Don't pontificate about democracy — de Klerk

 

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

Former South African President, F. W. de Klerk, has stated that much as he admires American and British democracies, they should not be dogmatic about Africa following their example.

“There is often an enormous chasm between Western protestations of democratic rectitude and their social practices back home”, he said, noting that the two democracies were not as perfect as they had been made to appear.

The former South African President, during whose tenure apartheid rule ended, was delivering a Post Supreme Court Verdict lecture, organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), in Accra yesterday.

The lecture was on the theme: “Fostering Peace, National Cohesion and Reconciliation after the Ruling of the Supreme Court of Ghana.”

The event attracted stalwarts from Ghana’s political divide as well as traditional leaders. They included former President John Agyekum Kufuor, Convention People’s Party Chair, Samia Nkrumah; former Majority Leader of Parliament, Cletus Avoka; People’s National Convention Chair, Alhaji Ramadan.

“Now, I hasten to add that I have the greatest admiration for both the American and British democracies – but the point that I am making is that they should not be so quick to pontificate to Africa,” Mr de Klerk said.

African democracy
Making a case for Africa’s own style of governance, he asked Western style democracies to accept that African countries might need to evolve their own special forms of democracy to suit the special needs of their people.

He stated that in view of the complex multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious populations of Africa, the continent must avoid the trap of ‘majoritarian domination’.

“Many of the problems that continue to beset African countries have their origins in the fact that colonial borders often encompassed widely different cultures and religions,” Mr de Klerk said.

Suggesting that Africa can agree on democracy provided it avoids the trap of majoritarian domination and by making proper provision for the protection of minorities, the former Southern African President asked whether that was even better than the traditional African approach of consensual decision-making.

“As we know, there are strong democratic elements in most of the traditional African governmental systems,” he said.

He held the view that the doctrine of traditional ‘democratic centralism’ could very easily be grafted onto the new emerging one-party states in post-independence Africa.

Ghana commended
Full of praise for Ghana for being one of the first African countries to adopt a robust multiparty democratic system, Mr de Klerk said the problem of traditional consensual governance, however, was that it could and did easily morph into the dictatorial one-party rule that became the curse of much of post-colonial Africa.

The chairman for the event, Dr Charles Mensa, Board Chairman of the IEA, said it was organised as part of IEA’s contribution to democracy and lessening tension in the country as a result of the election petition hearing.

After listing other activities that the IEA had conducted in the development of democracy, Dr Mensa said “Ghana must continue to shine in the sub-region as a beacon of democracy.”

This story was first published by the Daily Graphic/Ghana on Wednesday September 11, 2013