Fallacy of better democracy

But it makes very little sense to claim that Western democracies are the “finished product”.

First, Western democracies differ between themselves. So which version are people in Africa meant to mimic? Must their countries become unitary states like Britain or France, or federal like the U.S. and Germany? Must African states give unions and business associations a say in decisions as Sweden, Austria and Switzerland have done? Must language or religious groups be allowed a special say as Belgium and Holland have done? It is not clear which of the many forms of Western democracy Africans are meant to want to be.

Second, the “finished products” of the West are not that finished. Britain has an unelected house of traditional leaders and clergy – the House of Lords. The U.S. system allows the half million residents of one state to have the same say in the Senate as the 35 million of another. Several Western democracies detain suspects without trial – the U.S. has done this for nearly two decades at Guantanamo Bay, far longer than South Africa’s apartheid state ever detained anyone without trial.

The media in several Western countries is judged by specialists to be less free than those in some non-Western democracies. To show the absurdity of claiming that Western democracies are always better, think what would happen if an African president was elected because he won the vote in a state where the voting machines were faulty and the governor was his brother? This happened in the U.S. in 2000 – and no-one has declared it an “incomplete” democracy.

Third, the democratic idea is that every adult should have an equal say in the decisions which affect them. Where does that happen? Nowhere. So no democracy is a “finished product”. All fall short of the democratic goal and so Western democracies are no more real than those elsewhere. It also makes little sense to claim that one democracy is further down the road to “completion” than another – democracy has many aspects and on some, newer democracies outside the West are further down the road than those they are meant to want to be.

More people vote in some African countries than in some in the West. South Africa does more to promote women’s participation than most Western countries. A study of Botswana complained that its people did not value democracy because only 45% of voters knew the name of their Member of Parliament – but the equivalent figure in Sweden was only 33% and several other European countries lagged far behind Botswana, whose voters are better informed than Swedes.

Inferiority complex

In sum, the democratic inferiority complex of many Africans is unwarranted. The idea that our democracies are “B Grade” and those of the West are prime quality is false.

None of this means that African democracies are better than those in the West. It means that the idea of “real” and “not yet real” democracies expresses a colonial mentality, not reality.

Like all democracies, Africa’s have much room for improvement. But they will never become what they could be if they struggle to become a copy of a romanticised Western democracy. Africa’s democracies will progress if they concentrate on the core democratic principle – giving more and more people a say over more and more issues – and debate how to do that in their particular conditions.

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Steven Friedman is Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg