When Democracy Fails: The Case of America

By Michelo Maunga

I like to follow current affairs. This can be through watching news, reading the papers or following certain social media pages. Comes naturally, as in the house I grew up in, we followed news. Anyway, away from my proclivities, what is current now is happenings with America. This is a country that for many of us, was greatly admired. Many of us desired, and some may still long, to make our abode, in America. For those of our people who managed to migrate there, they immediately assumed a sense of superiority, in our minds. Growing up, America influenced, practically every aspect of our lives. What we watched; what we listened to; what we wore, even what we ate, seemingly, could be tied to that land. Yet before our eyes, the eyes that the American long ridiculed, that Dynasty seems to be crumbling. At the heart of America’s downfall, is that of its brainchild, democracy. Why do I say so? America is not such a bad place. Some of the world’s brightest minds, are American. They have, however, a leader who is orchestrating their demise; a leader who won on the basis of democracy. It is a glaring lesson, for the rest of us, that democracy can fail.

Democracy was touted as a magic pill. America spent much of the late 80s to early 90s encouraging, and in some instances demanding, that countries adopt it. Zambia, for instance, in order to receive support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group, during early 90s, had to commit to a structural adjustment program (SAP). It was this program that auctioned nearly every State-Owned Asset. Though, I have not read any official reports on this, I would not be surprised if Kaunda’s secession of power was in someway influenced by the notion that democracy was the solution to everything. Now, Zambians wanted multi-party democracry, which is fine, and credit to President Kaunda for honouring this desire, but you can develop without democracy. China, for instance, is not a democracy and has never been. Yet very soon it will be the largest economy in the world. The United Kingdom, is a monarchy. They have a sort of pseudo democracy, through election of a Prime Minister, but Sir Keir Starmer, reports and answers to the King, who is not elected. At the heart of democracy are the principles of one man, one vote; freedom of speech; freedom of expression, amongst others. This assumes, however, that every man/woman is sensible. What happens when you are a population of nincompoops, and each of them has a vote? Herein lies the weakness of democracy, it assumes every adult is sensible and thus deserving of an opinion, even on the course of a country for the next 4-5 years.

The Chinese, have never believed in this philosophy. Their system of governance is a meritocracy.  You have to merit your vote. The masses vote for their representatives, who represent them in the Chinese Peoples Congress. It is with these elected officials that the authority to select a leader, the President, lies. I hear there is a very rigorous process to being accepted into this institution, what in our system is referred to Parliament. The chosen President can serve as many terms, so long as he continues to be the preferred nominee of the Congress. We can see how such a system limits the influence of the masses. However, it does not completely exclude them from decision making authority. Today, China is viewed as a hallmark of stability, which is like gold in the language of investors. Democracy, unfortunately is very volatile. At whim, almost, the work of a progressive Government, can be removed, after 5-10 years, and a successor is at will to literally undo every good thing that Government did. This is exactly what Trump is doing. He has almost complete autonomy to decimate his country and how it is perceived by the entire world. For a lot of what he does, he does not even get his own Parliament’s (Congress) approval, unchecked authority almost. In the most powerful country in the world, that is a truly dangerous reality. And so, the time since he became President has been marked by economic warfare- through tariffs, kidnappings and killings of leaders of other countries and now, the completely unnecessary, war in Iran. Complete chaos. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And very soon, Economists, like myself, will start talking about inflation, again. All because, Mr. Trump, felt like going on a little excursion/joy ride in the Middle East.

But this Ladies and Gentlemen, unfortunately, is the consequence of one man one vote, without scrutinizing the mental faculties of this individual. We have suffered this in Zambia. Many of us were fooled by late President Lungu, MHSRIP. At the time, we could not tell. It only became clearer much later. But at that point, the damage had already been done. I am no means calling for an end to democracy. Just pointing out that it is not the magic pill, President Ronald Reagan (40^th President of the USA), touted it to be. With time, we may begin to see the wisdom in approaches adopted by countries like China, Rwanda and even Uganda, which are closer to home. Maybe, something in between democracy and dictatorship, may be best suited. Or even doing away with term limits. I mean if people like a leader, why should they be stopped from benefitting from his labour until he or she, or the people decide, to part ways. The fact of the matter is that democracy places a demand on a society to produce a never-ending pool of competent leaders, in a time when they are getting rarer.

In summary, we have long received different forms of advice from the West, for how they believe we should govern ourselves. We are advised in  health, in economics, in administration. According to what our friends tell us, what we are sold will solve all our problems. In most cases it doesn’t. What I learned in writing my book, Transformation of the Zambian Economy, is the countries that succeed are those that create their own solutions, reflective of who they are. If we are being honest with ourselves, democracy is not an African ideal. Kingdoms were run by Kings, Chiefs, or collectively by the tribe. It is an imported philosophy; I believe it started with the Greeks or Romans, empires which both collapsed. We don’t need to abandon democracy now; it has served us. But in the long term, we may be required to accept its limitations, and possibly explore alternatives. Till then, let us follow what is happening in America; that will be the true test case of the system of demokratia.

The Author is an Economist