Changing Patterns of Politics in Africa

Abstract

THE LAST DECADE AND A HALF in Africa’s recent history have been markedby some dramatic and significant developments on the continent’spolitical terrain. These developments have been as varied as theyhave been contradictory. They have also constituted a major sourceof challenge to political theory as different schools of thoughtgrapple with them in terms of their weight and meaning. As can beimagined, there is no consensus on the most appropriate approachfor interpreting the changes that are taking place in the structure,content and dynamics of African politics; indeed, efforts at conceptualizingthe changes have produced a veritable Tower of Babel, with commentatorsnot only speaking in different tongues but frequently past one another.The sense of confusion which is prevalent in the literature is indicativeas much of the complexity of the changes themselves as of the crisisof theory in the study of Africa (Mkandawire, 1996; 2002; Zeleza,1997; Mamdani, 1999). The contradictoriness of the changes, at onceinspiring hope and generating despair, has polarized the scholarlyand policy communities into Afro-optimist and Afro-pessimist camps.But for all the insights which they may offer into the problems andprospects of progressive change in Africa, both the Afro-pessimistand Afro-optimist frames are far too simplistic and subjective toserve as an enduring basis for capturing the dialectics of socio-politicalchange and transformation. A more careful, historically-groundedinterpretation of the changes occurring on the continent is, thereforeneeded, and for it to be useful, it should enable us to transcendthe narrow and narrowing parameters that currently dominate the discourseon the processes and structures of change occurring in contemporaryAfrica.