The Blended Representation Principle (BRP)-inspired democracy practice will forestall coups in Africa

This note provides a fresh perspective on forestalling coups in Africa with the implementation of the Blended Representation Principle-inspired democracy practice. The recent spate of coups in the West Africa sub-region has become a major concern for the international community.

BRP is a fusion of traditional African and Western democratic ideals for organizing the designs and shape of statehood according to needs, realities, and aspirations of the target communities. BRP stipulates that power be shared among leaders selected based on elections and multiparty arrangements, and leaders chosen based on traditional African norms and conventions.

By this measure, (a) Africa will change the century-old false development paradigm that institutions derived solely from outside could be the engine of development; (b) the continent will utilize its culturally-based leadership institutions to communicate, mobilize and organize the majority around a shared vision of collective transformation; (c) the grassroots will have relative access, influence and control to curb autocratic tendencies of leaders entrenched since independence which breeds impunity and incompetence in the management of the public purse; (d) participation in politics at the local level will be communal and participation at the national level will be through multiparty universal adult suffrage; (e) majority will use familiar and easily understandable languages of engagement rules and principles to participate voluntarily in affairs of the nation; (f) local government which is the vehicle of transformation where the development tires hit the road, will cease to be the weakest link between the nation state structures of central, regional and local nexus, and operate as grounded checks and balancing of individual and collective interests; and (g) decentralization will become meaningful and ceases to be an extension of central government interests at the local level by turning local public officials into poodles of government officials at the national level.

Horizontal and vertical transparency and accountability for the use of public resources will be guaranteed through the utilization of varied tried and tested technical, and behavioral guardrails. These will include prompt and decisive actions on watchdog annual reports, the psycho-social composition of the people, capitalizing on the prevalence of primordial loyalties particularly at the grassroots, wording and administering oath of commitment, and allegiance to enable the primacy of community supersedes that of parties, and eliminate impunity in the use and management of the public purse. Majority will trust and respect the operational procedures of leaders in public office with demonstrable increased sense of belongingness.

Coups occur mainly because of majority deprivation, disenchantment, and resentment of the ways benefits of common resources of the land are used and managed; and subsistence in abject poverty while public officials at the helm of national affairs are perceived to be living in riches, wealth, and luxury. Government of the day is seen as callous and not caring with minimal investments in kitchen table issues – health, education, agriculture etc.– while in many cases public officials living the lifeclasss few of the citizens can dream about. However, an additional layer underlying the recent spate of coups in French-speaking African countries is the pacts and agreements which France imposed on former colonies. France has to abrogate such pacts for peace to return in these countries as the people have voiced intent of no longer moving forward with such a burden.

Under BRP-inspired democracy practice, public office holders will imbibe and practice the values of serving others first before leading, and service delivery will focus mainly on kitchen table issues which are instrumental in ensuring peaceful coexistence in communities. None of such game changing ingredients of good governance ideals in the use and management of public resources pertain in the current dispensation of democracy practices across the continent.

BRP is detailed in the book, “Leadership in Independent Africa, Six Decades On: The Blended Representation Principle as a Cause for Afro-Optimism” by the same author and published by Bloomsbury Publishers under its Open Access Collections initiative, November 2003. Please visit www.blomsbury.com for details on purchase arrangements

Kofi Anani is the Managing Partner of Anani-Afele Network www.anani-afelenetwork.org), a Think-and-Do Tank dedicated to transformative development in Africa.

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