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Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the transtextual network that binds the novels of Alex La Guma and André Brink in order to explain and demonstrate that the similarities and particularities noted in the thematic and aesthetic representation they made of racial discrimination is, actually, a multi-layered denunciation of such an evil. In this way, it explores the paratextual design and the intertextual parallelism that frame the message of commitment and transethnicity of both authors.

Keys words: Transtextuality, paratextuality, intertextality.

 

 Résumé

Cet article est une analyse des relations transtextuelles que partagent les romans d’Alex La Guma et d’André Brink dans le but d’expliquer et d’affirmer que les similitudes et spécificités dans le traitement thématique et esthétique qu’ils font de la discrimination raciale en Afrique du sud est, en réalité, une critique caustique et multidimensionnelle de cette tragédie historique. Ainsi, cette étude examine le paratexte et les réseaux intertextuels par lesquels les deux auteurs encodent leur message d’engagement et leurs idéaux transethniques.

Mots clés : Transtextualité, paratextualité, intertextualité.

 

Introduction

 One thing that catches attention after reading works by South Africa’s literati is the recurrent treatment of the issue of apartheid. A wide range of literary works expose the same concern about the contradictions and abuses that were the order of the day under the Nationalist regime.

Like many other figures, La Guma and Brink made caustic representations of the realities of the political regime that was running the country. By portraying the multifarious effects of such a system on the lives of individuals and groups, they are conscious that writers can be sometimes rebels who fight for “…human values – against everything which threatens the human – against everything which is essentially inhuman”[1], like promoting a culture that separates people on a race basis.

     Although “historically and legally separated” as coloured and white, La Guma and Brink share the conviction that South Africa must be freed from the arbitrariness of political power, a conviction framed in their productions through different perspectives.

Following the principle upheld by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva that texts cannot be separated from the larger cultural or social textuality out of which they are constructed, it is no wonder that the writings of La Guma and Brink be sunk into the realities of South Africa under apartheid and present, to a certain degree, the same thematic and aesthetic reference. Thus, it will be enthralling a task to probe into the narrative shape and assess some techniques that sustain the representation of apartheid in order to show that it is a multifaceted denunciation of the lot of those who have borne the brunt of oppression.

In this essay - concentrating on a work by each writer (In the Fog of the Seasons’ End[2] and A Dry White Season[3]) and leaning on Genette’s theory of transtextuality - I seek to demonstrate that the parallel depiction of racial discrimination in La Guma’s and Brink’s works is, actually, a multivoiced indictment of the same arbitrary ideology. By spotlighting the paratextual and intertextual similarities and differences in the representation of South Africa, I hope to show that this transtextual depiction of the same issue suggests the meanings and impact of the two authors’ commitment to debunk the system.

 

1. Paratextual Framing

In Palimpsestes[4], Gérard Genette defines transtextuality as a network of implicit or explicit relations that binds one text to another. Transtextuality is composed of five branches: intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, architextuality and hypertextuality, all of them defining the different levels of textual dialogism. These models of literary cooperation are found in the novels of André Brink and Alex La Guma, although paratextuality and intertextuality are among the approaches that help the most both authors in their endeavour to map out the hideous face of apartheid.

     Paratextuality refers to all the elements that are at the outskirt of a piece of literary work, the textual drawings that accompany the work and which bear some “suggested” link with the story. “More than a boundary or a selected border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold. It is a “zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction […]”[5]

     In The Fog and A Dry, the paratext takes the form of a quotation, a text commonly known as “epigraph” which “determine[s] and shape[s] readers’ expectations as they enter the text”[6] and encloses clues that can lead to a full understanding of the story. In the first novel, the reader finds an “allographic epigraph”[7]borrowedfrom the poem of Guinean Conte Saidon Tidiany, Martyrs. It reads like this:

Banquets of Black entrails of the Black,

Armour of Parchment of wax,

Fragile and Fugitive when facing the burning stone,

Will be shattered like the spider web,

In the Fog of the Seasons’ End. (The Fog, i)

 

By its strategic place, this citation from Martyrs should, normally, arouse the curiosity of the “competent”[8] reader. The gist of the story in The Fog is a sensitization about the imperative of armed struggle in the colonial context of apartheid. As such, the meaning of the narrative is in line with the connotations of the epigraph. Indeed, in the poem, Tidiany alludes to the sufferings and shackles of bondage that have, for a long time, enslaved and killed blacks – “Banquets of black entrails of the Black” - , an oppression exerted by the ferocious and brutal white Oppressor – “Armour or parchment of wax”. But such a violent power from whites makes blacks become vulnerable – “Fragile and fugitive when facing the burning stone” - , which, however, progressively crumbles face to the dauntless black martyrs – “like the spider web”- ; this signals the end of a long season of affliction- “In the fog of the seasons’ end”. The significance of the fogged existence of the oppressed groups, hinted in the poem, is further disclosed by Fritz Pointer:

In The Fog of the Seasons’ End suggests that, even as African people struggle for true independence and their humanity, in these final days of colour and racism, the end may appear cloudy and often obscure. Still at the end of the seasons, in the words of Dr Martin Luther King, ‘we, as a people will get to the promised land’. This is a very functional and optimistic image, one that plays a wonderful role in the thematic development of this novel.6

 

In this way, the meaning of the intertext is very accurate in the light of La Guma’s desire to sensitize people against the violence of racism and discrimination. The epigraph-text bears a semantic link with the themes discussed in The Fog because not only does it reinforce the message encoded in the events but it allows a better understanding of the attitudes and reactions of characters like Beukes or Elias. Finally, the extract from Conte’s poem adds to the symbolism of La Guma’s novel: The Fog deals with the determination of daring figures who strongly believe that behind the cloudy sky of South Africa lies a gleam of hope for a better future.

     In the same vein, the image of the “season” is used as a metaphor in the allographic epigraph that welcomes the reader in A Dry. Sharing the same motive with La Guma, Brink resolutely uses other literary elements from pre-existent works so as to re-mould the collective consciousness of his community, warped by arbitrary beliefs, but also to better voice his fierce determination to rehabilitate the social and political condition of his country. A Dry unfolds a poignant and realistic account of the backlashes of repressive policies on Apartheid-run South Africa. “Depicted as a massive totalitarian state with an elaborate apparatus of paid or terrorized informers and a highly organized system of torture and intimidation […] South Africa is revealed to Ben du Toit as a self-perpetuating terror machine.”[9] In this respect, in A Dry, Brink calls to Mongane Wally Serote, a black Soweto poet, to set the tone of the story through the epigraph. It has this form:

It is a dry white season

dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out

and with a broken heart they dive down gently headed for the earth

not even bleeding

it is a dry white season brother,

only the trees know the pain as they still stand erect

dry like steel, their branches dry like wire,

indeed, it is a dry white season

but seasons come to pass (A Dry)

 

Like Brink and La Guma, Serote was among the most committed and undaunted artists who was spurred by a dream of equality and justice. The epigraph is woven around the metaphor of the “dry white season”, that hints at the harshness of the “seasons of apartheid”. These lines at the threshold of the novel already connote the inhuman situation generated by the racist regime in South Africa, where Non Whites like Gordon Ngubene or Jonathan do not live long because of the repressive apparatus of the government - “dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out. Still, these terror policies meet the resistance of valiant black fighters who, though vulnerable, stand up firmly - “only trees know the pain as they still stand erect, dry like steel”: indeed, however dry and harsh as white racism may be, “seasons come to pass”. Therefore, the epigraph suggests the “age of iron”[10] upon blacks but also whites (like Ben du Toit) who are pegged as dissident.

     Thus, not only do the epigraphs in La Guma’s and Brink’s novels constitute another evocative way to represent life under apartheid, but they are “a text” that can help the reader better grasp the temerity of black resistants and the experiences of characters. Apart from justifying the choice of titles in both novels, they are a symbolic expression of the ideals of both prose-writers. 

     The symbolic connotation of the paratext is much more articulated through the use of dedications in The Fog and A Dry. Analyzing this element of intertextuality urges to probe the meanings of the text through which an author dedicates to or names his work after someone or a group of people. Gérard Genette has this definition of the technique: “[…] the dedication, […] is the proclamation (sincere or not) of a relationship (of one kind or another) between the author and some person, group, or entity.”[11]

In A Dry, the reader meets an “anonymous” dedication, as it relates to a person unknown to him. It reads like this: “For Alta who sustained me in the dry white season”. Certainly, the dedicatee is close to the author because, through the comment “who sustained me in the dry white season”, the reader can infer that there is a relation of compassion[12] that tied the latter to the dedicatee, Alta. Indeed, like the main figure in his novel, Brink underwent the wrath of the police of apartheid. He avers in an interview:

I’ve been under constant surveillance: all my mail is opened, and my phone is tapped […] But I have been called in for interrogation, I’ve had my house searched, I’ve had notes and things seized. So they certainly keep one aware of their presence. [13]

 

In this way, the small text that meets the reader in the hall of the novel and which seems to have merely a decorative function, is, actually, knotted semantically to the events unfolded by the story. This connotative weight of the dedication is more accented in La Guma’s The Fog. Here, the dedication “To the Memory of Bazil February and others killed in action, Zimbabwe 1967”, is more than a text posted and suggesting some vague relation with the author: it works as a resounding way to expose, at the outset, the violent and grotesque nature of a system which urges resistants like Isaacs or Robert in A Dry or even Baby and Alia in Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, to go abroad and train for military action. In this way, the dedication foretells the relentless protesting actions of rebels in both novels. And the reader can progressively step into the narrative and construct its full meaning through the “lens of the paratext” and discover that the sacrifice of February recalls that of Elias in The Fog and Ben Du Toit in A Dry.

Therefore, resorting to such paratextual design in The Fog and A Dry bears its relevance in the exposition of life under apartheid. It heightens the aesthetic weight of the stories and functions as a comment on the thematic line of both novels. By the relationship of solidarity and compassion it conveys, the dedication gives the reader another opportunity to appreciate, once more, the commitment of Brink and La Guma to debunk the system.

     As much as with the dedication, the prologue (or foreword) and the epilogue are other accurate paratextual devices that hold clues of the backlashes of racial discrimination in South Africa. These elements of transtextuality are generally favoured by writers who, at some point, feel the necessity to provide some reasons that have triggered the act of writing. Brink and La Guma also use these narrative techniques in their respective works in the view to enhancing the relevance and urgency to use their pen to indict the apparatus of coercion in their country.

        The Fog is La Guma’s only novel that opens with a prologue. It is an important and symbolical part of the story because it announces the tensed and violent events that will be unfolded in the reading process. Indeed, by exposing what can be regarded as an ideological confrontation between the Mayor (an epitome of apartheid) and the unnamed prisoner (whom the reader discovers later as Elias and symbol of the resistance wing), the prologue betokens a pathetic and thrilling story of domination and rebellion. The following exchange is an expression of the stark opposition between oppressor and oppressed:

‘I do not understand the ingratitude of your people’ [...]. ‘Look what we, our Government, have done for your people. We have given you nice jobs, houses, education. [...] We have allowed your people to get education, your own special schools, but you are not satisfied. No, you want more than what you get. (The Fog, 4)

 

This plea of the Mayor is rebuffed by the prisoner through this averment:

You want me to cooperate. You have shot my people when they have protested against unjust treatment; you have torn people from their homes, imprisoned them, not for stealing or murder, but for not having your permission to live. Our children live in rags and die of hunger. And you want me to co-operate with you? It is impossible. […] You are going torture me, may be kill me. But that is the only way you and your people can rule us. You shoot and kill and torture because you cannot rule in any other way a people who reject you. (The Fog, 5)

 

As it can be noted, “the prologue functions to state the two ideologically divergent positions.”[14] This technique is all the more significant as the plot of The Fog is “illuminated by the theoretical justification of violence as inevitable and even desirable.”[15] In A Dry, Ben’s father-in-law too repeats, here, the same hackneyed view of whites’s ‘generosity’ towards the Non-White groups in South Africa:

 “Don’t you realise what the government is doing for blacks? One of these days the whole bloody lot of them will be free and independent in their own countries. And then you have the nerve to talk about injustice!” […] You give it another good think, Ben […] We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of before the eyes of the world, my boy.” (A Dry, 212)

 

Likewise, the story in this novel opens with a foreword, a preface in which the object of the book is disseminated; it is where the reader learns that the story of Ben du Toit and his investigation on the murder of Gordon and Jonathan Ngubene by the police is related by a “he” narrative voice who is an old friend of Ben. A journalist, the anonymous narrator explains in the foreword, that he is, somewhat bound to collect and weave together the scattered threads of Ben’s story into a coherent narrative, the ultimate aim of which is to question “the well-established ethical and social values of the Afrikaners community he belongs to.”[16] The prologue reveals that Ben du Toit wanted to thwart the intention of Stolz and the other police sleuths “to wipe every sign of [him], as if [he’d] never been here.” (A Dry, 13) In fact, “throughout the apartheid years whole territories of silence were created by the nature of power structures that order the country and defined the limits of its articulated experience. Some of these silences were deliberately imposed, whether by decree or by the operation of censorship and the security police.”[17] Faced with all the intimidating and terror-based policies of the regime, the “he” narrator has no choice but to become the voice of his friend Ben, already silenced forever by the security police; his death is summarily announced in a local newspaper and posted right on the first page of the foreword: “Johannesburg teacher killed in accident, knocked down by hit-and-run driver. Mr Ben du Toit (53) at about 11 o’clock last night, on his way to post a letter, etc. Survived by his wife, Susan, two daughters and a young son” (A Dry, 9) In this wise, what drives the most the narrator to arrange Ben’s notes into a story is drafted in the epilogue, another crucial paratextual element that accents the meaning already suggested in the prologue: “to report what I know. So that it will not be possible for any man ever to say again: I knew nothing about it” (A Dry, 316). His account works as a reveille that is meant to wake the awareness of the Afrikaner community.

Everything considered, these textual threads - titles, chapter titles, prefaces, caption, notes, dedications, epigraphs, etc. - that Genette takes as “peritext” are  the narrative techniques that tie the strands of the two authors’ narratives together, and they have a major effect on the interpretation of the commitment of La Guma “to restore reason to an errant humanity”[18] and that of Brink to question the well-established ideology of racism and change the mindset of the white community in South Africa. This engagement of both writers to make their narrative a source of hope for better forms of life, is strongly felt through the parallel and sometimes different images they draw of the smutty world of the ghetto but also of the gamut of awe-inspiring policies meant to ensure the hegemony of the regime.

 

      2. Snippets of Intertextuality.

Roland Barthes asserts that “all in a text has already been written”[19], to suggest that there is a kind of tacit or unsaid relationships between former and recent texts or texts of the same generation. Barthes further posits that texts (as signs) do not “originate from [their authors’] own unique consciousness but from their place within linguistic cultural systems.”[20] In other words, the literary productions of writers like André Brink and Alex La Guma are cast in some socio-political background, “a larger cultural and social textuality [that of apartheid] out of which they are constructed.”[21] In this way, A Dry and The Fog echo the South African society’s “dialogic conflict over the meanings of words.”[22] The two novels bear intertextual interconnectedness and their “language inevitably contains common [and divergent] points of reference”[23] in the multifaceted representation they make of the “invisible ubiquitous power” of apartheid (A Dry, 237), of the humdrum and violent world of the ghetto, and, above all, of police brutality over non-white communities.

A major theme in Brink’s and La Guma’s writing is the description of the dramatic and corrosive transformation of their country by the implementation of racist policies, the many-sided impacts of which are exposed under different narrative perspectives.

In A Dry, by progressively unwrapping the insidious activities of the clique in power, Ben du Toit, notwithstanding the opposition of his family and class, and regardless of the police’s mischievous actions, discovers the conditions of the assassination of Gordon and Jonathan. In the same vein, he meets the real face of the political system which runs his country, the brutality of its agents motivated and sustained by the unjust and biased views they had hitherto of the ‘other’. In the following lines, Ben muses over the implications of this dialectics of “the self” and “the other” in the colonial context:

 “My people”. And then there the “others”.  The Jewish shopkeeper; the English chemist; […] And the Blacks. The boys who tended the sheep with me, and yet were different. We lived in a house, they in mud huts with rocks on the roof. […] But it remains a matter of “us” and “them”. […] But suddenly it is no longer adequate, it no longer works. [...] I stood on my knees beside the coffin of a friend. I spoke to a woman morning in a kitchen. […] And that mourning had been caused by “my people.” […] What had happened before that drought has never been particularly vivid or significant to me: that was where I first discover myself and the world. And it seems to me I’m finding myself on the edge of yet another dry white season, perhaps worse that the one I knew as a child. What now? (A Dry, 163)

 

This journey of the protagonist into “the other” and back to “the self” (which will be illustrated later) allows him to reconsider his own “self”. In this quotation, we have an “I” narration mode, through which Ben exposes the realities of cultural/racial differences. Let us specify that the narrative design of A Dry is made up of a patching of official documents (statement of the witnesses at the inquest into Gordon’s death), the account of events and of Ben’s personal notes, which obscures the presence of the author. This frequent shift in the narrative voice is an effective way to expose the turmoil of Brink’s protagonist caused by police harassment.

In the extract from the story, the “he” narrator lets the floor to Ben who engages in a deriding judgement of his community’s action towards blacks and the country, in the framework of apartheid. From the outset, the protagonist accents the strife that set racial groups apart: “My people” and “the “other.” The denigration and the rejection of blacks (the “other”) is further implied in the short nominal sentence, “And the Blacks.” The sharp and striking aspect of this sentence serves as a strong way to suggest the racial strife that exists between whites and other groups and the dramatic plight of the latter that are at the receiving end of racism. In this way, along with Ben, the reader can feel, through the lexical and structural shape of the passage, that blacks are the most oppressed and trodden down part of the community,  an exploitation that is not only based on race but is “actually shaped by perceptions of religious, linguistic, national, sexual and class differences.”[24]  Blacks or “the boys” have been tightly bound by a racist system which demands that they always be the lackeys of whites. Such a situation fortifies and reveals the true nature of the apartheid power structure. The death of “his friend” stirs the awareness of the character who realizes that his “own people” are the root cause of a “dry white season” which is daily smothering the “other”. In fact, the technique of mise en abyme[25] is highly relevant in the passage because it further highlights the seriousness of the plight of South Africans but also it shows that the country itself was weighing down under such a corrosive and foggy atmosphere.

Likewise, Alex La Guma is highly preoccupied by unveiling the perilous policies set up by the political machine. In a descriptive style, his narrators, in all his novels, have a religious patience in detailing the social trauma bred by racial discrimination. Like And A Threefold Cord, or even The Stone Country, The Fog combines irony and satire to debunk apartheid. In the following passage, we have a narrative voice, somewhat close to the author, who doesn’t hesitate to deride the sham domination of whites over blacks. It reads:

When African people turn sixteen they are born again or, even worse, they are accepted into the mysteries of the Devil’s mass, confirmed into the Blood rites of a servitude as cruel as Caligula, as merciless as Nero. Its bonds are the entangled chains of infinite regulators, its rivets are driven in with rubber stamps, and the scratchy pens in the offices of the Native commissioners are like branding irons which leaves scars for life. (The Fog, 80)

 

The passage, wrapped up in an ironical and metaphorical language, demonstrates how a totalitarian regime such as South African apartheid, functions as the “Devil” in its policies. In this way, it unfolds the multiple laws and regulations that constitute its backbone but more, the numerous “permissions” that must be granted to Non-whites in order “to exist”. All these sundry rules and permissions - “the permission to be in this place; the permission to travel”- that cordon off the daily life of people from the ghetto are, indeed, “irons which leave scars for life.” The image of “iron” is very telling of the violence meted out to blacks and coloureds: it echoes the drought and whiteness of the season that afflicts local communities in Brink’s novel. The whiteness of the season symbolises death, the whiteness of the skeletons of the animals killed by the drought (apartheid). Coetzee’s protagonist, Mrs Curren, in Age of Iron describes the season as: “the age of iron”. She says: “What, after all, gave birth to the age of iron but the age of granite? […] Are there not still white zealot preaching the old regime of discipline, work, obedience, self-sacrifice, a regime of death, to children some too young to tie their own shoelaces? What a nightmare from beginning to end!”[26]

Therefore, the drama of such an insidious and rampant power lies in the fact that it not only corrodes the lives of Non Whites but more, it destroys totally those of its upholders to a point that life in South Africa is “so much like life aboard a sinking ship, one of those old-time liners with a lugubrious, drunken captain and a surly crew and leaky lifeboats.”[27] Isaacs, a resistant in The Fog, feels “almost sorry for these people who believed themselves to be the Master Race, to have the monopoly of brains, yet who were vindictive, selfish and cruel.” (The Fog, 115).That is what spurs Diala to write that “the dissident writer’s crucial responsibility is significantly not merely the political liberation of blacks but the redemption of the Afrikaner from the ideology of the apartheid.”[28]

     This “deranged, divided age”(A Dry, 196), this “political doctrine of separate existence, a doctrine which has no parallel in any other country of the world”[29], deeply affects and afflicts characters like Beukes, Elias or Ben who sadly realize that the upholders of the racist regime have largely succeeded in causing strife between members of the oppressed community. In A Dry, Ben, in a moving and metaphysical approach, ponders over the inhuman social relationships generated by policies of separation. We read in one of his journal extracts:

Whether I like it or not, whether I feel like cursing my own condition or not – and that would only serve to confirm my impotence – I am white. This is the small, final, terrifying truth of my broken world. I am white. And because I am white I am born into a state of privilege. Even if I fight the system that has reduced us to this I remain white, and favoured by the very circumstances I abhor. Even if I’m hated and ostracised, and persecuted, and in the end destroyed, nothing can make me black. And so those who are cannot but remain suspicious of me. In their eyes my very efforts to identify myself with Gordon, with all Gordons, would be obscene. (A Dry, 304)

 

These pathetic words of Ben are expressive of the trauma that can result from a well thought-out and law-backed up power like apartheid, a power which calcifies tribal/racial divides, a power in which groups each “excludes the other, distrusts the other, fears the other, and hates the other.”[30] Indeed, in Foucault’s view, power “manifests itself not in a downward flow from the top of the social hierarchy to those below but extends itself in a capillary fashion – it is part of daily action, speech and everyday life”[31] of South Africa.

Actually, one fundamental feature of such a barren regime is the degradation and impoverishment of the characters’ social framework. Brink and La Guma, through their novels, are adamant to unveil the filthy and dangerous nature of the ghetto. In this way, detailed and realistic representations of space loom large in The Fog and A Dry. This can be easily understood if we consider that:

The aim of the realistic writer is constant: to write, with respect to the valid norms of his time, more veraciously and to put reality more directly into words than his predecessors have done. […] A concrete historical situation, a datable and locatable frame are conditions for the realization of realism.[32]

 

If it is a truism that La Guma and Brink refer to “a concrete historical situation” (apartheid), it is nonetheless an enthralling enterprise to analyse how both writers “veraciously” draw out ghastly images of the ghetto. In The Fog and A Dry, the similarities in the representation of the world of the oppressed are under two forms: first what can be referred to as a focalized or rolling description and second, a sensorial depiction of space.

          The focalized representation infers that the reader perceives the rotten social framework of the story through a character. But this, according to Philippe Hamon, means that the latter will be placed in the conditions to perceive things and events. Hamon writes: “Il s’agit de faire en sorte que l’action conduise le personnage à observer un objet, à le décrire pour autrui ou s’en servir. Ce procédé est particulièrement fréquent dans la littérature réaliste. »[33] The mechanism of this process of feeling and transmitting some part of the story is further explained by Eric le Calvez: 

Le regard du personnage établit une conjonction temporelle entre description et récit, car non seulement le cours du récit n’est pas interrompu brutalement, […], mais de plus une diachronie interne est réintégrée, correspondant à la durée de l’acte contemplatif.[34]

[The look of the character establishes a temporal conjunction between description and narration, because the flow of the narration is not abruptly interrupted, and more, an internal diachrony is reintegrated, which corresponds to the duration of the contemplative act.]

 

In the focalised depiction of the ghetto space in both novels, the reader does not feel an abrupt break in the temporality, the narration of events and the description of some dirty areas. This excerpt from The Fog showing Beukes in a taxi is a telling example:  

They [Beukes and the taxi driver] are in the main street of a ghost town. Along the shadowy pavements under the old iron and wood balconies shop windows, boarded up when their owners had abandoned trade in the wake of the general exodus, stared with blinded eyes out into the grimy, sunlit, thoroughfare. The shopping crowds of the past had dwindled noticeably and now people moved along the sidewalks, past the rows of shabby shopfronts, like the survivors of a holocaust. (The Fog)  

 

The comparative and metaphorical designs of this segment (respectively “like the survivors of a holocaust” and “a ghost town”) are of lifeblood in the denunciation of the overall destitution of the physical surroundings. Indeed, the reader can feel the decayed milieu through the “eyes” of Beukes. The latter, going to his friend Tommy’s, is the pretext or the “motivating” drive of the scene. The degradation of the characters’ environment is so widespread that the narrator resorts to adjectives - “shadowy pavements”; “grimy thoroughfare” - as connotative clues. Using a focalized representation is very relevant here because it is, actually, a strong way for the narrator to justify the importance of the resistance and, in the same way, to reinforce Beukes in his engagement to do away with the foul regime. That is the reason why, in the novels of Alex La Guma, narration and description join forces in the thorny task of exposing the general and generalized horror bred by racial discrimination.

        André Brink takes almost the same aesthetic path as La Guma. His text is fraught with focalized descriptions and many other devices meant to beautifully express the ghastly backlashes of racial discrimination on the day-to-day life of characters. Here is a relevant illustration:

Stanley glanced at him as they slammed the car doors shut, but said nothing. The car pulled off again, following once more an intricate route through patterns of identical houses, as if they were passing the same ones over and over again. Brickwalls covered in slogans. Peeling billboards. Boys playing ball-games. The barbers. The wrecks and the charred buildings. Chicken. Rubbish heaps. (A Dry, 92)

 

The reader finds, in these lines, a rolling or ambulatory description of the road towards the inner city where Ben and Stanley are heading to, a space marked by a row of identical and shabby houses. The particularity of this sequence, compared to the one from The Fog, lies in the structural design; it is organized around successive short nominal sentences that offer a sequential picture of diverse parts of the disintegrated physical surroundings. Such a representation allows the reader “to look”, at the same time as Ben, at the areas the two characters pass by on their way. This stylistic option adds vividness to the tableau because it is articulated around the perspective of Ben and also because it helps the reader realizes how shocked the latter is by the discovery of this “other world”. Therefore, with a structure built around “the ability to look” (to refer to Hamon) of Ben, the passage further draws the stark difference that exists between Ben’s self environment and that of the “others”, where life seems impossible. Such an allegorical image of the dilapidated social atmosphere of the ghetto is acutely dealt with by Nadine Gordimer through these words of Toby, the protagonist in A World of Strangers:

By contrast an African township looked like something that had been rased almost to the ground. The mass of houses and shacks were so low and crowded together that the people seemed to be swarming over them as if they had just invaded a deserted settlement. Everytime I went to a township I was aware of this sudden drop in the horizon of buildings and rise of humans; nothing concealed, nothing sheltered – in any but the most obvious sense – any moment of the people’s lives.[35]

 

In both The Fog and A Dry, the ambulatory or rolling description of landscape and social environment constitutes a momentous feature of the realistic approach used by the authors to put the apartheid reality into words. This urges Brian Bunting, prefacing one of La Guma’s novels, A Threefold Cord, to hold that the South African writer

[…] knew and understood the people and their problems, their ‘troubles’, as they call them, and he wrote of them with intimacy and care […] It is the very completeness of his knowledge and understanding of his milieu that gives Alex La Guma’s prose its incisive bite.[36]

 

Beside the focalized or ambulatory representation of the characters’ space, “sensorial” descriptions take centre-stage in the aesthetic framing of both novels. Indeed, part of the author’s realism consists of a strong appeal to some figures’ sensory organs. Instances occur at almost every step of the narrative in The Fog and A Dry. One is when Ben journeys, for the first time, with Stanley into the grimy and desecrated unknown world of the ghetto. The narrator reports:

Ben turned his window down a few inches. An oppressive smell of smoke drifted into the car. The awareness of disembodied sound grew overpowering. And once again, but more intensely than before, he had the feeling of being inside an enormous animal body with intestines rumbling, a dark heart beating, muscles contracting and relaxing, glands secreting their fluids. […] Never before had he experienced so acutely the total isolation of their respective worlds, and the fact that only through the two of them those words were allowed to touch briefly and provisionally. (A Dry, 170-1)

 

This passage constitutes a veracious expression of the unbearable living conditions in South Africa. Actually, by highlighting the reek that assaults Ben - the smell of poverty and want - the narrator further points at the huge gap that separates the two worlds. Leaning on Ben’s perspective - prompted by his action of opening the window - the sensorial description of the physical surroundings is a resounding way for Brink to make his community aware of the extent to which the racist policies implemented by the government have eroded the existence of marginalized groups and have, indirectly, dehumanized whites.

Another example very expressive of sensorial representation of intimate and external space is contained in this part of the story where Ben visits Emily, Gordon’s widow:

They [Stanley & Ben] knocked. […] Emily opened immediately, [...]. There was only one gas lamp burning inside, and the corners of the small front room were in semi-darkness. Against the far wall a few children were sleeping under a grey blanket, small bundles close together, like loaves of bread set out to raise. [...]. A vase filled with plastic flowers. The floral curtains drawn. There was a smoky stuffiness inside, aggravated by a stale smell of bodies. (A Dry, 172)

 

This excerpt presents almost the same syntactic framing as the previous one: with short nominal sentences, combined with an evocative adjectival regime (of the smell and destitution), that are in line with the movement of Ben’s eyes.  This focalized description that is focused on the sensory image - “There was a smoky stuffiness inside, aggravated by a stale smell of bodies” - is a way for the narrator to arouse the consciousness of the character. In other words, such a journey into the intimacy of the hitherto unknown “other” and his dilapidated world reinforces Ben in his determination to bear the brunt of family and police pressure.

     The aesthetic choice to present the characters’ environment through olfactory references runs through the narrative of Alex La Guma, especially in The Fog. One telling example is found in these lines:

At that time there were tin shanties everywhere, he thought. [...] Coming back from the town, the smell of rot and stagnant water had been overpowering, but later one had got used to it, to the puddles of dirty water, the mess left by children and animals dotting the pathways like mines in a minefield. Poverty had enveloped the whole scene in a tattered and smelly cloak of rust, decay and destitution. (The Fog, 122)

 

The same descriptive style that encodes the story in Brink’s novel is also found in this extract from The Fog. Both quotations heavily rely on the reader’s olfactory and other sensory organs to render the generalized squalor that is a main feature of the social environment. But while the narrator in A Dry seems to favour a staccato phrasal structure, La Guma’s text is rather framed with enumerative sentences which expose in detail the rotten and filthy atmosphere. To further demonstrate such situation the narrative voice makes use of comparison - “like a sore or a boil” -  and personification  - “just stretch of slum clinging to the edge of the town” - which are another eloquent and beautified expression of the fetid surroundings to which the inhabitants finally get “used to.”

     In this way, both writers draw out horrendous and realistic images of the decayed existence of the marginalized groups under apartheid. Sensorial or focalized representations of the characters’ internal and external environment is one aesthetic clue which tie the strands of Brink’s and La Guma’s narratives together, but also that of many South African writers, conscious that political commitment can bring forth a redefinition of interracial relationships, and a new social contract.

     However, this is no easy task because writers like Brink and La Guma were subject to censorship, enhanced, with an iron hand, by a ubiquitous police force. In his article “After Soweto”, Brink describes the apartheid police system in these words: “The Security Police is ever alert to suppress or inhibit the truth. Often the persecution is brutal and overt. More often it is subtle and destructive on a less exposed level.”[37] In one interview with Cecil Abrahams[38], La Guma admits that the question of the police was bound to be an integral part of his fictional output, and this is in line with the life-size weight of this crucial branch of the system in the story and textual space.

     A repressive justice is the bedrock of any totalitarian regime. And the political situation in South Africa is no exception. Indeed, the Security police are at the core of the terror machine that sees to the stifling of any dissident individual or movement. South Africa is, La Guma upholds, ‘a police state” (The Fog, 24). The Fog and A Dry bear some similarities and some particularities in the thematic and textual representation of the police officers and their torturing methods, but also of the victims’ reactions.

      In The Fog, the police agents are the pillars of the vileness of the regime; they terrorize characters who, like Beukes, are panic-stricken whenever in front of policemen. During one of his night rounds, Beukes has this reaction when he sees the police:

Beukes cursed under his breath. In a clearing stood two big police trucks and already there were people crowded behind the wire mesh of one of them […] Beukes turned immediately and made his way back. His heart beat a little pronouncedly. People who were not white – even the criminally innocent – always reacted that way. There were a hundred and one crimes one might have committed without knowledge. Palpitations of the heart had become a national disease. (The Fog, 64)

 

These “palpitations of the heart” are kept up by such policemen as Sergent Van Zyl and Grobbelaar, but also Raalt in A Walk in the Night[39], or even Captain Joll in Waiting for the Barbarians, through whom the violence of the Nationalist exploitative regime comes to a head. The evil forces are responsible for the intimidation, night-time raids, torture and, ultimately, the murder of dissidents. The reader first meets the two police officers in the prologue, as anonymous figures, holding a prisoner. The presence of Sergent Van Zyl and Grobbelaar haunts the story until when a plain description of them is provided in their favoured activity: torture. In these lines, the narrator graphically expresses their brutality set against the dauntless prisoner, Elias, who refuses to cave in their demands:

Pain was like a devil which had usurped his body. It was wrenching in his wrist and hands and the sockets of his shoulders as he dangled with all the weight on the handcuffs that shackled him to the staple in the wall. It was his body battered and bruised by the pistol barrel, and in his legs, his skinned shins, which would not hold his weight. There was a taste of pain in his mouth where blood had replaced saliva. […] They each took him under the arms and he was paddled up to the door, out of the room, stumbling, trying to use his legs, grasping with the pain in them, stumbling and flopping like a doll all the way to another room. (The Fog, 169-170)

 

This thorough description of the pain of Elias lays bare the savagery of the torturous practices heaped on him. This minute representation is sometimes wrapped in a metaphorical style. Unlike in A Dry where the depiction of police violence upon Jonathan and Gordon is indirectly reported (through Seroke) to the reader, La Guma’s scenic approach is much more vivid and it catches the reader’s attention. The ultimate aim is to convince the latter of the unspeakable brutality of the police in South Africa. Such a detailed exposition is better felt in the depiction of the eyes (face) of the torturers. Indeed, under the perspective of Elias, the reader has a glimpse of the inhumanity that is oozing from the eyes of those that prey upon him:

Elias looked at them, seeing them hazily far away, and saw that they were like rags from which all the water of humanity had been squeezed […] The young one stared at Elias with eyes that were now flat and expressionless as a reptile’s. (The Fog, 170-171)

 

La Guma’s literary output, but also Brink’s novels to some extent, is glutted with such aesthetic turns that focus on the eyes as an expression of the inner nature of some protagonists. In A Dry, the narrator probes into the atrocious nature of the system through this representation of the look of Stolz:

You can not restrain yourself from turning to look. He is still standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, the orange moving up and down in a slow mechanical rhythm, his eyes cool and frank, as if he hasn’t looked away for a second. Strangely dark eyes for such a pale face. The thin white line of a scar on his cheek. And all of a sudden you know. You’s better memorize the name. Captain Stolz. His presence is not fortuitous. He has a role to play; and you will see him again. (A Dry, 60)

 

The same technique is used here: the eyes of Stolz are a basic element of his characterization. However, the expression of the face of the character is further expressed by the not signalled direct narration of the thought of Ben, - “Strangely dark eyes for such a pale face” -, a nominal structure that heightens the drama of the passage. Here is Ben introduced to the police agent through the stern face and the frozen look of the latter. Consequently, he can realize that Stolz is a crucial link in the repressive chain elaborated by the police system. Ben is right to think that his presence is not “fortuitous” because he is the one whose sacred mission will be to intimidate and sway Ben away from his perilous quest for truth. But this is without the courageous Ben who, in spite of a constant harassment, keeps on gathering evidence of the guilt of the system. In this way, throughout the story, Stolz and his ilk work out their determination to stifle any action that is meant to expose the part played by the police in the murder of Jonathan and Gordon but also in that of the rebellious children of Soweto. Therefore, they carry out insidious and underhand doings to undermine Ben’s morale and preserve the integrity of their nation. Cases of persecutions, as the following, abound in the story:

A new wave of anonymous call, another vandalistic attack on his car, the entire front wall of his home sprayed with slogans, coarse insults on his blackboard, at night the sound of footsteps going round the house. [...] And whenever nothing specific was happening there was the gnawing awareness of that invisible and shapeless power pursuing him. (A Dry, 261-2)

 

Like the Magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians, Ben is socially alienated, his family and community charging him with betrayal to the Afrikaner cause. These lines demonstrate, once more, how the police manage to transform Ben into a hermit in the eyes of “his own people.” Indeed, he is permanently subject to police attack and such a relentless persecution is suggested by the long asyndetically framed sentence – “A new wave of anonymous call, another vandalistic attack on his car, the entire front wall of his home sprayed with slogans, coarse insults on his blackboard, at night the sound of footsteps going round the house”. This aesthetic turn suggests that the sleuths are totally devoted to fighting to the last drop of blood the enemies of the nation.

          A more striking expression of police violence is found in this passage from The Fog:

Then for some reason or another, a policeman shot into the noise. […] The firing burst out again like a roll of metal-skinned drums. From the front of the Police Station, from the groups around the trucks, from the turret of the armoured car, the shiny brass cylinders of spent ammunition leaped and cascaded for a moment in deadly ejaculations and then stopped. (The Fog, 104)

 

The violence of the firing is not only hinted at in the set of sentences but more, in the lexical field and tone of the sequence. In fact, the comparing structure - “a roll of metal-skinned drums” -, the anaphora - “from the front of the Police Station, from the groups around the trucks, from the turret of the armoured car” -, combined with the metaphorical image, - “deadly ejaculations” - suggest the extreme rapidity and savagery of the police forces upon the demonstrators.

Thus, the South African regime and its repressive apparatus, “shoot people as if they are waste, but in the end it is [them] whose lives are not worth living”[40], Coetzee’s heroin says in Age of Iron. And the “sin of power”, in La Guma’s country, is “not only to distort reality but to convince people that the false is true, and that what is happening is only an invention of enemies”[41], like Ben, who is finally killed by Stolz and his clique, as he keeps on refusing to yield under the latter’s pressure.

 

Conclusion

Both Brink and La Guma have expressed their discontent and loadstars about the racism and discrimination that have eroded the rainbow nation. Like many of his protagonists, La Guma was totally committed to “run guns and to hold up radio stations, because in South Africa that is what [they] are faced with, whether [they] are writers, or whether [they] are common laborers.”[42] Likewise, Brink’s “obsessive theme is not merely apartheid. It is the mortal condition, and the terror of apartheid’s metamorphosis into destiny.”[43] Like Ben, Brink is totally devoted to searching and mapping out his truth, a search which might end up in failure, but it is going to be failure that can affirm his humanity, redeems him[44] and alerts the consciousness of his own people.

Through what can be branded a “transethnic characterization”[45], both writers have been unwavering in their effort to debunk the ideological and repressive apparatuses of apartheid. Brink and La Guma knew that “the writer is in fact an organ developed by society to respond to its need for meaning.”[46] They live up to this mission.

In this way, bits and pieces of the racist regime and the social tensions of the time reverberate in their texts[47]. A Dry and The Fog are deeply cast in the apartheid cultural and social framework, the realities of which they have exposed from different aesthetic perspectives. The transtextual analysis of both novels has shown that the narrators turn to other texts, under various approaches, to disseminate the encoded message of commitment and hope of Brink and La Guma, through “texts” put at the threshold of their respective works. These narrative devices set the novels in the African literary tradition. The epigraphs and prologue/epilogue, combined with the intertextual representations they made of the implementation and drawbacks of the regime on the lives and physical environment of characters, are another beautified expression of the horrendous nature of the system. Thus through their multi-coloured accounts, A Dry and The Fog constitute a resounding multivoiced plea for the establishment of a race-blind society.

 

Works Cited

• Abrahams,Cecil. Alex La Guma.Boston: Twayne, 1985.
• Allen, Graham.Intertextuality. London: Routledge, 2000.
• Asein, Samuel Omo. “The Revolutionary Vision in Alex La Guma’s Novels”.Phylon.http://www.jstor.org/stable/274434. Accessed: 18/10/2008.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail.The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Balasubramanyan, Chandramohan,A Study in Trans-ethnicity in Modern South Africa: The Writings of AlexLa Guma, 1925-1985. Lewiston: Mellen Research University Press, 1992.
• Brink, André.A Dry White Season. New York: Penguin, 1984.
• ----“Writers and Writing in the World”,Mapmakers:Writing in a State of Siege: Essays on Politics andLiterature. New York: Summit Books, 1983.
• ---- “Reinventing a Continent (Revisiting History in the Literature of the New South Africa: A Personal Testimony)”,World Literature Today.www.jstor.org/stable/40151846. Accessed 10/07/2011.
• Bunting, Brian.Preface to A Threefold Cord. London: Kilptown Book, 1988
•  Coetzee, John-Maxwell.Age of Iron. New York: Penguin, 1990.
• ---- “André Brink and The Censor”.Research in African Literatures. Antumn 1990, 21:3 (www.jstor.org/stable/3819634)
• ----Waiting for the Barbarians. London: Penguin, 1982.
• Davidson, Jim.An interview with André Brink,Overland, 94-5 (1984): 24-30.
• Diala, Isidore. “André Brink and Malraux”, Contemporary Literature. Spring 2006, 47:1(www.jstor.org/stable/4489149). Accessed 03/01/2001.
• ---- “André Brink and the Implications of Tragedy for Apartheid South Africa.”Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies. Dec 2003, 29:4 (www.jstor.org/stable/3557393.) Accessed: 03/01/2011.
• Genette, Gérard.Paratexts: Threshold of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• ----Palimpsestes :la littérature au second degré. Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1982.
• Gikandi, Simon. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Gordimer, Nadine.My Son’s Story. London: Penguin Books, 1990.
• ----A World of Strangers. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.        .
• Hamon, Philippe. « Un discours contraint »,Littérature et réalité, ed.Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1982.
• Kane, Baydallaye. “The Fragmented Story of a Dual Journey: reading The Present through the Past in Andre Brink’s An Instant in the Wind”,Groupe d’Etudes en Langues etLittératures, GELL.Saint Louis: Presses Universitaires de Saint Louis, janvier 2009, n°13.
• La Guma, Alex.In the Fog of the Seasons’ End. London: Heinemann, 1972
• ----A Walk in the Night and Other Stories.London: Heinemann, 1968.
• Le Calvez, Eric. « La description focalisée »,Poétique. Paris : Editions du Seuil, novembre 1996, n°108.
• Loombia, Ania.Colonialism/Postcolonialism. New York: Routledge, 1998.
• Murfin, Ross & Supryia M. Ray,The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998.
• Paton, Alan.Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful. Harmonds worth: Penguin Books, 1983.
• Pointer, Fritz.A Passion to Liberate. La Guma’s South African Images of District Six. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001.
• Schipper, Mineke. “Toward a definition of Realism in the African Context”, Spring 1985, 16:3 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/468840). Accessed 10/05/2010.
• Yousaf, Nahem.Alex La Guma, Politics and Resistance. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001.

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Moving into the 21^st century, and the world becoming more globalised than never before, the African has a responsibility to create a developmental paradigm to pave the way for socio-economic progress. In this process, Africans must begin to decide and design a development strategy that is African, one which is based on African education through African languages and one which is responsive to the needs of the African as the Africans response to globalization. How can this be achieved? There is an urgent need for us to re-conceptualize our education, re-connect to our culture and languages and most critically design an indigenous educational paradigm that is linked to African languages and realities. This debate has captured the interest of many high-profile scholars such as Wali (1963), Ngugi (1986), Mafeje (1994), Menang (2001) among others. The theme of language in African educational systems continues to be a contentious issue in post-Independence African countries. The importance of using the child’s mother-tongue as the medium of instruction at school was underscored by UNESCO (UNESCO: 1953). Moreover, this organization continues to uphold the view that the choice of an instructional language and policies concerning language in schools are critical for any meaningful teaching and learning to take place (UNESCO: 2005). The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) also clearly maintains that language is an important determinant for quality education (ADEA: 2004).

It is also necessary to take note of the above especially when one considers the fact that in most African educational systems, the medium continues to be the language of the colonial masters. Children continue to start school using a foreign language (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2010). Thus the need to integrate indigenous African languages in African schools as mediums of communication cannot be overemphasized. This is necessary in order to make the education that African children continue to receive more relevant to their needs and aspirations. There should be a call to use African languages in acquiring and disseminating knowledge for the purpose of sustainable education.

Most African societies – if not all – are multilingual. This is to say that learners in African schools would have gained some degree of proficiency in their L1s even before starting to learn a foreign language. The only difference is in the syntactic and morphological structures between the mother-tongue and the foreign language they are obliged to acquire. The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning in its 2010 report aptly states: “…the choice of languages, their recognition and sequencing in the education system, the development of their expressive potential, and their accessibility to a wider audience should […] be gradual, concentric and be done in an all-inclusive approach”.

It is therefore imperative to note that a step-by-step integration of African languages in educational systems shall yield far reaching benefits for both learners and society. Local languages, if properly utilized, could complement foreign languages as mediums of instruction in African classrooms.

The multiplicity of languages in African societies could bring about effective communications and unity contrary to the widely held view that it could be a “communication barrier, and would engender conflicts and tensions” (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2010).

The existence of a variety of speech communities which use different languages could be effective in matters of governance, communication and above all, education. In essence, African languages could be instrumental tools in reshaping the lives and dreams of entire generations.

Language policies could be developed through holistic means to enhance social cohesion and overall linguistic and academic development of learners. Thus concerted efforts of all stakeholders in the business of education are needed to make learning vibrant. In fact, African languages could be used as mediums of instruction in schools to enhance students’ understanding of concepts that are abstract and alien to them. When carefully selected and utilized, they can positively improve learner’s performance in the achievement of set down educational goals and targets. Also, with the use of indigenous languages, and increased access to learning materials, there will be massive community participation in the educational arena. Thus, capacities of both the beneficiaries and implementers of education shall be enhanced to reasonable degrees.

In its 2003 Biennial Meeting, ADEA succinctly stated that African languages could be determinants for quality education. Education for All Global Monitoring Report (2006), in concord with ADEA, also asserted that “improving the quality of education is one of the six goals of education”. These assertions have set the motion for an all-out debate on the use of the mother-tongue with a view to improving the educational performances of learners.

Linguistic diversity could bring to light the linguistic reality of a country. Through a well-planned and coordinated language learning programme, community activities could be clearly outlined. According to Djite (2008) and Stronel (2002), a linguistically empowered and creative people are able to contribute more effectively to economic growth. This view is vital to note because community life in African settings is characterized by the use of languages.

Moreover, access to knowledge and information technology through the use of African languages is critical in boosting the productive capacities of beneficiaries. The language industry can greatly complement the creative industry through the effective use of mother-tongue based instruction or communication. African languages continue to be relevant in education and commerce. Djite (2008) discusses the importance of linguistic and cultural diversity for development from the perspective of health, education, governance and the economy. Industrial countries could help in the development of strategies based on the realities on the ground in order to meet their demands and targets within the framework of efficient and healthy competitions. This shall enable education planners and partners to effectively support drives that are necessary to make education meaningful and responsive to the needs of the people.

The argument in most intellectual circles that most African languages are too costly and time-consuming to integrate in the mainstream of educational systems should not be given much consideration. This is because as language develops in use, it could be used to meet set down targets using cost effective strategies. In Senegal for instance, Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED) publish in Pulaar to respond to the Pulaar community’s need and demand for Pulaar literature. ARED’s main aim among other things is to go beyond basic and functional literacy materials with a view to making their interventions broad-based and in line with the changing needs of their beneficiaries.

Using the mother-tongue is the medium of instruction in schools continues to draw the attention of many scholars. This is because the learner’s L1 could greatly help him to better comprehend abstract concepts that are supposed to be developed at an early stage. Schools should build on the skills and expertise in the first languages as language learning takes place in all subjects, not only in language classes (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong learning, 2010).

Macdonald (1990) found that the frequent switch from one medium of instruction to another continues to be responsible for the inadequate linguistic proficiency of many early learners. Thus, a good number of such learners eventually find it impossible to be able to appropriately get themselves immersed in the foreign language of instruction. Alidou and Brock- UTRE, 2006; 87 outlined that some students, particularly girls, avoid speaking in class especially if the language of instruction is unfamiliar to them to avoid being “ridiculed”. Girls are more likely to participate actively in the classroom when the language of instruction is the local language (World Bank, 2000).

With a carefully planned language instructional strategy, learning in African schools could be greatly enhanced. Learning outcomes could be qualitatively improved. Results of learning objectives will be greatly enhanced.

This implies that Africans must start to take ownership of their own education, not in isolation, but within the global context of new technological flows and information orders. In “Decolonizing  the Mind” (1986), Ngugi Wa Thiong’o argues that the control of the African mind during the transAtlantic slave trade and colonial periods was done through the devaluation, at best, and destruction, at worst, of the African peoples culture, art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, and  literature. Most crucial, of course, was the domination of the African languages by the languages of the colonial masters. This was necessary for them to be able to dominate the mental universe of the African and this necessity was explained away by the prejudicial assumption that “what we understand by Africa is the unhistorical under-developed spirit, still involved in the condition of nature” (Hegel, 1991:93). In the same vein, both Emmanuel Kant (1960) and David Hume (1964) believe in the inferiority of the Black race vis-à-vis the Whites. Therefore, in the family of nations the African is “a late-born child” according to Lugard (1968).

African culture and history are rich and their scientific exploitation and popularization are a sure path to progress and survival. The Gambia is one of those countries that could serve as a glaring example in terms of cultural wealth. Her culture places high premium on the respect of the integrity of women, and of marriage to ensure harmony and procreation and the expansion of the family. Before colonialism, venereal diseases were almost unknown in The Gambia and the soundness of the cultural values transmitted to the present generation explains why the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in this country is among the lowest in Africa. Wealth should not be defined in fiscal terms alone. African culture and tradition are also her wealth and academics are invited to explore further into the intrinsic cultural morality of traditional Gambians.

It is evident that the continued effort to control the African mind by controlling his language is so strong. This has resulted in what Ngugi (1998, P.89) refers to as a continent of “bodiless heads and headless bodies”. Yet in the 21^st century it is not surprising to find Africans dismissing any recognition of positive experiences in African history or language (Menang: 2001). When an African conspires to denigrate Africa (Emmanuel Kwofie: 1972) and her glorious past while admiring and eulogizing the totality of Euro-centrism and trying to be what Ali and Alamin Mazrui (1998: P.137) term Afro-Saxons; there is definitely a mental and developmental problem. The role of the African people in taking the lead in designing the development of their societies through African-centered education by using African indigenous languages is central to Africa’s socio-economic development. Africans must start to take ownership of their own educational systems so that they find solutions to Africa’s myriad problems.

Indeed, our continent is confronted with a plethora of mammoth problems and challenges that permeate through every single fabric of our human lives. These include health, education, socio- economic, political to name just a few. A prominent African sombrely summarizes the African situation thus:

Once a region with rich natural resources as well as bountiful stores of optimism and hope, the African continent now teeters perilously on the brink of economic disintegration, political chaos, institutional and social decay.

 

While this appraisal of Africa might seem too depressing, very few Africans would want to disagree with this observation that Africa has been experiencing regression, rather than progress, not only in the economic sphere, but also in the social and political spheres. It is against this backdrop that it is deemed necessary to rethink, revisit and re-conceptualize education in Africa to contribute to the socio-political and economic transformation of the continent.

Another prominent scholar on African studies also observes that colonial education was Eurocentric and ignored the achievements and contributions of the indigenous populations and their ancestries; and that education in Africa is still struggling to rid itself of this colonial legacy.

It is time for Africans to liberate themselves from this Eurocentric colonial legacy if any meaningful development is to be achieved. This can only be done by underpinning African education in African indigenous cultures and languages as a tool for socio-political transformation. Strictly speaking, there is a strong nexus between language, education and development (Mbaabu: 1996).

It is indeed true that development in any country has to do with the improvement of the social, cultural, economic and political lives of the people. However, this paper will be confined to the nexus between language, education, socio-economic development and the international environment. There is evidence pointing to the fact that there is a correlation between language, education and economic development; and this lies in the nexus between language and education on the one hand, and education and development on the other, all evolving within a given international context. It is axiomatic that language plays a critical role in education. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o identifies two aspects in every language: one is its role as an agent that enables us to communicate with one another in our struggle to find our means of survival; the other aspect is its role as a carrier of the history and the culture built into the process of that communication over time. The two aspects, he concludes, are inseparably linked and form a dialectical unity, describing language as the collective memory bank of a people.

Going back to the role of language in education and consequently in development, this paper earlier emphasized the role of language in education. It is through linguistic interaction between teachers and learners on one hand, and among learners on the other, that knowledge is produced. Certainly, language learning proper, Bunyi argues, is an important component of the education itself. Accordingly, much of the children’s early years in school are spent on developing their linguistic skills. Such years are said to be spent on literacy development.

Being one of the most multilingual continents, and therefore the most linguistically complex area of the world, post-Independence Africa needs to revisit and re-examine what type of literacy must support her policies as regards indigenous languages in education. It is therefore clear that “the use, misuse or even the non-use of a culture to which language belongs, can have a very fundamental impact on the minds of those who would have otherwise excelled, had they been taught and made to articulate their thoughts in a language they understand, a language that they are comfortable to spontaneously and creatively express their ideas and experiences in” (Senkoro: 2005, P.15)

The relationship between literacy and economic development has already been confirmed and established, and UNESCO concludes in a study that illiteracy has a close correlation with poverty and underdevelopment. This suggests that in order to achieve meaningful development, literacy rates in Africa, especially south of the Sahara, must be raised. Needless to say, policies as regards indigenous languages in education will have a positive impact on the success of African development.

The spread of languages such as English, French and Portuguese was concomitant with the advent of colonialism. Consequently, the educational role of these various languages has been, arguably, more destructive than constructive: “With the benefit of hindsight, one can only conclude that the colonial administration machine, knowing the important role of language in shaping one’s identity, initiated language policies that were meant to subdue their subjects, making them more susceptible to western languages and cultures. Many began to disdain their languages and other cultural practices, trying instead very hard to learn the western way” (Mohochis: 2005, P.5). Furthermore, whether through practice or by attitudes, the colonial languages have come to enjoy unparalleled pride and prestige in formal education in Africa. Ironically, it is African indigenous languages that have been and continue to be neglected in the formal education in Africa.

As long as the denigration and devaluation of the African indigenous languages continue, no meaningful development can take place in the continent. It is time Africans domesticated African educational institutions by creating a strong relationship between indigenous languages and education for the purpose of socio-economic development. This, combined with the use of ICTs as tools, can be fruitful in the drive to achieve new goals as set out in the 21^st Century agenda.

Indigenizing education needs a total social re-engineering and this is not only vital, but also immensely necessary if Africans want to promote and effect socio-structural change and to meet educational needs for socio-economic development.

To achieve this, indigenous African languages should be given a more central role in education in Africa so as to contribute to the much needed social, economic and political transformations. The enormity and difficulty of this task is self-evident because of Africa’s socio-linguistic complexity.

Language is constantly evolving and the language policy in Africa today must take into consideration its utility, and its integration into regional and continental supranational institutions. Language, as an instrument of development, should serve the African and not the other way round. It should not be an instrument that is used to construct ethnicity and nationality which are fluid in most contemporary African societies.

As an instrument of development, language should be effectively used as a tool to bridge the inequality gap that exists among the different strata of African societies. Within the context of social and economic development, it should be used to harness the hopes and aspirations of the African people. It could, at all cost, be used to portray the wishes and aspirations of the African people within the framework of economic and social development; very far from the notion that it will create ethnic strife.

Afro-centric scholars of contemporary times could use language to counter the prejudices and bias in the colonial literature concerning the black man (Okolo: 2005). It should be used to redefine the black man as opposed to the Eurocentric definitions and interpretations of him. A close re-examination of indigenous African languages shall bring to light realities concerning African culture, values, knowledge, beliefs and standards. This, to a large extent, shall unlock the mystery that has for a long time surrounded the African cosmological system.

In fact, local languages could be effective tools that could be used to identify and strengthen the bonds that exist between and among the diverse ethnic groups in African societies. In some extreme situations, they could be used not only to intimately connect peoples and societies, but also to identify their different cultural identities and locations.

The different linguistic groupings and languages could be harmonized with the different speakers adopting one as the lingua franca. Kiswahili is a typical example: it is spoken by almost 95% of the population (Batibo 1995: P.68) in Tanzania and other East African countries with more than 120 local languages according to Roy-Campbell and Qorro: 1997 (quoted by Senkoro: 2005, P.7). Wollof could be the Kiswahili of the Senegambia region if the will is there. With that, one could clearly see the unifying nature of the language within a complex sociolinguistic setting.

Furthermore, post-Independence African countries continue to grapple with problems associated with language. This is because rather than serving as a unifying and developmental tool, it is used in many instances to divide the masses. Thus, a complete rethinking on the use of language for social reorientation and development is essential in both political and intellectual discourses within and among the African academic circles. This shall help unlock the mystery that surrounds the different African linguistic units within the broader context of development. Debates over the roles of African languages in social, political and economic transformations in African societies need to be at the forefront of debates concerning language as a tool for development and progress in post-Independence Africa.

It is urgent to address the challenges that the colonially imposed languages represent for students and scholars in Africa as they strive to understand their linguistic identities within a global framework. The exercise should not be restricted but broadened in order to create a healthy intellectual reflection on the issue.

 

 

References

• Conrad, J., 1950, ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899), inJoseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer, New York: Penguin Publishers.
• Hegel, G.W.E., 1991,The Philosophy of History, Trans. J. Sibree, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.
• Hume, D., 1964, ‘Of National character’, in Thomas Hill Green and Thomas H. Grose, eds.,The Philosophical works, Darmstadt 3, no 1.
• Kant, E., 1960,Observation on the feelings of the beautiful sublime, Trans. J.I, Goldthwait: Berkeley and Los Angeles.
• Kenya”,Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 16 no. 1, pp. 85-94.
• Kwofie, E.N., 1972, ‘The Language question and Language consciousness in West Africa’, African Studies Association of the West Indies, Bulletin no. 5. December.
• Lugard, (1922),The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons.
• Lugard, F.D., (1968),The Rise of our East African Empires, vol. 1, London: Frank Cass.
• Mafeje, Archie. (1994). ‘African intellectuals: an inquiry into their genesis and social options’ in Mamdani, Mahmood and Mamadou Diouf eds.Academic freedom in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA
• Mazrui, A.A and Mazrui, A. (1995),Swahili, State and Society: The Political Economy of and African Language, Nairobi & London: East African Educational Publishers
• Mbaabu, I. (1996),Language Policy in East Africa, Nairobi: Educational Research and Publications.
• Mohochi, E.S. (2005), “Language and Regional Integration: Foreign or African Languages for the African Union?” In F.A. Yieke (ed.),East Africa: In Search of National and Regional Renewal, Codesria, Dakar, pp. 41-54.
• Mohochi, S.,Turning to Indigenous Languages for Increased Citizen Participation in the African Development Process,http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/mohochi.pdf
• Ngugi wa Thiong’O, (1986), Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
• Okolo, M., (2005),Reassessing the Impact of Colonial Languages on the African Identity for African Development, CODESRIA’s 11th General Assembly, December 6 – 10, 2005
• Onoma, A.K. (2005),The Language Question: an Anti-essentialist Excavation,CODESRIA General Assembly, Maputo, Mozambique, 6-10 December, 2005
• Senkoro, F.E.M (2005),Language of Instruction: The Forgotten Factor in Education Quality and Standards in Africa, CODESRIA General Assembly, Maputo, Mozambique, 6-10 December, 2005
• UNESCO (2010 ),Why and how Africa should invest in African languages and multilingual education - An evidence- and practice-based policy advocacy brief, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning
• UNESCO, (1968), "The Use of Vernacular Languages in education: The Report of the UNESCO Meeting of Specialists", in. J.A. Fishman (ed.), pp. 688-716. 

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Introduction

What do we mean when we talk about Francophonie? For Jean Claude Blachère (1993: 7), francophonie is a concept “not stabilized, its geography is fuzzy, its history poorly known, and its definition feeds perplexity.” This is especially because “It is difficult, indeed, to say who speaks French in black Africa- to limit ourselves  to this space- and what it means to speak French: a little, a lot, passionately "? Even the concept of "francophone," says Jean Claude Blachère (1993: 7), is ambiguous because it "should cover only situations of orality[1]" while it is used without question to describe an opaque monster called "francophone literature[2]."

Ambroise Kom (2000) describes Francophonie as a machine with three speeds. First there is the Francophonie of the North whose space covers France, Quebec, Acadia, Belgium and Switzerland in particular. In all these countries, he adds, French, as a mother tongue, is an ancient heritage of which the heirs and custodians are trying to manage in the best of their skills with the aim to making it grow and expand beyond their borders and leave it thus enriched for their progeny. Then there is the Francophonie of the Arab world, that of Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and even Egypt. This Francophonie is similar with that of Asia. Finally, there is the Francophonie of Africa south of Sahara.

The latter is the focus of this paper, especially its specificity, its challenges and its future prospects. To better understand that specificity, we have to go back in history and reopen the issue of the cultural and linguistic policy of France in order to look for and explain the historical, political and cultural roots of the Francophonie in sub-Saharan Africa. The challenges to this Francophonie will then be analyzed through the colonial policy of France and its consequences on the educational and cultural development in the countries concerned. The analysis will allow us to project the future of a new and more dynamic Francophonie for Africa. Note that if necessary the cultural and linguistic policy of France will be compared to that of Great Britain. The purpose of this comparison will be to better identify the "mistakes" of the Francophonie and learn from the Anglophone experience.

 

 

The specificity of the Francophonie in Africa south of Sahara

As already explained above, with the francophone of the North the expansion of the French language is always received with some satisfaction. What is more, in all these countries the people rightly claim the right and freedom to live, to dream and develop their "daily life in French;" which, briefly, defines the Francophonie of the North in opposition to the one of the South.

The latter in turn has different characteristics depending on geography and history. Indeed, in Africa Ibnlfassi Laila and Nicki (1996: 6) have found the Francophone literature from both sides of the Sahara "fascinating because of the differences emerging from the two corners of a shared continent which experienced similar colonial histories, albeit in slightly different forms." Thus the central question that interests us at this point in terms of definition is to know what the Francophonie in Asia and in the Maghreb have in common and what distinguishes them from both the Francophonie of the North and the one of black Africa. Unlike in the North, in Asia and in North Africa French is either a second language or a foreign language, not a mother tongue; which is also the case in Africa south of Sahara. But unlike black Africa, the Arab world, it is said, is culturally and linguistically homogeneous. Here in the Arab world language, culture and religion intermingle against the background of centuries-old Islamic civilization recognized as such by the colonizer[3].

A. C. Brench (1967 :100-101) suggests that recognition when he explains how the perception and approach of the colonizer toward the Muslims were colored by the expansion of Islam into Europe where it took roots and even came into conflict with the Christian religion. So for Brench (ibid.),

This is one of the many and varied reasons why it [Islam] has been treated with circumspection and respect by the various administrations. During the colonial period, Muslims were permitted a certain amount of religious and political autonomy by the administration and missionaries. They were not treated as unsophisticated pagans and their beliefs, although considered erroneous, were respected[4].

 

Indeed, in the eyes of the French colonizer, there is one major difference that distinguishes the colonized peoples of Black Africa from the ones of Asia and North Africa. For example, unlike the former, the latter are considered as peoples "of ancient civilization, but vanquished (Antoine Leon 1991: 266), as it is the case in Indochina and North Africa. This recognition by the colonizer of the ancient nature of the civilizations of these peoples has therefore been one of the major reasons that led to adopt an attitude more conciliatory and respectful of their cultural and linguistic identities in comparison to the attitude of the same colonizer in non Islamized black Africa.

The most illustrative example of this attitude was the conciliatory approach to teaching in elementary education. Indeed, Leon (ibid.) tells us that in Indochina the instruction is given in the native language during the first three years of primary education. It is also the case in the Maghreb, especially in Morocco, where "the language of the colonizer and that of the colonized [Arabic] are used jointly" (266, emphasis added).

This educational approach is reminiscent of the one adopted by Great Britain in all its African colonies. Maybe we can also read some influence of the British policy of Indirect Rule on the French colonial administration as well as a recognition, even implicit, by the French, of its effectiveness. In all cases, Mahmood Mamdani (1996 :82-3) confirms this hypothesis when he writes that the change from the French policy of assimilation to that of association in Africa south of Sahara was inspired by both the experience of France in Indochina and Algeria, but also by " the British example next door”. This, Mamdani says, has enabled France to appreciate "the need for a native cultural policy rather than assimilation."

Unfortunately, despite the good educational outcomes produced by this method, which involves the teaching of local languages in primary education before the language of the colonizer, France did not implement the teaching of local languages in its system of education in Africa South of the Sahara, preferring a policy of assimilation much more rigorous and glottophage, to paraphrase Jean-Louis Calvet (1993). Now the question is why, of all its colonies, it was only in those in Africa south of Sahara that France rigorously applied its policy of assimilation?

In response to this question, the chief colonial administrator in charge of education in Cochin China first recognizes that "it is a common sense that the teaching of early childhood education is given in the mother tongue of the child." Of course he means when the teaching concerns "civilized" people with "ancient civilization" like the ones from Asia and North Africa. But the same philosophy does not apply in Black Africa because, according to the same colonial administrator, French is essential, in the first years, for "the education of barbarous or semi-civilized peoples."(Leon, 1991: 288; emphasis added) Michael Crowder (1962: 3) also observed that the attitude of the French colonizer towards the Africans south of the Sahara was different because this part of the continent was regarded as having "no indigenous culture worthy of the name.” So in the eyes of the colonizer, Africa south of Sahara would be the habitat of "barbarians"; "a cultural desert," would say Gabriel Manessy (1994).

To materialize this approach to cultural and linguistic policy of assimilation, the French developed a colonial educational system first in the metropolis and then in the colonies. Even in France some explained that this policy of assimilation was the result of the spirit of the Revolution of 1789. Thus, in her analysis of the institutional framework of Francophonie, notably through what she calls the "Traditional French Linguistic Policies, Their Extension to Her Colonial Empire and Their Legacy Today" Anne Judge notes that it was after the questionnaire developed by Abbé Grégoire in 1790 which shows the existence of many languages and dialects spoken in France that the Revolutionaries, in a spirit of justice and equality, “decided that [languages and dialects of France] should be suppressed in the name of equality of opportunity[5]. This began a movement to establish state schools for the teaching of French."(In Laila Ibnlfassi et al, eds. 1996:13)

It is therefore not surprising that in 1829 the Governor of Senegal undertook to establish schools where instruction was intended “to wipe out through a common education the difference in customs and language” (in Spencer 1974: 163). About a century later, precisely on December 20, 1920, the Governor General of AEF signed an order which states that "No school will be allowed where the instruction is not given in French. The teaching of any other language is forbidden "(In-Tabi Manga 2000: 42). Henri Labouret (1938) is therefore right to say that, generally, the cultural and linguistic policy in France was influenced by its history. And F. Michelman (1995: 219) adds that this history is the legacy of the Roman Empire, particularly its tendency "towards linguistic and cultural centrism." So it is no surprise that Thomas Spear (2002: 11) tells us that of all the languages of colonization, French is the only one “whose old European capital remains the epicenter." And Spear adds that "only the French language has a European-based linguistic headquarter- from which the basic dictionaries are published[6] ...." (My translation) This headquarter is the French Academy founded in 1635 to regulate the use of French in France and around the worldwide.

Indeed, it is Richelieu who created that academy, which, according to Harriet Walter (1994: 244), "will have the mission to decode the vocabulary and fix grammar. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie prescribed in 1694 a "good usage," [meaning] the one of the court and of high society, as well as orthography respectful of etymology[7].” (My translation) A century later, in 1794, Father Gregory demanded the abolition of all other "dialects" in favor of French. And finally, in 1964 De Gaulle created the Haut Conseil de la Langue Française thus taking, in the words of Rubango (1999: 572), "the Francophonie to the baptismal font." This Haut Conseil later became the Haut Commissariat and then the Delegation a la Langue Française before becoming Francophonie under Francois Mitterrand.

Irene d'Almeida (Spear in 2002) is therefore right to believe that the French language policy has its origins in the creation of the French Academy, whose main purpose is to ensure the purity of the French language. For Christian Valentin (2001: 55), Francophonie recalls "the assimilating dream of the Third Republic [which was] to bring together the peoples of the Empire around the same language spoken by all, in the same cultural melting pot[8]." (My translation) This is probably the same project that inspired the French colonial policy of assimilation and glottophagie in Africa south of Sahara and brought about the challenges facing Francophonie today.

 

 

The Challenges Facing Francophonie in Africa south of Sahara

"In less than ten years, the Africans will speak English, the technology they will use will come from America, their elites will be educated in the United States, as for we [the French], we will remain cut off from our African roots, curled up on a chilly Europe, incapable of being a competitive power[9]."(Bernard Debre, a former French Minister of Cooperation," Plaidoyer pour l’Afrique", Le Figaro, 9 février, 1998)

"Between the African intellectuals and the negro kinglets [roitelets] Paris had chosen long ago. Calls, pressing sermons, institutions, as rich as they are, will not help: the official Francophonie is bound to be the flag parade of hack mercenaries, and the laughing stock of independent creators[10]. "(Mongo Béti," Seigneur, deliver-nous de la Francophonie, " In Peuples noirs-Peuples africains, nos 59-62, sept-déc.1987/janv.-avr.1988, 106; My translation)

The concern of the Minister Debré and the judgment without appeal of Mongo Béti are the consequences of the cultural and linguistic policy of colonial France of which Francophonie is a new manifestation. This is so much so because the weight of regulation of the colonial and now postcolonial school, with its educational reflexes, continues to weigh heavily on the minds and lives of the elite in particular (see also Blachère 1993) and on the socio-economic and cultural development in general. The challenges, as they will be discussed later, are enormous; and although they cover all the aspects of the lives of Francophone Africans, the language issue remains the greatest concern.

Already in 1961, Pierre Alexandre, in an article entitled "Les problèmes linguistiques des Etats négro-africains à l’heure de l’indépendance” [The Linguistic Problems of Negro-African States at the Time of Independence], established a link between these challenges and the language policy of France. He particularly emphasized how the exclusive use of French in colonial and now postcolonial schools, explains without doubt, on the one hand, the delay in African studies in France[11] compared to what happened in London or Brussels; and on the other hand, the fact that French, because of its glottophagie, to paraphrase Louis-Jean Calvet, "penetrated much deeper [into the being and identity of the colonized] and was qualitatively better known in French colonies than English in the English colonies. [The language policy of France] may also explain why the "petit Nègre" or "Français tirailleurs" has never grown like the Coastal English or Pidgin[12].”(183, emphasis added, my translation).

But the most serious challenge, as Ambroise Kom (2000: 108) noted with bitterness, is that forty years after independence African countries have not yet really begun the "decolonization of the French language and its tools. Because of inadequate facilities, poor management of local staff and, above all, the lack of a rigorous and rational policy of appropriation of the colonial legacy, French, no matter what is said, is far from being considered as part of the African heritage.[13]" (my translation)

In the foreword to his book: Le français en Afrique noire: mythes, strategies, praitiques (1994), Gabriel Manessy rightly notes that the school and the political and administrative structures "have somehow limited negatively the other side of French in Africa, that is to say, the popular French also called "petit negre[14]" (8, emphasis added). As Pierre Alexandre and others had already done, Manessy did not resist the temptation to compare the past with the present to better understand the latter. Thus, he notes that unlike in the countries colonized by Belgium, Germany or Great Britain, in all French-speaking countries that were under French rule, French, today as yesterday, "does assume there only unequally the role of lingua franca among communities speaking different mother tongues. This is obviously a direct legacy of colonization; the remarkable fact is that the legacy has survived the abolition of colonization and it actually seems not to be questioned anywhere[15]... “(18; my translation). And Manessy comments that, unlike in the English-speaking countries where a pidgin developed as a lingua franca, there is in Francophone Africa, a "relative unity of French (...) rather more surprising than its diversification[16]" (33; my translation; see also Calvet, L’Europe et ses langues (1993).

Cote d'Ivoire is an exception with the development of “petit nègre” in the major urban centers (Walter 1994: 153). This explains in part why in Francophone Africa, in the words of Kom, language awareness is the lowest. Some argue that the continent has more pressing concerns than dealing with language issues. Perhaps, but " is it not illusory, wonders Ambroise Kom, to think that Africa can escape the simultaneous search for solutions to her problems while facing the risk of  deteriorating situations that could have been remedied otherwise[17]? (Kom 2000:108-9; my translation).

In any case, adds Kom, "it (...) seems difficult to separate the fate of African languages from the continent's political future[18]" (6; my translation). As for Calvet (1993), he binds the continent's economic future to the development of African languages along side French. After that, the issue of the revaluation of African languages conceived and perceived as a condition for a genuine liberation is well documented[19]. But their importance as a challenge for Francophonie in Africa South of the Sahara deserves a brief attention and review of the literature about the language debate.

Kom and other researchers have in fact shown the importance of seriously taking into account the question of African languages in educational systems for the simple fact that there is no evidence that French has really solved the problem of communication among the language groups present in many Francophone countries. Language of the elite and administration, French is used by the happy few who were privileged to have attended school to a certain level. In addition, despite all the campaigns for literacy, the school benefits only a tiny fraction of the population. Therefore the development of popular French that can strengthen the national unity is limited.

In fact, linguists agree that in the best case, not more than 10% of the populations of French-speaking Africa are truly fluent in French, even if the official rates are higher for reasons very well known. As an illustration, Kom took the case of Senegal and Algeria, two countries where the French presence was the longest in Africa. In the case of Senegal, Kom explains, after three hundred years of French colonization, the country has only about 10% of the population that truly masters the language of Voltaire. It is also the case in Algeria where, after one hundred twenty-six years of colonization, the country had about 15% of boys and 6% of girls who attended school in 1954 (Kom 2000:110-111). Note that among these literate boys and girls, at least in the case of Niger, many can barely write and sign their names!

The case of Niger is also good to think about by those who want to sell Francophonie, claiming the role of the French language as a tool of interethnic communication and the role it played in the national unity. For if it is admitted that only 10% of the population uses French, we must also add that there are ten ethnic groups in the country. Assuming that the ten groups had equal access to school, which is not certain, how many elites of each group are fluent in French? Logically no more than 1%! This is to say that in reality only 1% of the population of each group can communicate effectively in French with all the other nine ethnic groups. In light of the above facts, the opportunities for national unity by the French language are rather slim[20].

In the same vein, William Safran argues that "a common language does not guarantee national unity" (in Landau, ed. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, vol.137 (1999:61). Indeed, the case of Somalia illustrates the argument defended by Safran because this country is, according to Gerard (1990: 73), "the only sub-Saharan country with full ethnic homogeneity"; except, to some extent, Burundi and Lesotho. And yet Somalia seems now more than ever torn by internal conflicts. This means that other reasons have to be looked for outside multilingualism (see also Bamgbose 1994). What then?

 

 

The future of Francophonie in Africa South of the Sahara

Ambroise Kom and others have proposed a change in the educational systems, a change whose primary purpose will be "the domestication of the French language" which necessarily entails a certain valorization and development of African languages. Especially because linguists and educators are unanimous that the teaching of mother tongues in primary school education plays a significant role in the transmission of theoretical and professional knowledge and above all in the learning of a second or foreign language like French in Africa. That is one of the conclusions that Tabi-Manga (2000) and many others have learned from the British experience. Moreover, that experience has been confirmed by all the experimental schools of Francophone countries which nevertheless continue to exclude the local languages from teaching in the other schools. So teaching the African languages alongside French in our schools must be the condition of our presence in a new Francophonie that is fair, balanced, supportive and respectful of our identity. It is also one of the major challenges facing Francophonie in Africa south of Sahara.

 

 

Conclusion

It is Hamani Diori, former president of the Republic of Niger, who is cited as the architect of the institutional Francophonie for having been credited with the initiative of ACCT and it is indeed Leopold Sédar Senghor, poet, Academician and former president of Senegal who is recognized as the greatest theorist and ideologue in chief of the Francophonie movement.[21](Kom 2000:111; my translation)

 

 

So born in Niamey on the banks of the River Niger and weaned in Dakar on the banks the River Senegal before joining its ancestors on the banks of the Seine in France, it is still in Africa that Francophonie is facing its greatest challenges. Growing pains or crises of identity, Francophonie is facing challenges and paradoxes that are threatening to destroy it in the absence of necessary reforms. For Jean-Pierre van Deth, the Francophone countries "have contributed in their way, and for various reasons, to the current supremacy of English[22]" (in Calvet 1993: 133; my translation). Indeed, in Africa south of Sahara, the decline of the French language is mainly due to the linguistic and cultural policy that France conducted during colonization and continues to practice after independence with the complicity of African leaders. Already in 1985 Mohamadou Kane lamented the fact that some French cultural assistants and African nationals "with the support of the local political power, can deprive the education specialist of the country of any pedagogical initiative[23]" (in Beniamino 1999: 182; my translation).

Fifteen years later, Ambroise Kom (2000: 52) notes with regret that Notre Librairie "is a creation of the French Ministry of Cooperation and Foreign Affairs and the Commissariat Général de la Langue Française. Its objective is to popularize African literary production in the continent and in the other French-speaking nations of the world. The offices of Notre Librairie are located in the Ministry of Cooperation and its editors are all staff of that Ministry.  Although Notre Librairie requests numerous [external] scientific collaborations, the journal is primarily an instrument of propaganda; extremely attentive to the image that African states want to give of themselves and of their culture[24]." (my translation)

Given the poverty of African countries and the low level of the linguistic consciousness that characterize them and the financial and political means available to the Francophonie, we can say without any risk of error that the image of Africa, and especially of their respective countries that these leaders will give is largely created by and for the needs of the Francophonie. (See also Serge Bourjea in Beniamino 1999: 189-190). But if in spite of all of the above facts, one can still conclude that Francophonie is a failure then it becomes necessary to draw the appropriate lessons.

The fundamental lesson comes from the experience of the British or Anglophonie: namely the need to change the education systems in Francophone Africa south of Sahara. The aim is to introduce the teaching of local languages as a necessary complement to the French language. Without this complementarity, warns Calvet (1993: 167), "there will be no future for the French language” (my translation), especially since the introduction of African languages in primary education in the former British colonies has not stopped English from flourishing. Instead the language of Shakespeare is thriving so well that it has become a point of concern for the Minister Debré (Kom 2000).

Moreover, local cultures are much more developed in the English speaking countries than in Francophone countries. For Abdou Moumouni, the possibility of a flowering of African cultures on the side of English was finally the mark of the difference between the British colonization, with its education system tolerating the teaching of local languages, and that of France which dreamed of a universal language, French. Moumouni explains that this difference is "not in any philanthropic tendency of English colonization compared with the French, but in the objectively greater possibilities of cultural development which flow from even the partial use of African languages in schools "(in Michelman 1995:220; emphasis added).

In addition, the teaching of African languages will enable students to have a better perception of their languages and identities, without forgetting that it will allow an increase in enrollment rates. It is probably no coincidence, says Gabriel Manessy (1994: 26), if Togo and Benin, two countries where the schools of the German missions kept the traditions of teaching in local languages, quickly became, according to a famous formula, the "Latin Quarter" of francophone west Africa while Senegal, even after three hundred years of French colonization, is not very far from Niger, often showcased as the worst example in Africa in terms of schooling.

After the reform of schools, universities in francophone Africa south of the Sahara as well as in the metropolis must in their turn be reformed to become more interested in African Francophone literature. Because they have been created in the image of French universities, Kom (2000) reminds us, Francophone African universities do not give enough importance to their own cultures through the teaching of national literatures in French as well as in local national languages. For example, none of these universities, with the exception of the University of Yaoundé (although the case of Cameroon is unique because of its bilingual situation: French and English), has within it a department of African languages and / or national literatures. By contrast, in Nigeria, for example, some universities have curricula in Master (MA) and doctorate (PhD) degrees in the three languages of wider communication: Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo. And for many years it has been possible to have a Master or a PhD entirely written and defended in these languages. Akinwumi Isola informs us that at the University of Ife, for example, the first PhD entirely written in Yoruba was defended on March 7, 1991 (in Research in African Literatures 23 / 1 (1992: 21).

By contrast, adds Kom, in Dakar, Abidjan, and Ouagadougou as well as in Brazzaville and Niamey, some go out of their ways to ensure that the place given to national and African literatures does not exceed the tolerable threshold for those who will judge the equivalence or integration across the different administrations. The reference is still to the French curriculum. And Ambroise Kom (2000: 168) concludes that "There is no irony to say that the example should still come from France. [For] ... the reality is that African universities, although they are autonomous, have a cultural contract to honor: that of not taking the risk of straying too far away from the old model of the metropolis. It is therefore important that the example comes from elsewhere and that French universities themselves set the tone [see also Alexandre 1961] and serve as models for their African counterparts. Because if the French university had granted the Francophone literatures of Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere a special place in their programs, Africa would not have hesitated as to develop the teaching of its own literatures and that of other francophone countries around the world[25]." (my translation) It is also our conviction. Moreover, the future of the Francophonie in Africa south of Sahara will largely depend on these reforms.

 

References

• Alexandre, Pierre. « Problèmes linguistiques des états négro-africains à l’heure de l’indépendance.»Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines2/6 (1961):177-195.
• Bamgbose, Ayo, « Pride and Prejudice in Multilingualism and Development. » Richard Fordon et al; eds. African Languages, Development and the State.London : Routledge, 1994 :33-43.
• Baniamino, Michel.La francophonie littéraire: essai pour une théorie. Paris/Montréal : L’Harmattan, 1999.
• Blachère, Jean-Claude.Négritures. Les écrivains d’Afrique noire et la langue française. Paris : L’Harmattan, 1993.
• Béti, Mongo. « L’écrivain francophone, le public, la société. »Littératures africaines : dans quelle(s) langue(s) ?Yaoundé : Silex/Nouvelles du Sud, 1997 :237-242.
• Brench, A.C.The Novelists’ Inheritance in French Africa: Writers from Senegal to Cameroon.London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967.
• Calvet, Jean-Louis.L’Europe et ses langues.Paris: Plon, 1993.
• Crowder, Michael.Senegal: A Study in French Assimilation Policy. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
• Gerard, Albert.Contexts of African Literature. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1990.
• Ibnlfassi, Laila and Nicki Hitchcott, eds.African Francophone Writing: A Critical Introduction.Oxford: BERG, 1996.
• Joubert, Jean-Louis et al.Les littératures francophones depuis 1945. Paris : Bordas : 986.
• Kom, Ambroise. La malédiction africaine : défis culturels et condition postcoloniale en Afrique. Yaoundé : Lit/Clé, 2000.
• Labouret, Henri. « L’éducation des indigènes : méthodes britanniques et françaises.»L’Afrique Française 38(1928) : 404-411.
• Léon, Antoine.Colonisation, enseignement et éducation : étude historique et comparative. Paris : L’Harmattan, 1991.
• Manessy, Gabriel.Le français en Afrique noire : mythes, stratégies, pratiques.Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.
• Mamdani, Mahmood.Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Meyer, Birgit et al. eds.Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure. Oxford: Institute of Social Studies/Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
• Michelman, Fredric. « French and British Colonial Language Policies: A Comparative View of Their Impact on African Literature. »Research in African Literatures26/4 (Winter 1995): 216-225.
• Moura, Jean-Marc.La littérature des lointains : histoire de l’exotisme européen au XXe siècle. Paris : Honore Champion, 1998.
• Spear, Thomas C. « Introduction. »La culture française vue d’ici et d’ailleurs, 2002 :9-37.
• Spencer, John. « Colonial Language Policies and their Legacies in Sub-Saharan Africa. » Joshua A. Fishman, ed.Advances in Language Planning. The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1974: 163-175.
• Valentin, Christian. « La francophonie et la langue française. »Revue des Deux Mondes, (nov.-déc. 2001) :52-59.
• Walter, Harriette.L’aventure des langues en occident : leur origine, leur histoire, leur géographie. Paris : Ed. Robert Laffont, 1994.
• Ya Rubango, Nyunda. «  Le Congo et l’Afrique face aux enjeux et aux paradoxes de la francophonie.»Revue Canadienne des Etudes Africaines, vol.33, Nos 2/3 : 571-583.

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I. INTRODUCTION

“It was not until the intensification of popular struggles for democracy in the 1980s that African scholars turned their attention specifically to the question of democracy on the continent” (Archie Mafeje: 1999).

 

According to Archie, the above is not to say there was no awareness of democracy prior to the 80s, but rather for the purpose of highlighting the emergence of its dramatic proportion as a result of the growing euphoria for democracy among African [scholars]. Hence the clamor for liberal democracy by Africans was a somewhat reactionary attempt against the growing ruthlessness and despotic manifestations by many African governments with their actions devoid of every anticipated positive payoff of breaking from the colonial yoke. Such actions included the institution by many, of one party systems, characterized by limited rule of law, dwindling economies, growing abject poverty, domestic conflicts; the absence of popular participation, and where it exists, sometimes in the form of elections, they are marred by intimidation, fraud and so on.

Consequently, the agitation for “second independence” as put by Ake was all the more desirable by many Africans. It served as a catalyst for a more deepened call for democratic pluralism around Africa as the answer to our governance vis-à-vis development problems.

However, as indicated above, liberal democracy was embraced by Africans to offer ‘heavenly solutions’ to Africa’s governance and development predicaments. Therefore, against the foregoing, this article examines liberal democracy by highlighting its nature and form taking due cognizance of its practice in Africa. Second, it shall assess to what extent liberal democracy has delivered on its anticipated objectives in Africa amidst high hopes to restore the shattered anticipated development and prosperity that post-independence was meant to usher in. Finally, the paper makes an attempt to suggest a possible solution to the existing problems of the systemic and the managerial aspects of African governance.

 

II. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AS A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

• THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

Democracy has been defined in various ways using different approaches. Seward argues that the best approach is to look at those countries known to be democratic and define the concept according to the main features of their practice. (Seward 1994:6-2 1)

For Beetham, who takes the second approach the core principle of a democratic system are those embodied in the historical conception of democracy as “rule of the people” i.e. popular control or sovereignty and political equality? (Beetham 1993:6).

According to Holden who constructs a conception of political democracy, inclusive citizenship and political equality are basic principles of a democratic system. (Holden 1974:7-9).

The definitions reviewed above seem to agree that there are four basic elements or core values of a democratic system i.e. equality, sovereignty/control and inclusiveness. These include majority rule and participation, equality, freedom, consensus, coercion, competition, pluralism, constitutional rule and more.

Seward develops the assumption that in a democratic system “all citizens are equal with respect to their right to decide the appropriate political course of their community”.

It is important to state here that the basic characteristics of democracy are just more than the three-core principles highlighted above. The pillars of democracy include:

• Free press

• Respect for human rights

• Constitutionalism

• Free and fair elections (regular)

• Separation of powers

• Popular participation

• Majority rule with respect for the (minority etc

• Pluralism.

 

With all these pillars one can then argue that many political systems across the continent are, at least structurally, democratic. This definition of democracy has been re-emphasised by the Western donors viz: IMF/World Bank since the 1980s when democracy in the sense of popular participation, good governance and respect for human rights including press freedom were a prerequisite for obtaining their assistance. It is on the basis of this equality assumption that Seward develops a general defining rule of democracy ‘Within the theory of democracy”. Thus, according to this rule “substantive policy, and politics and administrative actions performed under substantive policy must correspond to the expressed preferences of a majority of citizens” In other words” there should be necessary correspondence between acts of a government and the equally weighted expressed wishes of citizens with respect to those acts. This is what Seward calls “responsive rule” and for him” a political system is democratic to the extent that and only to the extent that it involves realisation of the responsive rule”.

The problem of the “responsive rule” definition is that it appears to suggest direct, rather than, representative forms of decision making as the favourite. This is because direct decision-making processes are certainly more responsive than the representative forms. But in Africa in general and in West Africa in particular, what obtains is the representative mechanisms of decision-making. To remedy this shortcoming of “the responsive rule” definition, which he himself acknowledges, Saward identifies some core principles or minimal conditions and describes them as “the logically necessary conditions of democracy”. These principles are: Basic Freedoms, citizenship and participation, administrative code, publicity and social rights.

So for a political system to be democratic, at least from the liberal democracy point of view, it has to observe and respect the basic freedoms of the individual and it also must have a common and standardised form of legal membership compatible with the basic freedoms. There should also be appropriate codes of procedure for employees in public bodies, for decisions to be taken into effect and a constant formal process of public notification of decisions, opinions, arguments, issues and outcomes of all these conditions or basic principles of democracy.

According to Saward, there is another view, which believes that democracy, being the rule of the people by the people and for the people implies, in political terms, the right of the people to freely choose their representatives. In his opinion “a democratic administration is one in which the people, all the people, are enabled to express a free choice on all matters affecting them”. (Saward 1994:6-21).

For Hague and Harrop, liberal democracy, particularly in the modern time, means that citizenship is no longer an elite status but it is now extended to the vast majority of the adult population. Likewise, today’s democracies are representative rather than direct (Hague and Harrop 2004: 38-39) Thus, elections under this system are regarded as an expression rather than a denial of democracy. According to this view, the meaning of democracy in the modern time is contrary to what the ancient Greeks viewed it to be. For the Greeks, elections were used as an “instrument of aristocracy” that is, a “device for selecting qualified people for technical tasks which required an unfortunate departure from self government” (Hague and Harrop 2004: 38-39)

The modern meaning of liberal democracy also includes:  A system of government based on a liberal philosophy in which the scope of state powers is restricted by the constitution. Thus under liberal democracy the constitution is supreme and then followed by the legislature. (Hague and Harrop 2004: 38-39)

This is a direct reference to the modern concept of the “rule of law” which emphasizes the supremacy of the authority of the law. Rule of law in this sense is one of the basic components and essential ingredients of democratic governance under the liberal democracy construction.  

According to the Liberal democratic construction both rural of law and constitutional rule are essential for a system of government to be truly democratic and the two principles are further explained below.

 

The rule of law

By the rule of law is meant the supremacy of the authority of the law that all people and institutions are equally subjected the control and dictates of the law. The principle of the rule of law teaches about the equality of people before the law and equal protection of the law, the legality of the administrative acts of the political authorities and fairness or constitutionality of the legal authority backing the legislative and administrative activities of the government of the day. In order words it is not only enough to govern by law, but the law that we use to govern must be just, fair and reasonable.

 

Constitutional rule

The principle of constitutional rule as a core-element of a democratic system can only be effective if the Constitution enjoys a supremacy status within the political system. The concept of constitutional supremacy teaches that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and all other laws, executive decisions and administrative activities of the government of the day must be in conformity with the constitution, otherwise, they are declared null and void by a court of competent jurisdiction. This principle has been established in section 4 of the 1997 Constitution of the second republic of The Gambia. Constitutional supremacy also ensures a more conducive environment for the observance of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

This brief explanation of the nature and characteristics of liberal democracy as a system of government is absolutely necessary because it clearly shows that the problems of African governance are not originating from this system of governance. Rather they could possibly be due to the poor and irresponsible attitude of leaders of post independence Africa in most countries of the continent 

  

III. DEMOCRACY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

• GOVERNANCE AND GOVERNMENT

While government refers to the machinery and institutional arrangements for the exercise of sovereign power for serving the internal and external interests of the political community, governance implies the process as well as the result of making authoritative decisions for the benefit of society. (Mander and Asif, 2004 P.11)

Thus, governance means the act or process of governing, specifically, authoritative decisions and control. (Webster’s dictionary) Governance is the interaction between formal institutions and those in civil society. Another definition describes governance as “a process whereby elements in society wield power, authority and influence and enact policies and decisions concerning public life and social uplift”. (Mander and Asif 2004, P.12.) For the World Bank, governance is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development. Consequently, the term governance includes public sector management, accountability, the legal framework, transparency and information”. Many governments, international organisations, and multilateral and bilateral donor agencies including the Asian Development Bank share this World Bank’s understanding of the notion of governance. (The World Bank 1992 Governance and Development P.1, and Mander and Asif 2004, P. 12)

Consequently, governance refers to “the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal (or human) rights (and fundamental freedoms), meet their obligations and mediate their differences”. (Mader & Asif bid) also (A.A Senghore, PhD: 2010).

The act of exercising economic, political and administrative powers of the state to manage its affairs at all levels becomes democratic when the exercise is conducted and the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which such authority is exercised are created and functioned in accordance with the spirit of the basic principles of democratic governance identified above (A.A Senghore, PhD: 2010).

In other words, a democratic government must be guided by a constitution, the principle of respect for human rights and the rule of law and free participation of citizenry in the government of their country. Modern international human rights conventions have guaranteed the right of every citizen to participate freely in the government of their country and to have equal access, on the basis of non-discrimination, to the government and its services. (Arts.2 1 of the University Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and 13 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights).

However, beyond defining the concept of democracy as a participatory system of Government, the emphasis from the 1980s was on good governance a concept that involves bottom top participation from the election and empowerment of officials of the local governments to the legislature and executive, the free press is underscored to create an atmosphere of transparency. It is expected to inform and also expose shady deals, corruption, nepotism, ineptitude, election malpractices etc. It is therefore intended to play the role of a watchdog, Press freedom is not only a basic component of democracy but it is also a central element of good governance. This brings us to a very important question that needs to be addressed viz: What is good governance, is it the same as democratic governance? And has liberal democracy been able to ensure good governance for post independence Africa? (A.A Senghore, PhD: 2010).

 

• WHAT IS GOOD GOVERNANCE?

The above discussion on the nature of governance implies that governance has three major components namely, process, content and deliveries. Factors such as transparency and accountability are included in the process while values like justice and equity are included in the content of governance. The third element (deliveries) ensures that the citizens especially the poorest have the basic needs and live a life with dignity. It needs to be clarified at this juncture that being able to deliver does not by itself constitute good governance, there is no doubt that a dictatorship that delivers basic needs to the citizens is better than a dictatorship that does not, but this is not enough to be good governance. (Mader and Asif 2004: 14-15)

Good governance on the other hand implies an administration that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of the people and is effective in coping with emerging challenges in society by strictly adhering to and implementing the principles of democracy discussed above. For the World Bank, good governance “is epitomized by predictable, opened and enlightened policy making, a bureaucracy imbued with a professional ethos, an   executive arm of government accountable for its actions and a strong civil society participation in public affairs and all behaving under the rule of law”. This description of good governance by the World Bank obviously epitomises the democratic principles of transparency, accountability, participation, respect for the rule of law and separation of powers. The European Union believes that “in the context of a political and institutional environment that upholds human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, good governance is the transparent and accountable management of human, natural, economic and financial resources for equitable and sustainable development”. (Mander and Asif 2004:15) This envisages a situation where there are clear decision making procedures at the level of public authorities, transparent and accountable institutions, the primacy of law in managing and distributing resources and capacity building for elaborating and implementing anti corruption measures. Government of the Netherlands added the elements of security, decentralisation and participation of civil society to the EU’s definition of good governance. It argues that good governance must allow “a responsible economic and financial management of public and natural resources for the purpose of economic growth, social development and poverty reduction in an equitable and sustainable manner, with the use of clear participatory procedures for public decision-making, transparent and accountable institutions, primacy of law in the management and distribution of resources, effective measures to prevent and combat corruption, support for leadership and empowerment of men and women”. (Mander and Asif 2004:15)

These two definitions of good governance by the EU and the government of the Netherlands have substantially incorporated the principles and basic characteristics of democratic governance already alluded to. However, it is obvious from the exposition of both democratic and good governance that sometimes emphasis is laid on the managerial aspect of governance while at some point the focus is on the systemic aspect. The former is a characteristic of the definition of good governance whereas the latter is a natural outcome of the definition of democratic governance. Whatever the case maybe, for the government of the day to be both good and democratic, the two aspects of governance (systemic and managerial) must be adequately enforced. In other words, the system within which one governs must be based on the core values of democracy while the style and manner of managing the resources and affairs of a country are not only transparent, accountable or effective but also equitable and sustainable. However, it is important to note at this juncture that the system highlighted above can only be followed and exhaustively utilised if our leaders demonstrate positive and responsible attitude in the governing process of their respective jurisdictions. 

  

• HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

In the modem art of governance, the linkage between democracy and human rights is not only real but it is genuinely crucial. The two are not necessarily the same but it is fair to say that any struggle for democracy particularly in Africa, is by definition a struggle for human rights. Furthermore, human rights do not exist or prosper in undemocratic societies.

According to Zehra Arat “Where a political system falls on the scale of democracy largely depends on the extent to which it recognises and enforces civil and political rights. The more strongly civil and political rights are reinforced in a society the more democratic it becomes”. (Zahra Arat 2000:2-4) The international human rights movement has, both in theory and practice, always emphasised democratic principles. The global and regional instruments have identified several democratic principles as fundamental human rights. These include popular participation, multiple political parties, freedom of expression and press freedom, equal access to public services, periodic and genuine elections. Democracy is about those values and they are also fundamental human rights. This explains why human rights are a basic value for a genuine democratic system of governance under liberal democracy construction.

In view of the above argument, one may conclude that democratic governance itself is a fundamental human right. To conclude, liberal democracy as depicted in this section is undoubtedly a sound system of governance and regardless of my criticism of the concept below, democracy if applied the way it is explained could definitely have substantially resolved may of the crises and complications of African governance in the modern time. It follows from this exposition that the problems of governance in Africa are not as a result of the system of government adopted by the post independence leaders but they are, as I have already alluded to, due to the attitude of leader and politicians from all over the continent.

The section below briefly examines the nature and types of the political and leadership crises in post independence Africa 

  

IV. NATURE OF THE GOVERNANCE CRISIS UNDER LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES IN AFRICA 

The nature of the governance problems in Africa keeps on changing from one form to another.  During the few years that immediately followed independence, Africa was engulfed in destructive and senseless civil wars, whereas throughout the period of the cold war the continent became a favorite playground for the supper powers.  This unfortunate situation produced a unique brand of leadership problem for Africa which aggravated the continent’s governance crisis.  The leaders of this period were giving priority to their own personal or individualistic interests on one hand and on the other, they put the economic, political and strategic interests of their foreign masters and allies above those of the indigenous people whose interests they were exclusively contracted to serve.

In some cases, the problems were systemic in nature.  While some leaders introduced unpopular and failed Marxist economic policies without the consent of their people, others haphazardly pursued western capitalist economic models and as a result they horribly failed their people.  There were other leaders, who by their style of leadership, engaged their countries in senseless and destructive wars, as a result of which they sinked their national economies.  Furthermore, those internal conflicts enabled the leaders concerned to loot their national treasuries and therefore exposing millions of Africans across the continent to abject poverty. 

As a result of economic exploitation, political repression and the eventual failure of the social welfare and public service delivery systems throughout Africa, millions of Africans are, today, exposed to severe economic hardships, political instability and socio-economic insecurity.  As a result of the crisis of the post independence period particularly during the 1970s and 1980s most economies in Africa experienced dramatic decline and eventual down fall (Al Mufruki, 2001).

 Domestic conflicts and civil wars count for more than 70% of the leadership crisis during this period.  In 2001 it was estimated that “there was a war in at least one out of three (African) countries and there was only a relative peace in the continent.  The situation continued to be tense, either due to ethnic and regional troubles or religious disagreements” (Al Mufruki, 2001).

The crisis highlighted above, though sometimes appearing in different forms, continue to exist together with other problems, to the present day and they still obstruct Africa’s economic development and progress.  Those wide ranging problems include the following: mall electoral practices, disputes over election results, persistent refusal by incumbent leaders to share power with political opponents, the spread of civilian led autocratic rule and military dictatorships which block all means of democratic and peaceful leadership succession, the unprecedented rise of the cost of living and basic commodities at a time when only 4% of national budgets are currently spent on agriculture, the dramatic increase in the cost of fertilizer, the continuous rise in the cost of fuel, the instances of daily power cuts because of inadequate generating capacity or severe shortage of fuel for heavy duty generators, the absence of potential foreign investors from many countries in our continent due to poor infrastructure and communication facilities, poor human rights records of governments across Africa.  (Richard Dowden, 2008).

The economic and political situations in Africa today are still fragile and too bad for the continent to regain the ground it has lost.  Growth rates are still very low in many countries, poverty is still rampant and wide spread, national economies of the majority of countries are fragile and therefore vulnerable to domestic and external shocks, domestic savings are very low, many countries continue still to depend to a large extent, on foreign products for their basic commodities and human rights violations and abuses continue to be rampant.  There is gross inadequate support and poor management of the agricultural sector and the continent is still unable “to reap the full benefits of globalization – a process that could increase the resources available for productive investment that Africa needs so badly (Alhassan Outtara, 1999).

The democratic successes recorded by Ghana and Senegal recently and also Mali before its current political crises in achieving democratic and peaceful leadership succession through free and fair electoral processes are few but positive exceptions to the picture painted above.  There is a general tendency on the part of many African analysts of viewing Africa’s problems in terms of the excesses of individual dictators and autocratic leaders and their wrong doings.  They argue that it was these irresponsible leaders who turned several parts of the continent into killing fields in senseless wars and that only their removal from power, preferably through democratic and peaceful means, can make a difference.  In order words, a change in government through democratic means is the main pre-requisite for making a fresh start and attracting foreign investments and economic aids crucial to rescue their economies.  (Tunde Obodina, 2000) In 1996 alone the international humanitarian mission to Africa cost more than 3 billion US dollars whereas only one third of this money could have been used to comprehensively address the entire economic and developmental problems of the warring countries.  While the rest of the money could do a lot of good things toward solving the continent’s entire economic and developmental problems.

All these crises are happening under liberal democracies of various forms with periodic elections taking place every where across the continent. Thus, it is genuine to ask at this juncture whether the governance crises in Africa are as a result of the adoption of liberal democracy as a system of government in most part of the continent or such problems are originated in the negative and irresponsible attitude of leaders of the post independence Africa. The latter, as suggested by many governance and legal experts, human rights advocates, researchers and academics from across the continent, are being described as the main cause of the governance and developmental problems of post independence Africa (AA Senghore, PhD: 2010)   

  

V. LOOKING AT DEMOCRACY AS AN IDEOLOGY OR AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

“It is correct to generalize that after the collapse of the Soviet Union the majority of the world perceived democracy as an instrument of social progress" (Lumumba-Kasongo: 2005). This strong assumption engulfs Africans too. However, this drive towards democratization, to be specific, liberal democracy had produced mixed results for Africa.  Thus, at this juncture, it will be imperative to reflect over the democratic project in Africa. Many African countries, after independence, were engulfed in a wave of democratization as the perceived magic formula for the achievement of their development agenda, justice, freedom, equality, and economic independence.

However, there emerged stumbling blocks to the achievement of such grandiose ideas that were anticipated. As a result of ideological warfare between the Capitalist West and the Communist East (Soviet and the former Eastern Bloc), the democratic project was hijacked and as indicated above Africa became an ideological battle ground for these competing powers. The institutions that were intended to serve this purpose for the achievement of justice, freedom, equality and development were turned into agents of manipulation for the furtherance of their agendas. The resultant polarization contributed to the establishment of the most notorious dictators in Africa, including Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu of D R Congo and Eyadema of Togo (Lumumba-Kasongo: 2005).  Also, and as explained above, the fulfillment of frequent renewal of mandate for legitimacy purposes as a democratic principle has proven to be another stumbling block to the sustenance of democracies in Africa. This, where it exists at all, it happens in the form of elections which are, often marred by violence and often generates enough potential for a country to slide into conflict as was the case few years ago in Kenya during its post-election skirmishes and currently in Egypt. 

Another challenge to this effort was the disintegration of an “independence consensus.” This consensus cut across ethnic boundaries and availed the independence movements around Africa a unified front to attain independence.  However, soon this consensus will break and pose a serious challenge to the existence of the state itself and consequently the democratic project in Africa. 

This is clearly demonstrated by the bloody conflict in Somalia in the Horn of Africa and before in Liberia and Serra Leone in the Manu-river region of West Africa.

The objective of this enumeration, however, is not meant to be exhaustive, but to avail us the picture of the democratic process in Africa, and some of its challenges as a lead up to discussing the variants of liberal democracy.

  

VI. THE LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IMPERATIVE

The form of liberal democracy we have today may not, in fact, be synonymously represented by what has been propounded by the enlightenment philosophers. According to this small group of intellectuals, man’s actions should be guided by reason and underpinned by principles of liberty and equality. This whole idea of liberalism was to counter the widely held notions like divine kingship or absolutism. The questioning of such ruler ship was regarded blasphemous. These awkward notions led to the birth of liberalism and subsequent institution of systems of government as counter measures against aristocratic and monarchical rule. Efforts at the institution of liberalism can be traced to the French and American Revolutions. Their resultant governments represent a prototype liberal government.  It met stiff resistance from the royal houses or traditional monarchy.  In the face of this resistance, nonetheless, it was able to mainstream itself by the end of the nineteenth century and, since then have become the dominant theory of government, enjoying the endorsement of a myriad of the political spectrum.

However, it is worth noting that the symbiotic relationship between democracy and liberalism has not been an all rosy one, given their points of emphasis. It is argued that liberals are not necessarily democrats (Kilcullen: 2000) Liberalism, in its classical form, is highly individualistic and, democracy is often viewed as a collectivist ideal concerned with the empowering of the masses as underscored by R. S. Kilcullen:

In the early 19th Century, when liberalism was in its heyday, the term liberal democracy would have seemed paradoxical or even contradictory. Liberals were frankly against democracy, because they believe it was incompatible with freedom and that it was even more important than freedom. (Kilcullen: 2000)

 

This shows a dichotomy between the two concepts. Notwithstanding, liberalism and democracy have all come to mean one and the same thing, thus the term liberal democracy (Satori, cited in Bo Li: What is constitutionalism), refers to the system of representative democracy as propagated in and followed by the West and Westernized systems across the World.

Today, however, liberal democracy has become a household name around the world including Africa. The classical notions about liberalism provided a suitable ground for the emergence and adopting of liberal democracy around the world.  The word liberal democracy can be best described as a fuzzy word, given the multitude of its variants that are practiced elsewhere and in Africa. Furthermore, despite this problem of inconsistency in its philosophical foundation and basic premise, liberal democracy, both as a concept and a political system, has managed not only to survive but also to function effectively as a viable system of governance and administration.

The post-independence era saw a trial moment for Africans in terms of instituting governance systems.  This was manifested by the fact that, newly independent states adopted several forms of governance systems at given periods of their statehood. However, one thing that was certain, was liberal democracy came to outplay any other form of governance system. Hence, many governments began to cast themselves from the shadows of other competing ideologies they bought into.  However, if the embracing of liberal democracy in Africa was to salvage the failings of African governments, many have been disappointed. 

Another factor was the position of the West in order for Africans to benefit from their aid and loans.  It was widely lamented by the West, as espoused by World Bank policies, that Africa’s underdevelopment and many other crises were because of lack of democracy and competitive markets in the continent. This impliedly shows that, it is democracy that can bring prosperity and glory to Africa. This resulted in a ‘wild goose’ chase by Africans to institute democratic governance (i.e. liberal democracy). This was described by Michael Huntington as the third wave of democratization.

These measures included the introduction of multipartyism, conduct of frequent elections, constitutional liberalism, and emphasis on rule of law, more economic liberalism and creation of political parties to provide for popular participation. All these measures are to usher in a renewed hope in the minds of Africans who have already or might be suffering at the hands of their incapable and in effective leaders.

In the light of the foregoing, the critiquing shall be examining how African governments delivered on such grandiose objectives that liberal democracy has promised. Against that background, I shall be looking at the processes and their ramifications to highlight the contradictions between the theory and the practice of liberal democracy and a subsequent discussion of its strengths and failures in Africa to propose, as already noted earlier, a possible alternative or solution that would address Africa’s governance ills.

The twin ideals of popular participation and limited government are, in many African countries, under an increasing threat posed by the shellfish and irresponsible attitude of leaders across the continent.

Multipartyism as a fundamental tenet of liberal democracy aimed at providing that framework for popular participation saw a widespread institution in Africa in the 1990s amidst the demise of the Cold War. This liberal tenet reinforces the classical idea that power to make government and rule lies in the hands of the sovereigns. This is deemed to enable the populace hold their leaders accountable to the electorate. Therefore, multipartyism provides that room for public discourse capturing a myriad of opinions that are held by independent people. This marks a leap in the democratization process in Africa.

However, despite this perceived leap forward in Africa’s democratic transition, multipartyism has not developed to a stage where all political groups agree to compete with one another on a level playing field (Oliver de Sardan, 2000). Parties are created to partake in elections to avail citizens the choice to elect their rulers. However, election exercises in fulfillment of this basic tenet of liberal democracies, most often in Africa, defeats its purpose. The rational of elections, serving as a check on elected officials fails in many instances, where these officials in essence become so powerful because they are actually chosen by “hidden hands.” This is manifested through governments personalizing state resources to influence election outcomes in their favour. However, it may be worth noting that this may not be a problem arcane to Africa alone, but many democracies around the world. Cassen and Clairmont, also expounded (cited in Kasongo,2005) that the holding of multiparty elections is nothing but an alibi aimed at qualifying them for the benefits of an already fowled individualistic system. 

African governments in their bid to curry favour with the donor countries give-in to their conditionality, allowing for the West to plunder the crucial natural resources and African markets. Hence an election in Africa becomes qualifying criteria for accessing donor money which has so far failed to solve any of the content’s chronic governance problems.  The economic and political situations are still fragile and too bad for the continent to regain the ground it has lost.  Growth rates are still very low in many countries, poverty and corruption continued to be rampant and wide spread, national economies of the majority of countries are still fragile and therefore continue to be vulnerable to domestic and external shocks, domestic savings are very low, many countries continue still to depend to a large extent, on foreign products for their basic commodities. Thus elections have so far failed to address or resolve the problems of governance in Africa.  

Instead, elections have become source of conflicts around Africa, as observed most recently in Kenya, Madagascar and almost Senegal in most recently and, earlier on in Ethiopia.  Also political party support in Africa has always been galvanized along ethnic, tribal and regional lines. This serves as a potential source of flaring up violence.  The Kenyan post election violence between the Kikuyu and the Luos and the Shona and Ndebele case in Zimbabwe are a clear manifestation of ethnically and regionally charged politics in Africa.

Election induced violence and political persecution are contributing factors for Africa’s becoming the world biggest refuges generating continent. Thus  today, more than ten million of the world’s fourteen million displaced persons are from Africa (US State Department Website) Another limiting factor to the realization of the rationale behind liberal thinking about elections is the high illiteracy levels in Africa, where the majority of electorates constitute illiterates, as in West Africa where illiterates constitute about 60% of the populace (National Census of the Gambia - 2003) Therefore, they cannot understand the programmes of their candidates. This simply suggest that they may be voting based on sentiments which does not help in making a rational and informed choice or decision.

The biggest problem of the electoral process is that the outcome does not truly reflect the will of the people and that it always leads to establishing elective dictatorships. According to the leader of the then Green Revolution in Libya, the electoral process always culminates in the victory of a candidate with only a simple majority i.e. about 51% of the total number of votes cast.  This is a dictatorship   established in the guise of a democratic process because the remaining 49% of the electorate who did not vote for the wining candidate would be governed by a government that they never like and never voted for but it is being imposed upon them.  Al Gathafi pointed out in the Green Book another serious flow in the electoral process.  According to him the parliament as an arm of government instituted as a result of the electoral process is essentially established in the name of the people. Yet this underlying principle is in itself undemocratic since democracy means the power of the people and not power vested in elected members of parliament in the name of the people.  (Al- Gathafi 2005- latest edition 2008) 

Another fundamental tenet of liberal democracy is rule of law. Liberalism espouses the avoidance of governmental tyranny through a limited government. This is to ensure that life, liberty and individual properties are protected.  However, these objectives remained a major challenge to African governments. Nevertheless, in the wake of the so called “third wave” of democratization, Africans have tried to mitigate such problems with the adoption of liberal constitutions. However, this attempt is stifled by the growing tendency for personal government i.e. monopolizing power by incumbents. Constitutional amendments, promulgation of draconian laws, and the hounding of the media are tactics employed by such leaders. Also, the economic liberalist policies that are promoted by the West through their agencies, the IMF and World Bank in the form of policies like the unpopular Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) then, and now the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and Bush’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) are all exploitative instruments of the West in disguise. Given Bush’s AGOA initiative, small countries like The Gambia, and other beneficiaries of the initiative, have little to profit from the venture. For instance, in the Gambian case, where it is given a quota on all textile exports when, in fact, Gambia hardly exports textile or if any, it exports on a very minimal scale. Also, the catastrophic SAPs and the calls by the IMF and the World Bank for African countries to open up their markets all wreaked havoc on Africa’s economies. And by implementing such policies, peoples’ fundamental rights are curtailed. For instance, access to basic necessities such as health, education, electricity and water thereby contributing to lower levels of living.

The theory of economic liberalism advocates for individualism which runs counter to the collectivist mindset of Africans. Collectivism has provided a social security system for many Africans. The ramifications of such development led to the disintegration of families that were led by one bread winner in the wake of the SAPs.

Liberal democracy, like all other systems, has both strengths and weaknesses. Meanwhile, the liberal democracy enterprise in Africa has succeeded in providing citizens with the platform for the exercise of their political rights, which range from participating in elections to select their representatives to exercising choice in belonging to associations. It is a more desirable outcome to authoritarian regimes. In furtherance of the ideals of liberal democracy a good number of Sub Saharan Africa countries have enjoyed debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiatives (HIPC). Riding on the back of the strong commodities boom, African economies have been growing on average from 5-6% Also on the continent people are freer now than they were under the brutal regimes of Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire and now Democratic Republic of Congo, Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, Idi Amin of Uganda and Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic (Ake: 1996).

Africans in their rush to embrace liberal democracy coupled with economic liberalism have failed to model it to mirror African realities. These realities, as indicated above, include poor infrastructure, poor communication networks, high rate of dependency and the cultural realities like the African social networks. Economic liberalism advocates for the withdrawal of the state from the activities of the market losing site of the appalling poverty among Africans. Such withdrawals gave the hungry corporations the leeway to maximize profit on the back of widespread misery. Home to this argument is the flow of oil in the backyards of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, but yet its people continued to be condemned in abject poverty. Congo may be Africa’s richest resource wise but its people ranked among the world’s poorest. All these could be attributed to the meddling into the governance arena by Multi National Corporations (MNC) with the blessing of their home governments. Governments that are sympathetic to this MNCs enjoy their support through funding of election campaigns, supply of arms to fight insurgencies. Where they do not enjoy such sympathy, they instigate insurgencies to avail them the opportunity to milk away their valuable natural resources.  The liberal agenda has helped open up Africa to the advances of global capital. The exploitation of Africa’s resources and access to its market could have been possible without the complicity of African governments (Ake: 1996).

  

VII. CONCLUSION

• MAIN FINDING

In the light of the above it is obvious that liberal democracy, regardless of whatever may be the reasons, has grossly failed to deliver the continent from its chronic leadership and economic crisis. Perhaps, liberal democracy is not the magic formula for Africa’s developmental and governance agendas. Maybe this is the time for Africa to decide whether it should experiment the different democratic variations or other systems of governance or whether the real issues are change of attitudes and not systems.

 

• WHAT IS THE REAL ISSUE?

In my view, the real issue in the overall problems of governance in Africa is not the systemic aspect of it. In other words, the particular system of governing followed by one country or the other whether it is liberal democracy as the case is in most African countries or direct democracy as the case was in Libya,  or Communism or absolute monarchy or military dictatorship as respectively witnessed in various countries across the continent, is not necessarily the cause of  the political or leadership crisis which did not only hamper development and progress in virtually every African country but it also brought the state down and lead it to fail in Somalia in the Home of Africa and Liberia and Sera Leone in the Manu-river region of West Africa in the past. Consequently, what is needed in Africa is change of attitude and not necessarily changes of systems. There are people who believe that for any governance process to be successful; it must introduce liberal democracy as a system which incorporates the good governance principles of transparency, accountability, decentralization of authority, civil society participation / promotion and protection of human rights and above all that the system must be adequately responsive to needs of the masses including the grass roots (Monder & Assif: 2004). Some governance and legal experts believe that these principles are not fully and adequately represented in many governance systems in Africa. Likewise, the Islamists across the continent world advocate for the introduction of Islamic rule and the Islamic system of government in those African countries with Muslim majorities. There is no doubt that the Islamic system of governance, which is backed by divine authority or the wholly Quran and the Sunnah or tradition of the prophet of Islam (peace be upon Him) and which is mainly characterized by administrative centralism could be a very good and viable alternative. The centralized nature of Islamic administration was typically demonstrated by the Ottoman Turks, who ruled the whole of the Islamic world under one strong central administration for about six countries. (A.A. Senghore, PhD: 2011)

However, whether it is liberal or direct democracy or an Islamic system of governance or absolute or constitutional monarchy or authoritarianism or Communism or a hybrid of any two of these systems is followed by African countries, as witnessed in some instances, the political and leadership crisis will continue to exist if attitudes are not changed.

Africans must stop viewing or considering leadership as a privilege and a source of economic and political empowerment of few individuals. Rather they must acknowledge and accept the fact that leadership is a responsibility in the first and for most instances. They must realize the need for them as leaders to sacrifice for the progress and betterment of the masses, and be truly sensitive to the legacies they will leave behind. Thus, immoral practices like nepotism, favoritism, all sorts of discrimination, corruption, greed, selfishness, irresponsibleness, autocracy and the like must be completely eradicated from the political and governance arena throughout the length and breadth of the continent. 

  

VIII. SELECTED REFERENCES

• A.A. Senghore, PhD The Judiciary in Governance under the Second Republic of The Gambia – The Quest for Autonomy under the Second Republic”, Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2(Fall 2010), pp. 215-248
• A.A. Senghore, PhD The Islamic System of Administration and its Capability to ensure lasting peace and sustainable development: A case study of Omar Ibn al Khatab’s Style of Administration (Arabic) Paper presented at the International Conference on the Islamic Civilisation and its Effectiveness for Muslims to Face the Challenges of the Modern Time held in Nouakchott – The Islamic Republic of Mauritania from the 12^th – 14^th February 2011. 
• Ake, C. (1996), Democracy and Development in Africa (Washington, DC. Brookings Institution). 
• Archie Mafeje, (1999) Democracy, Civil Society and Governance in Africa
• B. Holden (1974) the Nature of Democracy, London Thomas Nelson
• Bo Li, What is Constitutionalism: Perspectives, Vol.1, No.6 Democracy and Governance in Africa: Conclusions and papers presented at a conference of Africa Leadership Forum, Ota, Nigeria, 29 November-1 December 1991.
• David Beetham (1993), “Auditing Democracy in Britain”, Democratic Audit paper No. 1, London, Human Right Centre, University of Essex p.6.
• Michael Seward (1994), “Democratic Theory and Indices of Democratisation”, Defining and measuring Democracy, SAGE Modern politics series, vol 36, pp. 6— 21
• Holden (1974), the Nature of Democracy, London: Thomas Nelson, p. 7-9.
• Mander Harsh and Asis Muhammed, Good Governance Resource Book, Banglor, Books for Change, 2004
• Mummer Al Gathafi The Green Book: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy, the Economic Problem and the Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory Tripoli – Libya, World Center for the Study and Research of the Green Book (2005-latest edition 2008) 
• R. S. Kilcullen, Liberal democracy, 2000 (No place and date of publication indicated)
• Rod Hague and Martin Harrop Comparative Government and Politics: an introduction – sixth edition New York USA, Palgrave Macmillan (2004)
• Tumkumbi, Lumumba-Kasongo, (2005), Liberal democracy and its Critics in Africa: Political dysfunction and the struggle for social progress.
• US State Department website (www.state.gov)

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