ELEMENTO SUBJETIVO DEL TIPO

A THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF THE

CRISES IN AFRICA

"Africa is dying. The economy of our continent is lying in ruins. Our ancient continent is now on the brink of disaster".

Edem Kodjo OAU Under Secretary 1 978.

Chapter two conceptualised the CrIses In Africa in the context of the disastrous

circumstances of Africa's socioeconomic and political malaise. It argued that Africa's

crises are more complex than the ordinary everyday conceptualisation of the term

crisis suggests. In this chapter the causes of the crises in Africa are critically analysed.

It is argued that the causes of the crises are rooted in Africa's colonial past, and only

through an exposition of the structure of the colonial exploitation of Africa will the

root causes of the crises be understood. The crises in Africa are grouped into four broad areas: sociopolitical, economic, the environment-drought-famine nexus and the

AIDS pandemic.

5. 1 The Crisis of Political Instability: The Nature and Causes of The Crisis

Political instability is the norm rather than the exception in modern Africa. Only a very small minority of governments have been replaced by peaceful transition and only

a few leaders have relinquished power voluntarily. It is estimated that in the first 25 years of independence, more than seventy leaders in 29 African countries were

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forcibly removed from office (Winchester 1 987, p302), and by 1 980 only five of the 29 leaders who had signed the charter setting up the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1 963 were still in office. Seventeen had been overthrown in military coups, another three killed in bloody military coups, and four died of 'natural causes' (Gavshon 1 98 1 , p64). Apart from these there are the hundreds, and possibly thousands, of coup attempts that failed, secessionist wars, cross-border conflicts and inter-ethnic conflicts and genocide. This section examines the social and historical context of the crisis of political instability in Africa. It looks at the effects of colonialism and analyses both the endogenous causes and the global context of the economic and political linkages between Africa and the metropolitan colonial and imperial powers. The examples discussed are mainly from Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa in line with the overall scope of the thesis.

5. 1 1 The Legacy of Colonialism: 1 The Creation of Nation States

European colonisation of Africa bequeathed an explosive legacy on the African continent and its peoples. The arbitrary, often illogical partitioning of the continent into chunks and bits between the colonial powers split peoples and concentrated diverse and often hostile tribal groups into territories which ultimately became sovereign states, thus making internal and trans-border strife almost inevitable. Colonial boundaries were set by extending the hinterland of the trade posts established by the commercial establishments from the colonising country, such as the British Royal Niger Company, either by military conquest or mutual agreement between the colonising powers.

The re-organisation of the mosaic of the ethnic nationalities into single territorial and institutional framework of nation-states created the recipe for the crisis of political instability in the post-independence period. As Gavshon observes:

"any map showing the major ethnic, language and kinship groupings in Africa today illustrates the insensitivities and absurdities displayed by the colonisers who, beyond the rhetoric of their 'civilising missions', in reality made sure that 20th century Africa would become a setting for conflict. The contrasts shouted their messages of inequity and iniquity".

Gavshon 1 98 1 , p35.

The inter-ethnic strife in African countries must therefore be understood in the context of the creation of colonial entities to service European colonial territorial ambitions. That these entities have survived intact for four decades after independence is a remarkable achievement.

The pre-colonial political arrangement of Africa was characterised by decentralised disparate independent tribal authorities. This indigenous structure of legitimate power and authority was destroyed by centralisation of power through the amalgamation of disparate groups essentially for colonial administrative convenience. After independence the ethnic groupings became the basis for political organisation because there were no other reference groups such as social classes or ideology. Ethnicity or tribalism became the primary source of conflict over national resource allocation, rekindling historic animosities with devastating consequences such as the genocide in Rwanda and the civil war in Nigeria. While in Angola the roots of indigenous conflict was the division between the Bakongo who constituted the power base for the FNLA, the Ovimbundu in the southern and eastern plateau region who supported Sivimbi's UNITA and the Mbundu, the power base of the MPLA (Gavshon 1 98 1 , chapter 1 0) .

On top of these divisions a system of social stratification was superimposed on the Angolan society, where the mulattos (children of cross-cultural marriages, between white and black) , were higher than the ordinary black, and then the black population was again categorised into assimilados and the ordinary folk. (An assimilado is a person who behaves like a white person. To be considered an assimilado a black must have some basic education, have a job, pay their taxes and be law abiding). Thus, apart from being divided on tribal and ethnic lines, Portuguese colonialism imposed a system of colour, class and social distinction which discouraged the development of a national consciousness and inter-ethnic co-operation between the rival ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups. At the time of the struggle for independence these cultural, ethnic and social distinctions were assiduously perpetrated by the Portuguese colonialists in the system of divide and rule which fractured the independence movement and disabled the post-independent nation crippled by twenty years of civil war in the post-independence period.

Similarly, the scramble for positions in the 'Horn of Africa' was to take advantage of its strategic position. Located at the junction of two continents, Asia and Africa, the Horn is a prized possession. It has port facilities in the gulf of Aden and access to the Indian Ocean. The colonial powers thus parceled out chunks of territory amongst themselves to satisfy their territorial and strategic ambitions. This partition entrenched indigenous and imported animosities of the tribal groups in the countries of the Horn, and set off a process of change and frontier fixing that continues in the 1 990s. Before the colonial era a loose alliance of Somali tribes and clans wandered freely in search of pastures and water for their herd. The British were the first to arrive, and their initial desire was to secure posts for regular supplies to their garrisons in the Middle East.

They were closely followed by the French who, unable to convince the British to share facilities at Aden, set themselves up at Djibouti. The Italian dream of an empire in Africa brought them into direct conflict with the British and the French, but their bid to overrun Ethiopia resulted in crushing defeat and rebuff at Adowa in 1 896 (Davidson 1 994, p 1 83). But the seed of political crisis and regional instability had been planted as distinct, often rival, tribal groups were amalgamated to form territorial units, or culturally homogenous and distinct tribal groups were split up between two, three or in some cases even four different countries, as in the case of the Somali (Nzongola-Ntalaja 1 987, pp. 65-66). In the post-colonial period, the importance of the Horn, particularly its proximity to key sea routes linking the oil producing countries of the Middle East with the US and Europe, meant that political crisis there inevitably had super-power involvement. Hence, as Chege suggests, the crisis of political instability in the region must also be understood in the context of the activities of super-power rivalry:

"Conflict in the Horn of Africa must be seen as a confluence of two forces: local and international. The local input is the violence arising from attempts by states in the region to forge nations within boundaries which are incompatible with the existing mosaic of nationalities in the region. The international input is the super-power rivalry, essentially in the quest of national self interest. The Soviet Union promotes its credibility as a super­ power by arming clients while paying little more than rhetorical attention to their socialist content. The United States camouflages its control of energy resources in the greater region in terms of promoting regional stability (that is opposing revolutionary changes) and counteracting Soviet military threats in the Gulf, Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean. The dialectic of internal causes and international intervention is one in which alterations in one induce changes in the other. The social and economic costs to the people of the Horn of Africa have been tremendous."

In the post-colonial and post-cold war period, the super-power element of conflict has been withdrawn. However, the local causes that Chege refers to are still very much present. This is the insurgence of irredentist minority groups in the various countries, such as the Tigreans and the Oromo in Ethiopia and their struggle for self determination, and Somalia's claim over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. These are minority ethnic groups which were put under single territorial frameworks without consideration for their peculiar socio-cultural associations. The result is their common historical experience of political and administrative neglect and cultural oppression in their respective countries. The explosion of long bottled-up feelings of powerlessness by minority groups in the nation-states has resulted in long drawn civil wars that dominate the political landscape of post-independent Africa.

Not only did colonialism fetter disparate groups into unholy marriages, cantankerous divorce was invariably written in the marriage contracts through colonial policies that entrenched animosities between regional and ethnic groups within countries. In the Sudan for example, the physical and socioeconomic differences between the north and the south were entrenched by British colonial policies of divide and rule. The north, made up predominantly of Muslim Arabic-speaking tribes, dominated the south which was largely Christian and non-Arabic black Africans. To control the emergence and spread of anti-British nationalism from the south to the north, the British made the south a 'closed district' in the 1 920s. This meant that trade, cultural and social exchange such as marriage between the northerners and the southerners was strictly forbidden and illegal. Coupled with this the exploitative disposition of colonialism created a dualistic economy. North Sudan was economically developed while south Sudan was neglected because the colonial political economy was implemented in such

a way that only those regions which were economically useful received socioeconomic infrastructure. North Sudan's historical and economic links with Egypt were useful to British imperialism. It was developed and administered by the elite Sudan Service, while the South was run by military officers with little investment in social and

economIc infrastructure. In blatant disregard for post-independence national harmony, the British made Arabic the national language and Islam the state religion in the post-independence unitary state system. Because of the economic and educational backwardness of the south, Arab civil servants were generally the only ones qualified to occupy the higher ranks in the administration of the south. The south naturally resented this because it was effectively Arab colonialism. At independence in 1 956, Sudan was therefore fatally divided. Although independence was attained without the bloodshed such as experienced in Algeria, the two groups in the country raised as mutually antagonistic, divided by language and religion and a dual economy could not realistically be expected to bury their differences and animosities of the past and work together. The long civil war that started even before independence continues today.

The most brutal and perhaps the most vivid in our consciousness, is the genocide and the reprisal killings in Rwanda in 1 993 and 1 994, and the ethnic conflict in Burundi. Both are the direct result of colonial policies in the two countries. In Rwanda, German colonisation followed by Belgium administration under United Nations mandate, maintained a political structure that encouraged the minority Tutsi ethnic group to dominate the majority Hutu. The· Belgian administration discriminated against the majority Hutu in education, participation in the administration and the armed forces, in favour of the Tutsi (John 1 986, pp. 69- 70). In the period leading up to independence in 1 962, the Belgians shifted their support from the Tutsi minority to

the Hutu majority in retaliation for the rise of Tutsi nationalism against the Belgian colonial administration. The formation of the National Rwandese Union (UNAR) and the revolutionary political agitation demanding immediate disengagement of Belgian colonial control in Rwanda brought the Tutsi in direct conflict with the colonial authorities. The ensuing political conflict degenerated into ethnic killings between 1 959 and 1 962 as the colonial administration attempted to manipulate tribal tensions and conflict to its advantage. The Hutu-Ied post-independence government did not last and the social and ethnic tension continued to fester until the explosion of 1 993- 1 994.

The sequence of events described above is repeated in most African countries, East, West, North and South. The consequences have been devastating both in terms of human lives and economic disintegration. Virtually every one of Africa's 53 countries has been affected by some form of internal civil strife in the post-independence period, ranging from secessionist wars to cross border conflicts, all these set against a rather promising background when it is remembered that 40 of the 53 African countries achieved independence without violence.

5. 1 2 The Legacy of Colonialism: 2 The Heritage of One-Party Rule

It has been argued that Africa's crisis of political instability is also the direct result of the colonial legacy of suppressing opposition movements Ake 1 993; Gavshon 1 98 1 ) . Despite claims of the civilising mission of colonialism and the established multi-party system in the metropolitan countries, the political structure of the colonial system in fact embodied single party arrangements (Gavshon 1 98 1 , p36) . Colonial administration did not actually implement the refined democratic practices of the

metropolitan parliaments in the administration of the African colonies. Instead they imposed rigid frameworks which precluded political opposition which fell outside the guidelines drawn by the colonial administration. Those African nationalists who operated outside the boundaries set by colonialism, who gave voice to nationalism, risked imprisonment or even exile. There was, therefore, no established basis for broad popular participation in the political process or public policy. As Gavshon observes, the legacy of the colonial heritage was such that in the years leading up to independence:

"it became almost a precondition for aspiring African nationalist leaders to spend part of their apprenticeship behind bars or banishment. Ben Bella of Algeria, Habib Bourrgiba of Tunisia and Morocco's Sultan Mohammed the V, were all locked up or exiled by the French. The British did the same with Ghana's Kwame Nkruma, Jomo Kenyata of Kenya and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda before each became president of their country. Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of Congo, was released from prison in order to attend the

constitutional conference that preceded independence in 1 960".

Gavshon 1 98 1 , p37.

Much more recently Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, the latter the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, and Nelson Mandela, the President of South Africa experienced a similar fate. They were all exiled from their respective countries and forced into the bush in order to undertake independence struggle. In the case of Mandela, he was put away for 2 7 years, incarcerated on Robben Island for life before being released at the age of 70 years to lead his country to multi racial reconciliation and majority rule, becoming the President of a democratic South Africa at the age 74 years in April 1 994.

Political opposition under colonial rule was therefore, an illegal act, and the colonial administrative system inherited at independence was set up to subjugate and not to serve the citizenry (Harden 1 990, p226) . The heirs to the seat of power at

independence naturally assumed that this IS the norm of democratic practice.

Winchester reports that at the end of the first decade of independence only the Gambia and Somalia had multi-party political systems (Winchester 1 986, p300) . In 1 98 3 only 29 per cent of African countries had multi-party political systems, although there would be serious questions about the methodology used in defining multi-partyism. It would be hardly appropriate for example to regard the apartheid system in South Africa at that time as a plural-party system when opposition was rigorously suppressed with military force. The relevant point however, is the fact that the political tradition of distrust for opposition and leaning towards single-party dictatorships was established by colonial administration and persists in the post-independence period.

Having tried the Westminster parliamentary system of multi-party democracy and failed, the majority of African nations have moved to adopt a system of uni-party presidential system of government. They contend that the single-party system suits better the basic African traditional form of government by which decisions are reached through consensus, a system where all groups are involved in government and no one stands out formally in 'opposition' to the 'government' of the community. In the traditional African system of government debates lead to decision making revolved around issues not personalities. Uni-partism or the 'single-party' system is therefore more responsive to the question of social solidarity and its ideology and enables social integration to be accomplished in a manner which optimises popular participation and stability. Winchester summarises the arguments thus:

"Sensitive to external criticism in particular, one-party regimes have gone to great lengths to justify the elimination of competitive party politics. They have pointed out, for example, that in most cases the nationalist party that led their countries to independence became the majority party or ruling party when power was transferred, and it has been

argued that they therefore truly represent the will of the people. One-party regimes further argued that the crises of poverty, illiteracy and underdevelopment facing African countries at independence are analogous to crisis situations which other countries have had to face and which have prompted even western democracies to circumscribe democratic practices and civil liberties for a time. African leaders are cognizant of