Metanationality, comprehensive dem ocracy and left communitarian rights: lessons from Ghana for South Africa The Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Gyekye, defends a concept of metanationality (nationality-transcending specific ethnic groups, yet accom modating them all on a basis of equality), which he regards as eminently suitable for application in multicultural societies. Metanationality dis tinguishes between first-and second-tier solidarity. Second-tier solidarity entails commitment to the

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... atic institutions of the state and a system of rights to which individuals bear title. These rights include social and economic rights which are backup rights ensuring effective use of political rights. This system of comprehensive democracy requires that the constitution does not differentiate between citizens, though individuals are differentiated at first-tier solidarity with reference to the communocultural groups with whom they identify. Gyekye succeeds in marrying rights to a politics of the common good. This success is due largely to a novel feature of his philosophy -the equal moral standing of individual and communityand to a limitation clause designed to limit liberty whenever it is necessary to protect the requirements of equality. Gyekye' s attempt to find a reciprocal balance between rights and the common good is instructive for attempts in South Africa to effect a just dispensation for all citizens. Koers 65(1) 2000:45-76 45 the possibility of cultural oppression of any ethnic group by another. The recognition of equal moral standing for individuals alongside their com munities creates a public space for internal criticism of moral practices which runs on a capacity for moral agency partially independent of the formative influences of community. The idea, central to Gyekye's communitarianism (the idea that the community has moral significance), that neither the common interest nor individual rights are by themselves absolutely overriding or trumps, determines that the political community and its institutions are never simply the neutral umpires of individually chosen goods. This non-neutral stand is, in Gyekye, a guarantee of free dom from oppression. Gyekye's left-communitarianism is inherently paternalistic. State inter ference in the private domain is not only permissible but justifiable from the point of view of capacity building. Gyekye's sense of justification connects with his concern that Africa should remain the master of her own fate, and that the African states might retain a hold on their choice of the shape of modernity provided that their governments create conditions conducive to cultural development and technological growth. This pater nalism creates space for a liberal critique, yet its possibility does not dampen Gyekye's enthusiasm for communitarianism. From his perspec tive, a defense of communitarianism -as he modifies it with additions from liberalism -is the appropriate response to the over-individualistic liberal treatment of the person and her community, and to the sense of alienation that accompanies individuals' experience of the liberal state. Gyekye's attempt to construct a left-communitarianism on the basis of the equiprimordiality of the person and her community contains an immanent critique of the liberal alternative. Specifically, the community and the individuals who make it up are equally significant loci of value. As a source of value the community acts as a restraint on the excesses of individualism, particularly with respect to claim-rights affecting the extent of liberty. Gyekye's anti-Lockean stand is apparent in the limita tions affecting the right to dispose of one's property (including one's body, one's life and one's talents) as one pleases. Individuals have responsibilities to their communities regarding the manner in which they conduct their lives, and to what ends they apply their talents. Indeed, in Gyekye's communitarian setting they are morally accountable to the community in this respect. In view of this public institutions have the power to shape the common good and to determine how it might best be served (with due consideration to the side constraints which the moral rights of individuals generate). Yet the values which the community espouses are never incontestably or selfevidently right or true. Ultimately value is determined in a contested dialogue between community mem Metanationality, comprehensive democracy and left communitarian rights ..._____________ 46 Koers 65(1) 2000:45-76 Pieter Coetzee agent is primarily concerned with the instantiation and reproduction of these relationships and loyalties (Bird, 1999:90) . Gyekye rejects the view that community is "a mere association based on a contract of individuals whose interests and ends are contingently congruent" (Gyekye, 1997:42). This view lacks the strong normative dimension which deliberate pursuit of the common good possesses simply because, in the appropriate social context, "Individuals are con cerned solely and primarily with the promotion of their own interests, ends, and well-being and pay attention to the common good of the society only sporadically' ' (Gyekye, 1997:43). Gyekye hereby rejects the aggregative sense of the collectivity. To construe the collective as an aggregate of individuals is to treat individuals as separate units who contribute arithmetically to the whole (Bird, 1999:86-89), and who have interests only contingently connected. (Gyekye ascribes the aggregative view to Western theorists like Rawls and Dworkin.) Strong and weak association construe the relation between individuals and the collectivities with which they identify as a "'membership' relation" (Bird, 1999:85). Strong and weak association distinguish two sets of "membership" relation: the relation between individuals and the com munity that they collectively constitute, and the relation between the community and the political institutions of the state that act on behalf of the community whenever the rights of individuals are at issue (Bird, 1999:86). This distinction draws a line between the public and private domains which are significant for theories that entertain the notion of individual rights in some way. Now, if individuals count as moral agents only because of their membership of a group, and act as moral agents only through the marital, paternal, and maternal structures of their groups, the relationships between individual members are said to be irreducible (Bird's term -1999:87), and this is a characteristic of strong association. Strong association is a feature of Wiredu's theory, given the moral significance he attaches to kinship groups and lineages1. This does not mean, as Bird (1999:88) makes clear, that "the relationships defining an association ... exist apart from individuals"; strong association makes a claim "about how individuals compromise ... [the] collective" Metanationallty, comprehensive democracy and left communitarian rights...____________ 1 See Wiredu (1996:34-42). Wiredu does make provision for individual rights vested in human beings in virtue of their intrinsic worth as human beings. This aspect of his theory makes provision for rights owed to strangers which, as a class of rights, is distinct from the 'role'-rights observed by the Akan. Akans, of course, also owe each other rights of respect vested in the intrinsic worth of persons, a right Wiredu defends as a universal norm founded in the biology of the human species.