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Africana: A Journal of Ideas on Africa and the African Diaspora

Volume 3, Number 1 2009

Editorial Coordinator Mr Yilma Tafere Tasew

Editor-in-Chief Dr Christopher LaMonica

Board Members Mr Thomas BandaDr Margaret ClarkDr Ramon DasDr Mourtada DemeDr Marron Maddox

Dr Victoria Mason

IT Consultant Ms Mariko Hemmingsen

AFRICANAVictoria University of Wellington

P.O. Box 600Wellington 6140

New ZealandPhone: +64 (4) 463-5760

Fax: +64 (4) 463-5414

www.africanajournal.org

© Africana: A Journal of Ideas on Africa and the African Diaspora. Allrights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any

form without permission in writing from the publisher.

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CONTENTS:

Introductory Note

Christopher LaMonicaYilma Tafere Tasew

5 Attractions and Limitations of Liberal Democracy in Africa J. Shola Omotola

32 Cultivating cultural change through cinema; YoussefChahine and the creation of national identity in Nasser’s EgyptBarrie Wharton

57 Growing Civic Awareness - Symptomatic Rehearsal ofTrue Democratic Dividend: Lessons from Nigeria’sGeneral Elections of 2007 Franklins A. Sanubi

73 The Niger Delta in Nigerian Nation-Building, 1960- 2005 John H. Enemugwem

91 Some Ethical Challenges in Media Advertising in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Zimbabwean Case Study

Fainos Mangena

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

As several have astutely noted, publication and release of theDecember 2009 issue of Africana was delayed by several longweeks. This was due to the relocation of our journal fromVictoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand (with MasseyUniversity Printers), to the African Studies Center, at BostonUniversity, 232 Bay State Road, Boston, Massachusetts, in theUnited States. http://www.bu.edu/africa/ It is our firm beliefthat formal affiliation with this long-established and wellrespected institution, dedicated to the study of Africa, can onlyhelp the global recognition of our journal and our mission. Assuch, future editions of Africana will include formal references toand coordinates of our new home, as well as a newly establishedISSN. Being based in the relatively neutral state of New Zealanddid have its advantages and the growing number of Africanrefugees within that state made dialogue of African issuesparticularly appealing and interesting. Our Board continues toinclude participants from New Zealand and Australia. But wehave also taken on board a scholar of islamophobia, NorthAfrican & Middle Eastern Politics from Lancaster University inthe U.K., Dr Victoria Mason, and an Africanist scholar from theUniversity of Cergy-Pantoise in Paris, France, Dr Douglas Yates.As stated on our web-page http://www.africanjournal.org ourhope is to extend the dialogue on Africa and the AfricanDiaspora among interested parties throughout the world.

It is an atmosphere of some excitement but with the knowledge

that much work remains to be done that we present theDecember 2009 issue. In the months leading up to itspublication we received an ever-growing number of

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among the Nigerian electorate that politicians should be electedsolely on the basis of commitments to the provision of publicservices (e.g. roads, health care facilities and education). Withina democratic context, politicians also play an important role atpromoting ‘civic awareness,’ which is instrumental to the proper

functioning of a democratic state. With references to the state ofliterature on the subject, Dr Sanubi cleverly uses data from theNigerian elections of 2007 to make his case. It is compelling andwe thank Dr Sanubi for his contribution.

The fourth article, by John H. Enemugwem, Senior Lecturerand Head of Department of History and Diplomatic Studies,University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, is entitled“The Niger Delta in Nigerian Nation-Building, 1960-2005.” DrEnemugwen’s aim is to demonstrate the crucial historical rolethat the peoples of the Niger Delta played in the creation ofthe modern Nigerian state. As is so often the case indiscussions of history, the involvement of certain peoples inparticularly important national moments is not always asadequately documented as it should be; we wish DrEnemugwem well in his efforts to document theaccomplishments of the peoples of the Nigeria Delta andthank him for his contribution to our journal.

Finally, Fainos Manenga, a journalist and a Senior Lecturer atthe University of Zimbabwe’s Department of ReligiousStudies, Classics and Philosophy, considers some of the ethicalissues tied to advertising in sub-Saharan Africa and in

Zimbabwe in particular. He reminds us of the potentialconflicts of interest between multinational businesses and thepublic at large. As is the case with other contributions to thisissue, Dr Manenga’s topic is timely and especially well-

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argued. To him and to all of those who have made thisDecember 2009 issue possible our sincere thanks.

Christopher LaMonicaYilma Tafere Tasew

December 2009

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Attractions and Limitations of LiberalDemocracy in Africa

J. Shola Omotola1

Abstract

Democracy is today one of the most popular concepts not

only in academic circles, but also in governmental as well

as non‐governmental domains. The New World

(Dis)Order has made its liberal version to acquire a fairly

standardized and universal connotation to the neglect of

1 J.

Shola

Omotola,

currently

completing

a PhD

in

Political

Science

at

the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, teaches political science at

Redeemer’s University, Redemption City, Nigeria. His research

interests are in comparative African democratization, oil and

environmental politics and identity politics, on which he has

published in reputable national and international journals, including

Representation , Africa Today , African and Asian Studies , Africa Insight

and South African Journal of International Affairs , among others. His

latest work, “ ‘Garrison’ Democracy in Nigeria: The 2007 General

Elections and the Prospects of Democratic Consolidation” appeared

in Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 47, 2(2009): 194‐220. He is

also completing a book length manuscript tentatively titled Trapped

in Transition: Nigeria’s First Democratic Decade, 1999‐2009 to be

published by the Canadian based publisher, Africa Reads.

Email: [email protected]

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contextual variables that may impact on it for good or ill.

This paper questions the universalistic conception of

liberal democracy as one, whose character is fairly

standardized, arguing that such a conception represents

a major disservice to democratization in Africa.

Consequently, liberal democracy has not only become

subjective, but also theoretically ambivalent and

analytically vacuous. Its dispositions as a c̋elebrityʺ in

its own right, tend to propel undemocratic forces to

pretend as democrats to avoid coveting international

resentment. For this reason, the concept of liberal

democracy can be indicted of complicity in the level of

autocrats in civilian garbs across the globe particularly in

Africa. In its present form and character, the concept of

democracy does very little or nothing to illuminate our understanding of contemporary politics particularly in

the African context. Its main attraction seems the

advancement of Western interest especially the USA in

the consolidation of its Cold War victory, and that of

opportunistic African leaders in their quest for power

and accumulation of private capital. Critical questions

pertaining to its contexts of origin and metamorphosis

must, therefore, be interrogated if the concept would ever

be

useful

both

theoretically

and

analytically.

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Introduction The talk of democracy is very influential. Indeed,

democracy is today probably one of the most popular concepts

not only in academic circles but also in governmental as well

as civil society domains. While it has a long history in political

theory, the use of the concept of democracy does not belong to the category of concepts defined in universalistic terms, whose

character is fairly standardized within the context of its origin.

But, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent emergency of

a New World Order has, hypocritically indifferent to the

contexts of its origin and metamorphosis as it were, tends to

make democracy acquire a fairly acceptable, standardized and

universal connotation, to the neglect of contextual variables

that may impact on it for good or ill. Consequently,

democracy as a concept has not only become subjective,

difficult

as

it

is

to

operationalize

(measure),

but

also

theoretically ambivalent and analytically vacuous. As the

“hottest” bride in town, with its celebratory disposition as a

ʺcelebrityʺ in its own right, it often propels űndemocraticʺ

forces to pretend as democrats to avoid coveting international

resentment. In this sense, the concept of democracy can be

indicted of complicity in the level of autocrats in civilian garbs

across the globe particularly in Africa. The universalistic

conception of democracy as one, whose character is fairly

standardized, therefore, represents a major disservice to the

concept.

This paper attempts a critical evaluation of the

attractions and limitations of liberal democracy in Africa. The

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paper’s analysis is underpinned by the central question: what

is the concept of liberal democracy good for? The main

purpose of the paper is to explore this question in the light of

inherent and apparent contradictions in the emerging

standardized conception of liberal democracy (see Saul, 1997a:

219‐236; 1997b: 339‐353; Shivji, 1991; Robinson, 1996; Ake 1995 etc). But, if democracy is a concept whose values are

standardized, why is it so markedly different in its level of

development across time and space? What sort of difference

do we refer to, and how does it impact on the usefulness of the

concept today particularly in Africa? These questions are, no

doubt, central to the substantive question of the study, either

of which cannot be satisfactorily answered without a good

knowledge of the meaning of the concept of democracy,

showing its metamorphosis.

The first

substantive

section

of

the

paper

addresses

the

meaning, origin and growth of democracy. The next section

conceptualizes democracy particularly its liberal version as an

ideology. The last major section evaluates the concept of

liberal democracy to ascertain its attractions and limitations in

the global and African contexts.

Democracy: Its Meaning, Origin and Growth

Democracy has been a concept of intense study. The

resultant body of literature is equally very extensive.

However despite the mass knowledge that has been

accumulated over the years, there is little appreciation of the

fact that its conception as an inevitable phenomenon whose

values are not only standardized but also universal is not only

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theoretically faulty, but also practically unsupported by

reality. The global outlook of democracy that has emerged is

therefore pretentious and runs contrary to the logic of the

argument of this paper.

What then is democracy? This is certainly a difficult

question to answer. Yet it is pivotal to the distillation of our central question. Let us begin with a general definition.

Democracy is a system of government usually involving

freedom of the individuals in various aspects of political life,

equality among citizens, justice in the relations between the

people and the government and the participation of the people

in choosing those in government (Nnoli, 2003: 143). This is in

line with the c̋ommon good and the will of the peopleʺ thesis

of democracy. As Schumpeter (1950: 250‐283; 1967: 153‐188)

democracy entails that i̋nstitutional arrangement for arriving

at political

decisions,

which

realizes

the

common

good

by

making the people itself decide issues through the election of

individuals, who are to assemble in order to carryout its willʺ.

The second side of democracy, according to Schumpeter (1950;

cf Quinton 1967: 173), emphasizes the centrality of competition

to the emergence of political leadership. In this sense

democracy is an i̋nstitutional arrangement for arriving at

political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to

decide by means of a competitive struggle for the peopleʹs

voteʺ.

What these general conceptions suggest is that

democracy as a system of government stresses the sovereignty

of the people (see Zack – William, 2001:213‐214; Osaghae,

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1994). It is also reminiscent of Robert Dahlʹs t̋wo dimensions

of democracyʺ (Dahl, 2000:35 – 40). The first dimension sees

democracy as a̋n ideal, goal, aim, or standard, one that is

perhaps unachievable but nonetheless highly relevant not only

for classifying and judging political systems but also for

fashioning strategies of democratization, designing appropriate political institutions, and so onʺ. An ideal

democracy is therefore coterminous with a̋ political system

that might be designed for members of an association who

were willing to treat one another, for political purposes, as

political equalsʺ (Dahl, 2000: 37). Such a system requires

certain criteria for effective functioning. This include a set of

fundamental human right of citizens, democratic political

institution to boost citizensʹ participation in electing

representative, to freedom of expression, inquiry, discussion

and so

on.

One

important

thing

is

that

these

rights

and

opportunities must not just exist as merely abstract moral

obligations, but must be e̋nforceable and enforced by law and

practiceʺ (Dahl, 1989: 106 – 131; 1999: 35‐43, 83 – 99; 2000: 37‐

38).

This takes us to the second dimension of democracy. It

has to do with democracy in practice, as opposed to it theory.

This becomes the more pertinent because, as Dahl (2000: 38)

has also pointed out, h̋aving rights and opportunities is not

strictly equivalent to using themʺ. The mere fact that

democratic society concede certain rights, for example to vote

and be voted for, to their citizens, does not imply that all

qualified citizens will participate in these activities. In reality,

there is ample evidence to support this position. For example,

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empirical studies have shown that citizens do not put much

value on actual participation themselves in political life, as

exemplified by the experience of European Community as a

whole. There, it was found out that a̋verage over the entire

period 1973 – 92 ̋, 1̋7 percent said they discussed politics

frequently, and 34 percent said they never do soʺ (Topf, 1995: 61; cf Dahl, 2000:39).

Lamentable this seeming contradiction marks a major

problematic about the concept of democracy, which may not

be unconnected with its context of origin. Within the context

of the Greek City State to which democracy owes it origin as

an ideal and a practice, it was for a very long time confined to

the borders of Athens. This was at a time when Athens was

sustained by the labour of its slaves, who incidentally were in

overwhelming majority relative to the free citizens. It would

therefore be

catastrophic

to

allow

for

egalitarianism

in

the

decision making process. This is because such would have

enabled the slaves to predominate over their economically

superior master but with limited number (see Nnoli, 2003:146).

Hence the Athenian democracy excluded the slaves, as

ʺequality, freedom and justice values were to be confined to

free citizensʺ. Democracy therefore, within the context of its

origin in Athens during the Greek era, was an exclusionary

phenomenon, where women and slaves were deprived of any

political rights (El‐Din, 2003: 5). In fact, it was such that in

another Greek State, Sparta to be specific, which existed about

the same time as Athens, the issue of egalitarianism in decision

making even among the so called free citizens was absent.

This was due to the threats of revolution from the slaves to

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upturn the table against the citizens. This led to the

emergence of a strong military machine to thwart such a

revolution. It was also necessary to be able to crush it if it

materialized. Under such a circumstance, as Nnoli (2003:146)

has rightly observed, s̋ome, if not most, of the citizens

necessarily lose their freedom ʺ and S̋parta was reputed as a military dictatorship or oligarchy.ʺ

Following the dialecticism that characterizes the

history of human society, from the slave through the feudal to

the capitalist epoch, nowhere has egalitarianism, fairness and

justice have ever prevailed. The ascendancy of bourgeois

democracy following the industrial revolution in Europe and

the subsequent colonization of colonies particularly in Africa

attest to this (El‐Din, 2003: 6). But following the

marginalization of the bourgeois by the nobility in the decision

making process,

their

focus

shifted

from

securing

favourable

conditions of international trade to that of removing the

priviledges of the nobility at the political and economic realms

so that they could assert their growing influence in society.

Thus such concepts as freedom, equality and justice were

conceptualized as inherent to man, sanctioned by arguments

of natural law, and found expression in doctrines of natural

and human rights (Nnoli, 2003:148).

During the Cold War, the concept of democracy

became a part of the propaganda arsenal of both ends of the

ideological spectrum – the West led by the United States of

America (USA) and the East led by the Soviet Union. Why the

former champion a kind of democracy built on liberal

philosophy of individual freedom and equality the latter

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emphasizes what it called socialist democracy where the state

calls the shot. Following this classification, the USA

reportedly worked assiduously to overthrow the

democratically elected working class government of Salvador

Allende of Chile in 1973, and supported all forms of anti –

democratic regimes in the name of fighting communism (see Nnoli, 2003: 149). The Cold War era also witness the rise of

what was called African socialism in Africa as champion by

African leaders such as Kwame Nkuruma of Ghana, Julius

Nyerere of Tanzania and so on. Thus the concept of

democracy assumed some ideological underpinnings that

were inimical to theory building and the universalization of

knowledge on democracy.

With the end of the Cold War in favour of the West,

there has been the ascendancy of liberal democracy on a

universal scale,

with

no

competing

values

(see

Fukuyama,

1991). It values include pluralism and multi‐party system,

including free and fair competitive politics; popular

participation; the rule of law, respect for human rights, and

equality of access to all citizens and groups to the state power

and resources; gender balance; and constitutionalism, among

others (see Osaghea, 1999: 7; Ayoade, 1998: 1‐8). The

universalization of this values, with little or no contest from

any quarters, would appear to be of a moderating influence on

ʺthe clash of civilizationsʺ as espoused by one of the most

articulate, influential and original thinker and writer of our

time, Samuel Huntington (Huntington, 1996). But, this may

not be so, if we interrogate further the concept of liberal

democracy as an ideological category, which may still possibly

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recede with time, like all other previous waves of democracy

(see Huntington, 1991), considering the level of criticism that

has attended it.

Liberal Democracy as Ideology

Our understanding of democracy in its current form and character will be enriched if we treat it (liberal democracy)

as an ideology. This requires that we first of all have a

working definition of what an ideology is all about, as well as

its defining character. Basically, an ideology is a̋ systematized

and interconnected set of ideas about the socio‐economic and

political organization as a wholeʺ (see Lane 1962; cf Nnoli,

2003: 178). Essentially, it serves to provide collective

legitimization of governmental actions and/or inactions, as

well as a basis for popular mobilization in support of such

actions.

Characteristically, an

ideology

often

tends

to

arise

in

conditions of crisis, is exclusive, absolute and universal; and in

the extreme, may be personalized and turn into a sacred belief

similar to religious beliefs (Nnoli, 2003: 177 – 183).

If we situate liberal democracy within the context of

the foregoing description, one finds that it is largely an

ideological phenomenon. For example, the rise of liberal

democracy on a universal scale was as a result of the crisis and

contradiction of the Cold War era, for the battle of dominance

between the West and the East. And since its victory at the

end of the Cold War, its waves have continued to spread in an

unprecedented manner, such that no region, not even the once

impregnable Eastern Europe, is free from its hegemonic

penetration. It was so much that the ascendancy of liberal

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democracy, following the end of the Cold War, has been

labeled as t̋he end of history ̋, portraying it as t̋he final form

of governmentʺ (Fukuyama, 1991). It has therefore become

hegemonic and universal, and fast assuming the status of a

ʺglobal religionʺ for the mobilization of citizens internally, as

well as citizens and states, in addition to other actors at the international level. This is exemplified by the fact that donor

states and institution have now come to link their

development assistance/aid to democratization. The same

condition has equally been set for any form of concession on

the Third World quest and clamour for debt

forgiveness/cancellation (see Diamond, 2001; Baylies, 1995:

321‐337; Allen, 1997: 329‐337).

Generally the hegemony of liberal democracy has not

been without criticisms. As far back as 1984 when the Cold

War was

still

alive,

Barber

(1984:

4;

cf

Saul,

1997a:

230)

has

forcefully argued that:

We suffer, in the face of our eraʹs manifold crisis, not from

too much but from too little democracy… from the time of

Toqueville, it has been said that an excess of democracy can

undo liberal institutions. I will try to show that an excess

liberalism has undone liberal institutions. For what little

democracy we have had… been repeatedly compromised by

the liberal institutions with which it has been underguided

and the liberal philosophy from which its theory and

practice

has

been

derived…

Liberal

democracy

is

…

a ʹ

thinʹ

theory of democracy, one whose democratic values are

prudential… means exclusively individualistic and private

ends. From these precarious foundations, no firm theory of

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citizenship, participation, public good or civic virtue can be

expected to arise.

Earlier, Huntington (1975; cf Barber, 1984: 95 and Saul,

1997b: 341) has argued that the problems of governance in the

United States

then

stemmed

from

an e̋xcess

of

democracy

ʺ.

For him t̋he effective operation of a democratic political

system usually requires some measure of apathy and non‐

involvement on the part of some individuals and groupsʺ.

Still in the same tradition, Manfred Bienefeld powerfully

argues:

Unfortunately genuine democracy is hard to reconciled

neoliberalismʹs mystical belief in the magic of disembodied

markets, it fierce hostility to the notion of state and society as

organic entities capable of defining and pursuing a common

interest and its insistence on pervasive deregulation. Under such conditions, the state loses the capacity to manage the

economies in accordance with democratically determined

social, ethical or political priorities. Only the shallowest and

most meaningless democracy will survive in a ćowboy

capitalismʹ where property rights became virtually absolute

because states and electorates are disempowered by the

mobility of capital … (Bienefeld, 1995: 17; cf Saul, 1997b:

343).

While these assertions may be general, the African

condition is certainly more pathetic. For example, even in the face of glaring possibilities of pervasion and abuse, Africans

had had to continue to support the struggle for democracy the

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continent as a s̋econd independenceʺ movement. Their hopes

of material improvement and political empowerment were

recklessly shattered because of the divorce between public

policies and social needs. Even where the two converges, poor

implementation due to massive cronyism has always been a

clog in the wheel. The result is the general atmosphere of democratization of disempowerment prevalent in Africa. As

Claude Ake has poignantly pointed out:

Democracy is been interpreted and supported in ways that

defeat these aspirations and manifest no sensitivity to the

social conditions of the ordinary people of Africa. Generally

the political elites who support democratization are those

with no access to power, and they invariably have no feeling

for democratic values. They support democratization

largely as a strategy of power… the people can (only) choose

between oppressors and by the appearance of choice legitimize what is really their disempowerment (Ake, 1995:

39 – 40; cf Saul, 1997b: 349).

African resignation to fate is understandable. It was

due to their helplessness. For, as Miliband (1994: 190 – 191) has

observed, virtually all g̋overnment in the T́hird Worldʹ have

accepted the hegemonic role of the West and adapted their

economic and social policies to it. The price for not doing so is

beyond their capacity and their will.ʺ Perhaps, this

helplessness explains the fragility of democracy and

development across the continent. This is a semblance of what

John Saul (1997b: 339 –353) refer to as the f̋ear of being

condemned as old fashioned ̋, which has made Africa to

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follow the path of liberal, at the expense of people/popular

democracy. Despite it inherent tendencies towards popular

disempowerment, liberal democracy has continued to gain

popularity and recognition as the final form of government the

world over.

Even as scholars continue to talk about too much or too little of democracy, there is yet the problem of measurement.

Onyeoziri(1989: 80) has pointed out, to say that a political

system is democratizing is a theoretical statement. This is

because at the level of phenomenal reality, we cannot

physically point at the political system and say, t̋his is

democratization going on.ʺ Measurement therefore bridges

the gap between a theoretical concept and observational

reality. To adequately measure democracy however requires a

multiple indicator approach that will capture the entire

domains

and

dimensions

of

democracy.

While

such

dimensions have engaged scholarly attention (for example,

Bollen, 1990; Cutright, 1963: 253‐264; Dinneya, 2003: 137‐177),

the problem is still far from being over. It should be noted that

these dimensions are institutional, processoral and

behavioural, and any good measure must capture all these

dimensions. The breakdown of these would include element

such as participation, competitiveness, inclusiveness,

openness, civil liberty, level of toleration of political

opposition, succession credibility, legitimacy standing of

government, independence of electoral bodies, mass media

and judiciary, quality of governance, level of democratic

dividend and the general environment of politics. Again there

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is also the problem of how to assign numerals to, and scale

these indices.

Yet, every country of the world today claims to be

democratic, even if its democratic credential is not beyond the

level of teleguided elections, with little or no chances of

leadership alternation, as has mostly been the case in Africa (see Jinadu, 1997; Bratton, 1998; Adejumobi, 2000; Omotola,

2004a). In most cases, this has been partly responsible for the

high level of legitimacy deficit among African governments

(see Omotola, 2004b) with the protection offered by such

façade election it is therefore not difficult to come across

several leaders especially in Africa who, except for the simple

fact that they assumed office through the ballot of the box,

whose results were at best suspect and questionable, are by all

standard autocratic in their style of governance. Basic human

rights as

simple

as

that

of

freedom

of

expression,

right

to

vote

and be voted for and the like are not only being violated with

impunity, the economic rights of the people particularly the

peasants have been effectively mortgaged through the

elevation of the capitalist component of liberal democracy to a

dizzying height. This is usually done through economic

reform agenda built on chronic opportunism and political

patronage that made the accumulation of private capital

dependent on the state, to the disempowerment of the masses

(see Omotola, 2005; 2004c). The argument that democracy is a

precondition for development therefore stands defected at

least in the African context (see Ake, 1996; 1995; 1994).

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Flowing from the foregoing, liberal democracy can be

described as an ideological category, which despite its

contradiction and criticisms, has continued to enjoy universal

practice. It has continued to be a rallying point within the

context of socio‐political and economic mobilization at all

levels of governance. Yet there is more to it than meet the eyes. This questions the very usefulness of democracy as a

concept.

Attractions and Limitations of Liberal Democracy What then is the concept of democracy good for with

reference to Africa? From the preceding analysis, democracy

as a concept can be said to serve two useful purposes and

interests. First is that of the developed democracies and

advanced economies of the West particularly the USA, which

emerged as

the

victor

from

the

Cold

War.

To

consolidate

its

victory, the USA has to strengthen its values especially liberal

democracy that constituted one of the core issues of the Cold

War. This was necessary to prevent any possible reversal and

by extension erosion of its pyrrhic victory. Democracy is

therefore a useful concept for the preservation of Western

(American) hegemony across the world. This hegemony is

mostly demonstrated through the so‐called democracy aid

industry, through which liberal values such as elections and

election monitoring are emphasized (Omotola, 2009; 2006;

Carothers, 2009).

Second, liberal democracy is also useful for the African

countries not only because it has become one of the major

conditions for development assistance by donor states and

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agencies, but also because it serves the interest of African

leaders in their quest for power and accumulation of private

capital. In order to achieve both development assistance and

accumulation of private capital at a minimum cost, the surest

bet is for African leaders to be seen as being d̋emocracy

compliant ̋, no matter how pretentious such may be. The most prevalent example of this tendency in Africa relates to the

conduct of ritualistic elections, just to fulfill all righteousness,

without meeting internationally acceptable standards of

democratic elections (Omotola, 2009; 2008; Roth, 2009). These

standards can be measured in terms of popular competition,

participation and legitimacy (Lindberg, 2004). Assessed

against these indices, African elections are far from being

democratic. With the notable exception of Ghana, Botwana

and South Africa (Gyimah‐Boadi, 2009), African elections are

nothing more

than

the

fading

shadows

of

democracy

often

adopted by autocrats to masquerade as democrats (Roth, 2009;

Adejumobi, 2000).

Beyond these, liberal democracy is completely emptied

of any meaningful relevance. It is neither a necessary nor a

sufficient condition for development especially in Third World

countries in general and Africa in particular. This is because,

as Allen etal (1992: 10; cf Saul, 1997b: 348) have pointed out,

ʺmuch more commonly, democracy serves as a system

through which class domination and various forms of

systemic inequalities are perpetuated and legitimized.ʺ In

Africa, for example, the Structural Adjustment Programmes

(SAPs) of the 1980s through the 90s represented an example of

World Bank and IMF dysfunctional policy prescriptions for

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Africa. As the SAPs turned out, it further pushed Africa down

the margin towards total collapse. These manifested in the

form of political, economic and social dislocations, including

rising unemployment, urban unrest, poverty, inflation and

general decline in the standard of living of Africans. the end

result was the excruciating debt burden it inflicted on most African economies and the widening of the developmental

gap between Africa and the developed economies (Omotola

and Saliu, 2009; Omotola and Enejo, 2009).

Democracy is also both an exclusionary and elitist

phenomenon, which marginalizes, nay excludes the masses

especially at the economic realm. This is best exemplified by

rising official corruption, increasing inequalities between the

rich and the poor, and the privatisation of the privatisation

process, or what Omotola (2005) calls ‘deregulation of

disempowerment’, etc.

In

fact,

democracy,

be

it

liberal

or

not,

is not a necessary attribute of human life because it has not

existed from time immemorial. Its origin and growth were

embedded in a Western historical context, grounded on the

economic and social development of Western societies and to

that extent entrenched in capitalist theories (see El‐Din, 2003:

6; Nnoli, 2003: 146 – 149). The fact that it has passed through

many waves whereby its contents vary from one epoch to the

other, having been known in the Athenian city states system

only to disappear and reemerged in a different shape after the

industrial revolution (El‐Din 2003; Huntington, 1991) is an

eloquent testimony. The Cold War was to later have profound

impact on its definition from ones spectrum of the ideological

continuum to the other, in addition to its transformed

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meaning and virtues in post‐Cold War order. Today, main

emphasis is placed on elections and related institutional

parameters, without adequate attention to more substantive

issues of human well‐ being and development. This trend, in a

sense, reflects what Carothers (2009) calls the political

approach to democracy assistance at the expense of the developmental approach. Although he did not call for the

abrogation of the political approach, Carothers seems to

privildge the developmental approach over the political

approach, but calls for a careful merger of the two in a

mutually reinforcing manner.

In the final analysis, therefore, the attempt to portray

liberal democracy as a universal and inevitable phenomenon,

whose character is fairly standardized and perhaps a

necessarily attribute of human life is largely unfounded. This

development negates

the

fact

and

lesson

of

history.

The

messianic connotation attributed to it as a precondition for

development assistance and by extension development, has

not only made it subjective, but also contributed to the high

level of autocrats in civilian garbs across the globe especially

in Africa. Conceptually, therefore, democracy is analytically

vacuous and theoretically ambivalent, difficult as it were to

adequately define and measure. In its present form and

character, the concept of democracy does very little or nothing

to illuminate our understanding of contemporary politics

particularly in the Third World. Critical questions pertaining

to its contexts of origin and metamorphosis must therefore be

raised if the concept would ever be useful both theoretically

and practically.

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Conclusion What I have done in this paper is to interrogate the

usefulness and otherwise of the concept of liberal democracy

in the African context. It would seem, as suggested by the

preceding analyses, that the universalistic conception of liberal

democracy as one with a fairly standardized values and possibly inevitable to human existence, is not supported by

the fact of history and a body of empirical evidence and well‐

constructed theory. Rather, it is merely an ideological

category, whose character and form have been everything but

constant under its various waves over the years. Thus apart

from its usefulness in advancing the interest of the West in

propagation of its values, and that of it dependant for foreign

aid of various kinds from the Third World, the concept of

democracy, to all intents and purposes, serve little or no useful

purposes.

Indeed,

it

is

a

major

source

of

disservice

particularly to the developing countries, which pathetically

have had to live with it due to their helplessness. With

democracy as the only game in town, what these countries

need to do is to situate their democratization process within

their particularistic and systemic contexts to accommodate

their political culture. But as a concept, it is too ideologically

laden, analytically vacuous and theoretically ambivalent to

illuminate our understanding of contemporary politics in the

Third World and beyond.

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E‐mail: [email protected]

Department of Political Science and Public Administration.

Redeemer’s University, Redemption City,

Mowe, Ogun State, Nigeria.

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Cultivating cultural change through cinema;Youssef Chahine and the creation of nationalidentity in Nasser’s Egypt

Barrie Wharton2

Egypt has long been considered by most commentators as the

birthplace of Arab cinema and many of the seminal milestones

in Arab cinematic history such as the shooting of the first full‐

length feature film, Layla (1928)3 took place along the banks of

the Nile. The golden era of Egyptian cinema began in the late

2 Dr Barrie Wharton, from the University of Limerick, Ireland, is

currently a Visiting

Fellow

at

the

National

Centre

for

Research

on

Europe at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has

lectured widely throughout Europe ( Portugal, Greece, etc) and the

Islamic world (Egypt, Iran, etc) and he has published widely in

refereed journals throughout Europe, the Middle East and North

America. He is a regular contributor to the international press and

media on questions relating to Europe and Islam. 3 During the article, all films will be referred to in the first instance in

italics by their Arabic title in an English alphabet form followed by

an English translation and the year of film release. Subsequent

referrals to the same film will be in italics but in English translation

form only. In the filmography at the end of the article, all films are

referenced in their Arabic language version in English alphabet form

followed by an English translation and year of release. All

translations are in standard Egyptian Arabic. Any Arabic terms used

in article are highlighted in italics and bold script.

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1940’s and continued through the 1950’s and early 1960’s, an

era which coincided with the coming to power of Col. Nasser

after the Free Officers Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent

establishment of Egypt as the cultural fulcrum of the new

emerging pan‐Arab doctrine. During this period which ended

with the death of Nasser in 1970, Egyptian cinema moved from being a simple entertainment tool for the masses to a role

as an instrument of socio‐cultural change. As such, Egyptian

cinema became almost a blueprint for the new Nasserist

societal vision and the cinema screen brought this vision to a

population where high rates of illiteracy hampered written

efforts.

Although much more famous internationally for his

post‐Nasser work, one of the foremost directors of this period

was the recently deceased Egyptian director, Youssef Chahine

and this

neglected

period

of

his

career

may

in

fact

prove

to

be

his most important legacy. This neglect is perhaps

understandable as Nasser’s sudden and premature death in

1970 led to a rapid demise in what had become perceived as

Nasserist cultural policy and in a rapidly changing Egypt,

both cultural commentators and Chahine himself shied away

from the discussion of his role in what had been perhaps the

most important project of national identity creation in modern

Egyptian history.

Indeed, when one analyzes the considerable literature

available on culture, and more specifically on cinema, in

Nasserist Egypt, there seems to exist an almost avowed and

deliberate playing down of Chahine’s role in Nasserism. On

the contrary, there has been a vast range of academic studies

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on the role in Nasserist Egypt of his contemporary and

sometime collaborator, Naguib Mahfouz4 while the influence

on Nasserism of the legendary singer and actress, Um

Kolsoum has also been widely documented.5

There are various reasons for this academic obfuscation

of the relationship between Chahine and Nasser but foremost amongst them is undoubtedly the contemporary academic

obsession with Chahine as an anti‐establishment maverick

director whose themes of cosmopolitanism, liberalism and

homosexuality mark him out as an anti‐regime figure in Arab

society. This obsession was exacerbated by his attack on

Islamic fundamentalism in Heya Fawda..?/Chaos (2007) and

increasingly, one sees Chanhine posthumously lauded in an

erroneous manner as a “Western” director . Admittedly, the

aforementioned themes do exist in his most famous work in

the

West,

his

Alexandrian

quartet, Iskandariyah...

lih?

/Alexandria…Why ?(1978), Hadduta Misriyah /An Egyptian Tale

(1982), Iskandariyah Kaman wa Kaman/Alexandria Again and

Again (1989) and Iskandariyah‐New York/Alexandria‐New York

(2004) but they do not predominate in these films and play no

part in much of his work. In fact, closer examination of

4 Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 and this

spawned a huge wave of research on his work with the bulk of it

concentrating on his work during the Nasserist perios when he

wrote his classic Cairo Trilogy and perhaps his best‐known work,

Midaq Alley. 5 Indeed, the Institut de Monde Arabe in Paris dedicated a full

exhibition in 2008 to Um Kolsoum with much of the exhibition

concentrating on her relationship with Nasser and Nasserism.

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Chahine’s complete oeuvre reveals a cinematic master who

was far more a poet of marginalization and social inequity

than a chronicler of dilettante life in modern Egypt and it is

noteworthy that by the time Chahine released the first of this

mainly autobiographical quartet of films which is often cited

as spanning his career, he had already directed twenty‐eight films and as this article will argue, his most significant

cinematic work, albeit not his most celebrated, was already

behind him.

In particular, this article will concentrate on three of

Chahine’s films which were produced during the Nasserist era

and which had in different ways, a profound effect on a

national culture and identity which was still in the throes of

formation. The first is the seminal Bab al‐Hadid/Cairo Main

Station (1958), a film which recreates and distills the upheaval

of Col.

Nasser’s

new

Egypt

through

a series

of

interwoven

and

fraught personal relationships in the symbolic location of the

country’s largest train station. Second is Al Nasser Salah Ad‐Din

/Saladin (1963), the quintessential Arab epic of the Crusades

and a thinly‐veiled allegory of the expected triumph of pan‐

Arab nationalism, a paean to the moral certainty of the new

regime and almost a hymn to Nasser himself. Finally, this

article will examine the daring and ground‐ breaking Al‐

Ard/The Land (1969), Chahine’s sadly neglected neo‐realist tour

de force which captured the soul of rural Egypt and still stands

today as one of the most powerful testaments to social

injustice in the annals of world cinema.

To understand the problematic position with the work

of Chahine and its role and influence in Nasserist Egypt, one

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must look primarily at the reception which has been afforded

to pan‐Arabist and Nasserist‐era cinema and intellectuals in

the post‐1970 period. First and foremost, one must mention

that the legacy of this period has been primarily associated

with Col. Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and to a

lesser extent, Hafez al‐Assad in Syria, the late father of the current Syrian president. The association between Nasserism

and these authoritarian and dictatorial figures has done much

to discredit Nasserism as an innovative cultural project and by

extension, those that were heavily involved in its creation.

Some such as Naguib Mahfouz, the winner of the

Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, managed successfully to re‐

invent themselves in a new post‐Nasserist Egyptian cultural

environment without having to overtly disassociate

themselves from or deny their past. Others such as

Abderrahman Cherkaoui,

who

had

worked

with

Chahine

and

Mahfouz on the script of Saladin, were not as successful and

found themselves intellectually marooned in President Sadat’s

new infitah capitalist society6 where they were tainted, albeit

often wrongly with the stigma of servants of the Soviet Union

and intellectually demeaned and debased as mere reactionary

mouthpieces of the culturally redundant Nasserist ideology of

pan‐Arabism.

6 Infitah or open door policy was a policy initiated by Sadat which

was originally economic but quickly had wide‐ranging socio‐cultural

and political ramifications. It involved the opening up of Egyptian

society to capitalism and the rejection of Nasser’s socialism. It

brought Egypt closer to the United States and away from the Soviet

sphere of influence.

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Youssef Chahine circumvented this danger when after

a three year hiatus from feature films after Nasser’s death, he

released El Ousfour/The Sparrow (1972), a film which clearly

points the finger of blame for the calamitous defeat of Egypt at

the hands of Israel in the Six Days War of 1967 at the Nasserist

political establishment. Indeed, the film was so provocative in its attack on state corruption that Nasser’s successor, Sadat

had it banned for two years after its release. However, the film

was successful for Chahine as an individual in that he

managed to clearly draw a line in the cultural quicksand

between his Nasserist past and his future career and as such,

The Sparrow becomes a watershed not only in Chahine’s career

but also in the trajectory of Egyptian film as its release marks

the end of Nasser’s pan‐Arabist cinematic dream as a new

generation of Arab directors and producers followed

Chahine’s

lead

and

moved

towards

more

introspective,

microcosmic visions of their societies in stark contrast with the

avowed pan‐national didactic nature and universality of

theme and structure which had characterized Arab cinema in

the Nasserist era. Highly ironically, The Sparrow was itself an

Arab co‐production between Egypt and Algeria but such co‐

productions would be few and far between in the following

decades.

However, it is Chahine’s pre‐The Sparrow work which

is of principal concern to this article and despite its powerful

condemnation of Nasserism, the reality is that Chahine’s

career was forged in and helped to forge Nasserist culture and

by logical extension, contemporary Egyptian identity. It may

have been possible to detach and remove the stigma and yoke

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of Nasserism from Chahine after 1970 but it will never be

possible to remove Chahine from Nasserism.

Born in 1926 in Alexandria into a Christian family,

Chahine attended the prestigious and elitist Victoria College

from where he progressed to Pasadena Film School in

California. As such, Chahine was not a member of the different opposition political groups such as Young Egypt or

the Muslim Brotherhood7 but to suggest that he was

ambivalent to or ignorant of the great political change that was

on the horizon in early 1950’s Egypt would be foolish.

His first three feature films were shot when Egypt was

still under British colonial rule but his career really took off

after the Free Officers Revolution of 1952 which brought Col.

Nasser to power with his accompanying vision of a new

Egyptian culture and society. This vision called for a total

bouleversement

of

the

hitherto

existent

class

and

societal

structure through a socialist programme of nationalization and

education for the masses in order to create a new, more just

society.

Nasser’s utopian vision involved the formation of a

new national identity and culture and emissaries were enlisted

throughout the respective spheres of Egyptian cultural

production and entrusted with the dissemination of the new

Nasserist creed. Cinema was one of the principal spheres and

from the early days of the revolution onwards, Egyptian

7 Young Egypt was a neo‐fascist group with sympathies towards

Nazi Germany while the Muslim Brotherhood which still exists

today sought to islamicize Egyptian society and was the breeding

ground for many offshoot Islamic radical groupings.

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cinema enjoyed huge government subsidies and production

support as long of course as it served the aims of the

revolution. Chahine was one of the first directors to benefit

from this support and early films such as Sira` Fi al‐Wadi

/Struggle in the Valley/The Blazing Sun (1954), in which Chahine

discovery, Omar Sharif enjoyed his first main role and Sira` fi el‐ Minaa /Dark Waters, Struggle in the Port (1956) stand the test

of time as almost propaganda documents of early Nasserist

doctrine.

However, it was Cairo Main Station (1958) which would

cement Chahine’s reputation as Nasserism’s greatest director

and bring his work and by extension, Nasserism to a wider

Arab and international audience. Cairo Main Station is a

complex and above all, visually rich film, a veritable feast for

the eyes. Its frequent long shots echo the influence of Italian

neo‐realism

as

the

principal

characters

are

juxtaposed

against

the tumult and chaos of the real railway station of the title.

Such contrasts mirror the cultural upheaval and radical

change which characterized early Nasserist Egypt and perhaps

the most moving scenes are occasional ones of complete

silence which contrast starkly with the usual incessant noise of

the station. One of the most striking and famous images from

the film is the shot of the giant statue of Ramses II which

stands outside the station with the masses swarming around it

and the impact of this shot, which represents the creation of a

society of the masses, a dominant theme in pan‐Arabist

ideology, remains as powerful and effective today as when the

film was first released.

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Cairo Main Station is the story of a simple‐minded man,

Qenawi, a disabled newspaper seller in the railway station, a

rural peasant cast adrift in the new metropolis. Chahine

himself plays the role of Qenawi and despite his privileged

upbringing, he imbues his character with an ibn‐al‐balad8

quality which endears him to the audience who identify with his character from the very beginning. Qenawi cuts pictures of

women from magazines for the station hut he lives in but the

real object of his sexual desire or more correctly, frustration is

Hanouma, the beautiful lemonade seller, played by the

popular Egyptian actress, Hind Rostom. However, Hanouma

is engaged to the handsome Abou Serib, a station porter and

trade union organizer, played by Farid Chawqi.

Hanouma playfully but innocently flirts with Qenawi

and the confusion this provokes unleashes a wave of tragic

violence. This

violence

results

in

the

death

of

an

innocent

girl

whom Qenawi kills during a rage in a case of mistaken

identity as he attempts to kill Hanouma who has resisted his

advances and when he attempts to kill her again, this act

inevitably leads to Qenawi being taken away to a lunatic

asylum. This allegory for the consequences of the inability to

accept and embrace change in Nasser’s Egypt was shocking

for Egyptian audiences and after its release, it was shelved for

almost twenty years in Egypt but it had succeeded in breaking

8 ibn‐al‐balad , literally a son of the neighbourhood, is one of the

greatest compliments one can pay to an Egyptian. In dialect, it varies

from area to area but in Irish English, the term “salt of the earth”

would be used. The term is used to describe somebody who

embodies inherent decency, a type of everyman.

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new ground in Egyptian cinema and its positive portrayal of a

“fallen” woman as a heroine was the first time the issue of

gender inequality had really been portrayed on the Egyptian

cinema screen.

The power of Cairo Main Station is its ability to portray

complex political, social and cultural issues in a simple yet always didactic manner. For this purpose, Chahine employs

all the classic stereotypes of Egyptian society in the familiar

setting of the Cairo railway station, a location familiar with

almost all of Egyptian society. Sounds of people greeting and

parting, eating and drinking, buying and selling permeate the

film and almost lull the audience into a sense of ease and

familiarity which makes the end all the more shocking.

Parallel stories permeate the film as we see a selection

of vignettes of a changing Egypt which reinforce the film’s

message. Porters

try

to

set

up

a trade

union

while

a feminist

gives a speech. A family of rural peasants wander through the

station completely lost and adrift akin to aliens in a brave new

world while two young lovers arrange a secret rendezvous.

Above all, we see the repeating vignette of the uprooted and

isolated Qenawi, an existential loner and silent voyeur,

emasculated and doomed by his social condition.

A tale of failed socio‐economic determinism and socio‐

cultural fatalism, Cairo Main Station is a cry for change in

Egypt for only radical change can alter the destinies of the

protagonists. The final scene in the film, when Qenawi is taken

away in a straitjacket through the teeming crowds after he has

been persuaded to dress up for a wedding which will never

take place, is almost overly melodramatic but indeed, highly

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emotive and it quickly became seen as a leitmotif for the

programme of social justice and reforms which Nasser sought.

If Cairo Main Station linked Chahine to the new

Nasserist creed, he became interminable intertwined with its

fortunes through Saladin (1963). Ostensibly, a historical epic

charting the twelfth‐century defence of Jerusalem by the Arab hero, Saladin against the Christian crusaders, the film is a

thinly‐veiled allegory for the yearned for triumph of the pan‐

Arab nationalist ideology of Nasser.

Scripted by Naguib Mahfouz and Abderrahman

Cherkaoui, the film was originally titled El Nasser; Saladin but

to avoid accusations of overt propaganda, the title is usually

shortened. However, the inferred parallel between Saladin and

Nasser is glaringly obvious. Saladin is a paragon of peace and

religious tolerance, an educated ruler who gives clandestine

medical assistance

to

Richard

the

Lionheart

and

guarantees

religious freedom for all. A three hour epic, Saladin remains

one of the few authentic post‐colonial cultural productions

which attest to the glory of ancient Egypt. Indeed, the film is

often as cited as the great historical epic of Egyptian cinema

with Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria uniting Arabs

across Western Asia and North Africa in order to ward off the

Christian crusaders and its appearance in the wake of the Suez

crisis was widely interpreted as echoing Nasser’s

contemporary harnessing of Arab society against the Zionist

enemy.

Chahine never discussed at length Saladin in later years

but its interpretation and appropriation of Egyptian history for

propaganda purposes cannot be denied. Saladin had already

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been the protagonist of an Egyptian film by the Lama brothers

in 1941 but in colonial times, he had been reduced to a mere

action hero in an adventure. Yet, Chahine’s production, in

which he appears himself, brings Saladin to a new plane as a

symbol of justice and chivalry with the omnipresent slogan of

unity resonating throughout the film, striking a direct chord with contemporary Nasserist ideology of the time.

Arab identity is constantly placed above religious

affiliation a

Africana, 3, Dec. 2009

Documents

Transcript of Africana, 3, Dec. 2009