*The Disengaged Public*

By Baba Galleh Jallow

African publics are generally disengaged from the politics of their
countries. Paradoxically, they are also generally saddened by the politics
of their countries. This paradox seems to affirm the view that if you do
not get involved with politics, politics will still get involved with you.
In other words, human beings are essentially political beings. Among the
majority of Africans, including a large section of modern day
intellectuals, politics is shrugged off as really not that important, as a
dirty game, as something that just has to be endured.

Since Africans cannot really ignore their national politics, and since
African politics are generally unpleasant to contemplate, most Africans go
about their daily business carrying around a sad sense of déjà vu when it
comes to what their government is saying or doing. They are beset by a
pervading sense of helplessness and often do not bother to join whatever
little effort there is to remedy the situation, either by speaking out,
acting, encouraging, or acknowledging those who do speak out and/or act.
The majority of this silent majority ascribes government to God and
patiently wait for the arrival of God’s will to change the government,
however desperate their situation, however unjust and tyrannical their
government.

African publics’ disengagement with their national politics has its roots
in colonial space. The colonial state stood African civic cultures on their
head by totally shifting the locus and source of political power from the
people to their rulers. European colonial policies demanded total obedience
and compliance from African publics through African rulers that they either
installed or tolerated. The preoccupations of African rulers were reduced
to the task of helping the colonial state rule her African subjects, have
them pay taxes and do colonial labor as and when required. African rulers
were often allowed to form their own police units and build their own
prisons for those of their people who would dare to question their
authority or the authority of the colonial overlords. Where rulers were
held accountable by their people before European hegemony, they now dared
anyone to question any of their words and actions, however manifestly
unjust and destructive. The ugly phenomenon lives on in many present day
African rulers, some very close to the home.

In postcolonial Africa, the people remain powerless because power never
shifted back to its precolonial source and location in society. The men who
took over from the colonial authorities chanted songs of freedom and
popular empowerment, and energized and mobilized their people in the
struggle for independence. But once independence was gained, freedom and
popular empowerment were placed at the bottom of national priorities where
over half a century later, they still languish. In a majority of cases,
independence was understood to be coterminous with the departure of the
colonialists, the transfer of political power from white hands to black
hands, and nothing much else; certainly not the freedom and popular
empowerment in whose name independence was sought, often violently fought
for, and won.

Following independence, the people were consulted only for their validation
of the new rulers. Their votes were solicited at election times, when they
were reminded of the heroic victory of the new rulers over the old, how
they were all freed from foreign domination. They were told they now owned
themselves and were nobody’s slaves. And they were told to be grateful and
loyal to the rulers that God had given to them. Those who thought otherwise
were branded and continue to be branded agents of the old rulers whose
imaginary insidious plots to enslave the people again would never
materialize. Unlike foreign slave masters, Africans now had local slave
masters who would not to beat them up too badly unless they badly
misbehaved by refusing to be “patriotic” citizens whose defining
characteristic was total obeisance to the new rulers. They were often
reminded and continue to be reminded to this day that only God could effect
a change of ruler which, given their unchanging circumstances was really
not too hard for the people to believe. The new African rulers proved more
powerful than the old colonial rulers and practiced a politics that
rendered the people even more removed from their governments. Africa is one
continent that bears the dubious distinction of replacing colonial rule
with a worse kind of indigenous rule; a continent better off in 1960 than
it is in 2015.

African diaspora communities are more or less equally disengaged from their
national politics. Those Africans who travel outside the continent as
economic migrants are more interested in earning a living and sometimes
supporting their families and relatives back home than they are in how
badly their government behaves. Thousands of Diaspora Africans remain mute
and seemingly indifferent unless and until they or a close relative or
family member gets into trouble with the rulers. At that point, they would
join the verbal struggle against the bad rulers either momentarily or
permanently. This pattern of behavior is also seen among the African
intellectual Diaspora.  The majority of educated Africans in the Diaspora
maintain a stony silence over the ugly politics of their countries. While
unavoidably angry and / or sad at the sorry state of their national
politics, at the outrageous antics of their rulers and governments, many
educated Africans remain publicly disengaged from the politics of their
countries.

The minority of Africans both at home and in the Diaspora who find their
home politics sufficiently unbearable to speak out or advocate for
political change find themselves in a very lonely and hostile space. They
have to contend with a malignant state, mentally blind state loyalists,
indifferent audiences and cynical detractors. They draw inspiration to
continue speaking and/or acting only from a deep-seated sense of duty and a
conviction that disengagement from their national politics is simply not an
option.


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