Africa can draw from the Ubuntu philosophy to improve its democracy

 

Despite the many decades dedicated to trying and testing the mechanics of democracy in Africa, there seems be so little to account for better leadership or better still better quality life for the African citizen.  

 

From Cape Town in the South to the Northern Port of El Kantaoui, one common red thread that runs through the greater governance question is failed democracy.  To me, the thought of democracy in the region sparks imaginations of the following popular yet unfashionable mannerisms: the contentious issues around incumbency and the usually contrived electoral processes.    

 

Probably, democracy in itself is not a bad concept but the managers of it have let low some of its key underpinnings.  We have continued to promote democracy from a structural perspective and completely forgotten its causes and convictions.  

 

In the search to find solutions for democracy shortfalls, the entire focus of most of our thinkers has been on structural formations and effectiveness rather than on the substantive, spiritual, futuristic and inspirational ideas.   

 

The daunting task we have at hand as wananchi from all walks is to seek to redefine and reclaim the goodness in our forefathers’   beliefs in society leadership.  For Africa, we need to restore Ubuntu, first as a guiding philosophy to the contemporary governance but secondly and most importantly as a basis for raising the moral threshold in our politics.  As we might recall from Africa’s history, Ubuntu was a conglomeration of humanness in the polity of the African society.  Accordingly, there were no motives whatsoever for leadership fights, war, oppression, bribery or theft.

 

Today, there are many humdrum democratic issues which seem far removed from moral concerns.  For instance, the problems with elections in Africa are more uniformly of a moral nature rather than a structural-build.  Look at rigging, violence, vote buying, intimidation, murders, police brutality, among others.

All this leaves one key question unanswered, where are the fundamentals of Ubuntu in our democracy?  

 

As we might have seen even from the contemporary history, no society can thrive without a mirror of an ideal to pursue.   In Greece, it was democracy. In the West it was capitalism, in Eastern Europe it was communism, in China it was Confucianism and in Africa it was Ubuntu.  Apart from Africa, these philosophies to date greatly influence the way societies are run elsewhere.   Capitalism still stands in the west, the Balkans and post USSR states continue to struggle to rejuvenate communism and the Chinese still hold strong on to their Confucian philosophy.  

 

Today, we in Africa still remain hostages of other people’s philosophies.  We have imported democracy just like how we import champagne, coca cola or just like how we import Japanese used cars nowadays.  And probably this is the time for us to strongly reflect on whether the democracy we boast of is in tandem with our very own culture or if it at all it serves to put us on the path of the future we want.

 

Africa needs an ideology based on humanity, on love, on peace, and on brotherhood.  This is the greatest ideology that will cure our scathing wounds of slavery, resource theft, cultural onslaught, degradation and dehumanization.  

 

As citizens, if we strongly and passionately feel about how our governments govern us, then we undoubtedly have to make fresh choices and take fresh steps towards emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, real justice, traditionalism, and sincerity as threaded in the Ubuntu philosophy.

 

 

As we speak now, India is undergoing a process of re-writing its history with a hindu message.  The Arab world is undergoing a governance evolution led by their prehistoric Kalam (speech) philosophy.  

 

China has risen to become a world power through the use of its philosophical resources for socially constructing peace through Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism.  All these seem to be a trajectory of rediscovery of who these people were and who they would want to be.

 

For Africa, this rediscovery is not in the foreign, it is with us and it is in us.  It is in the Ubuntu trajectory. A trajectory of reason, ethics and values that espouses focus on human values and concerns.