People and power in an African consensual democracy

Abstract

Some African thinkers have argued that the governance systems in traditional precolonial African societies were democratic, and the kind of democracy they practised was consensual democracy. It was democratic because it ensured the maximal participation of all members in the governance of the society, and it was consensual because it involved the rational deliberation of issues where decisions were primarily reached by consensus. The aim of this article is to examine, on the one side, the nature of the demos and kratos in traditional African systems of governance that warrants characterising them as democratic, and, on the other side, the decision- making process that marks it as a distinctive form of democracy – consensual democracy. Reflecting on Akan proverbs and archival records of deliberations, I argue that the question of democracy in relation to the traditional African systems of governance should be pursued not from how they cherish consensual decision- making, but by how they uniquely conceptualise the demos and kratos in the political experiences of African societies. This unique conception of people-power and the institution of decisional dissensus is what distinguishes traditional African consensual democracy from both populism and deliberative democracy.