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Democracy is a model. Democratisation is a process. Democracy is a transplant. Democratisation is organic. By democracy I mean the concept of bourgeois liberal democracy imposed by the West on the Rest. By democratisation I mean the struggles of the Rest against the West and its local ‘implants’ to expand the sphere of human freedom and dignity.
Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1492 and blazed the trail for Western invasion of Africa and Asia. Christopher Columbus landed in Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) also in 1492 planting the seeds of first genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, the so-called Red Indians, and the most gruesome trade: The triangular, Atlantic slave trade. Thus began the next five centuries of the development of the world capitalist system and Western civilisation, with accumulation in the centre and dispossession in the periphery. The stories we tell our children and the history we teach them and the values we preach at the altar are spurned by the hegemonic West. This is called civilisation, progress, universal human rights, development, modernisation and now globalisation. The process of resistance against dispossession is called barbarism, cannibalism, nativism, witchcraft, juju, tribalism and terrorism. Thus goes on the story of the West and the Rest to this day as we meet here to discuss the liberal model of democracy, good governance, human rights, transparency, accountability, humanitarianism etc. |
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