Col. Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya, is the Chairman of the African Union for the next year. The BBC reports his comments at an AU summit in Ethiopia. His view: that multi-party politics don't work in Africa because the society is essentially tribal and thus political parties become tribal parties. Tribal parties, Gaddafi argues, lead to bloodshed and civil war.
Pretty clearly the BBC expects you to be outraged at Gaddafi's comments. If you are a regular reader of this blog you probably do prefer multi-party democracy, warts and all. So do I. However, the odds approach 100 to 1 that you do not belong to a tribe, most Americans don't, I don't.
Before you reject Gaddafi's views out of hand, think carefully about the political violence in Africa over the last half century, since the end of colonialism. Almost all of it has been essentially tribal in nature. From the Nigerian Civil War to the current fighting in Darfur, tribalism has been at the root of it.
However much we may feel uncomfortable with the idea, perhaps Gaddafi is at least partially correct in identifying the problem. His notion that a one-party strongman state like Libya is the answer for Africa is likely to find few takers in the developed nations.
It may be that post-tribal multi-party government as practiced in developed nations won't work among still-tribal people. The question is then: what will work that allows the will of the majority to guide the state while protecting the rights of the minorities in a multi-tribal society? Africa needs the answer to that question
