Compatible Cultural Democracy : The Key to Development in Africa / Daniel T. Osabu-Kle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Osabu-Kle, Daniel T., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indigenous peoples--Africa, Sub-Saharan--Politics and government.

Indigenous peoples.

Democracy--Africa, Sub-Saharan.

Democracy.

Africa, Sub-Saharan--Politics and government--1960-.

Africa, Sub-Saharan.

Africa, Sub-Saharan--Colonial influence.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.)

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book argues that it is time for African nations to govern themselves using modified, indigenous political structures and ideologies. Osabu-Kle closely examines the colonization experience and the massive transplantation of Western political forms as well as the post-independence period of structural transformation. He delves into the makeup of a number of indigenous African political systems: the Ovimbunda, Zulu, Ashanti, and Ga peoples whose cultures, though geographically distant, exhibit common characteristics, including consensualism and a balance between centralization and decentralization to check the abuse of power. Osabu-Kle argues that only a type of democracy compatible with the historic African cultural environment is capable of achieving the political conditions for successful development. But he goes beyond establishing that precolonial African political systems were democratic. Rather, he describes how the indigenous political culture might be modified to achieve the political conditions necessary to work towards a successful future. This dynamically written, lively, and informed study provides a provocative challenge to conventional Western commentaries on Africa and current thinking about the continent's "re-democratization."

Contents:

Introduction : variants of democratic practice

The great transplantation

The post-independence problem

Typical African political systems

Towards the modification of African political culture

Ghana : tactical action, socialism and the military

Nigeria : oil, coups, and ethnic war

Kenya : settler ideology and the struggle for Majimbo

Tanzania : Ujamaa, compulsion, and the freedom of association

Somalia : experiments with democracy, military rule, and socialism

Senegal : from French colonialism to the failure of partisan politics

Rwanda : from success astroy to human disaster

Congo (Kinshasa) : "a most lethal poison."

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

ISBN:

9781442602472

1442602473

OCLC:

1110709905