I have heard democracy’s origin story told and retold many times. Most of us know the broad outlines, democracy was invented by the Greeks in the 5th century BCE. In that period, political power in the city state of Athens was concentrated in the hands of an aristocratic elite. Their exercise of power was abusive and they maintained their privileges at the expense of ordinary Athenians, leading to widespread social unrest. As the society became increasingly unstable, the ruling class was forced to find solutions, eventually introducing a series of reforms which gave ordinary people a voice in decision making. The Greeks coined the word “democracy” to describe this new system where the demos or people would rule. The system disappears after the Roman invasion of Greece, but emerges again in England centuries later, advances to the US, across Europe and eventually spreads to the rest of the world over the last 200 years. Here’s the issue, in all the versions of this story that I hear repeated by experts, there is never any mention of Africa or of Africa’s contributions to democracy.
What is repeated constantly is the single-lineage story about democracy’s trajectory from Athens to the rest of the world, a story so dominant, that you would be forgiven if, like me, you're not aware that this story is increasingly regarded as false. A competing argument made by several historians is that Africa, and not Athens should be recognized as the birthplace of democracy. Their theories about the African origins of democracy start with good questions, like where did the Greeks get the idea of democracy from? What would have inspired the crazy idea that ordinary people should participate in important decisions when nothing in Athenian society at the time even hinted at this? These scholars consider, not unreasonably, that ideas for democracy must have come from somewhere else. In their search for possible sources, they turn to a society which was older and more advanced than the Greeks, a society with a three thousand year head start that would already have gone through different types of political organization and devised different systems of governance. They look to Africa and more specifically, to ancient Egypt which had attained a level of stability that the Greeks would have envied and which had structures to incorporate the input of ordinary people in their design of public policy. The argument goes like this - we know from historical texts that the Egyptians were greatly admired by the Greeks, we also know that Greek scholars would regularly travel to Egypt to study their laws and customs, so it is not unreasonable to propose Egypt as the source of Greek democratic reforms. For the advocates of this argument, Africa should rightfully be recognized as the birthplace of democracy, not Greece.
This argument has been widely criticised, the main counter-arguments being that it presents an overly romanticized version of ancient Egypt ( which institutionally, operated as a theocratic monarchy under the rule of the pharaohs), that there are no historical records to prove Egypt as the source of Athenian ideas about democracy and finally, that it is not grounded in historical analysis, but looks more like misguided political project unsupported by any proof. We can’t deal with all these counter-arguments here, except to acknowledge that there is no scholarly consensus that Africa invented democracy. However, what even the fiercest critics will concede is that Africa had practices of participatory decision making that pre-dated the Greeks by thousands of years and that these practices are a likely source of inspiration for Athenian thinking about their own democratic reforms - Africa may not have invented democracy, but democracy’s roots are undeniably African. Travelling to ancient Egypt, the Greeks would have seen a highly efficient and organised administrative system in action. They would have observed the operation of local councils or courts in which ordinary people could discuss and resolve issues collectively. They would have learned about the Egyptian concept of ma’at, which formed the foundation of their approaches to governance and embedded ideals of truth, justice and fairness into the exercise of power. That these encounters with alternative approaches to governance provided inspiration for Greek thinking about their own governance challenges appears not to be in question.
When it comes to practices of participatory governance, the contributions of pre-colonial Africa do not end with the Egyptians. There are rich seams running all across the Continent that provide abundant resources for thinking about how societies can make decisions. The Oromo nation in Ethiopia developed a system known as Gadaa, which provided for rotational leadership and collective decision making. The Igbo nation in Nigeria held assemblies for collective decision making through open discussion. The Ashanti nation in Ghana operated a complex council system and held open forums for discussions on communal issues. The Tswana nation created the kgotla or public assembly for the open date of community issues. The Sotho nation in Lesotho and South Africa relied on public gatherings called lekgotla to build consensus in decision making. The Zulu and Xhosa nations in South Africa relied on public assemblies called inkundla or imbizo for consensus building. The San in the Kalahari region practiced consensus-based governance which took the form of community councils. I know I’m not doing justice to these systems by listing them, but I hope the list starts to convey the scale and the depth of African solutions to the challenges of participatory decision making. Recognition of these ancient practices is growing and leading to new stories about democracy’s roots. The single-lineage origin story is seductively simple, but is now widely regarded as incomplete. While it is appealing to credit the invention of democracy to a particular group of people, in a particular place and time, scholars are recognising that forms of democratic practice appeared in different cultures at different times. This approach takes seriously the profusion of councils, assemblies and public decision making bodies that were operating in the ancient world and demands a rethinking about democracy's origin story, not as a Western invention that was later exported to different countries, but as a dynamic process of invention and reinvention taking place around the world as human beings in different settings sought to create and implement solutions for dealing with the age old problems that we are still facing today - how to limit the exercise of power by the few at the expense of the many and how to expand participation in decision making.
Learning about the uniquely African approaches to democratic governance is more important now than ever. We find ourselves faced with exercises of power that are failing to serve people effectively. In too many places, decision making by leaders has become corrupt, unjust and destructive to the interests of ordinary people. We can draw on these ancient practices to inform a critical view of what we see happening around us today, not based on external sources but reinforced by the ideals of consultation, accountability and communal consent that were once at the heart of African governance systems. More importantly, as the world searches for ways to revitalize flagging democratic energies, the practices implemented by these great civilisations offer a tremendous resource for new thinking. It is our turn to engage with the age old problems of how to limit power and increase participation in decision making. My hope is that a closer study of African exemplars will provide the world with much needed inspiration for the next wave of democratic innovation.