IF YOU WERE A LEADER IN AFRICA, WHICH SINGLE CHANGE WOULD YOU AIM
TO BRING ABOUT, AND WHY? HOW WOULD YOU DO IT?
AS an African leader, I would aim to strengthen and deepen
democracy.
An Igbo proverb goes, “when the brothers fight to death, a stranger inherits their
father’s estate”. With
reference to Africa, lack of sound and issues-based leadership remains the main
signpost to Africa’s stressed future, as such; my brothers and sisters in
Africa must get out of their political slumber and save Africa from the
continent’s attraction of problems of choice by focusing on and investing in
constructive, positive, civilized and issues-based leadership. This is because
for Africa, from a democrat’s perspective, good leadership is as necessary a
condition of civilized life as the unity beyond uniformity, of Africans, within
and outside Africa, in the endeavors of transforming the continent for the
better. The African change has its roots in the Africans and its branches in
the African leadership and politics. Unfortunately, the African leadership and
politics that are the major players in the reform process, have excluded
reason, merit, civilization and natural justice in their practices, even when
and where the people of Africa have shown discontentment with this kind of
features. It is against this backdrop of leadership incompetence and political
hubris that my leadership would focus on strengthening and deepening democracy,
as a tool, art and science of positive change.
Larry
Diamond conceives of democracy as encompassing “not only a civilian,
constitutional, multiparty regime with regular, free and fair elections and
universal suffrage, but organizational and informational pluralism; extensive
civic liberties; effective power for elected officials; and functional autonomy
for legislative, executive and judicial organs of the government” (Larry
Diamond, 1995;4 ), I view democracy as the gateway to constitutional
genuineness, political tolerance and relevance, social cohesion, integration
and civility and economic liberation through its defining feature of expanded
freedoms, which in my opinion, are the best and inevitable recipes for African
change. Regrettably, for Africa, the leadership and governance of states has mysteriously
survived the natural turmoil of fate, even though a few African states have
never found luck in fate, with a leadership anchored on unfortunate assumptions
of leadership; the assumption that those who get elected to positions of
leadership are infused by their victory with an omniscience that enables them
to formulate solutions for all the states’ problems, the second unfortunate
assumption is that once elections are held, the victors get an
omnipotence to do as they wish with the states, their resources and people.
These assumptions have been the causes of most of Africa’s underdevelopment and
regrettably, civil strife-real lack of practical and practicing democracy. This
is wrong since the African continent is too diverse to be managed by the
imagination, ideas and energies of one person or a group of people. Our
demographics separate us literally over civilizations, from the traditional
African culture to the most modern digital era, and to solve this problem of
monopoly of ideas, I would foster a culture of working with all persons across
the board to deliver the promises of independence, democracy, freedom and
constitutionalism to the different and divergent populations since this will
help in formulating solutions to Africa’s development challenges by taking us
miles away from the primitive and unpopular philosophy of exclusion and
patronage, where African leaders have always attempted to assume the position
of the omniscient and omnipotent deliverer, a philosophy whose results have
always been crises, pain and failure.
In addition, in my efforts to strengthen and deepen
democracy, I would abolish extractive political and economic institutions and
establish inclusive political institutions that not only guarantee innovation,
but also expansive growth due to expanded freedoms. This I would achieve by
providing an open leadership style in which public institutions are accessible
for public assessment as this will not only boost public confidence in
institutions of governance, but also promote positive criticism that will help
in shaping up the institutions towards the course of quality service delivery
hence enhancing positive change. Above all, in spearheading this process of
institutional reforms, I would encourage Africans not to gratuitously claim
uncertainty about their political course, for that would foreclose avenues of
practical achievement of desirable change with prevalent political experiments
and retrogressive options. I would encourage unity beyond uniformity, so that
Africans can collectively focus on challenges and avoid them, and make that a
collective and less individualized task.
Moreover, I would establish and sustain a political culture of
consciousness that would help in generating a sense of meaning in Africa’s
relations amongst themselves as well as with continents of the world. This is
because just like an Igbo peoples proverb goes,
“a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he
dried his body”, Africa’s leadership does not know where the political
rain that has besieged Africa, began. But I believe that the political rain
that beat Africa began four to five hundred years ago, from the discovery of
Africa by the western powers. As such, Africa’s post-colonial disposition is
the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves, and have
consequently lost interest in Africa’s political life; the end result of this
is underdevelopment. As such, a meaningful solution will require the goodwill
and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africa’s
historical burden, and in my capacity as an African leader, I would revive
African international relations policy and even reconstitute the policy so as
to reconcile it with the African democratic needs, issues and challenges
vis-à-vis the trends in our times world order.
In addition, since Africa is positively unique in its own
way, I would lead Africa in inculcating within itself adaptive capacities
promote constructive common cultures, align Africa’s moral values and let
Africa acquire a compelling political, social and economic vision of positive
change. These, I believe, would set the African political campus and point the
course which Africans would steer through the political ocean of time opening
on her. Through this, my leadership would be putting focus on positive
consequences so lasting, and effects so decisive of our future destinies in our
favor, hence avoiding Africa’s inducement to the hazard of political opinions,
tensions and uncertainties.
In conclusion therefore, I believe that the development of
Africa squarely lies in the ability of the continent’s leadership to understand
that the practices of democracy are justifiable because of the interests that
they serve, in particular because of their role in serving certain common or
public interests. However, this justification should be supplemented with the
assumption of fallibilism.
This article was written by Jack Adienge, a third year
Political Science Student from Maseno University. Check out his blog here. You
can also contact him through his twitter account and e-mail address alegotunya@gmail.com
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