AFRICA: DEMOCRACY in "Black" Africa?

Opinion

Democracy is simple, but humans tend to make things complicated for themselves, for any number of reasons. It is defined in several ways, but the essence is this: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives." System, government, whole population, elected representatives… That sounds simple, right?

As a citizen in Africa (the Cameroons, for example), when you hear talk about "government", do you consider yourself part of the government? Yes? No? How? Why? Do you know?

I ask because if a citizen is part of "government", and I see a gendarme (an armed government agent) beating a citizen as if beating a snake, my question is: "Is anyone allowed to beat up the government the way one beats a snake?" And the answer is… crickets.

Families vs parties vs government?

Does anyone else try to find the logic in the words we hear every day about "government"? It is a thing that affects the daily lives of all our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces… you get the drift. Unlike other communities in foreign places, we (most of "Black" Africa) are mostly a community of FAMILIES, not one of POLITICAL PARTIES.

"Me, my wife and two kids". Where's the party?

There are communities that practise "democracy" where the family unit is limited to "me, my wife and two kids". Belonging to a party artificially extends the family, and at that point power in the community can swing in favour of one "party-family" or another. That can be a convenient way of practising democracy as a party-vs-party tournament.

On the flip side are communities where group dynamics (family, clan, brotherhood, etc.) are different. How does democracy work there?

In "Black" Africa, group dynamics revolve mostly around the natural family, which naturally outranks artificially created political parties. So there is the problem. The first question a GrandPa or GrandMa will ask is: "Why do we need a party?" Of course there would be reasons, and they should be clearly explained. To have democracy, we must have parties? Then the next question is: why do we need democracy? It would be important, and honest, to explain exactly how and why introducing political parties makes sense, when the community problems they were meant to solve have not been solved in half a century of party politics.

Why the fixation on systems?

Is the goal of a political party in a community of families to bring families together, or to set one family against another? If the latter, why? In a few words, what is the core purpose of setting up a political party in a community of natural families? If that is well explained, and everyone agrees on the goals, then maybe it's time for kids to leave the natural family and join the artificial parties? If we are still talking about democracy, is the party the school where citizens learn how to practise "a system of government by the whole population"? Is that a syllabus that takes a lifetime?

At this point, we have not even considered what part the indigenous culture of the community plays in this mix of natural family, artificial parties and indigenous culture. "Black" African youth know little or nothing about our systems before colonization. Community history is mostly handed down orally, with all the errors and misinterpretations that come with oral communication. Tip: it is unwieldy to design new systems from oral communication alone.

What kind of system, or systems, will work in this context: a hybrid system? For practical purposes, getting to the kernel of citizens' problems is the beginning and the end of any system in this kind of context.

The systems and vocabulary of colonized behaviour

The systems and vocabulary used to govern formerly colonized nations have not changed, or not by much. Keep this at the back of your mind: Africa was not colonized as a charitable, non-profit enterprise. That means the SYSTEMS DESIGNED for use in the colonies were SYSTEMS DESIGNED FOR PROFIT, as in business profits.

Now, if you "follow the money", as they say, and the systems have not changed much, where do you think the PROFITS are still going?

A typical example: education

Think the education system set up in colonial times has changed? Think again.

Here's why it has not changed. The products of colonial education were shaped for efficiency in a context where they were useful: a colonial context, or one like it. In other words, if you trained in medicine, as a nurse or a doctor, it was in line with the procedures your trainer knew. British medical teams did not teach Chinese medicine to nurses in the Cameroons. Nor could they teach the physics of the Boomerang Thunder from Oku, in the montane grassfields of British Southern Cameroons, aka Ambazonia.

The result: colonial (and former colonial) education institutions graduate citizens who then CANNOT FIND JOBS. Should that surprise anyone? Effective education does not happen in a vacuum. It happens within a context, which should be well defined and understood by everyone involved.

Surprise number two: graduates who do not find jobs in our post-colonial system must decide whether or not to migrate. Where to? Will they consider the education they have had, the one that cannot find them a job in the Cameroons, in Africa? Of course they will. Often, language opens the door, and migrants go where they can at least understand the language.

And when they do, they can generally NOW find JOBS in their new context, mostly in the former colonizing nations, whose systems the graduates are "mysteriously" already used to, because their curriculum was prescribed in colonial times to bring the "black" African from darkness into the light. Now they see the light, but the system at home is all darkness. The result is an easy exodus of trained people back to the root of the system that designed their training. As far back as 2002, a medical journal reported that Nigerian health authorities were worried about the exodus of their doctors and nurses.

If this "No Systems Thinking Syndrome" in "Black" Africa is a problem that has rung alarm bells for decades, and no one is listening, or going beyond lip service to change the trend, then 20 years from now new vocabulary will be needed to describe the situation.

We need to push our thinking. A lot of helpful information is available. Finding the right information can be confusing at first, but by spending time on it, you get to the kernel of a matter, and then solutions become apparent.

Systems thinking

The colonial businesses created systems for their own use. We can either design our own systems, or heavily adapt the colonial systems to achieve the goals we set (if we have any).

The general idea is that human communities use systems to run their day-to-day business of living. Not having a handle on these systems gives outside forces the chance to hijack them and exercise undue influence and power over the community. That is neither acceptable nor sustainable.

Democracy is "government by the people", so "let the people decide"?

In post-colonial "Black" Africa, simply saying "let the people decide" is NOT ENOUGH.

Communities need help setting up systems, just as communities in Britain, France and Germany set up systems to manage their daily lives at home, not to go and colonize some territory overseas. Reminder: colonizing agencies set up systems to run the colonized territories for PROFIT. Once it became clear the enterprise would become unprofitable, the simple action was to WITHDRAW.

Our "Black" African local communities need to design systems to run their territories: not just for PROFIT, but mostly for THEMSELVES, and for the FUTURE of their CHILDREN and FAMILIES. It takes a CHANGE in the WAY we THINK about SYSTEMS to keep the ENGINES of our COMMUNITIES humming for a LONG TIME into the FUTURE.

And that's where we are.

— Wanaku Verdzekov