By TEE NGUGI

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Thus Julius Nyerere argued that “we in Africa have no need of being taught democracy, it is rooted in the traditional society that produced us.”

On his part, Kwame Nkrumah wrote about a “cluster of humanist principles which underlie traditional African society” And Jomo Kenyatta in Facing Mount Kenya claimed that “before the coming of the Europeans, the Kikuyu had a democratic regime.”

The intellectuals tended to agree that the rebuilding of post-colonial Africa had to be founded on traditional concepts and practices. It was only later that people like V.C Simiyu and Afrifa Gitonga began to question notions of pre-colonial democracy. Prof Anyang Nyong’o went on to argue that democracy was facilitative, rather than disruptive, to the development project.

Therefore, the revolution of the 1990s that restored democracy in Africa was also a repudiation of thinking that had dominated African discourse since the 1930s. The new thinking was that there were universal rights to which everyone — across nations and cultures — were entitled to by virtue of being human beings.

The Bill of Rights enshrined in constitutions in parts of Africa today is affirmation of this new thinking and a repudiation of the search for a unique African democracy.

I hope that President Kenyatta’s painful admission will resonate with other African presidents. This is because their admission of responsibility for the state of the continent might just occasion a thorough-going re-examination of the way we manage our affairs.

Take, for instance, the recent collapse of a school building in Ng’ando in Nairobi that has killed eight pupils and injured scores of others. Everyone who rushed to the scene could clearly see that the building had contravened several regulations. Wire mesh, not steel, had been used to firm up the concrete of the upper floor. This was death waiting in the wings.

Every year similar substandard buildings are put up in our towns and cities. Every year, they collapse and kill and maim people. Who gives permits for these buildings? Where are the quality assurance officials? Where is the ministry? Where are MPs and local leaders to give leadership and direction before tragedy strikes? (Perhaps engaged in political campaigns for future elections). After we bury the dead, it is business as usual until the next season of death.

It’s the same story of negligence and death and impunity with respect to road carnage, famines, fires and floods. We decry corruption and failure, then reward these by ambassadorial appointments. Africa decries poverty but countenances dictators who use the countries’ resources as personal property shared among family members and cronies.

It is deadly clear that we need a paradigm shift in the management of our affairs. The revolution of the 1990s taught us that we can own democracy. We repudiated old lessons taught us by our founding fathers that democracy was ruinous and against African traditional culture.

We refused the lesson that we were slaves of our past and could not reinvent our societies into what we wanted them to be. Likewise, we must now demand of those who manage our affairs the highest possible levels of performance.

We must refuse to accept negligence, failure and mediocrity. Africa must inculcate in its societies a new attitude. Instead of looking at the chaos, disorder and poverty and saying, “Well, this is Africa,” we must now demand for our situation to be different. As in the 1990s revolution, this repudiation of a culture we accept as innate to us will result in a new consciousness and a new society.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator