Coloniality of Democracy and Algocracy in Africa: Vanhucracy as an Afrocentric Model for Politics

Abstract

Originating from a Greek goddess called Demokratia, democracy constitutes a coup de ‘tat against African spirituality and against Afrocentric politics. Subjected not only to the Greek goddess Demokratia but also to algocracy, corporatocracy, and technocracy, African politics has long ceased to be Afrocentric in the sense of serving the material interests of African people. Drawing on the Shona (a people of Zimbabwe) term vanhu (humans) to coin the word vanhucracy, and drawing on intensive literature review, this study argues that Western democracy is in fact colonial in the sense of it bypassing African material interests and in its privileging of liberal rights. In this regard, the study also frames the argument in terms of what it calls the coloniality of democracy which speaks to how Demokratia disrupts Afrocentric politics.

Plain Language Summary

How democracy and intelligent technology are connected to colonialism: the value of vanhucracy in Afrocentric governance

The study critiques Western democracy and it argues for reliance on the African notion of vanhucracy which is derived from vanhu (humans) in Shona culture (a people of Zimbabwe). The paper argues that the West dominates politics in Africa and so it disrupts Afrocentric governance which places African values at the center. While the paper draws insights from Shona word vanhu, it also argues that this word would find resonance across the entire continent of Africa and in the African diaspora.

Introduction

The problem with democracy is that it erroneously assumes that the humans in the demos are an exceptional creation of the West which has consequently arrogated the role of a global policeman in relation to politics around the world. Because the West has arrogated the role of a global policeman, democracy has become as oppressive as autocracies in the sense of it assuming one dimensionality in a world that ironically professes plurality and diversality. In a world of plurality and diversality, one would expect that Eurocentrism will merely be one possible form of doing politics and Afrocentricity would have its space for its own ways of doing politics in terms of putting African values, cultures and worldviews at the center (Chawane, 2016; Gwekwerere, 2010; Oyebade, 1990; Sesanti, 2019). In other words, democracy becomes autocracy when some in the West assume the role of global policemen reserving the privilege to themselves to weaponize such democracy against the rest of the world.

Afrocentricity has exposed the fact that colonialism, colonization, and the attendant Eurocentrism dismembered Africans through land dispossession, enslavement, through Eurocentric religion, and education which sought to displace Africans’ cultural memory—replacing it with European cultural memory and worldviews (Mazama, 2001; Sesanti, 2019). Africans’ minds have been colonized; the Eurocentric paradigm has assumed hegemonic universal character; European culture has placed itself at the center of the social structure such that it has become the reference point or yardstick by which every other culture is defined; with Eurocentrism, Europe has become the starting point for everything such that whatever cannot be found in Europe does not exist (Oyebade, 1990; Asante, 2006a). To reverse the harm Eurocentrism has done to African values, cultures and worldviews, Afrocentricity seeks to inform African thought and behavior in politics, economics, geography, history, archaeology, medicine, architecture, law, etc.; it challenges the defining principles of the European supremacist domination over African people; Afrocentricity seeks the liberation of information, images, concepts, definitions, and symbols from European hegemonic control; it seeks to ensure African autonomy; besides, Afrocentricity seeks to reverse and resist the European’s invention of the nonhumanity of Africans; thus, Afrocentricity stresses the importance of the humanistic viewpoint to the liberation of Africans; Afrocentricity begins from African experiences, values and agency which undergird African culture and worldviews; Afrocentricity undergirds African Renaissance and decolonization (Gwekwerere, 2010; Harvell, 2010; Asante, 2006a). Besides, Pan-Africanism argues that European imperialists suppressed the African personality by employing various strategies intended to depersonalize and empty the personality of its former religious and cultural heritage; to dominate the world-view and behavior of the African personality, European cultural imperialism alienated and dislocated the people of African origin and descent from their own tools of self-expression as a people in relation to others in the universe; African personality can be recovered by re-establishing Africans’ own history, reviving African memories, languages culture, dignity, unity, and by radically reorganizing African economies, societies, and polities (Tondi, 2005; Woddis, 1962).

Contrary to some discourses which problematize humancentrism and anthropocentrism (Cudworth & Hobden, 2013; Gagnon, 2015, December 22), Afrocentricity emphasizes the thematic importance of the humanistic viewpoint to the overall liberation of Africans (Asante, 2006b; Harvell, 2010). In any case, Western democracy has never been humancentric in the sense of privileging humans across the world: it has been Western in the sense of privileging Westerners as the policemen for democracy across the world. Arguing that there is need to think in terms of what this paper calls the coloniality of democracy, it is contended herein that Africans should put in place appropriate Afrocentric governance designs (see Aliye, 2020; Chawane, 2016; Gumede, 2017) which revolve around vanhucracy wherein humans, as understood in African cultures, are central in political and economic projects. In this regard, the coloniality of democracy is a function of both the Euro-American policing of democracy and the ontological assumptions that underlie demokratia.

Demokratia, Algocracy, Corporatocracy, Marketocracy, and Econocracy as Entangled Colonial Modes of Governance

While they dismiss African ancestors, spirituality, cultures, and Afrocentricity, more broadly, as utopian, traditional, demonic, infantile dogma, and as belonging to the past (Ferguson, 2011; Nhemachena & Dhakwa, 2022), Westerners have ironically defined their own democracy, and the goddess Demokratia, which undergirds democracy, as modern. Westerners have always loved to tell stories about their gods, goddesses, and heroes; thus the goddess Demokratia was worshipped in Athens, she attracted cult following, stone and wooden monuments were erected for her, she was offered prayers, public sacrifices, cakes, loaves of bread, wine and honey, goats and lambs were slaughtered and burnt for her, she had mysterious authority which could not be profaned and so democracy was about establishing and enforcing the will of the European deities (Slavin & Conway, 2014; Keane, 2015, October 23). The point here is that the uncritical invocations of democracy in Africa amount to conjurations of the Western goddess Demokratia upon whom Africans have been unwarily called upon to sacrifice. The Greek goddess Demokratia cannot love Africans and other peoples in the Global South as much as she loves the Westerners over whom she ruled during her lifetime. Of course, the goddess needed sacrifices in the form of animals and, by extension, in the form of animalized humans who were deemed to be so subhuman as to be indistinct from nonhuman animals. Indeed, the goddess needed stone or wooden artefacts and living objects to be dedicated to her so that she would continue to participate in the politics dedicated to her as a vitalist demokratia.

In the light of the foregoing vitalization of Demokratia, it is not surprising that some contemporary Eurocentric scholars are arguing for the inclusion of nonhuman animated artefacts and objects into global politics; there are arguments, by some Eurocentric scholars, for the establishment of a parliament of things such that nonhuman things are acknowledged as political actors; also, there are arguments for the inclusion of what they call “quasi-objects” in politics; besides, there are contentions for decentering some humans such that the humans cease to be special subjects in politics; their arguments are against humancentrism in politics; what is more, there are arguments for what is described as an “onticology” that counts technologies, symbolic entities, fictional entities, possible things, artificial entities, and many other entities as belonging to the domain of real being; in other words, there are contentions for adopting a democracy of things (Bryant, 2011; Latour, 1993, 2004). There are arguments for the “democratic” representation of nonhumans; also, there are calls for the adoption of cosmopolitics wherein humans and nonhumans would participate together in politics as supposed = besides, it is argued that the voices of nonhumans, including the goddess called Demokratia, must be included in politics and there are arguments against limiting politics to humans, their interests, their agency, their subjectivities, and their rights; and it is argued that rights, voices, and feelings must be extended to nonhumans, to things, objects, actants, etc.; in other words, there are arguments for an expanded politics which does not privilege some humans’ right to speak (Brown, 2018; Puddephatt, 2022; Revill, 2020). There are Eurocentric discourses pushing for the expansion of politics and democracy to include nonhuman actors, entities or objects including European gods and goddesses such as Demokratia and Gaia.

The nonhuman actors, entities and objects—including fetishes of gods and goddesses—which are currently receiving attention in Eurocentric discourses on expanded politics and expanded democracy include algorithms that are already entering the field of politics and governance. Algocracy, which is governance through algorithms, is already entering political philosophy; such algocracy refers to use of computer algorithms and even blockchain technology to take over some and possibly all the “burden” of governance from humans; also, algocracy uses data from smart phones and computers to make “smart” and very quick governing decisions; it is advised that in algocracy, humans are constantly wired into government such that the government knows instantly and fully the data which matters; besides, algocracies employ network codes which govern workflows according to underlying schemes, they constitute complex techniques of control and access, electronic firewalls, gateways, packet filters, and proxy servers (Aneesh, 2022). Algocracy is currently gaining eminence with the recognition of robots as persons deserving political and civic rights (Negri, 2021; Osborne, 2021). The point here is that there is the emergence of algorithmic governance and algorithmic governmentality wherein governments increasingly rely on algorithms, data and robotic persons rather than on [African] humans (Danaher, 2022; Rouroy & Berns, 2013; Savaedi & Nia, 2021).

Put in other words, algocratic forms of governance seek to bypass Afrocentricity, including African humans who are being replaced with algorithms in matters of governance and politics on the continent and beyond. Although there are fears that nonhuman algorithms are displacing human decision-making (Mead & Neves, 2022), it is important to notice that it is Eurocentric global elites who effectively delegate their power, including decision making, to nonhuman algorithms in the logics of indirect rule (Brown, 2018). In this regard, while intelligent algorithms have emerged as powerful potential decision-makers owing to their rationality and high computational power (Schnader & Leyer, 2019), it is actually Eurocentric global elites who make their decisions through algorithms to which they delegate power. The technologies are delegates of some powerful sections of humanity, they serve as substitutes for the humans who would otherwise perform the tasks of the technologies; indeed, it has been argued that humans are often happy to delegate their revenge to outside agents including to algorithms which then oppress, dominate, and kill other humans; it has been argued that humans are content to let others punish on their behalf; indeed, algocratic systems are noted as constraining some humans’ interactions (Bilz, 2007; Brown, 2018; Danaher, 2022). It is noted that there are risks associated with algocracy; there are risks of killer robots and government by superintelligence; besides, humans will have to behave in terms of routes and programmes embedded into underlying computer codes; thus, algocracy is a threat to [African] humanity and to Afrocentricity, more broadly, because it bypasses African values, cultures and worldviews; in these ways algocracy poses the risk of becoming autocracy as it rules in terms of embedded rules and codes (Fortes & Rubim, 2021). In other words, algocracy is technocolonialism and it is technocapitalism (Madianou, 2019; Matute & Gonzalez, 2021) in so far as some humans are expected to become as responsive as robots—always connected with algorithmic rationality and an “efficiency” unimpeded by independent thought or desire (Laumond et al., 2019). The dangers of algocracy are flagged by Fortes and Rubim (2021, pp. 45–46) who write thus:

The neologism Algocracy may mean government by algorithms. Architects of artificial intelligence have perspectives on killer robots and government by artificial superintelligence and are engaged in public debate on both themes. The risks of being dominated by artificial superintelligence and of being subjected to undemocratic, unconstitutional or illegal algo norms inspires our reflection. Institutions should organize rules of the game that prevent machine learning algorithms from learning how to dominate humans. . . .Likewise, the threat of government posed by the emergence of an artificial superintelligence that dominates humankind also requires the development of a new algorithmic law that establishes check and balances and controls the technological system.

While the above constitutes a kind of dictatorship through algocracy, that is, through autonomous technology, there are many other forms of dictatorship including econocracy wherein the state is subsumed under geopolitical and geoeconomic pressures of globalization (Earle et al., 2016). Besides, the world is also ruled through Western neoliberal marketocracy wherein the invisible hands of market forces assume precedence over the power of some states (De Regil, 2021). Indeed, the world is also ruled through what is called corporatocracy in which multinational/transnational corporations make executive, dictatorial, and authoritarian decisions about how the world should and is governed (Rahman, 2021; Suarez-Villa, 2012). Writing about corporatocracy, Rahman (2021, pp. 3–14) notes that:

Corporatocracy is about making few people richer whether politicians or businessmen given the limited resources on earth. . .Corporatocracy is a broader collaboration with politicians, foreign aid agencies, private contractors and the military, that is global corporate empire is a shared bond between governments, many strategic intermediaries, corporations including the banking industry and the military industry [. . .] Our futural aspect of corporatocracy is increasing automation of its resources and employable labor. Corporate lords in time of mature automation through artificial intelligence will have immense leverage and more power than ever over humanity.

Notable is the fact that democracy, algocracy, technocracy, corporatocracy, marketocracy, econocracy, etc. do not put African values, cultures, and worldviews at the center as posited in Afrocentricity and pan-Africanism. All these forms of governance are not humancentric because they do not privilege [African] humans. Rather, they privilege the West in the sense of them being Westerncentric. The point here is that what is Westerncentric is not ipso facto humancentric and so there is need to avoid collapsing Westerncentrism with humancentrism when discussing democracy, for instance. Westerncentric forms of governance, economic systems, jurisprudence, and environmentalism are not necessarily humancentric in the sense of placing all humans at the center. Thus, since the enslavement and colonial eras, the world has been Westerncentric without it being humancentric, let alone Afrocentric.

The Creation of Afrocentric Conceptual Tools

Taking the foregoing into cognizance, this paper argues that Africans must devise their own terms, which underline African ontologies, in order to bring about Afrocentric and humancentric forms of governance. Drawing on scholars who argue for the “creation of new concepts,” for “turning over to a new leaf,” for the “redesigning of language”; for building “southern theories”; for “theory from the south” and for “shifting the geography of reason” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012; Connell, 2007; Engestrom, 2020; Fanon, 1961; Gordon, 2011), this paper argues for the creation of Afrocentrically novel concepts. Without the creation of new concepts, there can be no thinking with a difference and there is no line of flight in thought (Parr, 2015, November 8). To think with a difference, it is essential to create new concepts which then function to reimagine the world. Writing about the creation of concepts, Engestrom (2020, pp. 99–110) contends thus:

Culturally novel concepts are not only created by scientists but also by people struggling with persistent problems and challenges in all walks of life: we are all involved in the creation of new concepts. This has been ignored by scholars of concept formation. . .Concepts need to be examined as embedded in complex instrumentalities, social relationships and patterns of learning within the activity system that generate and employ them. . .It is equally interesting that the English word concept is related to ‘conceiving’, that is, imagining, envisioning or making up a possible future state of affairs.

Drawing on the Shona concept vanhu (plural for munhu meaning human) I coin a neologism vanhucracy to describe forms of governance which place humans at the center. In this regard, African liberation movements fought to place vanhu at the center of governance on the continent, but they were deceived at the point of independence such that they ended up placing the Greek goddess Demokratia at the center of African governance systems. Instead of placing their own ancestors and anticolonial heroines and heroes such as the Zimbabwean ambuya Nehanda and sekuru Kaguvi at the center, Africans were deceived to place the Greek goddess Demokratia at the core of African governance. Besides, instead of placing vanhu at the core of African governance, African states placed the Greek goddess Demokratia at the center of the continent. The reason why there is corruption, misgovernance, bad governments, underdevelopment, violence, and suffering on the continent (Gumede, 2017) is that, since colonization, vanhu were not placed at the center of governance in an Afrocentric sense. Vanhucracy is undergirded by chivanhu which speaks to hunhu, including morals, etiquette, ethics, good behavior, consideration of the interests of others, the exigencies of restitution and reparations for crimes like enslavement, colonization, and so on. In other words, vanhucracy places hunhu at its center. Hunhu constitutes African humanism, it speaks to visions of perfect or virtuous individuals; an individual who upholds the cultural values and norms of a true African society; hunhu derives from the duality between good and bad, right and wrong; and it places the community at the center of all moral deliberations (Chimuka, 2001; Hapanyengwi-Chemhuru & Makuvaza, 2014; Mtapuri & Mazengwa, 2013). Hunhu separates munhu from nonhumans such as dogs, baboons, and monkeys; hunhu is against forms of inhuman and wayward behavior; hunhu is different from the English word “person” because it means more than simply being human as underscored in the Shona phrase “hona munhu uyo arikufamba nemurungu” (there is a munhu walking with a White man) (Mtapuri & Mazengwa, 2013, p. 4). Because they have enslaved, colonized, dispossessed, exploited, dehumanized, violated indigenous peoples, and refused to pay restitution and reparations, Westerners are considered to lack hunhu including the shame of having wronged other people and of keeping stolen resources—and so they are not described as vanhu in the Shona worldview.

The upshot of the foregoing is that while Western democracy celebrates those who are going around the world giving donations, including “humanitarian” aid, which are in fact proceeds from enslaving and colonizing other people, vanhucracy would require those who enslaved and colonized others to first of all pay reparations and restitution before they begin to count what they give to others as genuine donations. Whereas Western democracy does not force those that enslaved and colonized others to pay reparations and restitution, vanhucracy would force criminals to pay reparations and restitution to those that they enslaved and colonized. Vanhucracy is not merely about communitarian values to which ubuntu has been sadly reduced; rather vanhucracy is also about reparations and restitution to those who were enslaved and colonized as is evident in African demands for reparations (Craemer, 2018; Henry, 2003; Osabu-Kle, 2000). Put differently, in vanhucracy, “donations” or “humanitarian” aid does not humanize victims of enslavement and colonization because even dogs and other nonhumans also receive donations and aid. In vanhucracy, wronged humans are humanized through restitution and reparations, and not through donations which may, in any case, be proceeds from crimes of enslaving and colonizing the same victims. In vanhucracy, those that refuse to yield restitution and reparations cannot be treated and regarded as vanhu because they have not redeemed their hunhu. Thus, whereas Western democracy treats even thieves, looters, plunderers, robbers, etc. as humans, vanhucracy would require miscreants to first of all redeem their hunhu through reparations and restitution in order for them to become vanhu. Indeed, in chivanhu, someone who has lost morals and the sense of shame to an extent of failing or refusing to pay restitution or reparations is equated to a nonhuman animal which has no shame. In this regard, hunhu includes the sense of shame for wrongdoing—and such hunhu can only be redeemed through restitution and reparations (Nhemachena, 2023a).

The argument in the foregoing is that Western democracy is ill-equipped to aid decolonization, including enforcing restitution and reparations for enslavement and colonization. What Africans needed at independence was not Western democracy but vanhucracy. A world that is premised on a democracy which tolerates and even gives accolades to those that enslaved and colonized others cannot be a just world. In this sense, Western democracy and human rights are devoid of material justice because the justice of restitution and reparations have been consistently denied to African victims of enslavement and colonization. Similarly, Western forms of good governance are not based on principles of material goodness and justice because they do not seek to make good the wrongs of enslaving and colonizing others. The point here is that governance cannot be good unless it makes good the wrongs of enslaving and colonizing others.

Because Western democracy is not premised on hunhu, including the sense of shame for wrongdoing, we witness the West continuing to exploit and dispossess Africans even after formal independence (Nhemachena et al., 2017). Even as Westerners profess democracy, Westerncentric “democratic” constitutions which have been imposed on Africans continue to shield those that historically dispossessed and exploited Africans during colonialism. The “democratic” constitutions encumber the redistribution of land and other resources to Africans and other indigenous peoples. Although the constitutions inhibit the redistribution of land back to Africans, they are praised in Western circles. Put in other words, “democratic” constitutions in Africa support colonialism by inhibiting the redistribution of land and other resources to Africans. Besides, the “democratic” constitutions inhibit African states from exercising sovereignty over their natural resources and yet such constitutions are praised in Western circles, as democratic constitutions. What is more, Francophone West African countries are being forced to pay colonial taxes on the supposition that they benefitted from French colonialism; since the 1960s, they are being forced to remit $500 billion every year to the French Treasury; French armies are still operating in the African countries; the African countries are forced to give preference to French companies in awarding tenders and in the sale of minerals (Nhemachena & Warikandwa, 2017) yet the West would assure the West Africans that they are living in democracy and constitutionalism.

In fact, Western democracy is weaponized against vanhu in the sense that it is designed to hide the ugly face of neoimperialism which continues to plunder the continent of Africa. Indeed, even Western human rights are weaponized against vanhu in the sense that the human rights are designed to hide the ugly face of neoimperialism which continues to dispossess and exploit Africans. Similarly, Western discourses on good governance are weaponized against Africans in the sense that the discourses are designed to hide the ugly face of neoimperialism which continues to dispossess and exploit Africans. And of course, Western discourses on the rule of law are weaponized against vanhu in the sense that they are designed to hide the ugly face of neoimperialism which continues to dispossess and exploit Africans. Indeed, even Western discourses on environmentalism and climate change are weaponized against vanhu in the sense that they are designed to hide the ugly face of neoimperialism which continues to arrogate ownership and control of African environments and other resources to itself. The West has deployed weaponized-versions of human rights, democracy, rule of law, good governance, and constitutionalism which are then forced down the throats of Africans (Nhemachena, 2023b). In this regard, vanhucracy is an Afrocentric version of popular and majoritarian government which has not been historically weaponized for looting other people’s resources.

Vanhucracy: On the Coloniality of Democracy

What I call vanhucracy is a system of government that placed Africans at the center in material terms and not merely in ideological senses of Western neo/liberal equality. Vanhucracy placed sovereignty over natural resources at the center of the lives of Africans. In other words, vanhucracy holds that formal independence without sovereignty over natural resources does not amount to material freedom. Thus, vanhucracy enjoins reparations and restitution for [Western] crimes of enslaving and colonizing Africans. Consistent with hunhu, vanhucracy expects those that enslaved and colonized Africans to be shameful and to repair the harm they caused on the victims of enslavement and colonization. Vanhucracy is premised on the Shona sayings that mhosva inoripwa (perpetrators of crimes have to compensate victims) and mhosva hairovi (crimes do not become stale). In this regard, vanhucracy delivers material democracy, and it is not merely about liberal democracy. It holds that, to be a human, one has to own and control one’s resources including land. Also, vanhucracy holds that it is dehumanizing for adult Africans to be dependent on other people, particularly on the colonial and imperial powers that have historically enslaved and colonized them. In other words, vanhucracy argues that because neoimperialism has retained ownership and control over African resources, Africans are forced, to live like minors in the sense of being dependent on global imperialists who, ironically, have histories of enslaving and colonizing the same Africans.

The point in the foregoing is that vanhucracy entails rule by the people who own and control their resources—and who utilize their resources to run their own economies. In so far as it is complicit in denying Africans ownership and control over their material resources, Western democracy infantilizes Africans who are denied the adulthood which derives from owning and controlling one’s resources. In other words, vanhucracy is not all about holding periodic elections but it holds that elections must be premised on ownership and control over one’s resources. Thus, African constitutionalism would, in so far as it derives from vanhucracy, provide for the redistribution and restitution of resources back to Africans who were and are victims of colonialism. Put differently, while Western democracy holds that it is liberal elections that should have primacy in Africa, vanhucracy holds that it is sovereignty over natural resources which should have primacy in Africa (Nhemachena, 2023b). Vanhucracy contends that merely electing leaders without African [state] sovereignty over natural resources amounts to electing beggars who subsequently turn to begging from those that still own and control African resources. In other words, Africans and other peoples in the Global South, invariably elect beggars into offices, and yet it is trite that beggars cannot be leaders because they have no choices in the world. Without ownership and control over African resources, the proficiency of an African leader heavily depends on how effectively he or she is able to beg at an international level.

Whereas in the precolonial era African leaders did not constitute international beggars, in the 21st century Africans elect international beggars for leaders, precisely because electoral democracy is given primacy above African sovereignty over natural resources. Western democracy which is complicit in denying Africans sovereignty over their natural resources is undeniably part of the contemporary Euro-American designs which have entrapped Africans into what I herein call matrices of beggary, if not also buggery in this queer world. Because they are beggars, African leaders have no choices in the world. In fact, recently the incumbent Kenyan President has bewailed the fact that African leaders are treated like schoolboys and girls as they are often summoned by Western leaders to attend shows and meetings in which they have little if any choices and say (Nhemachena, 2024). Yet, even as it reduced African leaders to international beggars, democracy is glorified in Western discourses which are insensitive to the dehumanization of African leaders who, like in Greek pederasty (Nhemachena, 2024), are forced to relate as boys and girls with Western leaders who assume the roles of adults reserving the right to summon such African leaders to unimaginable indignities. If there is no dignity in beggary, there cannot be dignity in a democracy that is complicit in creating beggars out of Africans who are denied ownership and control over their resources. The fundamental problem in Africa is that many think that what is good for the colonizers is good for the Africans as well.

Because vanhucracy was destroyed by colonialists, Africans now have Western democracy which accounts for why they can no longer survive without donations and aid from Europe and North America. In other words, vanhucracy is rule by [Black] people who own and control their resources including land—and who are thus self-sufficient enough to run their own economies without depending on Western donations and aid. Among the precolonial Shona, Africans were expected to be self-sufficient and to be productive using their resources. The few lazy ones who did not value productivity and who depended on others were mocked as simbe (lazy) and as vapemhi (beggars). Indeed, among the Shona people, the few who went about asking for donations or aid from others were deemed to have done something wrong to their ancestors and, thus, were undergoing some spiritual punishment. For instance, it was those who had wronged their fathers or mothers who were expected to undergo the ritual of kutanda botso where they went around the villages dressed in old strips of blankets, rags, and even in sacks (kupfeka saga), with bowls and asking for donations of millet or rapoko as part of the ritual. In kutanda botso, the beggar had to undergo humiliating processes and hardships collecting handfuls of grain from the village while being ceremonially scolded and insulted by onlookers (Chitauke, 2017; Chivasa, 2021). Writing about kutanda botso, Chitauke (2017) notes thus:

Literally, kutanda botso can be translated as to chase away violence. The perpetrator must brew some beer out of the grains that he collects from other people through begging. He is not allowed to use his own grains or money to cover the expenses of such a ritual. If he uses his own grain, then the ritual would be rendered invalid. He should dress in rags, sackcloth, or old strips of blankets, and walk from one home to another singing a beggar’s song while asking for grains. He has to let everyone know that he is a fool who had ill-treated his mother. The villagers are bound to give him something, but not before they ridicule him by throwing cold water or ashes on him.

In Western democracy it has become normal for Africans to survive on donations and “humanitarian” aid. Indeed, even the term democracy itself is some kind of a donation from another part of the world. Of course, the problem is also that colonialists imposed themselves as fathers and mothers to Africans who they considered as children, regardless of their actual chronological ages (Nhemachena, 2024). In fact, in colonial Zimbabwe, Western missionaries imposed themselves as fathers to Africans who then addressed the missionaries as mafata (fathers) (Nhemachena, 2021a). Indeed, Westerners still regard themselves as fathers and mothers to Africans whose governance systems, including sexualities, are thus regularly subjected to Western policing. So, when African leaders go around begging, they are in essence executing rituals of kutanda botso, not necessarily for violating their biological fathers and mothers but for violating the expectations of Westerners who have since arrogated parenthood over Africans. No wonder, 21st century African leaders are still treated by Western leaders as boys and girls fit for running imperial errands—despite the world being a democratic one.

Vanhucracy entails rule by those that observe and have internalized hunhu, the laws, morals, ethics, etiquette and decorum beyond the rhetoric of the Western neoliberal rule of law, human rights, good governance, democracy, and constitutionalism. In vanhucracy, citizens including their leaders would not practice corruption or pilfering from the public purse, but they would assist one another, and they would even assist strangers who got stranded; in this regard, strangers, including European travelers, traders, explorers, and missionaries, were provided with accommodation, food, and other forms of hospitality at no costs (Nhemachena et al., 2020). If vanhucracy did not exist in precolonial Africa, European travelers, traders, explorers, and missionaries would not have enjoyed African hospitality (Nhemachena et al., 2020). If precolonial Africans did not have vanhucracy and were corrupt, European travelers, traders, and missionaries would have been robbed, and they would not have been able to freely move, associate, practice their religions, settle, and live among the Africans, particularly during the pre- and early colonial periods.

Because of its attention to the fact that every African needs material means of production and survival, vanhucracy ensured that every African had access to land—whether by way of usufruct rights or ownership rights (Lan, 1985). Kings, chiefs, headmen, village heads, and African fathers would grant rights to property because vanhucracy held that access to and rights to use resources such as land were every African’s right. In precolonial Zimbabwe, for instance, upon getting married, sons were allocated pieces of land to productively use for the sustenance of their new families. In vanhucracy, the right to life derived from the right to own and control one’s land yet, in Western democracy the right to life is simply asserted even as Africans are denied the right to own their land which is, after all, the material foundation of the right to human life and human dignity in African modes of governance. Put differently, in vanhucracy, the right to human life is, by extension, the right to ownership and control over one’s resources. The argument here is that in vanhucracy, it is insufficient to provide for a right to life because what indigenous people deserve is a right to human life. A mere right to life, as is provided in Western liberal democracy, would legitimize the replication of colonial injustices where indigenous people were forced to live [dog’s] lives or the equivalence of [nonhuman] lives. Rather than merely providing for a right to life, as in Western democracy, vanhucracy provides, for Africans, a right to human life. The inadequacy of a mere right to life is evidenced in a world where even enslaved Africans were afforded such a right to life but one which was indistinct from nonhuman life. Africans are living lives which are indistinct from nonhuman lives precisely because Western democracy, which is the basis for politics in Africa, merely provides for a right to life which can be in fact the life of a dog, which does not own and control resources.

By dispossessing Africans of cattle, or livestock more generally, colonialists deprived the Africans of material means by which to fulfill marriage prestations. They deprived Africans of their right to marry, to be married, and their right to human life (Nhemachena, 2021b). Yet, in spite of these material forms of dispossession by colonialists, Western democracy and human rights, which have been foisted on Africans, rhetorically provide for the right to marry and have a family, as well as the right to life. Vanhucracy would ask what right to life or to marry can be extended to people who have been dispossessed of their material means of production and survival?

For vanhucracy, rules on how to govern the continent of Africa and indeed the entire world should come from people who have hunhu, and who experience deep senses of shame for enslaving and colonizing others. The Shona saying mwana akabva kuvanhu (a child who originates from vanhu with hunhu) captures the models who must be creating the rules for governing the continent of Africa, and the entire world. The saying mwana akabva kuvanhu refers to someone who does not only originate from humans, in the Western sense, but from a particular form of humans called vanhu with hunhu. In this sense it is not sufficient to be a human, in the Western sense, but one has to be a munhu with hunhu in order to be eligible to lead in vanhucracy. The question here is, what purpose does it serve Africans to receive rules and laws, on how to govern, from those that have robbed them for centuries? Africa and the rest of the Global South are victims of sacrifice to the Greek goddess Demokratia. Indeed, Western democracy is a form of cult worship to the Greek goddess Demokratia. It is sacrifice that comes in the name of freedom, liberation, and independence.

The irony of Western democracy is that it majoritizes elections but not ownership of land. Because it opposes the majoritization of land ownership it, by extension, majoritizes poverty, and disinheritance among Africans. Poverty is majoritized by those who refuse to pay restitution and reparations; to return land and other resources which were stolen during the colonial era. In this regard, it is imperative to think with the tenets of vanhucracy as an Afrocentric model for governance.

Conclusion

Going beyond simplistic deconstructions of hierarchies and power, vanhucracy offers a conceptual and empirical way to decolonize and Africanize African politics. The argument is that vanhucracy offers a tool for Afrocentricity in that it places Africa values, culture, jurisprudence, politics, governance, personhood, humanity, and spirituality at the center of modalities of African governance. Put simply, the study has argued that Africans are suffering multiple governance problems, including poverty, not simply because Africans are unable to govern but because colonial forms of governance, which bypass the material interests of African people, are still being practised on the continent.