|
|
|
|
The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, by Célestin Monga, translated by Linda L. Fleck and Célestin Monga
6. Civil Society and Public Sphere: The New Stakeholders
| Un peuple ne tombe jamais en faillite totale |
| * |
| A people never becomes totally bankrupt. |
| —Were-Were Liking, Cameroon |
When analyzing the implosion of political space and the rupture of social stability that have characterized the course of African history in recent years, there has too often been a tendency to focus attention on institutions, structures, and politicians. Though these are obviously important, such an approach tends to obscure the groundswell of new and yet barely understood social changes. Because politicians seem unable to advance the process in which so many people have invested so much, many observers feel the need to explore alternative sources of dynamism. This is largely the reason for the current interest in the notion of civil society, which has become fashionable in the cloistered world of African studies.
One of the first problems with the term civil society is determining exactly what it means. Although there is evidently a need to define the nature and sphere of political parties’ activities in Africa, any attempt to define the forces hastily grouped under the label civil society appears problematic and doomed to failure. This is principally due to the diversity of political situations and the inherent inadequacy of using tools designed for understanding the workings of Western democracies to analyze the situation elsewhere in the world, which raises the general problem arising from the transfer of sociological concepts across space and time. 1
Yet an attempt to define civil society is essential if our study of recent political movements in Africa is to be more than a superficial commentary. We are now witnessing a complete transformation of the conditions in which politics emerge, not least because new popular ambitions have created an upsurge in the aspirations and dreams cherished by Africans. This has manifested itself in the movements of social protest that appear to have been amplified by the huge challenges posed by this fin de siècle. Africans sense these opportunities all the more acutely, as they have fewer economic resources than others with which to ensure the survival of their species in the emerging world order. New social frontiers are being traced, new networks of solidarity are being established, new mentalities are taking shape. Values believed to be lost have reappeared, supplanting and replacing the ideologies whose limits have been exposed by thirty years of single-party rule. In this flux we are witnessing a diversification of political activities: Pressure groups emerge from the shadows, lobbies spring into broad daylight, and no one knows either the main actors or their ambitions, let alone their scope for action.
An empirical examination of the sociopolitical situation in most of the countries caught up in this democratic vortex reveals the emergence of new social mechanisms and the discovery of what one might call public opinion. People are becoming more and more aware of belonging to specific, defined groups and increasingly express the desire to create interest groups in both civil and political arenas. From political courtiers to financial marabouts, from unemployed youths of the suburbs to the intellectual and religious elites, there is hardly a social group that has not felt the need for its members to communally articulate their daily concerns.
For example, in both public and private companies the void due to the absence of structures of collective organization—notably, unions, works committees, employers associations—is being filled by a multiplicity of increasingly dynamic informal groupings, even if these are often established along Weberian lines of sex, age, kinship, and religion. For Africans, these groupings are a way of reclaiming the right of self-expression, long confiscated by the official institutions of power. In establishing their members as full participants in the political game, these groups expand the arena of association, stealthily influencing the ongoing multifaceted transformation. By blurring the rules of the game, they represent a disruptive force in the sociopolitical environment, what Ilya Prigogine would call a “structure dissipative” structure. 2
The upsurge of informal groupings has the potential to overturn not just the existing political order but also the surrounding moral order—assuming that such a thing exists. The emergence of such dominant players on the national stage brings both virtues and the risk of distortions. Their strength lies in the fact that their collective conscience is greater and sharper than the sum of the citizens who participate. Many of the new organizations are rooted in a popular base, supporters are recruited from the lower classes, and they are flexible in their operations and efficient in their lobbying. Their presence means that the social game has become even more complex.
Although the fact that broader sections of African societies are speaking out on and reappropriating major issues is a welcome change, a swift sociology of the diverse systems emerging and a close look at the behavior of the principal actors raise a series of worrying questions. Beyond the obvious risks inherent in new movements, such as leaders rapidly stagnating and/or settling into new hierarchical systems, one must ask how these social structures, until recently unknown, will fit into the “national project” of each country and whether their ideas and actions will draw them into or distance them from the official discourse. Are they centrifugal forces that will stimulate and enhance the construction of the state, or will they be swept into centralization and squabble over the remains of the ruined state? Do they aim to embody the earnest proclamations of democracy or to establish alternative spiritual values and impose radically different modes of social exclusion and violence? Does their tendency to refer to tradition have any substance?
With so many things changing, researchers face new difficulties. The numerous reforms undertaken in the name of political and economic adjustment, the new and diverse modes of producing freedom analyzed in Chapter 4, and the intense social creativity have generated new cultural phenomena and the ballooning of the informal economy. Thus analysts must first to grapple with the problems of precisely defining civil society, then interpret the multitude of evolution, and, most important, offer a reading of the changes that will help identify and evaluate the scale of the current dynamic for democratization. 3
In this chapter, I present some elements of a study based on the premise that most political authorities in Africa do not have a grip on the actual mechanisms of society. I suggest that rather than historical, institutional, or economic factors, psychological and emotional aspects of everyday life determine the main social phenomena that continue to be experienced. Needless to say, the work of others has long demonstrated the importance of the subconscious in the psychology of social groups in general. 4 My own findings highlight the emotional dimension of the protest movements that have been shaking Africa’s political stage. I believe that these movements cannot be understood unless they are seen within the perspective of what might be termed an anthropology of anger. This chapter is therefore a study of cumulative frustrations and an analysis of collective modes of expression and discontent, including the informal attempts to use them as vehicles for political action.
How to Define a Phantom Concept
There is little doubt that African civil society cannot be fully comprehended, let alone assessed, by the classic instruments of analysis. Most institutions that make up African society cannot be compared to those we see working in Europe, where elected local, regional, and national structures meet regularly to decide policy and choose leaders. In Africa, the leadership, membership, and functioning of such structures are often shrouded in mystery.
Of course, most associations have a constitution that provides, inter alia, information about their aims, membership, finance, and internal rules. In reality, the officers are frequently changed to suit the circumstances, particularly as there are often no selection procedures. Although the decisions made can have a decisive effect on society, the most important meetings happen only irregularly, have no formal agenda, and are held in closed session, frequently in secret locations. We cannot define a specific African civil society without referring to its peculiarities or the context in which it has emerged.
Inflation of Politics and the Civic “Deficit”
Thirty years of authoritarian rule have forged a concept of indiscipline as a method of popular resistance. In order to survive and resist laws and rules judged to be antiquated, people have had to resort to the treasury of their imagination. Given that life is one long fight against the state, inventiveness has gradually conspired to craftily defy everything that symbolizes public authority. Once politics has been opened up, any collective recalcitrance can only lead to a profound civic deficit. Decrees cannot change overnight patterns of behavior patiently refined over many decades of quasi dictatorship.
That the existing structures of social management are inefficient is obvious to all observers. In general, it was not political parties that initiated the protest movements. With very few exceptions, trade unions, often the most easily organized of mass movements, did not play a determining role in the course of events, and those content to act as a mouthpiece for the ruling single-party were hardly likely to oppose the status quo. 5 Still, violent social disturbances frequently forced the established authorities to climb down and triggered a process of democratization. This is proof that, despite apathy from opposition parties and unions, African societies were able to generate their own networks of communication and forums for discussion within which it was possible to express collective fears and dreams. For me, the term “civil society” refers to those birthplaces where the ambitions of social groups created the means of generating additional freedom and justice.
Geographic Variables
Any definition of civil society will be different on opposite sides of the Sahara, since from a political point of view, the problems are not identical. Sociologists in the Maghreb, for example, include only “the parties and associations which, despite their divergences of opinion on many issues, share the same values of human rights and individual freedoms.” 6 Such a definition excludes movements laying claim to fundamentalist Islam, even if they have a dominant role in the sociopolitical plan. South of the Sahara, things are different. The mullahs do not, at least for the moment, have a determining role on the course of events, although this statement needs qualifying. The mobilizing potential of religious communities is clear in Nigeria, where the smallest clash between their members may result in hundreds of deaths. The chaotic and violent history of the building of a mosque in Cameroon revealed a well-established “Muslim force” in the capital. In Senegal, the chief of the Mouride community has for many years dominated the country’s business affairs (Magassouba 1985). Nevertheless, religious organizations capable of influencing politics as much as the Islamic movements do in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, or Morocco do not yet exist in Nigeria, Cameroon, or Senegal.
That is why my definition of civil society south of the Sahara incorporates the churches and religious movements that, until now, have contributed in their own way to the birth of democratic power. It includes all organizations and individuals whose actions have helped amplify the affirmations of social identity and the rights of citizenship, often in opposition to those in power, whose natural tendency is to repress such identities and rights. It obviously does not exclude the interactions among the state, the political parties, and leading personalities. In a nutshell, civil society in Africa is formed by all those who are able to manage and steer communal anger.
I am well aware that I shall not escape the criticism of those who reject the notion of civil society in states that are not democratic in the Western sense, such as the Tunisian sociologist Mohammed Kerrou (1989). Although my formulation of the concept differs significantly from the eighteenth-century European definition, it has the advantage of clearly emphasizing the significance of historicity and the capacity of African societies to evolve within their own unique trajectory. 7
Preponderant Role, Mysterious Organization
The opening up of politics in Africa has prompted a quasi-anarchic multiplication of parties, yet in almost all countries, the new political leaders have almost immediately revealed their limitations. Thus, to avoid the risk of being deprived democratization, society has had to invent alternative structures to manage and express its dissatisfaction by creating informal networks of communication.
The Discrepancy Between Political Supply and Demand
The weakening of authoritarian regimes has triggered an implosion of politics and an extraordinary rise in individuals claiming to be the leaders of so many new parties; in 1991, 19 political parties were legalized in the space of just a few months in the Central African Republic, 27 in Gabon, 70 in Cameroon, and over 200 in Zaire. This turmoil is a response to the demand of representation in each country, but these parties generally have neither a clearly defined program nor any effective organization. Their capacity to make an impact on the political stage and to promote change seems limited. The multiplication of parties has not increased the civil rights of ordinary citizens. Public discourse is still unidimensional because too many leaders are content to proclaim slogans and pledges of faith during the meetings to which people flock in the hope of hearing real solutions to their daily hardships. 8
Most embryonic organizations are inevitably characterized by a lack of trained cadres and strategies. Faced with many grievances and demands from poor social groups, the supply of ideas from the political leaders has remained limited. This is the source of widespread disillusionment with politics and the inversely proportional eruption of alternative groupings through which large segments of the population try to express their views and demands.
Reappropriating Symbolic Goods
Given the prevailing circumstances, it is not surprising that public discontent manifests itself in terms of anger. The proliferation of privately owned newspapers and magazines, the growth of efforts to create independent trade unions, the multiplication of private media, cooperatives, professional bodies, youth organizations, and academic groups, all serve to promote the demand for rights that conventional organs and institutions seem unable to understand or satisfy.
Everywhere, the emerging civil society tends to be self-managing as its leaders attempt to rekindle social consciences. Four influential social groups have emerged in the leadership role: (1) the students in all countries, who have been at the forefront of protest; (2) the clergy (notably in Benin, Zaire, Gabon, and Mali); (3) the lawyers (Algeria, Tunisia, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Togo, and Mali); and (4) the intellectuals and journalists (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia). By their commitment to the democratic struggle, they have amplified the collective dream. 9 One of their principal demands concerns the symbolic commodities of recognition and dignity.
The leaders of these new social groups are motivated by a thirst to express themselves, to participate and be represented in the crucial cabals so that they may influence the choices made by politicians. They demand their share of the “national cake,” although this is not always their main aim. Occasionally, their links with elements of the political class cast suspicion on their position; hence, in the minds of some, they are assimilated into the opposition movements, lending a partisan connotation to their struggle to reestablish certain values. In Mali, Togo, and Cameroon, the decision by human rights organizations to join antigovernment alliances means that their leaders have become frustrated politicians.
It is difficult to make categorical judgments about what is happening in Africa. Does an organization designed to defend human rights compromise its critical stance if it joins a group of opposition political parties in the struggle against an authoritarian power? Should it remain always neutral to conserve its impartiality? A similar question applies to the private press. On the pretext of objectivity, should rulers whose illegitimacy is well established be treated in the same manner as opponents who are struggling to change their country? It is interesting to note that these types of questions were not raised about social organizations in Eastern Europe after the collapse of Communist regimes.
The Discovery of New Means of Communication
In practice, the leaders of the most active elements of civil society could not afford to dither over such existentialist questions. Having decided not to wait for international public opinion to come to their rescue, they set themselves up in opposition, establishing informal channels of information to get their message across to the people. In fact, they did not really have a choice. Access to public media in Africa has always been denied to any group challenging the existing authorities. Professional organizations and student groups, for example, knew that it would be dangerous, if not impossible, to criticize those in power in state-owned television, radio, and publications. In most countries the press laws either implicitly or explicitly allow censorship—perhaps by a paragraph surreptitiously introduced into the text adopted by the assembly or by a proregime committee installed in the offices of a newspaper. Necessity is the mother of invention, and thus killing two birds with one stone became a preoccupation for those who wished to earn money while discreetly undermining the authorities that they at best half-heartedly supported. 10
Oral communication in the political arena, whether by word of mouth and/or radio trottoir, has been reestablished. Numerous organizations in Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon, for example, have used the ebb and flow of people between large towns and villages as a means of effectively distributing critical messages. Orders for strikes have been transmitted from one area to another by family visits and day trips. Word of mouth can be distinguished from rumor by the fact that the information communicated in the former is generally precise and unusually specific. Such modes of expression have an authority that allows the emerging civil society to free itself from the shackles of official propaganda and to define the image of its own evolution.
Is Civil Society Civilized?
Many African countries have recently witnessed both the intensity of public wrath and the desire of emerging social institutions to direct actively the sense of public frustration. The absence of fear and the growing dynamism of these institutions have established them as forces with whom the public authorities are obliged to talk and thus render obsolete the remarks of John Dunn, who noted that there is “good reason to see in the internal domination of state power, the relative inconsistency of civil society, (the low) degree of viable and sustainable institutionalization of social forces outside the sphere of the state” (1978:15).
The aim of the new stakeholders is to assume control of the collective anger in order to intensify the momentum for political change. This poses numerous problems, notably that the more voluntarist view of the relationship between fragile or even moribund states and their societies encourages the emergence of rival factions and rebellious leaders. One can also question the efficiency and goals of these new groupings whose actions are still unclear. Having abruptly established themselves as the driving force behind current political changes, they find themselves center stage. In the process, they have altered the structures of civil society, changing the sociological space to such a degree that their organization requires further study. Other issues worth investigating are the perverse effects of the extraordinarily large scope of action that various groups have created for themselves. On what basis do they form alliances and promote solidarity, and how do they determine their objectives?
The Standards of Solidarity
What is the best way to analyze the civil society that is developing in Africa? Antonio Gramsci suggested a method of evaluating three distinct dimensions: the organization, the normative space, and the “private” nature of the groups involved in the process (1977: 606–607).
Organization
Whether it be trade unionists, journalist, intellectuals, students, or the unemployed, many in Africa today are no longer content to wear the labels of social origin, tribe, or age. Rather, they increasingly choose to adhere to a particular social group according to individual ideas of solidarity based on religious, philosophical, or spiritual criteria. Numerous popular religious organizations, active notably among urban youth, are now able to recruit members from throughout society, not just from one segment or tribe, as was the case twenty or thirty years ago. However, it is a slow process and is more sucessful in some areas than others. It does not necessarily represent a radical change in the way Africans participate in associations; many people still follow traditional forms of solidarity.
Normative Space
Whereas socioprofessional bodies tend to disregard the primary affiliations of their members, even within each social class, these are reinforced by organizations with an ethnic or regional basis. Nevertheless, they all attempt to inculcate a sense of communal solidarity in place of individual identity, which seems to have been the guiding principle for the majority of citizens. Some associations believe that membership of tribes and/or parties help create the conditions for their more effective role in society. This idea is worrisome, particularly to those who agree with Habermas that the democratic process is linked to the ability of individuals to free themselves from the dictatorship of groups, whether they are based on family, ethnicity, or religion, and that access to freedom is proportionally linked to the affirmation of individualism, because “the new conflicts do not arise from problems of redistribution but from questions which are linked to the very grammar of forms of life” (1987:432).
One can question the validity of the morals that govern the ambition of opinion formers within the new social groups. In many countries, powerful associations openly affirm their tribalist affiliations in the name of ethnic groups that they claim have been marginalized in the distribution of the national cake. 11
Private Aspect of Civil Society
The drive to create voluntary organizations does not stem from the so-called crisis in the African state—notably, the state’s inability to manage society—as some theoretical models would have predicted (Thériault 1992; Melucci 1985). To the contrary, the popular will to create spaces of freedom for new groups is an attempt to fill the social void that the absence of the state represents for so many of the inhabitants.
Choosing a Framework of Analysis
Apart from looking at the operation of civil society in Africa, we need to analyze the way in which opinions and decisions are made within this emerging entity. The motivations underlying the choice of a particular set of beliefs and references follow a subtle evolution. Collective social representations—the way in which most Africans reappropriate daily events by translating them into commonsense terms—transcend individual subjectivity and are imposed on each member of the community as an inescapable constraint. This occurs all the more easily for populations in revolt because of the injustices they have suffered, which strengthens their tendency to return to the tribe as a point of reference and deemphasizes the role of the individual.
Impatient observers may feel that tribalism is both an imperative of and a key to understanding civil society. In reality, most men and women interpret issues in daily life in diverse ways. The “success” of the constraints operating within sub-Saharan social organizations can be explained by the fact that representations have both a psychic and a cognitive structure, having been theorized by the leading personalities of each social group. Evidently, this is true even if the a priori logic rests on a purely imaginary base. This does not mean that the choice of a cognitive framework is necessarily an act imposed by the groups. As it is anywhere else, the fundamental motivation in Africa is the expansion of individual interests. The ideas articulated by pressure groups have the possibility of taking root in the collective imagination if they obey this imperative. 12 Citizens make decisions on the basis of the quality of their information and their ability to manage anxiety. They will either follow or disobey the orders of their social group according to the intensity of their anger and the scope of their competing social identities. When tribalism and xenophobia become the official ideologies of certain factions, their fear will lead to troops being mobilized, whether they want to carve out an electoral domain, govern, or maintain themselves in power. The structures of civil society are particularly receptive to leaders who adopt slogans in line with populist illusions. In Africa, the misery for so long suffered by ordinary citizens tends to increase society’s receptiveness to such ideas.
All of these observations raise legitimate concerns. Is the form of civil society being constructed in Africa democratic? Are its leaders motivated by ethical ambitions or by a desire for revenge against the state and those elements of society that oppose their interests? Do they know how to adapt their demands to the socioeconomic issues and imperatives of the market economy? Will they abide by the rules of the political game if these rules legitimate their marginalization and appear unfavorable to certain interest groups?
How to Deal with the Process of Social Fragmentation?
The theoretical issues raised by the ongoing sociopolitical adjustment are as serious as the threats to the future stability and viability of each African state posed by the anarchic emergence of an ill-defined civil society. Faced with the weakening of law and order and a decaying state, the fragmentation of society due to the rise of tribalism and regionalism, and the absence of politicians with clear plans, the African population tends to react by rejecting all forms of authority. After decades of resistance to the brutalities of power, people’s behavior has come to be inspired primarily by personal interests. This autistic tendency, which marks the end of unanimity, is simultaneously welcomed and worrying; although it frees the citizen from group discipline, which we know can be detestable, it legitimizes a private universe as the principal reference point for every social leader. 13
How should this problem be studied? This constant risk of barbarism that African civil society carries could interfere in the ongoing reappropriation of freedom. On this precise point, how can the West assist the process of democratic construction in Africa?
Issues of Conceptualization
In order to react positively to current political developments, we must first decipher the notion of civic duty, or socialité. Hence, we need to presuppose that civil society is sufficiently strong to contain and channel its collective anger and that it is desirable to steer the socialization of the state toward some kind of optimal equilibrium. This means taking a closer look into the issues raised by the way civil society works in Africa today, notably, the extent to which many policymakers now tend to adjust their decisions according to the degree of legitimacy enjoyed by certain groups in each country (Monga 1994a).
Diamond (1994) has suggested an interesting framework for assessing what he calls the ten democratic functions of civil society. The theoretical considerations emphasized in his analysis include the educational virtues of a dynamic civil society, the numerous advantages of social mobilization and participation, the adoption of transparent rules in the political game, and the recognition and institutionalization of lobbies, which means the emergence of a new type of political culture focusing on cooperation, bargaining, and accommodation rather than on conflict and violence.
However, in order to comprehend fully the significance and implications of the rediscovery of civil society in Africa, we must also study a number of disturbing developments. The first is the cult of nihilism and cynicism that is a feature of many religious and civic groups; indeed, in countries whose protagonists are primarily animated with revenge and anger, the dissemination of despair and violence seems to be the main feature of informal political markets. In Senegal, Mali, and Cameroon, for example, some of the most popular slogans used by the new social leaders have to do with organizing public trials of those who were in charge of the country since independence—in other words, they are promoting retaliation, punishment, and various witch-hunts. Such discourse sets a negative tone for political debate, not least by limiting the types of issues that are brought to the forefront.
The second major threat stems from the informalization of the political markets. Indeed, it is clear that some of the most vocal trade unionists and civil rights activists in francophone Africa have taken advantage of the relative freedom that they have as social leaders to engage in subtle strategies of political entrepreneurship. Given the inflexible structures of government and administration in most of these countries, as well as the fact that political parties are increasingly mistrusted by the general public, many mysterious associations have been created by people who are really running for office. These leaders simply argue that they have found a way of circumventing the current renewal of authoritarianism since those in power are much less willing to crack down on a “human rights league” than on a political party.
A third issue concerns the political role assigned to international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In Senegal, for instance, Oxfam has become so powerful that one cannot dismiss the need for scrutiny, regardless of the staff’s commitment to ethics. I do not claim that NGOs always have a hidden agenda, but it would be naive to believe that there is no political price to be paid for the charity business in Africa.
Policy Recommendations
For any given country, the policy recommendations emerging from my analysis can be classified as follows.
Restoring the Idea of a Common Destiny
There is an obvious need to restore hope and a sense of common destiny in the hearts of people who hardly believe in the relevance of any kind of public authority. The aim must be to convert what appears as violent collective anger against the state into a source of energy for a more dynamic process of social engineering. As the key political event of the past five years, the uprising of civil society has been due to the failure of governments to provide a moral foundation for the principle of “togetherness.” While disillusion about the goals of the nation-state is not an issue per se, it is necessary to emphasize that people are bound to live together, and that any policy ignoring that premise is likely to lead to a “no win–win” situation and possible bloodshed—unless countries deliberately choose ethnic cleansing as a means for solving disputes. So it is urgent to reinforce the message that the members of all groupings in any given country share the same destiny, regardless of their tribe, status, or religion. It may sound obvious, but past and ongoing tragedies in Africa remind us of the necessity to insist on some banal truths. This can be done through very well-designed communication strategies.
Building a Better Leadership
There is an urgent need for strong, responsible, unselfish new leaders who are committed to pursuing ethical values. Their paucity, so apparent throughout the continent, requires that we look beyond the elites that recycle the same old tactics, using ethnicity and violence as their main political tools. To paraphrase West, Africa needs leaders who can situate themselves within the continent’s larger historical narrative, grasp the complex dynamics of its people, and imagine new political strategies grounded in the best of its past, yet who are attuned to the frightening obstacles ahead. “Quality leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical events. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons” (1990:37). The new leaders must place their trust in today’s grassroots initiatives and traditional African philosophy that highlights democratic accountability and perceives negotiation as a fair and honorable way of making decisions.
Expanding Social Capital Beyond Geographic Borders
The literature on civil society usually emphasizes the necessity of strengthening civic communities by supporting NGOs and by providing them with various forms of aid. But one must go beyond such requests. A much more powerful way of tackling the pervasive issue of urban nihilism, for example, and of encouraging the feeling and reality of “brotherhood” would be to build links not only within but also among social groups and across countries. The term social capital has been used by some authors when referring to “features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions.” 14 In fact, in the case of most African countries, there is little or no lack of such social capital; the problem is its limited scope in the absence of formal or informal links between the various components of civil society. Expanding the network of existing groups beyond their geographic and regional limits means that more people with similar interests and concerns can be connected, not least so that they can perceive how similar their fears and dreams are.
Linking Civil Society and the Legislature
It is essential that the marginalized social groups—from which the new organizations are currently attracting support—be gradually eased out of their ghettos. The equilibrium necessary to the functioning of political institutions cannot be maintained unless full democratic citizenship is restored to all those who feel marginalized. This raises the problem of the linkage between economics, politics, and society. 15 Social stability cannot be established if political gains are not accompanied by parallel economic improvements. In particular, these must meet the basic needs of the poorest sections of society, who often form the majority. New bodies may need to be created to inculcate a moral ethos into the leadership of the nascent social groups.
A new political apparatus must limit the potential for conflict between the diverse groups of civil society, and constructive links need to be established with the legislature. There are numerous judicial ways in which this might be achieved. For example, the most influential sociopolitical organizations could be directly represented in parliament. Even those societies that operate secretly could be given opportunities to express their views about laws and rules drafted by the political power. This would be sensible given the determinant role that such groups have always played, notably during the resistance to all forms of colonialism, as well as during the struggle to create the state in Africa. 16
Adopting a New Scale of Interests
The rupture of social bonds currently under way is likely to continue. People’s heightened awareness of their own personal interests could hasten the erosion of the primary family, ethnic, and regional ties that have been dominant until now. Already one can see what Merton (1965) called “the paradigm of anticipated socialization,” according to which individuals tend to assume the values and behavior of the groups to which they aspire to belong rather than those to which they are assumed to belong. The shift in the scale of values against which Africans measure their interests implies the demolition of the powerful myth of the tribe or ethnic group as the dominant social factor. 17
Numerous studies have demonstrated that the nature of the bonds between state and society, what some writers have called “penetrative interdependence,” is one of the specific characteristics of democratic countries. 18 A number of analyses have established the existence of a correlation between the phenomenon of the state’s penetration of society and the proportion of the state budget allocated to social spending. Yet this observation is of no use in Africa, where macroeconomic aggregates do not have the same meaning and social problems are very different. Although the scale of public spending allocated to social needs might increase substantially, the state simultaneously refuses to root itself in the society it is ostensibly representing.
It is small wonder that African societies aim to take their revenge on the state and to establish only a symbolic relationship with public authorities. Having been at their mercy for so long, society now seeks a radical shift in the balance of power. This ambition is expressed through the operation of informal groupings and the multiple strategies of resistance to public authority, including infiltration into areas of responsibility normally reserved as the domain of the state. (This infiltration can explain why in some villages and towns in Africa, people have never waited for governmental subsidies to build schools, roads, and other public works.) Studies of social dynamics must henceforth look beneath the violent disturbances and analyze the issues that have created this collective anger.
The problem is to find an optimal equilibrium point in this process of “socializing the state” 19 —namely by defining limits to society’s revenge without repudiating the state or stripping it of any legitimacy, as is too often the case. By appropriating territory normally under the control of the public authorities, civil society is locked in a struggle that, eventually, can only weaken all concerned. Take, for example, the fact that in almost all African countries the collection of taxes is falling. For most citizens, not paying taxes is an act of civil defiance, a way of reducing the amount of national wealth that has been salted away in Swiss banks (compare Monga 1990a).
Some Conclusions
How can a reciprocal contract between the state and civil society be defined so that democratic governance in Africa is more likely? How can communal anger be steered so as to avoid its degeneration into an anarchic cacophony behind the mask of an amorphous civil society? How can the credibility of the state be reestablished, providing firmer foundations for private society while achieving a better rate of democratic citizenship per person? How can we ensure that the social rights won from the state through the struggle of NGOs correspond to new political obligations for the electorate?
My hypothesis is that civil society will acquire moral objectives only through a better-educated middle class, since its members are at the forefront of those fighting for political space. Of course, their associations are still young and vary from one region to another, yet they represent those segments of the population that are the most engaged in the struggle for change and that have the greatest influence with the poorest urban and peasant households. Better information and training among targeted groups could be designed for much wider transmission and might be the most efficient way of spreading a message of hope for all social classes.
Obviously, the efficient regulation of informal political markets cannot be resolved by theoretical analysis, hence the need for practical suggestions aimed at reinforcing the components of civil society in Africa. I believe that the lack of material resources is not the biggest obstacle to democratization in Africa. Far more important than money, the sub-Saharan states need to benefit from the knowledge, experience, and savoir faire of others, particularly social engineering and the political apparatus. By this I mean that all the mechanisms, rules, and institutions should be dedicated to the best possible regulation of relations between the state, the market, and the society.
The social fabric of Africa has to be strengthened in a variety of ways, not least by helping the independent mass media play a more effective role, as was suggested in May 1991 by the UN/UNESCO seminar for African journalists held in Windhoek, Namibia (Martin 1992). Before the end of the Cold War in Europe, when the Polish trade union Solidarity was fighting to free the nation from the dictatorship of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the publishers of Le Monde donated their old printing machines to Lech Walesa’s organization. This soon proved to be one of the most significant acts of Western assistance, and the private press in a number of African countries would greatly benefit from this kind of imaginative support. Campaigns on civil rights and duties must be arranged, with adequate funds for television and radio programs, books, pamphlets, cartoons, and advertisements. Journalists would obviously gain from seminars, conferences, and courses organized by leading practitioners, from Africa and elsewhere, who want to share their expertise and experiences.
The multiplication of human rights groups in Africa has not necessarily meant a better cataloguing of violations and abuses. The assorted organizations often appear to be structures of power in the hands of certain individuals who are more concerned with personal advancement than with public investigation. None of these groups have published precise, verified information on the violent incidents that have shaken the continent in recent years! However, there are many associations outside Africa that could train human rights observers to perform this essential task.
We must explore other possibilities if we do not want the political inflation accompanying current social upheavals to transform into a deeper communal disenchantment with a wholesale loss of civil values. There is no question of transferring ready-made solutions in the North to the South, but the leaders of African civil society should be offered the means of avoiding the errors, delays, and catastrophes that marked the democratic process in the West—and that have already occurred in Rwanda and Burundi.
Endnotes
Note 1: The difficulty in using the term civil society in applied research is not restricted to Africanists. The history of the concept is littered with queries and skepticisms; useful surveys are Ferguson (1996) and Keane (1988). See also the philosophic synthesis of Gourdon (1991). Back.
Note 2: See Prigogine and Stengers (1988) and Prigogine and Nicolis (1989). It is also worth mentioning the retrospective of Gleick (1989), which synthesizes the numerous attempts to use the methodology and theories of physical sciences in the social sciences. Back.
Note 3: The notion of dynamism is taken here from the psychoanalytic theory that analyzes psychological principles of change. See Lewin (1948) and Fischer, et al. (1993). Back.
Note 4: See Le Bon (1963) and Tarde (1901) for the oldest frameworks available in social sciences. Back.
Note 5: This is not true for the countries of North Africa, where unions have always been very active. They played a key role in the evolution of politics in Congo and Southern Africa in 1989 and 1990 but have had virtually no presence in Cameroon, Central African Republic, or Mali. Back.
Note 6: See Zghal (1991). For a good understanding of the fears of Maghrebian intellectuals on this issue, see the lively pamphlet by the Algerian Mimouni (1992), as well as Boudjedra (1991). Back.
Note 7: Here I mean historicity in the Gramscian sense. After World War I and the victory of the Russian Communist party, Gramsci used the ideas of civil society to analyze the specificity of the Communist parties of Western Europe. Back.
Note 8: This partially explains the fact that while the demonstrations organized by opposition parties in Abidjan and Douala in 1990 and 1991 attracted hundreds of thousands, in 1992 they were attended by only tens of thousands. Such indications, still provisional, suggest real disenchantment. Back.
Note 9: Personalities such as Monsignor Ernest Kombo (Congo), Laurent Mossengo (Zaire), Demba Diallo (Mali), Nicolas Tiangaye (Central African Republic), Christian Tumi, Bernard Muna, and Charles Tchoungang (Cameroon) have all become familiar to those who follow political news in Africa. Back.
Note 10: In francophone Africa, a popular newspaper normally sold at FCFA 200 may fetch FCFA 500–2,000 on the black market. Hence, there is clearly a temptation, especially in those countries where the average monthly pay of a police officer is around FCFA 70,000 to make ends meet by organizing illegal sales of certain publications, especially as there is no record of the number seized. Back.
Note 11: A highly instructive survey is given in Collectif Changer le Cameroon (1992). Back.
Note 12: These processes, termed objectification or anchoring, are well described by Aebischer and Oberlé (1990). Back.
Note 13: Authors who have examined this issue, which in Europe is one of the traits of postmodernity, include Rosanvallon (1981), Mendel (1984), and Lipovestky (1983). For a synthesis of such ideas, see Jalbert (1992). Back.
Note 14: See Putnam et al. (1993:167). The concept of social capital was introduced by Loury (1977). Back.
Note 15: Researchers are increasingly agreeing on this point; see Lefort (1981). Back.
Note 16: See Augé (1982), especially chap. 7, “Signes du corps, sens du social: sorcier imaginaire, sorcellerie symbolique,” pp. 211–280. See also Mbokolo (1990). Back.
Note 17: Although one needs to question the authority of these terms, Amselle and Mbokolo (1985) began such a task in their excellent work. Back.
Note 18: The term comes from Banting (1986:14). Back.
Note 19: A process that Daniel C. Bach provocatively called “the cannibalization of the state by civil society.” See his comments at the conference on “European-African Relations: Challenges in the 1990s,” Ebenhausen, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, May 24–27, 1992. Back.
The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
Email this citation