Another discussion of democracy ( the moderator was not too happy
Cornelius Hamelberg
In real-time,14.minutes and 40 seconds into this video
A Decade of Democracy: China and Russia
Jeffrey Sachs answers a question
Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2022 9:36:42 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Another discussion of democracy ( the moderator was not too happy
In real-time,14.minutes and 40 seconds into this video
A Decade of Democracy: China and Russia
Jeffrey Sachs answers a question
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Some political theatre here at PMQs 2nd November ( It’s cultural)
Some light-hearted stray thoughts engendered by
“a culture just in the past is only part of the story. The other is what we make of ourselves, now. And that depends on our current conditions and beliefs, not just history.”
Indeed, as so precisely lamented in Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
What Don Harrow says reminds me of the third verse stanza of our dear old Sierra Leone National Anthem (“High We Exalt Thee, Realm of The Free”) which we school urchins with presumptions - “intimations” ( a sound Wordsworthian word ) intimations of visionary hope, self-assurance, self-confidence & determination about the bright future that lay ahead for our Salone, Africa’s youngest Independent nation burning in our patriotic hearts, used to sing so gustily :
“Knowledge and truth our forefathers spread,
Mighty the nations whom they led;
Mighty they made thee, so too may we
Show forth the good that is ever in thee.
We pledge our devotion, our strength and our might,
Thy cause to defend and to stand for thy right;
All that we have be ever thine own,
Land that we love our Sierra Leone”
If only the knowledge and truth which we boast that our forefathers spread, and the mighty nations which it is alleged that they led was being taught as history lessons back then, it could have further bolstered national pride and self-esteem - even fostered greater ethnic unity along the sometimes torn tribal lines when we began to understand more about the mighty nations ( tribes etc) which our ancestors are said to have led, and in the aftermath of the dust of various battles eventually settling down after a few bloody tribal wars some of those nations now happily or unhappily wedded and welded together for better or for worse into one nation shortly before Independence amalgamating the colony ( the Western Area of Sierra Leone, a crown colony - like Hong Kong ) with the Protectorate which the elderly Super-Creole folks supposedly more Civilised & Westernized, in their usual fits of arrogance usually referred to as “the hinterland” and sometimes more disdainfully as “the bush” - the natural habitat of “ the natives”some of whom had originally shipped them down river. ( I could entertain you with many anecdotes about those kinds of perceptions)
The African proverb still holds true that “when elephants fight it's the grass that suffers'' and I suppose that this applies to the nuclear powers and equally to the intellectual giants too, so that when His Eminence Ojogbon Falola and his Crown Prince Chief Moses Ochonu ( history) and Alagba Harrow (African literature, Camus, Marx & Trash Cinema) are locked in head-to-head argument, if we ignoramuses, the lesser beings in terms of relative cerebral firepower on the special subject matters being disputed, if we are not careful, along with the grass, we could also get trampled too, mashed.
“ Know then thyself ” advised Pope, and from Solomon the wise, “ There’s a time for every purpose” including a time to know when it is not wise to enter the fray and get bashed, mashed up with the grass..
Having followed your discussion “There Are No Dogmas For the Practice of Democracy” thus far I daresay that just as you observe, locally and globally neither we nor time is standing still - and indeed in the race known as modernization and development - peace on earth and goodwill to all men, we have different rates, levels, speed of progress towards our different cherished goal of a better life here on earth for everybody, before we kick the bucket and go to heaven or to the other place, world without end, Amen.
With the wind of change blowing over Africa, the decolonization of the 1960s was dominated by the impact of various strands of ideological pressure and rivalries between the West and “ the Commies” supporting liberation movements in Southern Africa - there was South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, to name just a few, there was Dag Hammarskjöld, there was Aimé Césaire’s “A Season in the Congo” - and there was Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah whose enemies accused him of wanting to be crowned Emperor of Africa
It’s the winner-takes-all mentality that's the devil in our multi-ethnic nations trying to establish democracy. It’s one of the reasons why I admire Bolaji Aluko so much, for his generosity of spirit as he wishes others, “ May your tribe increase” ( and thereby show some numerical strength on election day)
Our second weakest point, åschologically speaking, from nation to nation, it’s the national “Achilles heal” - it is that we don’t like to hear any talk about “austerity” or “ making sacrifices”: If Atiku or Tinubu were to utter such fateful words on their campaign trail, it would be political suicide and they would have forever kissed goodbye to their dream of tenure at Aso Rock. All the Great & MIghty Peter Obi would have to say is “ Fellow citizens, hear ye me: it’s NO to austerity “ and NO to” you must be prepared to make sacrifices” and he would be smiling all the way to the bank.
See how China sacrificed. Mao put some academics in the fields - rice paddies and all that - for a long time, see how they contented themselves with going MONO and when they had gathered enough momentum they took off in great style with STEREO. In early 1981, on my first visit to Aba, there were all kinds of super stereo sets that I had never seen in Sweden..
From the abstract to the specific: Since it’s not as if at Independence any specific form of government was imposed on us ( former colonies)- say by force of arms, so, in adopting whatever forms we chose, we could have been and we can still be a little more innovative and accommodative in integrating - at our own convenience - organically or holistically speaking, the necessary cultural features and traditional norms into the Western-type models of democratic government that we inherited from the colonial masters ( and mistresses?)
At Independence in 1961, Sierra Leone - the first British colony in Africa - and for the longest period of time ( over 150 years) Sierra Leone felt comfortable and at home with the Westminster Model of Government - however, at the time of the first military coup in Sierra Leone, in 1967, just after the parliamentary election results were at a stalemate, there was a great deal of confusion when Brigadier David Lansana wanted to justify his military intervention on grounds that the “ House of Chiefs” - at the spur of the moment, his cooked up equivalent of the British “House of Lords”, I suppose - that it was up to the members of the “House of Chiefs” to declare their political party allegiance and thereby determine which party (the incumbent SLPP or the APC opposition) could have a parliamentary majority that would thereby qualify to form a government. The tragedy is that Brigadier Lansana invoked that clause which existed in his military imagination only but not in the Holy Sierra Leone Constitution…
Fast forward and Sierra Leone became a Republic, the Prime Ministerial position being replaced or dis-placed by a powerful concentration of executive power in the hands of an all-powerful President, nicknamed “Agba Satani”, by his enemies.
MZWAKHE MBULI : Resistance is Defence