Democracy and Interreligious Dialogue in Africa: Prolegomenon for an African Political Theology

Abstract

precis: This essay reflects on the future of democracy in Africa and the role of interreligious dialogue in the process. Based on research in political forms of democracy and extensive ethnographic work in Africa, especially the Democratic Republic of Congo, the author contextualizes the need for this reflection on the impact of colonization on indigenous African Traditional Religions (ATR's) and consequent chaos, economic misfortune, and the collapse of ancestral values. The Western rights paradigm is contrasted with the virtues paradigm of non-Western views of governance. The Luba religious view of Bumuntu summarizes this virtues paradigm; a ruler seeks to provide for authentic personhood embodied in concepts of good heart, dignity, and self-respect with a goal of cooperation between fair governance and moral values based on religious views. Is democracy possible in Africa? Is it needed or wanted? There is no panacea, yet the essay claims that governance according to ethical rules and religion as a foundation for moral virtues and values requires interreligious dialogue. Religious liberty and tolerance as both a right in the Western sense and a practice over many years in African life provide a bridge between ATR's and democratic aspiration. Details are provided of how the Golden Rule appears in a variety of ATR's and in Asian cultures. When democracy and human rights are rooted in local and regional understandings of the intrinsic nature of human being and the reign of humanity as a whole, then "Bulopwe I bantu" (power is to take care of the people) becomes a pathway to establish genuine democracy in African societies.