Africa between the traps of an imported democracy. [05.01.2008]

Whereas a glimmer of hope is falling down on the continent at this beginning of the year 2008, the international media whip at the carnage rhythm which is observed in two distinct poles of Africa and Asia with in one part, Kenya where two opponents who yesterday were real brothers and friends become at once enemies after a tight presidential poll putting in danger the peaceful coexistence which has a long time existed between the various ethnic groups of the country; and in addition Pakistan where the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated during full election campaign upsetting social cohesion which was not even at a good quality. Two events attached to the notion of the democracy with its corollary, the electoral campaign and the elections.

Probably and to the reading of this, someone will think that the critic loses himself in his intellectual wild imaginings. Also I will be tempted to say, after the colonization Africa and the emergent countries of Asia were trapped and are indeed trapped by the occident colonialist under the influence of three major elements which constitute for them the keystone of a contemporary society and for the third-world countries, the bottleneck of the people long time frustrated which aspire to a true blooming.

The first element, it's the appliance of the famous universal declaration of the humans right. A declaration which draws its historical origins from the franc-maconnerie texts whose fundamental alibi, was to conquer the world and to control the occupied countries. What shows in any regard the crucifixion if I dare the statement of the occupied countries, which in December 10, 1948 adopted in the headquarters of the United Nations this famous declaration which lasted from 1603 in England if I am not mistaken. A declaration worked out during slavery and adopted at the time even where the occupied countries were not free, where the African intellectuals could not contradict the "master-colonist", and where the Negro as they said it, were learning how to read and to write. Never the African man was respected in relation with this declaration and the examples are legion with the assassinations which have had run more than fifty years in Africa, with tortures and executions of all kinds that underwent the African indigenous people and their leaders, the use of the African continent as guinea-pig space where environment and human being are under chemical, nuclear, and bacteriological experimentations of all kinds.

The second element, it's the assistance called to the development. While the western countries plunder African richnesses, they borrow to Africa a part of the outcome and on this they claim it back in the form of debt. They can refuse or lend the means to it as it is good for them imposing the mode of refunding and at which scale, or to force sanctions to the extend to starve a whole people in order to put in failure the regime which makes them opposition to place that which will make them beautiful shares.

The third element, it's the democracy and besides, the question known as of the elections. Essential question which slows up the development and the takeoff of Africa since the African countries in the Nineties, have allowed it as the central motive of the imported democracy. And what I can allow myself to ask, on what base the elections as a democratic principle? I mean do sovereign people need the elections to choose an individual for the conduct of its affairs in which case, that would be an escape of responsibility, a negation of oneself of the people since, to anticipate in place of the people its desire for self-determination and self-control is antidemocratic and constitutes an obvious violation of the integrity of the people as from the moment they are sovereign.

"The instrument of governing is the prime political problem which faces human communities.  Even the conflict within the family is, often, the result of this problem. This problem has become serious since the emergence of modern societies.

People, nowadays, face this persistent problem and communities suffer from various risks and grave consequences to which it leads. They have not yet succeeded in solving it finally democratically.  

All political systems in the world today are the product of the struggle for power between instruments of governing. This struggle may be peaceful or armed, such as the conflict of classes, sects, tribes, parties or individuals. The result is always the victory of an instrument of governing-be it an individual, group, party or class - and the defeat of the people; i.e. the defeat of genuine democracy.

Political struggle that results in the victory of a candidate with, for example, 51 per cent of the votes, leads to a dictatorial governing body in disguised of a false democracy, since 49 per cent of the electorate is ruled by an instrument of governing they did not vote for, but had imposed upon them. This is dictatorship. Besides, this political conflict may produce a governing body that represents only a minority, for when votes are distributed among several candidates, one of them polls more than any other candidate. But if the votes polled by those who received less are added up, they can constitute an overwhelming majority. However, the candidate with fewer votes wins and his success is regarded as legitimate and democratic! This is the reality of the political systems prevailing in the world today. They are dictatorial systems and it seems clear that they falsify genuine democracy" (confer the Green Book of Muammar Al Qathafi). And when people, marginalized and dispossessed of its power cannot remain for a long time dumb, it creates sometimes fratricidal massive revolt as it is the case in Kenya nowadays.

Of course, the international opinion Americans and its European allies leans on the irregularities observed during the elections. It also thinks that the crisis currently perpetrated is a question from a tribal order. It is of its prerogative to evaluate it in this aspect especially because it is a question for it of not stressing that, it is the imported value of the democracy which makes problem in Kenya but also in the world in general and in Africa in particular.

Before the elections, the Kenyan tribes as of other African tribes always lived peacefully in the respect of the person of others, of the elders, and in the respect of the clans and the chiefs of clans and even the chiefs of tribes. It is the imported democracy, the Western democracy which shows its burden, it is it which opens the doors of the inconsideration of the crowned and taboo and injects the venom of the opened conflicts to the Machiavelli interests between the African people.

In front of this human bloodshed observed in Kenya, the westerners, promoters of the democracy and human right, invites a loser who self declared himself victorious to form a government of national union with his opponent, that's the democracy??? I can inquire myself: Yes but which is the winner resulting from the Kenyan presidential elections of last 27 December? Raila Odinga, the opponent or Mwai Kibaki, the outgoing president. And if it is the case for Mwai Kibaki, that would suppose according to the Western democracy that the best loser is from now on the best winner. Therefore, the elections do not have any more a value as such.

It is important anyway to point the Kenyan example at the same range as what is happening everywhere on the continent. The imported democracy is a sheet of straw. It is green when people are blinded, desiccated or burned when they are awakened. It is in fact the new field of the imperialists to conquer the world, to re-conquer the territories of which they had lost control. The elections as transparent as one wants to show, are antidemocratic. The winner always exercises the dictatorship on the loser and no matter what he does, the loser would never be convinced of his actions even if positive. What explains in fact why the elections put in danger the emancipation and the hegemony of the free people. Elections do not serve the interests of the people but those of the people or groups of people who are attached in. They divide the components of the same society and invite the "colonizers" to play the role of the referee i.e. to protect through their mediations their economic interests in the region. 

It is urgent for African and the occupied countries to readjust the internal debate on the amply democratic African bases which draw its origins from the local customs and habits. Freedom is not offered, it is acquired with coarseness. And the price to be paid is the installation of the popular congresses and the popular committees to ensure popular dynamics and to avoid falling into quarrels and the conflicts which would transform us into wolf for wolf.

It should be times for us, Africans, to go back over another political Africa which holds for Leviathan, the people. For us remainders, we must be covered in African man proud and haloed to be African because never the principal concern of the African has been the power or the attainment of the power. Power in Africa was in hands of the honest men encircled by the wise and erudite people. The honest man, the wise-sovereign, being the leader had preserved the identity of our people. The return in our historical past seems to be the ideal route because modernity with the Western way becomes increasingly pernicious and animalist. The Kenyan carnage of these last days shows the thesis of the animalism on which the same westerners confer to us. Violence with no similar where young African armed with hatchet, machetes, and the thorny sticks strike, kill their fellows as if one attacked a wild animal which is escaped from the bush. Which cruelty, AFRICA, my Africa!?

By Gilbert Rocheteau.