FORGET ABOUT THE END OF HISTORY – IS THIS THE END OF DEMOCRACY?

Introduction

I sit here as an outsider to this Transatlantic Bridge Conversation where my continent of Africa with a long border with the Atlantic Ocean, and as the cradle of humanity, has been marginal in these conversations.

If Europe and the USA continue to imagine and shape a “global liberal economic and political system’ that is founded on the marginalisation of 80% of the world population, then the global community is at grave risk. There can be no free liberal democratic system that does not acknowledge the fatal flaws of the original sin of colonial conquest, slavery, and extractive socio-economic system, that have enriched Europe and USA at the expense of Most of the world. Africa, Asia, and Latin America were impoverished by destroying their rich socio-cultural and ecosystem systems that have sustained people for millennia.

The Trump Regime is a mirror to the so-called Western Liberal Global economic and political system. The foundations of Western Civilisation are fatally flawed as Mahatma Ghandi, said: It would be a great idea. Trump is the extreme version of a system designed in Europe to exploit the rest of the world’s people.

The fundamental premise of this extractive system is the denial of the essence of what it  means to be human. Despite irrefutable science that there is only one race – the human race – humanity continues to frame social relationships in terms of ‘races’.  Despite irrefutable scientific knowledge about the limits to economic growth, humanity continues to revere economic growth as a measure of progress. Progress towards extinction?

The issue before us is not Trump nor right wing party resurgence. The issue is about how we as a human race are to reimagine how to be human again in the 21st century by re-embracing the values of interconnectedness, interdependence within the web of life.  It is these values that enabled our common ancestors to evolve and sustain themselves in the cradle of humanity – Africa.

In the 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist activist said: “Two centuries ago, a former European colony tried to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster in which the taints, the sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.”

How come this trans-Atlantic bridge is so narrowly focussed on northern countries- that constitute a small proportion of the Atlantic community, but exclude the majority?  Isn’t that the root problem of the global order?

So what do we do now? What Lessons and Examples of Reimagined Democracy and the world order? Four key points:

1.        Acknowledgement of the fatal flaws of Liberal Democracy. Freedom is indivisible. Europe and the USA cannot have a sustainable world order without acknowledging Most of the World and the alternative socio-cultural foundations of inclusive values based on and promoting the one Human Race that is interconnected and interdependent within the web of life.

2.        Invest in mindset shifts away from post-Industrial Revolution linear thinking, competitive winner takes all, zero-sum games, extractive economic models, towards reconnecting with our inner essence of humanity. Consciousness of this inner essence has enabled indigenous people across the globe, who constitute 6% of the global population, to be effective stewards of around 80% of biodiversity and ecosystems on which the very survival of humanity rests. We need to become indigenous again. Liberal democracy with its focus on competitiveness is unsuitable to Africa and cultures that promote collaboration rather than competition.

3.        Botswana and Namibia are modelling alternative socioeconomic approaches to disrupt the continuing extraction of Africa’s critical minerals in the name of ‘greening the global economy’.  Post colonial African leaders, with few exceptions, such as Morocco, have allowed neo-colonial extraction of natural and mineral wealth with the Washington Consensus, for the benefit of Europeans, Americans and Chinese people at the expense of Africans. The industrial military complex has eliminated post-colonial leaders such as Lumumba of DRC, Sankara of Burkina Faso, Anton Lubowski of Namibia, Chris Hani of South Africa, who attempted to get their countries to take alternative pathways to a more sustainable Africa.

4.        All the above require investments in conversations at various levels: inter- generational, international national, continental, and global open discussions to set humanity’s eye on shaping futures that are focussed on wellbeing for all for a healthy planet. At home in South Africa, on the African continent, and at the Club of Rome, we have programs to strengthen these open conversations. Europe, USA and China have the opportunity to be part of these conversations driven by young people to shape future different from the past.

Mamphela Ramphele

Trans-Atlantic Bridge

31/5/2025