features of traditional african system of government
Why the traditional systems endure, how the institutional dichotomy impacts the process of building democratic governance, and how the problems of institutional incoherence might be mitigated are issues that have not yet received adequate attention in African studies. With the introduction of the Black Administration Act the African system of governance and administration was changed and the white government took control of the African population. There is strong demand for jobs, better economic management, reduced inequality and corruption and such outcome deliverables as health, education and infrastructure.22 Those outcomes require effective governance institutions. Under the circumstances, it becomes critical that traditional leaders are directly involved in local governance so that they protect the interests of their communities. Rather, they are conveners of assemblies of elders or lower level chiefs who deliberate on settlement of disputes. A third layer lies between the other two layers and is referred to in this article as traditional institutions. Among the attributes of the traditional system with such potential is the systems transparent and participatory process of resolving conflicts, which takes place in open public meetings. The Role and Significance of Traditional Leadership in South African 1.4. Music is a form of communication and it plays a functional role in African society . The features associated with this new form of governmental administration deal with smaller government responsibility for providing goods and services. The colonial state modified their precolonial roles. 14 L.A. Ayinla 'African Philosophy of Law: A Critique' 151, available at Pre-colonial Administration of the Yorubas. Rules of procedure were established through customs and traditions some with oral, some with written constitutions Women played active roles in the political system including holding leadership and military positions. Keywords: Legal Pluralism, African Customary Law, Traditional Leadership, Chieftaincy, Formal Legal System Relationship With, Human Rights, Traditional Norms, Suggested Citation: Greater access to public services and to productivity-enhancing technology would also help in enhancing the transformation of the subsistence sector. Similarities between Democratic and Authoritarian Government. The terms Afrocentrism, Afrocology, and Afrocentricity were coined in the 1980s by the African American scholar and activist Molefi Asante. The place and role of African Youth in Pre-independence African Governance Systems 19-20 1.7. There are several types of government that are traditionally instituted around the world. (PDF) INDIGENOUS AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS - Academia.edu The question then becomes, how to be inclusive?19 A number of African states have decentralized their political decision-making systems and moved to share or delegate authority from the center to provincial or local levels. African Politics: A Very Short Introduction explores how politics is practised on the African continent, providing an overview of the different states and their systems. Features of Yoruba Pre colonial Administration - Bscholarly Broadly speaking, indigenous systems of governance are those that were practiced by local populations in pre-colonial times. At times, these traditional security system elements are sufficient enough for some uses, but there's certainly no denying . Nonhereditary selected leaders with constitutional power: A good example of this is the Gada system of the Oromo in Ethiopia and Kenya. In Sierra Leone, for example, approximately 85% of the population falls under the jurisdiction of customary law, defined under the constitution as the rules of law which, by custom, are applicable to particular communities in Sierra Leone. Traditional and informal justice systems aim at restoring social cohesion within the community by promoting reconciliation between disputing parties. Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Contentious Politics and Political Violence, Political Values, Beliefs, and Ideologies, Why African Traditional Institutions Endure, Authority Systems of Africas Traditional Institutions, Relevance and Paradox of Traditional Institutions, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1347, United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, Global Actors: Networks, Elites, and Institutions, Traditional Leaders and Development in Africa. Different property rights laws are a notable source of conflict in many African countries. The Pre-Colonial Period: From the Ashes of Pharaohs to the Berlin Conference At the end of the prehistoric period (10 000 BC), some African nomadic bands began to In any case, as . Presently, Nigeria practices the federal system. It considers the nature of the state in sub-Saharan Africa and why its state structures are generally weaker than elsewhere in the world. There is no more critical variable than governance, for it is governance that determines whether there are durable links between the state and the society it purports to govern. The initial constitutions and legal systems were derived from the terminal colonial era. In the thankfully rare cases where national governance breaks down completelySouth Sudan, Somalia, CARits absence is an invitation to every ethnic or geographic community to fend for itselfa classic security dilemma. African Style Democracy? - Public Seminar The settlement of conflicts and disputes in such consensus-based systems involves narrowing of differences through negotiations rather than through adversarial procedures that produce winners and losers. (No award was made in 50% of the years since the program was launched in 2007; former Liberian president Ellen John Sirleaf won the award in 2017. The same factors that hinder nation-building hinder democratization. In this regard, the president is both the head of state and government, and there are three arms and tiers of rules by which the country is ruled. In a few easy steps create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. In other cases, however, they survived as paid civil servants of the state without displacing the traditional elder-based traditional authority systems. The traditional and informal justice systems, it is argued offers greater access to justice. There are several types of government systems in African politics: in an absolute monarchy, the head of state and head of government is a monarch with unlimited legal authority,; in a constitutional monarchy, the monarch is a ceremonial figurehead who has few political competences,; in a presidential system, the president is the head of state and head of government, PDF Traditional Systems of Communication in Nigeria Some trust traditional leaders more than they trust state authorities. South Africas strategy revolves around recognition of customary law when it does not conflict with the constitution and involves traditional authorities in local governance. These communities select the Aba Gada, who serves a nonrenewable term of 8 years as leader. Beyond the traditional sector, traditional institutions also have important attributes that can benefit formal institutions. In general, decentralized political systems, which are often elder-based with group leadership, have received little attention, even though these systems are widespread and have the institutions of judicial systems and mechanisms of conflict resolution and allocation of resources, like the institutions of the centralized systems. Judicial marginalization: Another challenge posed by institutional fragmentation relates to marginalization of the traditional system within the formal legal system. Subsequent to the colonial experience, traditional institutions may be considered to be informal institutions in the sense that they are often not sanctioned by the state. Traditional institutions already adjudicate undisclosed but large proportions of rural disputes. While traditional institutions remain indispensable for the communities operating under traditional economic systems, they also represent institutional fragmentation, although the underlying factor for fragmentation is the prevailing dichotomy of economic systems. Extensive survey research is required to estimate the size of adherents to traditional institutions. There are very few similarities between democracy and dictatorship. Another basic question is, whom to include? For example, is it more effective to negotiate a power-sharing pact among key parties and social groups (as in Kenya) or is there possible merit in a periodic national dialogue to address issues that risk triggering conflict? Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society. Government, Public Policy Performance, Types of Government. Highlight 5 features of government. Legal norms are an integral part of the discussion about inclusivity since they affect every aspect of economic and personal life; this poses a critical question over whether individual rights or group rights take precedence in the normative hierarchy. Communities in the traditional socioeconomic space are hardly represented in any of the organizations of the state, such as the parliament, where they can influence policy and the legal system to reflect their interests. The origins of this institutional duality, the implications of which are discussed in Relevance and Paradox of Traditional Institutions, are largely traceable to the colonial state, as it introduced new economic and political systems and superimposed corresponding institutional systems upon the colonies without eradicating the existed traditional economic, political, and institutional systems. This theme, which is further developed below, is especially critical bearing in mind that Africa is the worlds most ethnically complex region, home to 20 of the worlds most diverse countries in terms of ethnic composition.8. One layer represents the formal institutions (laws) of the state. Cold War geopolitics reinforced in some ways the state-society gap as the global rivalry tended to favor African incumbents and frequently assured they would receive significant assistance from external powers seeking to build diplomatic ties with the new states. Large countries such as the DRC, Ethiopia, and Mozambique are likely to experience pressures against centralized, authoritarian, or one-party governance (whether accompanied by real elections or not). Chieftaincy is further plagued with its own internal problems, including issues of relevance, succession, patriarchy, jurisdiction, corruption and intra-tribal conflict. The Sultanes of Somalia are examples of this category and the community has specific criteria as to who is qualified to be a chief (Ahmed, 2017). In Africa, as in every region, it is the quality and characteristics of governance that shape the level of peace and stability and the prospects for economic development. Such a consensus-building mechanism can help resolve many of the conflicts related to diversity management and nation-building. Government and the Political System 2.1. Another category of chiefs is those who theoretically are subject to selection by the community. Relatively unfettered access to the internet via smart phones and laptops brings informationand hence potential powerto individuals and groups about all kinds of things: e.g., market prices, the views of relatives in the diaspora, conditions in the country next door, and the self-enrichment of corrupt officials. He served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989. The council system of the Berbers in Northern Africa also falls within this category (UNECA, 2007). The regime in this case captures the state, co-opts the security organs, and dissolves civil society. This layer of institutions is the subject of inquiry of this article. While empirical data are rather scanty, indications are that the traditional judicial system serves the overwhelming majority of rural communities (Mengisteab & Hagg, 2017). In Botswana, for example, the consensual decision-making process in the kgotla (public meeting) regulates the power of the chiefs. A Long Journey: The Bantu Migrations. Chiefs with limited power: Another category of chiefs is those that are hereditary, like the paramount chiefs, but have limited powers. The traditional African religions (or traditional beliefs and practices of African people) are a set of highly diverse beliefs that include various ethnic religions . In new countries such as most of those in Africa,7 where the rule of law is in competition with the rule of men, leaders play a strikingly critical role, for good or ill. "Law" in traditional Africa includes enforceable traditions, customs, and laws. African Traditional Political System and Institution: University of The Gambia, Faculty of humanities and social sciences. For example, the election day itself goes more or less peacefully, the vote tabulation process is opaque or obscure, and the entire process is shaped by a pre-election playing field skewed decisively in favor of the incumbents. The introduction of alien economic and political systems by the colonial state relegated Africas precolonial formal institutions to the sphere of informality, although they continued to operate in modified forms, in part due to the indirect rule system of colonialism and other forms of reliance by colonial states on African institutions of governance to govern their colonies. The US system has survived four years of a norm-busting president by the skin of its teeth - which areas need most urgent attention? The customary structures of governance of traditional leadership were put aside or transformed. Their "rediscovery" in modern times has led to an important decolonization of local and community management in order to pursue genuine self-determination. In these relatively new nations, the critical task for leadership is to build a social contract that is sufficiently inclusive to permit the management of diversity. In many cases, the invented chieftaincies were unsuccessful in displacing the consensus-based governance structures (Gartrell, 1983; Uwazie, 1994). The Dutch dispatched an embassy to the Asantehene's . In addition, according to Chirayath et al. The size and intensity of adherence to the traditional economic and institutional systems, however, vary from country to country. by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. The relationship between traditional leadership and inherited western-style governance institutions often generates tensions. The end of colonialism, however, did not end institutional dichotomy, despite attempts by some postcolonial African states to abolish the traditional system, especially the chieftaincy-based authority systems. The Boundaries of Tradition: An Examination of the Traditional 20 A brief account of that history will help to highlight key continuities spanning the colonial, apartheid and the post-apartheid eras in relation to the place of customary law and the role of traditional leaders. David and Joan Traitel Building & Rental Information, National Security, Technology & Law Working Group, Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group, Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group, Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group, Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies, Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance, Support the Mission of the Hoover Institution. Module Ten, Activity Two - Exploring Africa
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