How Colonial Interpretations of Pre-Colonial African Governance Were Fundamentally Flawed
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
For centuries, colonial scholarship misread Africa’s pre-colonial governance systems through a foreign and deeply inadequate lens. European administrators and historians—trained exclusively in hierarchical bureaucracy, Roman law, and monarchic absolutism—encountered African governing systems that did not resemble their own.
Rather than recognising a different governing intelligence, they declared absence. Where they saw no ministries, they inferred disorder. Where they saw councils instead of parliaments, they assumed primitivism. Where authority was moral rather than coercive, they labelled it weak.
This misinterpretation was not merely academic. It became the intellectual justification for colonisation, administrative takeover, and the violent replacement of African systems with bureaucratic rule. Yet what colonialism dismantled was not a lack of governance—it dismantled a commicratic civilisation.
To understand this error, we must return to Africa’s original fountainhead of Statecraft: Kemet (Ancient Egypt)—and then trace how its governance logic migrated, evolved, and survived across the continent.
1. Pharaonic Governance Was Not Bureaucracy—Nor Was It Popular Lawmaking
One of the most persistent misunderstandings concerns the role of citizens under the Pharaonic system. To avoid modern projection, this must be stated clearly:
Under Pharaonic governance, citizens did not make laws, nor did they prescribe State policy.
Law was neither a democratic nor populocratic product, nor was it an autocratic decree. Instead, governance in Kemet operated through a triadic interdependence:
- The Pharaoh – the judicial executor and symbolic custodian of Ma’at.
- The Priesthood of Ma’at – the moral, cosmological, judicial advisory, and economic interpreters.
- The Royal Councils and Scribes – administrative and legislative articulators.
The Pharaoh did not rule alone. Nor did the people rule the Pharaoh. Both the Pharaoh and the people relied on the priesthood for moral calibration, economic timing (flood cycles, harvests), advisory bodies, and social balance. This is precisely why the Priesthood of Ma’at functioned as an advisory oversight institution, guiding:
- The Pharaoh’s judicial decisions.
- The Royal Council’s lawmaking interpretations.
- The ethical limits of State power.
- The peoples’ moral life.
Ma’at was not a constitution—it was a cosmic ethic, and the priesthood were its interpreters. In this sense, Pharaonic governance was interdependent, not bureaucratic. Authority flowed horizontally between institutions, even while executive power remained centralised.
This system worked because it balanced moral legitimacy, administrative order, and social coherence—not because it imposed hierarchy for its own sake.
2. The Aye–Horemheb Rupture: Where Kemet Diverged from Africa
The most critical historical rupture occurred at the end of the 18th Dynasty Kemet. Akhenaten’s religious and administrative revolution did not merely alter theology; it shattered the interdependent architecture of governance that had bound the Pharaoh, the priesthood of Ma’at, and the people into a coherent moral order.
By centralising sacred authority within his own office and marginalising the priestly institutions that traditionally moderated royal power through advisory, Akhenaten converted a relational system of balance into a unilateral bureaucratic command. This rupture destabilised public trust, disrupted ritual continuity, and fractured the ethical synchrony between State and society, producing widespread disorder that could not be sustained beyond his reign. The instability made reform inevitable.
Pharaoh Aye, emerging from priestly lineage and bearing the title It Netjer—God’s Father—attempted to restore equilibrium by re-anchoring governance in interpeer relations between sacred law and governing authority, correcting the excesses of Akhenaten’s overreach. Under Pharaoh Aye, a subtle but powerful reform was underway—one that emphasised communal consultation, ethical recalibration, and adaptive governance. This reform did not populocratise Kemet in a modern sense, but it softened absolute centralisation and strengthened moral interdependence. However, this trajectory was abruptly severed and its corrective moment was short-lived.
With the military succession of Horemheb, governance shifted decisively toward command authority, legal codification, and military discipline. His reign redirected governance of Kemet toward military consolidation and administrative rigidity, suppressing Aye’s commicratic restoration and replacing moral custodianship with command discipline. The priesthood was subordinated. The State hardened. Kemet turned inward, and—critically—its living link with the rest of the Africa continent fractured.
What followed was not continuity but departure: Kemet gradually drifted away from its pharaonic governance order, losing its role as the stabilising fountainhead of African civilisational balance and entering a phase of institutional disorganisation that severed its historic link with the wider ethnopublic systems of the continent.
What did not take root in Kemet after Pharaoh Aye, however, did take root elsewhere.
3. Where Kemet Withdrew, Pre-Colonial Africa Advanced Commicracy
Across West, Central, East, and Southern Africa, the commicratic reform matured rather than collapsed. Here, governance evolved beyond Pharaonic civilisational continuity into participatory moral systems, where:
- Councils of elders deliberated in open forums.
- Citizens participated in lawmaking through hand-raising, acclamation, and consensus.
- Rulers governed by trust, not force.
- Economy developed into cooperative.
- Community Rule became established as the divine freedom to the people; it grants them the right to choose the gods that answer their spirits, without fear of the priests, chiefs or ruler’s decree.
This was the decisive innovation: individual moral agency. For so long as the people could choose their gods, the gods themselves would choose to remain among the people. And so Commicracy was born as the spiritual law of balance for the civilisational trajectory of men and gods. It gave to every person; the farmer, the soldier, the craftsman, the mother; the right to choose the god that answered their inner voice. It freed the temples from the tyranny of single worship, and it restored the freedom of divine communion that had been the glory of our ancestors.
If Pharaoh or priest turned their face from one god to another, the people were no longer bound to follow. For the covenant of Ma’at could never belong to one ruler; it was the inheritance of all who lived by truth, justice, and balance.
This was the essence of Aye’s vision: that no god, no Pharaoh, no governed territory should ever again enslave the spirit of the people. If Kemet; the civilisational head of the African continent; were to lose its way, the body must remain intact, guided by its own memory of divine order. In this way, the fall of one governed community would not mean the fall of all. The power of the gods would remain dispersed, safeguarded through the communal spirits of the many lands that once looked to Kemet as their sun.
Unlike Kemet—where priesthood mediation was institutional and centralised—pre-colonial Africa extended moral authority downward, commicratically. Citizens could seek guidance directly. Law was not imposed; it was emergent. Power was not delegated downward; it was recognised upward.
Colonial observers, seeing no written codes or ministries, failed to understand that what they were witnessing was sub-commicracy, not sub-bureaucracy.
Unified African Governance Continuum: Pharaonic, Pre-Colonial, and Ethnopublican
| PHARAONIC PILLAR (KEMET) | PRE-COLONIAL AFRICAN GOVERNANCE | ETHNOPUBLICAN ARM OF GOVERNMENT | UNIFIED CORE FUNCTION |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pharaoh (Divine Head / Custodian of Ma’at) | Supreme Ruler, Oba, Mwami, Asantehene, Negus, Mansa (Moral Sovereign) | Statelords (Judicial Arm) | Moral supervision, constitutional balance, guardianship of ethical order and social harmony |
| Vizier (Chief Administrator) | Chief Minister, Prime Elder, Grand Vizier-equivalent, Council Head | Secretary of State (Executive Arm) | Administrative coordination, policy execution, operational coherence |
| Royal Council & Scribes | Council of Elders, Lineage Councils, Griot-Scribes, Clan Assemblies | Citizenry Prime Minister (Legislative Arm) | Lawmaking, deliberation, memory-keeping, civic representation |
Temple Economy & Treasury | Communal Granaries, Guild Elders, Trade Stewards, Labour Councils | Economy-Prime Minister (Economic Arm) | Resource distribution, labour organisation, trade regulation, economic equilibrium |
| Priesthood of Ma’at | Spiritual Custodians, Ethical Elders, Ancestor Councils, Priests | Advisory-Bodies (Judicial, Legislative and Executive Oversight Institutions) | Ethical arbitration, moral instruction, dispute resolution, and advisory. |
| Nomarchs (Provincial Governors) | Regional or Tribal Chiefs, Clan Heads, Provincial Heads | Regional Statelords–Governors & Councillors | Decentralised governance under unified moral law |
| Scribes (Record-Keepers) | Griots, Oral Historians, Court Recorders | Civic Registrars & Govox Systems | Knowledge preservation, accountability, institutional memory |
| People of Kemet | Clans, Lineages, Age-Grades, Guild Members | Citizenry | Social participation, legitimacy, collective identity |
| Ma’at (Cosmic Law) | Customary Law, Ancestral Codes, Communal Ethics | Ethnopublican Constitution | Universal ethical order governing all relations |
| Public Works (Temples, Roads, Irrigation) | Communal Labour Systems, Cooperative economy, Rotational Service | National Infrastructure regional Commissions | Collective development, shared prosperity, social cohesion |
4. Colonial Misreading: Bureaucracy as the Only Measure of Order
European colonial administrators assumed governance must look like files, offices, ranks, and chains of command. African systems did not comply—so they were declared informal, tribal, or chaotic. This was a catastrophic misreading.
African governance was:
- Moral rather than procedural.
- Horizontal rather than vertical.
- Relational rather than administrative.
- Consensus-driven rather than coercive.
Where Europe demanded obedience to the State, Africa demanded harmony with the community. Where Europe centralised power, Africa distributed legitimacy.
Colonialism did not replace chaos with order—it replaced commicratic intelligence with bureaucratic domination.
5. From Pre-Colonial Consultation to Modern Ethnopublicanism
Modern ethnopublican commicracy is not an invention. It is a recovery and scaling of Africa’s pre-colonial logic.
Just as citizens once consulted priests individually, modern citizens consult Advisory-Bodies and Regulatory Commissions. Just as councils once shaped law through public consensus, modern citizenry shape governance through structured civic consultation. Just as rulers were morally bound rather than hierarchically supreme, modern Statelords are judicial custodians, not political rulers.
This continuity matters because it reframes legitimacy. In ethnopublican commicracy:
- Authority is not owned—it is entrusted.
- Power is not superior—it is reciprocal.
- Governance is not imposed—it is commissioned.
This is why colonial interpretations were not simply wrong—they were epistemologically blind.
Conclusion: Africa Was Never Ungoverned—It Was Governed Differently
Africa did not lack governance before colonialism. It lacked bureaucracy—and that absence was its strength.
Kemet provided the moral and structural architecture. Pre-colonial Africa perfected participatory commicracy that emerged from Aye’s reform since he was a Vizier in Kemet. Colonialism disrupted both. Ethnopublicanism restores the line—modernised, constitutionalised, and continent-scaled.
The task before Africa today is not to imitate Western systems that arose after wealth and empire—but to reclaim and evolve African own ancestral governing intelligence.
What colonialism misread as disorder was, in truth, a higher order of human organisation that surpass bureaucratic management—the social organisation of commicracy.
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