Professor Issa Shivji is a legend in his own lifetime. He is one of the few veteran members of the leftist intelligentsia who has withstood all storms and remains firmly on the side of the people. He is truly a life long member of the ‘Africa will never, never surrender’ Club for whom ALUTA CONTINUA is not just a slogan, but a working motto. He retires from the University of Dar Es Salaam this year. He may be retired but he is certainly not tired. More importantly his colleagues, comrades, and several generations of students are not tired of him.

It is not often that Africans, especially those of us on the left, say thank you to one of us. Often we reserve our best homage till they are no longer with us. We think it is a kind of bourgeois ostentation, vanity, or what they call ‘feferity’ (ie showmanship) to celebrate individual achievements because the struggle is all that matters. Individuals, no matter how much they have contributed to our struggles, are not supposed to matter.

I have always had unease about this... It is the people that matter in the end but who are these people if not an aggregate of individuals?

It is heartening that times are changing and we are beginning to celebrate our heroes and heroines while they are still alive. The Africa Research and Resource Forum this week in Nairobi has been holding a celebratory seminar alongside a series of public debates in honour of Shivji.

One of the public lectures was entitled “Choosing leaders: The dilemmas of democracy in Africa and abroad”. It was held at the Kenya National Theatre close to the University of Nairobi and opposite the colonial edifice of the Norfolk hotel. Prominent African scholars participating in the seminar were on the panel chaired by Prof Peter Wanyande who is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Nairobi. The panelists included Prof Thandika Mkandawire; former Director of the Dakar based CODESRIA and Head of the UNRISD in Geneva: John Oyoo of the Africa Institute of South Africa; Prof Haroub Othman of the University of Dar; and Professor Mahmood Mamdani.

Thandika opened up the discussion with a Brecthian quote suggesting that in Africa the challenge of democracy may not be about the way to choose our leaders but how they choose their peoples. He was not downplaying the importance of the formal processes of free and fair elections, or rule of law and associated freedoms, instead of drawing attention to the mystification of formalities that lead to people confusing the process with the end itself. This has created a situation in many countries where people vote without choosing or become ‘choice-less voters’.

Just being chosen in an election is not enough. There are consequences for the chosen one. One of these is the obligation to be accountable to the voters. This is an area where democracy is still facing numerous challenges in Africa and elsewhere. How do we hold our chosen leaders accountable in between elections? How do we prevent them from becoming elective dictators and self-serving lots who only care for themselves? This is very important in Kenya where the MPs are among the best paid in the world. During this week President Kibaki had to turn down a salary increase awarded by the parliament that would have seen him earning more than President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Even in the so-called ‘advanced democracies’ where institutions are more developed and there are countervailing centres of power, checks and balances, accountability is difficult to enforce. For instance Tony Blair went to war even though an overwhelming majority of British voters did not support the unjust war.

In Africa, thanks to the IMF and World Bank and their fellow travellers in the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the moment, accountability has now become accounting. Yet according to Thandika, it was African scholars who first suggested to the IMF/World Bank, in a now forgotten pioneering dialogue with African scholars, that governance was a central issue for the continent. This was in the 80s when the Bank and its egg-head economists believed that only structural adjustment mattered. They produced a two-volume report which was quickly forgotten but they were to pick up on ‘good governance’ later as a mantra. In Washington terms, good governance is government without politics, a dictatorship of experts in the name of technocracy.

Thandika advised that African scholars should examine our societies more in terms of how they are shaped, and who is shaping them, in order to understand our politics and the political behaviour of the masses. By looking at ourselves we can better understand the sociology and ideology that determines the consciousness of the African voter, and why this voter is susceptible to class, ethnic, religious, and other forms of manipulation.

Finally, he suggested that there is a cyclical turn-around in African politics that he estimated to be between 30-40 years, during which the same political elite have been dominant (whether in or outside of government) waiting to be government. He sees the next few years as the period during which a new cycle will begin. He challenged the younger scholars and political activists to seize the opportunity to reshape Africa.

I am not quite sure about this cycle of Thandika’s because there is another problem that I see with some of our political leaders especially the so-called ‘New Leaders’. They are a special class that has known no other role other than leading. Last job: Leader. Present job: Leader. Future expectation: Leader. They do not know ‘followership’.

John Oyoo spoke after Thandika. He observed that in the independence period there was a more unified elite with the common aim of riding the continent of colonialism. Many of the politicians were intellectuals and many intellectuals were politically involved. However in the post-colonial phase, intra-elite conflicts led to military coups which decimated the intellectual class and devastated state and society. Intellectuals became either opponents of the khaki boys or their stooges and hirelings.

The Cold War also took its toll on our intellectuals and politicians who became cold warriors for the east or the west. By the late 1970s and throughout the 80s, Africa had become prostate and formed an experimental ground for all kinds of half-baked ideas of development from outside, principally through the hegemony of the IMF /World Bank and their dubious Washington Consensus.

The IMF and World Bank did not want thinkers who would challenge their dubious assumptions and arrogance. The military or one party dictator did not want any criticism of their misrule. Between both of these, our once promising and flourishing intellectual centres became deserts and development thinking and planning became externalized.

Haroub concentrated on his familiar themes of the essential difference between visionary and non-visionary leaders. At independence, many of the leaders, regardless of their ideological leaning, were visionary, charismatic and beloved by their peoples and they derived their legitimacy from the people.

However the unity between the leaders and the masses soon fizzled out in many countries as class differences began to emerge and consolidate. The progressives of the nationalist period soon became the conservatives in power, unwilling to set their own people free. Resistance to their tyranny developed.

Some countries like Tanzania under Nyerere managed to retain popular legitimacy largely due to the personal discipline, humane and humble leadership of the Mwalimu.

He concluded by observing that leaders do not emerge from the heavens but need to be developed organically from among the various social forces in any society: political parties, mass movements, factories, industries, workshops, production sites, farms, villages, etc.

The final speaker was Mamdani. He lived up to his well-deserved reputation as one of the most engaging intellectuals of this continent. As usual he turned the topic upside down, preferring not to focus on individual leaders per se but first the structural basis of the relationship of power, and secondly the kinds of individual leaders they produce.

In the past few years it has become very difficult (or maybe impossible) to discuss anything with Mamdani without coming back to ‘Citizenship and Subject’, his seminal book that still remains very thought provoking. It is still provoking Mamdani himself.

He began by postulating that, in general, countries that have gone through colonialism are susceptible to group violence especially civil war. A cursory look at the history of India, the USA and Africa will confirm the point. Mamdani thinks this is largely because of the struggle for the expansion of the rights of citizens who live in these colonial states. They are about citizenship since citizenship defines who belongs, who has a right to belong, who is to include and who is to be excluded.

Colonialism distorted peoples’ ways of life and imposed new identities, regimented those that were previously converging and in many cases offered different sets of rights to different peoples in the same political community. At independence the leaders did not inherit a country with one citizenship and one people but a myriad of political communities in one state with different grades of rights enforced through colonially constructed customs and traditions, natives and subjects. What the colonialists used to maintain their power was soon adapted and adopted by the new elites with devastating consequences.

He contrasted Nigeria and Tanzania. While Nigeria carries on with the colonial divisions albeit through new forms of tribalisation (state of origin instead of tribe, federal character instead of ethnic character), Tanzania completely changed the colonial basis of citizenship and succeeded in creating a nation which Nigeria has not been able to do in spite of all the riches.

While identifying the colonial roots of the problems Mamdani was clear that the responsibility for changing them and righting these wrongs are ours, not anybody else’s.

On the role of individuals, he posed a number of questions: How do we find a saint in politics? Why should we be looking up to those in power to help us make them accountable to us?

They are rhetorical questions for which he provided his own answers. It is not the leaders who will voluntarily render themselves accountable. Rather, we have to mobilize socially and politically throughout society not to accept lack of accountability in our public and private lives. We must struggle to broaden the political space for the fullest participation of all members of our political communities without discrimination. We also have to make politics about the social questions that affect the majority of our peoples rather than the political ambitions of the individual elite.

It was a very good forum and a worthy testimony to Issa Shivji as one of the most important of our intellectual leaders. The turn out was great and quite refreshing to find so many young people in attendance.

But I am always left frustrated whenever there is a discussion about leadership in Africa. The comments, questions and answers session of this panel discussion had all the elements that frustrate me.

One, the discussion of leadership is often too narrow and limited to politicians. We do not include ourselves and our role or inaction and how this impacts on the socio-economic and political lives of our peoples. Invariably we blame others and are content to ignore our own culpability. These leaders did not emerge from space; they grew from amongst us and are kept in power in part by our collaboration or indifference.

Two, Mamdani asked why we want saints in politics. The same question has to be asked about our intellectuals. Why do we expect them to be prophets or messiahs? They are part and parcel of our society, with their contradictions, and they have to make choices to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

Three, we need to look beyond our political class and politicians for the failures of leadership on this continent. Are our universities better run? Are our NGOS better run? Are we running our homes democratically? How many NGOs, including the human rights ones that make so much noise about political leaders and state abuse, can claim that they practice what they preach?

The dilemma of democracy is not just about the leaders. It is about us as a whole and about creating a democratic culture that tolerates difference, manages diversity and respects the right of everyone of us whether as children and parents, old and young, women and men, bosses and workers.

• Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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