A Critique of Consensual Democracy and Human Rights in Kwasi Wiredu’s Philosophy

Abstract

The paper is a critical examination of consensual democracy and the political problem of human rights in Kwasi Wiredu’s philosophy. In one of his philosophical works, Wiredu establishes the thesis of a non-party system, based on consensus, as a central principle for political theory and democratic practice in Africa. The imperativeness of this, among other reasons, is to forestall, if not all, but certainly the causes of the political problem of human rights in contemporary Africa. Taking off from Wiredu’s positions, this paper examines the problems and flaws arising from his thesis. The paper argues that while his discovery of some harvest of human rights is an enviable contribution to African jurisprudence, his proposal on non-party consensual democracy, is however, a theoretical farce. As a consequence, the paper concludes that the difficulties in Wiredu’s notion of consensual democracy necessarily stifle the possibility of it being a sine qua non to the reality of his much vaunted political right to decisional representation in the 21st century Africa.