Africa’s Democracy, Still Growing – Anyaoku

Former Commonwealth Secretary General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, has described democracy in Africa as “still a plant of tender growth”.

Anyaoku was speaking on the “general issue of strengthening democracy in Africa’ at the Chinua Achebe Colloquium on Africa at the Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island in the United States last Saturday.

“Democracy in Africa is still a plant of tender growth and so needs care and strengthening, and needs strengthening urgently,” he said.

Anyaoku said that the issues connected with building and consolidating of democracy in Africa, stemmed from two related sources – the legacy of the old politics and the needs of the new.

According to him, under the old style of politics, opposition parties were not banned out-rightly but the citizens were made to see them as illegitimate organisations operating against the national will and interest.

He said this was made easy by the fact that the notion of political opposition did not exist in any indigenous African lexicon.

Anyaoku said the campaign against opposition parties was usually coupled with various forms of oppression that made opposition figures to defect to the ruling party.

“The old style politics which dominated the continent for three decades is now over, its legacy will take some time to undo.

“This had cast a long shadow over the present efforts to build democracy in Africa,” he said.

He said that in some African countries where transition from one party system to multi-party politics, opposition parties were still made to feel they exist more on the surface.

Anyaoku said that consultations that ought to have taken place between government and opposition to facilitate consensual government are not allowed to hold.

He said that major challenges of consolidating democracy in Africa were the issue of governance.