Rethinking democratic citizenship education in Africa

towards moderate deliberation

Joseph Jinja Divala

Rachel Ndinelao Shanyanana

pp. 31-52

in: Yusef Waghid, Nuraan Davids (eds), African democratic citizenship education revisited, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

This chapter interrogates the idea of democratic citizenship as it is applied in Malawi and Namibia. The authors assert that although substantive deliberative democracy has been defended as a more preferable option globally, such a framework will be difficult to attain, if not impossible, in the context of most African countries. Instead, they argue that unless the African democratic states promote moderate deliberative democratic education, citizens may possibly not be able to engage in matters of mutual concern and will inevitably fail to have meaningful deliberations that can start addressing unjust encounters confronting the continent today, thereby potentially thwarting the many advantages of developing democratic communities Africa requires to promote.