Traditional and Modern Political Systems in Contemporary Governance in Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID5801529
AuthorsD Wadada Nabudere (corresponding author), Dani W Nabudere
Year2004
Volume3
Issue1
Pages13-41
Publication date2004-06-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Elections (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1609-4700 • E-ISSN: 2415-5837
PublisherElectoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.20940/jae/2004/v3i1a2
OpenAlexW2136198723
LanguageEN
Citations received6

This paper analyses the role of traditional and modern institutions of governance in contemporary Africa.It examines the traditional institutions in their historical setting and the way in which they negotiated with the modern political arrangements under colonialism and later during the post-independence period.Both the colonial and postcolonial authorities viewed traditional political institutions with disgust and suspicion, seeing them as backward vestiges of the past, but also as possible competitors for colonial and post-colonial political power.This uneasiness was ameliorated somewhat under the colonial system by the introduction of 'indirect rule' and the use of 'customary law' under 'Native Authorities', which were used as a neo-traditional colonial policy control mechanisms.Under the post-independence political order, traditional political institutions were either banned or tolerated to the extent that they were retained only as 'cultural' institutions.In Swaziland the neo-traditional colonial system came to dominate the modern party system and in Lesotho the traditional system existed side by side with the modern political party democracy.In Buganda and Ashanti the neotraditional systems were marginalised and banned.With the crisis of the African postcolonial states and the tendency towards presidentialism, there has been a resurgence of traditional political institutions in a number of countries.The result has been an attempt on the part of the political elite to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards them, while at the same time, using state patronage to woo them and make them part and parcel of the contemporary political party system as 'cultural' institutions.Such is the case in South Africa, Uganda and, to some extent, Lesotho.The real question is to what extent the traditional political systems can be reconciled with the modern political party system and to what extent these institutions can help heal the wounds of ethnic divisions and conflicts on the continent.This paper will try to provide some theoretical and practical approaches to how cultural identities and the institutions they represent can become the basis of new forms of African state formations under the African Union.VOLUME 3 NO 1 This stands in sharp contrast to the historical record, which reveals a rich tradition of the capacity of African people in the pre-colonial period to develop diverse political systems to suit their conditions.A study of these systems reveals a rich variety of forms of state and systems of governance.It is to these different forms that we now turn. AFRICAN TRADITIONAL POLITICAL SYSTEMS *Early anthropologists researching African political systems were pre-occupied with uncovering their functions and roles.This, as Blandier (1963) points out, enabled them to define the political relations and organisational basis of the systems, but the approach did not go far enough in elucidating the nature of the political phenomenon itself within the social system.The typological approach tried to advance the analysis by defining the 'types' of system studied by classifying the forms of political organisation arising from them.All this was done under the evolutionary assumptions of the origin of the state.Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1963) adopted this approach in their book on African political systems.The analysis enabled these scholars to trace the systems investigated from their simple, undifferentiated forms to more complex, centralised ones; from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft and from mechanical to organic solidarity.Marxist theories used to identify stateless societies from state forms based on class rule.However, these approaches tended to create fixed hierarchies, which obscured the organic links in the political relations of the 'types' being investigated, and their politico-ideological basis as well as their cultural and historical preconditions.This weakness was not helped by the structuralist approach, which attempted to overcome evolutionist weaknesses by measuring the types in terms of structural differentiation.As Eisenstadt, Abitbol and Chazan (1988) noted:It was assumed that the more institutional spheres are differentiated and specialized, the more the political structure takes the form of a specialized political sphere with distinct roles and organizations.The main weakness in all these approaches was the exclusion of history from the analysis of African societies.The assumption that African societies did not have a history of their own became the very reason for ignoring the role of history and for locating African historical political consciousness solely in the era of colonisation so that the anti-colonial struggles that followed were seen as arising out of colonial consciousness rather than in the African historical consciousness that was confronted * For those interested in pursuing the issue of African political systems reference is made to my

African history and culture studies · Legal Issues in South Africa