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Democracy and Human Rights

The second session of the Electronic Roundtable, covering democracy and human rights, opened with panel presentations (February 10-16, 2000) and continued with discussion by panelists and participants from February 17 through March 15. This chapter juxtaposes the views of panelists and participants, in their own words, on the critical political issues confronting Africa.

The full archive, including e-mail contributions by participants and English and French versions of all panel presentations, is available at www.africapolicy.org/rtable.

Panelists

Tade Aina, Ford Foundation, Kenya
Dede Amanor-Wilks, South African Development Community Centre
       of Communication for Development, Zimbabwe
Ezra Mbogori, MWENGO, Zimbabwe
Patricia McFadden, Southern African Political and Economic Series Trust, Zimbabwe
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, InterRights, London

Aina: I believe that it is imperative to begin our discussions on democracy and human rights in Africa with a very basic question: democracy for what? By asking this question, we will free ourselves from the overwhelming confusion that surrounds the use of several concepts such as "democracy", "human rights" and "governance". These notions have not only become trivialized today, but have been misappropriated by a wide range of interests such as some donors and multilateral institutions.

To answer the question stated above, my position is that, democracy is for the promotion and advancement of the individual and collective well being of the different peoples of our nations and continent. This means that, whatever structures and processes that we struggle to put in place for democracy and human rights, these must recognize and embody the basic principles of inclusion, participation, freedom, justice and equity for all who find themselves in any of our African countries at any given time. This is important. These basic principles cannot be compromised even in one single case.

Odinkalu: The relationship between human rights and democracy in the very complex milieu of Africa is embodied in the dynamic tension between stability and justice. It pits the interests and expectations of an overwhelming majority of the continent's pauperized peoples for better living conditions and accountable leadership on the one hand, against the desire of a powerful minority of entrenched local and international elite for predictability and privilege on the other.

Regimes offering "stability" are rewarded with effusive international support that is often prepared to gloss over egregious violations of the most basic rights. It is also often prepared to relativize the goal-posts of acceptable political behavior, including, where necessary, conscious complicity in patent electoral fraud. In seeking to trade off (structural) justice for short term stability, the partnership of domestic and international interests that has so far shaped Africa's destiny succeeds in damaging the prospects of both justice and stability. As a result, human rights and democracy in Africa are also damaged.

Severely steeped in the history, politics, cultures and economics of the continent, it is impossible to disinfect the fates of human rights and democracy in Africa in peroxide of political "neutrality" and economic illiteracy. Although not interchangeable, human rights and democracy are cousins in a relationship not much different from the proverbial chicken-and-egg conundrum. In Africa, these concepts represent the project of realizing both economic and political justice for individuals as well as groups in the aftermath of colonialism. It is the search for a just stability.

McFadden: I want to approach the discussion on Democracy and Human Rights as an opportunity to interrogate and unveil the relationship between:
a. The identity of being African and the notions of integrity and autonomy;
b. The historical discourses that construct democracy and rights within narratives of community and collectivizing traditions; and, the growing demand for a recognition of the African as a person who must have entitlements and who can and will exercise choices; and
c. Making the linkages between claims of authenticity (related to gender/ spatial location/ and appearance) and "Othering", on the one hand, and the reification of exclusion which perpetuates or facilitates undemocratic relationships and practices.

These relationships and practices continue to undermine or violate the human rights of African persons on the continent and elsewhere. I interpret the discourse about democracy and human rights as an exciting opportunity to interrogate old paradigms and political stances regarding these notions. This is the case whether one is positioned within the civil society (with all its possibilities to craft commonalities and proclaim differences), or whether one approaches this engagement from a "nationalist" stance, driven by often unacknowledged yet well known feelings of loyalty and bondage.

Mbogori: While I do not have any empirical data to back this up, I would like to suggest that democracy is more actively discussed today than has ever been the case before. Yet, there is a more noticeable lack of democratic practice today than ever before.

Let me try to illustrate this, beginning at the micro level. Taking the household as the most basic unit of analysis for our purposes, I have often wondered about the ways in which the notion of democracy can have practical meaning and application. Take a household in some rural setting anywhere in sub-Sahara Africa. In whatever village we may want to situate ourselves, poverty will be an ever-present The notion of democracy, where this might be interpreted to mean participation and the ability to exercise one's free choice, would appear far removed from reality.

Take the village dweller that is largely dependent on subsistence agriculture for their livelihood. Besides selling off whatever limited surpluses they might get from time to time, they can only offer their labor occasionally, if they needed to raise cash to meet other needs that they might have, besides the food they grow. In instances where the weather is not favorable over a sustained period, they cannot even raise sufficient food for their subsistence. Their labor then, is all they have.

I am reminded of one such household in which I learned that a six year old child was known to have asked her eight year old sister if there was any way the sister could get her a job in the city, or indeed anywhere away from home. We will quickly think that this is tantamount to promoting child labor. What we may not appreciate is that in this household meals are served only occasionally, and even then, most times amounts to only a small cup of porridge. The desperation exhibited by every member of the household sets fertile ground for violence, which is itself, a common occurrence. No one in the household even thinks about their rights, let alone respects those of others. Inevitably the rights trampled upon are those of women.

The question for me in these circumstances is; how do you impart an understanding of the concept of democracy and the need to respect human rights to members of this household. Lest we all dismiss this as an extreme example, let us remember that more people live below the poverty line on the continent than those living above it. The glaring question here is whether human rights include economic or indeed basic rights for that matter. What is it that people who do not enjoy these can do?

Amanor-Wilks: On February 12th and 13th, Zimbabweans will be asked to vote yes or no to a new draft constitution, which will replace once and for all the much-criticized and amended Lancaster House Constitution. This constitution reflected the historic compromise balancing the rights of minority whites with those of majority blacks, and that ushered in Zimbabwean independence in April 1980.

Controversy has raged, however, over whether the new draft constitution captures the sentiments expressed at public meetings convened by the constitutional commission across the country during a three-month process of consultation. In particular, the debate has centered on the powers of the executive and the commissioners' interpretation of whether "the people" expressed their wish to have an executive or ceremonial presidency. In the run-up to elections in April, attention has understandably focused on the separation of powers between the executive and the legislature and between the presidency and the proposed office of prime minister.

Much overlooked in the process has been Chapter III of the new constitution, which sets out the country's fundamental human rights and freedoms. The new constitution considerably strengthens civil liberties, including the areas of personal liberty, personal security, freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to dignity, freedom of speech, and- not least of all- equality before the law. This section of the proposed new constitution needs to be carefully combed by civil rights organizations for indications of how it might advance or compromise the rights of their various constituencies.

Interestingly, Zimbabwe's human rights record has attracted the most attention where it has been, perhaps, the least wanting, in practice at least. The international media, together with some local media, have been preoccupied by issues such as last year's arrests of journalists and Mugabe's "gay-bashing". When viewed from the perspective of Zimbabwe's human rights record as a whole, these amount to isolated incidents, though still serious infringements of civil liberties (in the case of the arrests, and a now familiar posturing in the case of the verbal abuse of gays). But, they pale into insignificance when compared to the disregard of human rights for an entire segment of Zimbabwe's population, namely agricultural workers, who make up 25% of the formal sector labor force and between 11% and 18% of the total population. These are laborers working for commercial farmers who contribute about 40% of foreign exchange earnings and 15% of the country's GDP.

Aina: Democracy as a participatory and inclusive social institution that guarantees freedom and social justice is a very recent occurrence in human history. It is also very fragile and subject to sudden reversals, threats and attacks from competing allegiances and identities that define the human condition in terms of bondage to the dictates of creed, race, ethnicity, class, social status and other narrow interests. We see the trends of such attacks and reversals every day in Africa. In many African countries, governments and regimes flagrantly breach the rule of law and human rights, which they have not only sworn to defend, but, in certain cases, they had themselves established.

Attacks also come from sources beyond governments and regimes. The enemies of democracy are not only in governments. They are in churches, mosques, temples and shrines, and also in homesteads, kraals, shantytowns, high-income estates, communities and in civil society. These enemies are everywhere that intolerance, exclusion, injustice, domination and unmitigated exploitation and victimization of others occur. They not only use the resources of governments, but also use weapons such as guns, knives, clubs, "pangas", petrol and other bombs, "necklaces" and lynching to pursue their goals. As a result, we get the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic riots and killings in Burundi, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. This is why in Africa today, democracy and human rights are not only about governments (though these are the greatest culprits!).

Odinkalu: To be fair, democracy was always going to entail hard toil and committed leadership. The tragedy of Africa is that we got neither. Across the continent, direct colonialism ended without resolving or even addressing the explosive problem of power sharing in the multi-national, multi-ethnic and, in some places, even multi-civilizational masterpiece of cartographic arbitrariness that became Africa. The elite of Africa's nationalists, who inherited the raft of dictatorial powers, legislation and attitudes that sustained colonialism, were quick to experiment with their newfound powers with an impatience only matched by the enthusiasm of a child trying out a new toy.

In less time than it took colonial administrators to leave the continent, the high sounding, high-minded rhetoric of the independence movement- perhaps, the second truly popular human rights movement with its origins or inspiration in Africa, the first being the anti-slavery movement- was replaced by the instinct of political leaders to survive in power as the raison d'ˆtre of government. Towards this objective, the enormous powers of the post-colonial African state, together with all the goodwill that could be wrung from Cold War belligerents and post-colonial metropolitan powers, not to mention (in some countries) the odd presidential shaman or marabou were pressed into service.

Political patronage privileged persons with the right ethnic origins at the expense of merit. Dissent was criminalized, and the judiciary was abolished as in Sekou Toure's Guinea, emasculated into irrelevance as in Banda's Malawi or intimidated into obsequiousness as in Nkrumah's Ghana. Onto this canvass, the unfinished, even virgin business of post-colonial power-sharing exploded with a vengeance, accounting for the cycle of zero-sum politics, military adventurism, gross human rights violations and instability that all appear to characterize Africa.

Amanor-Wilks: Zimbabwe's farm workers are a particularly acute example of how easily a significant sector of a population can be by-passed by worldwide trends towards greater human rights and democracy. The example also suggests a critical role for civil society in bringing human rights abuses, so commonplace within a particular sector as to have assumed the appearance of normalcy, to the fore. The agricultural sector is also guilty of the more obvious forms of rights abuse, such as physical beatings and the degrading treatment of workers, although the full extent of this is not generally known. Within farm worker communities themselves, women are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

Farm workers have remained outside the normal governance structures available to other Zimbabwean communities largely because they have traditionally been viewed as "aliens". This is the case even though many of them are in fact Zimbabweans, and a good number second, third or fourth generation Malawians, Mozambicans and Zambians who have no other home but Zimbabwe. Because of high levels of illiteracy and lack of political representation, they may not have regularized their status in the country. Indeed, it was the failure of the colonial policies to procure and retain local labor for settler farmers that led to the policy of labor recruitment from neighbouring countries, such that by 1966 an estimated 54% of male agricultural labor was foreign.

Aina: No outsider can build democracy for Africans. We must build our democratic institutions and values by ourselves, not by reinventing the wheel or pretending to create some special or exceptional "African democracy" but through struggle and mobilization. We must make demands on ourselves that recognize that democracy, while expanding human well being and progress, is essentially subversive of existing conventional social and political orders and relations.

We must reconstruct the state. Fortunately, some of these "artificial" states are disintegrating and imploding. In many other cases, the clamor for constitutional review all over the continent is a sign that Africans want to be involved in redesigning the conditions of their co-existence. No matter how flawed some of these efforts are, they constitute a beginning. They show that more Africans want to be part of constructing their "social contract". In cases where these inclinations have been blocked or hi-jacked by powerful interests, people have resorted to violence and wars. The lesson is that there can be no peace without building democracy. Yet, to build democracy requires peace.

What needs to be impressed on outsiders, particularly the powerful societies of the West and the dominant international financial institutions and multilateral agencies, is that propping up unpopular African regimes is no longer acceptable. These powerful interests must also contribute to the design of global governance norms and institutions that advance peace, reduce poverty and promote social justice and equity.

Amanor-Wilks: Many of the proposed changes to the current Zimbabwean constitution deserve to be hailed for their expansion of human rights in the country. For instance, Article 41 on freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment specifically states that "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment includes gender-based violence." This is a great leap forward in terms of verbalizing the need to protect women from various forms of domestic violence.

But what do the proposed new constitutional arrangements mean for agricultural laborers who have fallen between the cracks of development policy? In what way can the constitution's pledge of dignity for all serve farm workers (or indeed other segments of the society) who live and work beyond the public domain in a realm inaccessible to most?

According to Article 34 of the draft Zimbabwe constitution: "Human beings and juristic persons are entitled to the rights and freedoms set out in this Chapter to the extent that those rights and freedoms can appropriately be extended to them." It is not clear to what extent commercial farm workers would be considered as an "appropriate" target group for the extension of such rights, given that they work and reside in a sector that has hitherto largely governed itself. Moreover, they work in a sector with which the government has been at odds over its land reform program and that, for this and other political reasons, has been reluctant to invite government intervention by way of welfare provision.

McFadden: Most Africans are not yet citizens, either in the manner they perceive themselves (at the level of the individual with an identity and an agency to interact with her/ his socio-political reality) or in terms of inter-personal relationships. Citizenship plays little role in how these individuals relate to each other via the most critical sources of identity in their societies (gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, spatial location and other statuses). Nor are Africans citizens in terms of their relationships with the state, civil society organizations, and other key institutions that mediate between persons and critical resources in political, economic, cultural and religious terms.

However, becoming a citizen is not only dependent upon one's own conception and embrace of the notion of citizenship (and thereby accessing the rights, resources or entitlements associated with this notion, especially its feature of inalienability). Becoming and being citizen is also about being someone whose agency is driven by the ownership and exercise of human rights. More importantly, it is refers to specific mechanisms for acting on these rights that persons can use in their daily existence and through which their creativity and energy as social beings can be expressed..

Human rights are reflected in and through: a. The products of social and political struggle; civic phenomena that arise out of the political realities and the visions of entire communities of persons; b. Civic spaces which we have crafted through our interactions with other human beings; and c. The relationships which express themselves in material and aesthetic structures, formulae and systems, what we call institutions and organizations -i. e., the pathways along which we traffic in life which are encoded with our values, prejudices, assumptions and expectations;

Amanor-Wilks: Two of the big issues facing farm worker communities are their lack of land rights and the problem of national registration. Farm workers who lack land access rights in communal areas are vulnerable to abuse on farms because they reside on the property of their employer and, therefore, depend on the continuation of their job for a place to live. Women employees are vulnerable because they are rarely employed as permanent workers in their own right and rarely qualify to be housed independently on farms. Retired farm workers face a particularly acute social security crisis. This is particularly the case when they are foreign migrants with no links to their countries of origin and no rights in Zimbabwe. Children represent a captive labor force for seasonal work and child labor is still prevalent on many commercial farms.

In many ways, the right of farm workers to be protected under the new constitution is complicated by their unclear citizenship status. The new draft constitution provides for citizenship by birth, descent or registration. But citizenship by birth can only be bestowed if either parent was a citizen at the time of a person's birth. In terms of citizenship by registration, the draft constitution deals only with legal adoption, minors born of Zimbawean citizens by registration, and the acquisition of citizenship through marriage. Other categories are not covered by the constitution, and an act of parliament is required to provide for them.

While the new constitution upholds the right of children to "have a nationality from birth", in the case of farm workers, children continue to be born each day to workers who themselves have no legal status and, therefore, no nationality to bequeath to their children. Many farm workers, even second or third generation workers, carry national identification cards bearing the designation "alien". An alarming number of them have no national ID, much less birth certificates for their children. Without a birth certificate, children born on commercial farms cannot obtain a national ID. Nor can they sit Grade 7 examinations qualifying them to enter secondary school, assuming that such facilities exist within walking distance of the farms on which they reside.

Aina: To reclaim democracy and human rights in Africa, we must return to the foundations of democratic development. I link democracy with development, because, they are both closely connected and we can not have one without the other. This is the case in Africa and any part of the so-called Third World today (see: Thandika Mkandawire's paper to the CODESRIA's 1995 General Assembly on "The Democratic Development State" and Armatya Sen's 1999 Development as Freedom). If the goals of our struggles are the promotion of the collective and individual well being of Africans, then we can not have one without the other.

In this case, we are not talking about development merely from the perspective of the increase in Gross Domestic Product or per capita income. Development includes these two, but must entail a more holistic notion incorporating social and physical infrastructure, the meeting of basic needs and the condition of peace, security and minimal good health.

Odinkalu: It is not for nothing that the widely advertised recent wave of democratization and non-governmental human rights initiatives in Africa roughly coincided with the end of the Cold War, the decimation of Africa's middle-classes by post-colonial dictatorships, and the popularization of kitchen-ware for high intensity political violence. Across much of Africa, it is not unusual to hear advocates of pluralism being blamed by local communities for inflicting instability on the people. This sentiment deserves close examination.

To many of our people, the "wave" of human rights and democratization that "swept" through Africa only meant optimal political turbulence and hardly a ripple of positive difference to their well being. These notions offered a terminally endangered middle and intellectual class a limited facility of protest, where in the past, they were actively complicit in or indifferent to bad government. Anxious to preserve something of shrinking aid budgets from the weight of expectation imposed by domestic electorates unburdened by Cold War appropriations, Northern "philanthropies" made common cause with recently articulate voices of mainstream protest in Africa. They consecrated them into ready beneficiaries of the post-Cold War dividend.

With the venom of a bushfire, the fate of Africa's democratization was tied to the city-dwelling parvenu or disgruntled ex-apparatchik in country after country. For them, democracy meant replacing existing power with a different face, and human rights represented the prerogative to realize this ambition as theirs. They prosecuted the project of democratization "for", defended human rights "on behalf of", and sought power "in the name" of the "people" rather than "with" them. Newfangled national constitutions entrenched partial franchise conferring the right to vote on everyone. But they tended to restrict the right to be voted for to only those few who had gone to school and spoke English or French. l There was limited access to the basic education that met the constitutional threshold for access to public office.

Preferring the devils they know to unfamiliar and distant angels, our people have, where they have been allowed to do so in free and fair elections, mostly responded by voting with their feet in conferring electoral legitimacy on existing, defunct or resurrected dictatorships. Thus, democracy, which in the rest of the world represents, among other things, a choice between different visions of organizing society and protecting rights, is, in Africa, an experience that offers neither choice, nor change to our people. Moreover, democracy in Africa is still portrayed as an electoral event rather than a process of making society more just and government more respectful of law and our rights.

Mbogori: Regarding the mounting of elections- which in most community settings is the ultimate display of democratic practice- I would like to draw my examples from experiences in the NGO sector. For most membership organizations, the mounting of elections is always a very dicey exercise. For a start, hardly any member has knowledge of others regarding, for instance, what qualities they may have that would be useful at the leadership levels of the organization. Making distinctions between opportunists and those who bring genuine leadership and commitment to the organization is a difficult task. Often, NGOs do not see it as their role to conduct a voter education exercise prior to the election. Yet, they expect the membership to elect the best leaders into office. Is this not a case of expecting the impossible?

The experience is not much different at the broader levels of local or national government in any country. Opportunistic politicians make their appearances when they want to be elected. They take advantage of the poverty that grips the electorate. They put their best face forward (and sugar coat this with a small bribe) and convince voters that they offer outstanding possibilities for impacting positively on the development of the community. In all this, hardly anyone gets to question the values by which these people are guided.

There are numerous examples in our midst of political leaders who, in some settings are heroes, while in their homes, where their real characters are well known, they might be tyrants. The question is, can doctors heal themselves? At what point do we apply the general definitions that are given for democracy and human rights to ourselves? Lately, for instance, there has been a proliferation of Human Rights organizations in our midst. While there are a variety of internal, as well as external reasons for this, many of these organizations fall far short of the standards expected of them when it comes to observing the basic tenets of democracy and human rights. So, have we really internalized these values?

Aina: What then are the foundations of democratic development? In my view, these are peace, economic well being, the rule of law and an environment of social justice and equity. Given the limited space here, I will quickly run through each of these in terms of the concrete means by which they could be operationalized. I leave the discussions open for deepening and expansion by other participants.

Beginning with peace, it is obvious that there can be neither democracy nor development without peace. Africa today remains one of the biggest arenas of civil wars and internal and external conflicts. Under conditions of war, there is little meaningful and beneficial economic production. As such, human rights are denied and the rule of law is broken down. For democratic development to occur, Africa's wars and conflicts must be ended. It is Africans who must do this through dialogue and effective mediation, peacekeeping and peace building.

Fortunately, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has finally recognized the principles of interference in the affairs of other sovereign states to prevent genocide, gross violation of human rights and suffering. What is needed is the political will and resources. But ending wars is a political act to which good governance and an inclusive and participatory framework is essential. As for the outside factor, it is obvious that most of the wars and conflicts of Africa are not fought with weapons made by the protagonists. Reviewing the sales of weapons of war at the international level becomes an important question here.

An equally important foundation is that of economic well being. That is, building an economy that provides access to the market both for production, consumption and distribution for all our peoples. This involves a sustained and systematic war against poverty through freeing the energies of the African small producers, the informal sector as well as organized capital for effective production to meet the needs of Africa. This demands rebuilding and incorporating the African private sector into current economic challenges and finding means of building and channeling the vast wealth that current globalization makes possible to African sources.

An important aspect of this is a return to an effective and efficient social policy to support the poor in liberating themselves from poverty. Again, there are internal and external factors involved in this. The external factor involves being part of the global struggles to reform both the international financial institutions and the global financial and economic architecture. What is clear from the point on the economy is that extensive poverty most times does not promote a culture of democracy and human rights, as it leaves too many people vulnerable and open to manipulation by several forces and interests.

McFadden: Human societies have created their most lasting and most socially relevant institutions and "spaces of belonging and identity" through the mobilization of human agency and knowledge. We have defined such moments as "democratic" because they express and speak to the innermost desires for peace, fairness ( justice) liberty and a consolidation of what makes us social.

It is through the extension of these commons- the civic spaces where rights and entitlements have emerged and where they most openly reside, and, through their extension to all those who occupy social spaces (regardless of what ever differences fragment and separate us in our specificities as gendered, classed, raced, and ethnicized beings) that rights become inalienable. They become the "natural" outcomes of democracy in its conceptual and practical senses. They become basic to the existence of all human beings.

However, these notions have been deeply embedded in exclusionary paradigms. Women in particular have been excluded from this process of becoming "righted" and therefore of entering the transformative experience of knowing and exercising ones rights and of being citizens. Therefore, the process of democratization and "righting" in our societies has remained severely truncated and deeply contested.

Patriarchal constructions of women's labor deems it as being without value or equivalence to that of men, Therefore, women's bodies become the private properties of men (as wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, etc); women's knowledges become mere gossip or "subjectivities" that cannot be included in the knowledge stock of malereferencing societies. Through legal systems which continue to define women in relation to sexist, supremacist notions of inferiority and subordination- each of these mobilizing culture as a weapon and a resource that excludes women from the most critical sites of social creativity whilst privileging and pampering males as the "knowers" of our societies- women still have to struggle to break into the most critical sites of contestation in all African societies, without exception.

Therefore, a key question that we need to engage with is how to initiate a process that enables us to reflect on our relationships as Africans (via the highly contested issues of authenticity) that seem to be so intimately linked to the exclusion and Othering of Africans who are female, young and located in the "rural" spaces of the continent.

Aina: Consequently, with a few exceptions to be found mostly in the women's movement and the faith-based, social justice initiatives and networks, Africa's contemporary pluralism advocates- as human rights or pro-democracy advocates or opposition politicians- share a core of values as members of a narrow urban protest movement with approximately similar or convergent political outlook. They are inspired and actively supported by Northern watchdog and advocacy initiatives in a marriage of convenience, and underwritten almost exclusively with funding from outside. These advocates are economical in cultivating genuine domestic legitimacy outside a core urban, literate constituency, and have little real existence outside the cocktail, media and workshop circuits.

Amanor-Wilks: Since the mid-1990s, and with the emergence of new civil society groups working to buttress a historically weak agricultural union, there is a gradually discernible move in Zimbabwe from a purely welfarist, essentially piecemeal approach towards a more transformative approach. This approach attempts to get the state to recognize the rights of farm workers, hitherto seen almost exclusively as "aliens", to land access and national registration.

Thus, for the first time ever, the government's 1999 land policy framework acknowledges the need for farm workers to be resettled alongside land-short peasants. At the same time, civil society lobbying since 1996 has resulted in the setting up of an inter-ministerial committee to look into the national registration issue and a recently established pilot registration program. As of now, the government's position is that those who entered the country as indentured laborers during the Federation years from 1953-1963, and their children, are entitled to citizenship. The government does not yet recognize the rights of workers who came into the country after 1975. This was the year of the creation of the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) by the erstwhile Rhodesian state. To date the perception remains that many of the agricultural workers who entered the country from Mozambique over the past 25 years were members of Renamo and should be returned as aliens along with other former refugees.

On the side of farm employers, greater pressure from civil society- and of course worries about the possible application of social clauses under new WTO arrangements- has also recently resulted in a movement among commercial farmers themselves to introduce ethical standards. Thus, the Horticultural Production Council of Zimbabwe recently established a code of conduct and has taken the lead to convince other agricultural sectors that low standards of health and hygiene in the sector mean "bad business". Increasingly farmers are coming to the realization that if they don't adapt and change they will be hit in the pocket.

While there is now a quite discernible trend to include farm workers in government policy, and a new progressive tendency among especially younger commercial farmers, much work remains for civil society groups in the area of strengthening the voice of farm workers at the level of local government. Though given the franchise at the end of 1997, it has been practically difficult for farm workers to participate meaningfully in the Rural District Councils. The councils are dominated by commercial farmers unused to sharing power or ideas with their employees. Indeed, until the unprecedented and violent 1997 nationwide strike by farm workers, the agricultural sector had been seen as composed of largely docile workers lacking the means or vision to press for democratic change. In the absence of minimum standards governing the sector and with the sectors still characterized by master-servant relationships, farm workers need to be given the means to articulate their own demands and to set the pace for democratic change in their sector.

Aina: We must build the conditions for the rule of law and an environment of social justice and equity. My honest view is that most African countries have little space to avoid doing this for too long. Africa today is not the Africa of the 1960s. Communications, social awareness and a readiness to resist have increased significantly. We must change or be destroyed through endless conflicts, balkanization and the disintegration of states and national boundaries.

The choice is between transformation and chaos. While the political elite pretends not to know this, many citizens and communities are aware of the urgency of the threats. The wave of struggles for constitutional change, political reforms and democratization is an indication of this. The key is the setting up of acceptable and legitimate processes of dialogues, consultations and discussions on the future of nations and nationalities, the rights and obligations of citizenship and the role and relative power of democratic institutions. Other issues include the patterns of power sharing, the place of majorities, minorities and marginalized groups such as youth and women.

In many parts of Africa, these discussions are proceeding with more or less a degree of freedom and openness. These are led and promoted by intellectuals, some politicians, workers, peasant groups, civil society institutions, the media, the professionals and faith-based groups. All of these actors have a stake in some form of orderly transformation. We have all seen too much chaos, insecurity, conflict and tension at close quarters, to know that they are not the conditions under which democratic development, prosperity and happiness can thrive. This realization and the struggle for effecting transition from the old to the new, although slow and often inconsistent and little sustained, provide both optimism and a window of opportunity for intensifying the fight for democratic development in Africa.

McFadden: The position of Africans is determined in many instances by socialization, cultural practices, conventions and social status laws that have become legalized as so-called customary laws. These laws are now becoming enshrined in the constitutions of most African countries as expressions of our difference from the Europe. When we consider this position, we see that these "authenticators" of "Africaness" have assumed a "common-sense" character in our language, interactions and presumptions about each other, especially across the gender divide. It is the making common what in actuality were patriarchal privileging mechanisms that poses a critical test to modernizing Africans. Commodifying rituals and practices, which over centuries became "cultural" practices and which, therefore, have not entered the market and or come under civic or public scrutiny, have become barriers to the realization of full citizenship by the majority of Africans.

"Otherness" has too often become reified and uncritically accepted by those who are excluded from modern contestations and discourse about the meanings and the exercise of democracy, human rights and entitlement. This presents a key challenge to activists and scholars.

Odinkalu: Towards the end of the last century, the slogan of the international human rights movement invited activists to "think global and act local". Ostensibly underlying this slogan was the perfectly valid claim that human rights as norms asserted a universally valid common denominator of human values. In practice, however, this slogan also represented the co-option of the legitimizing language of human rights by a motley crowd of new incarnations of hegemony. It furthermore expressed the domination of both the capital for and the identity (including the language and methods) of human rights advocacy everywhere by Northern organizations. Little respect has been shown for the divergent local realities confronted in different parts of the world.

Unlike their African counterparts, whose mostly unviable national boundaries have been elevated to a form of unregulated geo-political ideology, the operations of Northern-based human rights activists and institutions are regulated by strict laws, trust deeds and mandates in deference to which they think local but act global. For Africa's contemporary advocates and activists for pluralism and human rights, it is now more important to think economic and act political. We must be prepared to contemporaneously think global, think regional, think local and think the people. For, as long as we are encouraged to think of the global in opposition to the local, we and the rest of the world will also think of stability in opposition to justice. And for so long will Africa's people know neither democracy nor human rights.

Mbogori: Let us imagine for a while, that by some stroke of luck, the children from really poor households find themselves in school. What they invariably find is treatment from their teachers that reinforces the environment prevalent at home. Sometimes, even the violence that they are so familiar with in the home is a part of the experience at school.

But worse than this is the fact that teachers, who take responsibility for molding these young minds, are themselves not particularly sold on democracy and human rights as fundamental concepts. Apart from the electoral exercise that all adults become involved in occasionally, they see democracy and human rights as luxuries that do not apply in the local setting. While they might acknowledge them as being important, they certainly do not consider them to be priority considerations for the children that they get to teach. Is it not the case that important opportunities to inculcate important values and attitudes are lost here? It is my view that democracy and respect for rights begins from the institutions that every individual is exposed to during their formative years. Yet, these institutions have not so far been at the center stage of most discussions that explore these concepts.

I would venture to suggest here that unless democracy and human rights can be treated with the urgency that HIV/ AIDS is beginning to be treated now- or indeed with the emphasis that was accorded to population control in most countries during the decade of the eighties- there is little chance of creating a critical mass of people who truly subscribe to these ideals.

The other venue worthy of mention for the household that we are observing, is the local religious "shrine"- whether this is a church, mosque, temple or some similar setting. It is no secret that religion plays a significant role in the lives of most Africans. Here again, there are certain attitudes that remain dominant.

The example I would like to pose here is that of the "training for transformation" movement of the eighties, which faltered after the church leadership, which had played a vital role in nurturing it, insisted on its disbanding. The main reason for this move was that parishioners were beginning to demand accountability from their leaders; to insist on their rights and generally to speak with greater confidence than had been the case previously. So, in a short time, what was taking the form of a citizens movement in which ordinary people were conscientized was nipped in the bud largely because it posed a threat to those in the leadership. The sense of equality and expectation of tolerance that people developed as they became more aware of their rights became unacceptable to those in authority.

McFadden: The discourse on democracy, governance and human rights has become universalized and thus more accessible and collectively owned, making it more open to the diverse interpretations of those who contest its definition and direction. But the implicit assumption is that each constituency of human beings (distinguished by gender, class, race, geo-political location, age, ethnic identity etc) will have to resolve the myths and culturalized distortions of these critical human resources in the context of their specific realities in order to access a universalised notion of rights. This resolution has become the urgent imperative of African activism and scholarship.

We can struggle for democracy and rights at the global level because we live in globalizing/ globalized world. But the most critical struggles lie in the reality of Africa as a continent largely unprepared for the 21st century. It is unprepared because the majority of its people have not become persons with a recognized and respected integrity. This integrity is expressed through the guaranteed right to be full citizens and owners of the continent in local, regional and continental terms.

That for me is the challenge of the 21st century- a century which will have to be the turning point in the shaping, mapping and realization of Africa as a democratic and right-full space.

Mbogori: Despite all these despondent examples, I would hasten to add that I do see signs of hope- hesitant in many cases, yet positive. The Well-known struggles undertaken in several countries by citizens seeking to assert their choices are clear signs of changing times. It is hopefully becoming clear to those leaders that appreciate the need for a different style in leadership that disagreement is not a basis for enmity. Civil societies are increasingly insisting on their right to participate and, in some instances, the continued refusal of this right has led to the downfall of governments. NGOs too, have played a useful role both in conducting civic education but also by seeking to engage policy makers on these issues. The question is, however, will this create the critical mass that is needed? Indeed, is it possible to teach enough old dogs new tricks?

Participants

Akwasi Aidoo - The Ford Foundation, Nigeria
Olugbemiga Ekundayo - Morgan State University, USA
Steven Friedman - Centre for Policy Studies, South Africa
Mahmood Mamdani - Columbia University, New York
William Minter - Africa Policy Information Center, Washington, USA
Ambassador Joseph W. Mutaboba - Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations, New York.
Kwame A. Ninsin - African Association of Political Science
Iheoma Obibi - Alliances for Africa, London, UK
harles Okigbo - Department of Communication, North Dakota State University, USA
J. P. Owusu-Ansah - Extension Rural Sociologist
George W. Shepherd - University of Denver, USA

Aidoo: Tade Aina poses an interesting question: "Democracy for what?" The question is interesting because most ordinary Africans, who are long accustomed to crushing poverty, are wont to ask: "What use is democracy if it doesn't improve our lives?" This is legitimate, but posed in such a direct instrumentalist manner, the question is also problematic for it places an absolutist or fundamentalist burden on democracy that is neither warranted nor feasible in certain circumstances. Take any African country that has been destroyed by war, for example: At what point can one reasonably expect "developmental dividends" from democracy (whatever democracy means in that context)? Might democracy not be simply an end, a social-political good in and of itself in such circumstances? I am not sure there is an easy answer to this.

Friedman: We know what we do not want, and that is important. But do we yet know how to get what we do want?

The contributions reflect the appropriate skepticism among African intellectuals at the continent's `wave of democracy' and the assumptions which underpin the role of international actors in it. But they suggest too that we still have much to do before we are able to offer coherent alternatives.

The panelists offer a compelling critique of international fads which, among other flaws, tend to mistake democratic form for substance. This is a theme in all the contributions, whose most important insights offer a critique of what Karl and Schmitter have called the "fallacy of electoralism"- the assumption that elections are sufficient for democracy. The point is made explicitly by Odinkalu and Mbogori, implicitly by the others: Aina, Mbogori and McFadden remind us that obstacles to democracy are found not only in the state but in non-state institutions and mores which remain intact when the state form changes.

Mamdani: Tade Aina argues that democracy cannot be reduced to a process that may be appropriated by one and all; it needs to be linked to a purpose, "the promotion and advancement of the individual and collective well being". He thus insists that the pursuit of freedom be linked to that of social justice. Chidi Odinkalu agrees. He sees "the dynamic tension between stability and justice" at the heart of Africa's current predicament, the former reflecting "the desire of a powerful minority of entrenched local and international elite for predictability and privilege", the latter "the expectations of the overwhelming majority of the continent's pauperized peoples for better living conditions and accountable leadership."

Friedman: Another important theme is the insight that democratization strategies are focused primarily on visible- usually urban- elites. Amanor-Wilks, Mbogori and McFadden point to sections of society- farm workers, the poor, rural women- still beyond democracy's reach: Odinkalu goes further, labeling the current brand of rights and democracy as the agenda of a "terminally endangered middle and intellectual class." Enthusiasm for constitutionalism in form rather than substance is also challenged by Odinkalu and Amanor-Wilks. Aina points out the centrality of peace as a central, albeit elusive, precondition for progress. Several contributions note the corrosive effects of poverty on democratic participation and the exercise of rights.

Aina also does the discussion a service by pointing out that, contrary to international conventional wisdom, democracy is not a "natural" political equilibirum reached by all but the deviant and "undeveloped". It is, he reminds us, fragile and often elusive: even when it is achieved, its survival cannot be taken for granted. This is an important warning against assumptions and strategies which assume that the "norm" can be achieved in Africa merely by pasting elections, constitutions, and a modicum of funding for "civil society" onto a jagged social fabric.

Aidoo: There is also the related issue of who is going to build democracy. Tade routinely talks of "We". But who are the "We"? One of the ironies of the "democratization" project in Africa is that the political orientation, the language of discourse, and the institutional supports of this project are simply unconnected with anything to which some 80 percent of our people can easily and enthusiastically relate. Simply put: What are the cultural foundations of the democratization project in Africa? Can there be any Africa cultural foundations for this project? This raises issues of language, concepts, traditional practices, and the entire normative framework that guides the lives of most Africans.

Obibi: McFadden raises significant questions in her piece on the notion of citizenship that I feel are at the center of the debate relating to human rights and democracy, and civil societies' participation in it. McFadden writes, "in order to have an active citizenship- a body of agents who engage with power and issues relating to power- one must first become a citizen... most Africans are not yet citizens, either in the manner in which they perceive themselves or in terms of inter-personal relationships and how they relate to each other."

While, Dede illustrates the lack of citizenship through the denial, until 1997, of voting rights to rural farm workers, who are in effect "... second, third, fourth generation, Malawians, Mozambicans and Zambians who have no other home but Zimbabwe... high levels of illiteracy and lack of political representation may not have regularized their status in the country."

One must acknowledge that the denial of citizenship rights to sections of the community has always been a strategy of governments who see the involvement of these communities as a potential source of tension. Further examples include the denial of citizenship to the children of women who are married to foreign partners. Others include the exclusion of second, third and fourth generations from participating in politics, running for president (not that we all want to be one) and other such exclusionary tactics.

Mamdani: McFadden writes of women, and Amanor-Wilks of aliens, or those constructed as such. Both categories, "women" as well as "aliens", cut through the divide between exploiter/ exploited, even that between oppressor/ oppressed. To the extent that these are legal constructs enforced by law- that "women" are to be treated as juniors, or that "aliens" do not have the same rights as those considered "indigenous"- they need to be understood as political identities. They have the potential of explaining to us political divisions through which both the poor majority and the rich minority become divided and fractured along lines of gender and ethnicity. To realize this potential fully, we need to make an analytical distinction between market-based identities (e. g., class) and political identities (e. g., race, ethnicity, gender), before understanding the mediations between them.

Citizenship is about rights and entitlement. The discussion on rights has focused on three generation of rights: civic, political and socio-economic. But citizenship also involves another question: not just which rights, but whose rights. It is also about the construction of the political subject. Who is the post-colonial subject? Who has a right to justice in the aftermath of colonialism? For it is clear that not everybody does. In my view, this is where we need to return to the colonial legacy, for the post-colonial subject was constructed in the colonial period by the colonial state. This is why a successful struggle for social justice requires, first, a political struggle to redefine the subject of rights and entitlement or, to put it differently, the member of the new political community.

Colonialism constructed the political subject under a discourse that claimed to be "customary" and "authentic." The overarching claim here was that there was in the colonies a single and undisputed source of "custom", and the point was simply to identify that source and enforce its version- subject to the "repugnancy test" of the power that presented itself as the custodian of "civilization"- as a "customary law". That source of custom was said to be chiefs. They were defined by three attributes: gender, age and ethnicity. The authority of chiefs represented the force of patriarchy (gender, age) and of ethnicity (" indigeneity"). The first part of this proposition is the subject of McFadden's contribution, and the second, part of Amanor-Wilks. While the former has been pressed home by a growing body of feminist scholars, the latter needs more attention.

Friedman: But, if the panelists are united in their skepticism of current international notions of democratic progress, they are not at one in their proposed antidotes. This is no criticism- on the contrary, intellectual ferment is an exciting and encouraging aspects of our current condition. But they do highlight the important point that alternatives to the "false dawns" partly inspired by international actors are far from clear.

Constitutions and constitutionalism are one point of difference. Odinkalu dismisses "new-fangled" constitutions as products of English and French-speaking elites and their international reference groups. Aina, while recognizing some flaws of "the clamor for constitutional review all over the continent", hails it as "a sign that Africans want to be involved in redesigning the conditions of their co-existence". Amanor-Wilks avoids a critique in principle of constitutionalism, but points to its inability to address the circumstances of neglected social strata- and highlights a key flaw in current democratizing projects, a failure to come to grips with Africans who find themselves on the "wrong" side of (often arbitrary) national boundaries.

Both sides have questions to answer. For the skeptics, are the new constitutions simply cosmetic? Do they not, despite their limited capacity to ensure rights and participation for all, create political space that did not exist before? Are strategies which seek to give substance to new constitutional forms not more appropriate than those which dismiss them as fig-leaves for elite domination? For Aina and other African constitutionalists, from whence is the "clamor" emanating? Are Odinkalu and Mbogori not right to suggest that it is not "the people" but the intellectual and professional classes which see rights and political procedures as more important than peace and bread? And is a synthesis between the two positions not possible- one which recognizes constitutions' elite inspiration and limited effects, but which seeks to use the opportunities they provide to add substance to democratic form (an approach which seems to inform Amanor-Wilks's contribution)?

Another difference is that between competing conceptions of the potential for grassroots mobilization for democracy. The need for it is a clear theme: Odinkalu wants activists to "think the people"; Aina urges "struggles and mobilization"; McFadden exhorts activists and scholars to struggle against "culturalized distortions". But, while Aina talks of increased pressure from "citizens" and "communities" for democratization, Mbogori suggests that grassroots people see democracy and human rights "as luxuries", and Odinkalu notes that "it is not unusual to hear advocates of pluralism ... being blamed by local communities for inflicting instability on the people". McFadden's reference to "distortions", and her assertion that Africans are "not yet citizens" implies that grassroots enthusiasm for democracy is not a given but a goal.

Mamdani: Amanor-Wilks tells us that 11-18% of Zimbabwe's total population are agricultural laborers. By 1966, 54% of these were foreign in origin; a good many were 3rd or 4th generation Malawians, Mozambicans or Zambians. In spite of the fact that every child is supposed to have a nationality by birth as a constitutional right, it is part of "customary" law in Africa that rights be conferred not by birth or residence, but by descent and ancestry.

Yet, the fact is that the politicization of indigeneity is a colonial tradition. It is colonialism that politicized indigeineity, first perversely- as a right of settlers over natives- and then as a native self-assertion. Is it then surprising that most struggles for rights and entitlement, indeed for social justice, have come to divide the ranks of the poor between those indigenous and those not, whether this is within the borders of a state or a Native Authority? So that those who are defined as "settlers" in postcolonal Africa come less and less from outside Africa, and more and more from neighborhoods next door? Is not more internal conflict in Africa between those constructed as indigenous and those not?

My general point is that the notion that "custom" was both unchanging and unchallenged was an ideological creation of the colonial period. Historical investigation to date tells us otherwise. It tells us that there was not a single but multiple authorities of "custom"- not simply chiefs, but also religious groups, clans, age groups, gender groups- each with authority in a different social domain. There were not only different notions of customs, but also different sources of custom. Even where there was a religious law with a single domain, as in the Islamic Sharia, historical research tells us that the substantive content of Sharia changed through the practice of judicial interpretation (ijtihad) which made for changes in jurisprudence in response to changing political and social conditions. The notion of a fixed and unchanging Sharia, just as that of a fixed and unchanging "customary" law, was a colonial construction, upheld by despotic forms of post-colonial power.

Friedman: The debate raises crucial questions of analysis and strategy. Are the grassroots available for democratic mobilization but constrained by poverty and the indifference of democratizing elites? Or do they have to be "won for" democracy? If the former elites- McFadden's "activists and scholars"- need to mobilize, the grassroots and international actors must support them. One example may be AmanorWilks's relative optimism about a "transformative project" in which (presumably middleclass) civil society groups support a weak agricultural union to win rights for farm workers. But if those outside the elite remain skeptical of- or hostile to- democracy, let alone broader emancipatory projects such as McFadden's, difficult issues arise.

There are echoes here of the Menshevik-Bolshevik debate: are grassroots preferences expressions of popular democratic will or symptoms of false consciousness? And, while intellectuals are entitled to attempt to impart their values to the grassroots, whether we are talking of "civic education" or emancipatory feminism, is there not the danger that "liberatory" projects may be another vehicle for the urban elite to impose its perceptions on the grassroots- an activist version of the elitism that Odinkalu attacks?

The point is illustrated by the question of tradition and its social understandings. McFadden is most explicit in rejecting them as obstacles to progress: describing herself as a "modernizing African", she dismisses "cultural practices, conventions and social status laws that have become legalized..." in most African constitutions as "patriarchal privileging mechanisms", which "have become barriers to the realization of full citizens by the majority of Africans." Aina and Mbogori note that extra-state institutions and practices obstruct democracy, but seem to urge not their destruction but, by implication, their democratization. McFadden is correct to note that tradition contains important elements of patriarchy, and other forms of domination. But is the issue this simple? Can a viable African emancipatory project be built on "modernizers" destroying the oppressive myths of the traditionalists?

There are strategic and normative grounds for questioning this. Postindependence African history and current trends in many parts of the globe do not suggest an optimistic prognosis for attempts to demolish traditional norms: phenomena as seemingly diverse as the partial restoration of the Buganda monarchy, resurgent Islamic fundamentalism in Asia and the USA's "culture wars" suggest that tradition is more stubborn than its critics once assumed. In these contexts, the most interesting- and, probably potentially effective- feminist projects are being conducted within traditions, not against them; their weapons are re-interpretation, not rejection. More generally, the same challenge may face African democratizers: to recognize but seek to reshape tradition, a task compatible with Aina's and Mbogori's concerns, even if they do not specifically advocate it.

The normative point is of even more general application: democracy is a means of recognizing difference and it is surely the suppression of difference that lies at the heart of Africa's travails over the past four decades. This is increasingly being recognized by African intellectuals as respect for ethnic diversity is now firmly on the democratization agenda- appropriately so, since the attempt to obliterate these differences has been responsible for the conflict and domination we have witnessed these past decades. The Jacobin attempt to destroy the differences that colonialism was seen to have created merely repeated the colonial pattern of domination. But does respect for difference also extend to institutions and understandings which intellectuals (including this one) might decry as pre-modern? Is there not a great deal of productive ground between tolerating "tradition" where it violates rights and simply dismissing it as an oppressive excuse for elite power? It is perhaps worth noting that the continent's only two long-term democracies, Botswana and Mauritius, accommodate tradition, the one by allowing traditional institutions a space complementary to the democratic system; the other, through a complex ethnicallyweighted electoral system.

Mamdani: My appeal is that there is an alternative to junking custom as patriarchal and ethnic. It is to democratize our notion of custom. Just as we recognize that democracy means recognizing that there are choices within modernity, that modernity is plural and not singular, so we need to extend the democratic perspective to the past. The result would be to recognize that custom, too, was the subject of contention, which gave rise to plural- and even at times opposed- perspectives. Custom should thus cease to be the political counterpart to the Structural Adjustment Program, and Customary Authorities the internal counterpart to the Bretton Woods institutions, whose writ we are supposed to either throw up or swallow, but never to submit to a democratic process.

My concluding comment is on the question raised by Ezra Mbogori, since it bears on the question of the democratic process. He comments on those who lead civil society organizations, and how they divide between "opportunists" and "genuine leaders." He then wonders how "doctors can heal themselves." When I was at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in the 1970s, our formulation of this dilemma was: "Who is to educate the educators?"

Just as it is useful to look at educational institutions when focusing on the process of education, I suggest we begin with the changed nature of civil society organizations when discussing the shortcomings of its leadership. Over the past ten years, a total overhaul of civil society organizations has taken place. Before that, we had a more popular and democratic tradition- the cooperative, the trade union and the welfare union were the prototype. No matter the corruption and the irregularities, the principle- even if observed in the breach in many cases- was that leaders are supposed to be accountable to members in some way. Our struggles were about realizing this accountability in practice.

Friedman: There has been an important shift in Africa's intellectual climate from a paradigm which, with its emphasis on "nation-building" and African specificity, justified democracy's negation to a paradigm centered on democracy and human rights. But isn't there also a risk that this shift may repeat the errors of that which it challenges by imposing on African societies a new elite construct, i. e., a particular idea of democracy, rather than the earlier notion of nation? I do not mean by this to repeat the folly of claiming democracy's alternatives as "African", but to suggest a need for a democracy which understands, acknowledges and builds on grassroots social arrangements and understandings, both in its attempts to mobilize and in the institutions it devises.

An element of the gap in understanding, as well as action, that separates the democratizers from the "masses" may be a failure to accept that understandings and arrangements at the grassroots do not conform neatly to Northern notions of the rationality maximizing citizen. Yet, democratic impulses within these grassroots arrangements may be just as strong as those of the instrumental citizens of much Northern political science (that are themselves largely the figments of academic imaginations).

Indeed, there may be a great irony in much African intellectual critique of Northern approaches in that it risks mirroring the assumptions it purports to reject. Aina seems to imply that one of the problems of current Northern assumptions is a democratic teleology that Guillermo O'Donnell has identified and criticized as the assumption that democracy is some sort of end-point to which the sophisticated and developed naturally gravitate. If this is the case, then the same critique can be directed at African approaches that see the grassroots either as natural allies of the Northern liberal democratic state, or as poverty-stricken and tradition-bound non-democrats who will be brought into the democratic sphere by a healthy dose of education or development.

So part of the way forward may well require, as Odinkalu argues, elites willing to work with the grassroots rather than on their behalf. But that begs our earlier question: how available are the grassroots for mobilization, given the poverty and lack of organizational resources which Mbogori and Amanor-Wilks describe and the reality- hinted at by some contributions but not tackled head-on by any- that people at the African grassroots have often coped with the assaults of colonial and postcolonial elites by insulating themselves from the state rather than engaging with it? Aina is the panel's firmest optimist, arguing that "communications, social awareness and a readiness to resist have increased significantly". But the cautions raised by other panelists confirm that this judgement is hardly clear-cut.

Aidoo: Amanor-Wilks' presentation is the most interesting I have read so far. I think we have, here, a very practical strategy for enhancing the rights of ordinary Africans in an enduring way. I was very intrigued by the issue of citizenship and all of its trappings- identity documents, etc. Clearly on this issue, even the best constitutional provisions for human rights in Africa are inadequate, for they always focus exclusively on citizenship rights. So-called "aliens", who are simply other African working people, are simply disenfranchised. The Zimbabwean case amply demonstrates that we need a much more encompassing coverage and application of human rights law, and also highlights the need for human rights activists to heighten the struggle to broaden the frontiers of the current rights paradigm.

Mamdani: The new NGO culture operates on an opposed principle: they operate on a principle of noblesse oblige, as charitable institutions and not democratic institutions. If the leaders of NGOs are said to be accountable at all, it is to donors, never to members. In fact, most NGOs do not have members; they have recipients. NGOs think of the population on the ground as welfare recipients with needs, not members with rights. They see themselves more as on-the-scene "reps" of foreign donors, less as expressions of local initiative. I suggest that if we find the leadership of civil society organizations problematic, we begin with a critical analysis of NGOs as institutions, and not leaders as individuals. Tade Aina is right: outsiders cannot build democracy, neither in Africa nor anywhere else. Rather than a turnkey project, we better start thinking of democracy as an outcome of internal mobilizations and internal struggles.

Friedman: Some tough choices and conundrums confront us. It seems reasonable to suggest, as some panelists do, that poverty and economic exclusion explain low grassroots propensity to mobilize and claim rights. But what is likely to change that? The social policy that Aina urges? Yes, but without grassroots organization, who will press for that? An extension of markets, which he also advocates? Yes, but from whence is this likely to come? Contrary to some Northern economic recipes, markets cannot work, even for elites, without states- which are built not merely by governance techniques but by links between government and the governed. While East Asia may have experienced a period of top-down market extension followed by democratization, is African economic modernization really likely to be driven by elites in the absence of democratization? Has not the postindependence period shown that, the Musevenis, Aferworkis and Zenawis notwithstanding, non-democratic rule in Africa produces not economic take-off but a division of spoils among elites?

The dilemmas do not end there. Only Aina draws attention to a point which seems axiomatic- that there will be no democratic revival in Africa without a reconstruction of the state. But- again the "New African" leadership notwithstanding- who is to build the state without a citizenry able to hold the statebuilders to account? And what role is there within the African state for those- and there are many- who are not notional citizens of those states? The greatest contradiction of all is that, as Aina points out, there can be no democracy in Africa without peace, but no peace without democracy (because it is the attempt to suppress difference and the politics of exclusion and of particularism that have destroyed peace). Perhaps, as Aina vigorously argues, forces are beginning to build which will break these Gordian knots. But if they do, progress is likely to be slow and littered with setbacks.

What does all this mean for African democratizers and international understandings? For the former, it suggests a need to confront two related challenges- the need for greater rigor and the need for a deeper understanding of grassroots realities. The first requires more thought on the domestic impulses- and obstacles- to democracy. We have perhaps only begun to address the really hard strategic and analytical questions. What sort of coalitions for democracy- economic as well as political- can be built? Which social strata are available for the project; which are bound to frustrate it? What are the preconditions for strengthening the former rather than the latter? Similarly, given that any viable strategy is likely to be lengthy and incremental, what spaces and opportunities are created by current developments? Is critique of today's "democratization" enough without a nuanced evaluation of the openings it provides (among our panelists, Amanor-Wilks's analysis of the forces creating opportunities for farm workers' rights is a useful example)? But none of this is possible without a more detailed and nuanced understanding of grassroots realities than we have been able to achieve thus far.

Given the work still required of us before we are able to develop a diagnosis of democracy's constraints and possibilities, it might seem implausible to begin formulating recipes for international understandings. Yet, there is much that the North in particular can learn from the African intelligentsia. While we still know not enough about what will produce democracy, we know much about what will not. We know that elections alone will not suffice, that state-building requires more than textbooks on good governance, that the "democratic forces" and civil society beloved by many international actors usually do not extend much beyond the middle class, and that much of Africa's social life has been barely touched by current international understandings. We know that without peace there will be no progress and that, even if its preconditions remain elusive, international interventions still do much to obstruct it. And we know that democracy will not take root in Africa unless grassroots economic participation also takes does too and that a Northern approach which dispenses textbook recipes behind high protectionist walls will not achieve that.

But perhaps the most important lesson is that, for international actors as well as African intellectuals, democracy cannot be achieved simply by assuming a democratic path- and a citizenry- which resembles an idealized version of Peoria, Illinois. Africa- like Peoria (or Glasgow or Baden-Wurttemburg)- has its own specificities that offer potential for as well as limits to democracy. Any serious democratization project will need to recognize them. As African intellectuals embark on a journey to a more rigorous understanding of the route to democracy, serious international actors will join us on the adventure, listening and learning on the way.

Ekundayo: The discussions tend to view African realities as bound, for the purposes of posterity, prosperity and happiness, to move along the European path through the corridors of time. While current conditions and comparisons do put pressure on Africans and their world to look at the cosmos from this perspective, the core African cosmic views are still largely intact.

The question therefore arises: to the African, what actually is democracy and what do we assume are human rights? I would hazard to challenge us to look critically at these assumptions and see what can be done about them. Is democracy a government of the people by the people for the people? Does this definition assume a consensus of the majority? How does the majority arrive at a consensus on one idea out of many others of equal weight in different places at the same time? How do the priorities coincide for consensus? If my worldview is different from yours, can our collective decisions be democratic? If the answer to the last question is yes, how do we set the grounds for the appropriate processes to develop and thrive? And how do we manage my own priorities when yours are being addressed at the moment? African values and cultures have been largely been ignored by so-called intellectual Africans themselves.

Mutaboba: Democracy and human rights are values that are not alien to Africa. They sound strange and foreign to some foreigners and some of our fellow Africans simply because those two words have been defined and taken up in a purely narrow western view.

Democracy to me and most people means making a choice: a choice to say what you want and a choice to do what you think is right to do for you and for your people. Human rights, on the other hand, is a notion that is not strange or foreign to African either. The only problem is that once the notion was brought "as new" to Africa and African people, much as Christianity was, the whole concept was completely taken out of context.

Right to live: sacred and that is why vengeance and hanging were practiced everywhere. Right to eat and to free expression: common and that is why sharing food or a word was imperative to all, never mind where and between whom, be it children among children, women among themselves and men between men. Sexism or some sort of discrimination in Western terms may exist, but not human rights violations in terms of African cultural practices then and today.

The only difference is that so-called human rights in the Western view have not been taught to Africans when Western colonizers came over. Until today, they do not know them as such. They were taught what to do (obligations) and never what they should expect to be done for them (rights). Such an imbalance grew larger than the usual practices (simply because the post-colonial rulers did worse than their colonial masters) and made us believe that we are doing worse than those who taught us about "Human Rights". You cannot blame anybody for not being taught, but rather blame those who chose not to teach us what our rights were- never mind hammering what our obligations were/ are.

Ninsin: African societies lack the ideological and material capacity to construct and control their own government. The latter is poverty in scientific and technological knowledge to transform our lives and the institutions that regulate them. Both external and internal colonialism have succeeded partly because of this social deficit.

Ideological capacity is a function of material capacity. Put differently, the capacity to articulate and defend the ideology of freedom is a function of one's capacity for autonomous action. The poverty of the latter accounts for the pervasive "politics of the belly", which has enabled pretenders to install fabricated democracies throughout the continent, despite the resurgence of so-called civil society. Democracy cannot thrive on a backward continent, where poverty is increasing unabated. Here, only tyrants and demagogues triumph.

Mbogori: I fail to see the emergence, let alone the relentless pursuit of a holistic vision for the development of the continent. I fear that a coherent vision does not exist even at the level of most countries. The reactive nature of most leadership on this continent leaves Africa well disposed to the continued exploitation that has been our lot, as far back as we care to remember. In fact, with this reality in mind, I have been convinced for some time now, that we are all afflicted by what I call the "poverty syndrome". This manifests itself in an almost burning desire to escape from the effects of poverty by any means possible. This inevitably leads to our acting irrationally.

I would venture to suggest further that the conflicts that prevail on most parts of the continent are in some way associated to this syndrome, as indeed is the criminalization of dissent that has been referred to in some contributions. Asked what I see as the way forward, I would suggest that we seek a remedy for this syndrome and consciously commit ourselves to acting rationally. Anyone who genuinely cares about Africa, her people, her wealth and her future has a responsibility to identify a role and perform it. There is a need for confidence building on the continent. We have to convince ourselves that we can act in the interests of the whole continent. We can be proactive, and this is part of a new culture that we must embrace.

Friedman: The current intellectual climate among African democrats has produced many articulate and eloquent denunciations of the present and also a broad vision of the future- one in which all the major social groups fashion a new society. But it has produced far too few rigorous analyses of the strange opportunities- and, of course, constraints- which face this vision. Like many South African intellectuals during part of the apartheid period, we are in danger of assuming that moral denunciation is all that is required. We do need to move now to engage with the strategic questions if we want to begin making progress towards our goals. For those who insist no change or progress is possible, that is exactly what all the "experts" said about apartheid, at least until the 1980s.

Okigbo: Can we achieve development in Africa if the people do not feel a sense of nationhood and patriotism? How committed is the average African to contributing his/ her quota to national growth? McFadden was correct in noting that most Africans are not yet Citizens. Development is more difficult to achieve in our present situation where many feel disconnected in their relationships with our societal structures. Many feel like outsiders- within our countries. This is evident in our treatment of public property, public office, national wealth, and anything that belongs to the state. Our so-called leaders demonstrate this by where they keep their valued assets (houses and money)- usually outside their home countries. McFadden expressed the tragedy of our situation very clearly:

After all these beautiful analyses that will make our alma mater so proud of our linguistic and communication skills, we still have to ask- so what? What to do? For Aina, the best solution appears to be continuing the discussions which are led and promoted by various interest groups. These are yielding some optimism and windows of opportunity for intensifying the fight for democratic development in Africa. This is an echo of Julius Ihonvbere's admonition to break down the walls of silence in African countries. Discussions are vital- but they must be guided, purposeful, goal-directed, and action-oriented- if they are to break down the walls of silence and ignorance.

Friedman: If all the key forces and interests in any African state can agree on the basic political rules, the prospect that they will become ways of settling conflicts rather than of simply creating new forums for them is enhanced. There clearly are precedents for this- of which South Africa is obviously the most oft-quoted. I agree that this line of thought is persuasive but would simply warn that it raises two key problems. The first is how this process is to be achieved in societies where there is insufficient popular pressure for it and leaders that are resistant to it. The second is how inclusive such a process would be unless grassroots citizens in the particular society are part of the process. Inclusion requires either leadership which is firmly in touch with constituencies or strong organization among the citizenry (and not only the middle class). (The South African process was, I would argue, helped by the fact that it was negotiated by parties with real support bases although, even in this case, the link with the grassroots was not nearly as great as we are often led to believe) Both of inclusion and organization are are weak in many African states. I am not sure it is possible to create inclusive and representative constitution-making processes unless grassroots participation in public life is much strengthened (whether through parties, social movements or civil society organisations). Therefore, I wonder whether, at this stage, we are not better advised to be talking about how to achieve this than to debate the precise form of the processes and institutions which that would follow from it.

Ekundayo: Democracy assumes checks and balances. Africa, as presently composed, does not have that luxury. In order for democracy to thrive in Africa, there must be forces in critical numbers, depth and strength, which will nurture, maintain and safeguard it. It is this ability that translates into "rights". Does Africa have that base? The answer is no. Therefore that base needs to be developed. How? It is through making large (critical) numbers of African prosper, with their own native ideas. These will be the stakeholders who will protect and expand their gains. Let these "acquisitions" be defined by Africa in terms of who owns what. Communism and Marxism are also European ideas which may actually be anti-African. The challenge, therefore, is to study what are really African interests and strive to nurture it. For the final edification of human rights takes place in democracy only when all the diverse needs and views are satisfactorily addressed, and in a way that excludes none.

Okigbo: If, as Tade Aina rightly affirmed, "democracy is for the promotion and advancement of the individual and collective well being of the different peoples of our nations and continent" and must be based on "the basic principles of inclusion, participation, freedom, justice and equity for all...", how do we bring this about more successfully? What are the main catalytic forces and constraints to watch out for? Aina is right in linking democracy to development, which he correctly characterized as more than national income or GDP. Perhaps the strongest point in Aina's presentation is the assertion that "no outsider can build democracy for Africa."

Minter: It seems to me that profound influence by outsiders on the state of democracy and human rights within a local community or a state is hardly a new phenomenon, for Africa or anywhere in the world --witness the slave trade, colonialism, Cold War patronage, etc. Nor is its direction (and value) any more easily judged than struggles "inside" a local community or state- witness the influence of anti-slavery campaigns, the anti-apartheid movement, the international connection to the Nigerian pro-democracy movement, oil companies, and the Niger Delta.

What the new "global" context does is to change the parameters within which this influence takes place. Among other things, it creates the option for greater transparency and accountability by all involved. But of course this won't happen "naturally." To me, this means the sites of contention for the fate of democracy and human rights in any particular local community, state- or continent- are inevitably world-wide, both "inside" and "outside."

Those involved- all of whose actions need to be examined for their potential positive or negative contributions and "right" to be engaged- include not only residents and citizens. It also includes diaspora communities- significant through their networks, skills and campaign finance even when excluded from voting "at home." And, it includes Western donors and other "donors"- multilaterals, foundations, NGOs (whether donors or activist). "Pro-democracy" efforts, in my view, should demand transparency and accountability from all these actors. (In practice, of course, "results will vary.")

Owusu-Ansah: While other newly emerging nations, Malaysia and South Korea, for example, are reducing disparities and spending resources judiciously on issues that help make life worth living, African countries south of the Sahara engage in what I would describe as the politics of chemosmosis.

Chemosmosis is the chemical treatment of a surface. Because the treatment is concerned with surface appearances, it lacks depth. Chemosmosis rears its head in African politics when the leaders emphasize unimportant, abstract things of little or no bearing on the issues affecting people's well being. Leaders often engage in rhetoric and embark upon haphazard measures that fail to tackle the root causes of illiteracy and poverty, two major factors in Africa's under development. Thus, in the absence of democracy, leaders engage in trivialities and often remain unchallenged.

Democracy may not be a-cure-all medicine for underdevelopment. However, given the level of development, progress, and prosperity in Malaysia, the country that attained political independence from the British in the same year with Ghana, it seems clear we have no choice but to practice democracy. The fact is we have not practiced democracy long enough. We have not given democracy a chance, compared to the one-party system, which has dominated the African political scene in the past four decades. Characterized by arrest and imprisonment without cause or trial, the oneparty system, championed by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, is itself a violation of human rights.

That the one-party ideology of the Nkrumah-Nyerere era has, to a greater extent, derailed democracy and stigmatized Africa's human rights record cannot be overstated. The evidence is overwhelming. A cursory examination of the African continent shows that African countries that blindly adhered to the one-party system are almost invariably worse off than they were at independence. Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, Sekou Toure's Guinea, Modibo Keita's Mali, Leopold Senghor's Senegal, and Julius Nyerere's Tanzania all exhibit concrete evidence of the havoc created under the one-party ideological concept. Sierra Leone under Siaka Stevens, Uganda under Milton Obote, Zambia under Kenneth Kaunda, Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, and Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa's Central African Republic are equally victims of intolerance under the one-party system. Before independence in 1980, the Zimbabwe economy was among the best in the world. Today, barely two decades later, under Robert Mugabe's one-party dictatorship, the economy is in the doldrums. Inefficiency is at the highest levels.

Shepherd: There are many admirable attempts underway to protect people against abusive governments and even genocide. But these cannot succeed without getting our priorities straight. The right to "Sustainable Development" means that a basic attack on poverty must be undertaken that places the rights of people to food, education, and a clean environment on a equal plane with freedom from disappearances and "crimes against humanity." Some human rights advocates are beginning to do this. The role of the Sierra Club and Amnesty International in the recognition of the needs of the Ogoni people against Chevron oil exploitation was a beginning. The new Nigerian government needs to be supported internationally by the major human rights advocates and NGOs, in its attempts to bring equity and a solution to this problem of human and environmental need. The reduction and cancellation of African Debt as proposed by Jubilee 2000 is a central step to be taken if the social welfare structure is to be rebuilt. Unfortunately the recent African Summit failed to place this first.

The failures of Structural Adjustment to provide the basis for African recovery should now be obvious. A massive Marshal Plan for Africa in cooperation with African states should be launched. Then, there may be much hope for improving trade and investment. These are the priorities and programs that need to be undertaken along with assistance in the holding and monitoring of elections and the strengthening of international and national tribunals on war crimes. Those of us in the Africa field who propose to help Africa meet basic human needs and the democratic aspirations of its people need to get our own priorities straight. Then, we may be able to persuade our Governments to undertake these humanitarian, global sustaining programs. These could as Tade Aina suggests, go a long way toward "supporting the poor in liberating themselves from poverty."

Concluding Statements

Odinkalu: The exchanges during this panel have been so insightful, any number of them deserve to be treated in their own right as set-piece contributions. So many different but related themes emerged during these exchanges, including dialogues on citizenship and the nature of the post-colonial African state, inclusion, exclusion and social justice, the purpose of democracy, custom, women, gender, and identity, to name only a few. We have also been invited to interrogate the appropriateness of "Africa" as the template for our exchanges. I do not pretend that I can respond to all of these. And I don't attempt to do so.

Since our exchanges began last month, several events of relevance to the subject matter of our panel have happened across the continent. I propose to call some of these events in aid of an attempt to elaborate the difficulties, methods and challenges that have been highlighted by these exchanges. What I end up with will perhaps be an eclectic collection of verbiage that, I hope, will not fail the test of trade description if you choose to call it "remarks".

The flip side of Tade's very pithy question "democracy for what?" is another equally fundamental poser, "democracy for whom?" We could easily adapt these questions to the related notions of human rights and (social) justice. In addressing these questions, Suren Pillay counsels that "we move away from broad general solutions like "Africa needs so and so" to local, specific studies that tell us about the distribution of power, along the various cleavages that separate and overlap...", and asks "[ I] s it not useful that those who study societies and the many (sic) across this continent tell us what these lofty ideals mean to those around them?"

While I agree that generalizations about Africa in any field of endeavor are more than likely to be unsustainable, I am unable to subscribe to a suggestion that the interpretations of Pillay's "those who study societies" (whoever they may be) are a substitute for narratives constructed by those who inhabit the experiences described. The outcome of the recent Zimbabwean Referendum arguably attests to this. The document voted down in that referendum was drafted by a commission that included some of the best known of "those who study societies" among Zimbabwe's intellectual and professional elite. That draft Constitution was the product of what was supposed to be a process (however flawed or inadequate) of consultation with the people of Zimbabwe.

The outcome of that referendum has been portrayed the world over as popular reprobation for a bad and out-of-touch President and his ruling party. I would argue that the outcome of that referendum, including the low turnout evidencing its inability to excite most Zimbabweans or, perhaps, its irrelevance to their scheme of things, was an equally damning verdict on the intellectual and professional experts recruited by the President to legitimize his self-perpetuation. The ex-post facto allegations of governmental interference in the drafting of the constitutional document were half-hearted at best. They also confessed to a naive assumption, not uncommon in current intellectual exchanges on constitutionalism in Africa, that the government itself should be a "neutral" party in the politics of constitution making.

Professor Mamdani challenges us to "democratize custom", a point which is both radical and, in implementation if not in conception, quite controversial. For with custom, as with organized religion, it's impossible to demarcate where the temporal ends and the transcendental begins. The democratization of custom would entail working out a modus vivendi with those whose interests are served by retaining its more oppressive manifestations. To this challenge, Patricia McFadden and Muthoni Wanyeki, among others, contributed meaningful insights that demonstrate that we cannot democratize custom, or, indeed, Africa unless we also democratize identity.

I hear it said that (our) people are mad to kill one another for ethnic or religious differences. And I say really? That's not helpful. Why is it that our people, most of whom can't be bothered to raise a voice in protest against injustice, are nevertheless sufficiently worked up to kill in industrial proportions for appearances of Allah/ God, skin pigmentation, height difference or the imagined shape of another's jaw-line? Why is it that our compatriots who cannot be excited by the worst excesses of government, nor stirred by blandishments about patriotism and nation-building, are easily roused to episodic outbursts of psychiatric epidemics over identity and sectarian differences? I, for one, believe that there is more at work here than passionate irrationality or the cynical exploitation of ignorance.

Since Nigeria's transition to civil rule (I decline deliberately to call it a `transition to democracy') in May last year, the country has experienced more violent killings than anything wrought by the combined excesses of the military governments of the past one and a half decades. Nigerians, who could not be worked up by the crimes of the successive military regimes, have experienced a succession of rapidly deteriorating identity-fuelled carnage. The response of the Obasanjo regime to this worrying situation is a mixture excessive military action, deliberate encouragement of police excesses, denial, and confused gestures to the "investor" and so-called international communities. It appears committed to a line that suggests that it owes its existence and legitimacy as a government to the foreign investor and the international community. Instead of political imagination, the Nigerian government prefers police action.

Events such as the ongoing violence in Nigeria teach that we can deconstruct identity and traditional or sectarian institutions until we are black and blue in the face, but we dismiss or deny their potency at our own peril. If we can find a way of tapping the passions that drive our people to the kind of identity-based, low-tech, high intensity violence most of our African societies experience now and again, we would have taken the first steps in the right direction.

But we cannot begin to do this unless a different generation of ideas and participants are prepared to get our aprons dirty in creating a new but realistic framework for political engagement. The attempt at democratization in Africa has managed somehow to defy the continent's generational and demographic trends. In the euphoria of the close results from the recent (but yet inconclusive) election in Senegal, very little has been said about the intriguing relationship of inverse proportionality between the age of the various contestants and their electoral appeal. Although not unmindful of the positive interpretations that we can salvage from those results, I fail to see- not for want of trying- how the prospect of a 75 year-old former law professor and minister replacing his 63 year-old former boss and benefactor necessarily represents the much-touted "change" on whose brink we are invited to believe Senegal's `democracy' now is. Democracy in Africa will remain a pie in the sky unless the project excites our youths. Building a politically credible and ethically regenerated leadership potential among Africa's young people remains one of the eternal challenges of our democracy project.

Mamdani (and many other participants) rightfully warn against the unaccountability of a majority of the new NGO-cracy. And I believe it was Tade who asked the question "[ W] hat use is democracy if it doesn't improve our lives?," inviting us, implicitly at least, to eschew the arrogance of fundamentalisms in approaching democratization and social justice in Africa. I would call attention here to the dangers of human rights and NGO fundamentalisms too. The framing of human rights norms is increasingly done in multi-lateral forums in which consensus documents reflect lowest common denominators having disparate impact in disparate contexts. Increasingly, there is an inflationary trend in international human rights standards whose mutual coherence is quite doubtful.

Only recently, the Appellate Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ordered an alleged leading genocidaire to be freed without bothering to examine the allegations against him because he had been in pre-trial detention for nineteen months. This was a form of what I choose to call due process fundamentalism that can only discredit the values of human rights, making it at best a marginal enterprise. The notion of "indigenous peoples" coined in very particular circumstances is in many places around Africa increasingly used to differentiate superior and inferior claims of citizenship and its perks that invite all forms of unacceptably violent self-help in settling perceptions of historical injustice. Such tendencies damage the basis and context for remedying historical exclusion and privilege by discrediting the means of activists without acknowledging the ends they seek to bring about. Universality is no excuse for uncritical and uncontextualized fundamentalism in the cause of texts negotiated, after all, by governments.

It bears restating that NGOs in Africa are no substitute for the state, nor management a substitute for participation. Tade suggests that the choice we have in Africa is one "between transformation and chaos". I do not personally see chaos and transformation as mutually exclusive. Chaos, like beauty, is in any case, in the eyes of the beholder. If we begin from the premise that democracy is messy, then we must accept that it entails a degree of chaos. The business of sorting out the disjunctures and injustices of Africa's past in today's world can't be pretty. The challenge for Africa- and for its friends around the world- is not to despair or, even worse, apologize for our difficulties. One choice we definitely don't have is to trade in the prospect of long term transformation for short term appearances of order and convenience.

McFadden: Several commentators mentioned the need to retain culture and or accommodate tradition as an essential feature of remaining African in a modernizing world. It is absolutely true that all societies carry something of the past into every experience of the present and future- that is the nature of existence in any form (material or social). However, for me as a feminist activist and scholar- the more critical questions are: what do Africans want to retain and who is carrying that past? What is it that authenticates the notion of that which is "African", and what are the consequences for particular groups of persons and or individuals.

In my view, this is where the tension lies and we must have the political and personal courage to engage with the challenge this presents. Africans must become modern, and African intellectuals must remove themselves from the outdated claims that modernity is about being European. Africans have to move into the present time- and this will not mean that we become less African in any way. We will (if we begin to work on it) become new Africans- and that for me is the critical qualitative issue.

Modernity is about acquiring the ability to thrive (not just to cope) in the present time- at the local, national, continental and global levels. It is about embracing those things which are critical to the empowering identities of the times- becoming citizens in the fullest manner; exercising democratic rights and engaging in democratic practice in the public and in the private; extending rights in their fullest meanings to all who live in our immediate and global context; and being aware of the critical and central importance of entitlement in our lives as individuals who are Africans in all the senses that this notion connotes and means.

People can only become citizens when they have a consciousness of themselves as entitled to certain "products"- rights, which come out of their struggles to be free and creative; services- which enable them to develop a consciousness through which they can demand access and accountability. The notions of governance and democracy can only become "real" and sustainable if the majority of Africans move out of the 15th century (in material, cultural and social terms) into which they have been locked- and which so many intellectuals reify as "authentic" and untouchable.

When one exists in a material reality where one can access modern utilities (basic things like portable water within ones home, electricity, waste disposal, etc) and through which one can experience the ability to purchase such commodities and thereby demand accountability and efficiency from those who should provide them- one develops a sense of entitlement.

The process of entitlement awareness also comes from the engagement with commodity exchange and with being valued as the possessor of labor through which one can access other social products. Because most African women are not paid for their labor, their awareness of entitlement remains low. They tend to accept things as given- as unchangeable, and therefore are easily mobilized as the custodians of archaic notions of patriarchal privilege. I know that I am treading on dangerous ground by making so many generalizations. Nonetheless, I am making these broad statements because the very act of raising new questions is in and of itself pleasing and personally enjoyable.

Those of us who are articulating the notions of rights, democracy, and citizenship live in environs where we have been able to enter into "civic" relationships with structures and systems that shape our consciousness as "entitled" individuals and communities. Most Africans do not live in such environs. They do not have the experience of being "entitled" to facilities and to material and social products that they can purchase and therefore demand. I am not saying that poor rural people do not have a consciousness of what they need to make life possible. I am talking about a consciousness that can be mobilized to transform the African political scenario in new and different ways.

Most Africans, especially African women, live in the "privatized" spaces of the rural areas- where even the most basic elements of governance and civic expectations are often absent. While I as an urban based woman can access the law when I am threatened with violation- and I have been able to develop a consciousness about myself as a human being with an integrity of person and, thus a consciousness of the entitlement to security and wholeness- the rural woman is largely excluded from this experience. There is her exclusion from education and information and from property relations which are critical to a modernist consciousness. In fact, most African women are largely constructed as property within their natal and marital families.

Consequently, patriarchal practices which reproduce women's commodified status in rural environs persist, and activists based in the urban sites have not been able to "break into" these private, customized spaces, largely because the wider structures and systems of governance are difficult if not impossible to access. We want women (and rural men) to have a consciousness about their rights, about modernity, in a vacuum- without the trappings that are essential to the emergence and sustenance of a modern consciousness. Note the impact of education on the views of men about the education of girls. Most women who are educated come from families where their fathers recognized access to knowledge as an essential attribute of modern existence.

Therefore, we encounter the resistance and impenetrability of traditional and cultural practices that violate and exclude women and children (especially girl children). We have discourses about democratization and governance, about rights and entitlement. But, they continue to exclude the majority of Africans because they have not been extended the basic pre-requisites of modern existence.

I know that some people will counter that Africa had democratic practices long before the modern age. Maybe- but, democracy as we are defining it now was most certainly not the experience of women in the past- however that past is re-claimed and or reinvented. A contentious issue, for sure, and one which will enable us as Africans to further our creativity and engagements.

In conclusion, I think that we must begin to engage certain key questions which underpin the transition for Africa from coloniality,-whether it is pre-or post-, in order for us to actually make the difference we so desperately need.

Firstly, we must engage with the issues of property and how they exclude and silence the majority of Africans- and which are presently couched in notions of authenticity and culture. For women, entering into a relationship with property is central to their transformation from subjects to citizens- to use Mamdani's beautifully articulated argument, with a gender inclusive bent.

Secondly, we must engage the issue of infrastructure and access to services and systems of mobility in relation to economic, political, cultural, educational and wider social aspects. People cannot become citizens if they are excluded from the most critical material and social resources that shape their consciousness as citizens. The most basic of these is the positioning of the individual at the intersection between civic and market processes. When people interact within the civic sphere, they create new energies which can be mobilized and expressed as "social phenomena" '- notions of rights and access which underpin modernity and agency as far as I see it. The fact of the matter is that we live in commodified societies, and each and every African has the right to position her/ himself in relation to both the "civic/ public" and the "market" as they choose. Here I am obviously not talking only about the relationship with capital. I am also referring to the fundamental relationship between the individual and the capitalist mode of production as a larger phenomenon with which we all have to engage.

Thirdly, Africans have to detach themselves from old notions of who we are in terms of our personal and public identities. We are Africans- and will be such to all else for a long time to come. We do not need to authenticate ourselves through the maintenance of exclusionary practices that only make the task of transformation even more difficult. We must embrace the modern because we are an essential part of it.

Africans have crafted and shaped modernity largely through our struggles and the demands we continue to make within our respective post-colonial societies, as well as through our engagement with patriarchy and exclusion at the global level. We have the right to be complete citizens- but to be such, we have to shed the past that has kept outside the most critical sites in our societies- sites where material, social and political resources reside.

In my opinion, it is only when we have the courage to be modern that we will be able to engage the post-colonial state effectively as gendered citizens. The challenge of making gender difference an expression of our diversity rather than the basis of our exclusion and violation will then become a foremost political issue for all Africans.