| The Benefit of Benevolent Dictatorship for Africa |
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| Written by Ozodi Thomas Osuji | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 24 February 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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GUIDED DEMOCRACY FOR AFRICAN COUNTRIES (The Benefits of Benevolent Dictatorship) Ozodi Thomas Osuji
The buzz word of the day is democracy. Many talking head talks about how democracy is good for African countries. In this light, one is expected to go with the crowd. But one will not conform to the so-called intelligentsia; one will state what seems self evidently true to one. Contemporary Africans, as I know them to be, not as I would like them to be, are not yet ready for democracy. In my judgment, Africans need benevolent dictators to guide them towards modernity. I think that Africans need a generation (thirty four years) of subjugation to the iron fisted rule of dictators to discipline them, to get them to live by the rule of law. After they have been disciplined by a draconian leader (s), they could then be ready for the self checking behavior of democratic politics. Let me put it this way: if I ruled Africa, I would rule as a dictator, albeit a benevolent one. I would impose rigorous discipline on Africans. At present, Africans are too chaotic; nature cries out for them to be disciplined, I mean disciplined in all aspects of their lives: political and personal. Until Africans are vigorously and mercilessly disciplined, we can forget the hope that they would catch up with the rest of humanity in economic or any other type of developments. Consider corruption. Africans too easily give in to corruption; it is as if they have no moral fiber and do not have the ability to resist the temptation to take easy money; it is as if they lack appreciation that corruption is antithetical to economic development. Give an African monetary bribe and, I do not care what his level of education is, he takes it. Even those Africans that talk loudest about the evil of corruption are prone to taking bribes. Therefore, merely expecting them to be corruption free would not do it; what would do it is cracking their heads and sending them to long term prisons. (We must create our own version of Siberia; I suggest the Sahara Desert; we should send convicted corrupt persons to desert colonies and have them desalinize the ocean, build canals, irrigate and reforest the desert.) I admire Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler’s iron fisted rule. I do not admire their goals (socialism and fascism) but the tough minded, unsentimental means through which they sought to attain their ends. I am not a socialist and I am not a fascist either; I am an African nationalist. My primary interest is modernizing Africa, bringing Africa to where the rest of mankind is and doing so in a hurry. In political ideology, I am somewhat of a conservative; in economic ideology I am a mixed economist. I have addressed these issues elsewhere and would not permit them to detain us here; at present, we are talking means, not end.
THE AFRICAN AS I SEE HIM Every approach to politics is predicated on the perception of human beings, their nature and their habitual patterns of behaviors. Africans are human beings. They are like any other group of human beings. As Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) pointed out, and my experience agrees, human beings are primarily self interested. Human beings pursue their individual self interests and when it serves them well cooperate with one another for their mutual interests. Left alone, however, each human being does what, in his opinion, serves his personal interests; and he would not hesitate for a second placing his self interest ahead of other peoples interests. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations), I believe, is correct in stating that though at the conscious level human beings would like to see themselves as moral beings and as social interest serving that at the deeper level they are selfish. (I also agree that selfishness is not necessarily bad, especially, if taken advantage of, as the capitalist economy does.) For our present purposes, because they are motivated by self interest, human beings tend to harm other people’s interests. In nature people are at war with one another and the strong take from the weak. The weak, of course, resent been taken from and fight with the strong; thus in nature is war of all against all. The result is insecurity for all and life in nature is nasty, brutish and short. To reduce their insecurity human beings everywhere formed governments. The primary function of government is to pass laws that protect all the people within a specific polity. Human beings are safe in situations where there are laws and where those laws are vigorously implemented. If there are no police, courts, prisons and other law enforcement institutions that rigorously enforce laws human life is precarious. For there to be political stability and personal security there must be laws, laws that are impersonally implemented by law enforcement officials. You engage in an illegal act, you are arrested, tried and sent to prison (or killed, as in capital punishment). There are no ifs and buts about it, no misguided sentimentality. In sum, human nature, as observed in the empirical world, not as we necessarily want it to be, is selfish and, as such, we must have laws and implement them if we seek to have a society where people respected each other’s life and property. There is a general human nature, a nature which Africans share with the rest of humanity. On the other hand, the peculiarities of each human group make their situation a bit different thus necessitating different political arrangements. Africans, for any number of reasons, did not go through the modernization process that transformed barbaric Germanic, Celtic and Slavic tribes into the relative law abiding people they are today. Africa did not go through the specific steps we know that the West went through: fall of classical Greek/Roman civilization; the dark ages where the primitive Catholic Church superimposed its superstitious world view on European society and in the process destroyed all scientific inquiries; Mohammed’s establishment of Islam; Arab-Muslim conquest of southern Europe; the Arab reintroduction of Greek rationalism into Europe; the Renaissance; the reformation of the Catholic Behemoth; the age of enlightenment; the Industrial revolution; the Urbanization revolution that brought primitive Europeans to urban centers; the Romantic backlash against reason; the modern age of science and democratic governments beginning with the American and French revolutions. These revolutions changed Western man’s ways of living. They did not take place in Africa and Africans are still living in situations best characterized as pre-modern. The contemporary African is, perhaps, where the European was before the renaissance. All things being equal, it would probably take a thousand years for the African to eventually drag himself to where the modern West is. (And the West would not be standing still waiting for Africans to catch up; the West would probably be another thousand years ahead of the African.) Obviously, Africans do not have that kind of time and must use every means necessary to drag themselves to the modern world. That was exactly what Joseph Stalin did: use brute force to drag a primitive Russian people to the modern world. Stalin, like him or not, used brute force to industrialize Russia, to bridge the gap between the modern West and a primitive Russia. In the process, he killed many millions of people, especially those that resisted modernization and, unfortunately, those that his paranoid misinterpretation of peoples motives led him to believe opposed his modernization efforts, when, in fact, they did not. Give me thirty four years and I will modernize Africa, not by been sentimental with people but by exercising the most brutal force humanity has known. I will exercise that force for a goal: modernization, hence I call it benevolent dictatorship. We are not talking about dictatorship for the sake of the individual’s personal ego, his sense of grandeur but for the sake of all Africans. You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. You cannot modernize Africans without breaking people’s minds and backs. If a few million Africans are killed for the sake of modernizing Africans, that, to me, is a small price to pay for the goal sought. If millions of Africans are sent to prisons that, to me, is a minor price for the goal we seek: modernizing Africa. A complicating factor is Africans experience of slavery. For over a thousand years, beginning with Arab slavery which began around 900 AD and continuing with European slavery, which began around 1500 AD, Africans sold themselves into slavery until about 1900AD. This one thousand year culture of selling themselves into slavery means that Africans lost respect for themselves. The African has zero self esteem and certainly does not esteem other Africans (you do to others as you first did to you; if you do not love and respect you, you cannot love and respect other people). From his position of no self love and self respect and no love and respect for his fellow Africans, the individual African engages in self serving behaviors. In politics all he wants to do is optimize his self interests and does not care for other Africans interests. As the Nigerian musician, Fela Anakulape Kuti used to sing, contemporary African politicians are nothing but slave sellers; they are still selling their brothers into slavery and obtaining warped sense of prestige from so doing. They want to seem very important persons, VIPs, adorn their bloated bodies with shapeless robes, robes that they acquired from Arabs (who have discarded them). Africans are callous beyond belief. They do not see it as their function to help their own people. They see political office as from which they enrich themselves, not from which they do things to improve their peoples welfare. They seek political office by all means and do not mind killing each other just so that they are the chief thieves of their countries. Nigeria is about to conduct an election (April 2007). Going by her past history, the election will, of course, be rigged. (Only a naïve fool would believe that the election would be fair.) The most efficient group at rigging will be pronounced as the winners of the election. As expected, the new thieves in town would proceed to plunder the national treasury. These thugs masquerading as politicians would cart their country’s wealth to Europe and North America while their suffering country men would pray to non-existent gods for help. And there seem nothing men of good will can do about this obnoxious situation, until, perhaps, the Niger Delta oil money runs out and Nigeria joins the other failed African states; and given her stupendously large population produces the most starving mass of humanity that the world has seen. We can do something about the absurd situation. Given the decidedly egoistic mental status of the African, he needs to be re-socialized, to be made to internalize a social serving ethic. The African needs to be approached from the perspective of transforming his warped character structure. When I see an African, I see a selfish person; I see a slave seller and deal with him without mercy. I have no misguided sentimentality about what Africans are capable of doing. Since he is selfish, I deal with him as you would deal with predatory animals. I believe that we must use the law to make Africans to work for public good and if they step outside the law punish them in the most drastic manner. If he kills a person (he has no regard for his fellow Africans and kills them like they are flies) kill him, immediately. There must be capital punishment. Every weekend line convicted criminals up and use them as military shooting targets. If the African steals, arrest and sentence him to long term prison, to no less than ten years in prison, hard labor, in the proposed Sahara Penal Colony. He must work to feed himself, he should never be fed by the tax payers. We cannot afford to be emotional with Africans; we must treat them as unsympathetic and dispassionate as is humanly possible. Harden your heart to all feelings of love and sympathy and treat the African criminal as punitively as is possible. He does not understand love; he understands only hate and crime so objectify him and treat him mercilessly. I would like to use Africans to accomplish social goals; I would work them until they dropped dead (pretty much as Nazis worked their prisoners until they died). I would love to use their labor to build roads from one end of Africa to another and to build modern cities (as the Pharos used slave labor to build the pyramids). I would love to make Africans pay a heavy price for selling their people into slavery and pretend their lack of culpability in this crime against humanity. I would like to wipe out that infantile I see in their face as they blame others for the slave trade and for their current mismanagement of their people’s resources. I would love to make them pay a severe price for being easily prone to corruption. I would love to break these people’s tendency to cavalierly gravitate to lives of evil. I would make them learn not to indulge in evil behaviors. I would love to transform them into human beings, not animals that exploit each other and pretend that that unnatural behavior is natural. What Stalin and Hitler did to their people is nothing compared to what I would like to do to Africans. For a generation I would subject them to nothing but hard work. I would break their tendency to seeking immediate gratification and a life of fun. Give me these people and I would remold them into the new African, a productive African.
POLITICAL STRUCTURE FOR AFRICA I have never been able to understand why Africans are particularly politically dense. Since they acquired independence from their European colonial masters, it cannot be said that they have done anything that is politically realistic and remotely related to real problem solving. European colonial powers used force to lump different African tribes together into polities that many of them would rather not be in. So what should Africans do about it? They have bitched and moaned about what the Berlin Conference of 1884 did to them but they have not had the courage to do what they must eventually do. Africans must restructure the polities they inherited from their former colonial masters and make them realistic. Let each tribe have self government and control its resources (and let its citizens pay taxes to support a national government. Consider Nigeria. At present there are thirty six states in the country. Why in the world should there be thirty six states in a small country like Nigeria? Nigeria has about nine major tribes: Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Edo, Uhrobo, Efik, Tivi, Hausa, Fulani and many smaller ones. Divide the country into twelve states with each state comprised of a tribe (Yoruba state, Igbo state…Igbo state comprising all Igbos, from Port Harcourt to Agbo in present Delta State). Lump the smaller tribes together into three states, for a total of twelve states of Nigeria. Each of these tribe based states would be totally in charge of its own affairs and would control its economic resources one hundred percent. Of course, the national government would control foreign affairs and the military. We are talking federation, not confederation or unitary government. What is done in Nigeria is replicated in all African countries. There are about four hundred major African tribes, so we would have four hundred states in Africa. (And lump the smaller tribes into an additional one hundred states for altogether five hundred states of Africa). For the present, it may be necessary to retain the colonial set boundaries but soon we must restructure all of Africa. By the middle of this century, I see all of West Africa as one country, all of East Africa, as one country, all of South Africa as one country and all of central Africa as one country (I exclude North Africa for those are Arabs and are not Africans). Ultimately, there must be one African federation (which must come into being by the end of this century). At the central government level we will have the usual structures for governing: legislature, elected every five years (unicameral, composed of no more than 300 members), a supreme court of thirteen members, one the chief justice, twenty years term limit for all members; the supreme court supervises the courts of appeal and district courts; a prime minister who serves five years, two term limit (selected from the party with the largest member block in the legislature…he forms a cabinet from outside the legislature, that is, he selects qualified technocrats, as in the USA). In addition to this structure is a new position that I call the Guardian. This is the dictator position. He guides the legislative, executive and the other branches of government and makes sure that they behave according to the rule of law. He has the ability to over rule any of the three branches of government. His job is to bring about drastic change in the polity. At the state level we replicate the national structures: a unicameral legislature that does not exceed fifty members, a premier (who selects his cabinet from outside the legislature), a state high court and the courts under it (county courts, town/city courts). The national Guardian appoints a lieutenant guardian for each state and the later could veto whatever the other branches of government are doing. At the local level is a county (district) government composed of a county council (not more than eleven members), a county administrator selected from the council (who hires his cabinet from outside the council) and a county court. The Lt Guardian appoints a resident sub-guardian in each county. He, too, can veto everything the county government does. At the city or town level the same structure is replicated; a city or town council of no more than seven members, one selected as the mayor (who appoints a cabinet of technocrats from outside the council) and a town court. The county resident appoints a town guardian who can veto what the three branches of town government does. We all know that the free enterprise economy is by far the most productive form of economy; if in doubt go ask the Russians under their monolithic communist government. We do not have to reinvent the wheel, so we should have a capitalist economy. However, there are certain functions that men of goodwill everywhere agree must be performed by the government if the people are to be adequately provided for. It is the role of state governments to provide all their citizens with education, free, at all levels: six years of elementary education, six years of secondary education and four years of undergraduate university education for the top 33 percent of secondary school graduates. Free technical education: two years in-class instruction and two years on the job training, along the German system, for the two thirds of secondary school graduates who could not go to universities. Two years of masters level education for the top ten percent of graduating undergraduates, and additional two years of doctoral education for the top five percent of masters’ graduates. Education must be paid for, at all levels, by the state (that is, the people). Additionally, each state must provide its people with one hundred percent medical health insurance. Apart from these two critical services, each state decides what other functions to perform for her people.
THE GUARDIANS The role of government in society is very simple: provide security for the people via law and order. What the legislature, executive and judiciary do is well known. The only additional component added to the known governmental structure is the Guardians. I add these people for I think that we need them to supervise the other branches of government and make sure that they do what they are supposed to do, and failing to do them remove them from office. The guardians at all four levels of governance, central, state, county and city, must have the power to behave like dictators and remove elected and other officials from office. If an official is alleged not to do his work well or is corrupt, the guardian investigates and if he is satisfied that the allegation is correct, remove the official from office. He possesses dictatorial powers. I submit that we need such persons and their extraordinary powers if we are to reshape Africans and get them to live in accordance with the law. The question that necessarily arises is how do we select such persons and how do we make sure that they are not egomaniacs and are corrupt? This is a good question. In the nature of things such persons would select themselves and impose their iron will on the people. Please study how Hitler (his Mein Kampf, Table Talks etc) or Stalin came to power. How these European dictators came to power might give us some insight into how such iron fisted persons could come to power in Africa. An alternative mode of coming to power is for there to be a military take over and the head of the military coupe become the Guardian at the center and appoints his lieutenants at the state, county and city levels, and establish the political structure visualized here. Once he establishes the structure he supervises its working and removes those who do not operate according to its rules. As noted, the advocated form of government is a temporary mechanism for bringing some law and order into the chaotic environment that is Africa. One does not expect the situation to last forever. One generation of draconian rule is enough time to break the wild minds of Africans and force them to obey the laws of the land.
DISCUSSION And how do we prevent the Guardians from becoming megalomaniacs who use their unprecedented powers to abuse the people and enrich themselves? I wish that I had the answer to that question. I do not know but I still think that benevolent dictatorship is the only solution to the chaos that is contemporary Africa. I do not have the illusion or delusion that democracy is the answer for Africa’s problems. Democracy is good but it requires people who have internalized the rule of law to make it work. The Africans that I know of do not like to operate under the law. If you establish the law they would seek ways to circumvent it. Indeed, if you are law abiding they would consider you a fool, a mugu. Consider the Internet. Folks all over the world are using the Internet to do good things for their people, but Nigerians primarily use it to figure out ways to cheat, to steal and to engage in other criminal activities (such as look into each others backgrounds, steal their identities etc). Long ago I gave up on the possibility that Nigerians, by themselves, can do the right thing. I am now of the opinion that since they are like undisciplined children that we need the iron fist to beat them into doing the right thing. Nor do I believe that it is possible to develop a new breed of African leaders that can improve Africa. Leaders are selected from the people and reflect the people they govern. If the people are crooked the leaders must be crooked. I expect Nigerian leaders to be thieves and have no illusions about their behavior. As I see it, what we need to do is carry a big stick and whack Nigerians on the head, whack to kill, if necessary, to get them to do what they ought to be doing without big brother supervising them. I believe that we need to do this for at least thirty four years, a generation, before we can re-socialize Nigerians into doing the right thing. It would be nice if people did the right things by themselves but since they refuse to do what they ought to be doing, we must intimidate them into doing them. Human beings are animals and like all animals are motivated to live; they are afraid of death and would do anything to live. If you threaten to kill them and actually kill some of them, there is a tendency for human beings to shape up, quickly. Fear of death makes people obey the law, so let us instill the fear of death in Africans by killing many of them so that those who live learn to obey the law. It is in obeying the law that we have social order, economic growth and individual security.
CONCLUSION I personally do not like any one to tell me what to do. When it comes to social policies making, I want all of us to put our heads together and discuss what we are going to do, what is good for us. I am a democrat. My preference for democratic policy making process not withstanding, I am acutely aware that if you want law and order that the other forms of governments are the best means for attaining them. Monarchy, Aristocracy, fascism and other forms of government are better at attaining law and order in society. Whereas democracy and capitalism are, no doubt, the best forms of government, especially if freedom is our goal, the fact of the matter is that in a continent like Africa where people are making transition from preliterate to modern society, there are a lot of disruptions in people’s lives. People are lost and do not know what to do. They live in a state of anomie and many are tempted to believe that they can do whatever they want to do and get away with it. It is true that one can steal and get away with it. But suppose all people steal then what happens? Chaos results. We need the draconian rule of law to bring about order where there is chaos. It is also the case that economic development can be facilitated where a dedicated group takes it upon itself to develop their people. I want to transform Africans into a law abiding people; I want to modernize Africa, to bring her economically to where Europe is. I want to do so in a generation. I believe that benevolent dictatorship is the quickest means of attaining my goals. If you have better ideas please persuade me with them, I am all ears. In fact, I would that you have persuasive ideas for, clearly, my position shows loss of faith in my fellow Africans. It is not exactly good for one to lose faith in ones people’s ability to do the right thing and come to believe that they need a dictator to make them do the right thing. This is awful perception of ones people and one certainly would rather not have such a negative view of ones people. Nor is this negative view merely ones, many Africans are of the same opinion. It is not the case that one lost faith in ones self and project what one sees in ones self to other Africans and come to believe that they are not good enough and are not able to govern themselves. I would like to believe that Africans are capable of governing themselves. I want you to show me how Africans can govern themselves, but do not give me excuses as to why, so far, they have not been able to govern themselves right. I do not want to read all the rethreaded neocolonial argument; one read those in graduate school but one is now disabused by actual relationship with Africans in positions of power. One has seen how easily corruptible Africans are. One has no need to blame others, particularly white persons, for ones problems; one takes responsibility for ones problems and just wants to learn how to fix them. If one points two accusatory fingers at other people three point right back at one. This means that whereas other people do contribute to ones problems that ones own contribution is greater than others contribution to it. If you have ideas on how to fix African problems let us hear about them, but please do not blame others for Africa’s problems, that is now an old tale and one is tired of hearing that same old stanza. It is time that Africans grew up; growing up means taking responsibility for ones fate. *This paper is an exercise in political theory, in philosophizing about what type of government suits a particular people, at a particular point in time. The reader, hopefully, is acquainted with political philosophy and is able to think the subject through. The writer’s thesis is academic and is meant for intellectual discourse; it should not be taken as a dogmatic assertion of what is good for Africa and Africans. Perhaps, if we hear from you we shall then be able to collate what is good for Africa and Africans? Dr Osuji presented this paper to a life audience.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji February 24, 2007
FURTHER READING (Each of these classics in political theory has several publishers.) Aristotle. The Politics of Aristotle. . Bentham, Jeremy. Economic Writings. Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James and Jay, John. The Federalist Papers. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Lenin, V.I. Collected Works. Locke, John. Second Treaty of Government. Machiavelli Niccolo. The Prince. Marx, Karl. Der Capital. Mill, John Stuart. On Representative Government. Montesquieu, Charles. Spirit of the Laws Plato The Republic. Rousseau, Jean Jacque. Social Contract. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations.
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Posted by Robot| 24.02.2007 07:59