Speech by President Dada Kockpon on the occasion of the conference on Peace and Culture at the United Nations

Speech by the President of the PACTCA on the occasion of the conference on Peace and Culture at the United Nations on July 18, 2018, 100th anniversary of Mandela.

Your Excellencies,
Your Majesties,
I bring you fraternal greetings from the kings and people of Africa that I have the very special privilege of presenting here today on the occasion of the 2018 Spirit of Peace Conference the focus of which is PEACE, Justice and Strong Institutions.

I felicitate with all those who have worked so assiduously to ensure the success of this all important conference.

I am particularly attracted by the topic of this conference as it pointedly addresses the very burning issues that pre-occupy humanity today – how to guarantee peace with the instrumentality of justice and strong institutions.

Understandably, the orientation of my intervention will be towards my immediate constituencies: Africa, in particular South of the Sahara, and the role of the ROYAL institutions in the evolution of justice and strong institutions to guarantee peace.

Before the advent of colonialism, there were the African traditional systems of administration, largely based on traditions, customs, and value systems of the different African societies under the various Empires and Kingdoms: Kanem-Bornu, Ghana , Songhai, Dahomey etc. These Empires were ruled by a hereditary system which was largely based on theocratic system to which allegiance was total.

Heredity and the theocracy are the two major elements that characterized pre-colonial administrations under the various traditional rulers. These two elements guaranteed total authority to the ruler and total submission of the populations to the supremacy of their rulers.
The result of this system was the stability and prosperity that characterized the various societies of black Africa before the advent of colonialism.
We recall that trans-Saharan trade and the prosperity it brought to the sub-Saharan Africa, the prosperity that ensured the successful Kingdoms of unforgettable rulers like Mansa Musa.

The colonial administrations established by the various colonial masters presented a complete antithesis to the cultures, religions and value systems that pre-dated the advent of colonialism.

As we have seen, culture, tradition and religion were the major ingredients that ensured the stability on a hereditary system in which the King derived authority from God and not the people. This meant that any rebellion against the authority of the King was rebellion against God.

Colonialism, on the contrary, introduced the imposition of Christianity from the West, Islam from the Orient, each intent on the total destruction of the religion, culture, tradition sand value systems of the conquered and balkanized territories. Empires and Kingdoms were destroyed, Kings set against their people and the total value systems ruined.

Under the British colonial system of administration, which was the indirect system, the traditional rulers were retained, their authorities consolidated but only to the extent of enforcing the new administrative systems imposed by the colonial masters which were essentially to advance the economic and religious ambitions of the colonial powers. The roles of the Kings as the supreme ruler and protector of the people were subverted to the extent that the Kings became the slave hunters for the white masters.

Worse still was the Direct rule system of the French. It would be recalled that the essential ingredient of the French Revolution was the Philosophy of Republicanism the essential content of which was equality of all Men and the inalienable authority of citizens to choose their rulers who would govern according to a constitution which represented the supreme and collective will of the people, not of God.

It is not surprising, therefore , that when the French discovered in their conquered territories and administrative system that reminded them of pre-Revolution Kings, that descended with equal brutality on the Kings the way they terminated their own Kingdoms with the necks of the Kings under the guillotine.

The sum total of experiences of both territories was the total balkanization of the traditional systems administration under the pre-colonial systems.

In traditional Africa, the King was a deity deriving his authority from the ancestral divinities. This guaranteed peace, tranquility and progress. Colonialism brutally challenged this system to subjugate the traditional institution to the authorities of mortal men and their artificial and academic fabrications.

The 1960s witnessed the independence of most Francophone and Anglophone Africa. However, the dilemma facing Africa at Independence, which subsists till date are the questions: which way Africa?

Which political system if a return to the past is impossible.

It is a matter of profound regret that neo-colonialism and not independence is the lot of all African countries. The colonial experiences have caused irreversible dislocations in the political, cultural, traditional and value systems fabrics of post-independence African societies.

Impossible to go back to the pre-colonial era of the Kingdoms that worked because it was in tandem with the African cosmogony , post-colonial Africa today has inherited the concept of democracy which operated on the principles of equality of all men, and universal suffrage.

The result of this is the social, political, economic, religious dislocations which are setting the world on fire. It has been impossible for Africans countries to fashion out a political system that matches their past with the present, a system that accords with their inherent philosophy that is inseparable from their existence.

I have taken my time to invoke this historical and comparative analysis to indicate that peace is a product of a conducive socio-political and economic well-being and that in the absence of such an enabling environment, peace will remain elusive.

The pre-occupation of this August gathering is peace in AFRICA. This paper’s response is that there can not be peace in societies that fail to create the necessary atmospheres for peace to reign.

And I know that the question on the lips of everyone would be: what kind of socio – political and economic structure do we need to create the conducive atmosphere for peace?

The universal response would be: DEMOCRACY.
But I ask: what is DEMOCRACY? Our response would tally with the orthodox western definition of democracy: a government of the people, by the people, for the people. In that case, we must recognize that representative democracy has many colorations. Like both the parliamentary system and the presidential system arte both democratic, some variances of democracy exist in China, Iran , Russia, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Italy , France etc.
This means there is no universal definition of democracy. By extension, it would be wrong to consider variance of western style democracy as undemocratic.

If we adopt the argument above, I believe the task before African countries is how to craft a democracy that derives its major ingredients from the original African value system and cosmogony.

I deliberately use the term – CRAFT because what I am proposing does not exist anywhere yet. It has to be originated – a mixture what is distinctly African and what has been irrevocably imposed on Africa. A kind of arrangement that relies heavily on the African value system which is not inferior to the imposed value systems as current realities are manifesting.
And this is where the traditional institutions, as the guardians of the peoples’ collective socio- cultural patrimony, come in – a political system that is not alien to the people but is based on their belief for example, while an African would not hesitate to falsely swear using the Bible or the Coran, the invocation of the name of the ancestral gods would extract the truth from the African.

Finally, TRUTH, JUSTICE, RECONCILLIATION AND PEACE, in the order of priority, shows that PEACE is a product of its predecessors – truth, justice and reconciliation. Of these, perhaps only RECONCILLIATION needs defining. I this context, it means re-uniting with our past so that we can bring back the PEACE that characterized our pre-colonial experiences. This reconciliation is indispensable because, as the saying goes, one thousand years’ stay in the river does not change does not change a leaf into a crab. Not even the brutalizing colonial experiences have not been able to transform the African into a westerner. In spirit the African remains African and only reconciliation with his past can emancipate him from the current mediocrity that characterizes his competitive inadvantage in a world that contains not the iota of his culture, tradition and value system.

Thank you