From cultural nationalism to liberal democracy in Africa

On August 4, Kenyans voted for a new constitution that will finally establish the country as a liberal democracy.

In so doing, it will join a growing number of African countries that have adopted liberal constitutions and become bona fide democracies.
The remaining countries on the continent still experimenting with other forms of government, will too find that they are only stalling an inevitable journey to liberal constitutional democracy.

It is fair, therefore, to say that Africa has come full circle to accepting a governance philosophy and conceptual framework for social and economic development that it had rejected soon after independence.

What we will also realise in due course is that, in addition, a liberal constitutional order also provides the material with which to build a substantive worldview, on the basis of which we can define our identity and ideologies of change, and which will enable true artistic exploration of self and society.

Therefore, whether in the short or medium term, the adoption of a liberal democracy will occasion a radical discontinuity with past efforts to construct an African worldview and an African model of socio-economic development.

It will offer as well a revitalised vision of self and society that will be the basis of a more experimental, virile and liberating art.

Up till now, attempts to define an African worldview and model of development were informed by the belief that it was within African traditional culture that we were “most at ease with ourselves, that there was the truest coincidence between us and the world (Irele,1982).

The elaboration of this idea was that colonialism occasioned a disruption of our means of social reproduction and we had become something other than what we are; alienated and lost, unable to find meaning and purpose in life.

Thus, a constant proposition in the various constructions of an African worldview and model of development was a return to traditional values and practices as a way of not only reclaiming our lost souls, but also as a basis for our socio-economic and political development.

Of course, these values and practices were assumed to be self-evidently desirable and superior to those inherited from the West via colonialism.

Cultural nationalism then is at the heart of the various theorisations of an African worldview and African model of development, and has informed all other ideological, intellectual and artistic expression.

But cultural nationalism was a disabling conceptual framework, limiting our self-expression and self-definition, and more importantly, our cultural and political growth.

Take Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, for instance, which is representative of the style, themes and points of view of most of our modern literature.

Before the white man, Okonkwo — the tragic hero of the book —was a successful man. But the coherence of his world collapses with the coming of the white man.

Unable to relate to the changing times and values, he commits suicide. The point of view of Things Fall Apart is unequivocal: only within the context of our traditional world can we find meaning and purpose.