Of African political traditions

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena

African political traditions are as confusing and sometimes as complicated as the political histories and cultures on which they are founded.

As part of his research project on Africa’s Triple Heritage, which was an investigation of how the Christian civilisation and Islamic civilisation impacted on the African civilisation to form a civilisation of three major ingredients, Ali Mazrui tried to provide a followable narrative of African political traditions.

Prominently, Mazrui delineated the Warrior Tradition and the Tradition of Poet Presidents of Africa. By political traditions in Mazrui’s research and partly in the understanding of this column is meant approaches to political leadership and practice and styles of political presentation and representation of leaders and their followers.

Because of our slavish and colonial history that occasioned the Triple Heritage that Mazrui so ably nuances, African histories, cultures and traditions have become complicated, confusing and sometimes sophisticated mixtures of legacies and heritages, bitter and sweet, from many other world histories, cultures and traditions.

Our histories, cultures and traditions, in other words, are not innocent of both the corruptions and enrichments by other world histories, cultures and traditions, we can only wish there was a pure, innocent and authentic Africa.

Besides the bounty of human resources and other natural resources that the world has benefited from Africa we can proudly and courageously claim that the world has learnt a lot from Africa, and drawn a lot from its humanity, history, culture and traditions.

Today I isolate for observation some political traditions that have become visible and continue to be applicable in the African continent.

Tradition of Philosopher Kings

In his classic, Republic, Plato argued that unless philosophers become kings or those who are kings become philosophers society will see no end to its troubles.

In other words, Plato meant that political power should only rest in the hands of deep thinkers and wise heads or else society will see chaos and anarchy from the rule of those who lived “unexamined lives.” Africa has had a long tradition that leaders should be wise and surround themselves with a council of wise advisors.

There are historians who argue that after all, Plato got the idea of philosopher kings in Africa during the many intellectual visits that the wealthy son of a Greek nobleman made to Egypt as a studious youth.

The underside of the tradition of philosopher kings has been the arrogance that only formally educated people can be successful leaders, a notion that isolates political leadership to all types of elites.

Thandika Mkandawire in 2004 complained that owing to the philosopher king tradition in African even tyrants and other dictators were going around pretending to be philosophical leaders when they were only making incantations of their poor opinions. All sorts of sophists and pretenders have arisen and pretended to philosophical leadership.

Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki are severally noted by a numbers of scholars as having been notable African philosophical leaders.

Once one is recognised as a philosopher king they come under pressure to philosophise even when what is needed is swift action, the HIV/Aids controversy where Mbeki became busy brooding on the meaning of syndromes and politics of medicine instead of distributing drugs urgently, and many lives were lost to philosophy, is one such sad case.

The Tradition of Warrior Kings

In his whole life Plato tried and failed to groom any philosopher king. Only his student Aristotle who did not agree with the idea of philosopher kings in the first place managed to produce one of his students, Alexander The Great into a kind of warrior rather than philosopher king. Warrior kings are fighters who lead their people in wars of liberation and conquest. Tshaka the Zulu is one such king who built scattered tribes and clans into a nation through war.

Ali Mazrui notes how founding African leaders all had to display some warrior tendencies and the ability to defend their territories and populations from all kinds of aggression and intrusion. The trouble with warrior leaders then and now is that when there are no wars to be fought they tend to run out of relevance and end up creating wars.

That a leader must be a fighter and dispenser of violence and pain can lead to all kinds of tyrannies and autocracies that are punitive to populations.

When what a leader knows best is war and political violence, they tend to invent war where it is absent or not needed. After all, when one’s only tool is a hammer every problem tends to look like a nail.

Tradition of Cultural warriors

The tradition of an African leader as a custodian of a people’s history, culture and traditions is important. African kings such as King Lobhengula cultivated reputations as rain makers, even as Lobhengula in particular was critiqued for taking to western clothes and habits rather speedily, yes, in his time Omkhulu was accused of being a kind of spoilt nose-brigadier and soldier.

The tradition of the leader as a cultural warrior led to African leaders making strong ties with traditional chiefs if they were not chief themselves like Nelson Mandela.

Shrines, churches and mosques, sangomas, prophets and other seers became part of African leadership tradition where the leader appears and even pretends to be a cultural and spiritual ambassador of his people, a messenger of the ancestors or an anointed one of God.

In several cases this led to some tyrannies where certain leaders bullied others based on what sangomas and prophets said, trying to rule for life in the pretext that some god or ancestor said so. Mobilising the cultural and spiritual world in order to monopolise earthly power is a common political bad habit in Africa.

The Poet Presidents

Augustinho Neto of Angola and Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal come to mind when one delves into that political tradition in Africa that Mazrui described as the tradition of “poet presidents” that serenade the world and their populations with poetry.

The ruler as an artiste and a man of rhyme and reason is a prominent political method. It is from this tradition that the leader in Africa is generally expected to be an orator and a dispenser of poetic reason who circulates quotable quotes and becomes a kind of phrase monger as a result.

The troubles with this political tradition are not difficult to imagine. A poetic leader may end up producing and distributing slogans and catchphrases instead of supplying policies and sound ideas.

This political tradition has led to much poetic noise-making in the place of sound articulation of political thinking and direction in many countries, lots of controversy that has no usable content. The people’s leader, under pressure to be poetic ends up a joker and a true clown who manufactures and distributes national laughter when people need answers to the weighty matters of life.

Of the Dictators

All forms of political leadership can, depending on where one stands, escalate or degenerate into dictatorship. The leader as a philosopher, warrior, cultural icon, poet or all the above can use that as entitlement to dominate rather than liberate his people.

Of the dictators there are two principal types, the malevolent and the benevolent. In Africa benevolent dictators have been the people’s strong but good old man like Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, he who was not ashamed to cry in public if there was any national tragedy or disaster.

The malevolent dictator is that tyrant that creates a reputation for violence and murder and is willing to kill for power where tough but bloodless political competition was expected. Political malevolence and benevolence create a true dilemma. For leaders to have control and provide their people with rights, resources and freedom they must be tough and possess power and control.

Toughness and power may entail true tyranny and despotism. Moderation, accountability and a critical balance between power and responsibility seem to be the solution.

Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana successfully styled themselves as powerful reformists whose toughness led to national development and produced more public enjoyments in the long term.

Mazrui used to joke that Nkrumah came into power as a democrat and left a tyrant while Rawlings came in as a tyrant and left as a democrat.

How power is sought, found and kept makes a big difference as far as good and bad leadership are in perspective.

Good leadership that is empowering and liberating is that which balances power and responsibility, discipline and generosity and avoids extremes and excesses, especially those that limit freedoms and threaten and annihilate life.

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Mafikeng, South Africa:[email protected].