Africa's Culture Of 'Agreement' Holds It Back

Prince Mashele, the executive director of the Centre for Politics and Research, argues that to achieve sustainable transformation, Africans must learn from other cultures, and incorporate those aspects that will take them forward.

- Gerhard Uys

In his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney writes that Western civilisations are civilisations of dissent. Westerners encourage each other to say no. In ‘no’, they see the possibility of progress, and the opportunity to check their own assumptions. In this way, Western civilisations are propelled by contradictions.

I remember attending a legotla (a public meeting or community council) and finding that the spirit was one of agreement. In fact, any person who disagreed at the meeting was seen as causing problems. We as Africans are a civilisation of consent; contradiction is not part of how we do things. Consensus is our culture, and as a result we are a civilisation that says ‘yes’.

Democracy is also not ‘our thing’, and this is something we shall have to confront. Democracy is Western thinking that is imposed on us. But to go forward, we have to acknowledge things that are not done in our way. As painful as it might be, we must impose democracy on ourselves by building institutions of accountability. If we don’t, our children and grandchildren will continue to live with the ills we battle with today.

LEADERSHIP

There is an African saying that goes: “If you have a problem with the king, then get out of his land”. Leaders reign supreme in our communities, and in Africa, the idea of people as citizens is a foreign concept. We are subjects, and the way that leaders relate to ordinary people is that of a leader towards his subjects.