Building On The Indigenous In Constitution Making
By Professor Bethwell A. Ogot Director,
Institute Of Research And Postgraduate Studies, Maseno University, Kenya.
07-02-2002
At the Constitution Of Kenya Review Commission Seminar On Culture, Ethics
And Ideology At The Great Rift Lodge. Naivasha. 7th February 2002
In my book entitled Building on the indigenous (Kisumu: Anyange Press,
1999), I argued in one of the chapters that the structures, institutions
and values of different societies should be the point of departure of a
dynamic development instead of regarding them, as we often do, as obstacles
to development (p. 142). This is the process I referred to as building on
the indigenous, and it is increasingly being regarded as the necessary
condition for self-reliant development. It implies that the indigenous
should determine the form and content of development strategy and should
ensure that development change accommodates itself to these things, be they
values, interests, aspirations and social institutions which are important
in the life of the people. I concluded that it is only when developmental
change comes to terms with them that it can become sustainable. How can the
indigenous determine the form and content of the new Kenya Constitution?
This is the question l intend to address in this talk.
In the public lecture organised by the Constitution of Kenya Review
Commission at Charter Hall, Nairobi on Friday, 17th August, 2001,1 raised
the question: "How can identity groups interrelate to a common political
community at the centre?" I prefaced my answer to that question with the
following remarks:
"In terms of practical experience, the view that political accommodation of
groups .... would lead to a break up of the body politic has been
widespread in Africa. But it should be remembered that the African nation
was an invention by the nationalists and academics. The State in Africa is
constituted on classical liberal principles which wrongly deny the moral
claims of groups. The principles revolve around individuals who are taken
to be the source of valid moral claims and are viewed as having moral worth
deserving equal respect. This is the theory which shaped the development of
the modern state in Western Europe. It was specific to culturally
homogenous societies which the theorists had in mind. Exported to Africa,
this liberal theory produced the idea that the State is culturally and
ethnically blind and hence political developments in Africa were premised
on the abandonment of primordial loyalties. Political development was
disconnected from African cultural specifics and increasingly became
alienating as individuals were stigmatised for exhibiting ethnic loyalty.
However, the classical theory of the political community, which has no
respect for cultural diversity, is now being revised to recognise that the
group to which the individual belongs has a moral space which ought to be
factored into theory. Consequently, the cultures of minority groups have to
be secured to enable their members to exercise the autonomy and freedom
which the majority group members take for granted. Rather than lead to the
dissolution of the polity, practical experience has shown that a
recognition fosters a sense of belonging and a strong civic bond."
The rest of this lecture should be regarded as an elaboration of this
thesis.
In Kenya, practically all the over forty nationalities are hybrid
societies. By the end of the nineteenth century, African societies in the
future Kenya were already all contaminated by each other in a complex,
interdependent human world. There were no watertight ethnic categories.
Numerous clans, lineages and sections of clans expanded and contracted,
gaining and losing members. The migration of segments or absorption by
other ethnic groups produced considerable complexity. New communities and
new languages were often the result. A thorough examination of the
traditions of the different Kenya nationalities reveals a lack of narrow
cultural nationalism. On the contrary, they stress integration by an ever
fruitful mingling and migration.
The researches of Professor Gideon S. Were on western Kenya have revealed,
for instance, that between thirty and forty per cent of the Baluyia clans
were originally Kalenjin: the Abatachoni, large sections of the Babukusu,
Abatarichi, etc. Similarly, but to a lesser degree, several Luyia clans
such as the Abashimuli of Idakho, the Abamuli of Bunyore, the Abashisa,
Abamani and Abakhobe of Kisa, and the Banyala of Bunyala, are of Maasai
origin.
In Central Kenya, for instance, the Kikuyu who regarded Muranga as their
heartland had been expanding northwards into Nyeri and southwards into
Kiambu throughout the nineteenth century. They completely absorbed the
indigenous people such as the Gumba and the Athi and proceeded to forge
extensive trade, cultural and family relations with the neighbouring Maasai
both in the North where they interacted with the Purko and the remnants of
the Laikipiak Maasai in the Nyeri plains, as well as in the south where
they established extensive contacts with the Maasai of the Kaputie plains,
in his authoritative work, A History of the Kikuyu, 1500 —1900, Godfrey
Muriuki has portrayed vividly the intimate relations that existed between
the Kikuyu and the Maasai in Mathira, Tetu and Kabete in the 19th century.
One important feature of these contents was the extensive intermarriage
that was practised between the two groups. Muriuki
estimates that perhaps half or more of the population in Mathira and Tetu
is of Maasai origin.
In the South, many Maasai groups and individuals took refuge among the
Kikuyu of Kabete during the times of adversity, 1880-1890. One of them,
Waiyaki wa Hinga, had even emerged as an eminent Kikuyu leader. Through
these contacts, Kikuyu language borrowed almost all the words related to
cattle from the Maasai language. The Kikuyu also borrowed basic religious
concepts such as Ngai (God from Maasai E'Ngai}, initiation rituals and
military tactics.
Interdependence and cultural fluidity was even more pronounced along the
coastal region of Kenya, in the Tana River area, the Pokomo who had settled
in their present homes towards the end of the 16th century had their
culture influenced considerably by the Oromo. Today, the Korokoro or the
Northern Pokomo speak Oromo and Pokomo dialects. Moreover, many Oromo
groups have been assimilated into Pokomo society. The situation was not any
different with the other Shungwaya conglomerate: the Mijikenda. Together
with the Pokomo they arrived from the north and proceeded southwards to
settle along the Kenya coast in nine villages or Kayas: Kwale (Digo),
Giriama, Ribe, Jibana, Chonyi, Kambe and later Rabai, Duruma and Kauma,
which were located on the hilltops of the coastal ridge. They formed the
Mijikenda or the Nine Kayas’ which has been Swahilised into Mijikenda.
During the second half of the 19th century, the Mijikenda people moved out
of their Kayas and evolved into the independent ethnic groups we know today.
But the interdependence did not only exist between the different Kayas: it
also extended to other groups along the Swahili coast, especially those in
Mombasa, the Oromo and the hunter-gatherers Waata. Each Kaya had a special
economic and political relationship with individual Swahili, Oromo and
Waata communities. Many of these relationships were consolidated through
intermarriage and blood-brotherhood. The Mijikenda rapidly became the
middlemen in the trade between the coast and the interior.
The Taveta people of the Kenya coast may be taken as an excellent example
of nation-building. Their traditional history reveals that refuge groups
comprising the Pare, Shambaa, Kamba, Taita, Chaga and Arusha fleeing from
the famines and conflicts of their respective home areas settled in the
Taveta forests in the 17th century. By the 19th century this heterogeneous
group had developed a distinctive common culture and evolved land-holding
clans and central institutions which unified the migrants into a single
people. There was also widespread intermarriage between the clans and the
adoption of the Pare language by all these clans which greatly assisted in
welding them into a cohesive nationality. The role of culture, common
central institutions, language and intermarriage in nation-building are
clearly demonstrated in the case of the Taveta.
When colonial literature later portrays the Taveta as a "tribe" in the
sense of an exclusive barbaric and static society, it was in effect
inventing a primitive community whose presumed needs and hopelessness could
be used to justify colonialism. This picture can be multiplied across the
territory that was to become Kenya in 1920. It emphasises the complex
nature of African traditional frontiers and human patterns. There were no
pure ethnic groups: the luo were an amalgam of luo, Bantu, Kalenjin,
Maasai, Karamojong and Teso elements; and the Kipsigis comprised the Okiek,
Maragoli, Gusii, Luo and Maasai. Each group was a dynamic and living unit
whose continuity depended less on its purity or single origin than on its
ability to accommodate and assimilate diverse elements. Most of the myths,
legends, epics and rituals one comes across in stories of migration and
settlement are meant to facilitate the process of integrating people whose
origins are divers. We can thus draw useful lessons about nation-building
from the pre-colonial history of Africa.
The drawing of colonial boundaries on a map froze the historical processes
whereby dynamic interaction among the constituent elements had constantly
produced either new syntheses or cultural differentiations. Individuals
could no longer move to new areas nor could people form and reform.
Consequently, cultural development was fossilised at a particular time in
history, and from then on the anthropologists could only write about "the
ethnographic present." Cultural and ethnic purists soon emerged among the
local people to stress the uniqueness of each "tribe." They even accepted
the concept of a "tribe" as an appropriate appellation.
As far as possible, the Africans were to be governed in their own language
units, and district boundaries seldom cut across ethnic frontiers. The
effect of this was profound, because it meant that, however much the
institution of a "tribe" was transformed and standardised, the modern local
government system emerged upon a 'tribal' and linguistic basis, in other
words, ethnic exclusiveness was strengthened by the introduction of the new
local government institutions. This was not building on the indigenous.
Henceforth, the Africans themselves began to promote ethnic consciousness.
Furthermore, new and bigger "tribes" such as the Abaluyia, the Kalenjin and
the Mijikenda were invented during the colonial period by the Africans
themselves to safeguard the interests and welfare of smaller units against
possible domination by the larger groups. This kind of balancing action has
tended to intensify ethnic chauvinism and the struggle for the capture of
the post-colonial state.
With the support of such converts it was not difficult to introduce
the "tribal" concept of local government upon which the colonial power
built its subordinate mobilising agencies. District Councils soon
became 'tribal' councils where matters pertaining to interests and welfare
of particular ethnic groups were discussed and problems resolved. The
Samburu, the Turkana, the Nandi, the Giriama, the Embu, Meru, Pokot had to
have their councils. The trend continued into the post-independent period.
New districts such as Tharaka-Nithi, Kuria, Elgon, Teso and Suba are being
established to give those ethnic groups who still lack a geographical base,
their districts. Any future restructuring of local government which ignores
this 'tribal' factor is likely to fail.
Thus the decision of the post-colonial government of Kenya to retain the
colonial district boundaries (which were not indigenous) is making it
difficult, if not impossible, for Kenyans to live in multicultural and
multiethnic societies (which are indigenous) that would encourage diversity
and interaction, promote the co-existence of communities with multiple
identities, protect minorities and emphasise intercultural dialogue and
tolerance, in short, the ethnic enclaves created by the colonial boundaries
and accepted by the post-colonial regimes are hindering the evolution of a
democratic framework within which the culture of peace can be developed.
This represents one of the major challenges facing the commission in its
task of reviewing the Constitution, especially those sections dealing with
Local Authorities.
Having accepted colonial borders, the nationalists had to deal with the
concrete fact of "nations" consisting of many ethnic groups and
nationalities. The nationalist movement saw recognition of Africa's social
pluralism as succumbing to the "divide and rule" tactics of the
colonialists and neo-colonialist forces that were bent on denying African
independence. Its quest was for a "national consciousness" and inclusion,
and any assertion of difference was seen as divisive and treasonable, in
other words, in combating "tribalism," the nationalists denied ethnic
identity and considered any political or economic claims based on these
identities as diabolic as imperialism, if not worse.
In African countries where "Marxism" became the leading ideology such as
Tanzania, class analysis simply rode roughshod over any other social
cleavages. They argued that ethnic identities were "invented" by the
colonialist or the petty bourgeoisie. They were part of "false
consciousness." But "false consciousness," while subjective in its origin,
assumes an objective historical esence that can only be dismissed at one's
peril. while acknowledging the pluralism of African countries, carved as
they were out of "artificial" boundaries, we should not avoid confronting
this diversity squarely, largely due to fear that recognition of ethnic
division would be misused by those bent on sowing the seeds of division.
Nor should we accept arguments for authoritarian or centralised power based
on the fear of the fissiparous pressures.
It is, however, interesting to note that while denying the salience of
social pluralism and the ubiquity of ethnic identity, the nationalists in
power often engage in the politics of "regional balance" that prides itself
on ensuring that all ethnic groups are somehow officially recognised.
And so pluralism remains not only "a fact waiting for some institutions,"
as Kwame Antony Appiah has observed, "but also a reality awaiting
theorisation" [Kwame Antony Appiah, 1992, My Father's House: Africa in the
Philosophy of Culture, London: Methuen
But this is not a purely African problem. Whereas the international system
is made up of about 180 nation-states, it is estimated that there are 8,000
ethnic groups. Most countries are in fact polyethnic nations (or, in some
cases, multinational states). The processes of social development and
modernisation are based on the assumption that ethnic and cultural
differences within nation-states' will tend to disappear. It is assumed
that social cleavages and mobilisation focus around functional groups
(social classes, occupational categories, urban-rural settings, political
parties, and interest groups).
However, it is becoming increasingly recognised that many of the
developmental "failures" of recent years cannot be traced merely to
technical, financial, or economic shortcomings but must also be linked to
the cultural and ethnic complexities involved in "nation-building." All
over the world in recent years, there has been a resurgence of ethnic and
cultural demands by minority or majority peoples who do not control power
of the State, in Sri Lanka, India, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone,
Liberia we have witnessed conflicts with a clear-cut ethnic dimension. In
the Arab world and western Asia, religious and ethnic minorities such as
the Druse, the Copts, the Baluchi, and the Berbers, attempt accommodation
with the dominant culture.
In western Europe, recent years have witnessed a renewed militancy by
territorial and national minorities in States that considered such problems
as having been solved long ago. The Bretons and Corsicans in France, the
Scottish and Welsh in Britain; the Flemish and Walloons in Belgium; the
Basques and Catalans in Spain. In the case of Britain, for example,
successful reforms reviving and restructuring regional parliamentary
systems have been introduced to accommodate Scottish and Welsh
nationalisms. This represents an excellent example of building on the
indigenous in constitution making.
In Africa today, there is a new wave of fascination with "identities,"
ethnic diversities and various forms of locations, in a recent book edited
by Thomas Spear and Richard Waller entitled, Being Maasai: Ethnicity and
identity in East Africa, the authors of these provocative essays make an
important contribution to the continuing debate on the process of being,
becoming and indeed transforming individual and corporate identities. The
book is a study and interpretation of what it means to be a Maasai now and
in the past. But even more important historiographically, it offers a
serious analysis of the theoretical implications of ethnicity for
understanding identity. The Maasai are seen as part of an historically
dynamic process whereby "different economic groups, ethnically defined ...
participated as a matter of course in a common interdependent regional
economy and culture." Their concept of "being Maasai" is basically
instrumentalist and the affirmation and negotiation of identities as well
as the process of articulation, upholding and disputing moral values are
seen here as integral to ethnicity. The book demonstrates that a sense of
community has been central to Maasai identity, and that over time this has
adapted and evolved according to needs and circumstances. For example,
today Maasai identity is being increasingly contested and redefined under
the influence of fundamental shifts in land tenure and the surrounding
economy and in the transformation from communal to individual ownership and
orientation. It represents a shift in Maasai priorities from that of
struggle for control over cattle to one of control over land. There are
also new and conflicting responses by Maasai to outsiders. The authors
conclude that ethnicity is neither static nor necessarily strictly defined;
it can be fashioned and transformed:
In a similar study, the role of the Mijikenda in the development of Mombasa
from mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s has recently been examined
exhaustively in a fascinating book, Mombasa, the Swahili and the Making of
the Mijikenda written by Dr. Justin Willis. He focuses on the changing
concepts of ethnicity and identity and gives an account of the continuing
redefinition of being Swahili and the invention of Mijikenda identity in
the 1930s as a dynamic response to the interventions of the colonial state
and the perceptions of its local representatives. The study underscores an
important point we should bear in mind in discussing our topic of building
on the indigenous in constitution making, that is, that ethnic identity is
constantly being negotiated and defined, re-negotiated and redefined, in
everyday discourse.
From this brief survey, several lessons can be drawn which are relevant to
the process of constitution making.
Firstly, it has warned us of the danger of imputing a direct relationship
between modernisation and the weakening of ethnic identity. Modernisation
theories had assumed that effective national integration will follow from a
process of economic development. The spread of communication, increased
urbanisation and industrialisation were supposed to lead to the
assimilation of the inhabitants of all regions into the mainstream of
national life, the transcending of ethnic parochialism, the transference of
their loyalties to the State and their eventual fusion into a homogenous
nation. That was the theory, and it did not imply building on the
indigenous.
Today, we know that modernisation, in itself, is not a sufficient condition
for breaking down ethnic identities, if anything, there is sufficient
evidence to suggest that in some cases it leads to a strengthening rather
than a weakening of ethnic identification. Part of the reason is that often
certain regions perceive that their natural resources are being exploited
by a dominant political centre for the benefit of the latter. The Shaba
province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Cabinda enclave in Angola
and Southern Sudan have charged the central government of engaging in
discriminatory redistribution. This is one side of the political economy of
dissident sub-nationalism. On the other side, are cases where
underprivileged regions feel that a state controlled by a "dominant other"
is paying too little attention, in economic terms, to the regions. The Luo
of Kenya, for example, often complain that their region has been
marginalised economically since independence. Hence, given the unequal
effects of the modernisation process, ethnic identity may actually be
accentuated, resulting in the gradual development of feelings of dissent
sub-nationalism.
The second set of lessons that may be drawn from recent international
events concerns the limitations of the consociational approach to the
problem of multi-ethnic societies. The theory of consociationalism assumes
that in societies that are deeply divided along ethnic lines such as Kenya,
one should accept these realities as givens. The champions of
consociational-type analyses or primordial analyses therefore advocate
constitutional solutions founded on the premise that ethnic groups form the
basis of social organisation and that their conflicting interests needs to
be formally balanced, in order to preserve the territorial unity of the
State, the constitutional entrenchment of power-sharing arrangements
between the various ethnic groups is advocated. Majority rule is excluded
in such an arrangement, because it is interpreted as a dominant ethnic
group rule, which would result in discrimination, real or perceived,
against other groups.
Ethnic diversity, of course, has serious implications for democratic
theory. One of the problems is how to combine majority rule with minority
rights in a plural society. There are potential tendencies towards
domination among majority groups in society. Ethnic minorities, for
example, tend to be permanent minorities and the ruling groups tend to be
permanent majorities. Simple majoritarianism often works against the rights
of minorities unless they are specifically safeguarded by devises such as
proportional representation, which South Africa adopted, and constitutional
provisions such as the right to veto on matters deemed to be of vital
interest to these groups.
The principle of consociation may also be expressed in specific
arrangements governing relations between central government and States, or
regions, or provinces or cantons, often taking the form of loose federal
arrangements or confederation, for example, Switzerland, Canada, ex-
Yugoslavia and Lebanon.
The most serious problem with consociationalism is that it elevates
ethnicity to the status of the primary organising principle of political
life for a society. Political science literature suggests that individuals
who have loyalties to a variety of different groups will not develop
a "total" commitment to any particular one, and will therefore have a
personal stake in sustaining an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and
cooperativeness. For a democracy to work, therefore, the system must allow
cross-cutting factional loyalties. Pluralism enhances democracy where a
society is seen as having a high level of integration and consensus among
an array of ethnic, economic, and cultural groups, if members of society
have multiple, countervailing, group affiliations, these are likely to
restrain the intensity of conflict, to channel it through legitimate
processes and to diffuse a set of norms and values.
Hence, a constitutional dispensation which depends on ethnic boundaries is
poorly placed to take account of ethnic fluidity or complex, multiple
identities in which individuals often choose to locate themselves.
Moreover, by giving ethnicity a direct and elevated constitutional
expression, the risk of one group trying to destroy another is
significantly increased should the fragile basis of cohesion become unstuck.
Furthermore, the question of who defines whom, and the power relations
involved in the process, is of crucial importance in the process of ethnic
ascription. Who is to decide whether the Basuba are not Luo? Primordialists
tend to use the word ethnic as a means of establishing difference or
exclusivity. In which case, for consociationalism to work, ethnic groups
will have to be statutorily defined. But if we understand ethnicity as a
malleable, historically conditioned process, which we should, and reject
its use in categorical terms that approximate to race or population as not
indigenous, we may be in a position to advance our understanding of
Africa's complex societies, in addition, loyalty to one's ethnic group is
not necessarily incompatible with loyalty to the State one finds oneself in.
Also, there is the problem of wealth accumulation and the control of
political power in a highly diversified society with deep social cleavages.
The tendency in such a situation is for groups to attempt to control the
existing state or to secede. This is particularly so in Africa where,
regardless of ideology, the State has been the primary channel for the
accumulation of wealth. The ramifications of this arrangement for
ethnicity, nationalism and democracy are serious. As
Elliot Abrams emphasised:
"The essential fact is that when the government assumes such extensive
power and control over the economic life of a Society, control of the State
becomes the sole means of economic and social advance. This is almost
guaranteed to exacerbate ethnic, religious, and tribal tensions. When the
State decides where all significant investments will be made and allocates
the wealth, then the talent, initiative, and enterprise get channelled into
a fight for political power.""[Elliot Abrams, ""Pluralism and Democracy,"
in Dov Ronen (ed.) Democracy and Pluralism in a^ Africa, Kent: Boulder,
c.o. and sevenoaks, 1986, p. 631.
In such a situation, political power is often sought for the material
advantage it promises and there is therefore an intense struggle amongst
various segments of society to control and exploit offices of the State, it
is therefore essential that if there is to be an orderly democratic contest
of factions, a reasonable distance between the State and the means of
accumulation must be established. As Francois Bayart has contended:
"Where there is greater distance between accumulation and power, there
develops autonomous indigenous business classes distinct from the
bureaucracy and capable of strengthening civil society..... Elsewhere, on
the other hand, the State is in total control of channels of accumulation
and either uses them for patronage and political manna or simply
appropriates them." [Jean-Francois Bayart, "Civil society in Africa," in
Patrick Chabal (ed) Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the
Limits of Power. Cambridge, 1986, p. 1161.
In conclusion, I would like to state the following: There have been
alternative approaches to the question of ethnicity and constitution
making. One approach has been to draw up constitutions which recognise
individuals and not communities and which aim at the establishment of
a 'civic nation' wherein the notion of the rights and duties of citizens
within a liberal democracy play the unifying role normally assigned to
national myths - such as the "melting pot" or a nation with "manifest
destiny" found in the U.S.A. The advocates of this approach argue that the
normal safeguards of democracy are sufficient protection for minorities -
ethnic, cultural, religious or economic. Countries which have adopted this
approach - and Kenya is one of them - have not always succeeded in allaying
the fears of minorities, in such situations, minorities have often felt
that no redress is possible through the constitution and have often been
drawn into politics of protest or even violence as is exemplified in the
case of the Southern Sudanese, Sri Lanka Tamils, Turkish Kurds, Indian
Sikhs and Tibetans. Majoritarian democracy, in such cases, aggravate rather
than mitigate ethnic consciousness.
The second approach is where the constitution is built around communal
entities, proceeds on the assumption that what ethnic minorities need is
not only political protection but power-sharing and participation in
decision-making. The federal principle is often invoked to achieve this
objective. But this approach is never popular with the leaders of the
majority group who see it as setting the stage for the fragmentation of the
State. In Kenya and Ghana, for instance, the first constitutional
amendments were aimed at dismantling the regional structure adopted at
independence. Now that the constitution of Kenya is being revised, it might
be a good idea to revisit this approach and see whether there are any
lessons of history we can learn from our adoption of the first approach.
In Africa, it was assumed for a long time that ethnicity could be contained
politically through the one-party state. It was argued that ethnic parties
tend to be rigid; and whereas 'normal' parties compete by trying to cover
the middle Voter, and so tend to converge, ethnic parties compete for the
extremists in their own communities. Attempt; were therefore made to
regulate the formation and conduct of politics parties, in some countries,
it was stipulated that in order to qualify for registration, a political
party had to demonstrate that it had the support in several areas of the
country, such rules were designed to encourage parties to have a national
outlook, presidential candidates were required to have at least 25 per cent
of voters in the majority of the regions. The 1992 Presidential Election
Act in Kenya, for example, was meant to achieve this. I hope that in the
course of reviewing our Constitution, we would not lose sight of the
objectives of such legislation.
But in the majority of African countries, it was argued that since
political activity in new, plural states was inherently divisive, their
fragmentation can only be prevented by restricting political activity to
one party. In other words, the one-party state was justified as a much
better mechanism for accommodating diverse ethnic claims, it was further
stressed that it enables each community to share in power and therefore
offers its own version of democracy more suited to the African condition.
This was the one party version articulated by Julius Nyerere and in some
sense attempted in Tanzania. It eventually tripped on the inherent
contradictions of "one party participatory democracy." The great source of
incoherence arose from the failure to reconcile what were obviously
socially pluralistic arrangements in terms of class and ethnicity, with
political and economic arrangements that were monolithic and highly
centralised.
in short, no sooner had the African nationalists come to power than they
found reason to discard the liberal democratic institutions that they had
fought for and that had eventually brought them to power. The arguments
given ranged from the need for strong government and unity, both 'nation-
building' and development, to the cultural inappropriateness of Western
institutions to African conditions.
In Uganda, where political party activities have been outlawed since 1986,
Yoweri Museveni is still maintaining that a "no-party (read one-party)
system is more suitable to the African environment. The Uganda constitution
of 1995 allows no political party activities because they would bring
political polarisation. For political parties to function properly, there
must be social classes and Ugandans, according to Museveni, are of one
class, peasants. [Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Sowing of the Mustard Seed,
London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1997].
On 10 July, 1997, the Uganda parliament passed a bill making the National
Resistance Movement the sole political party of Uganda, "what is crucial
for Uganda now," according to Museveni, "is for us to have a system that
ensures democratic participation until such time as we get, through
economic development, especially industrialisation, the crystallisation of
socio-economic groups upon which we can then base healthy political
parties." [Ibid p. 1951. Like the former advocates of the one-party state,
Museveni claims to be building Uganda State on the indigenous. But the
truth of the matter is that the aim is to consolidate power in the hands of
one group indefinitely at the expense of those who have refused to join the
movement. It is also a violation of the constitution as it violates the
fundamental freedoms of association and assembly.
This brings me to the question of our search for a "usable past." During
the struggle for independence, the nationalists such as Nyerere, Kenyatta,
Senghor, Nkrumah, sought historical and cultural anchors - or a usable
past - for the sustenance of the new nation-states. And in the early years
of independence there was a genuine attempt to find new expressions for
what was happening, or expected to be deified, in post-colonial Africa.
African scholars, including myself, shared this quest, in a sense, it was
an attempt to build on the indigenous. However, we soon discovered that
the "usable" pasts we had sought to construct for our leaders could easily
be turned into "abusable pasts" in the hands of a growing self-serving
political class.
One of the problems we faced was whether our basic research really
addressed the key issues and whether, when it borrowed concepts, it was
sufficiently sensitive to the specificities of our conditions. The analysis
of Africa was (and still is) dominated by others whose purposes for
studying us were driven by their own concerns. African scholars became
slaves to the intellectual fads of the West. As Kwesi Prah has written:
"For us who ..... have the benefit of middle age and hindsight, we
recognise that we have in our formation been subjected to successive
intellectual fashions born in the west. The intellectual fads have affected
successive generations of African intellectuals and shaped their thinking
on Africa and the World, but have hardly provided viable inspirational or
ideological sources for transformation which translate into the betterment
of the quality of life of African humanity." Kwesi Prah, 1998, Beyond the
Colour Line, p. 1601.
Some commentators have suggested that African intellectuals are no more
than the "informed native guide," the comprador in cultural commodities.
Kwame Antony Appiah maintains that:
"Postcoloniality is the condition of what we may ungenerously call a
comprador intelligentsia: of a relatively small, western-style, western-
trained group of writers and thinkers, who mediate the trade in cultural
commodities of world capitalism in the periphery, in the West they are
known through the Africa they offer; their compatriots know them both
through the West they present to Africa and through an Africa they have
invented for the world, for each other and for Africa." Kwame Antony
Appiah, 1992: My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,
London: Methuen, p. 2401.
As a comprador intelligentsia, we import all our concepts, paradigms and
values. This is intellectual mitumbaism. The Africa we have invented for
the world is not authentic, and whatever institutional construction
processes we engage in cannot be regarded as building on the indigenous.
Finally, building on the indigenous should not imply isolationism.
Globalisation, which refers to both the actual processes driven by trade,
finance and technology and the ideological expressions of such processes,
is already proving to be a major challenge to the nation-building project.
Africans should be skeptical about processes of integration of their
countries into the world market, whether in earlier forms of neo-
colonialism, trans-nationalisation or inter-nationalisation or its new
guise of globalisation. Quests by Africans for "endogenous" or "self-
reliance" or "auto centric" development have been dismissed by the
developed countries as unrealistic sloganeering, either as implying a
complete break with globalisation or a return to some romantic past of
traditional institutions or knowledge.
Our attempts to create autonomous spaces for reflection have been dismissed
as insular and provincial, and ultimately doomed to fail due to the
ineluctable forces of globalisation. And there is already a new elite in
Africa that has emerged in the wake of liberalisation and privatisation
that see globalisation as ushering in a new era of freedom - unlimited
access to information and knowledge, multiple identities and infinite range
of choices, - who are already enjoying the fruits of this new order. They
see globalisation as a welcome wind that will sweep away autocratic regimes
and their restrictive and suffocating order which they have imposed on
Africa.
If globalisation is eroding the State, it is also unleashing powerful
localisms that nationalism had so desperately sought to tame. To be able to
resist the powerful forces of globalisation, African countries will have to
be individually and collectively socially coherent, it is this social;
cohesion that will determine and firm up the internal strategic" necessary
to make politically viable and legitimate whatever countries choose.
Failure to come up with adequate internal responses to the external
challenges will merely expose African countries to misery.
Both internal institutional and political weaknesses (and that why we need
a new constitution to correct these) and the particular way Africa is being
integrated into the global system are likely to lead to this undesirable
outcome. The internal problems are the result on the one hand of internal
inconsistencies and conflicts and what Africa themselves describe
as "betrayal" by the leaders of the promise independence; and on the other
of the reverberations of foreign pressures on domestic politics which may
not only alter the preferences or ideologies of key actors but also
influence the social composition and strength of political coalitions.
Perhaps the most insidious effect of "global talk" has been at the
ideological level where it has tended to denigrade national ideologies of
social change and to underrate social policy. More specifically, the
ideology has tended to suggest that notions of equity and social justice
are either old fashioned and "ideological" or simply doomed to be swept
aside by the force of globalisation in this sense, globalisation has either
provided an excuse for those who would want to set aside the agenda for
equity and justice, or has served to demoralise or disarm those who have
sought to use national policies to address these issues, as these might
scare "markets."
True, an attempt to avoid globalisation can easily lead to xenophobia,
fundamentalism or nativism. On the other hand, an uncritical embrace of
globalisation is bound to result into a blind celebration of
the "universal." Africa must avoid both approaches.
The fate of Africa, in my view, lies in a collective rethinking of the
continent's unfulfilled humanistic tasks in the light of what has
transpired, and the concrete situation today; so as to recast them into
cornerstones of social justice, solidarity and equality and to enable the
continent to reconnect with the rest of the world in a mutually beneficial
way. We need many more creative institutional designs - and this where a
new Constitution becomes relevant - for Kenya respond to the peculiarities
of Africa's social pluralism, we may, in the process, have to rethink the
attributes of a nation-state in Africa - in terms of a cultural basis and
territorial exclusivity - in order to give greater authority to regional
arrangements and to strengthen regional self-policing. The turn away from
the market frenzy brings us back to the question of the state and
development. The challenge for Africa is to establish developmental states
that are firmly and democratically embedded in their own societies and that
are competent to engage the world and respond to the exigencies of the
emerging global order. And a new Kenya Constitution should aim at
facilitating this process.
