Oferta hídrica subterránea

The impact of colonialism on state formation Africa has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (Young, C., 1997), (Mamdani, 1996), hence we will confine ourselves to a brief summary of its key features in this section. In short, it is apparent that borders were primarily established in accordance with European geostrategic interests, as opposed to indigenous groupings, ensuring that emergent African states would comprise an eclectic mix of peoples. This heterogeneity was then accentuated by the administrative structure of ‘Indirect Rule’, which demarcated the governance of ‘tribes’ to traditional authorities, and shaped colonial territories into conglomerates of ethnically aligned, locally focused factions. At times, European powers would favour particular tribal groups and accord them a disproportionately high share of a country’s wealth (Sandbrook, 1985, p.50). This fostered a degree of competitiveness between factions, which proved to be an unfortunate precedent for many postcolonial states.

Governance within the tribal entities was carried out according to colonial perceptions of African social organisation, whereby a sacrosanct chief would autocratically rule over his kin-group. This resulted in the empowerment of those individuals whom colonial governments identified as ‘traditional authorities’, when in reality many customary political structures deviated radically from this simplified model (Lockwood, 2005, p.70). All colonial African territories were socially differentiated into chiefs/‘big-men’ and their subjects, in accordance with this division of power, and, once established, as with the case of inter-tribal rivalry, this arrangement would prove to be a lasting one.

A further mode of socioeconomic division that resulted from the colonial period was between rural and urban communities. Mamdani (1996, p.20) described colonial states as “bifurcated”, in the sense that markets operated differently in rural and urban areas. In the former zones markets were constrained by customary law, whereas in the latter they could generally operate without such obstructions, in accordance with modern capitalist principles. This view is corroborated by Sandbrook (1985, p.43), who asserted that colonial African societies comprised both peasant and capitalist elements, although primarily the former, given that a dominant middle class failed to emerge. An educated, wealthy, indigenous minority did come to the fore in urban areas, but in many cases their wealth stemmed from achieving privileged positions within the colonial bureaucracy, rather than through entrepreneurial activities. As Tangri (1999, p.8) described, “embryonic” bourgeois and proletarian classes did emerge in cities prior to independence, but were vastly outnumbered by the rural peasant populations, who divided their labour between both market and subsistence activities. However, as will later be discussed, the new African political elites, for whom the accumulative logic of entrepreneurship had to take a back seat to the exigencies of politics, most fatally undermined the entrenchment of liberal capitalism.

It was mainly from within this educated urban ‘class’ that independence movements emerged. They were in fact the only credible candidates to continue governing the colonial political entities, given that many customary chiefs lacked a Western education and were primarily focused upon local issues. Western colonial powers had only really accepted the inevitability of African independence by the end of the Second World War. However, due to the rise of radical nationalist movements in the late 1940s, they were pressured into relinquishing control more quickly than they felt was prudent. Hence in many cases, such as Ghana and Kenya, sovereignty was promptly, and perhaps prematurely, handed over to the more moderate nationalists – favoured urban elites etc, in the hope that they would prevent major instability or full scale civil war by maintaining the fundamental structure of African polities, in terms of their territorial boundaries and Western-style administrative and political institutions (Allen, 1995, p.303-304). The former colonial rulers believed that the greatest possible degree of political continuity should be sought, in order to provide the best foundation for new states to successfully develop under their own steam (Doornbos, 1990, p.182).

At this point it is worth emphasising precisely what these new conservative, nationalist, African rulers had inherited. They were accorded sovereign status over decentralised and partially devolved, hierarchically structured, confederations of ethnically and linguistically differentiated groups. In most cases there was no history of national cohesion or consciousness beyond that which had been forged in the relatively short struggle for independence. Moreover, as Sandbrook (1985) has pointed out, in colonial and postcolonial Africa ‘ethnicity’ was akin to what Westerners now understand ‘national’ consciousness to be, i.e. “a sense of cultural uniqueness and determination to guard mutual interests” (Sandbrook, 1985, p.51). Therefore, ‘citizens’ of these new states were primarily allied to their ethnic factions and subservient to chiefs ahead of any national government. In sociopolitical terms, ordinary Africans were subjects dependent upon the benevolence of paternalistic leaders, and were entirely unfamiliar with the practice of exercising civil rights within a constitutional nation-state. In effect,

the new rulers of Africa assumed control of political apparatuses that were conditioned to function in a profoundly different manner from that dictated by their new official constitutions.

As Chabal (1994, p.75) pointed out, the colonial state was also a “conquest state”, relying on both collaboration and coercion to maintain its grip on power. The withdrawal of the threat of European force hence necessitated that a new political compromise be forged with ethnic and other social units (i.e. one that did not require military prowess) in order to secure and maintain loyalty to the national cause. Moreover, nationalists had made promises of material reward to their supporters, in exchange for the backing of both their independence movements and subsequent campaigns to attain sovereignty (Allen, 1995, p.304). Therefore, it was apparent that power and political survival in postcolonial Africa would rest upon the new rulers’ abilities to deliver improvements in material conditions. As will be explained below, both the structural economic constraints faced by these new states, as well as the timeliness with which remuneration in exchange for support was expected to arrive, greatly undermined the potentiality for achieving a betterment of material conditions via long-term investment and productivity growth. Rather, regimes were impelled to pursue short-term sources of revenue for redistribution to key clients. This would prove to be the fundamental political logic around which African states would revolve.

The legitimation of sovereignty by the practice of patronage was certainly not a postcolonial innovation. As Chabal (1994, p.172-173) described, colonial rule had relied upon striking a balance between coercion and patronage. Therefore, the new nationalist leaders entered a political system with a tradition of clientelistic relations, and which in fact comprised an extensive network of patron-client partnerships. Traditional leaders or local big-men had historically acted as both clients of the state and patrons of their constituencies, and this manifested itself in an overall dissemination of material rewards/personal favours from top to bottom, in exchange for

an upward movement of political support (Bratton and Van De Walle, 1994, p.458). In the words of Tangri (1999, p.10):

Political leaders have allocated public resources and amenities to key intermediaries and their ethnic clienteles in ways designed to fashion a following and ensure political support.

The new African rulers took the reins of a clientelistic system of governance. In order to secure sovereignty, they forged new political coalitions via the strategic use of investment, public sector employment and outright bribery, so that a sufficient proportion of their countries’ ethnic groups could be co-opted. However, nationalist elites sought more than simply the management of a patronage system, as this position was a precarious one. The low levels of economic development, combined with the low extractive capacities of most African governments (in terms of the effective collections of taxes, licence fees, tariffs etc), meant that an adequate supply of revenue to nurture the patronage system was by no means guaranteed (Van De Walle, 2001, p.53). Furthermore, nationalist elites had promised prosperity and economic development in order to elicit support and short-term political unity, hence their long-term legitimacy was staked upon the betterment of material conditions (Chabal, 1994, p.79-80) Therefore, rulers sought to assume centralised control of the economy, in order to augment their power and propagate economic growth. This was in keeping with development ideologies of the time, which asserted that a strong state was required to orchestrate the growth process (Sandbrook, 1993, p.2). In the words of Le Vine (1980, p.666):

The post-independence elites and rulers of Africa quickly reached for those tools that promised the most rapid construction of centralised power, including not only the structures of the modern bureaucratic state, but also the traditional mechanisms of legitimacy, social control, patrimonial rule.

The following section will outline what actually emerged from this centralising mission. This will be achieved by examining some of the prevailing characteristics of postcolonial regimes, which came to exhibit a form of government that has been termed ‘neopatrimonial’.