How protest is redefining democracy around the world

An acerbic critic of African political elites and the international organizations and networks that sustain them, Claude Ake ranks among Africa’s greatest social scientist. Killed in a suspicious plane crash assumed to have been orchestrated by Nigeria’s military dictatorship, Ake’s posthumously published book provides a brilliant exegesis of the widespread disillusionment that accompanied Africa’s democratic wave in the late 1980s. Yet Ake remained optimistic till the end arguing genuine, people-centric democratic transformation remained the only possible future for Africa’s masses.

Alcinda Honwana’s influential works offer the clearest snapshot of the lives of African youth. Unable to achieve the social markers that signify adulthood, she argues that youth across the continent are caught in a state of suspension, what she terms “waithood.” But far from condemning young people for inaction, she shows how they are creatively channeling their frustrations through various forms of political protest.

Frantz Fanon’s work is often said to be defined by its fury. But at core, Fanon’s fury is fueled by a sense of fatigue over the failure of non-violent modes of resistance. A first-hand observer and participant, Fanon came to his views on violence slowly only after noting that appeals to civility did little to curtail the relentless force of French domination. In Kwame Nkrumah, Fanon discovered his intellectual foil, and his classic works can be understood as one half of a protracted conversation on the merits of violent versus non-violent protests between two of the greatest intellectuals of the post-colonial era.

CLR James originated the method of history from below by narrating the story of the Haitian revolution from the perspective of the brilliant former slave turned revolutionary leader, Touissaint L’Oueverture. In this lesser known work, he applies his ferocious and compassionate insights to the actions of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party in Ghana.

Discussions of what constitutes democracy often rely on ideas first developed in the West and then transported via colonial institutions to the non-western world. But does that make democracy itself western? In this book, Partha Chatterjee continues to develop a vocabulary for discussing democracy outside of its western origins revealing how the daily practices of ordinary people shape democratic life in much of the non-western world.