Grounding african political theory on afro-communitarianism: arguments and implications.
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Date
2023
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Abstract
This thesis critically analyses Afro-communitarianism as a philosophical foundation for modern
African political theories and practices. The thesis links the reception of Afro-communitarian
political philosophy in modern African political philosophy with its long-standing tension between
community and individual as well as the conflict between rights and duty in modern African
political philosophy. The attempt to resolve this tension in literature has mainly focused on the
ideas of personhood. The thesis shows how development of the personhood approach to resolving
this tension was manifested in three senses, i.e. duty-based, rights-based, and Afro-communitarian
rejectionism. These three senses are both interrelated and independent discourses in African
political philosophy. The duty-based personhood approach holds that personhood is defined solely
by the structure of the community and not the self. It contends a notion of the self whose definition
of meaningful life is generated outside the reference to community dependency. According to this
approach, an ideal individual is a communal conformist, one that prioritises the duty to the
community over the self. As a result, this approach defends a political society where concerns of
rights, especially individual rights, do not matter.
Following this approach is the rights-based personhood response. The rights-based approach
responds to the lacunae in the duty-based personhood approach. Rights-based personhood
approach is also an independent position at resolving the tension in Afro-communitarian political
thought. This approach seeks to defend the compatibility of rights with Afro-communitarianism
and its equal status with communal obligation. It argues for certain features of humans that suggest
the partial dependency of the self on the community in the definition of human personhood.
Grounding on these features, the approach established the place of rights, autonomy, and freedom
in the Afro-communitarian discourse. However, what stands clear in this account of personhood
is the persistence of the community and its overwhelming nature in framing the functions of the
political virtues of rights, autonomy, and freedom believed to be individual properties. Rights only
matter to the extent of their coherence with communal values. It becomes apparent that the idea of
individual rights remains vague, especially in the face of specific human expression in
communitarian African societies.
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The conflicts between individual and community and rights and duty in the idea of personhood in
Afro-communitarian thought stirred up the third response and the third sense of the personhood
approach, which I refer to as Afro-communitarian rejectionism. Scholars in this camp suggest the
need to have a conversation on modern African politics without Afro-communitarian ideas. This
position rests on the claim that modern African philosophy will be influenced by diverse
orientations, which are sometimes incompatible with the ideas of Afro-communitarianism.
However, the challenge with this conception of personhood is that it ruled out the possibility of a
developed modern Africa profiting from the merits of Afro-communitarianism.
While the tension between the individual and community persists, the thesis argues that attention
should be given to the analysis of the community. In analysing the idea of community, the thesis
identified the various forms of community that undergird the various ideas of personhood in Afrocommunitarianism,
namely cultural community and community as self-interested individuals. The
first form of community is the Afro-communitarian notion of community. I show how the idea of
humiliation is inherent in the ideal notion of community in Afro-communitarianism and the
conception of self it informs. The question of humiliation is omitted in the various conceptions of
personhood. For Afro-communitarianism to ground modern African political ideas and practices,
its notion of the community must be non-humiliating. Achieving a non-humiliating community
involves a review of the norms of the cultural community. I attempt this review with what I call
the doctrine of cultural permissibility.
This thesis redirects Afro-communitarian debates by arguing for a shift to the community. The
thesis concludes that postcolonial African politics can only benefit from Afro-communitarianism
preoccupied with the desire for a ‘non-humiliating’ community that accommodates plural
conceptions of personhood. This thesis would provide nuanced views on the ongoing conversation
among Afro-communitarian theorists.
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.