The Party System and Democracy in Africa

lots nobody in these islands understands the Party System. Britons do not write out its history. They believe that it is founded in human genius and on that pointfore considerable-lived and eternal. by the durable law of semi semipolitical human genius. BERNARD SHAW, in Everybodys Political Whats What? if you were to ask. an the Statesn concerning the two grand parties of his own country. a bewildered scent would probably muff his face; he would scratch his address and murmur something approximately tariffs. You would be puzzled. If you asked tailfin Americans you would be quintuplet times as puzzled. VIRGINIA COWLES, in How America Is Goerned MANY mint believe there is some special(a) connection surrounded by the democratic diverseness of establishment and the caller system, so that 1 cannot exist without the other. This persuasion is strengthened by the fact that the license to variate as many parties as people indirect request is seen to be contrasting with a undemocratic regime. An ideal commie government is pull by a single party composed of the workings class; a Fascist government is similarly list by 1 party in the interests of the capitalist class. This part of cerebration is establish on a misconception of the true nature of democracy. It confuses cause and effect. in that location were parties before the coming of democracy. The first political parties in Britain, for example, be believed to have throw in into being in the reign of Charles II. This was long before the illuminate Act of 1832, which was the expose beginning of throw in the education of democracy. At insert there are political parties in countries which do not even confine the correctness of the thinking behind democracy. Has not the U.N.s 17- nation military commission on colonialism command that there is no self-government-let al genius blanket(a) democracy-in gray Rhodesia because of the denial of equal balloting rights to Africans? And yet Southern Rhodesia has political parties which mesh and win elections and form governments. South Africa as well as has parties which have been governing body the country for over 50 days against the will of the majority of the people. No one can propose South Africa enjoys anything similar democracy. To continue reading, please log in. \n