Vanguard (Lagos)
Biko Agozino
7 May 2007
opinion
Lagos — THE recent elections in Africa with a few exceptions confound political analysts and lay people alike in terms of why they are so chaotic compared to some elections in other parts of the world that appear more orderly. I believe that the explanation lies in what is known as African Fractals. Briefly, this is the finding that Africans prefer to design their social institutions and social relations in fractal patterns rather than the linear patterns which are preferred by Europeans. This fact was recorded by Ron Eglash in his book, African Fractals: Indigenous Designs and Modern Computer Engineering.
According to Eglash, modern computer engineering, especially given the internet that was developed with the formula of the Nigerian genius, Phillip Emeagwali, is based on fractal designs rather than linear geometry probably due to the fact that the internet is a web with interconnectivity and not a grid with straight lines. Eglash was surprised to find that African town planning, architectural designs, beliefs in the supernatural, kinship patterns, board games, textile designs, hairstyles and what have you all exhibit an abundance of fractal geometry while European designs tend to be Cartesian and Native American designs tend to be Euclidean or three-dimensional.
Eglash warned that this should not lead to the conclusion that Africans are closer to nature since nature itself is abundantly fractal while Europeans are closer to culture. Native Americans and other cultures that do not prefer the fractal patterns so common in Africa also do not share European culture. Moreover, African Americans continue to privilege fractal designs in their settlement patterns to the extent that the State of Georgia was forced to redistrict electoral boundaries to take into consideration the fact that African Americans did not settle in straight grids but in a chaotic fractal pattern and that they would be under-represented if electoral boundaries are based strictly on straight grids. Similarly, the musical genres created by people of African descent - jazz, blues, funk, rock'n'roll, reggae, ragga, calypso, soca, Afrobeat, highlife, gospel - all stubbornly resist the written musical score and privilege improvisation and the call and response motif common in African culture.
Eglash did not speculate on the origin of these African fractal patterns but my guess is that after Africans were hunted and captured for hundreds of years during the African holocaust, it is understandable that people of African descent deliberately evolved complicated social and physical designs to help them to elude capture by slave raiders.
This explanation was indirectly anticipated by Eglash who observed that the three great pyramids in Egypt were designed in fractal patterns thousands of years ago but then, the Egyptian civilization was itself the prey of many marauding invaders to the extent that even the educational system in Kemet was known as The Mysteries in which students were sworn to secrecy and very little was recorded in writing despite the availability of hieroglyphics.
There is a notion of African Time that is found also among the African Diaspora which assumes that events will start later than the scheduled time but this makes sense if for hundreds of years the Africans who turned up in time for meetings were the ones kidnapped and enslaved first. This is only a guess but it sounds more convincing when we remember that Europeans may prefer Cartesian designs because the grids make it easier for them to conquer and control others.
Elections are always messy as we have seen in the American presidential elections, the electoral crisis in the Ukraine, Bangladesh, India, The Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and Russia, to mention but a few. The only difference is that Africans expect the elections to be chaotic while Europeans expect them to be orderly and straight-forward. It is hypocritical to say that in elections in Europe and North America where only about 30-40 per cent of the electorate bother to turn out to vote are more democratic than ones in Africa where the masses turn out to vote but electoral materials are inadequate, voters registration out of date, political thugs try to intimidate them or no electoral officers show up or do not arrive in time, adhering to the fractal principle of African Time.
Let us not forget that the 2007 election is going to be the first time that one Nigerian regime will hand over power to another regime through the electoral process even if both regimes belong to the same ruling party and even if the elections are not perfect as the President himself admitted. The outrage against what someone called the 'elecsham' from the high and the low in the country is obviously an indication that the people expect more from the political leaders than the achievement of Third Term for the ruling party.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
