" and yet they were/are no less autocratic than unelected "undemocratic" ones. 

Conversely, one can identify "autocratic" or "undemocratic" regimes that afford citizens more civic freedoms, not to mention a much better quality of life and security than "democratic" ones.

So, for me, the labels of democratic and autocratic are almost meaningless in the African context. You on the other hand seem unwilling to interrogate this semiotic instability and indeterminacy. Nor are you willing to proceed from this to question the catalytic power dynamics of economic and political neoliberalism; the genealogy, provenance, and contradictions of the democracy that came to Africa in the 1990s post-Cold War era of democratization; and the ways in which these foreign factors imposed a particularly liberal variety of democracy on Africa through the instrumentality of blackmail, aid conditionalities, and dollar-denominated propaganda.

I see nothing sacrosanct or settled about liberal democracy.  Democracy, generically speaking, is for me a semiotic umbrella, under which there are (or should be) varieties of ideas, practices, and techniques for governing complex polities to accomplish the goals of accountability, representation, legitimacy, and participation. 

Relatedly, for me, each society or people have the right to pursue these democratic ideals however they deem fit, and the template developed in the West from their own historical political experience should not be imposed on African states and peoples. Nor should this template be preserved even where the imposition began with colonization or was embraced by African anticolonial movements, which also adopted state structures and institutions bequeathed by European colonizers. 

To reiterate my earlier point, liberal democracy has proved disastrous for African states. It is not that dictatorships, military or otherwise, have fared better, but that is precisely why Africans are growing disillusioned and embracing unelected alternatives. It is why Africans celebrate coups when soldiers overthrow elected civilian autocratic and dysfunctional regimes only to also participate enthusiastically in efforts to replace military rulers with civilian elected officials when, predictably, military regimes falter. This is the non-ideological pragmatism I wrote about earlier. 

For most Africans, food, shelter, peace, security, and other existential benefits trump abstract notions of individual rights or elections or labels attached to particular governing systems. Most Africans do not have the luxury of judging "democracy" or any other kind of government for that matter on the criteria of individual freedom or rights, which, for them, do not have any meaning outside more pressing existential questions confronting them. Moreover, Africans have a more capacious definition of rights, freedoms, and participatory agency that lead them to alternative modes of democracy that liberal Westerners may perceive and label as "undemocratic."

Lastly, there is one contradiction in your last couple of posts. You cannot say the coup celebrations in B/Faso may not be representative of the majority of the population but then claim that "Africans" fought for "democracy" and civic rights in the 1990s when in fact this fight was, as you know, largely an elitist affair carried out by urban educated activists, students, and members of the African political class who were funded by Western donors, foundations, and governments. How can you equate that with "Africans" fighting for democracy and then question whether Burkinabes who spontaneously poured into streets to celebrate the coup represent the population of the country?

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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 27, 2022, 8:47:36 PM1/27/22
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Ken

Let me attempt to summarize this:

  •  More than  two million people have been displaced in the Sahel
  •  by the  terrorists, jihadists, bandits, or whatever you want to call them.
  •  Thousands have been killed.  The "terrorists" were at a time in control 
  • of about half of Burkina Faso.

  • The civilian government, and the French  Barkhane mission
  • could not handle the situation. More bark than bite.

  • The civilian governments refused to purchase the necessary equipment  
  • to fight the wars, diverting the allocations into their private accounts,
  • or their pet projects,  instead.


  • The French, who were supposed to assist,  allegedly made deals with the 
  • terrorists, and even held back the local soldiers when they tried to go
  •  against them, raising deep suspicions.

  • Therefore, most of the populations in this area have welcomed the
  • military leaders,  who vow to restore security with the help of Russia, or 
  • the metaphorical  devil himself, if  necessary. Time will tell how successful 
  • the triad in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso would be  but at this point in time,
  • there is hope. People are voting with  their feet. In this case, they are walking away
  • from the ballot box, for now.


         

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 

Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 8:09 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

i made the same point in my posting on jan 25. i wrote:

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 28, 2022, 6:17:34 AM1/28/22
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Reformatted


Professor Gloria Emeagwali 
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research 
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;

2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;

2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 4:42 PM

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 28, 2022, 6:17:34 AM1/28/22
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Africans are dying even more in the hands of non-democratic govts.

We've been there. Over and over again. The hope that the violent thief of power will be the messiah. It has not worked.

 Democracy is a learning process, a process of adjustment.

Perhaps the Chinese model is being seen as something for Africa-delivering economic well being within a dictatorship. That has inbuilt limitations that assume the human being is all about their bellies and material satisfactions.

I am not able to see any significant alternatives to the democratic ideal 

Toyin

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 28, 2022, 6:17:34 AM1/28/22
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Arguing that Buhari is worse than Abacha is problematic.

Buhari is evil but at least he is not remaining in power.

He is leaving next year.

The people who are likely to replace him are not likely to pursue his brazen alliance with terrorist movements.

For those people to come to power, Nigerians have to vote.

Thus, those people are working on convincing Nigerians to vote for them.

Abacha not only came to power through a coup, he was using assassination and other forms of terror in working towards succeeding himself in the form of a civilian ruler, causing all political parties to adopt him as their consensus Presidential be candidate, out of fear for their lives.

The climate of fear he imposed on the country was so horrible, people. particularly in Southern Nigeria, jubilated openly when he died mysteriously.

Our journey from the Nzegwu coup and later Murtala  Muhammed and Danjuma coup, to various civilian govts, to IBB, to Abacha, to OBJ, to Yaradua,to GEJ, to Buhari has been a learning experience for us.

The Buhari era has played in a great role in breaking the  myth of the mutuality of interests of the North and it's politicians, a myth central to Buhari's victory, a victory rooted in the "power must return to the North" mantra, fueling Boko Haram Islamic terrorism in the earlier phase of it's 2011 resurgence as a response to the then new GEJ govt and Boko Haram'sc tacit and at times open support from people in the Muslim North to the strange paradoxes of the Chibok saga enabled by the Borno state governor keeping such a rural school open against the orders of the fed govt.

The Northern populace are being hardest hit by the current combined Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen/ Fulani militia/Fulani bandits terrorism crisis, long after they and even those in the South did not show significant sympathy for the recurrent bloodbaths engineered by the Fulani herdsmen and militia in the Middle Belt and later in the South.

The Middle Belt and the Northern populace now know that having a Northern Muslim President does not mean they are going to be better off. They will have a chance to express that awareness in the 2023 elections. Under Abacha, such options of choice did not exist.

I become worried when a journalist, like Sowore of Sahara Reporters did in the time of the desperate struggle to unseat GEJ, or as Moses is doing now, begin to legitimize military rule.

There is more to social management than feeding people. Social systems are holistic. Development, including political development,  cannot be imposed but must develop organically. 

The Chinese example of prosperity through dictatorship is problematic.

 The govt holds on to power through sheer force of arms, brutal censorship, propaganda, stifling control of the political process and, in my view, equating material well being, which they are providing through a combination of state and private sector initiatives, with all that the citizens need. 

Someone described that scenario as a time bomb, a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

The Saudi Arabian example of proserity through monarchical rule has it's own problems, operating in terms of a historical progression and socio/religious foundation perhaps impossible in Africa. 

What I see as capable of moving the debate forward in Moses perspectives might be his argument for exploring varied forms of democracy, not upholding autocracy as good for Africans as long as it guarantees their material well being.

Thanks

Toyin


Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 28, 2022, 6:17:34 AM1/28/22
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? i don't think in terms of democracy as maturing. i don't think of politics in that way, as if it were more mature in one country and less in another. one hears that often: "american democracy" since 1783 or whatever date, and democracy new in such and such a state, say since independence in 1960.

johannes fabian calls that non-coeval time, and i agree with that.

but i still don't believe we can use "africans" as if there were such a conglomerate or group, waiting for this or that political system. we have people with several different interests, and who look to different solutions to the question of governance, all depending on where you are and when you are asking.

we could ask about burkina now, and i'd be very interested in hearing about what the people in burkina are hoping for or supporting. i suspect you'd get lots of different answers.

or in nigeria, asking in one region vs another, wouldn't that generate different replies?
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 4:49 PM

Toyin Falola

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Jan 28, 2022, 6:26:02 AM1/28/22
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Moses is not legitimizing military rule. He is saying that democracy is not sacrosanct, and you cannot hang on to it without transformative deliverables.

 

You are an orisa man. The engagement between humans and orisa is plastic, underscored by the saying:

Orisa, if you cannot add to my blessings, leave me alone

Orisa, if you cannot alter my destiny for good, retain my essence as of the day I met you.

 

Then you go outside, take the orisa, and set it on fire.

You go inside and adopt another one.

 

The agency of choice, based on spiritual and material benefits.

TF

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 28, 2022, 9:25:31 AM1/28/22
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i don't disagree. democracy is hardly sacrosanct for me. what is closer to sacrosanct are people's rights, including the right to hold and voice an opinion as long as you don't hard others.

my argument is not around democracy per se at all, it is more around the economic system linked into world exchanges, i.e., the way capitalism today is functioning. the political systems that get erected are tied always to capital and who controls it.
if a military body takes control of the government anduses its power to take over the ownership of the major economic forces of the state, that is a form of govt that should be resisted. and yet it is happening throughout the world that neoliberal capitalism, under the auspices of globalization, has resulted in oligarchical control of wealth, at the expense of the workers, of ordinary people, and even of whole nations. the

the wealth flowing out of east congo fuels autocratic regimes or locally autocratic militaristic militias, and as a result in just the drc alone there are now 5 million internally displaced people, another million refugees, and perhaps 5-6 million people who died in the past 20 years.

the economic system is unjust, and it is the functionof govt to insure justice in society. if the injustice is sustained by a so-called democracy, but is not really such, like in rwanda, say, then it is a bad govt. the fault is not democracy, however, nor elections, but the abuse of democracy. if other systems were to lead to  justice, all the better.

but here's what i think happens in today's world. if a leader who is generally regarded as decent comes to power by a coup, he can remainin power only with the support of the military, or with a complement of power brokers, and after time those supporters want their payback, their money.
that happened with habyarimana, and so many others. the exceptions, like sankora, are rare.
k

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2022 6:25 AM

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 28, 2022, 9:43:09 AM1/28/22
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Toyin Adepoju,

Even Ken, to whom I directed most of my posts on this thread has not for once claimed that I am legitimizing military rule or that I am recommending it as a better alternative for Africans. That's because he knows that that's not what I'm doing. Falola, who gets me, has chimed in to help you understand me. Anyway, here is what I wrote in my last response, which conclusively refutes your strange reading of my position as an advocacy for military rule:

"It is not that dictatorships, military or otherwise, have fared better, but that is precisely why Africans are growing disillusioned and embracing unelected alternatives. It is why Africans celebrate coups when soldiers overthrow elected civilian autocratic and dysfunctional regimes only to also participate enthusiastically in efforts to replace military rulers with civilian elected officials when, predictably, military regimes falter. This is the non-ideological pragmatism I wrote about earlier." 

My point is that Africans are smarter and more pragmatic in their pursuit of elusive political and material aspirations than you give them credit for. They're not as hung up on labels, ideologies, and isms as some of you are. You're wrong and condescending to call them ignorant and impatient about democracy because they're celebrating coups, and for advancing the equally condescending and evolutionary notion of mature and immature democracy. And it's not just about bread and butter issues either--or what Bayart calls the politics of the belly. Africans' political philosophy is a lot more sophisticated than that. They're saying, if this "democracy" cannot put food on our table and give us other existential comforts, it should at least ensure peace and stability so that we can fend for ourselves in peace. It should not endanger the state and citizens and it should not normalize dysfunction, chaos, and insecurity. And it should not violate the constitution and other "democratic" institutions that should make it possible for us to punish and peacefully remove a failed, autocratic elected civilian incumbent. If a "democratic" regime fails these expectations, then of what use is this "democracy"? That is what they're saying with their actions, including the celebration of coups.

On the Buhari-Abacha comparison, here's what I wrote to Ken in my last post: 

The current "democratic" regime of Buhari in Nigeria has been more autocratic, in several respects, than the Abacha regime, the poster regime for autocracy and tyranny in the Western framing of Nigeria's recent political history, which tends to fetishize the abstract discourse of human rights to the exclusion of existential redistributive imperatives. Buhari has jailed more journalists, raided more media houses, arrested and detained people arbitrarily and extra-judicially, and has violated the Nigerian constitution more than Abacha did. And yet it is an elected civilian democratic government, considered unsuitable for the label "autocratic" in the binary language of Western liberal political discourse."

I stated that Buhari's regime is, in several respects, more autocratic than Abacha's. Did Abacha forcefully remove a sitting Supreme Court judge? Did Abacha's regime use security agencies to invade the homes of Supreme court judges, high court judges, and other judicial officials? Did Abacha disregard as many court orders as Buhari has done? There are other examples I could cite.

As I told Ken, I don't deal with ideological binaries. I deal with facts on the ground, with reality.

Of course, there are areas in which Abacha was worse than Buhari. You mentioned one of them: the use of an assissination squad against political opponents and perceived enemies.

At any rate, you seem to have missed my overarching point. It is very common to hear the "pro-democracy" brigade say, well, "elected "democratic" governments in Africa may not have improved lives and may have caused more crisis and insecurity, but at least they have opened up the political space and have expanded civic freedoms. My counterargument, instantiated by the Buhari-Abacha and other examples, is simple: even in terms of guaranteeing or expanding civic freedoms or what some people call human rights, there is no difference between so-called autocratic governments and so-called democratic ones in Africa as the latter are at least as autocratic if not more than the former.

You know the story of Mali and Guinea, where "democratic" incumbents, aside from failing to improve lives and aside from plunging their countries into intractable conflict, effectively built tyrannical, autocratic police states even while professing to be and being recognized as "democratic." One of them even set aside the constitution to run and rig himself in for a third term in office, a civilian coup that attracted neither sanctions nor reprimand from the usual suspects--ECOWAS, AU, UN, France, and the so-called international community.




Toyin Falola

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Jan 28, 2022, 9:43:31 AM1/28/22
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Ken:

State capture is a global phenomenon, irrespective of the system. US is also a victim of state capture: Wall street dominates the Main street.  In all political spaces, there are those who want to capture the state—the diesel merchants who don’t want electricity to work; car manufacturers who don’t want rail system to work; etc. One sells liquor to you and the other passes you on to the liver doctor.

TF

 


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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 28, 2022, 9:59:37 AM1/28/22
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Exactly, Oga Falola. It's not about systems or labels or which is superior. The notion of bad and good government, already a relative concept, is systems-neutral in my opinion and in the opinion of most of my African interlocutors. It's not and should not be about this reductive and unhelpful binary of an undifferentiated "democracy" versus an undifferentiated "autocracy."



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB7247DE043A849F942A010E39F8229%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 28, 2022, 1:11:24 PM1/28/22
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toyin, if state capture is a global phenomenon, it is certainly worse in some places than others. zuma was the poster child for it in s africa, and i dare say, for all his warts, ramaphosa is considerably better than his corrupt predecessor.
if state capture is everywhere, and your example is wall street over main street, then i am not sure state capture is the right term. regardless, i called it global neoliberal capitalism, and remain convinced that the flow of power through global capitalist mechanisms is fundamentally in control and is fundamental to the inequalities that it has generated everywhere. it is perhaps worse here, say, in the US, than maybe norway or other places. but its ability to control mechanisms of trade, generating wealth for the few, is relatively universal.

that is no longer a simple question of autocracy vs democracy. i think of another state that is the poster child for military autocratic inequalities of wealth, and it is egypt. elections or no, the result is the army control of everything, with vast control of the wealth.
i wonder, without knowing, what are other egregious examples. zimbabwe? burundi? drc?
is it worse in equatorial guinea despite no elections? and what of myanmar, another great example of military rule=military ownership of all the wealth.

this is a problem, on  worldwide scale. maybe all we can do is ask where it seems better, and how we should try to get there.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

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michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Friday, January 28, 2022 9:39 AM

Toyin Falola

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Jan 28, 2022, 1:34:40 PM1/28/22
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Ken:

Of course, there will be differences:

i.                    Economic scale, efficiency, and economic rationalization. If Nigeria had a diversified economy, it would cushion some of the serious impacts.

ii.                  Location of corruption—if you privatize it, as in the US model, you disguise it

iii.               Absorptive level of corruption—if you have more resources, you can mask.

iv.                Rationalization—your elite can rationalize practices, creating deceptive labels.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 28, 2022, 1:42:25 PM1/28/22
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hi toyin, i think of our current capitalist system not as one in which corruption hides, in private as opposed to public, but as a system that is grounded in fundamental inequality, with the few wealthy people gobbling up excess resources and the large masses of people living either middle class or lower middle class or working class or impoverished classes not having a just share of the country's wealth.

most countries in the world have variations of this, and without a socialist sense of justice, the basic system that permits it is wrong.
as many have known only this, they imagine it is natural, rather than constructed; they imagine it was always like this, and in fact is recent, mostly coming on since reagan here or thatcher in england.

i knowingly used the word "socialist" aware how propaganda against communism has sullied the term, but the basic ideals are things we need to keep alive. get paid fairly for your work.
we don't have that when people like musk have too much, and street people are still begging in the streets.
ken

kenneth harrow

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Sent: Friday, January 28, 2022 1:25 PM

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jan 28, 2022, 4:09:08 PM1/28/22
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Is it possible to dissociate US 
democracy from US capitalism? 
There is state capture of the 
democracy  by corporations and 
banks, inclusive of Exxon, Boeing, 
coca-cola, Walmart,Goldman Sachs, 
Citigroup, Microsoft, Alphabet, 
Apple,Tesla, Lockeed, Big Pharma
and the huge corporations. Their 
representatives (CEOs and  top 
board members) meet at Bilderberg, 
almost annually  and  network 
with the Trilateral Commission.
They contribute campaign funds
to presidential elections, and are 
major players in  key organizations
such as the American Enterprise 
Institute etc. Former senators, 
governors, and state department 
officials take up positions in these 
corporations and banks, that in
turn may sponsor candidates
biennially and every four years
for the presidential elections.
It is a revolving door.
They also control the media.
Who controls the Washington 
Post, Fox News, CNN and CBS?
The line of demarcation 
between private and public 
policy, and financiers, bankers,
 corporate interests, and govt 
bureaucrats, has become almost 
non existent. 
We are witnessing, right now, 
a power struggle within the 
camp, that involves Republican 
Trumpistadores,  who represent some stakeholders on the far right,
inclusive of evangelical and
KKK footsoldiers. Note how they
are manipulating the voting
system to suit their own
interests.

US democracy and neoliberal
capitalism are intricately bound.
 If you criticize one you are criticizing 
the other. There is no escape route, Ken.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2022 1:41 PM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
 

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hi toyin, i think of our current capitalist system not as one in which corruption hides, in private as opposed to public, but as a system that is grounded in fundamental inequality, with the few wealthy people gobbling up excess resources and the large masses of people living either middle class or lower middle class or working class or impoverished classes not having a just share of the country's wealth.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 28, 2022, 4:26:09 PM1/28/22
to Emeagwali, Gloria (History), usaafric...@googlegroups.com
my problem with this is the word "control."
the major capitalist corporations exercise a lot of power and control, but for me your list is perhaps too all-emcompassing.
at this point i no longer feel i have any strong basis for my opinions as frankly this isn't my field. so it is only vaguely felt sentiments and doubts. i find it hard to believe all the media outlets you mention are "controlled" in the direct way you sense. i doubt that even the representatives and sentators are "controlled" so directly.
but i would agree that there is an undue influence on their positions, and that money determines it, so we'd have to ask, who finances their campaigns.
as it turns out republicans and democrats aren't the same on major issues, and whoever is financing them must be different sources.
i hate speculating so much on an issue i have no real expertise in, so i'll leave it at that.

the larger question is how we assess "american democracy" and its tie to capitalist forces. if by "democracy" we are evaluating the practical actual system in the states, it is pretty warped by the differential voting powers that vary from state to state, and that are warped by gerrymandering, as in my state, where republicans run the legislature but the actual voters are close to divided.
the two camps are very divided on key issues, over and over; so they tend to represent different interests that are in conflict. i'd probably want to know what those interests are, where the  power of capital determines how resources are spent, etc. but to come back to democracy as a creature of this stage of capitalism only means, to me, it is not capable of representing more accurately the interests of the electorate than that it is a failed system per se.
ken


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2022 4:07 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Jan 29, 2022, 7:03:12 PM1/29/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ghana is not safe from Coups – Col Aboagye

On Tuesday, 25 January 2022 at 02:36:52 UTC+1 MEOc...@gmail.com wrote:
Are coups back? That may not be the right question. The right question may be, what’s souring Africans on Western style democracy and making coups attractive and popular again? That question deserves a truthful answer, not an answer that uncritically reiterates the Washington Consensus and it’s associated talking points and buzzwords about the imperative of “democratization.”

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2022, at 7:00 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

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DR SIKIRU ENIOLA

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Jan 30, 2022, 6:22:36 AM1/30/22
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A very fundamental dimension of this argument will find a logical analysis in Professor Emeagwali's submission. We all know what democracy is. We are really not happy at how it is operated in Africa especially. However, there had been examples of thriving democracies that are truncated by American led disintegration units. In existing democracies now, prospects of good governance are being dimmed by the shenanigans of the Brentwood institutions which will often require the withdrawal of all parameters that enhance social services in a nation.
The arguments have been made that the devaluation of currencies often arise from the non production of an economic structure which seeks to import more that it exports. This is what the modern economic slavery strategy planted in the intellectual space. The fact is that the big players manipulates the economic policies that not only put their currencies above others but that dictates damaging fluctuations in third world economies.
Consequently, the aggregate of these subtle acts of sabotage prompts civil unrests and a general break down of law and order. The hoipoloi sees no causative factor beyond their leaders. Following this chain of reactions, elements in the Armed Forces rise to correct what they perceive as ineptitude.  Since the army is not an institution that was programmed for civilian governance, repression, dictatorship and all forms of misrule emerge. The people will continue to protest and die until the nation fails. This is the usual road plied by the colonial coalition to keep the third world crawling.

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 7:59 PM 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
The truth is that  the official advocates of democracy are often
hypocritical.  They went against a democratic  Mosaddegh 
government in Iran in 1953 in favor of feudalism;  a democratically
 elected government of Arbenz in Guatemala, 1954; Brazil in 1964; 
and more recently seemed to prefer the TPLF, by no means democratic, against a
democratically elected government in Ethiopia. It turns out that
democracy is often just a word.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
 

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 1:15 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?

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there is a new issue of the African Studies Review out (64:3).
in it they have an "African Studies Keyword" and the word is Democracy. It was written by Nic Cheesemand and Sishuwa Sishuwa.
maybe this would bear on your reading of liberal democracy, moses.

my impression is that africans have been fighting for democracy ever since colonialism came. but what is democracy? i think of it as the people being self-governing, regardless of the model. it could be parliamentary, direct, indirect, representative etc.
i am angry at the failures in the united states since my vote counts less than people in smaller states, a system set up by slaveowning states to enable them to country free northern states' greater population and urban centers.
we are "relatively" democratic.
every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote.

are autocracies better? i believe autocracies can function only by theboss paying off his army police bigmen supporters, at the expense of the people. it is not just.
gotta go
ken

kenneth harrow

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dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 12:08 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?
Toyin Adepoju:

In 2010 or thereabouts, there was a coup in Niger and Nigeriens trooped out to celebrate the coup. That was a shock to the "democratization" brigade, but some of us were not surprised.

Then it happened in Mali more recently and people celebrated.

It then happened in Guinea and the coup was celebrated with a massive street rally, the coup plotters mobbed as heroes.

The situation in Burkina Faso is fluid, and I haven't seen audiovisual evidence of how the people reacted, but I would not be surprised if there were/are celebrations there too.

Which means, we should pose the difficult question of why people in these countries are celebrating coups, which they should be protesting in an era of "democratization" and "democratic" normativity. 

Could it be that the liberal democratic model uncritically adopted and implemented across Africa is dysfunctional and has failed to promote unity and security and to fulfill the cardinal promise the pro-democracy forces made in the era of democratization: that liberal democracy would produce economic development and accountability?

On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 9:20 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it Africans generally welcoming these coups or armed men taking power by force whatever people think?

Toyin

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Jan 30, 2022, 7:13:58 AM1/30/22
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A most intriguing piece by Eniola

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 30, 2022, 9:08:54 AM1/30/22
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i would add to his analysis that the army is often in control of the economic resources, or seeks to acquire land, businesses, and dominates. so they are not an outside neutral player in this, but a kleptocracy, in the final analysis.
not everywhere, apparently; but when there are coups, that will follow.
ken

kenneth harrow

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Moses Ochonu

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Jan 30, 2022, 9:57:05 AM1/30/22
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Consider this: the stealing field is often narrow and the circle of thieves smaller in a military rule than in a so-called civilian “elected” democratic regime. 

So, when it comes to corruption and good governance, it’s a wash between civilian “elected” governments and military ones.

Which is one of the reasons Africans are turning to military kleptocrats whom they hope would at least guarantee some stability and be decisive with decisio-making, good or bad.

Sent from my iPhone

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 30, 2022, 1:18:57 PM1/30/22
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you have a point moses, except for one thing. the military have no check, or less check, on their behavior. if you object, you're shot. the civilians don't all impose dictatorial regimes using the barrel of the gun, though some like qaddafi did.

we could use another vocabulary for the distinctions of rule. one is messy, with uncertain rules applied more arbitrarily. you never knew if you crossed the line, with ahidjo.oyono-mbia, a good writer, who was a former policeman, and handicapped, would tell us: when the black car pulled in front of the house, he told his mother to pack the bag for him. he didn't know if it was to take him off for a reward for his writing or to go to jail. he did both.

with a regime like that, be the president "elected" or simply imposed by the gun, down on the street it seemed not to make any difference.

maybe the better judge of a decent rule is not simply if it addresses the safety and food concerns of the people, but if it tolerates dissent and can be replaced without violence.
ken

kenneth harrow

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Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2022 9:55 AM

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 30, 2022, 6:22:02 PM1/30/22
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"The military have no check, or less check, on their behavior. if you object, you're shot. the civilians don't all impose dictatorial regimes using the barrel of the gun, though some like qaddafi did."

Ken, 

With all due respect you're hung up on textbookish, theoretical distinctions again. Have you been to Nigeria lately? Or Cameroon? or Guinea before the coup? Or Mali before the coup? Or Uganda? Or Rwanda? Or etc, etc? These "democratic" regimes and many more in Africa have no checks and behave exactly like military regimes. The only difference is that they maintain the illusion and facade of checks and balances by strategically tolerating the inconsequential and cosmetic existence of a legislative arm and a judicial arm--both of which are appendages of the strong "democratically elected" president. This optical enactment "performs" the tenets of "democracy" for Westerners so that aid, acceptance, and patronage can keep flowing. It also keeps the hostility of the West and the international community away. It is an elaborate, theatrical charade.

"Maybe the better judge of a decent rule is not simply if it addresses the safety and food concerns of the people, but if it tolerates dissent and can be replaced without violence."

This is where we differ sharply. You want to judge what constitutes "decent rule" with the abstract criterion of tolerance for dissent and the possibility of electoral removal of a bad regime. First of all, many elected regimes in Africa, with the complicity and even support of Western "pro-democracy" states, have taken measures to make the latter (their own removal through elections) impossible.

Secondly, as I have stated, Africans care more about first order ameliorative and existential aspirations than they do about civic freedoms; and, moreover, the question of tolerance for dissent in Africa does not divide neatly into a military versus civilian elected regime, or between "democracy" and autocracy.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jan 30, 2022, 7:15:26 PM1/30/22
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good points moses, but i already did signal the same issue earlier that in the case of rwanda we have the facade of a democratically elected govt, not a real election. i am hardly adovcating for democracy at all costs, or am unaware of the pseudo elections, like in cameroon.

i am surprised that you put nigeria in the same bag as rwanda, where the former has a relatively more open society with the press and voices of opposition or dissent whereas that isn't the case of rwanda. i don't think uganda is as closed as rwanda, on that score. but not to quibble: many elections are relatively false, like biya's

i mentioned that more than once: i am not arguing that this desire of regimes to adopt the facade of democracy is real or helps anyone.

but i really don't agree that civil rights are so irrelevant, or that "africans" as you put it don't really care about them. when it comes to security and violence is at the door, sure, peace is paramount. when it comes to food, of course, eating is paramount.
but most people are not starving or in war zones. when they are close to those situations, their rights to be heard are practically irrelevant to their lives. but that is not true of most people most of the time.

i don't know how one can speak with any authority on this question. i've been a country specialist for rwanda and burundi, for amnesty, for 30 years, and followed closely protests, people speaking out, being repressed, and fighting for their rights. i follow that elsewhere on the continent. i would not agree that this is a western question, or a question that most people do not care about.
i think it is a human right, in our times, in our days when we live in the social order of our times, and that political processes, radio and tv, newspapers, and publications, films, speak often to this right to voice an opinion, and that people, many many people, especially in cities, are attentive to the right to voice an opinion without the govt shutting down the press or tv station. the incredible bravery of many many journalists is attested to in the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, and HRW and elsewhere. for me these are not foreign rights or foreign human rights defenders, but people with whom many of us collaborate. I admire people like Tine, a hr defender in senegal, enormously. many risk their lives to publish, and should be admired.

you state in a number of regimes, like rwanda or uganda there is repression that is no worse than under the military, because those aren't regimes that defend human rights. i agree.
please notice when i asserted that people would want to be able to replace a regime without having to go to war to do so, i did not state by elections. i know that is your bug-bear. but in fact, lousy elections maybe be the only alternative for most people most of the time.
as for the joy of coups, well, you can cite burkina today, but for every celebration like that, you and i know there are dozens like the latest in guinea which hardly seemed to engender any dancing.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2022 2:03 PM

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jan 31, 2022, 5:18:54 PM1/31/22
to USAAfricaDialogue
"Would Americans Ever Support a Coup? 40 Percent Now Say Yes"


Liberal democracy is failing everywhere, even in the West, and citizens are desperately groping for and embracing alternatives, including those that Western propaganda has demonized for decades. Instead of asking why Africans are celebrating coups, ask why liberal democracy has failed or is failing everywhere, especially in Africa where it has never worked and continues to cause many more problems than it has solved, if it has solved any actual problem.


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