One Party System and its courses - colonial political era




Factors for the Establishment of One Party System
One Party System means having only one political party which dominates/takes power. No competing environment exists for political aspects

  Internal Factors

Here three factors have been identified.

The first factor is the nature and character of political competition to state power. Political competition took place at two stages, first at the stage of struggling of independence and second at the stage of consolidating state power after independence. At the stage of consolidating state power after independence you had the ruling party and the opposition parties. The interest of the opposition party was to take over state power from the ruling parties during subsequent elections, while the interest of the ruling parties was to consolidate and perpetuate their position of power. The tendency was for the faction in power to consolidate and perpetuate its position of power by elimination of the opposition parties.

The second important factor was that the class that took state power at independence had no economic base, the economy was under the control of foreigners and most members of the ruling group were from economic poor background. This means that the struggle for political power was also struggle for economic power. Therefore, political competition was also competition for the scarce resources. To ensure this those already in power had to perpetuate their state office.

The third factor was colonial legacy. The colonial system was by nature non-democratic system as  it  was  an  imposed  state  not  based  on  democratic  institutions  and  practices.  Under colonialism pre-colonial democratic institutions and aspects of democratic culture were destroyed and new ones could not be developed.

2.   External Factors

One source says that there was influence of Ancient Greece, and in particular the political philosophy of Plato. Plato is argued that in his political philosophy become authoritarian and hostile to democratic ideas. Plato developed the theory of rule by few who are good and wise, to rule over many who are bad and ignorant. He called democratic rule as rule of the mob. It therefore  said  that  most  of  the  African  leaders  adopted Plato’s  ideas  and  thus  becoming Platonic. It  is  thus  claimed that  the  establishment of one-party political systems by  these leaders was due to platonic tendencies and attitude. Another source of influence is said to have been communist influence from China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Cuba and even North Korea. It is claimed that some ruling parties in Africa such as TANU in Tanzania by the
1960s had developed association with Mao’s China and later Eastern Europe. This is given more weight  more  it  is  argued  that  some  countries  in  Africa  were  even  supported  by  socialist countries in their armed struggles against colonialism. While this contribution of external influence cannot be denied, we would like to argue that internal dynamics appear to have played  a  more  significant  and  predominant  role.  To  start  with,  both  external  sources  of influence seem to be based on weak foundations. On the influence of Ancient Greece, nowhere


is it clearly shown under what conditions and circumstances were most African leaders who adopted one party system in the 1960s and 1970s influenced by platonic philosophy resulting into the development of platonic attitudes. The education background of most of them was characterised by liberal ideas of multi-party democracy which they acquired under colonial education.

On the influence of communism from China, Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, etc there are a number of facts which seem to water down the magnitude of its contribution. First the ideas on one party system began to be developed by some African leaders such as Nyerere and Nkrumah long before contacts and relations were developed with the communist countries. For example, Tanzania began to establish friendly relations with China in 1965, while Nyerere’s ideas on one party began to be developed as early as 1962. Secondly a number of African countries that established one party system were ideologically hostile to Marxism, Leninism and Maoism. Kenya and Malawi are typical examples. Thus we can argue that rather than being important factors, these  external  influences  merely  facilitated  the  consolidation and  the  nature  and character of the functioning of the one party political system in Africa.

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