Imperialism and the Democratization Process in Africa

This is not to underplay the importance of liberal democracy in opening up political spaces, expanding civil society, creating opportunities for challenging the status quo, and providing openings and opportunities for nurturing new leaders. However, as Representative Harry Johnston (1994: 19) has warned, “the movement towards genuine democratic change in many African countries has stalled in the face of growing political anarchy. Africans must closely examine the current political trend if Africa is to succeed in its attempt to democratize. Recent experiences suggests that multi-party elections do not necessarily lead to open and tolerant societies.” This is largely because the Western conception and ideology of democracy hardly gives “sufficient thought to dismantling repressive state structures in the rural countryside and the creation of conditions for community empowerment,” (Mutua 1994: 14). Thus, the entire project is reduced to demands for a free press, independent judiciary, the right to organize and other attributes of liberal democracy. The real question is whether these rights can be guaranteed when the social formation is dominated and exploited by imperialism; managed by an unstable, inefficient, and non-hegemonic state; which is itself presided over by a subservient, factionalized, fractionalized, and corrupt dominant class.
The Western agenda cannot ask these questions or raise issues of empowerment, democratization, and the dismantling the neo-colonial state. This is largely because it would be raising issues which procedural liberal democracy cannot address: will marginalized, brutalized and exploited constituencies empower themselves to accept or change the status quo? Will communities and persons brutalized for so long and subjected to all possible indignities by local and foreign exploiters democratize in a way that will not lead to a major confrontation between the rich and the poor; the exploiter and the exploited? Do people empower themselves to accept domination and a continuation of the decadent tradition? Finally, will oppressed peoples accept to participate in politics under the guidance of the same state that has squandered scarce resources, suffocated civil society, looted the treasury, and severely underdeveloped their communities for decades? Such issues challenge the role of the West in Africa’s development: its racism, its double standards, its discrimination, and its lack of interest in helping Africa (Clough 1992). One can ask a rhetorical question: Which African country has ever received very serious foreign assistance like, say, Mexico, South Korea or Taiwan from the West? The simple answer is none. During the Cold War, the West funded ruthless dictators like Samuel Doe, Said Bare, Gaffer Nimeiri, Ibrahim Babangida, Marcias Nguema, Mobutu Sese Seko, Jeane Bedel Bokassa, and Arap Moi. We can see the legacies of these leaders and their foreign supporters in Africa today. America poured millions of dollars into the maniacal campaigns of Jonas Savimbi in Angola because the Angolans did not declare for capitalism. Today, Russia has received more foreign aid, loans, and pledges from the West and Japan as well as from international lenders and donors than all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa put together. As Salim A Salim (1994: 3, 5) noted recently, “Everywhere I go I am told that the continent of Africa is not being marginalized, that there is sufficient interest in Africa, there is concern about Africa. But it is not true: the reality is different. Because of global changes, there is less flow of resources to the continent now….Africa is no longer considered to be of Cold War geo-political importance, its problems will not be taken seriously.”