A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy

133 views
Skip to first unread message

Moses Ebe Ochonu

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 8:21:29 AM10/26/22
to USAAfricaDialogue
I don't want to resurrect our recent discussion and critique of the damage and problems of liberal democracy (with its emphasis on competitive, zero-sum, and majoritarian principles) in Africa, but this piece (linked below) by Ayodeji Ogunaike is the type of thoughtful, original, and transcendental critique we're talking about. This is where the debate is headed, decentering and historicizing liberal democracy and unearthing Africa-centered alternatives to it. 

Perspectives like this reject and go way beyond the farcical and shallow binaries of democracy versus dictatorship, election versus selection, participation versus non-participation, singularity versus pluralism, etc, which do little to get us out of the ontological and programmatic conundrum of a fatally troubled liberal democratic practice in Africa. 

The piece is part of our think-piece series being published on Africasacountry.com, with the edited volume to be published thereafter by UVA Press.


Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 4:12:40 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Wow

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPpc2ePzbbvvmDdG23-64cW8k-NrH_DomKJMwYsOXpo2bw%40mail.gmail.com.

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 4:12:57 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
thanks to moses for returning to the issue of african democracy.
i think we can all agree that the ideal of democracy is rough, is going through rough times, in much of africa. while moses says it is too reductive to suggest that it cannot simply be seen as standing against autocracy, and while we can all agree that in many cases it is democracy in name only, while manipulative forces control the electoral process, it leaves me still troubled by the realities of autocratic rule. i think of kagame who is a strongman, and who crushes the conventional democratic institutions like a free press, an independent judiciary, and a just police force, still they hold elections periodically where he receives most votes. in contrast, the recent elections in the drc were close, contested, and if not totally fair, at least not autocratically determined.
it is very very hard for me not to see the way elections in the west are held in contrast to those in russia or china, or other autocratic states.
if i were a citizen in any state in the world, i would want to have the freedom to vote, and if a democratic process is not working well, would i then say, take away my participation and give it to the wiser, more just electors who stand above me. the original american model of the electoral college was flawed for that reason, and its flaws now haunt us.
but the yoruba model of the oba in the piece moses is cited is equallly troublesome to me. who is to judge the electors and guarantors of the oba? if the oba really embodies the people, as the article claims, then we have an example of rousseau's Will of the People, which is basically infallible. he claimed the revolutionary leaders needed no check, because they embodied that will....like the claims re the oba. but the lack of a competing authority meant the guillotine had no check. those who select or authorize the oba, if they are hereditary figures, not elected, are not answerable to the people, and that means they control the power of the state...and the oil wells. i don't see the philosopher-king model, or inherited ruler model, as free from the basic neoliberal capitalist flows of power. to the contrary.
i think france did the right thing in eliminating royalty and aristocracy and their privileges; the u.k. should have done th same.
i think the bolshevik ideology of the vanguard is its achilles heel, and destroyed the great glories of revolutions that were directed against wealthy elites, inherited power, and the ideologies that sustained them.

i don't write this so as to defend the failures of democracy in african states. i will confess i work with colleagues in amnesty international so as to try to prevent abuses of human rights, which entails defending the rights of people to freely debate their views on statehood and to vote freely, to hear a free press. i don't care if it is capitalist or socialist, those fundamentals should not be shifted onto an oba and his court or courtiers in trusting them to do a fairer job.
i wonder how the workings of botswana could be judged given the interplay of traditional rulership and democratic rights? i wonder if we could open this question by asked which states comparatively seem to be working best for the interest of the population as a whole, as opposed to those doing the opposite.

at that point i quit and ask those political scientists who actually try to measure this question, using whateve GINI charts or measurements they have, to opine. is it better to press for decentralized power vs centralized, so that we'd have swiss models instead of american?
who should get to decide when books are to be banned or not?
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: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 8:13 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
 

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 4:22:21 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com


There is one question I would like to get an answer to:

What happens if/ when  neo-Nazi fascists are elected through
 the ballot box?




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 2:32 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 4:22:25 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Ken and Moses:

This is a good thread, but time is a thief that has stolen me and my time.

The obaship, as an idea and practice, must be about what you can extract from it as a philosophy of governance. You cannot reproduce it as it is grounded in a concept of city identity, far different from the idea of managing a plural society with over 300 groups with their organs.

I am from a city that rejected obaship, and substituted for republicanism.

I read the conversation not as a reproduction but more as an extraction.

Stay well.

 


Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 3:13 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 4:23:38 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

You accept, just as we accepted Trump!

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 5:10:02 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
i didn't accept trump. i wouldn't accept neofascists.
resistance can be multifaceted.

that's the short answer. the longer answer lies with gramsci for whom the problem of countering fascism with rising populism defined his times...you know, mussolini etc.
i'd also say that to be decent, we should have lines that we would never accept being crossed without going further than peaceful protest.
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 Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 4:22 PM

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 5:10:19 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
extracting philosophy of governance from obaship, or any other configuration or structure, is all about striving for change to improve our lives. i'm for that. that's really the original thinking that i believe moses would have us seek, and the only question then is how to implement it. that's a hard one, and i'd like to see answers to that.
one of the great champions of yoruba culture, in the arts, is kelani. his early films Ti Oluwa Nile open the question of how a decent oba might try to rule in these days of oil capitalism; and how his corrupt counselors etc pose problems for society.
no easy answer there.
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 Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 4:21 PM

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 5:13:15 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Ken:

Who was your president when Trump was in power?

This is what I meant, not as a philosophical idea of personal choice.

Whether I like a Dean, President, Provost or Head is a different matter, but as de facto power, I have to accept.

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 26, 2022, 6:06:28 PM10/26/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
accept might imply the opposite of resist. can't we resist  someone who is in office? to be clear, i accepted the supreme court decision to give the election to bush, though i believed it was an unjust decision, and florida should have run the election over. but i marched, signed petitions, talked with people i knew, about how to oppose trump.
yes, i accepted that he was president; but not that he should have his way.
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 Toyin Falola <toyin.f...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 5:12 PM

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Oct 27, 2022, 9:35:51 AM10/27/22
to Toyin Falola, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
If Hitler and Mussolini are acceptable
if voted in, then Kanye West should
get back his  2 billion dollars.Why all
the fuss? 

And apartheid leaders
Malan and Verwoerd should have
been accepted by Mandela etc.

There is a flaw in the argument.


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: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin.f...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2022 5:12 PM

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 27, 2022, 9:48:35 AM10/27/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Okay, Ken.

I answered in the context of Gloria’s question:

If democracy, as defined by elections, produces a fascist, what should we do?

While we protest, we usually do not call for mass suicide.

Alas!

TF

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 1:04:49 AM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Gloria’s argument is flawed for me because of the use of the word “acceptable”—it is meaningless unless defined. She can answer what she means; trump was legally elected, so was acceptable according to the rules of democracy. His actions and views were not acceptable to most people, who voted for other candidates so as to oppose him. Hitler never received a majority, and he effectively came to power by a false crisis. In any event, he was opposed, but stifled legitimate opposition, so people attempted to assassinate him, and opposed him by joining resistance movements.
The question really seems to be, how can we legitimize populist autocrats if they are elected, and as i said, go read gramsci, that was his issue with mussolini. Eventually a revolutionary opposition had to prevail to get him removed from office and hung upside down, as he deserved.
The logic that kanye west’s antisemitism is somehow justified by this is repulsive.
Ken
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 9:47:47 AM

Moses Ochonu

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 1:05:52 AM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Just to be sure and to repeat my clarifications from the earlier debate, let me make a couple of points:

1. Given the current reality of not just the failure of liberal democracy in Africa but the profound damage it is doing to African societies, I’m a strong advocate for searching for an alternative to it.

2. However, I have never argued that we uncritically adopt or implement an African or precolonial African mode of governance as a replacement for liberal democracy, as doing this would be fraught with its own complications and anachronisms. I am not one of those whose solutions to all African problems is to decolonize and return to some recoverable African essence that predated colonialism but was distorted or undermined by it. In fact some old members of this forum may remember my debate on this subject with the late George Ayittey. Even for the sake of argument, if we accept that colonization distorted all African democratic and political systems, I don’t believe that everything that was distorted can be restored to its factory setting, or that even if it were possible to do that, this would be desirable or compatible with the evolved aspirations of Africans in the twenty first century, 60 years after independence.

3. I am interested in deconstructing, historicizing, and demystifying the fetish of liberal democracy, which many people, including many Africans, tend to accept uncritically as a settled, normative, and superior modality of leadership selection and governance.

4. I argue that if you don’t know where a problem began, you cannot tackle it. As Achebe says it, we need to go back to when the rain began to beat us. To this end, I want to bring the conversation back to the moment of liberal democratic imposition, the recent post-Cold War period when the West took advantage of Africa’s economic desperation and need for external assistance to compel African states to “democratize” (accept and adopt liberal democracy in exchange for loans and other forms of assistance) under the ubiquitous and well-funded rhetoric of political and economic liberalization.

5. I argue that debates and discussions of appropriate political models should be left to people within each African society instead of a system that evolved from the experiences of Euro-America (liberal democracy) being imposed on them under the pretext that that system has universal applicability and works for all peoples at all times. Ultimately, it should be up to Africans themselves if they want to stick with the competitive electoral model of liberal democracy, revisit, modify, refine, and implement a system derived from their own political experiences and histories, or develop a new hybrid that combines elements of liberal democracy with African political traditions and modalities.

6. I argue that crafting an alternative democratic system for Africa necessarily entails the decentering and detotallizing of liberal democracy and its dominance over current African political praxis and discourse.

7. I strongly insist that crafting a new African democratic model must not ab initio discard or ignore African political histories and democratic systems but must critically draw upon them as part of the ideational and programmatic menu to foreground debates and political innovation. In some cases, the point of departure and reference for the debate and conversation must be African political systems and African principles of governance and societal management.

8. For me, a discussion of African democratic alternatives to the failed and destructive liberal democracy should not privilege or assign a higher instrumental and deterministic weight to the tenets of liberal democracy than to those derived, however problematically, from African political histories and experiences. Both must be put on our discursive scales on equal ontological terms. Both must be subjected to the same critiques, scrutinies, and rigorous interrogation both in terms of their flaws and their suitability for modern, diverse, socioeconomically challenged African nation-states.

In a nutshell, do not rig and settle the debate in favor of the failed liberal democracy before the debate begins or before African political ideas and democratic systems have been given a good faith chance to compete in the marketplace of political ideas and practices. 

Do not reinscribe the flawed premises and assumptions of liberal democracy as baselines of the debate while offhandedly rejecting all elements from African political traditions as unacceptable for modern times. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 27, 2022, at 9:48 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 1:06:01 AM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
i also wanted to add that protest is multifaceted. in this country, and abroad, protests against the war in vietnam included sds factions who bombed; huge street marches; many who chose jail or exile, and on and on.
the electoral process is not the only place where political acceptance takes place. and it wasn't simply mass suicide versus supporting the war.,
the same in south africa, with multipronged protests. some militant; some electoral
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 9:47 AM

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 1:06:02 AM10/28/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Should this guy be taken seriously? :

He says that “ Democracy Is Fraud! - We Need Monarchy!” 

As for Kanye West, this is what Sam harris thinks of him

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 1:12:11 AM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Moses:

There is a missing Point 9:

If a new “system” emerges, it does not mean it will be static. No system works for ever.

TF

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 9:13:13 AM10/28/22
to Harrow, Kenneth, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ken
Can you please cut and paste the 
statement that includes the 
word  “acceptable” with respect
to the current discussion.

What did I say was acceptable?


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: Thursday, October 27, 2022 10:01 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Moses Ochonu

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 11:36:03 AM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Oga Falola, I totally agree. We historians believe in contingency and abhor analytical systems that ascribe fixity, ahistorical stability, and finality to any idea, ideology, or practice. That’s precisely why it grates me when some scholars, including African ones who should be more experientially attuned to the recency, instability, and historical relativity of liberal democracy (with its fraught fixation on competitive, zero-sum elections and abstract rituals), pronounce it the best, the superior, and the most evolved of all political systems. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the critical thinking? Where’s the skepticism? Where’s the historical consciousness?

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 28, 2022, at 8:13 AM, 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 5:25:39 PM10/28/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
i am glad moses spelled out his main points, and that toyin added a tenth.
i feel, as so often, an outsider to this debate—maybe we could call it a challenge—because when i heard nick van der walle give a talk on african democracies, some years back, he went into refinements that a political scientist an economist could make. he classified various states as they met various criteria, which he considered basic to democracy. i wouldn't want to pretend any competence in making those claims. i know a bit about 4-6 states maybe, and they keep changing under my feet, like senegal. to be honest, i know how things work more or less in rwanda, burundi, and the drc, since i follow them daily. others in central and west africa i know about—like cameroon and senegal, and now, because of this list, nigeria.
i am very reluctant to ground a debate on the failures of liberal democracy, as moses puts it, as though every african state were equally marked by failure. i doubt that is the case.
but there are a couple of features that moses does not emphasize, which are more central to me than the voting procedures and the failures to have "free and fair" elections according to international norms.
elections are good, because i don't see how you could put in place any system at all without the general population voting on it. whether they vote on a communist or socialist system or western democratic system is not relevant.
i don't see how the terms liberal democracy actually really mean anything, without a recognition that it is the economic system that really determines the shape of the state and its relation to the people. the current dominant system, not only in africa but throughout the world, is neoliberal capitalism, or simply, globalization.
in my view the problems of injustice, inequality, struggle, and oppression are tied directly to the way globalization works in africa. i could go in some detail into its ugliest scenario, which is east congo. the state of the drc, and the people, get a small fraction of billions of dollars of mineral and timber wealth mined and harvested in the kivus and ituri. there are 120 militias vying for control. on top of that, rwanda and burundi and ugandi have their own militias and fingers in the pie, and these armed groups kill villagers and rape their women daily.
what enables this situation is a weakened state, an economic order with enormous money at stake, and an unlimited supply of weapons. an example is the m-23 which the un described as better armed and trained than the drc army itself, and that it was undoubtedly the rwandans who provided this.
my second point, which moses skirts, is the importance of human rights, a condition that the west imposed on african states when making loans through the world bank. at times that conditionality is contradicted by military agreements, like the french troops in many countries, whose primary function is to insure the state remain in power and grant french companies a free hand to operate. that often comes into conflict with other groups, and in the case of mali ultimately got them thrown out.  When they were replaced by russian mercenaries, i saw only worse conditions.

i agree completely with moses that african states have to be autonomous and free to determine their own systems without interference. but there is always interference when the economic order is engaged, and usually when it has priority, like the oil pipelines in chad and cameroon.

moses doesn't want to see simplist binaries, but i can't shake one: autocratic vs democratic states. i don't say "liberal" democratic, if "liberal" means liberal capitalism, what is often called neoliberalism. But i do agree that basic human rights are worth us fighting for in any system on earth, call it capitalist or african or socialist. uyghurs deserve not to be destroyed by the chinese; the same for chechens in russia, or ukrainians now. yemenites deserve to be able to choose their own state without saudis raining american bombs on them, and the same goes for any state.
but let's not be naive: if iran and the saudis could end their military support for other states in the region, peace in lebanon, syria, palestine, yemen, etc, might be closer.

as i read moses, i believe there is a bottom line, which is the right of african states to be autonomous. i agree, of course; but also would want to add, every word he wrote in defense of that autonomy should also apply to all the states of central and latin america, and they too are not free from the overriding force of neoliberal globalization, which often means american capitalist forces determine the limits of their political order, while human rights often go out the window.
that's not "liberal democracy" which has failed, but in fact the capitalist order that has conquered mao's china, and which putin is now fighting against in russia. i think only one state has successfully succeeded in opting out of that order—north korea.
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: Thursday, October 27, 2022 2:24 PM

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Oct 28, 2022, 5:25:40 PM10/28/22
to Emeagwali, Gloria (History), usaafric...@googlegroups.com
dear gloria
i didn't respond because i didn't want to dig back and figure what the statement was where i saw disagreement. but the larger reason is that i feel no matter what point i make, generally you find reason to slap it down, so i feel always on the defensive instead of in dialogue with you. i'd be happy to just discuss any points where we could agree or disagree. i'm trying to be open here.
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, October 28, 2022 2:01 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
 
Since Ken has not responded to
my request,  I have concluded
that  the imaginary  “flawed”statement  
that he disagreed with,  was one
 of the following:

 (a) A red herring 
 (b) A straw man
 (c) A monkey wrench
 (d) A slip of the pen




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: Thursday, October 27, 2022 10:01 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Yoruba-centered Critique of Liberal Democracy
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Oct 29, 2022, 7:31:47 PM10/29/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
This could be filed under the practical heading " Fruits and problems arising from Democracy at work in Nigeria:
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages