I am very grateful to be here and I’m also grateful to Dr. Tajudeen.  When we came in and exchanged greetings, and looked at the list of participants and prospective speakers, he told me that he wished that I spoke first, in which case he would say hallelujah, I agree with you.  I reverse that now, saying hallelujah to him, I agree with all that he said, which has in many ways reduced my task.  My task is now to reaffirm what has been said, as Dr. Tajudeen has already touched most of the things that I was to talk about.  So what I will do now, is to focus on three or four issues which I think are important for us to revisit and to rethink. 

I think the whole issue that we are facing here is really the issue of change.  Most of what he has said implies change.  It is because we have neither identified these changes nor have we been able to respond to them that we are facing these problems.  We are told that the serious problem we are facing as we approach the 21^st century is development and democracy.  There is poverty, there is underdevelopment and there is lack of participation.  It is because our people have not been able, as eloquently put by Tajudeen, to take part in decisions, which affect their lives and therefore cannot fit in, as it were, in decision-making positions and also in constructive development.  Now I would like to do three things: One, to talk, as briefly as I can, on this whole issue of change and change management and then I would like to say something of what I call the paradox of democracy and development, and what is to be done. 

Sometime ago, almost 30 years ago the late Julius Nyerere, then President of Tanzania said that the issue facing Africa was not that of change or no change.  The issue Africa is facing now is change, change is inevitable. Africa has been changed, Africa is changing.  Change is the very essence of development.  But the issues facing Africa is change by whom?  Is it change by circumstances, which one cannot control? Like a leaf falling from a tree, its direction is dictated by the wind or is it change that one could control, change by oneself?  And the problem as I see it - I’m not a historian but I’m a product of history – is Africa has not been able to respond to outside changes.  For whatever reasons, it could be reasons posed from outside or reasons by own people – Dr. Tajudeen referred to Feudalism, it is because we have not been able to respond to changes from outside that we have been marginalized.  If we take the two dates 1492 and 1497-98, when Columbus discovered the so-called ‘New World’ and Vasco Da Gama came to us, that was the beginning of our marginalization.  Because then they were able to encircle us but we never responded to that.  So it is the issue of change and this issue of change pervades all our sector societies and all our institutions.  The second issue of change is what is now termed as  ‘change management’.  This is what Nyerere referred to as ‘changes by ourselves’.  We decide what kind of changes are needed.  That requires vision, it requires capacity, it requires leadership, it requires a very, very clear idea of where we are going.  In that too we have failed. 

We are needed to respond to the changes.  We have allowed nothing to happen.  We have allowed other people to come and do things for us.  Again as Dr. Tajudeen mentioned about NGOs, the people come to us, they like us and change us.  They come to the house and change the furniture.  That is one issue I will come back to.  Changes have taken place within and without our societies; they have also taken place today with globalization.  We talk about globalization, but I don’t really think that we take it seriously analyzing and trying to understand what it means to us apart from just complaining.  Globalization is not a fad.  It is a phenomenon.  And it did not start after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It goes back to, at least 1492 – the second or third phase of globalization.  When we talk about globalization, do we, the people, the scholars see the implications of this for us, what it means, and how we can respond to it?  We make noises, we complain, we shout.  And again if I have given an anecdote, I do not want to be misunderstood, I am a great supporter of the late President Nyerere.  At one time, when he was fighting with the World Bank and IMF, in 1985 and 1986 and I was doing some work for the Canadian CIDA on the question of conditionalities, at that time CIDA wanted to find out what conditionalities meant, what the reaction of African countries was and Tanzania was my case study. I went to Mwalimu, we talked and there after I saw his finance minister, Amri Jabri who had retired, they are both dead. I’m using this to criticise ourselves.  Amri Jabri said, it was OK for us to complain.  What Mwalimu was doing was good - speaking out for the rest of Africa.  But what were we doing about it?  And he was not saying it in a nasty way, he said it was good for Mwalimu to do that.  But we as people, as individuals, as groups or as nations what were we doing beyond complaining?  I see the same thing too now with globalization.  It brings changes to us.  But what are we doing about it apart from complaining at ACP meetings or at conferences?  How are we responding to those changes because they are a pain to us?  Are we building our capacities and facing them headlong or are we asking our friends, again as Tajudeen said, to come and help us? 

Prof. Bujra said that we should be frank and I’m trying to be frank with you.  We talk a lot, we complain a lot.  We accuse other people but we ourselves do very little.  James Nxumalo said here we have so many conferences, there is a list of data in the library, a lot of information.  We are like a bicycle. The only way a bicycle can keep upright is to move and we like moving but not doing something.  That’s the one issue that I would like to raise across to you, the question of change.  There are changes out there.  It is because we were not aware of what’s happening outside us, that foreigners came and dominated us.  Have you ever thought of how an English man, a French man, a Portuguese and the rest of them away there in Europe come here, who don’t speak the language and who are able to interfere with us and make one of us pass the other one?  Reflect back and think how they were able to do it.  They did not know the language.  At one time I was in Accra, I went swimming.  It’s very rough sea there.  I pondered how these people could have come to land there.  They didn’t have the maps but they were able to do it and they are still doing it.  My friends, changes have been around us for many, many centuries and if we are not aware of that we are going to continue to be dominated and marginalized. 

The Paradox of Democracy and Development 

I said in the beginning that democracy or democratization and development are the challenges that face us.  It is also the challenge imposed upon us by our donors, but of course these two things have different meanings to them and to us.  Within the theme of change I would like to share the following as food for thought.  We tend to forget that development implies changes.  The development process entails changes, so does democracy.  And these changes create winners and losers.  In the case of democracy with elections, as Dr. Tajudeen said, we have a system where winners take hold.  But even in situations where winners do not take hold you still have losers.  We don’t think about losers, we just ignore them and believe that every thing will be fine.  We have no system where by losers can be accommodated, similarly with development.  Again I’m talking about this within the context of change and conflicts.  Development produces losers as well.  There are losers out there in whatever system, be it democracy or no democracy.  There are bound to be losers and winners and this creates problems.  There is no system in our societies to accommodate the losers.  We throw them out.  We have no systems where we can prevail on the winners to tolerate the losers.  And therein also we now have the problem of conflicts.  I say it is a paradox, which we scholars and researchers alike, again I could be wrong - have not really focused on.  The process, which solves our problems, is that very process that creates other problems.  So it is a continuous process.  Problems are solved, new problems will be created.  We have institutions, we have democratic institutions, we have economic institutions, but when you look closely, again as Dr. Tajudeen alluded to, the principles underlining the institutions are not African. The values underlining them, they are not African.  So when the problems occur we assume that they will be solved in the way they are solved outside Africa, let’s say in Europe or in the United States of America, where they do have provisions for the losers.  So there is a circulation of problems, one comes in one goes out, one comes in one goes out and we don’t pay attention to that.  We talk about the problems, we leave conferences and forget about them.  So what should we do? 

Before I go on, I would like to clear one or two concepts.  Again, Tajudeen referred to this. We have democracy, we are told we must democratize.  We must have democratic institutions, we must have good governance.  In fact governance now has become a part of conditionality.  But what are these things.  What is governance? Is it something new to us? It is not.  Governance simply means the process by which public power is utilized.  It simply means that.  And we had that in pre-colonial Africa.  What is bad governance?  Bad governance simply means the utilization of power contrary to rules and contrary to traditions.  What is democracy?  Democracy is not new to us.  Democracy means those who are in power because of certain rules and regulations; but there are rules and regulations which enable people to be in power and also rules and regulations which allow people to get those in power out.  It simply means that.  But the way it is put to us, it is a completely new way of life.  For example, liberal democracy is a way of life.  It is a particular way of life.  It’s got its own history, its own traditions, and its origins.  It applies to particular situations, to particular people.  There are universal principles of democracy.  But the way in which democracy manifests itself depends on the history of the people, their tradition, their aspiration and so on.  In our case we have adopted democracy and its uses with no relevance to our history.  So when problems arise we have no mechanism to solve them.  So what shall we do? 

I think one thing is that we must be aware that there are changes around us.  We can’t afford to assume that things are as they were in the past.  This must sound very behoove but it is one of the problems.  We do not want to accept changes, but there are changes out there and we must accommodate them.  We must build capacities to respond to those changes.  Changes have to be recognized and responded to.  We must also acknowledge that conflicts, as Dr. Tajudeen has said, are natural.  It’s part and parcel of the human impediments.  Where ever you have more than three people, you are bound to have differences.  The issue is not about conflicts or no conflicts.  The issue is what you do with conflicts.  Appropriately handled conflicts can be very, very constructive and creative. In fact, it is the result of responding to these conflicts that institutions are created.  Some of you who are political scientists may remember HOPE.  HOPE is a situation where there were no institutions and life according to HOPE was a solitary waste, brutal, short.  If conflicts are not properly handled, then they become violent conflicts.  So again we have to be aware that conflicts by themselves are not bad, it is how we respond to them that counts.  We must anticipate changes and prepare to respond to them. 

As I said, development implies change, winners and losers.  If the losers are not taken care of it creates problems.  We must create relevant institutions.  Relevant and meaningful to those who are going to use them.  This is the problem that we have with the NGOs because most of the NGOs have been created by the middle class, Euro-centric oriented with no basic values that go to the roots.  We must indigenize our institutions.  We must indigenize democracy.  As I said earlier, we talk a lot, and as Dr. Tajudeen mentioned, we talked a lot about democracy, but we never really looked at what it means.  What is democracy?  Is it just position in government?  Is it parliament?  What does democracy mean?  It simply means people participating in decisions, which affect their lives and their livelihood.  That they take part in decisions.  How do they do that? Depends on their own traditions, on their own history, their own aspirations.  It simply means that.  And we as a people have failed to respond to that – to create a democracy that has a meaning to us, to create democratic institutions that have a meaning to us. 

The principles of democracy are universal.  Democracy in Japan is different from democracy in the United Kingdom.  I lived in Canada as a student and as a teacher.  Democracy in Canada is different from democracy in the United States.  Difference in attitudes.  Democracy in the Netherlands is different from that in Germany.  France is different from that of Britain.  But they are all democracy with different institutions and different attitudes.  We have never been able to respond to that challenge.  Some people tried, Nyerere tried.  But this is a challenge that we have to face here as scholars and to pass on to the coming generation.  It is because we have institutions that are not rooted in our traditions, so when things go wrong we do not know how to respond to them.  Instead we use the mechanisms of other peoples. 

I would like to end with this comment.  At the beginning of the 20^th century because of our inability to respond to our changes we were colonized.  And before that soon after Columbus we were enslaved.  We could not understand what was happening outside.  After the manipulation of slavery we had colonization.  We said that those who came to colonize us had certain capacity, certain power, abilities and colonized us and we were made inputted.  Now, the 21^st century is coming.  The same thing is happening again.  We have been more marginalized because we have not responded to the changes outside us.  We refused to learn from outside.  And now it could be worse because everybody is taking care of himself.  The Asians, the Europeans, the North Americans are in control of technology, they are our markets.  If we don’t organize ourselves, and again as Dr. Tajudeen said, and create our own bigger economic unit we can be further marginalized and completely forgotten.

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