Autochtonie et Démocratie, entre Tradition et Modernité: Le Compromis Africain, l’Exemple du Cameroun

Democracy, as a political system that promotes the participation of all in public management, is implemented in ways that are coloured by the historical and political cultures of the peoples to whom it is to be applied. Cultural and ethnic mosaic, Africa is the place where tradition and modernity meet. It must find a formula that guarantees indigenous participation in democracy. While democracy is distinguished by its principles of equality, of majority and representation, indigenous is as much a matter of the individuals who embody it as it is of their culture. The example of Cameroon, Africa in miniature, shows that there is effective indigenous participation at the organic level, but that is difficult to integrate the rules of traditional law into the administration process. At the organic level, the indigenous presence is guaranteed by the rules which organise the various representative elections. At the regulatory level, customary law has met with hostility from modern system. Effectiveness at the organic level and progressiveness at the regulatory level, this is how the African compromise is developing. A compromise which, despite a number of pitfalls, suggest a desire to systematise an African-inspired form of law.