Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 23:46:20 +0200
Are conflicts over citizenship inevitable in Africa?
By Edmond J. Keller
July 23, 2014 at 1:51 PM
As has occurred throughout human history, identity politics the world over
have been characterized by social conflicts rather than by who belongs to a
particular political community. There are clear examples in the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/americans-are-ab
andoning-their-support-for-a-path-to-citizenship-for-undocumented-immigrants
/> United States,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/jews-face-rising-anti-semitism-in-franc
e/2014/06/19/1da8ae34-1a71-4f50-893a-9842af51e3ce_story.html> Europe,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/07/16/rockets-and-b
ombs-make-israelis-and-palestinians-less-willing-to-compromise/> Israel,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/17/inequality-be
lief-elections-in-india/> India,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/burma-needs-tolerance-to-reach-its-p
otential/2014/06/13/6e5d3c92-ea90-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html> Myanmar
and elsewhere where groups and individuals who claim to be indigenous or at
least true “daughters and sons of the soil” lash out against those they
consider to be “strangers,” “aliens,” “foreigners,” “
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/03/scapegoating-
africas-immigrants/> immigrants” or “interlopers.” Nowhere is this truer
than in Africa.
Some 50-odd years ago when most of Africa’s European colonies achieved
independence, there was a great deal of expectation among domestic as well
as international observers that, despite what looked like a rocky road ahead
for the region’s multiethnic, multiracial and artificially created states,
they would slowly but surely transform themselves into culturally plural
liberal democracies similar to those found in the West. However, after just
over a half-century of independence, the cultural diversity of most African
states continues to form the bases for many social conflicts among
constituent groups. The question is: Why have independent African states
not been transformed into politically integrated multiethnic and multiracial
states? In other words: Why have nation-building projects in Africa
continued to be incomplete and fragile?
To a large extent, intergroup conflicts in Africa today are based on
competing claims over citizenship and citizenship rights. Most often in
rural areas these struggles are over political and economic issues relating
to ancestral land claims, and nationally such conflicts stem from
competition among ethnic groups over the spoils of national political
offices.
African political identities relating to citizenship are rooted both in the
past and the present. From the past, individuals claim citizenship in a
parochial political community that is rooted in a particular place within
the new nation-state. It is important to note that in most cases the notion
of not belonging to one particular state but to another is not called into
question. However, the rights of ethnic communities to ancestral land and
self-determination are often at issue. At the national level, the state
insists on national citizenship and citizenship rights based on the
principles of liberal democracy.
The purpose of my book, “
<http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807088>
Identity, Citizenship and Political Conflict in Africa,” is to try to
understand the bases and processes of many of the sociopolitical conflicts
in Africa today. After three introductory chapters that spell out the
theoretical and substantive context in which these conflicts take place, the
major part of the book applies an analytical framework to the case studies
of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, and Kenya. The primary
assumption is that any effort to comprehend identity politics in Africa
today requires an understanding of three primary factors:
1. the weight of history;
2. the institutions that shape politics in particular circumstances; and
3. the perceptions of cultural identity among ethnic groups and
individuals.
The case studies highlight important examples of how conflicts can occur at
all levels during the process of political change. The Nigerian case
considers the legacy of British colonial rule and the implications of the
Biafran War, which threatened the very existence of Nigeria as a
multi-ethnic nation state not long after Nigeria’s independence. That
country’s leaders over the past 40-odd years have attempted to create a
sense of national identity among more than 250 disparate ethnic groups in a
country of almost 180 million. The design and implementation of affirmative
action policies based on “
<http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/75.abstract> The Federal
Character Principle” are carefully considered in this study.
The Ethiopia case study traces the evolution of the modern nation-state and
the efforts of successive regimes to mold society into a multiethnic but
cohesive nation-state. The imperial state under the leadership of Emperor
Haile Selassie first attempted this between 1945 and 1974, but its efforts
were interrupted by the following regime, a Marxist-Leninist junta that
ruled between 1975 and 1991. The junta, known as the Dergue, attempted to
downplay ethnic differences and ultimately failed to resolve the national
question. The pursuit of a culturally diverse but unified Ethiopia continues
under the current authoritarian leadership of the Ethiopian Peoples’
Revolutionary Democratic Front. The imperial and successive regimes
attempted to create the sense that all ethnic groups at the end of the day
were all Ethiopians. Repeated failure suggested a
<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=25
38792&fileId=S0022278X00021467> need for a new approach. Today Ethiopia is
organized as a federal state based upon the concept of “
<http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FFGNRfzndl8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA265&dq#
v=onepage&q&f=false> ethnic federalism”. Yet tensions continue to exist as
several major ethnic groups, collectively and individually, regularly
protest that they are being denied their citizenship rights.
In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, from the beginning of the postcolonial period,
conflicts over citizenship relating to land rights in certain parts of the
country eventually led to a definition of citizenship based on
<http://www.wikiwords.org/dictionary/autochtony/199524/397866> autochthony
or ancestral communities. This ancestral locale-based definition of
citizenship –
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v012/12.3toungara.html> named
Ivoirité – led to the exclusion of presidential candidates and involved
questions of whether a given village was located in the country’s
postcolonial boundaries. Tensions growing out of this situation led to two
civil wars and to constitutional reforms that redefined who can claim
Ivorian citizenship.
In Rwanda, although two major groups, the Tutsi (14 per cent) and the Hutu
(85 per cent) account for the majority of the population and historically
belonged to the same ethnic group, colonial-era rulers presumed them to
belong to distinctive racial groups. Toward the end of the colonial period
a social revolution occurred as the Hutu claimed to be the only
autochthonous citizens of Rwanda. In contrast, they viewed the Tutsi as
foreigners and oppressive minorities. Eventually this led to the 1994
Rwanda genocide as the Tutsi attempted to reclaim their birthright lost
during the revolution. In the end, invading Tutsi forces once again
reversed the social order and established a regime dominated by Tutsi.
The Kenyan case study centers on issues relating to land claims and the
confluence of claims of subnational citizenship rights and the introduction
of liberal democratic notions of citizenship. After the reintroduction of
multi-party politics in Kenya, cultural brokers and ethnic entrepreneurs
called upon their own ethnic groups to support the national candidacy of
their own ethnic elites. When conflict relating to the 2007 national
election broke out, long-standing tensions over
<http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/111/445/576.short> immigration and
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589000903154834#.U85nT41dUeE>
land rights erupted. At the subnational level, groups and candidates viewed
as interlopers became fair game for ethnic cleansing by groups that claimed
to be indigenous to certain regions of the country.
Are conflicts over citizenship inevitable in Africa? Or, are African
societies moving toward more modern institutions and democratic practices
that guarantee civic awareness of shared citizenship rights and the rule of
law? What is abundantly clear from my findings is that institutions
matter—but they do not matter all the time. Also obvious is the fact that
for political institutions to work the way they are designed to, credible
commitments on the part of political leaders, political opposition and civil
society must be strong. Presently in Africa, although this condition is
improving, good governance is often trumped by bad governance and the rule
of law appears in many cases to be weak or non-existent. For example, both
petty and major corruption is in numerous cases endemic. Leaders do not
consistently exhibit the political will to put the public good ahead of
their own personal preferences or that of their own ethnic groups. It is
clear that if conflicts over citizenship rights are to be reduced, effective
political institutions will have to rely on the adherence to credible
commitments in decision-making and policy-making on the part of political
elites.
****
See
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/tag/african-politics-sum
mer-reading-spectacular/> earlier posts in TMC’s First Annual African
Politics Reading Spectacular.
Edmond J. Keller <http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/keller/>
keller_book
This is the fourth installment of TMC’s
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/tag/african-politics-sum
mer-reading-spectacular/> African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular.
<http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/keller/> Edmond Keller,
professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, writes about his recent
book, “ <http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807088>
Identity, Citizenship and Political Conflict in Africa.” – Kim Yi Dionne
****
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