ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago I.M.Lewis believed that secular party politics in subSaharan Africa would become increasingly efficacious in spite of the continuing growth of Islam in the region. Post-colonial secular politics would effectively put a brake on any ‘new expansion of Muslim influence and Pan-Islamic solidarity’ because such forms of political discourse were ‘more important in the modern world than common religious interest’ (Lewis 1966 p. 91). Party politics, however, proved a disappointment and led to predictions that Africa’s democratisation trend of the 1980s/1990s would largely follow the dismal pattern of the multiparty experiments of the early independence period in the 1950s and 1960s: election results would be dis-puted, conflicts would emerge and old ruling parties would continue to dominate. A democratic spirit might continue to exist but ‘the daunting economic and financial problems which African governments face’ would ultimately contribute to a return of the ‘authoritarian strain in African politics’ (TordofT 1993 p. 57). The attempted secularisation of political culture in sub-Saharan Africa mainly ignored or was largely irrelevant to Islamists as it pitched notions of modernity against traditional cultural and socio-religious values.
