CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[M-A Lagrange]

And from M-A...
Of course it is. The idea that colonizers have no responsibility for the current state of affairs is equal nonsense. If nothing else, the egregiously perverse "national" boundaries inherited from the colonial age constitute a massive obstacle to progress.

All people, everywhere, have to gradually sort out the political identities that suit them, and to find ways for the entities they define to coexist without destroying each other. In Europe this process required centuries of almost continuous bloodshed. In the colonies the process was delayed by foreign occupation. That doesn't mean the process was made harder or easier, more or less complex, it was just delayed. When the colonists left the process picked up where it had stopped. It's going to be messy, as it has been everywhere else.

Dayuhan,

Sengor was saying, Africa will have finally deal with slavery the day African will recognise their responsability in it. It is the same with colonisation. Through, I am not saying that Europeans did not do it and had only positive influx. This is a very racist position which I reject in block without taking time to discuss it. Europ had a responsability in it and Europ had bad influence. Now, please, we are 50 years later in most of the sub saharian countries. (And what about US influence in Liberia...)
My point is that even in Europe, Boundaries were imposed on the people: look at Yugoslavia, Poland that disapeared for centuries, the German minorities in Poland... The question is not there. Also, my experience is that people have true nationalist feelings in the Great Lake region for exemple. A congolese is a Congolese and he denise the right to be Congolese to Rwandese. The same with people from Burundi, South Sudan... Their personal history within those "artificial" boundaries in the last 50 years has shaped their national perception. The true problematic is TOO MANY SEE AFRICA HAS ONE SINGLE ENTITY. It is NOT. And then, the political use of ethnicity by all political actors, internal and external. Do you really think that coming from Bourgogne I have anything in comun with someone coming from Alsace or Provence part from a language and a school teaching?
It is the same with ethnicity. Yes it is stronger in Africa than in other places but as much as anywhere else. What makes it so artificially importante is the use politicians did and still do of it. But I know more and more individuals who just do not care from which ethnic group you are, what is important is that you come from the same country. (With some bemol, I accept that).

Does it make any more sense to expect that Africans should be able to bypass stages in their political development that every other region has had to pass through just because we find those stages distasteful?

No but if it can be minimised, then it should. Political evolutionism is no reason for social darwinism.

With this I agree... if they do it in a single generation that would actually be a quite remarkable achievement. I would expect several.

Let say I am optimistic. But still, please, when it comes to Africa, do not forget that it is a continent with countries as different as Tunisia and Zimbabwe. Do you really think the political and maturation process in Ethiopia is the same as in Swaziland?