Comparative Analysis Of Modern Day Western Democracy And Political Systems In Pre-Colonial African Kingdoms

A resemblance between modern day Western democracy and the systems of political administrations practiced in many pre-colonial African kingdoms is that the presence of a leader, although they had different titles, still served a similar purpose as being the representative of society. In centralized federations of pre-colonial African societies, external affairs are regulated by a council of elders who are headed by a king (Fenske, 2011). The king primarily served as a first among equals or the representative member of the society. An example of a federation is the Ashanti Empire which lasted from 1670 to 1957 in what is now modern-day Ghana. A federation in pre-colonial Africa is similar to a Western democratic society, such as the United States, because there is a president who is the representative of the country. In addition, there is an appointed cabinet which advises the president on any subject that the president may require. There were some African kingdoms where the king nearly maintained absolute power due to religion.

These kingdoms were large empires that had developed complex systems of government: there was no separation of power, the kings defended their sovereignty, and there were no independent judicial systems. An example of a ruler with absolute power is the Alaafin of the Oyo Empire. He was “regarded as a sacred ruler, he was saluted as ‘Kabiyesi, Oba Alaase, Ekeji Orisa,’ meaning ‘The One whose authority cannot be questioned, the King with authority, the companion of the Gods’” (Afolayan, 2000, p. 173). He was regarded as a semi-divine ruler and a “visible expression of the collective identity and social memory of his people” (Afolayan, 2000, p. 173). This is a stark contrast between a Western democracy because there is a system of voting and the people of the Oyo Empire exalted their ruler in a much different and religious way than a leader in a democratic state. In modern-day Western democracies, religion is separated from politics; the leader is not set apart from other mortals as the Alaafin was in the Oyo Empire. Although the Alaafin’s word was theoretically law and order, and his court was the highest court of appeal, he still ruled with the advice of his chiefs, which is a similarity in Western democracy where the president also has his cabinet to advise him. If he were to ignore the advice and wishes of his chiefs, however, his life would be at risk. The decentralized states of Africa have both similarities and differences with Western democracies. Not much is known of these African states because there is limited historical availability on them and there was little opportunity and incentive to keep oral histories. There has also been prejudice against decentralized states arguing that they are not as important to study as centralized states. Unlike Western democracies, these decentralized states usually had no king, chief, or ruling elite (“Types of government in pre-colonial Africa,” (n. d. ).

The stateless political societies in Africa were made up of groups of adjacent towns and villages who had no political connections with any other kingdom. Although most did not have a chief, when there was one, the position was weak and unlike other chiefs in other societies, the position was not hereditary. A group of elders selected the chief based on their reputation and their contribution to the group, not their family connections. Some societies were overseen by a council of elders, for age is highly valued in Africa (Adejumobi, 2000). Sometimes these stateless societies are dubbed “democracies of age” because the elders held social, economic, and political power. This contrasts with Western democracies because in these countries, everyone who is of the age to vote is able to choose and decide who they want their leader to be and laws to be passed. An example of decentralized society in Africa are the Igbo speaking people who live in what is now Nigeria. The Igbo lived in politically autonomous villages where each village was politically separate and not politically connected to its neighbors, and each did not have an implemented system of hereditary chiefs. This is similar to consensual democracies in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands (Williams, 2014). In these countries the power is more fragmented and there are proportional electoral systems that are for a cabinet of parliamentary government. Although the Igbo had a council of elders to select a leader instead of a parliament, the similarity between these two methods of governing is that power is decentralized and there is a more separation of powers between the leaders and other bodies.

A stark difference between modern day Western democracies and pre-colonial African governments is that African societies often had religious organizations, structures of kinship ties, and lineage groups that served as more regulations governing people’s lives (Mazrui, 1982). The principles of Islamic law spread through the influence of holy men and women, merchants, and traders (Adejumobi, 2000). Sometimes a Muslim ruler would want to impose Islamic or Shari’a law, and the decisions of Muslim courts represented a fusion of Islamic and local law. In Western democracies, people may have their own individual religious views, but it is not seen through politics and the government, therefore religion does not play a significant role. The structures of kinship ties and lineage groups play a large role in African society as a whole and not just the government.

There are “social actions [that] come out of kinship ideology, cultural behavior also come out of kinship ideology, and, in political terms, hierarchy and political esteem are among the projects of kinship construction” (Ahanotu, 2000). Kinships were fundamentally based on blood and marriage relationships, but between different African societies, each group emphasized certain genealogies and disregarded others. For example, in Swahili customs “purity of blood” in the patrilineal kinship was insisted in the Luba ethnic group (Ahanotu, 2000). But in the kingdom of Zimbabwe, power was taken based on the divine Mwari and how it reached out to each family. In modern-day Western democracies, genealogy does not play a role in selecting leaders. Although there are examples of people from the same family serving the same position, such as George Bush Sr. and Jr. , they did not obtain their positions purely due to their family name and lineage. The United States of America is an example of a democracy that uses an electoral college system to formally cast votes for the president (Sundquist, 1988-1989).