By Alhaji U. N’jai
I first wrote this piece after the January 6, 2020 insurrection in the US and now in the wake of July 13, 2024 assassination attempt on President Trump, American democracy needs introspection.
America now needs to learn as much from Africa’ s rich experience with multi-ethnic and pluralistic democracy. American democracy has worked politically well in the past in a largely homogenous white dominated environment. It now must deal with an increasingly complex multi-racial, conscious, and pluralistic political economy for which it lacks the requisite experience to handle.
Four years of Trump, its handling of Covid-19 pandemic, race relations, post-US 2020 elections violence, Russia-Ukraine confiict, and Biden’s handling of the Israel-Palestine Gaza conflict have all severely damaged US global standing. It is time for America to deconstruct and decolonize its existing democratic model locally and in relation to the rest of the world.
On multi-racial democracy, America must now learn from the rest of the world rather than focus on being conveyors of it. For this, I believe, Africa’s rich pluralistic democratic experience structured on multiple layers of ethnicities, class, religions, western education and traditionalist, urban and rural dichotomies, and colonial experience offers a good starting point. African political economies have displayed remarkable resilience despite years of slavery, colonialism, bad governance, wars, turmoil, disease and environmental strife. African multi-ethnic democracies have been portrayed as weak, fragile, and instable, but have largely been that way because of colonial disruptions and current neocolonial influence, that ensures unfettered access to it resources.
Mediocrity on the part of the African elites or leaderships is yet to allow total liberation and the development of sound ideologies for political, social, and economic organization of its people. Four years of Trump and emergence of multi-racial democracy is pushing America to the brink of chaos. Essentially, America is now where Africa was post-independence, when it comes to it young and fragile multi-racial democracy. The challenge as in Africa is how to build national cohesion along a strong positive sense of national identity in a multi-ethnic environment.
The African culture of ubuntu, collectivism, communal belonging, social justice, and tolerance have been the foundational underpinnings of both the African resilience and success with pluralistic democracy. America must grapple with its individualism values and capitalism in an increasingly multi-racial and pluralistic political economy
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*About the author: Alhaji Umar N’jai is a Senior Scientist, Professor, Panafrican Scholar, Founder & Chief Strategist of Project 1808, Inc., and Freelance writer ‘Roaming in the Mountains of Kabala Republic’. #Jata #Meejoh #ThePeoplesScientist*
