Current thinking on the post-colonial state in Africa stresses the need to cut back or bypass the state, which is seen as inefficient and predatory. Can civil society perform the role of reforming the political realm that is currently expected of it? This chapter from the book ‘Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument’, argues that the dichotomy between state and civil society, which is taken for granted, does not reflect realities in Africa.
The danger of emphasising the supposed opposition between state and civil society is that it creates the illusion that African political systems are more similar to their western counterparts than they really are. In Africa, there is no genuine disconnection between a structurally differentiated state and a civil society composed of properly organised and politically distinct interest groups. The current assumption about the emergence of such a recognisable civil society in Africa is thus misleading and derives from wishful thinking more than from analysis of present conditions.
We need to recognise that far from modernising in the sense that development theory had anticipated, the continent appears to be moving in the direction of greater informalisation. Africa is not institutionalising, nor is it becoming a mass society. South of the Sahara, there are today virtually no examples of social or political relations devoid of clientelistic calculations or considerations of identity. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no significant development of horizontal, functionally determined, ties of solidarity, such as professional associations or issue-based groupings.
However arbitrary, violent or even criminal, state coercion on the continent has rarely been such as to make totalitarianism a realistic political option.
- In much of Africa, there is a political opposition genuinely committed to the kind of political reform that would increase political accountability. And at times, it is able to mobilise strong protest.
- However, the tendency is for political opponents to challenge their exclusion from the state in the hope that their agitation will earn them co-optation.
- The basic reference unit remains family and kin-based.
- In the absence of an institutionally autonomous and relatively impartial state affording protection to the country’s citizens, it is imperative for ordinary people to maintain links with those who have power.
- Whether rooted in primordial or clientelistic ties, social relations are inevitably based on personalised bonds of mutually beneficial reciprocity.
However, it is clear that Africa is not moving backwards:
- It is not engaged in a notional return to the ‘age-old’ ways of the continent.
- It is pursuing its own specific form of modernisation.
- There is as yet no evidence of a functionally operating civil society in Africa.
- There are instances of embryonic societal movements opposing central power, although as yet far removed from the ideals of civil society.
- Because there is little distinction between the private and public domains and because the organisational capacity of such movements is still limited, it would be misleading to argue that there is a politically salient cleavage between ‘state’ and ‘society’.
- Instead of focusing on such vague categories it is more profitable to pay attention to the actual behaviour of the main political actors.
