Will democracy ever reach Africa – Part 4

Will democracy ever reach Africa – Part 4

We must therefore explore the internal sources of mistrust and antagonism in the African communities to try to find a solution to the political evil in sub-Saharan Africa. Historian, Coquery Vidrovitchm, speaks as a source of ethnic antagonism African and
describes that manufacturing ethnicity and intensification of ethnic division for purposes of political control and administration by the colonial powers is one of the main causes of the conflict. But it is given to believe that the efficiency of this policy
of colonial fragmentation and division was based on a fertile soil. For the geographer, Yves Lacoste, the roots of ethnic conflict is respectively in the geopolitical disputes dating back to the period of the internal slave trade that took place among the
various communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Community conflicts are the result of late completion of the period that has dominated the African slave mode of production, in the sense of producing slaves for sale after having been captured and often carry over long distances. The current tensions that
plague multi-ethnic states in sub-Saharan be explained by the deep distrust, contempt and resentment that still persist between the groups and local predators slavery those who were their victims. Political defiance is a resurgence of atavistic distrust between
historic enemies that still preserve the memory of the slave raids and found themselves locked together in a territorial state borders arbitrarily drawn by colonization. The ethnic antagonism is explained in the next step, the exacerbation of tribalism in
colonial and postcolonial states. The manipulation of ethnicity in contemporary elites competing for power, economic benefits and prestige positions in multi-ethnic states in sub-Saharan Africa, would be the last source as of this process of division inside
Africa.

Therefore, the pressing question is this: The historical and geopolitical disputes the problem of the social contract in sub-Saharan multiethnic states can they are solved by democracy today and how? How to restore political confidence and disseminate the
idea and the national sentiment between peoples historically cleaved? How to build national unity as part of respecting the territorial state without ethnic diversity of ethnicity or sectarianism a criterion of political legitimacy and without making the foundation
of the constitution? A multidisciplinary reflection and mobilization of energy are urgently needed to devise appropriate solutions to avoid the danger of separatism and the risk of the balkanization of Africa. They must be taken now because time is running
out.

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Posted by Fouad Ashraf on Jan 2 2012. Filed under Africa, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry