Whatever Happened to APRM? Elections in Africa on my Mind
I was a 100L student in 2006 taking a course titled “Introduction to African Politics” led by a professor I can never forget, Professor John Ayam. Dr. Ayam will teach about the nationalist and anti-colonial movement across Africa and the high hopes for post-independence Africa, both by the Black Diaspora and Africans themselves. The outcry of every African colony still struggling with the shackles of colonialism was the sentence attributed to Nkrumah: "Seek ye first independence, and every other thing shall be added unto it."
The disillusionment that followed the first decade of independence and the era of military coups and countercoups across Africa, which slightly collided with the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, shows that independence was only in title but not in deed. Dr. Ayam would then meander to ideological movements like the Non-Aligned Movement, which was a paradox or mockery of its intent and name when you pay attention to Cold War politics in Africa amplifying the role of Congo Mobutu as the “player” of these two ideologies against each other.
When I taught the same course years later, I often emphasized the legacies of colonialism on postcolonial states and the role of African comprador bourgeoisies who act as cronies for external forces to further underdevelopment of Africa. We would then move to African institutions like the OAU, which metamorphosed into the AU.
This is where APRM came in. APRM stands for African Peer Review Mechanism, whose aim was in part ensuring Africans can check and balance and review each other’s progress while offering critical feedback that would advance each other. How can leaders who have stayed in power for over 30 years critique someone who has been there for five years and is still seeking another term? Your reviewer should be someone doing better than you on the parameters he is reviewing you for.
I started reflecting on APRM with recent elections across the continent. I used to think that the African problem was leadership, but I will add that we have never been allowed to elect our leaders. The worst of us have always been "appointed" to rule the rest, and the best of us by people for whom our underdevelopment is the platform on which their ego and savior complex are built. Those who derive their pseudo-messianic complex from our misery will allow anyone to be a life president as long as they continue to guarantee the protection of their interests.
How did the people who built maroon communities in swamps as refuges for fugitives, Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Rosewood, and several others manage to do so if Africans cannot lead themselves? In the Maroon communities they had their own unique medicine and cures, leadership, and economies; these Black settlements model our ability for self-governance.
In the meantime, I remain thankful to mentors who were never tormentors.
Rest well, Professor Ayam!
