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Why Study Africa and African Politics
John Bing: notes for day one of a class
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Why study Africa? More precisely, why study African politics? I suppose I could say simply "because it is there." That would be, after all, the easiest of all ideas to defend. We are each part of this world. Who would argue with the general idea that we should know more about the whole of which we are a part? It is our nature to know things, to understand, to experience, to find things out about our environment. I said that this is an easy idea to defend. I have just done so in a few sentences. The problem is not its simplicity, or ease of explanation. The problem is that I suspect you have not been persuaded that you need to do anything about it. To say that we must understand everything is as uninviting as it is bewildering. Obviously, it is an impossible approach to take. And we are very likely to deal with the request (sometimes, because of the way in which schools are organized, the demand) that we study this, by saying that we are presently already occupied studying that. So I have another approach in mind, another project if you will. I would like you to consider three quite different reasons -- three reasons that I feel are particularly important for us both as students interested in political matters (i.e. in the ways in which authority is established, expressed and exercised in modern societies) and as citizens trying to understand what government policies, towards the rest of the world, are wisest and best, that is, how our government should go about its responsibilities of advancing our interests, protecting our safety and, perhaps, insuring that our children (and perhaps the children of others) will be able to enjoy a high quality of life in the future. First, the study of African governments provides us with a chilling view of the consequences of lawless political authority. Many African governments today rule by force and extreme fear, to the extent that they do in fact rule at all. And without recourse to law to counter arbitrary violence, faced with a precipitous decline in economic opportunity and government services, people are forced to extreme measures of resistance -- civil war, ethnic cleansing and terrible suffering. Under these conditions of near chaos, local strong men, often little more than leaders of armed gangs, assume power and develop a following, a following of those who will accept "any port" in a murderous storm of insecurity, danger and uncertainty. It is not the wisest and the best that are most likely to emerge strengthened under such conditions of extreme disorder and danger. Instead it is often the boldest and the cruelest, those most willing to spread fear and punish disobedience -- the bully, the ruthless and the immoral. Their rule, in turn, leads to renewed despair and hopelessness. Their authority rests with lieutenants who are quick to desert or betray. Their cruelty has laid the groundwork for a new insurgency and a new anarchy and the cycle repeats. Second, the study of African governments is a study of the consequences of government by command, of authority exercised by elites that treat a population as objects of rule, not members of a political order. Colonization brought alien laws, administrative structures and values. It was an assault on the very basis of self-worth and self-actualization, i.e. confidence in the value of one's own native beliefs, ideas and action. Post-independence governments, supported and encouraged by Western governments and economic institutions, largely continued the project of forced modernization, dictating laws and values, imposing projects and purposes, forcing compliance. Under the weight of this rule, many people began to lose a sense of direction and dignity. Anger, hopelessness, apathy and despair are not civic virtues. They are not the basis for a strong progressive state, for a government that enjoys legitimacy and loyalty. They undermine cooperative projects and the willingness to undergo present sacrifice for future good. There is also a third consideration, although it is only now emerging -- a third important reason why the study of African government is valuable in itself. Africa is presently undergoing a public health crisis the like of which we have not seen since the plague years of the 16th century. AIDS has devastated whole cities and countrysides, infecting and threatening to destroy a major part of the young and the educated and the productive. This is a danger to the entire world. Poverty, crowded cities, poor diet and bad sanitation will continue to spawn new diseases that can spread far beyond national boundaries. And while the anarchy of African societies tends to encourage criminal activity that can affect the rest of the world, and provides safe havens for terrorist networks, the health conditions of Africa may yet prove the greater threat to our own safety and well being. Thus, we need to study and understand Africa for our own sake, for our own safety, so that we can engage with our leaders in a rational dialog about future policies and priorities toward Africa and the world. |