Re-conceptualising the king’s power in akan consensual democracy

Abstract

Kwasi Wiredu’s support for consensual democracy as an alternative to majoritarian democracy is grounded in interwoven structures of traditional Akan society. One such structure is the centrality of the kingship as a social, political and religious amalgam animating the entire political life of the Akan. While Wiredu presents the king’s office and role as neutral and distant from the exercise of power, a closer theoretical examination of such office does not support Wiredu’s anthropologically based philosophical assertions. The combination of a number of conflicting roles in that office, as well as the nature of the effect of power on its holders, will result in a different dynamic to the one imagined by Wiredu. Through an assessment of what traditional African religious beliefs are, in respect of the religious powers the king was said to have, I will seek to construct an attitude towards the king that is different from the one presented by Wiredu. By analysing what power would have meant for the king and how power is understood by those who hold it, especially in traditional African systems, I propose that the king should be seen as an individual who was intimately involved in the final decision-making processes. Substantively, I argue that the final outcome was not always a neutral reflection of the will of the people. At the very least, such an outcome was an expression of various political plots that had nothing to do with consensus. If I succeed in this argument, then we have reason to doubt the foundations of Wiredu’s consensus as anchored in the office of the king as merely political. If the doubt I seek to establish holds, then Wiredu’s recommendation for consensus as a viable postcolonial democratic practice for Africa is not as sound as he might have us think.