Civil Society and Democracy in Africa

Critical Perspectives

Nelson Kasfir

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780714649085
• eBook ISBN: 9781136323119
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This work critically reviews the conventional uses of the concept of civil society in promoting democratization in Africa and suggests omissions and modifications are needed for more accurate analyses.

Uncivil Society, Capitalism and the State in Africa

IRVING LEONARD MARKOVITZ

Irving Leonard Markovitz, Department of Political Science, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

State and society do not stand apart in Africa — or anywhere else. Neither do they exist in precarious balance. This article explores the ways in which elements of the state are connected to civil society, and how elements of civil society are not merely affected by the state, but are seated in the state. Privileged place is given to capitalist phenomena. An examination of clashing theoretical views of civil society is followed by critical evaluations of contemporary Africanists and concludes with a brief discussion of the Senegalese—Mauritanian conflict and its bearing on the evolution of capitalism and democracy in Africa.

State and society do not stand apart in Africa — or anywhere else. Neither do they exist in precarious balance. Rather, state and society in Africa intertwine in complex, changing ways. ‘Civil society’ is a term that invokes a noble ideal, and conjures forth resplendent images of revolution and liberty. Today, in eastern Europe and in Latin America, in Poland, in Russia, and in Africa, trade unionists, church workers, and intellectuals struggle against repressive states and invoke the name of ‘civil society’.

Gramsci foresaw the final achievement of communism when the state would not so much wither away as be ultimately absorbed by an expanded civil society that replaced coercion with administration and participation. Marx disagreed with Hegel, not because Hegel advocated the state as a higher form of association than the selfish egoism he found embedded in civil society, but because Marx insisted that civil society included the state and did not exist apart from it.

What Gramsci, Hegel and Marx have in common is their uncommon use of the term ‘civil society’. Each of these theorists meant something very different, something that made sense only within the larger corpus of their work. What we must learn from their examples is how to measure the meaning of the term within some larger political and intellectual framework and context. This article suggests how the concept may be best understood so that it can clarify the social conflicts raging in Africa today.

AN OVERVIEW: WHY DOES IT MATTER IF WE THINK IN TERMS OF ‘BALANCE’ OR ‘INTERTWINING’? ISSUES AND PROBLEMS OF STATE—CIVIL SOCIETY INTERPENETRATION

This article raises a series of issues about the nature of civil society in Africa. It insists that state and civil society are not in ‘precarious balance’ but that they intertwine.¹ The article attempts to explore the meaning of intertwining, the terms of engagement between state and civil society, the ways in which elements of the state are connected to civil society, and how elements of civil society are not merely affected by the state, but are seated in the state.² This is not just a question of a few representatives of elites sitting in parliamentary assemblies; it is a problem of embeddedness, of establishing and of realigning networks.³

We also ask about the interrelationship between state and civil society in the development of democracy and capitalism. We try to be clear about why we are looking at these issues, about what is our political, moral and ideological agenda, and about whether we are engaged as moral cheerleaders doing, as Leopold Senghor once said, ‘Boyscoutism’.⁴

This article also inquires into the popular consequences for the establishment of democracy. The coming of democracy will not necessarily be the cause of universal rejoicing.⁵ A number of often overlooked consequences of introducing democracy deserve attention. First, some groups and interests will be excluded. Second, in some countries, or in some situations, there will be a ‘tyranny of the majority’. Third, in Africa, as everywhere, the institutionalisation of separate spheres of the public and the private will be of doubtful benefit to those without power, especially to those without economic power. Powerful minority, elite-establishment interests will benefit disproportionally. Fourth, the values of the private sphere will prevail not only in exchange relationships but in crucial sectors of public life. Fifth, in Africa, many have suffered, and will suffer, from a double exploitation, from the old and from the new systems, from the remaining obligations of the ‘traditional system’, and from the new demands of capitalism. And, finally, none of this can really be understood if we persist in seeing the state and civil society as separate, balancing entities.

This article gives privileged place to capitalist development in Africa. Whether capitalism exists in Africa is still a matter of great dispute among social scientists. We argue that capitalism exists, that capitalism sometimes emerged in some countries unexpectedly but that there are explanations for this apparently precipitous emergence, that capitalism continues to expand very rapidly, that class conflicts result from these developments, and that these are important considerations in our understanding of the relationships between state and civil society.

As one indicator of the development of capitalism, consider what has happened in recent years to stock markets. African stock markets, ‘north of Johannesburg’, have experienced a significant expansion since the first half of the 1990s. According to African Business:

Besides South Africa — the world's twelfth largest stock market with a capitalisation of $281bn — there are 14 operative bourses. Market capitalisation, including North Africa, has increased eight-fold, from $5bn in 1989 to over $43bn in 1996. Among the major bourses are Zimbabwe ($5.95bn), Nigeria ($4.4bn), Kenya ($2.3bn), Mauritius ($1.9bn), Ghana ($1.3bn), and Cote d'lvoire ($lbn). Uganda and Tanzania should have set up bourses by the end of the year, and Mozambique and Madagascar aim to open stock markets in 1998, to trade shares in privatised companies.⁶

Zimbabwe had one of the best performing emerging markets of 1996 with a rise of 92 per cent; Botswana rose 50 per cent in 1997. Until 1992 net equity flows to sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) amounted to little, but they added up to $17 million in 1993, surged to $641 million in 1994, declined to $297 million in 1995, and recovered to $385 million in 1996.⁷

If social scientists have been slow to recognise the development of African capitalism, foreign investors are now attracted by the low valuations and growth potentials of the African markets. Price—earnings ratios range from a low of 3.3 in Ghana to 19.9 in Zimbabwe. One of the largest mutual funds that specialises in Africa now estimates that by 2010 sub-Saharan stock markets will increase their capitalisation to five or six times their current size.⁸

Some social scientists might play down the significance of these markets. They might say that these stock exchanges only represent mining or oil or other enclave enterprises, and not real capitalism. They might maintain that Indians or Lebanese or Arabs and not real Africans own these ventures. This would not be true. Even to the extent that expatriates and foreigners are involved, one cannot overestimate that stock market development has required effective legal and regulatory systems. They are necessary to safeguard investors' interests. This is essential to mobilise domestic savings as well as to attract foreign funds and the repatriation of flight capital. African governments have made this surge in capital flow possible by, in terms of this article, reaching out to civil society to relax capital controls and restrictions on interest and dividend remittances. They have abolished legislation that discriminated against foreign investors. African governments have in the 1990s advanced a faster pace of privatisation that has included major assets such as public utilities, telecommunications facilities, national airlines and banks. States must draw upon lawyers, bankers, entrepreneurs and other experts of every imaginable kind from civil society. This expansion of capitalism cannot exist without the type of qualitative improvement in the regulatory, financial, pension and banking systems that have been taking place.

In Africa, and elsewhere in the world, civil society and the state intertwine when state officials go to members of civil society for advice, both occasionally and on a sustained and systematic basis; when civilians from organisations or interests in civil society are loaned or seconded to the institutions of government that are responsible for the oversight, management or conduct of those organisations or interests; when the structures and organisations of civil society are created, enhanced, supported and promoted by structures, organisations and officials of the state, or the reverse. Civil servants and government officials do not necessarily do business from their offices. Nor do they necessarily engage themselves in church work, labour actions, cultural affairs, or the thousand and one other possible activities of civil society. But they might, because those individuals are not isolated in ivory towers.

In setting up a new network of retail and wholesale distribution, for example, ministerial officials will engage successful entrepreneurs in civil society. They will seek out someone who has succeeded on his or her own, someone with great organisational ability, somebody who knows the tastes of the national market. They will also, most likely, look for somebody whom they can trust. Preferably, they will look for a party member, or a political partisan, maybe a past major contributor, or somebody who has the resources that could be solicited in the future. Why would they not?

Interrelationships between state and society are not a matter of isolated, individual contacts. What counts are the repeated and systematic encounters over time. To measure, to envision, these types of impacts, we must think in terms of networks and webs of relationships. At a minimum, these are matters not of individuals, but of families.⁹ Family structures are basic for an understanding of any society. Family interrelationships are also key in understanding the intertwining of state and society.

WHAT THE BALANCERS MISS

One of the most dramatic illustrations of the intertwining of state and society can be found in Adam Przeworski's account of what happened in the transition to ‘democracy’ in Chile under the military regime led by General Pinochet.¹⁰ Przeworski's simple statement of the conditions laid down by Pinochet as the price extorted for his consent to free elections speaks volumes. These conditions included permanent office for the commanders of the police and armed services; amnesty for certain political crimes; the right to name nine members of the senate; autonomy of the central bank, the president of which was chosen by the military; acceptance of the privatisations carried out by the military without investigation of how they were carried out; automatic allocation of 20 per cent of copper revenues to the military budget. State and civil society were inextricably mixed.

What the balancers miss is a focal point, a sense of relative weight and significance in determining which interests and which developments are really significant. What counts is not only the development of capitalism, but of those rationalising structures of state and society, of bureaucracy and of government, analysed not just by Marx, but also by Weber. To understand properly the current developments in Africa, we must give privileged place to capitalist phenomena. Ethnicity, gender, labour, the military, police, religious brotherhoods, clans and caste are all significant. They are each independently important. However, they all gain added significance through their existence within a domestic and international capitalist framework. To explore their ‘embeddedness’ requires us to focus on how networks and structures reinforce each other.

The Chilean case is also instructive because it demonstrates the economic interests of the military and of the police. Although these interests are not ‘economic’ in terms of their structure or power, they are located within an economic system, namely capitalism, which they consider to be indispensable to those interests, as well as to the welfare of the nation. Copper must be sold in an international capitalist market-place in order to bring the money that will pay for their salaries, equipment and perquisites, as well as provide for the civilian offices and business of friends and family members.

Privatisation in the former Soviet Union also dramatically illustrates the difficulty of those who would see a ‘balance’ between state and society. Studies of the Russian transition to ‘free enterprise’ vividly demonstrate the creation of a new bourgeoisie in Russia.¹¹ Former managers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Conventional Notion of Civil Society: A Critique
• Uncivil Society, Capitalism and the State in Africa
• The Social Power of Religious Organisation and Civil Society: The Catholic Church in Uganda
• Expanding ‘Civil Society’: Women and Political Space in Contemporary Uganda
• Politics, Capital and the State in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Civil Society, the State and Democracy in Africa
• Index