Emerging African development thinking

Continued from Part Two

To Read Part One

African chiefs have been the enduring fixtures on the traditional system. They command far more authority and respect from their people than central governments. In addition, they are the custodians of the land. As such, no credible agricultural development can take place without their participation. Et after independence, they were not consulted. In fact, African nationalist leaders saw them as a political threat and stripped them of their traditional power and authority.

In the case of Ghana, the Governments of Ghana took away the authority of traditional rulers by passing laws (or acts) and decrees. In 1951, the Legislative Assembly passed the Local Government Ordinance which substituted Local Councils for the Native Authorities or the Council of traditional rulers. The Ordinance intended that elected persons rather than traditional rulers should act as the guardians of the welfare of the community. In 1954, another Ordinance of the Government deprived the traditional rulers of their representation in the Local Councils. In 1958 (a year after Ghana became independent), the Local Courts Act abolished the courts of traditional rulers and took away the authority that the Colonial Government had given them to settle disputes among the people, as they had done in the days before colonial rule itself. Also in 1958, the Legislative Assembly passed the “House of Chiefs' Act”, which confirmed that traditional councils and the Houses of Chiefs could resolve disputes among traditional rulers.

There were subsequent laws in 1962, 1969, 1971 and various amendments. But, the manner in which the Governments of Ghana have applied some of these laws greatly weakened the position of traditional rulers and made it clear even to those who had no idea of the new laws that the traditional rulers can act only if the central Government wished them to do so. The Governments had had certain rulers removed from their stools by notifying the public in the Gazette that they no longer “recognized” those rulers. The most famous examples are the removal of the rulers of Akyem Abuakwa and Wenchi by the Government of Kwame Nkrumah, and the rulers of Akyem Kotoku, Wenchi and Yendi by the National Redemption Council under the Chairmanship of the late General I.K. Acheampong.

Nigeria was supposed to be the exception, since its federal constitution provided for some devolution of authority toward local authorities and traditional rulers. Furthermore, in the struggle for independence, there was little friction between the traditional rulers and the elites. In fact, the position of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon in its 1954 manifesto was quite explicit: "Our Emirs and Obas, Obongs and Etubons and Amayonabos, are sovereigns in their own rights. This is the verdict of our history. Accordingly, our National Rulers must fit into the position of Constitutional monarchs”. But it did not turn out that way.

Beginning under Nigeria's first president, Abubakar Balewa, the northern region government abolished the chiefs’ status of sole native authority. In 1963, the Emir of Kano was capriciously removed by the federal government. After the Nigerian military coup of 1966, the traditional rulers had hoped their fortunes would improve but it was never to be. As West Africa put it:

They lost their Native Authority police forces under one military head of state; under another, they lost more of their role and responsibilities through the Local Government reforms of 1976; they lost their critical authority over land use under a third; and they lost their own forum, the House of Chiefs, under the incoming civilian administration of the Second Republic in 1979. Under the next military government, they were forced for good measure, as it were, to witness the humiliation of two of their senior most colleagues, the Emir of Kano and the Ooni of Ife, whose passports were withdrawn in 1984 for displeasing the military government; in military idiom, the rulers were further humbled by being ordered not to leave their domain without the prior permission of their Local Government chairmen, the new and sole channel of communication between the traditional rulers and Government. Twenty five years after the brusque removal of the Emir of Kano, the traditional rulers watched the dismissal of the Emir of Muri, once again as the outcome of a clash with government, along with central intervention over the appointment of the Sultan of Sokoto himself (20 26 March, 1989; p.431).

It was the same in Mozambique. When President Joaquim Chissano's Frelimo Party won independence from Portugal in 1975, he accused chiefs of having been puppets of the Portuguese and stripped of their power. During the liberation war between 1964 and 1974, chiefs in the province of Niassa gave vital support to Frelimo and their rejection after independence left them particularly disgruntled.

The economic systems established by African nationalist leaders after independence were also alien. Many of them were based on the socialist ideology of state ownership of the means of production, state control, state planning, state-owned enterprises, etc. The socialist ideology, itself, is alien.

While it is true that Africans are imbued with a greater sense of community awareness than most Western cultures, the concept of the individual was not completely absent. According to a Fanti proverb: "Life is as you (the individual) make it”. And in the general African phrase: "I am because we are”, in which the "we" connotes community, the "I" (the individual or personhood) was not entirely absent. An analogous situation is supplied by the phrase: "Man is a social animal”. The meaning here is that the human being desires the company of others and abhors living alone. Accordingly, each person yearns for some "togetherness" or "a community”. But it cannot be inferred from this disposition that "man is a socialist”.

Being a "social animal" (sociable or socialistic) is totally different from being a socialist. Another distinction should be made: Socialism as public policy and socialism as an economic ideology. Public policy and responsible government mandate that the state should care about the poor, the handicapped, the unemployed, the sick and the elderly. In that sense, even the U.S. government is very socialist. However, that should not be confused with socialism as an ideology, which is rooted in political, economic and intellectual control by the state. The ideology of socialism, as understood and practiced, entails government ownership of the means of production; government control and direction of economic activity; the operation of state enterprises to the exclusion of privately owned businesses; price-fixing by the state and a myriad of state regulations and controls; one-party states and government ownership of the press. In other words, there is an absence of private ownership, free markets, political and intellectual freedom.

Indigenous African economic systems are not characterized by these absences and therefore cannot be classified as "socialism”. Economic, political and intellectual repression as well as state controls, were never part of indigenous African tradition. Nor could traditional African rulers establish a "socialist" (state-controlled economy) if they had wanted to since the logistics were well beyond their reach. The control mechanisms and measures needed to control the economy were not yet developed.

Many of Africa's nationalist leaders either misread their own indigenous African economic systems or were ignorant of them. Nyerere (1962), for example, was right in pointing to the communalism of African peasants. It is true the people of Africa pooled their resources together (family pot or fund, working bees, extended family systems, etc.) and helped one another ("communal labor"). But that feature of traditional African society can not be interpreted as readiness for socialism. One can be socialistic or communalistic without necessarily being a socialist or communist. Many rural folks in America are socialistic in the sense that they care about their neighbors, offer voluntary labor to help neighbors rebuild homes devastated by tornadoes, and watch over neighbors' property (neighborhood crime watch). But they are hardly socialist or communists. Neither are the Amish of Pennsylvania.

Being communalistic or socialistic did not necessarily mean the African peasant was communist or socialist and therefore willing to share his wealth equally with all members of the extended family. Julius Nyerere, ex president of Tanzania, for example, mistook the peasant's emphasis on kinship and community as readiness for socialism Ujamaa (Nyerere, 1962). But even then, the sense of community did not extend beyond one's kinship group. It was this fundamental inability on the part of African nationalist leaders to distinguish between "communalism" and "socialism" that caused many of them to adopt an ideology which they erroneously thought could be justified by African tradition. This resulted in some sort of comedy of errors after independence when they attempted to copy an alien system they did not understand to graft onto an indigenous system they did not understand either. One could well imagine the consequences.

Among western writers and analysts, there has also been pervasive mythology about indigenous African heritage. One of the most strikingly misleading statement has been the claim of "communal ownership of the means of production”. There was/is no such thing as "communal ownership" of cattle or land. Forests, rivers, lakes and the ocean were for common usage. However, a community could set aside some grazing land for such use. In general, however, land was privately-owned — controlled by lineages. In traditional Africa, the person who first settles on unoccupied land becomes the owner. He may pass this land on to his descendants and they can pass it to their descendants. Thus, the land becomes "lineage-owned" or controlled, belonging to the first ancestor, the original settler. Kings and chiefs may hold royal land or "stool land" in trust but it does not belong to them or the state.

The myth of communal ownership of land may have arisen innocently out of confusion or misinterpretation. When an European colonialist asked an African whom a plot of land belonged to, the African would have replied: "It belongs to us. We own the land”. To the African, the "we" meant his extended family or lineage, but the European might have assigned a much wider interpretation to the "we" to mean the entire village community or the tribe. Hence, "communal ownership of land”.

Furthermore, in indigenous Africa, all the means of production were privately owned. The economic factors of production — labor, capital, and the entrepreneur — were owned by the peasants, not their chiefs or the state. Huts, spears, and agricultural implements were all private property. The profit motive was present in most market transactions. Free enterprise and free trade were the rule in indigenous Africa. The natives went about their economic activities on their own initiative and free will. They did not line up at the entrance of the chief's hut to apply for permits before engaging in trade or production. What and how much they produced were their own decisions to make. The African woman who produced kenkey, garri or semolina herself decided to produce those items. No one forced her to do so. Nor did anyone order the fishermen, artisans, craftsmen, or even hunters what to produce. In modern parlance, those who go about their economic activities on their own free will are called “free enterprisers”. By this definition, the kente weavers of Ghana, the Yoruba sculptors, the gold, silver blacksmiths as well as the various indigenous craftsmen, traders, and farmers were free enterprisers. The Masai, Somali, Fulani and other pastoralists who herded cattle over long distances in search of water and pasture to fatten them also were free enterprisers. So were the African traders who traveled great distances to buy and sell commodities — an economic risk taking venture. They all go about their economic activities on their own initiative, not at the behest of their traditional rulers the chiefs. For centuries, they have been selling their produce and wares in open, free, village markets. African chiefs do not harass them, impose ridiculous price controls on them, or even fix wages and jail violators: Africans bargain over prices. Nor do these chiefs monopolize the tribal economy, or operate "tribal government enterprises”, the equivalent of state enterprises.

Indigenous African markets have always been hospitable to foreigners. Nigerian traders are welcome, and can indeed be found, in virtually every West African market. The local chiefs do not expel them. Arab and Hausa long distance traders have for centuries traded freely in African markets. So too did the Europeans until they rolled out their guns and abused African hospitality. Free trade and private enterprise were the rules in indigenous Africa.

[I wrote a book about this called Indigenous African Institutions. It was published in 2006.]

Interview conducted by:

Kofi Akisah-Sarpong, Canada. September 27, 2009