Much is currently being written and said about the African continent. Some comments and reports depict that continent as the fastest growing continent, where business opportunities are unequalled on any other continent. Other portrays Africa as the continent heading to chaos due to HIV/AIDS, wars, famine, etc. Both views, though opposed to each other are correct, and there are facts and figures to back them.

The most interesting is to know, despite the above-mentioned optimism, Africa is not getting closer to other continents in terms of development, technology, while it has all natural resources and qualified elites tom make good use of them? This will be my key preoccupation is the coming series of postings. Each will have a central issue which I will discuss and for which I will suggest possible solutions.


Aridemonarchy


Most African nations have experienced and experimented [multiparty] democracy for about 3 decennia, but the truth is that the promised and expected positive changes are taking too long to show up. Africans glancing back at the past have some nostalgic sentiments because their countries have lost their political and security stabilities.

In fact what is democracy? Marcus Cicero, a Roman philosopher in the first century BC, puts that system of government among many others and even concludes that it is not the best. Literally, the Greek terms – demos+ Kratein – means the power of the people. The Greek called their system ‘democracy’ because the future of the city-nation was discussed and decided in the Agora, by the male and free population. However, it was not perfect democracy because women and slaves were excluded.

In his reasoning summarized in ‘De Re Publica’, Cicero notes that democracy would be synonym of anarchy and would leave enough room for people manipulators to intoxicate masses. If democracy means the power of the majority, then the question is how do political leaders get that majority? In most cases it is through ‘sweet, seductive but deceptive discourses. Thus, a good manipulator will win the majority while the less gifted liar will lose the election while s/he might have salutary projects for the nation. Cicero suggests that the least bad system – because none of them is suitable on its own – is a combination of democracy, monarchy and aristocracy. In my opinion, that is what we call modern-days democracy. The President does not always have the mathematical majority of the population backing him – only voters, who would represent even less than 10 percent of the overall population vote for him. In most cases, the votes of the various losers together are more than those of the elected president. This makes the president a sort of monarch.

The democratic aspect in Ciceronian terms, is in the parliamentary elections, where people are supposed to vote for their representative. However, the monarchic president can send them home when he likes. The aristocratic feature of our current systems lies on the government. Almost all the powers are exercised by ministers who are not representing the population and who are appointed in the president’s discretion. The systems we have thus is not democracy but, AriDeMonarchy, where the three systems interact having the president as the key decider, not the people.

Here is one other question I would like to borrow from Cicero’s thought: Whom should we prefer between a bad democratically elected leader and a good well-inspired monarch? Many Africans will certainly agree with me that a well inspired monarch is far preferable to a democratically elected dictator. People from the Central African Republic (CAR) once believed what former colonial power France told them about their self-styled emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. Legends about him said he was a man eater who never concerned himself with developing the country. However, about 28 years after his ouster by French troops, CAR people regret the leader who managed to set his country on the international arena. Bangui of the years 1960s-70s was far better and developed than many African capitals. Unfortunately, since that time, the only thing that the successive ‘democratic’ regimes succeeded in was removing his name from the modern schools, markets, and roads he built.

Examples abound in Africa and should all push the leaders to think out another model that what they call ‘democracy’. In my sense, a true democracy would be one in which even a parliament can send the president home, where ministers are chosen among the MPs – this would mean that all people in power have the confidence of citizens - , where a president can govern only one mandate to avoid destructive frustrations, where the position of president should rotate in all the country’s region and ethnic groups.

The case of today’s Burundi should inspire its neighbours and other African nations: a president is chosen from the majority group –Hutu – and, automatically, a vice president comes from the minority group – Tutsi. A parliament can give hard times to the president and the reverse is really difficult. The transition in that country succeeded because of the ethnic rotation and, I believe, if the rotation does not go on even after the transition, things will most probably send the country back into the abyss of 1993 and 1996.