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Egypt: Liberal or
African democracy?
As I watched the
scenes of revolutionary protest in Egypt and the reluctance of democratic
western nations, self-claimed champions of democracy, to support the will of the
Egyptian people, I started to ponder why the use of the term ‘liberal
democracy’ has always made me feel uncomfortable, even though I am opposed to
dictatorships, one-party rule, and other systems of governance that deny the
participation of citizens. In contemporary political rhetoric, democracy is
often seen as the gold standard. Yet, those who uphold it at home and cite it as
a reason to pursue warfare, when confronted with people power, are left
bumbling. The humanity and dignity of the Egyptian people are at odds with
geo-political interests - even when exposed to the full glare of international
attention. It seems as if the empire has no clothes.
These events force us to consider the relationship between liberal democracy,
empire, global economic dominance, and social Darwinism. The Nigerian scholar
Claude Ake, in his book ‘Democracy and Development in Africa’, considers
democracy within the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa. Writing of
the North’s attitude to democracy in Africa, Ake notes that:
‘Even at its best, liberal democracy is inimical to the idea of the people
having effective decision-making power. The essence of liberal democracy is
precisely the abolition of popular power and the replacement of popular
sovereignty with the rule of law (p.130).’
The evolution of democracy since its origin in ancient Greece has been
well-documented and its variants have occupied political philosophers,
especially with regards to its manifestations in western societies. Ake
discusses how western social science constant clarification of the meaning of
democracy has ended in redefining it to the detriment of its democratic values.
For example, in the protective theory of democracy, the people are protected
from the state through a vibrant civil society. Political stability is dependent
on people surrendering participation and political apathy is interpreted as a
sign of people being content with rulers.
Ake is critical of the political conditionality of the 1990s and the emphasis
placed on multi-party elections, however manipulated, as the marker of a
democratic state. This crude democracy is, however, undermined by the political
authoritarianism of structural adjustment and poverty reduction and growth
strategies, and the continued militarization of African societies through the
sale of weapons and military policy interventions such as AFRICOM. Such forms of
democracy reinforce the idea that those who reside in developing countries have
less right to the benefits of development. As the Caribbean writer, CLR James,
points out, Africans in the diaspora have for centuries known the limitations of
bourgeois democracy.
Ake concludes by outlining the sort of democracy that Africa needs:
‘…a democracy in which people have some real decision-making power over and
above the consent of electoral choice…a democracy that places emphasis on
concrete political, social and economic rights as opposed to a liberal democracy
that emphasises abstract political rights…a democracy that puts emphasis on
collective rights as it does on individual rights…a democracy of incorporation
(p.132).’
For Ake, the only way this democracy can be achieved is if Africans take hold of
the process; not the elites who, he argues, have ‘ceded the initiative to the
international development community’, and appear to ‘neither knowing what to
do about the mounting crisis nor being in control of events…they have been
weakened by their sheer lack of control, their poverty of ideas, and their
humiliation’ (p.132).
To effectuate democracy, one has to address policies of development and
ideologies of militarism that leave the masses of people unemployed and
impoverished, whilst the elites accumulate wealth through facilitating contracts
with multi-national corporations and the purchasing of weapons. Despite the
billions of aid that Egypt has gotten from the west, the majority of its people
continue to live in impoverished circumstances. Development aid, in this
instance, is to sustain an autocratic regime that subjects its people to the
will of global and regional hegemonic powers, at a cost to their well-being.
It’s instructive that the 2010 Human Development Report for Egypt, notes:
‘…the most striking and unusual finding of this Report is the extent to
which youth are excluded from political and civic participation, especially
since the definition of youth for this Report is 18-29 years [numbering 30
million], at which time youth are legally empowered to vote and make important
social decisions (http://www.undp.org.eg/Default.aspx?tabid=227).’
The report refers to the state of limbo most youth find themselves in, what it
terms ‘waithood’ - waiting to start a living, to have the resources to
become an adult. This feature of contemporary life is not peculiar to Egypt and,
though the report refers to cultural and political factors that contribute to
this state, it fails to acknowledge the economic reforms that have destroyed the
structures that sustained the societies. The mix of state retreat from social
welfare provisioning, privatised education, reduced public sector, and high
unemployment, combined with economic policies of extraction, have destroyed the
future prospects of young people.
Proposals to include young people through creating separate political
institutions fall short because they are envisaged within an economic system
that marginalises them. True development and democracy are two sides of the same
coin. Both have to be participatory to be effective, and at their core is the
principle of self-reliance and direct action by the people - as primary agents
of change.
Recently, I watched again an episode of the late Basil Davidson’s 1980s series
on Africa. This particular episode focused on early African communities and how
they mastered the continent.
Davidson considered the systems of governance that worked and created stability
in these communities. It was a system where the communities came together to
ensure the survival of each and every member, what people in Africa term ubuntu.
This is how the historian, Walter Rodney, in his book ‘How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa’, understood the concept of development; as being
dependent on ‘the coming together of the societies in the struggle against
natural hazards and to protect their freedom; on this basis humans developed
tools and organized their labour to enable social development (p. 2).’ The
personal development of the individual is intertwined with that of the
collective.
Capitalist development, with its focus on individual choice, may have appeared
to deliver material benefits to many in the industrialised countries but this
came out of the struggle of the working people fighting for better living and
working conditions. Such struggles, what Karl Marx termed, class struggles, are
on-going, and are bound to intensify in the late neo-liberal era, as the safety
blankets in some welfarist societies in the west are pulled away. As David
Harvey and Samir Amin have shown us, inequalities and uneven development are
inherent to the capitalist system. Accumulation by dispossession in the global
south and former colonial territories continues apace, assisted by comprador
elites. Such practices are set to intensify as a result of the economic crises
that have recently beset advanced capitalist economies.
Advocates of social justice in Africa and everywhere have to sharpen their tools
of analysis to provide directions for non-violent revolutions and to think
creatively about the sorts of socio-political organisations that will provide
genuine representation. The focus on ‘community’ by international
development institutions has sought to de-politicise and de-mobilise
transformative collective actions in many states. While the old ideas of
socialism may have lost their relevance and organising power after 1989, the
principles of collective action, social justice, and popular participation
remain as rallying cries for revolutionaries. The lesson from the recent
uprisings in North Africa is that the quest for human freedom can never be
extinguished.
The Tunisian and Egyptian peoples’ call for an end to dictatorship, military
brutality, and their assertion of the right to self-determination forces
scholars of social justice to think through how to operationalise democratic
principles like those outlined by Ake and long articulated in the philosophy of
ubuntu. The people know what they want, but, as social scientists, do we know
how to give them what they want?
Patricia Daley
Bibliotheque
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