Gaddafi: Multi-party democracies don't work in Africa

Hmm... as new head of the African Union, Gaddafi is saying some interesting - and perhaps even controversial - things about how African politics should work.

An excerpt from the above-linked BBC article:

"We don't have any political structures [in Africa], our structures are social," Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

"Our parties are tribal parties - that is what has led to bloodshed."

The Libyan leader's remarks could prove controversial in a continent where people have struggled for decades to have more open systems of government, says our correspondent.

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Serving up the fix

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The city I was just in about 6 months ago - which owns more than a million years of human history - is now hearing a desperate, angry, and fearless roar of reform from its people, whose voice is reverberating across several Arabic-speaking countries. Egypt is an extremely valuable player on the global playing field. It's ancestors are known to have built one of the first far-reaching ordered civilizations the world has known. Medieval Egypt significantly advanced scholarship in the sciences and philosophy. In contemporary times, it has been looked at as a model of modernization amongst Arab states. Even more recently, Egypt has provided strong support in brokering peace in the Middle East, and negotiating as well as facilitating the transfer of resources from and to the Western world. The people of Egypt, therefore, have witnessed many, many changes in leadership. Moreover, they have experienced diversity in the most deepest historical aspect of the word. Surely, a people with s...

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