Let’s Talk About Electoral Democracy In Africa
2027 is another election year for some of Africa's most consequential countries, and once again many Africans are spitting fiery rhetoric about "protecting their vote" and ensuring that the leadership they want gets into office despite the expected shenanigans of the electoral authroties in their respective countries.
In this commentary, Senior Reporter @Big_Mck asks a simple but important question: if the institution of electoral democracy, which is uspposed to give people the power to choose their own government consistently does the opposite, and must be forced using widespread physical violence to even pretend to do its job, then why exactly do so many Africans continue to reflexively defend the existence of this non-performing institution? Were Africans made to exist at the mercy of electoral democracy, or was electoral democracy made to exist at the mercy of Africans?
Could it perhaps be time to ditch what is already known to not work, and try something that actually does what it says on the tin?
They called it the "Dark Continent."
Understand what that phrase was doing.
It was not a geographic description. European cartographers had been trading with coastal African kingdoms for centuries. Arab scholars had mapped the interior. Timbuktu was a name known across the medieval world.
The darkness was not in Africa.
The darkness was what Europe needed Africa to be.
Because a continent of kingdoms required a justification for conquest that a continent of kingdoms could not provide.
So the kingdoms were removed from the map.
Not literally. Rhetorically. Historiographically. From the textbooks and the lectures and the philosophical frameworks that decided what counted as "civilization" and what counted as nature waiting to be claimed.
They didn’t arrive in darkness.
They brought it.
And called it light.
@BrodaDerahh Yes, I read that having a low sex drive is usually a result of hormonal imbalance and poor health. That may also explain why fit people who go to the gym regularly say they have a sex drive.
Female. 👏 Predators. 👏 Are. 👏 Not. 👏 Rare. 👏
They are merely better shielded and better at going undetected than their male counterparts. Deep-seated social biases, the "nurturer" stereotype, the "ideal victim" myth, and the silencing of male victims all contribute to this.
“Don't feel bad if people remember you only when they need you. Feel privileged that you are like a candle that comes to their mind when there is darkness."
St. Nikolai Velimirovic