mustapha 2002 intrastate challenges to the nation state project in africa

8/3/2019 Mustapha 2002 Intrastate Challenges to the Nation State Project in Africa

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mustapha-2002-intrastate-challenges-to-the-nation-state-project-in-africa 1/28

1

Report of the 2002 CODESRIA Governance Institute on

‘Intra-State Challenges to the Nation-State Project in Africa’

ByAbdul Raufu Mustapha,

University of Oxford, UK

1. Introduction and Methods of Inquiry

The 2002 Governance Institute held from 5-30 August 2002 in Dakar, Senegal, broughttogether 13 laureates from 6 African countries. Five resource persons and two guest lecturers

joined the laureates to tackle the theme: Intra-State Challenges to the Nation-State Project inAfrica. Other participants included three invited speakers from various Senegalese politicaland civil organizations, and members of the CODESRIA secretariat. The Institute also greatly

benefited from the attendance of Professor Amadou Aly Dieng, a veteran participant in all previous Institutes. Significantly, 2002 also marked the tenth anniversary of the Institute.

To set the ball rolling, I proposed, as Director of the Institute, that clarity in issues of methodology, theory and concepts was very important in exploring the intra-state challengesto the African state. We needed to take into account historical, geographic, political,economic, and sociological factors, which have shaped the specific challenges faced by eachstate. The challenge before the Institute was to encourage the development of dynamicanalytical frameworks which incorporated these diverse elements, and which helped toilluminate specific cases while at the same time contributing to our general understanding of the wider African picture. I suggested two very broad analytical approaches that may beconsidered as starting points of our individual endeavours: a systemic approach and an actor-

based approach.

The systemic approach borrows from Baker [2000, 8] in placing emphasis on the broad political processes of the nation-state as a functional system with many interlinkedcomponents. At the core of that system is a problematic political authority that generatesdisapproval and intra-state challenges. The activities of this sub-optimal state affect varioussectors of societal and political life: economic, cultural, constitutional, territorial, andinstitutional, resulting in different patterns and intensities of responses from different spheresof society. Some groups in society respond to the sub-optimal state at the core of the system

by challenging it through engagement, thereby creating a mobilized ring around the core,while others respond to the same policies through disengagement, denoting economic,

cultural, territorial or other forces in society which seek to escape as far as possible from thereaches of the state and its constitutive institutions and processes.

Within this systemic perspective, challenges to the nation-state project can take the form of either engaging with it to force changes on the state, or disengaging from it in order to reduceits reach and efficiency and thereby weakening its capacities. Sometimes, the same policy canelicit reactions of engagement, disengagement, or indifference from different groups withinthe same society. In different ways, engagement, disengagement, or indifference can constitutesevere internal challenges to the state, and the intellectual task is to explore why particular sectors of society adopt particular strategies, at particular times. The central feature of thisapproach is that the dysfunction of the African nation-state is analysed in broad systemic and

historical terms, well beyond the immediate challenge itself. Just as important is the problematization of the sub-optimal nation-state that is the core of the system and the source



2

of the political disapproval. What specific and historical and societal factors underpin itsdysfunctionality? Implied in this approach is the need for a holistic approach in understandingand tackling the many challenges faced by various nation-state projects in Africa.

The second broad analytical approach is the actor-based approach that is derived,

appropriately, from Hirschman [1970] who developed his groundbreaking ideas from a studyof the dysfunction of the Nigerian Railways Corporation. Like the systemic approach, thisapproach also starts with a dysfunctional state system as a given. However, its analyticemphasis is not on that state as a system or process, but on the reactions of sub-systemic actorsto the dysfunction of the state. Its emphasis is therefore on the actors within the system, rather than the system itself.

The central argument in Hirschman’s work is that actors, faced with a dysfunctional state, canrespond in two fundamental ways: exit and voice. Secondly, Hirschman explores thecircumstances and reasons why some actors choose the exit option, while others choose thevoice option, even when both of them are reacting to the same problem. In some respects, the

dichotomy between exit and voice correspond to that between disengagement andengagement. Hirschman also suggests that apart from exit and voice, a third option might beopen to actors within a political system, that of loyalty. An analytical approach based onHirschman therefore directs our attention to the individual and collective actors within theAfrican state system. What is the nature and history of specific actors, and what options andresources are available to them? Why do they adopt specific options in response to thedysfunctional state?

These two analytical approaches are neither exclusive of each other, nor are they exhaustive of possible approaches. They however suggest that Institute participants should avoid anexcessively empiricist approach which merely chronicles and catalogues the many challengesto the African nation-state system. Similarly laureates were encouraged to be critical of thedubious ideologically driven culturalist generalizations on the African state system that havedominated much of the literature on the subject in the recent past. Institute participants wereurged to be daring and innovative in their country-specific projects and to capitalize on their intimate knowledge of their various countries to develop analytic frameworks that allowed for

both theoretical and conceptual innovation along with detailed attention to empirical data.Subsequent lectures and presentations moved increasingly from general issues to morespecific case studies.

2. Studying the African State: the Broader Context

The next set of presentations had the specific objective of sketching out the broader contextsagainst which the investigation of the African nation-state system can be more fruitfullyundertaken. In the lecture on the African state as History, I highlighted the historical,geographic and cultural context of state formation in Africa. It is of vital importance thatAfrica’s own experience of state formation plays a crucial role in our theorizing of thecontemporary political predicament of the continent. Eurocentric models are implicitly or explicitly deployed without any effort being made at establishing and evaluating the relevanceof any African experience on the matter. On the other hand, the late Professor AbdullahiSmith, argued forcefully in 1970 for the incorporation of Africa’s history of state formationinto its current efforts at nation-building:



3

No one is likely to dispute the suggestion that the most importantset of political problems facing the African continent today is thatrelating to the formation of States. Further, so many ‘new states’have been theoretically created over-night during the past twodecades by the sudden passing of constitutional laws, or the

signing of constitutional agreements, that the process of stateformation would seem to be one of almost magical simplicity[1987, 59].

This attention to the historicity of the state formation process in Africa is something addressedin different ways by Jack Goody [1971], Jean-Francois Bayart [1993], and Jeffrey Herbst[2001]. In comparing the historical process in Africa with that of Eurasia, Goody draws our attention to the historical importance of the land tenure system and its implication for stateformation. Basically Africa is described as a land of extensive agriculture. The population issmall, the land is plentiful and the soils are relatively poor. Furthermore, only in Ethiopia wasthe plough used, meaning that in Africa, productivity was tied to the use of the hoe. The

surpluses generated through the hoe were limited and in many places could not support non-agricultural occupational specialization and urbanization. It also meant that fixed investmentsin land were low, leading to the low value of land and the tendency towards shiftingcultivation and the constant movement of populations. Goody points out that this politicalgeography had two important implications for the way the state formation process hasdeveloped in Africa. Firstly, because land is plentiful relative to the population and becausethe value of this land is low, land rights in Africa are not as individualized and clearlydeveloped as in Eurasia. Secondly, Goody notes:

The social consequences were two-fold. Politically, chiefshiptended to be over people rather than over land; these a leader hadto try to attract as well as restrain. The conditions for the formsof domination that obtained in the European Middle Ages hardlyexisted, except for slavery itself. In slavery, labour is controlled

by political force; in serfdom, economic controls, such as landtenure, are of equal importance. It is highly significant that onlyin Ethiopia, which had the plough, was there any landlordism inAfrica…[1971,30].

Herbst touches on these same issues when he pin-points the central challenge facing state builders in Africa, be they pre-colonial kings, colonial governors, or post-colonial Presidents:

i.e. How do states broadcast power over sparsely settled lands? To support his contention,Herbst highlights some of the fundamental aspects of Africa’s political geography. Firstly, henotes that sub-Saharan Africa has 18 percent of the world’s surface area, yet Africa had only 6to 11 percent of the world’s population in 1750, 5 to 7 percent in 1900 and only 11 percent in1997. Because of this relative under-population, it has always been more expensive for statesto exert control over a given number of people in Africa compared to Europe and Asia withmuch higher population densities. From this point of view, both in the historical and thecontemporary periods, ‘underpopulation was the chief obstacle to state formation’. Secondly,Herbst notes that the ecology of most of Africa could not support high population densities:more than 50 percent of Africa has inadequate rainfall; about 30 percent of the world’s aridlands are in Africa. He argues that in Africa, large supplies of land, low population densities

and an inhospitable physical setting have combined to shape African politics differently fromthe experiences of Europe. Based on this political geography, State-builders in Africa, both



4

now and in the past, have historically faced the fundamental problem of the relative high costof expanding the domestic power infrastructure.

Goody’s argument that power in Africa was exercised largely over people rather than over given territories, as was the case in Eurasia also had important implications for the state

formation process. At some point in the development of the European state system, statesfaced the security imperative of physically controlling and defending their hinterlands in theface of competition from hostile neighbours. In Europe, therefore, to build a state is to developthe military and political infrastructure to continuously defend a precise and given territory.As Crawford Young [1994,33] points out, in Europe between 1500 and 1950, 475 autonomous

political entities were destroyed, largely through violence. African states did not face the samesecurity imperative to defend a precise piece of territory as threatened polities and peoplescould often migrate out of reach because of the land-population ratio. It can thus be arguedthat the exit option in politics has deep historical and psychological roots embedded inAfrica’s political geography.

The prevalence of the exit option affected not just the state formation process, but also thedevelopment and evolution of ethnic and cultural communities within the state systems. Andthis cultural impact has an immediate contemporary implication. Because of the difficulty of

projecting power from the centre of African pre-colonial states, the consequent evolution of concentric centre-periphery relations within these states, and the resulting evolution of implicit

patterns of multiple sovereignties, cultural and ethnic communities at the periphery of pre-colonial African states were often poorly integrated into the cultural and linguistic life of the

polity. One important consequence of this is that Africa is, even today, a zone of linguistic andcultural fragmentation. Bangura argues that contemporary African states have the highestaverage number of ethnic groups per state. While European states have an average number of 9.5 ethnic groups per state, Latin American states have an average of 21 and the states inAfrica/Asia/Pacific Region have an average of 50. He also points out an important difference

between Africa, on the one hand, and Asia and the Pacific Region on the other: in 74 percentof Asian states and 73 percent of the states in the Pacific region, one ethnic group constitutesat least 50 percent of the population of the state. Because of ethnic fragmentation in Africa,only 35 percent of contemporary African states have one ethnic group constituting at least 50

percent of the state’s population. The average size of the more than 2000 ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa is put at less than one million [Bangura, nd (2001?)].

Contemporary African states therefore set out on the path of nationhood with a number of handicaps quite different from the usual list derived from the colonial experience: ill-defined

borders, authoritarian administrative and political structures, weak economies, and a weak middle class. Preceding these colonial era handicaps are the pre-colonial ones of difficulty in broadcasting power over a sparsely populated area and intense ethnic fragmentation. It wasargued that this cumulative historical experience has a bearing on the contemporary problemsof African nation-states. The task, however, is not to assert a blanket historical relevance, butto intensely explore the historical and social processes in each case study so as to establish

precisely how far the prevailing contemporary dynamic has been influenced or conditioned byaspects of this long-run historico-social dynamic.

3. Vision, Nationalism, and Agency



5

However, it was also stressed that much as historical and structural dynamics are important for the understanding of the long-run problems of the African state, we must be careful not todescend into deterministic modes of thought. In reality, the African state, in its colonial and

postcolonial manifestations, is also the product of human imagination and human agency andmy next presentation concentrated on the theme of the African state as a visionary process. In

the early colonial period, the visionary impulse that shaped the African state could be seen inthe missionary zeal to demolish existing African spiritual universes and to replace these with aJudaeo-Christian outlook. African acquesance or resistance to this missionary vision often had

political implications of long-standing consequence [cf: Ranger, 1985; Whitaker, 1970].Similarly, the positivist sense of mission of the colonial administrator in the African hinterland- the proverbial ‘man on the spot’ -, his aristocratic inclinations and sense of unchallenged

power, his unquestioned belief in Empire and the ‘civilizing mission’, all constitute thevoluntarist repertoire of administrative practices which continue to be felt in many parts of

post-colonial Africa. Can some forms of political and administrative practices in post-colonialAfrica be traceable to the positivist, scientific-bureaucratic mindset of the colonial worldwhich sort to re-order, re-shape, reconstitute, classify, and count African communities? How

relevant is the inheritance of colonial ‘governmentality’ in the deformations of the post-colonial state?

Quite clearly, both the colonial and post-colonial situations in Africa have been marked bystrong elements of both voluntarist and idealistic thinking. Few can forget Kwame Nkrumah’sadvice: ‘Seek ye first the political Kingdom and everything else shall be added unto thee’. In asimilar vein, Patrice Lumumba is reported to have declared ‘I am an idea’. More importantthan the colonial heritage, however, is the vision or visions implicit in African nationalism.African nationalism has had a profound effect on the evolution of the African state because, asBreuilly [1993] points out, nationalism is a form of politics with the state as its target.Secondly, African nationalism has marked, and continues to mark, the collective Africanconsciousness. Are there any Africans alive today who have not been influenced by the mythsor reality surrounding Nkrumah, Lumumba, Nasser or Mandela? African nationalism is both aset of ideologies and a set of practices; in programmatic terms, it was simultaneously a nation-

building process and a class formation process. It also led to the sedimentation of practicesand ideas, which continue to influence the nature of the African state. For example, that ethnicconflict is much less virulent in contemporary Ghana, compared to contemporary Nigeria,might not be unrelated to the trajectories of their respective nationalist movements. While

Nkrumah provided a more unified and coherent nationalist mobilization in the run-up toGhanaian independence, what passed for a ‘nationalist movement’ in Nigeria split into threehostile regionalist blocs around Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Awolowo.

The nature of the African state has also been affected by changes within African nationalism.In its infancy, African nationalism understood two critical lessons, which it was later to forgetin its prime. Firstly, the nation was not understood as a monolithic entity at the beginning of the nationalist period. It was rightly understood as being made up of different segments andinterests, which were to be systematically and carefully woven into the nationalist movement.In this infancy, nationalism spoke the language of alliances and saw itself as a broad church.Secondly, as one of Africa’s leading nationalist theoreticians, Amilcar Cabral, pointed out,‘The people are not fighting for the ideas in anyone’s head’. Those who flocked under thenationalist banner expected that their lives would be improved as a result of decolonization.The nationalist movement fuelled this expectation: in Nigeria, one nationalist party promised

the people ‘Life more abundant’.



6

Nationalism triumphant was quick to forget these two crucial lessons of its infancy and theresult has been the authoritarian deformations, which have afflicted most post-colonial Africanstates. In a sense, the contemporary African state has been shaped by both visions and thefailure of visions. The point was made that in examining the trajectories of crises in any

particular African state, it was important to factor in the ‘vision thing’ as a constitutive reality

of both the colonial and the post-colonial state in Africa.

4. The African State and the World of Ideas

But representations of the African state are not limited to the ideational or programmatic productions of colonial actors and African nationalists. The African state has also been thetarget of formal academic and policy representations, particularly since the beginning of thecrises of the 1980s. And through the IMF, the World Bank, and a host of bilateral agencies,these intellectual productions on the African state, often of western providence, have acquireda hegemonic hold on the activities of the African state. In the presentation on the African Stateas Idea, I explored the range of academic ideas that have shaped the functioning and

understanding of the African state in the recent past.

Starting from modernization theory in the 1960s, through to the rise of the dependency schoolin the 1970s, we can see how the activities of the African state, or the politics surrounding it,have been shaped by the prevalent intellectual currents. Modernization and the creation of ‘political order’ formed the context for the tolerance of many a coup or a dictator, while themisguided nationalist populism of General Kuti Acheampong in Ghana, or the radical

populism of Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, cannot be properly understood except withinthe context of the hegemony of dependency theory in Africa. And need I say anything aboutthe suffocating influence of the civil society and governance paradigms and their impact onthe African state in the past decade?

Yet, I argued that the last body of academic ideas, the multitude of ideas generically referredto as the neo-patrimonial school, may come to have even more profound consequences for theAfrican state. A salient aspect of this body of ideas is that political authority and commandover resources come mainly through the decisions of specific individuals who act to servetheir private interests, largely without regard for formal government institutions, rules and

processes [Englebert 2000]. The governance of African states is seen as personalistic andconcerned with the struggle for spoils; it is neither rule based, nor is it institutionalized.Relying on ‘methodological individualism’ [Bayart 1993], the African state is reduced to the

personal behaviour of individuals while data of questionable quality and beer-parlour rumours

are elevated to scientific status and used to ‘establish’ the criminality of the African state or the criminal proclivity of entire ethnic groups such as the Igbo [Bayart et al, 1999]. One possible reading of these culturalist arguments, many of which verge on racism, is that thereare no collective political projects in contemporary Africa. Africans and their collectiveaspirations disappear, only to be replaced by a grim empiricism, which catalogues thedepravities of selected individual and defines the state and society accordingly. Laureates wereadvised to compare, for instance, the critical yet committed writings of Claude Ake with thoseof Jean-Francois Bayart. If there is no collective political agenda in Africa, but only corrupt or criminal personalistic networks, can we seriously talk of the African state? Is there asubsisting collective political project in Africa today?

Some other strands of the neo-patrimonial school make quite explicit the challenge to the veryexistence of the African state. Reno [1998] for example, suggests that African ‘shadow states’



7

exploit international norms of sovereignty to provide cover for personal, often criminal,networks. Implicit in this view is that the claim to sovereignty by African states should bereviewed [cf. Englebert 2000]. These ideas may sound far-fetched or even ‘imperialistic’, butthey are not too far from a number of concrete measures that are already in play in the field of international relations: the creation of a trusteeship in Kosovo under the new doctrine of

Humanitarian intervention which allow external bodies to intervene in another country in pursuit of ‘humanitarian’ objectives; the declaration of George W. Bush that his governmentno longer recognizes the government of Robert Mugabe; the demand that the Palestinians dropYasser Arafat as their elected leader; the demand for ‘regime change’ in Iraq outsideinternational law; and the change in American defence doctrine from deterrence to pre-emptive first strike.

5. Gender, the African State, and the Global Context

Professor Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo of Cornell University opened his contribution to theInstitute by examining ‘The Problématique of the African State, Its Mission, and Its Functions

in International Relations and World Economy’. He lectured on how one re-conceptualizeshistorically and philosophically the origins, structures, and functions of the African State andits relationship to other phenomena within the global economy. This problématique impliesthe identification, classification, and definition of the major problems related to, or associatedwith, the nature of the African State. Is it a vibrant entity in relationship to the African

people?

There are methodological problems, conceptual issues, and functional aspects related to thisstate that must be raised and discussed if we were to ask the question of what kind of the statefor Africa. The presentation, which focused on the general analytical perspectives, reflectionon the colonial question, and the paradigmatic elements of the post-colonial state, argued thatthe modern state is a dynamic phenomenon. It is an organ that can grow. But the way Africanstate was created may partially explain why it behaves the way it does. There was no

bargaining mechanism between the African political agencies/agents and the participants of the Berlin Conference in 1884/85 in terms of how the states were carved. This state was set upwith three major missions: (1) to disorganize the existing African political economy, socialsystems, and their values; (2) to create an agency of the international capitalism; and (3) tocreate an internal police agency for the European institutions and political elites. The

presentation concluded that in its current forms, the African state cannot and will not be ableto formulate progressive policies and politics needed for the development of the continent.

He followed this up with an exploration of methodological issues in the study of the Africanstate by asking: what kind of social science research for Africa? At this juncture of unchallenged domination by liberal globalization, both at its market economic level and at theelectoral democratic process, is there any theoretical, ideological, and political need to talk about social science research in Africa? What does social science research in Africa mean?Can/should Africa produce her own investigative research tools to deal with the dynamics of her environment? Lumumba-Kasongo emphasised the fact that research methodology is one of the most important components of the Institute’s work.

The main objective of his presentation was to articulate the intra-state challenges to the nation-state project in a broader social science context. He sought to link intra-state challenges to

ethnicity, political economy, environment, and gender within the framework of philosophical,sociological, ideological and theoretical assumptions, which shape the ways scholars perceive,



8

define, and analyze social phenomena. The lecture focused on raising epistemological and phenomenological issues related to what kind of social science research should be relevant,appropriate, effective, and challenging to African researchers. The most important questionsthat were posed in the process of introducing the subject matter include: What should be, or ought to be, the role of social science research in Africa? What are the dominant paradigms to

be used in dealing with the intra-state challenges? How have these paradigms beenconstructed? What are the relationships between the tools of the analysis and policies and

politics of states? How do we change paradigms? And how do we know that it is time to doso?

The presupposition is that understanding a social phenomenon is, first of all, a criticalanalytical exercise. It requires logical sets of rules, or what can also be called guiding

principles, an organized space where one is operating from, and methodologies with bothquantitative and qualitative dimensions. While the qualitative dimension of research dealswith systematic thought with the main objective of explaining, clarifying, judging or evaluating the phenomenon, the quantitative dimension is tangible or testable. Research must

be supported by empirical data. The relationship between these two dimensions is dialectical.

Using the works of Claude Ake [1982] and Bent Flybjerg [2001], Lumumba-Kasongo focusedon the need to develop systematic relationship between scholarship and research in Africa. To

be able to do this, there is a need to be critical and conscientious about how Western socialscience paradigms in Africa have served economic and political interests of the Westerndominant political and economic interests because the ‘bulk of Western social science onAfrica and other Third World regions amounts to Imperialism.’ The presentation concludedthat for social science paradigms to be relevant in Africa, they must use multidisciplinaryapproaches to articulate their objectives, which should be based on the imperatives of thehistorical, social, economic, and political needs of the people. He stressed the need to place thecollective yearnings of African populations at the centre of the research agenda. Such researchmust embody ideology and philosophy. He suggested that social science research in Africamust be developed on self-critical paradigms, unified social science framework, and praxis.

In his third presentation, Lumumba-Kasongo addressed the gender dimension of research onthe African state. How important is it to incorporate a gender dimension to such a researchagenda? Does gender matter in social science research in Africa? In the presentation it wasarticulated that gender matters in social science in Africa. Why and how is it so?

He argued that the dominant perception according to which the issue of gender in social

science research concerns mainly women is faulty. Gender, as a social science concept, is adynamic concept. In the presentation gender was defined in relational perspectives. It dealswith men-women and girls-boys relationships and how these relationships are reflected in theallocation and distribution of power and other resources. He asserted that these relationshipsare not static. They are constantly changing to reflect the dynamics that are taking place insocieties or demands that are emerging from societies. They are also constantly changing torespond to concrete social class, institutional, and other societal demands.

He suggested that in French and English, until recently, gender was basically used more as agrammatical analysis than a social structure or dynamic concept. Gender and women have

been confused. Some scholars have used them interchangeably. However, with works of

many scholars and institutions, such as with the Association of African Women for Researchand Development (AAWORD), CODESRIA, and SAPES, the debates in Africa on its re-



9

conceptualization have become mature and many issues have become systematized andclarified. Gender is a social category. Women and men and girls and boys can approach itfrom their own perspectives.

Lumumba-Kasongo pointed out that in the book: L'Unité Culturelle de l'Afrique Noire, Cheikh

Anta Diop developed two types of cultural spheres regarding gender relations:

(1) Indo-European Traditions in which man has the domineering position and constitutes thereferences for humanity; this type is called ‘Northern cradle’.

(2) African cradle, men and women play valued, though different, roles in society.

He argued that despite the contradictions of African societies in their multiplicities of culturesand traditions, and also in the ways these cultures interact with one another, the elements of this model prevail. For instance, many African languages reflect the neutral terms for human/person.

Using a combination of historical and philosophical approaches, the presentation challengesthe biological approach, which tends to focus on sex rather than on gender. This approach wasdefined as deductionist and deterministic, and therefore very limited epistemologically in thequest for understanding the nature of the dynamic relationship between women and men andgirls and boys in changing African societies.

He emphasised that in Africa, there is no period in the history of state formation whereAfrican women, as a social category of gender and society, were not actively involved in thestruggles for changes. Dona Beatrice, Nzinga Nehanda, Yaa Asantewa, and many other women, even among the masses, fought colonialism through physical force or politicalmobilization. In the popular movements, which challenged African dictators in the 1990s,women have played a central role as well. However, compared to the levels, quality, and thesubstance of their struggles, African women have not been equally represented in the organsof political power despite the presence of some women as tokens in governments throughoutAfrican.

He concluded that gender issues in social science research must take into account specificitiesand particularities of men-women's relations in their specific ethnic and broader politicalcontexts. And gender issues must also take into account African social history, social values,and worldviews. The current division of labour in which women are confined to some specificroles must be critically examined because it responds more to the imperatives of global

capitalism than to the demands of democracy and development. He suggested that this is notnecessarily a reflection of African cultures. Finally, gender equality has to be articulatedwithin the framework of citizens' and human rights principles and developmental paradigms.The coalition of men and women against the dysfunctionality and sexism of the African statecan provide an opportunity to advance dialogical relationship based on the principle of complementarity. For issues of gender to succeed in Africa, it will be necessary todemocratize ethnicity and the state, and articulate gender as a developmental imperative.

In his presentation on ethno-nationalism and the contradictions of global capitalism,Lumumba-Kasongo argued that ethno-nationalism is about the dynamic relationships betweenethnicity and nationalism and their political and economic implications. Ethnicity, as

nationalism, is a socially constructed phenomenon. It is not fixed. It should therefore beunderstood in relational and historical terms. Using historical structuralism and system's



10

analysis paradigms, he sought to define what ethno-nationalism is, to identify its dominantcharacteristics and their socio-economic manifestations. He also tried to examine how ethno-nationalism has interacted with the forces of global capitalism. How have the contradictions of global capitalism and ethno-nationalism impacted on the African state?

Lumumba-Kasongo suggested that colonial powers considered ethno-nationalism asantithetical to the nation state building project. Ethno-nationalism was projected as an attributeof the primordial domain, which was considered irrational, illogical and consequently anenemy to development and modernization. At the same time, however, ethno-nationalism inits various forms was used by the colonial power as instruments of state building. And duringthe Cold War era many elements of ethno-nationalism were mobilized as instruments of international power struggles.

He examined the impact of global capitalism, particularly as manifested in the structuraladjustment programs, on ethno-nationalism. Processes such as privatization, free trade,liberalization, deregulation, fiscal discipline, which have been adopted in Africa, invariably

had implications for the expression of ethno-nationalism. Contradictions of global capitalismwere defined in terms of tensions, alienation, exploitation, and struggles associated with thistype of capitalist incorporation and marginalization.

In a presentation on ethnicity, nationalism, and regionalism, Lumumba-Kasongo focused onhow these phenomena have affected the processes and/or mechanisms of state formation inAfrica. Ethnicity, nationalism, and regionalism were defined from various schools, notablymodernization, dependency, and third world perspectives.

Why is ethnicity gathering renewed strength in Africa? Is ethnicity always an irrational phenomenon? And what should be done about it? Its objectives and functions were discussed.

Commenting on Davies’ J-Curve Theory, which states that ‘Revolutionary events are likely tooccur when a prolonged period of rising expectations and increasing gratification is followed

by a short period of sharp reversal,’ it was articulated in the presentation that the widening gap between expectations and gratification can lead to revolution, uprisings, or revolts. People donot believe in ethnicity as a religious phenomenon. It is a functional and practical entity of human experiences. It can play a multiple role such as sociological citizenship, welfarist,identity consolidation, and the foundation of political parties.

Nationalism was defined historically and philosophically. Various approaches to studying it, based on the work of John Breuilly were discussed – the nationalist, the communication, the

Marxist, and the psychological and functional approaches. The presentation also focused onthe classification of various types of nationalism - reformist, separatist, accommodationist, andthose strongly associated with Afro-Marxist traditions - that have been produced in Africa inthe past 40 years or so. The major objective was to deal with the question of the impactnationalism on the processes of state formation.

Regionalism was defined in geo-physical, ideological, and political terms. Again, the concernwas to examine the policy and political implications of regionalism in the context of stateformation. Various issues related to the regional claims and demands of individuals andgroups based on the imperatives of morphology and particularism of culture were raised anddiscussed.



11

It was argued that increasingly, world capitalism is operating through regionalist perspectives.Organizations such as the United Nations have also been supporting regionalist approaches asan effective way to dealing with people's demands. In some countries federalism was used tosolve problems related to regionalism and ethnicity. In many cases, the nature of the Africanstate and its structures have not allowed a serious dialogue between ethnicity, nationalism, and

regionalism to take place. One of the problems of Africa, Lumumba-Kasongo asserted, is thatshe is less nationalistic than any other region of the world.

6. Nigeria: the longue duree and the burden of History

After these broad-ranging presentations, focus shifted to country specific studies starting witha series of presentations on the Nigerian state. In my introductory presentation on the intra-state challenges to the Nigerian state, I pointed out that Nigeria remains one of the mostturbulent countries in Africa. Its post-colonial history is characterized by: (1) a 30-month CivilWar between 1967 and 1970 during which over 1 million people were killed; (2) difficulty inorganizing a stable political order, leading to repeated military incursion into national politicallife and the resulting militarization of civil politics and the politicization of the military; (3)continuing sectarian mobilization and confrontation at many levels of society – ethnic groupagainst ethnic group, region against region, community against community, and religionagainst religion. Despite its enormous wealth in human and material resources, Nigeria hasfailed to fulfil its promise as a nation-state precisely because of the numerous intra-statechallenges it has had to confront. Indeed, the success of Nigeria is that it has managed, so far,to survive these numerous and repeated challenges whilst retaining a fairly coherent statesystem by African standards.

In my presentation, I sought to sketch out the broad historical and political context of these

intra-state challenges to the Nigerian state, leaving two other presenters, Dr Cyril Obi andKate Meagher, to examine two specific instances of intra-state challenges to the Nigerianstate. I emphasised five issues: (1) the way in which societal cleavages were structured intothe very heart of the colonial state in Nigeria; (2) the embedded inequalities within the

Nigerian state, particularly the gapping disparities between the northern and southern sectionsof the country; (3) the conflict-ridden hegemonic drive that has characterized Nigerian

political life; and finally, (4) large scale poverty as the context for intra-state mobilization.

On cleavages, I pointed out that the long-drawn politico-historical process of regionalism,statism and localism has led to a concentric pattern of 7 ethnic and political cleavages in

Nigeria: (1) between the north and the south; (2) between the three majority ethnic groups

often referred to as the wazobia; (3) between these wazobia groups on the one hand and theminority groups on the other; (4) inter-state rivalry between states, sometimes within andsometimes between ethnic groups; (5) inter-ethnic rivalry in a mixed state composed of minority groups of different strengths or a segment of a majority ethnicity surrounded byminority groups; (6) intra-ethnic rivalry within each majority ethnic group, sometimes alsocorresponding to state boundaries and sometimes within a single state; and finally, (7) inter-clan and intra-clan rivalries, particularly in the southeast and the northcentral parts of thecountry. On inequalities, I pointed out that some were the result of differential economicendowments, while others flowed from the consequences of often deliberate colonial official

policy. While geography can be used to explain the higher economic and infrastructuraldevelopment of the southern regions of Nigeria, the educational underdevelopment of the

northern part was largely a reflection of official policy and attitudes. The combined and



12

cumulative effects of these inequalities, corresponding as they do with the cleavages alreadycited, have bedevilled Nigerian society to this day.

Though the north is estimated to have more than half of the population, the south continues tohave a high proportion of social infrastructure like roads, hospitals and schools. The south

continues to produce more students and other professionals than the north. HumanDevelopment Indicators consistently show the northern states to be more afflicted by povertyand related constraints. The government and parastatal bureaucracies of the federalgovernment continues to be heavily southern dominated. The formal business sector andassociated professions are also heavily southern dominated. Of the total number of registered

businesses between 1986 and 1990, 57 percent are in Lagos, located in the southwest, 16 percent in the north, 14 percent in the east and 13 percent in the west [Hamalai 1994]. Mostmedia organizations, particularly the independent and influential print media are concentratedin the southwest. In 2002, Vice-President Atiku pointed out that 7 southern organizations wonlicenses to open private universities, while there were no applications from the north. Thecleavages and inequalities between northern and southern Nigeria continue to constitute the

main, but by no means the only, dangerous fault-line within the Nigerian state.

It is these cleavages and inequalities that have fuelled the politics of sectarian mobilizationwithin Nigerian politics. And since the collapse of the First Republic in 1966, a lot of effortshave gone into attempts to contain the centrifugal forces so active at the heart of Nigerian

politics. The creation of states, the quota system in distribution of resources, the reflection of ‘federal character’ in appointments, the building of the new capital at Abuja, right in themiddle of the country as a symbol of unity, and the effective centralization of political andfiscal power at the centre, may have sustained the state as a single unit without addressing thesectarian impulses that continue to challenge it. As a result, intra-state challenges to the

Nigerian state continue and are manifested in the recent past in: (1) the mobilization of Yorubaseparatism after the annulment of the June 12th 1993 presidential elections; (2) theacrimonious agitation for ‘power shift’ from northern to southern Nigeria in 1999; (3)increased claims of Igbo ‘marginalization’ since 1999; the increased agitation for ‘resourcecontrol’ amongst the minority ethnic groups of the Niger Delta; (4) the controversialintroduction of shari’a law in some parts of northern Nigeria; and (5) heightened levelscommunal conflict and criminal violence.

7. Nigeria: Youths, Environment and Ethnic Militia

Dr Cyril Obi, from the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, focused his

presentations on the challenges to the Nigerian state emanating from the conflict over resourcecontrol in the Niger Delta. In these presentations, he emphasised the critical factors of resources, environmental protection, youths and political conflicts. It is the dangerous cocktailof these factors in the context of a repressive military state that has defined the numerouschallenges to the Nigerian state in the Niger Delta. In his first presentation, Obi provided a

background to the struggles for resource control in the Niger delta, drawing on the dependentnature of the integration of the region into global capitalism and the Nigerian nation-state. Themarginalisation of the region thus fed into the resurgence of ethnic minority agitation for self-determination, local autonomy and the restructuring of the nation-state project.

Obi’s second presentation explored the nexus between inter-generational conflict and the

struggle for resource control in the Niger Delta, particularly in the context of youth violence.He argued that the conflicts in the delta are not a simple Manichean world with the ethnic



13

minorities on one side and the Nigerian state on the other. These conflicts are described ascomplex, with different minority ethnic groups and even different generations within an ethnicgroup and factions within generations assuming contradictory positions. These broadly showthe influence of class and personal interests, within groups that are broadly seen as the Niger Delta ethnic minorities. These divergent reactions within the Niger Delta also reflect the

impact of the tensions between a homogenising state project and the rights of the minorities toassert their control of oil.

In his third presentation, Obi focused on the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People(MOSOP) and the Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC) as case studies of specific challenges to the

Nigerian state in the Niger Delta. He highlighted the role of the youth in both movements andtheir struggles, and concluded that youth activism is less of an inter-generational war, andmore of a generational critique of the dominant power relations within Niger Delta societiesand between them and the Nigerian state. Youth mobilization therefore challenged theerstwhile culture of accommodation that has characterized the attitude of Niger Delta eliteswith the state, and replaced it with a culture of confrontation and heightened ethnic

mobilization that also created the unintended consequence of heightening intra-ethnic tensionswithin the Niger Delta. Youth mobilization also marked the transition from constitutionalmeans, led by chiefs and elders, to extra constitutional agitation. Emphasis shifted from thelanguage of universal political rights, prevalent in the era of decolonisation, and accent wasnow put on local idioms and cultural revivalism. Long forgotten cults and rituals wereexcavated and reinstated as the vehicle for political mobilization. Nevertheless, power andresources, and not cultural exclusivity, were the driving force of this mobilization. The localidioms continued to borrow selectively and heavily from foreign sources, particularly theascendant languages of human and environmental rights, the networks of global NGOs, thelanguage of genocide, and even mobilization at the UN.

Obi’s fourth presentation examined the external linkages to the struggle for self-determinationand resource control in the Niger Delta. He looked at the extractive consequences of oilmultinationals and western consumer-nations. He argued that the events in the Niger Deltacould not be fully understood unless the region’s role in the global network for producingenergy and profits for western multinationals and consumer nations is taken into account. It isthis global network, in alliance with the Nigerian state, which extracts both oil and power fromthe inhabitants of the Niger Delta, leading to local resistance. Obi also examined the strategyof linking up with global rights movements and international non-governmental organizations(INGOs), which has characterized the politics of groups like MOSOP. He drew attention tothe factors that drive the politics of these global NGOs in the Niger Delta, and also noted the

limitations of global rights movements in 'empowering' the forces of local resistance. Thehanging of Saro-Wiwa showed the limitation of international rights movements in their support for MOSOP; it would seem that in both Nigerian and western governmental circles,the oil multinationals have more clout than the international rights movements.

In his concluding presentation, Obi looked at the implications of the Niger Delta conflict for the Nigerian state building project. He argues that Nigeria’s unity is fragile and contingent onoil revenues; oil threatens Nigerian unity and cements that unity simultaneously. The Niger Delta conflict draws our attention to the crucial question of revenue as an essential aspect of state building. At the same time, the ethnic complexity of the Niger Delta and its long-running‘minority’ status draw our attention to questions of plurality and diversity within the African

state. It is to be regretted, he concluded, that violence has become endemic, episodic andscattered within the Niger Delta. Will this lead to the collapse of the Nigerian state or its



14

reconstitution? Whatever the outcome, he notes that youth power will remain a critical factor in the struggles in the Niger delta, as well as the quest for the restructuring of the Nigeriannation state.

One of the Governance Institute’s guest lecturers, Ms. Kate Meagher, formerly of Ahmadu

Bello University, Zaria, and currently at Nuffield College, Oxford, presented the second casestudy from Nigeria. Her focus was on the Bakassi Boys militia that sprang up in thesoutheastern Nigerian city of Aba in the 1990s. She pointed out that ethnic militias have

become a prominent feature in many African countries; in Nigeria, prominent militia groupsare the Yoruba-based Oodua People’s Congress, the Massob and the Bakassi Boys in the Igbosoutheast, and the various Islamist Hisba groups that sprung up in the wake of the adoption of shari’a in the Moslem parts of northern Nigeria. She pointed out that in the literature onAfrica, we now see an increasing accent on uncivil society and Africa is often portrayed as atheatre of perverse forms of civil organizations which undermine democratisation. Within thiscontext, militias are often seen as either perverse or progressive in a simplistic way. Sheargued that the reality is often more complex.

Those seeing the militias as progressive often define them as springing out of the efforts of ordinary people to create their own security and protect their property rights. A second pointof view suggests that the economic policy of liberalization tends to lead to perverse socialorganizations, which may tear society apart. A third perspective, she argued, sees the militia asinstruments that are organized to meet social needs, but end up serving completely differentends as they become co-opted by other forces in society. She emphasised that militias should

be seen, not as the organizational products of perverse cultures, but of perverse institutionalsettings.

In Aba, she pointed out, the context of the rise of Bakassi was the ineffectiveness of the policeforce, a force that is poorly trained, poorly paid, with little organic roots in society, and proneto corrupt practices, racketeering and extra-judicial killings. It was the failure of this policeforce to meet legitimate expectations of the community that led to the rise of Bakassi.Secondly, she pointed out the impact of military authoritarianism on the culture of policing inthis area. Under the military, there was increasing recourse to special paramilitary squads, thelatest in Nigeria being the ‘Operation Fire for Fire’. These tended to generate the culture of extra-judicial behaviour and a culture of impunity. Thirdly, she highlighted the wider politicalcontext surrounding the rise of the Bakassi Boys, which involved heightened debates over thecreation of state-level police forces to supplement the work of the federal police. However, thedebates pointed less to a concern for improved law and order, than a desire on the part of state

governors to have police forces under their own control.

She then chronicled the rise of the Bakassi Boys in Aba, their roots in particular economicgroups, their brutal modus operandi, their organizational and control structures, and their intimate links with the community. Most people felt that the Bakassi Boys were brutal in their methods – some even suggested they were unchristian – but all were agreed that the militiawas honest, gave everyone equal treatment, and were certainly better than the police. TheBakassi Boys were a challenge not just to the reputation of the police, but also to the Federalgovernment’s monopoly of the use of legitimate force, a factor that attracted increasinglyfavourable attention from the governors of Igbo states, especially from Abia and AnambraStates. However, Meagher pointed out that though the vast majority of its members were Igbo,

the militia was, strictly speaking not an ethnic militia as it was founded, not around an ethnicagenda, but around the protection of Aba market and its users, regardless of ethnicity. In the



15

concluding part of her presentation, Meagher documented how the spread of the Bakassi Boysto other Igbo states led to increasing control of the group by the governors of Igbo states whogradually subverted the aims and institutions of the group in the service of their own politicalagendas. She also highlighted the uncritical demonization of the Bakassi Boys by International

NGOs and the international media who rightly see the militia as a challenge to due process,

but ignore the more complex interplay of popular and political challenges that gave rise to thevigilante group. Here, Meagher distinguished two types of intra state challenges bound up inthe rise of the Bakassi Boys: a popular challenge to inadequate state performance, and achallenge to state power by local elites, who hijack local institutional initiatives for their own

political purposes.

8. South Africa: Constructing a Rainbow Nation?

The case study of post-apartheid South Africa was presented in a series of lectures byProfessor Kunle Amuwo of the University of the North in South Africa. In his first

presentation, he sought to establish the link between globalization, democracy and state

building. He started out by arguing that whilst globalization is a complex process and phenomenon of antinomies: integrating and fragmenting the world; uniformity andlocalisation; increased material prosperity and deepening misery; homogenization andhegemonization, etc, it has meant, for Africa, at once marginalisation and ‘deglobalisation’-one in which the structural context of choice is mired in a dialectical relationship between

putative openness of global market and a real lack of state autonomy. As a process in becoming, globalisation’s coherence, reach and specificity are still in a state of flux.Furthermore, the nature of the nation-state calls for serious interrogation rather than merely

pronouncing its decline. By favouring the worst kind of capitalism in modern history - withrigged rules and unfair agricultural standards for Africa; an iniquitous WTO, etc, -globalisation imperils both democracy and state building.

Amuwo argued that a way has to be found around the negative characteristics of globalization- particularly the alliance between corporate business and the authoritarian state. He suggestedthat African perspectives/responses are needed, in the form of social democracy, so that state

building is not left entirely to the market. The struggle for internal democracy by civil societyorganizations will have to include creating domestic citizens to complement the so-calledtransnational citizenship that globalisation has engendered. The struggle should also be for atype of democracy capable of eliminating inequality at the global, regional, national and locallevels. Finally, it should aim at civilizing power and overcoming the latent violence of conflicting interests.

In his second presentation, Amuwo returned to the theme of expanding markets and retreatingstates under the current globalization. He argued that the South African and the Nigerian stateshave to be analysed in the light of their excessive dependence on ‘advice’ from a myriad of international financial institutions. How do we understand such states within existingtheoretical frameworks? How much autonomy does such a state exhibit, particularly in termsof its domestic and international economic relations? A major argument for expanding themarket in Africa is that the state is disarticulated and, to that extent, has a highly reducedcapacity to address public problems; that it is too big, and too interventionist. However, as thestate retreats and the market expands, the economic system tends to become more exploitative;democracy, more procedural and less social; citizenship more of a tenuous concept and the

state itself more of a contested terrain. Furthermore, expanding markets under globalisationrender the state less and less a viable source of political legitimation. The logic of the IFIs is



16

that free politics needs a free and open market, but for whose benefit? Amuwo argued that theaim is apparently to discipline African political leaders who are said to put politics beforeeconomics. But pushed to its logical conclusion, the state, enmeshed in the calculus of

providing the conditions for cheap labour for sweatshops, is caught between the imperative of social democracy and a technocratic/managerial imperative in tune with the demands of

international financial forces.

Amuwo asserted that in both South Africa and Nigeria, we are confronted with differentdimensions of a retreating state: a state that promises a lot but delivers so little largely becauseof incapacitation by market reforms; an admittedly vibrant civil society, but often beholden tothe logic of the market and formalist liberal democracy; ‘political aid’ that has largely led tothe articulation of market-friendly rules of the game; a civil society that is increasingly being

pressurized by the state to renounce the culture of entitlement and expectation; a stateincreasingly unable to deliver on its numerous promises. He argued that in South Africa, 8years into the construction of the ‘rainbow nation’, one in every 2 South African is poor, andsocial problems like crime and HIV/AIDS are out of control.

In a presentation on citizenship and democracy, Amuwo argued that citizens are those whohave confidence in, and hold allegiance to, the public institutions of a state and such a statecan be said to be democratic if it seeks to enhance citizens’ trust and participation ingovernment and in public life. Social rights and social obligations are different sides of thesame coin. An important liberal concept, citizenship is often articulated in a three-folddefinition: civil rights, political rights and social rights. Citizenship and democracy are in adialectical relationship and mutually reinforcing: to build a ‘democratised political culture’,there is the need for a particular kind of civil society to help legitimise the state in the eyes of citizens and help build a culture where citizens readily meet their obligations to the state.

In post-independence Africa, particularly since the events of 1989 and the introduction of structural adjustment policies, citizenship has become more and more tenuous as statesundergoing democratic reforms simultaneously face socially painful economic reformsimposed by the Bank and the Fund. Economic decline becomes not just a serious threat to newdemocratic regimes, but to citizenship. Where limited or procedural democracy fails todeliver, the tendency is towards widespread non-citizenship behaviour: crime, various formsof rebellion and widespread non-payment for public services. Worse, citizen dissatisfactioncan be expressed in withdrawal from the public arena and in attempts to evade the reach of thestate. In the process, democracy is further threatened.

On the contemporary challenges to transformation and citizenship in South Africa, Amuwo posited the intriguing possibility that there could be states without citizens. Notwithstandingsome giant strides in the country since 1994, Amuwo asserted that the country remains, likeBrazil, a fundamentally unjust and unequal society. The South African transition wasessentially an elite pact, rooted in race politics and with tinges of a class compromise. Whilst‘diffuse pressures and forces in society’ within and outside South Africa facilitated thecollapse of apartheid, to paraphrase Alfred Stepan, the nature and character of the transitionwas such that the structural and systemic problems of apartheid linger. The hopes of rapid

political, economic and social change through liberal or electoral democracy were quicklydashed. He argued that the situation was worsened by the adoption by the ANC government of an essentially pro-business, market-friendly, macro-economic policy framework of GEAR

(Growth, Employment and Redistribution) that advocated fiscal conservatism and free-market



17

capitalism. Whilst not much positive change has resulted in the lives of millions of blacks, itis, however, not simply the old economic story of South Africa re-told.

Following Adam Przeworski, Amuwo suggested that we need to understand socio-politicalstruggles as a series of contests between social forces of history, culture and wealth. And there

is often the tension between the voluntaristic force of the individual and collective human will.That is to say, objective factors may limit the art of the possible in given historical contexts,

but contingency actions by historic agents and individuals may help facilitate transformation.In South Africa, Amuwo argued, the two levels of intervention are problematic, such thatreforms become a series of impediments to, or constraints on, the institution and consolidationof democracy. Transition problems cohere with problems of democratic consolidation; SouthAfrica is still grappling with the former, which explains why there is only little progress withthe latter.

Amuwo argued that several factors have aggregated to limit the reach and range of transformation: contradiction between Labour and Capital; a process of depoliticisation a la apartheid resulting from both an elite model of transition and from the sidelining of the MassDemocratic Movement (MDM) in the pre-1994 negotiations for a new South Africa; the non-translation of the expressions of direct democracy from late 1980s to 1994 into what Gibsoncalls ‘a radical rethinking of liberation theory’ capable of teasing out ‘paradigms of social andethical practices’; the ANC’s commandist legacy of the liberation struggle in the form of aculture of abject loyalty and conformism; absence of robust internal debates; ownership of most of the land and domination of industry and commerce by the white minority; and anemerging black capitalist class, but of little social purposes for the bulk of the black

population.

Coming to the question of identities, Amuwo argued that in post-colonial African states,region and ethnicity often constitute two important boundaries of identity. Within these socialconstructs, group histories are idealized, myths are invented, and identities are constructed for

political and related purposes. Electoral politics produces two sets of citizenship: a civic one,where, via public morality, all ethno-nationalities find expression and accommodation; and anethnic one, driven by alienation, imagined or real, where the state is seen, in Dennis Austinwords, as ‘an added affliction’. Amuwo contends that political ethnicity nourishes the politicsof division, focusing as it does on the politics of difference. Ethnic violence seriouslychallenges the nature and character of the African state and the base of its legitimacy.Similarly, ethnic differences get converted into mutual antagonism. Amuwo argued thathistorically, South Africans were more engrossed in broad citizenship demands, than in ethnic

mobilization. Self-determination, inclusive politics and civic citizenship were the major demands of the liberation struggle. Whilst apartheid was premised fundamentally on the ethnicdivision of black South Africans, it ended up homogenising them. Amuwo suggested,however, that post-apartheid politics has witnessed the (re) emergence of the plurality of ethnic identities that were held in abeyance under apartheid. He asserted that in South Africatoday, there is a growing consciousness of ethnic identity, captured by the so-called ‘Xhosanostra’. Not unlike in the past, this ethnic ascendancy is rooted in the historical association of groups with economic advantage.

On the specific question of intra-state challenges to the South African state, Amuwo arguedthat states are often objects of contestation. Intra-state challenges are usually for two major

purposes. One, states have to be mended, augmented, re-legitimised and renewed, insofar asinstitution-building is an endless process, always a work in progress. Two, there is the need



18

for the construction of a totally revised political discourse and economic structure capable of dealing with, and satisfactorily addressing, structures and processes generating inequality.Challenges centre on economic and institutional issues and often involve significant

programmatic and political trade-offs.

In conclusion, Amuwo suggested that in South Africa, apart from the limited experience of theANC in policy matters, the sedimented legacies of apartheid tend to constrain development

programmes. He stated that these constraints include inherited economic inequities, anunequal social and geographical distribution of resources and the underlying mechanisms of inequality by which a capitalist society operates. Challenges posed to the South African stateinclude the management of race and citizenship, the unfulfilled expectations embedded inAfrican and Afrikaner nationalisms, differentiated cultural voices seeking recognition andrelevance, the re-insurgence and politicisation of ethnic identities, and the uneasy alliance

between the market-friendly ANC, on the one hand, and its left-of-centre trade union andCommunist Party (COSATU/SACP) partners, on the other.

9. The Great Lakes: Putting the DRC Together Again

A case study on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was preceded by anexamination of the crises in the Great Lakes region as a whole. Opening the discussion,Lumumba-Kasongo pointed out that several colonial experiences could be found in the region:British, German, and Belgian. These experiences are germane to a historical and structuralistexplanation of the crises. One needs to go beyond the events that took place between April andJuly 1994, where nearly one million Rwandans, the majority of whom were Tutsi, weremurdered. He defined the concept of the Great Lakes Region as a combination of geographical, cultural, and political elements. Geographically, the Great Lakes Region islocated more in the Greater Eastern Africa than in Central Africa. Morphologically, the regionhas some characteristics that can be described as physically unique; it has several major lakes.The countries that are directly related to these geo-political configurations include the DRC,Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and to a certain extent Malawi. Most of these lakes arelocated in the eastern part of the DRC.

The process of colonization produced in the Great Lakes Region some physically poor micro-states; Burundi, with a 2001 population of approximately 6,502,000 in a surface area of 10,747 square miles (27,834 square kilometres) and Rwanda, with a population of approximately 7,949,000 in a surface area of 10,169 square miles (26,338 square kilometres).These land-locked countries have higher population densities than any other country in the

region. For instance, in 1958, the population density in Rwanda was 93 people per square kmcompared to 2 in the Equatorial French Africa, 3.5 for Angola, 5.6 for Belgium Congo, 9.5 for Tanganyika, 10.8 for Kenya, and 23.7 for Uganda. In 2001, the population densities per squarekilometre in Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda were 234, 22, 54, 302, and 102respectively.

Lumumba-Kasongo also explained how, since the 1960s, this region has produced somenotorious dictators such as Idi Amin in Uganda (1971-1979) and Mobutu of Zaïre (1965-1997). Additionally, in this region, three leaders of militia movements, Museveni, Kagame,and Kabila with different political ideologies, political profiles, and social agenda, gained state

power in Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC respectively. The first two tried to install friendly

regimes with foreign invasions disguised as internal rebellions.



19

He argued that despite the internal and national particularities that are reflected in variouscultures, ethnic composition, and religious and political loyalties of the Great Lakes Region,the nature of the current conflict has its historical and political roots in the legacy of colonialand post-colonial politics, which is summarized in the crisis of legitimacy of the state, ColdWar politics, the struggles for power, and the national effort toward the redefinition of

political power in Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. The Great Lakes Region has alarge foundation of cultural diversity and hundreds of ethnic groups. The microstates of Burundi and Rwanda have two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, with other smaller ethnic groups, the most important being the Twa. For example, the ethnic composition of Rwanda, by the end of the 1950s, was 0.68% Twa, 82.74% Hutu, and 16.59% Tutsi. In termsof proportionality, this composition has not significantly changed since. The complexity isgreater in the Congo, with more than 250 ethnic groups

He argued that in Rwanda, for instance, the decision of the Belgian administration to rulethrough the Tutsi aristocracy is responsible for most of the problems and the struggles thatoccurred later. The colonial administration, which did not seem to understand the true

meaning of the existing social and power relations before colonization, began to make theethnic designation in an ‘arbitrary’ manner. After many decades of favouring the Tutsi ineducation and employment and using them to administer the country on behalf of theBelgians, the Belgian administration and the Catholic Church then decided to switch policiesand favour the Hutu, but that was too late to create the foundation of social equality. TheBelgians had believed that Tutsi nationalism was supporting radical pan-Africanism and thus,was a threat to their hold in the sub-region.

Lumumba-Kasongo then focused on the rise of Laurent-Désiré Kabila as an important factor in explaining the crisis in the region. He argued that Kabila’s association with local radicalmilitias in Maniema such as Mayi-Mayi, Simba, etc., is central to understand the dynamics of

the Kivu region. These militia were part of larger military and political movements that werecharacterized as the second independence movement in the DRC, a movement led by PierreMulele of the Kwilu province. Their goal was to establish a unified radical leftist nationalistgovernment in Kisangani. The movement was essentially anti-Mobutist, anti-West, and anti-imperialist. It was temporarily crushed by the direct military intervention of the United States,Belgium, France, and their African allies to save their client regime.

Widespread poverty is also a central aspect of the crises according to Lumumba-Kasongo. Inlight of the level of poverty and based on the view that peace is indivisible from realdemocracy, the kind of constitution to be recommended in the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, andUganda is the one that should promote a social democracy in which cultural diversity or cultural heterogeneity of people is given political, economic, and legal status in amultinational state. He argued that a long-lasting peace in the region needed the developmentof a collective security arrangement and also the development of a collective regionalsovereignty scheme. Furthermore, he argued that a ‘consensual’ democracy combined withstrong built-in social programs could protect citizenship rights and thus contribute faster to theadvancement of emancipatory politics in the sub-region.

In his own contribution to the Great Lakes discussion, Amuwo stated that contemporaryliterature on violence and crisis identifies structural, political, socio-economic andcultural/perceptual factors as constituting explanatory schemas for the twin phenomenon.

Theorists also see violence as part of a process of state building. By the same token,globalisation is said to exert considerable pressure on weak states, resulting in ‘post-modern



20

conflict’. The latter is characterized by a wide range of actors bound together in local andexternal interactions and interests, including the use of novel warfare strategies: ethniccleansing, child soldiery, mass rape, banditry, use of mercenaries, entrepreneurs andinternational capitalists.

He suggested that the foregoing certainly captures part of the tragedy of the Great Lakes. Butit needs to be supplemented and augmented by a contextual analysis. Two major explicatoryschemas appear apposite here. One, the ‘philosophy of genocide’ in which extremist Hutusseek to use ‘Hutuism’ with a view to regaining lost ancestral land by literally killing everyTutsi. In military combat, the philosophy translates to making no distinction between civiliansand soldiers and encourages a ‘pre-emptory strike’ policy. The second leg of this philosophy,Amuwo argued, is the use of selective assassination of the leadership of the Hutu majority bythe minority Tutsi leadership. This policy of extermination is necessarily selective: leaders,elites and intelligentsia. The second explanatory schema is the representation of Africa by theWest. For the latter, the Great Lakes crises are little more than a function of so-called mutual‘ancient hatreds’ by the mosaic of ethnic configurations in that part of Africa. The crises are

also perceived as a product of ill-behaved African ‘strongmen’ operating states that excel in‘pre-modern’ tribalism. Such simplistic behaviouralist analyses often lead to therecommendation of ‘one man, one vote’ ‘democratic elections’ and nation-state building basedon the Western experience. Instead of this culturalist perspective, Amuwo suggested that other factors have to come to the fore: Cold War interventionism; land-scarcity conflicts; a politicaleconomy riven with ethnic conflict on account of the control of the military and securityforces by the group in power; and extractive minerals that are of interest to the West and itsregional surrogates.

Coming to the specific issue of the intra-state challenges to the DRC, Lumumba-Kasongoargued that the study of the intra-state challenges concerns the relationship between the state

and the people or their reactions to one another. It includes the legitimacy of the state, its performance, its legal acceptance, its claims, its institutional foundation and people's participation (or lack of it) and integration (or lack of it) into the dominant system and their expectations. He asserted, however, that the most important challenge in the Congo is how tore-construct a state out of the extremely devastated conditions caused by war and severaldecades of dictatorship, human annihilation, and underdevelopment.

He argued that the Western/European powers had defined the Congo as ‘a geologicalaccident’. Most of the intra-state challenges in the Congo are associated with the way the statewas produced and the country’s mode of integration into international capitalism. He asserted

that the DRC has never had any long-term peace and stability. The processes of stateformation are still unfinished since the country was created as a personal property of LeopoldII between 1885-1908. Although he focused his analysis on the post-colonial state formation

process, the point was made that there have been continuous challenges at every stage of theconstruction of the Congolese state. The first challenge was associated with Leopold II’sefforts in squeezing personal profit out of a state he held as personal property. In thisfoundational sense, the Congo was a unique case in Africa. It was given to Leopold II as a

personal gift in the name of the ‘civilizing mission’ and subjected to rapacious rule by theunholy trinity of the Corporation, the Catholic Church, and the Belgian government.

Lumumba-Kasongo stressed that the Congolese experience of state-formation in the ‘Congo

Free State’ was characterized by a highly militarized, centralized, privatized, and personalizedstate. Leopold II's autocratic style of governance and his ruthless methods of obtaining raw



21

materials and cheap labour caused the death of about 10 million people between 1885-1908.This first genocidal action qualified Leopold II as a mass murderer though he was never indicted. However, the ‘Congo Free State’ was taken away from him and given to the BelgianState. And based on the principle of ‘ pas d’elite, pas de problème’ (no elites, no problems) and strongly influenced by the doctrines of pacification as advanced by Christianity, the

Belgian model of colonialism produced the ideologically weakest African nationalist elite.The challenges to the Congolese state must therefore be understood in this historical setting.

Lumumba-Kasongo argued that the intra-state challenges in the Congo grew out of: (a) thedivided and weak political elite; (b) the confusion related to the first constitution/fundamentallaw, which was a carbon-copy of the Belgian Fundamental law; (c) lack of cadres or educatedelite; (d) manipulation by the corporations of the internal weaknesses of the society; and (e)the intervention of foreign powers in the domestic policy and politics of the country. He thendeveloped this argument to take account of the specificities of the first Republic under PrimeMinister Lumumba, the second Republic with Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, and the 3rd Republicwith the rise and the end of Laurent-Désiré Kabila. With more than 3.5 million people killed

in fighting between various armed groups and total instability, Lumumba-Kasongo argued thatthe major challenge is the implementation of the various peace accords aimed at halting thecarnage. With peace, he concluded, the DRC must then face the challenges of how to dealwith its massive poverty; how to construct institutions in a situation of extreme social and

political fragmentation; how to contain the re-emergence of ethnic politics, regionalism, andsyncretic and fanatical religions; and finally, whether or not the DRC should be federal,unitary, or confederal.

10. The Great Lakes: Uneasy Peace in Burundi

The discussion on the Great Lakes region was brought to a close by a presentation on Burundifrom the second guest lecturer to the Governance Institute, Dr Patricia Daley of the School of Geography, Oxford University. She argued that the proverbial ‘ethnic hatred lens’ throughwhich the crises in Burundi is often interpreted is far from correct. She analysed the changesin power structure and ethnic identification that happened in colonial Burundi, citing these asthe foundations of the Burundian crises. She stressed that the struggle for control of theBurundian state was not a simple juxtaposition of Hutus and Tutsis; she argued that manysalient political and military divisions existed within both groups. The internecine struggle for the control of the state by various blocs of ethnically and regionally based elites was the

primary cause of the instability of the Burundian state, and not the much touted thesis of ‘ethnic hatred’.

Daley then went to great lengths to explore the Arusha peace process, pointing out the many problems with this process, least of which is the signing of a peace accord without the signingof a cease-fire. She was very sceptical about the likelihood of the Mandela-brokered process tolead to lasting peace because many important military factions remained outside the process,while some of those inside were formed as a result of the perverse incentive to form groups asa platform for representation in Arusha. Daley also drew attention to the factor of personalambition on the part of many important players in the Burundian state. She argued thatBurundi is a challenge in that a formula must be found to reconcile the wishes of the majorityof the population, and the legitimate rights of the minority. She argued that the electoralismimplicit in the Arusha process does not address this crucial problem. Finally, Daley argued

that the Arusha stipulation for the reform of the Tutsi dominated army was unlikely tosucceed.



22

11. Cameroon: Conflicting Colonial Heritage

Dr Alain Didier Olinga of Universite de Yaounde II in Cameroun presented the Camerooniancase study. He started out by asking if indeed there was a nation-state project in Africa, and if

there is a model or a multiplicity of models for such a nation-state project. He asserted that thereal power of the state is on the ground: its capacity to exert violence, and its bureaucratic

presence. State power is very tangible, and so is its legality. The state has a social reality, butit is not without problems, one of which is that of intra-state challenges. History and politicalgeography can illuminate the basis of such challenges. He argued that the state in Cameroon isnot emanating from the nation, nor does it serve the nation. It seems to have its ownautonomous administrative and bureaucratic logic. And the project of state building may bequite different from that of nation building; the building of the state need not form the basisfor the nation.

Olinga then turned his attention to history; how useful is the history of Cameroon for the

understanding of the state? He argued that the colonial moment is the reference root of theforces whose sedimentation constitutes the state in Cameroon. German colonialism inCameroon reflected the Bismarckian predilection for nation building through blood and iron.Emphasis was on administrative and bureaucratic instruments of control. This first phase of colonialism was also marked by missionary activities. The atomized, semi-autonomousentities in pre-colonial Cameroon were welded together bureaucratically, and Olingaemphasised the diversity of trajectories open to them.

The end of World War 1 led to the break-up of German Cameroon into French and BritishCameroon; conflicting administrative practices emerged. While British Indirect Rule tended tovalorise chiefs, the French did not. In some parts of Cameroon, therefore, the traditional entityis still strong and manages and regulates aspects of society, while in other parts, the reach of the central Cameroonian state is more direct. After World War 2, the colonizers started toaccept the need to represent the interests of local groups and Cameroonian nationalismdeveloped from this basis. However, the armed anti-colonialism of the UPC and its violentsuppression was to lead to the stigmatisation of the Bamileke ethnic group who were the main

backers of the UPC.

Olinga argued that the salient intra-state challenges in the Cameroon are traceable to thishistory. Anglophone Cameroon developed a different culture and outlook, which constitutes amajor fracture in the national fabric. In the plebiscite of 1961, the northern part of Anglophone

Cameroon chose a merger with Nigeria, leading to mourning by Ahidjo. Even the southern part of Anglophone Cameroon, which chose to re-unite with Francophone Cameroon, did notrenounce the option of autonomy for the area. The unity of Anglophone and FrancophoneCameroon was based on a federalist constitution which has since been abrogated; thisimposition of a unitarist hegemony and the attempt to obliterate differences has led to strongAnglophone rejection of the state. Olinga was quick to add, however, that Anglophonesecessionist agitation might best be understood as a resource in the hands of politicalentrepreneurs.

Olinga argued that there are also regional and autochthonous challenges to the state. Struggleshave erupted over the appointment of priests and bishops, state officials, and municipal

mayors. Ethnic groups who define themselves as ‘autochthonous’ to particular areas arechallenging the right of others to such posts in their purported autochthonous area. At the



23

same time, Olinga pointed out, every Cameroonian is buying into the merchandizing of theIndomitable Lions! He argued that in northern Cameroon, the Lamindates, based on traditionalauthority, continue to constitute a muted challenge to the state. This is particularly the case inthe Lamindate of Rey Bouba, where the Lamido is reported to have an army of his own, andwhere the Lamido’s court is said to have passed death sentences. Olinga added, however, that

the Lamindates should not be seen in opposition to the state; there is mutual tolerance andmutual advantage between them.

Finally, Olinga raised the ‘Bamileke question’. He suggested that current thinking inCameroonian politics was that the Bamileke should concentrate on making money whilstleaving politics to others who are not tainted by the UPC past. He pointed out that it was oftensaid that a Bamileke cannot be President. For how long can this dichotomy between economicand political power be maintained? And what are the consequences for the state of a Bamilekeclaim to the political sphere?

In his second presentation, Olinga focused on the issue of minority and autochthonous claims

within the state, often seen as signalling a rift in the state and which have implications for thedemocratisation of the state. He pointed out that in Cameroon, the recent period of ‘democratization’ had also coincided with the recrudescence of sectarian claims. As a result,the protection of minority and autochthonous rights had gone up on the agenda. Some of theminority agitation surrounded the composition of electoral lists, particularly by the ruling

party. Minority and autochthonous groups argued that the electoral lists should reflect thesociological complexity of the various constituencies. The government, on the other hand,argued that a list with an overall ethnic balance was sufficient.

The debate over autochthonous rights was also closely tied to the issue of regional andterritorial autonomy and citizenship rights. Who qualified as an autochthon? Olinga arguedthat the constitution was silent on this crucial issue, leaving it to legal and political disputation.

Nevertheless, strident claims by so-called autochthons affected people’s access to land, tosettlement rights and to citizenship. Being an ‘outsider’ Olinga argued, was fast becoming a

badge of political exclusion as a result of regionalization and the reservation of some posts for autochthons only. ‘Mobile’ Cameroonian groups like the Hausa and the Bamileke weretherefore confronted with serious constraints on their citizenship rights.

In his final presentation, Olinga addressed the question of regionalization and the nation-state.He asserted that following French Jacobin administrative precedents, the unity of theCameroonian state was manifested in the centralization of the management of the country.

Olinga argued, however, that it was becoming increasingly important for the African state tolook closer at community level dynamics and this is what was fuelling the drive towardsregionalization. He suggested that this change had consequences, as there was an importantrelationship between the form of the state and the organization of the state. This was

particularly the case, he argued, in a situation where belonging to a territorial space and beingsubjected to the administration of that space was the first characteristic of being Cameroonian.

Olinga argued that from 1996, the Cameroonian state had been a decentralized united state, but this regionalism was largely administrative. Regions had no autonomy, they could makelaws, their decisions had to be approved by state agents, and they could be dismissed by thestate. Furthermore, the 10 administrative regions lacked sociological coherence, though there

were some important inter-regional dynamics between some of them. Olinga suggested thatregionalism was a vehicle for the integration of local chiefs into state institutions. Moreover,



24

the quest for regional balance in the state had led to the granting of special access to stateinstitutions to people from particular regions; under the Ahidjo presidency, special measureswere taken to absorb northerners into national administrative schools. In 1992, quotas for various regions were set for different regions and the retired military. Echoing some of the

problems with ‘federal character’ and ‘quota system’ in Nigeria, Olinga suggested that in

Cameroon, regional quotas had generated problems and stresses within the state; unequalaccess, favouritism, the lowering of standards, and frustration.

12. Does State Capacity Matter?

After these case studies, deliberations returned to one question of general concern andapplicability: the consequence of the intra-state challenges for the effectiveness and capabilityof the African state. Furthermore, the point was also made that more robust states may avoidor contain the challenges in the first place. My presentation on this theme explored therelevance of state capacity and leadership to the theme of the Institute, looking specifically atthe works of Englebert [2000] and Samatar [1997; 1999] and the contradictory experiences of

Botswana and Somalia. In his book, Englebert argues that what distinguishes Africa from therest of the world is the weak capacity of African states to respond to environmental, external,and market shocks. He argues that African states have proved too weak to design appropriate

policies and institutions to promote growth and a coherent state system. African states, heargues, have a propensity for bad policies and poor governance. He provides a raft of statisticsshowing that African states are under-performing, relative to the regions in the world. Heclaims that the tendency is to explain this failure of the state in Africa as a consequence of twothings: (1) the lack of trust and civic participation along with the weight of African traditionalcultures; and (2), ethnic heterogeneity. Englebert faults these two arguments, pointing out thatthey cannot help us to explain why some countries are doing better than others, when they areall subject to the similar cultural and ethnic dynamics. What distinguishes the success storiesfrom the failures, he argues, are two crucial things: (1) the development capacity of the state,and (2) its historical legitimacy.

The development capacity is the capacity to design and implement coherent and effective policies and extract the necessary resources for such a programme. States therefore have toraise revenue, spend it, regulate and control the activities of private agents and allocate scareresources to competing sectors of the economy. In particular, investments in education and

public infrastructure such as telecommunications are seen as very important. Englebert alsosupports the orthodox neo-liberal view that free markets are better for the developmentcapacity of the state. With respect to legitimacy, Englebert argues that the legitimacy of the

state relates to its endogenous content and its historical continuity; states with a higher pre-colonial residue are expected to be more legitimate than states with less. He argues that theAfrican state, often lacking in historical continuity and legitimacy, tries therefore to establishhegemony through patron-client networks or an instrumentalist legitimacy based onneopatrimonialism. Politics revolves around the struggle for spoils and plunder. The stateloses the capacity to design and implement policies and bureaucracies turn into empty shells.He argues that in states where precolonial forces were not destroyed, the modern state hadsubstantial social content and historical continuity which gave it legitimacy. Under suchconditions, a different style of politics was possible which emphasised development, and thisis what explains the different capacities of African states. Following Englebert’s logic, itwould be expected that Ethiopia would have state capacity. But his data does not bear this out.



25

Samatar’s work is an implicit criticism of Englebert’s economism and historical determinism.He compares the cases of Botswana and Somalia, two societies that started their post-colonialhistories with much in common in terms of their environment, their ethnic structure and their dependence on cattle. If anything, Samatar argues that Botswana gained independence in 1966under the worst of circumstances; its capital, Mafeking, was based on apartheid South African

soil and it was tied to the apartheid economy as a labour reserve and its currency was tied tothe Rand. Yet it was Botswana that succeeded in its nation-building project, while Somaliadisintegrated as a viable state. At independence in 1966, Botswana had a GNP per capita of less than $80; by 1996, this had risen to nearly $1,800. Samatar argues that the difference

between the two is that Botswana had a coherent ruling class with a clear vision of the societyit wanted to build. This might have been a capitalist project premised on severe inequalities insociety; it nevertheless had something in it for the ordinary people. The progress of the nation-state project in Botswana, even before diamonds were discovered, is a tribute to the coherence,vision and tenacity of the Botswana ruling class. In Somalia, on the other hand, the nationalistelite at independence soon fragmented and competed for power against each other. Themobilization of destructive clan sentiments arose as a consequence of this struggle for power.

Leadership and vision, rather than historical continuities are therefore the key to building statecapacity in Africa. Activists and policy-makers should address this question, rather than adoptEnglebert’s thesis that African states, lacking in historical continuity and legitimacy, should be‘reconfigured’ for better efficiency, even if it means compromising their sovereignty. Such adangerous proposition, especially with its implicit accent on the external agency, is pregnantwith numerous dangers, particular in this age of ‘regime change’.

13. Conclusion: Senegal and a Continuing African Dialogue

I have tried to sketch some of the central arguments presented at the Institute. What I have notdone is to reflect the intense debates some of these presentations generated; such an endeavour might require a full report of its own. Still, I want to emphasize that the presentations wereonly a framework around which vigorous debates took place. In the first place, an appointedlaureate led the discussion of each presentation. Secondly, many presentations, for instancethat on the Anglophone challenge in Cameroon, the discussion on taxation and state revenue,and that on the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria, elicited heated debates. Furthermore, apart from the

presentations and their associated discussions and debates, the programme also contained sixseminar presentations by laureates, covering a range of topics including a comparison of therole of Islam in Algeria and Senegal, the role of Libya, South Africa and Nigeria in theconstruction of a Pax Africana within the African state system, and the comparative impact of

ethnic structure and public policy in the development of the Tanzanian and the Nigerian states.These seminars were occasions for the laureates to develop their presentational skills as well.A substantial part of the Institute’s work was also taken up in the presentation and discussionof the individual research projects of the laureates. Revised versions of these projects were

prepared in the light of the peer reviews and final research reports from the laureates areexpected early in 2003.

The final element in the Institute’s work was the consideration of the situation of our hoststate, Senegal, within the context of the theme of the Institute. For this purpose, it was decidedto rely on active participants and observers within the Senegalese state system. The first forumon Senegal, attended by both Institute participants and CODESRIA staff, received

presentations from Iba Ndiaye Djadji, Professor of Letters at Cheikh Anta Diop University,Dakar, and spokesperson for the trade union federation, SUDES/CSA. A second presentation



26

was from Abdoulaye Elimane Kane, Professor of Philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop andspokesperson of the former ruling party in Senegal, the Parti Socialiste (PS). Iba Djadji arguedthat the Senegalese society and state faced an acute crisis manifested in the problems of thefishery sector, the then prevailing drought and its management, the management andremuneration of labour, and a general moral crisis in society. He argued that Senegalese trade

unions and workers had mobilized support for the ‘change’ coalition led by the current ruling party, the PDS. The unions had hoped that the cronyism and mismanagement of the PS would be addressed. Instead, Djadji argued, the ‘alternance’ or change of government from PS toPDS has not resulted in any change as far as ordinary Senegalese, particularly workers and

peasants were concerned. He suggested that the trade unions would have to continue fightingfor their rights if their needs were to be taken seriously by the state as merely voting parties inor out of office was not sufficient for taking care of their interests.

In his own contribution, Abdoulaye Kane sought to explain why the PS lost power in 2000after 40 years in power. In the course of a wide-ranging presentation which touched upon therole of African culture in development, the difference between written laws and social

practices, the role of marabouts in Senegalese politics, and the French presence within theSenegalese state system, Kane argued that the PS had tried very hard to manage a difficulteconomic and political situation, particularly before the 1994 devaluation of the CFA Franc.After 1994, the PS was actually recording some success in stabilizing the situation. The 2000election was lost, according to Kane, not because of any failure on the part of the PS, but

because of the extra-ordinary mobilization by the opposition in urban areas, largely fuelled bythe vocal support of the private radio stations. Kane also highlighted the importance of a

protest march by the opposition to the Internal Affairs ministry in the run up to the elections.In short, according to Kane, the PS lost the media war. Even so, the PS polled 42 percent inthe first round compared to the 31 percent by the opposition candidate. Kane also concurredwith Djadji that the ruling PDS government is mismanaging the economy; he expressed thehope that a leaner and more principled PS can take the fight to the PDS government. From

both presenters, it was obvious that constitutional means have largely become the means of resolving political confrontations in Senegalese public life.

The second forum on Senegal was devoted to the civil war raging in Casamance, a regionwhere the apparent civility of Senegalese political life seems to have broken down. The

presentation on Casamance was by Babacar Justin Ndiaye, a veteran journalist and author,currently on the staff of the Senegalese newspaper, Sud Quotidien. This was a highlyinformative and nuanced presentation. To cite only one example, Ndiaye pointed out theCasamance movement, MFDC, was formed even before the first incarnation of the PS was

formed in the run up to independence. He highlighted the controversy surrounding theunwritten accord that was said to have promised the MFDC independence in Casamance inreturn for support for the Senghorian party that latter became the PS. He also noted theincreasing Wolofization of Casamance culture, and the cultural prejudices against the so-called ‘Nyaks’ or non-sahelian Senegalese, of which the Diola in Casamance are a primetarget. He noted the increasing alienation of indigenous groups in Casamance from their landas a result of other Senegalese from the drought prone northern parts moving there. In short,

Ndiaye made a historical, economic, cultural and political case for the Casamance movementwithout necessarily endorsing its recourse to violence. He suggested that political negotiationscould resolve the issues involved, but regretted that the majority of Senegalese society

persisted in seeing the Casamance problem in terms of a military solution. The continued

delegitimation of long standing demands by the bulk of the Senegalese population, he argued,



27

lies at the root of the continued military challenge to the Senegalese state from Casamance.Professor Amadou Aly Dieng was an invaluable contributor to these and other debates.

The laureates returned to their respective countries to work on their individual projects. Theseranged from a consideration of the impact of the budgetary process on citizenship rights in

Morocco, to the mobilization of an ethnic Kikuyu militia in Kenya. Another project looked atcommunal conflict in Nigeria, while another considered the global economic context for state

building in Africa. Uniting all these projects was the theme of state building and its internalchallenges in contemporary Africa and when the fruits of these research efforts are published,they will, no doubt be contributing to an important African dialogue.



Bibliography:

Ake, Claude, 1982, Social Science as Imperialism: the Theory of Political

Development , Ibadan University Press.

Baker, Bruce, 2000, Escape From Domination in Africa: Political Disengagement &its Consequences, James Currey, Oxford.

Bayart, Jean-Francois, 1993, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, Longman,London.

Bayart, Jean-Francois, S. Ellis and B. Hibou, 1999, The Criminalization of the State in Africa, James Currey, Oxford.

Breuilly, John, 1993, 2nd Edition, Nationalism and the State, Manchester UniversityPress, Manchester.

Englebert, Pierre, 2000, State Legitimacy and Development in Africa, Lynne Rienner,Boulder, Colorado.

Flybjerg, Bent, 2001, On Making Social Science: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How

It Can Succeed Again, Cambridge University Press. Goody, Jack, 1971, Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa, Hutchinson

University Library for Africa, London.Hamalai, Ladi, 1994, ‘Distribution of Industrial Enterprises in Nigeria and National

Unity’, in A. Mahdi et al, eds., Nigeria: The State of the Nation and the way

Forward , Arewa House, Kaduna.Herbst, Jeffrey, 2001, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority

and Control , Princeton University Press, Princeton.Hirschman, Albert, 1970, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,

Organizations and States, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.Ranger, Terence, 1985, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A

Comparative Study, James Currey, London.Reno, William, 1998, Warlord politics and African states, Lynne Rienner, Boulder,

Colorado.Samatar, Abdi, 1999, An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial

Legacy in Botswana Development , Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. Samatar, Abdi, 1997, ‘Leadership and ethnicity in the making of African state

models: Botswana versus Somalia’ Third World Quarterly, Vol 18 No. 4. Smith, Abdullahi, 1987, A Little New Light: Selected Writings of Abdullahi Smith,

Vol. 1, The Abdullahi Smith Centre for Historical Research, Zaria, Nigeria.Whitaker, Jr., CS., 1970, The Politics of Tradition: Continuity and Change in

Northern Nigeria, 1946-1966 , Princeton University Press, Princeton.Young, Crawford, 1994, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, YaleUniversity Press, New Haven.

Yusuf, Bangura, nd. (2001?), ‘Ethnic Structure and Governance of the Public Sector:African and other Experiences’, An Issues Paper, UNRISD, Geneva.

mustapha 2002 intrastate challenges to the nation state project in africa

Documents