I concluded the first part of this essay yesterday by suggesting that we should recognise the importance of treating Africa as a source of philosophical development rather than merely an audience for ideas formulated elsewhere.
An African classical liberalism cannot consist merely of translating familiar arguments into African languages or attaching African proverbs to conclusions already reached elsewhere.
Such efforts may improve communication, but communication and philosophical development are different undertakings.
The philosophical challenge is to investigate how African intellectual traditions might deepen our understanding of liberty, responsibility, voluntary cooperation, property and legitimate authority.
Consider property rights.
Classical liberalism generally regards secure ownership as an important safeguard of personal independence and economic freedom.
Yet African societies possess varied histories of landholding, inheritance, resource use and communal administration.
Some customary arrangements recognise strong individual and household rights within broader communal institutions. Others grant considerable authority to traditional leaders, sometimes creating insecurity for occupants.
A serious African classical liberalism should investigate these arrangements rather than automatically assume that individual freehold is the only legitimate form of secure ownership, or that customary tenure should be preserved regardless of its consequences.
What is the fundamental purpose of property rights?
Is it to protect one particular legal instrument, or to secure enforceable rights against arbitrary dispossession and interference?
Can particular customary tenure arrangements provide meaningful security of occupation, inheritance and economic use?
Under what circumstances does communal authority protect individual interests, and when does it undermine them?
How should individuals be protected where customary practices produce unequal rights?
The answers require legal, historical and empirical investigation.
But the philosophical starting point should remain the protection of individuals against arbitrary interference with their legitimate property interests.
Voluntary association provides another area of inquiry.
African communities possess varied traditions of mutual assistance, including stokvels, burial societies and informal savings arrangements.
These institutions do not necessarily originate in liberal philosophy, but they demonstrate how individuals can cooperate to pursue shared objectives.
They also raise questions about trust, obligations, personal choice and the freedom to withdraw.
The significance lies in recognising that collective action does not necessarily require collective coercion.
People can pursue common interests through voluntary institutions while retaining their individual rights.
These examples point towards a broader principle that I believe should inform the development of African classical liberalism.
Individual freedom is not something granted by the state, but a fundamental moral entitlement that political and social institutions ought to recognise and protect.
The purpose of those institutions should therefore be to safeguard individual rights, protect property against arbitrary interference, uphold freedom of association and remove unjustified restrictions on economic activity.
Within such an environment, individuals should be free to pursue their ambitions, exercise their talents, undertake responsibilities and cooperate with others according to their own convictions.
This understanding is particularly relevant to the African philosophical relationship between individuality and community.
It recognises that people may pursue their interests independently or collectively, but that neither government nor communal institutions should possess unlimited authority to determine how they live.
An African classical liberalism should therefore seek to develop these principles through African historical experiences and intellectual traditions, rather than merely restating conclusions formulated elsewhere.
Expanding the horizons of African liberal thought
The development of African classical liberalism also presents an opportunity to contribute to South Africa’s existing liberal intellectual tradition.
The IRR and Free Market Foundation (FMF) have contributed extensively to debates concerning constitutionalism, economic freedom, property rights and the rule of law. Their contributions form part of a wider South African liberal history that includes important opposition to apartheid.
It would therefore be inaccurate to suggest that liberalism has no African intellectual history or that contemporary liberal institutions have made no efforts to engage African communities.
Nevertheless, defending established philosophical principles and exploring new intellectual foundations for those principles are distinct undertakings, both of which have their place.
Consider The Daily Friend, the publication in which this argument is being advanced.
Its broadly classical liberal orientation provides a platform for contributors to explore political, economic and philosophical questions from a variety of perspectives.
The questions I raise in this article reflect one particular area of intellectual interest, rather than a judgement about the subjects other contributors choose to pursue.
For example, I am interested in whether African communitarian understandings of personhood might contribute to classical liberal theories of personal autonomy and voluntary responsibility.
I am equally interested in what African customary tenure arrangements might reveal about the institutional foundations of secure property rights.
And, perhaps most importantly, I believe African religious understandings of individual gifts and spiritual calling deserve closer philosophical examination for what they might reveal about moral agency and freedom of conscience.
These questions are not intended to establish that African traditions are inherently liberal, nor that existing liberal philosophy is somehow incomplete simply because its intellectual foundations developed largely outside Africa.
Rather, they represent an opportunity to investigate whether African philosophical traditions can offer additional insights into questions that have occupied liberal thinkers for centuries.
This inquiry need not become a shared intellectual priority for every classical liberal institution, scholar or commentator.
Its value should ultimately depend upon the strength of the arguments it produces.
For my part, I believe the relationship between African understandings of personhood and the classical liberal conception of individual liberty offers considerable scope for further scholarship.
It is an inquiry I consider worth pursuing, not because African traditions must necessarily confirm established liberal principles, but because they deserve to be taken seriously as possible contributors to political philosophy.
Towards an African classical liberalism
African classical liberalism should not be presented as an intellectual tradition that must be invented from nothing.
African thinkers have long engaged ideas concerning constitutionalism, political representation, property rights and limits upon authority.
Historical scholarship on the nineteenth-century North African thinker Hassuna D’Ghies, for example, illustrates an early African engagement with liberal constitutional ideas.
African political thought is therefore more diverse than a simple opposition between European liberalism and African communalism would suggest.
The task is to recover and develop these intellectual histories while contributing new arguments.
I would propose that African classical liberalism begin with a particular understanding of the human person: an individual who is socially situated, morally independent and entitled to protection against arbitrary authority.
Its foundation would be the recognition that individual agency and social interdependence are simultaneous features of human existence.
But this description of human existence must be accompanied by a moral principle.
Because each person possesses dignity and moral standing, neither the state nor the community should treat that individual merely as an instrument for achieving collective objectives.
This does not imply that individuals are entitled to act without regard for others. The equal moral standing of other people places limits upon how freedom may legitimately be exercised.
From this foundation, four commitments follow as the core of the philosophy I am proposing.
The first is individual dignity. Human worth should not depend upon wealth, social status, religious affiliation or conformity with communal expectations.
The second is personal autonomy. Individuals should be free to determine their beliefs, occupations, associations and lawful conduct, subject to the equal rights of others.
The third is voluntary responsibility. Individuals should be free to undertake meaningful responsibilities towards families, communities, religious institutions and wider society without having their fundamental rights extinguished by those obligations.
The fourth is the limitation of arbitrary authority. Individual rights should be protected not only against government, but also against unjustified coercion exercised through customary, religious, economic and communal institutions.
These principles are recognisably liberal.
Their proposed African intellectual contribution lies in developing and defending them through African accounts of personhood, responsibility, community and legitimate authority.
Such an approach would not require the rejection of Ubuntu or other traditions of mutual responsibility.
It would require examining the moral limits of those traditions when communal demands conflict with individual freedom.
Nor would it require accepting every historical interpretation of classical liberalism as definitive.
The challenge is to distinguish the foundational commitment to individual liberty from particular institutional arrangements and assumptions that may be open to reconsideration.
Not every disagreement can be reconciled.
Where an African philosophical tradition requires unrestricted communal authority or denies fundamental individual rights, a genuine conflict with classical liberalism exists.
Similarly, where a proposed synthesis abandons secure property, freedom of conscience or meaningful limits on coercive power, it may constitute a different political philosophy rather than an African development of classical liberalism.
A serious intellectual tradition must recognise such boundaries without preventing critical examination of how its principles are interpreted.
Africa must become a producer of liberal thought
The development of an African classical liberal intellectual tradition would require sustained scholarship.
African histories of individual rights, political representation and opposition to arbitrary authority deserve closer examination.
African philosophical debates about personhood and community should be brought into conversation with theories of liberty, conscience and legitimate political power.
African religious accounts of personal calling should be investigated with attention to both their recognition of individual distinctiveness and the authority they may exercise over personal choice.
Customary property arrangements, voluntary economic institutions and communal governance should be studied for what they reveal about the protection and restriction of individual freedom.
This work should not begin with the assumption that African traditions will necessarily confirm classical liberal principles.
Some may reinforce existing arguments. Others may challenge them or expose unresolved tensions.
These outcomes should be regarded as part of philosophical development rather than obstacles to it.
There is also a separate empirical question.
My experience within liberal advocacy led me to wonder why agreement with certain liberal arguments did not always appear to produce identification with the institutions advancing them.
I cannot establish from that experience alone how widespread the disconnect is or what causes it.
Historical associations, economic disagreements, institutional trust, cultural familiarity and other factors may all matter.
Nor should anyone assume that a more developed African classical liberal philosophy would automatically attract greater popular support.
Its intellectual justification stands independently of that possibility.
The deeper argument concerns the nature of liberty itself.
Human beings possess individual identities and capacities for moral agency, yet develop and exercise them through relationships with others. These realities do not establish classical liberalism as the only defensible political philosophy, but they raise enduring questions about individual rights, voluntary cooperation and the legitimate limits of authority.
African philosophy can contribute meaningfully to answering those questions.
The conception of African classical liberalism I propose begins with the individual as a socially situated but morally independent person: someone whose identity is shaped by relationships, but whose fundamental dignity and rights do not depend upon communal approval.
Its development would require sustained philosophical engagement, serious historical scholarship and a willingness to examine both the strengths and limitations of inherited ideas.
The objective should not simply be to persuade African audiences to adopt philosophical conclusions reached elsewhere. It should be to establish what African intellectual traditions can contribute to the continuing development of liberal political thought.
Africa should not merely be a market for liberal ideas. It should be one of the places where the future of liberalism is written.
[Image: James Wiseman on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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