14.2: Post-Cold War Realities in Sub-Saharan Africa Versus Africanist Scholarship

The end of Cold War patronage has had dramatic implications for governance in sub-Saharan Africa. Without US-Soviet rivalry, the kinds of support that corrupt ^[1] African state leaders had come to rely on is now gone, leaving central government leaders decidedly less at ease. What this could mean for the citizens of sub-Saharan African states is a new possibility for democratic hope, the kind of hope proponents of democratization have long had for the African continent. Unfortunately, to date, a good number of Africanists have continued their long-established pattern of remaining focused on politics at the central government level. Moreover, many are repeating the error that occurred during the era of Africa’s ‘first independence’: interpreting political events in an overly optimistic and, in the end, quite superficial manner.

History

Of course, Africanists of all political perspectives have maintained that the first real democratic hope for sub-Saharan Africa came with decolonization—the ‘Year of Africa’: 1960—when thirteen African states gained their independence; from France: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte D’Ivoire, Gabon, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo and the Republic of the Congo; and from the UK: Nigeria and Somalia; from Belgium: the Democratic Republic of Congo. Others were soon to follow suit and many scholars of the time, such as the young Immanuel Wallerstein, were thrilled to partake in these great historical events and wrote of them with great optimism (Wallerstein, 1961, 1967). During the decades that followed, however, the subject of African politics was decidedly less popular among scholars and students alike. Even that previous generation that had expressed so much optimism in the 1950s and 1960s now deemed African studies as somehow less appealing, irrelevant, or even ‘too depressing’ (Kitching, 2000). And even Wallerstein, who has moved on to other areas of academic inquiry, now considers his optimistic language of the time to be unwarranted (Wallerstein, 1995).

The same can be said of the optimistic observations made by many observers of African politics in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War—what Colin Legum referred to as Africa’s ‘Second Independence’ (Legum, 1990). Writing for the Journal of Democracy, for example, Richard Joseph declared in 1991: “It is conceivable that by 1992 the continent will be overwhelmingly democratic in composition” (Joseph, 1991, p. 32). Carol Lancaster was similarly upbeat in an article written for Foreign Policy, noting that “three-fourths of the 47 countries south of the Sahara are in various stages of political liberalisation” (Lancaster, 1992, p. 148). The primary reason for these Africanists’ optimism was that democratic elections were suddenly taking place across the African continent after decades of single-party and/or autocratic rule. Yet, just a few years later, doubts were being expressed about the ‘wave of democratization’ that was taking place, not only in Africa, but also around the globe.

The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

It was in 1997 that Zakaria famously remarked: We see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon—illiberal democracy.” He explains: “It has been difficult to recognize the problem because for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy—a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.” Zakaria’s crucial insight that has clear implications for today’s new democratic states (and perhaps some of the older ones as well), is that liberalism is “theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy” (Zakaria, 1997, p. 22).

It could be argued that today the vague term of democratization, still in vogue in some circles, is gradually being replaced by the notion of democracy alongside political liberalisation—terms that, for many, are more meaningful and more easily subjected to scrutiny and measurement. This is because, as Zakaria points out, the sine qua non of democracy is, indeed, elections; and now that most of sub-Saharan African states are holding elections, they can be called formal ‘democracies.’ But there can be little doubt that observers of African politics have always had more in mind, when speaking of democratization, than the formal process of democratic elections. Many of the aforementioned observers of African politics were thinking not only of ‘democracy,’ but also the prospects for political liberalisation, that is, the various forms of political freedom. This post-Cold War concern is not only more ‘refined’ than what was typically argued during the Cold War; it has also made countless observers more sensitive to the need for local institutional support for liberal and other policy aims that directly impact human security. With human security in mind the pressing question for Africanists to ponder is whether neo-colonial norms of centralized governance, in this period of ‘Second Independence,’ can really be challenged. And there are reasons to be pessimistic because neo-colonial norms have prioritized the whims of those in central government and dominated the political culture in Africa for decades.

In the period of ‘First Independence,’ many Africanists refused to assign part of the responsibility to external powers such as those that helped to create the conditions for political monsters like Desiré Mobutu. Instead, they focused on the internal political realities and were freely writing about a ‘unique’ form of African political leadership that was patrimonial, patriarchal, etc. in form. Harvard’s Martin Kilson and Robert I. Rotberg are prime examples of Africanist scholars who based their entire careers on critiquing African leadership. With the implicit presumption that our external influence could only be benevolent, these Africanists argued that it was they – the Africans – who had a host of internal leadership problems. As early as 1963, Kilson was pessimistically describing the ‘patrimonial,’ ‘neo-patrimonial,’ ‘patriarchal,’ ‘authoritarian and single-party tendencies in African politics’ and Rotberg has been a consistent contributor to the ‘irresponsible’ and ‘corrupt’ African leader perspective. Since the Cold War these established scholars have not adjusted their thinking and in a 2004 contribution to Foreign Affairs Rotberg wrote that, “Africa has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership: predatory kleptocrats, military-installed autocrats, economic illiterates, and puffed-up posturers” (Rotberg, 2004, p. 14). And, of course, scores of others have remained in this ‘career-safe’ sceptical mode of talking about the internal shortcomings of Africa and/or Africans. To continue along the path of one-sided pessimism, I submit, is not only inaccurate, it is irresponsible scholarship that is good for careers in political science but hardly an accurate description of Africa’s political realities, past or present. The corrupt political phenomena that Kilson, Rotberg, and other experts describe do and have existed in Africa, but they cannot be attributed to only central government politics and politicians.

As Peter Schraeder and other Africanists have emphasized, responsibility for the lack of checks and balances in modern African contexts – that is, the abuse of political power – cannot be accurately portrayed as a uniquely African creation and that African political failures are and have been greatly influenced by external forces (Schraeder, 2004, p. 66). Indeed, the fact that Africanists have continued to make generalisations about African political realities based only on observations about central governments has only further aggravated the distortions that lead to misunderstanding. So ironically, both the optimistic and pessimistic views of today’s Africanists are much in alignment in that they both base their observations on central government events. Both, I contend, are largely superficial as a result and far removed from matters of local governance that impact human security for millions of sub-Saharan state citizens. As part of an effort to correct these distortions, the next generation of Africanists needs to have a more balanced perspective on the significance of both internal and external capabilities and influences, and to re-focus its energies on matters of local governance.

To do this, Africanists should also take a careful look at the clash of indigenous governing norms and the history of colonial efforts to implement new local government norms and institutions. Due to the Cold War tendency of focusing on central government politics, much of this local level discussion remains marginalized – addressed mostly, if not only, by the field of anthropology. Of course, there are also very real problems with the historical literature. For example, the writings of careful colonial observers of African politics, such as Lord Hailey, are problematic in the sense that doubtlessly they prioritized the interests and racial attitudes of the British Colonial Office. In retrospect, however, it should be recalled that Hailey’s local governance focus also aimed at achieving “the general improvement of the standards of life of the African peoples” (Hailey, 1938, p. 1600; Wolton, 2000). To date, the vast majority of Africanists has tended to ignore the fact that some improvements in local governance were achieved during the colonial era as – quite understandably – this would require ‘placing aside’ the racial attitudes and dramatic violence caused to African peoples and their pre-colonial governing institutions. But the same can be, and is, said of the histories of today’s free democracies, notably of the United States (consider Zinn, 1980). The point is, we can and should acknowledge the hugely flawed approaches to governance used in the early democratic states as elsewhere in the world, while simultaneously acknowledging some of the substantive gains of infrastructure, local governance, and political communication that were made. At present historical discussions on local governance in formerly colonized regions of the world are almost completely lacking; when mentioned they are usually dismissed as self-serving, wrongheaded, racist, or worse, with little attention to the sometimes mutually beneficial and potentially humanistic aims of those involved.