Modern African States Research Articles

Constitutional Accommodation of Ethnocultural Diversity in Thepost-Colonial African State

The issue of minorities or the question of the accommodation of ethnic diversity is a longstanding dilemmas that has continued to trouble the post-colonial African state. Despite more than four decades of nation-building, most African states lack national cohesion and suffer from problems of ethnic conflicts. This article submits that this is largely attributable to the nature of Africa’s post-colonial nation-building process. The first and main aim of this article is accordingly to investigate the nature of post-colonial nation-building. To this end, the paper interrogates the nature of constitutional and policy approaches of the post-colonial African state to this dilemma and explicates why and how these approaches have failed. As the investigation reveals, one of the characteristics of the post-colonial nation-building and constitutional discourse and practice in Africa was the refusal to take due account of Africa’s ethno-cultural diversity and develop relevant institutions and policies for the accommodation of the interests and identity of the different communities that together constitute the modern African state. Second, against the premise of the imperative of the politics of recognition, using materials from liberal multiculturalism and international human rights, the article argues for and sketches out an alternative constitutional framework that facilitates the accommodation of the interests and identity of members of various groups in the process of national integration. This anaysis reveals that South Africa represents a good example of a country with such a constitutional framework, from which other African countries can identify important insights for building a democratic constitutional order that adequately accommodates their diversity.

Glitz, Glamour and the Gautrain: Mega-Projects as Political Symbols

Gautrain, South Africa's first high-speed metropolitan transport network, is being developed at a cost of nearly R25 billion. It is being primarily justified on the basis of its close association with South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup. However, the sheer scale of the costs involved, set against the larger and more pressing national transport shortages, invariably prompts questions about the rationale behind the construction of the Gautrain. Focusing on rational, cost–benefit considerations, and special interest groups on the one hand, and political symbolism on the other, the article concludes that political symbolism appears to be a major explanation for the construction of the Gautrain. As in many other aspiring developing economies, this mega-project serves to underscore the extent to which it projects South Africa as the pre-eminent modern African state.

Narrating the African city from the diaspora: Lagos as a trope in Ben Okri and Chika Unigwe's short stories

In this paper, an attempt is made to examine the ways in which an African city (Lagos) is written about in the works of African writers in Europe. The paper relies on the templates provided by selected short stories of the London‐based Nigerian writer (Ben Okri) and Chika Unigwe, the Nigerian writer who lives with her Flemish husband in Turnhout, Belgium. In the main, the paper critically elucidates how the two migrant writers appropriate the city of Lagos in their respective texts. The analysis of the selected stories has revealed that Lagos has been used as a topos, a theme, a trope, a metaphor and a symbol by the writers. The city has been used in the stories as a pervading metaphor for insecurity, neglect, anonymity and perversion of the ideal. Thus, in the texts, the reader witnesses a tacit critique of urban regulatory mechanisms and all forms of neocolonial decadence in modern African states. It is also revealed that the stories appeal to readers due to the writers' adroit blend of matter and manner, that is, there is a skilful interface between literary aesthetics and social realities.

3 - The Role of African Universities in the Intellectualisation of African Languages

Neo-colonial language policies deriving from decolonisation have entrenched not merely the dominance but, fatefully, the hegemony of the languages of the Euro- pean colonial powers, especially that of English, which is also driven by contempo- rary globalisation processes. The intellectual and political leadership of the conti- nent has succumbed, with very few exceptions, to the forces that prevail in the linguistic markets and is reaping what Bourdieu (1984) refers to as ‘the profits of distinction’. African poverty and economic inequality are to be eradicated, or even reduced, during the twenty-first century. One of the central but least discussed is- sues that have to be addressed is the language question which is linked to the im- peratives of the democratisation of modern African states, of increasing effi- ciency and labour productivity for economic development, and of promoting individual and social equilibrium, including the enhancement of self-confidence and creativity. A general policy of promoting language equity in multilingual Afri- can societies and of developing (‘modernising’ or elaborating) African languages in the context of overall national development policies will have to be followed sys- tematically over a period of at least two generations. In this paper, the author con- siders the historical and social dynamics of African languages in high status func- tions and proposes a series of steps that will facilitate the realisation for the updated and revised Language Plan of Action for Africa, formulated and adopted by the OAU almost twenty years ago. The essay gives pride of place in this process to the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), which is fast becoming the major point of reference in the domain of language policies for the continent.

Injury prevention and safety promotion in Africa - local actors and global partners

The story of injuries and their avoidance is as old as Africa, the cradle of humankind. History has fascinating accounts of ancient populations and their relationship with the beasts of the wild, and with fire, which was at times their strongest defense and at others their harshest tormentor. Encounters with water, the source of life and cause of sudden death alike. And with weapons crafted by fellow humans, typically arrows and poison. And so it is today, that in Africa, people of modern African states and communities still confront the challenges of injuries from fires and burns, drowning, violence, and the added bonus of motorised transportation. This paper looks at what Africans are doing to prevent injuries, and to make communities and neighbourhoods safer. It gives examples of successes, failures, and missed opportunities. It also looks at what contributions global partners have made, and what actions by global players may not have worked to Africa's benefit, and what lessons can be learnt from those experiences.

Between the sacred and the secular: indigenous intellectual property, international markets and the modern African state

In the modern global economy, transnational corporations have become important sources of technology, market access and capital – all of which states seek in propelling economic growth. States themselves provide territory, and establish the ‘rules of the game’ by which corporations may operate within that territory. However, with the commodification and commercialisation of indigenous cultural and intellectual property, states are bypassed and negotiations emerge between corporations and sub-state actors who claim to represent population segments. May the bypassing of the state further weaken national or state identity among indigenous groups? Such is the case that may be emerging in Africa with groups who claim profits derived from the development and marketing of indigenous cultural and intellectual property. This paper explores the possibility that profit-sharing agreements between transnational corporations and sub-state groups may contribute to the widening of ethnic cleavages in African states by promoting inequalities between groups.

Towards a Functional African State: Bridging the Gap Between the State and the People

This paper analyses the contribution of the African state to the problems of development in Africa. I argue that the nature of the modern African state, inherited from the colonial state, is inherently oppressive and dysfunctional and that a fundamental change in the nature of the state is required in order to reposition the continent developmentally and liberate the energies of the African people. The existing nature of the African state disposes it toward a negative relationship with the people, leading to a gap in the relationship between the people and the state. This gap has to be bridged in order for the state to contribute positively to the developmental process in the interests of the people. I argue in particular that relying on structural adjustment, electoral democracy and other forms of reform to bridge this gap is misplaced because these reforms do not seek to change the nature of the African state. The people cannot liberate themselves from state oppression or make the state accountable through elections conducted and presided over by the existing negative structures of the state. Only a fundamental change in the nature of the state can accomplish this.

Plunder, Predation and Profiteering: The Political Economy of Armed Conflicts and Economic Violence in Modern Africa

AbstractThis paper presents a comparative analytical study that is based on a political economy perspective concerning the effects of economic violence and the specter of predation-induced armed conflicts in modern African states. Although "blood diamonds," crude oil, "conflict timber," and illicit arms trafficking have engendered and exacerbated civil wars, cross-border raids, and protracted regional destabilization in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, my primary focus is on the ongoing military debacle in Liberia and the recently concluded mayhem in Sierra Leone. The "resource curse" hypothesis will be utilized to examine and to illuminate the impact of economic pillaging, illicit arms trade, and predatory warlordism on the political instability and humanitarian atrocities in these two West African countries. A review of the internal regime types and the regional security relations within the sub-region will help to contextualize the recurrent trends and discernable systemic patterns that have been associated with these pillaging wars in the post-cold war era of Africa's international relations. In short, armed conflicts have weakened state capabilities, strained the financial resources of nongovernmental organizations and even raised provocative questions about the political will and sustaining capacities of the international community and regional security organizations to keep the peace and create conditions that are conducive to long-term, sustainable and viable political stability and economic development in the conflict-ridden and war-ravaged Sub-Saharan African States.

Identity and Contemporary Representations: The Heritage of Alberto Pollera's Monograph, I Baria e i Kunama

Identity and Contemporary Representations:The Heritage of Alberto Pollera's Monograph, I Baria e i Kunama Gianni Dore The Italian colonial system has had different impacts on the diverse local contexts of inland Eritrea. As has already been shown, colonial practices, as well as the ways they have been received, have not always been the same, in their forms and their meanings, for the different groups inhabiting a multiethnic and multilingual area such as Eritrea. Different relationships and representations, whether under British administration, in the wake of the bloody events of 1948–1952, under the federation, under the Derg, during the struggle for liberation, or finally today, in the troubled construction of the independent state, have conditioned subsequent history. Indeed, one of the major problems that has arisen in the construction of the independent state is that of compatibility between the process of Eritrean national unification and the respect for linguistic diversity that has been institutionally recognized.1 The question is how peripheral communities experience regional systems and take part in the process of building a modern African state. Alberto Pollera and the Kunama: How a Tradition Is Constructed Colonial knowledge acts on today's identity movements, whether collective or individual, along unforeseen pathways. Through his colonial [End Page 71] monograph, I Baria e i Kunama, published in 1913 but based mainly on his experience as residente between 1903 and 1909, Alberto Pollera2 introduced to a wider public the peoples of the Western Eritrean low-lands, Kunama and Nara, then called respectively Baza or Baze and Barià, which actually mean "slave," names that were given by the Tigreans and later used by the Italians. In his introduction, Pollera constructs a traditional essence of Kunama society with its variations and its regional and subregional specificities: In my narrative of the lives and the customs of those populations, I was soon confronted with noticeable diversities, from place to place, and village to village, although these were inhabited by peoples of the same descent.3 That statement was true to the historical and social realities of the western Eritrean lowlands, populated by various groups, among them the Kunama themselves, agriculturalist and partially pastoralist, internally divided by dialects that were not always mutually intelligible.4 All of these groups were parts of a continuum of societies exposed to various influences both from the subregions of the highlands and from the Sudanese states. The influence of the two historical mainstreams was felt most directly in the border villages, which were in a liminal situation between the Kunama regions and the varied groups and individuals with whom they interacted and intermarried. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Kunama individuals had traveled through the territory just north of Mogolò, a small center of attraction and exchange, north of the Gash and already in decline at the time of Munzinger's famous journey, while some of them had reached even further, all the way to the Taka and the Sennaar, either as slaves, moving from master to master, or as laborers, especially in the Kassala Turko-Egyptian cotton scheme, or as servants or soldiers in the Turko Egyptian garrisons. They could be found in Port Suakin, on the Red Sea, in Tokar's prison, in Massawa, as the offspring of mixed marriages or with families of the Addi Abo, and beyond the Setit (Tika for the Kunama), as laborers, under Tigrean or Muslim supervisors, in the farms [End Page 72] of the mäzäga of Wälqayt,5 lands which were known as tsellim, or black, even further away in Gondar. Some of them, if luck helped them, went back to their villages, sometimes to become the closest of their people to the colonial power because of their experience as travelers and ability to speak other languages they were recruited as soldiers and interpreters, and, before that, interpreters for the delegations of groups of villages in their tax dealings with the local Algeden and Beni Amer dominant groups (themselves often brokers or mediators on behalf of Sudanese or Tigray political centers). Why did Pollera make the homogeneity of the traditional Kunama the subject of his monograph, rather than their heterogeneity and their variations? The...

Demoke's Totem: The Role of the Artist in Soyinka's A Dance of the Forest

Drawing upon Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forest, the paper explores the playwright's attitude to Africa's socio-political experiences in the period just after independence. More especially, it uses the concept of totemism to examine the role of the artist in a modern African state. Though the playwright is filled with pessimism about the future of the continent, even as he tries to debunk the 'myth' about Africa's glorious past, he does not leave society without any hope. This hope is borne by the artist, represented by Demoke, who symbolizes freedom and reconciliation of conflicting forces in society. Thus the paper depicts Soyinka as overturning his own pessimism at the end of the play. (The Journal of Cultural Studies: 2001 3(1): 259-276)

The Relevance of the State in African Development: Preparing for the New Century

In more than forty years, the modern African state has either been unwilling or unable to perform its productive and protective functions. Today, most Africans continue to suffer from high rates of poverty and deprivation. Part of the problem can be traced to the fact that the laws and institutions that the African countries adopted at independence endowed post-independence leaders with almost unlimited power to intervene in private exchange and enhanced their ability to engage in opportunism. Thus, in the post-independence society, rent seeking, bureaucratic corruption, and other opportunistic behaviors became endemic. It is argued that the main reason why the African state has been unwilling to perform its expected duties has been due to the existence of poor incentive systems. A reconstruction of the state in order to establish constitutionally limited governments and economic systems in which individuals are guaranteed the right to engage in exchange and contract is recommended.

The Relevance of the State in African Development: Preparing for the New Century

In more than forty years, the modern African state has either been unwilling or unable to perform its productive and protective functions. Today, most Africans continue to suffer from high rates of poverty and deprivation. Part of the problem can be traced to the fact that the laws and institutions that the African countries adopted at independence endowed post-independence leaders with almost unlimited power to intervene in private exchange and enhanced their ability to engage in opportunism. Thus, in the post-independence society, rent seeking, bureaucratic corruption, and other opportunistic behaviors became endemic. It is argued that the main reason why the African state has been unwilling to perform its expected duties has been due to the existence of poor incentive systems. A reconstruction of the state in order to establish constitutionally limited governments and economic systems in which individuals are guaranteed the right to engage in exchange and contract is recommended.

Alternative dispute resolution, Africa, and the structure of law and power: the Horn in context

Data collected by comparative legal scholars show that legal transplants usually take place from more complex societies to less complex ones. By contrast, the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement that has recently developed in modern societies has been described as a return to a simple model of dispute settlement used in the past and in modern non-Western societies. Does this mean that we are experiencing a new kind of legal transplant, a transplant from less complex to more complex societies? In this article I will argue that this is not the case. Far from being a transplant from the southern to the northern hemisphere, ADR seems indeed to be a modern legal institution born from the retreat of the state from some of its traditional functions. A different question thus needs exploring: is ADR, at least, an institution that can easily be transplanted to Africa where the original transplant of the Western state has failed? In other words, is conciliatory ADR more similar to the African way of dealing with conflicts and consequently to be recommended as the dispute resolution mechanism for modern African states? The question appears to be appropriate in situations such as the one in the Horn of Africa—particularly Eritrea—where the new political leadership is confronting the difficult task of building a new legal system.

『可能性としての国家誌-現代アフリカ国家の人と宗教-』世界思想社, 1998年, vi+291頁+18頁 (索引・参考文献)

『可能性としての国家誌-現代アフリカ国家の人と宗教-』世界思想社, 1998年, vi+291頁+18頁 (索引・参考文献)

Emergent migration policy in a democratic South Africa.

This article sets recent debates on migration policy in South Africa against broader historical realities that have shaped patterns of population movement on the subcontinent since the end of the nineteenth century. During the course of the last century, most forms of population movement were the result of disjointed regional economic development which can be traced to two epochal events at the end of the nineteenth century: the creation of the modern African state system and the discovery of mineral wealth in Southern Africa. Although regulation of migrant labor was a fundamental feature of the colonial period, it was only after 1950, when independent states began to define specific migration priorities, that states began to restrict significantly the flow of transnational labor. From this point notions such as internally displaced person, refugee and illegal immigrant become increasingly appropriate to the study of regional migration. Particular attention is given to current debate on the definition of refugee which forms part of a broader international debate. A number of South African writers have argued that, given the structural imbalances contained in the regional economy, the term "refugee" should be redefined to included economic migrants. This position is not shared by the South African Government, and an analysis of current policy and legislation demonstrates a growing tendency to restrict the influx of undocumented migrants. This is due, in part, to the recent political transition and the institutional compromises that it produced as well as the growth of negative sentiment towards illegal immigrants at both mass and elite levels, as demonstrated by two recent research findings. The article concludes with a summation of recent trends in South African migration policy and an evaluation of the ambiguous position that South Africa occupies within Southern Africa.

Rural Interests and the Making of Modern African States

Rural Interests and the Making of Modern African States

Communalism, legitimation and party politics at the grassroots: The case of the Yoruba

It is widely accepted by scholars of contemporary African politics that communalism poses a major obstacle to the political stability of the modern African nation state. Firmly rooted in the complex nature of colonialism, this persistent problem is intimately connected to the neo-traditional and corporatist character of the post colonial state and society. An effective assessment of this pressing problem with its varied and ambiguous com? munal expressions, must explore the formation of political organizations by local elites, analyze the historical construction and interpretation of com? munal-based legitimacy doctrines and then proceed to link these local factors with major regional and national political developments in other parts of the country. The present paper is primarily concerned with this varied and con? flicting manifestation of communalism among one of Africa's most dominant ethnic groups, the Yorubas of southwestern Nigeria. At a general level the paper examines the impact of Nigeria's intense and often acri? monious party politics on the nature and character of communalism in Yorubaland from the period of decolonization (1951-1959) to the country's second attempt at civil/democratic rule between 1978-1983. It sets out to address three main objectives. First, with a view to conceptualize the com? plex manifestation of communalism in Yoruba towns, I will show how Nigeria's politics of federalism have consistently given impetus to a para? doxical expression of pan-ethnic and intra-ethnic collective political action since the introduction of liberal democracy in the period of decolonization. Second, I will examine how in an attempt to reinforce their power base a political class of politicians, chiefly rulers and even military administrators have actively engaged in the construction and propagation of communal based doctrines and symbols at the local level. Finally, drawing on a de? tailed case study of Oyo state, especially its major city Ibadan in the Second 419

African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

Writing inspired by four visits to Zimbabwe, her childhood home, from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007, Doris Lessing. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Doris Lessing made several visits to her homeland, Zimbabwe, a country from which she had been banned for twenty-five years for her opposition to the government of what was then white Southern Rhodesia. Vividly mingling memory and reportage, Lessing pays passionate and profound testament to an extraordinary country, its landscape, people and unquenchable spirit. 'African Laughter' is both a shrewd and perceptive portrait of a modern African state emerging from its bloody and terrible colonial history, and a candid and moving insight into the mind of one of this century's finest writers.

Unita and Ethnic Nationalism in Angola

Over the last decade or so scholars in the social sciences have been reassessing works on the rise of nationalism in Africa published in the 1960s and early 1970s. These earlier studies, written during the euphoria following independence and the spread of liberation ideology, regarded the transfer of power to the African élite as signalling the end of subjugation to European control and the emergence of modern African states.1This revision focused on the post-colonial state and its rôle as a mediator between competing groups for power and the allocation of resources.2Since then, the trend has generated a revival in understanding ethnicity which is again seen as a major force in most of the crises which have troubled Africa.

The Nature of the Dominant Elite in Africa

African countries seem to be constantly groping for the distinctive political paradigm as evinced by the fact that forms of political order have followed each other in rapid succession—the multi-party state, the one party syndrome, the charismatic presidency, the military coup d'etat and in some cases, like that of Nigeria and for a short while in Ghana, a return to civilian rule. The future of the African continent is thus viewed with deep rooted pessimism by political analysts, economists and literary writers. They prophesy in symphony that African countries are catapaulting down the path of political unrest—economic disorder, suspension of human rights, a breakdown of law and order—towards instability and general anomie. In the words of the noted author Chinuah Achebe, in Africa “things fall apart.”1 Dennis Austen using the title of this book for his article, writes that since their inception African states have been in a state of flux moving with regularity in and out of misfortune: The treachery of political life has been very real: armed coups, civil wars, public executions, the threat of secession, the recurrence of famine, the fanaticism of religious beliefs, regional wars, the near genocide of entire communities, the transitory nature of military and party regimes and the indebtedness not only of corrupt dictatorships (as in Zaire) but also of governments that still struggle to preserve an element of political decency in their public life (as in Tanzania).2 The keynote of the criticisms made in this vein3 is the absence of stability and the consequent destabilization, disorganization and anarchy. However, all evidence in the African countries points to the centralization of power and authority which can lead to a kind of stability—i.e. if stability is the only end of government and politics. The post-colonial state in Africa has created strong centralized administrations to weld the various social groups in common structures. The striking feature of post-independence politics to Markovitz, is not the lack of stability, but “indeed from any long range historical perspective the rapidity with which stability has been achieved…. The military coup d'etats and civil wars, appearence of anarchy notwithstanding, have furthered this process of consolidation.”4 The modern African state is one which is increasingly dominated by a powerful public sector, an overpowering bureaucracy and increasing militarization.5 The highly centralized nature of the African state is almost a throwback to the early colonial state. The colonial state was based on patterns of domination, its very raison d'etre was domination. The colonial institutional form consequently was aimed at establishing hegemony over the subject population, together with its essential militarised character and the system of irresistable power and force associated with it. In the Belgian case, the state was known as “Bula Matari” (the crusher of rocks).6 The pre-independence state forms have persisted. The observations of De Tocqueville are brought to mind. To De Tocqueville the 1789 Revolution did not bring an end to the ideas and order of the old regime in France. Springing from the chaos created by the revolution was a powerful institutional framework. Never since the fall of the Roman Empire, he commented, had the world seen a government so highly centralized. This new power was created by the Revolution, or, rather grew up almost automatically out of the havoc wrought by it. True, the governments it set up were less stable than any of those it overthrew; yet paradoxically they were infinitely more powerful.7 In Africa the heritage of colonial politics, namely power-politics, has been taken up by the post-colonial state. The colonial tradition has led to a scheme of affairs in African states where a premium has been placed on the holding and consolidation of political power. Politics has been construed strictly as a “struggle for rulership.”8 Political power is seen as a means of controlling the socio-economic structures of society. What becomes important in this context is the identification of the group that wields power. What is the nature and social basis of this ruling elite? As a pre-requisite to this, is the question as to what is the nature of class in Africa, so that the nature of class domination can be comprehended,