Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African History (Vail)

The essays in this volume attempt to remedy this situation by

placing the study of ethnicity within the unfolding history of a set of
societies which are genuinely comparable

- Takes on ideological approach to ethnicity in the African nation.

- Right: Expectation that tribalism would disappear through
modernization and migration away from the ‘rural’ sectors, and would
be replaeced by ‘nationoriented’ consciousness which underpins
progressive development. “Africa would be a continent of new
Switzerlands”
- Left: Believed in the breakdown of traditional societies by the forces
of new ‘state-sponsored’ welfare socialism. “Africa would be a
continent of new Yugoslavias”
BUT
- When the anti-colonial message became irrelevant, nationalist
‘thought’ was transformed into a gloss for the manipulation of the
institutions of the new nation-states on behalf of the ruling political
parties, in a succession of one party states.
- As a result of this quick reining in of nationalism's popular thrust
within the bureaucratic structures of essentially artificial post-colonial
states, ethnic or regional movements rooted in the colonial era had
fresh life breathed into them and came to be seen as attractive
alternatives to the dominant political parties with their demands for
uncomplaining obedience from the governed. In effect, the
revitalization of 'tribalism' was structured into the one-party system by
the very fact of that system's existence.
- Ethnicity became the home of the opposition in states where class
consciousness was largely undeveloped.  Hindered state-building
efforts.
- Ethnicity's future, even in countries such as South Africa, where
industrialization has proceeded further than anywhere else on the
continent, seems secure because it is likely to provide an important
focal point for whatever opposition to the dominant political classes
that might exist.
- With its power to divide people politically, then, and with its sturdy
resistance to erosion by the ideological forces of national or class
consciousness, ethnicity came to demand close—albeit it often very
grudging—attention after decades of neglect.
Revisiting Nationalism and Ethnicity In Africa (Young)
The idea of nationalism, whose African form is often regarded
by European interpreters as lacking the deep ancestral and primordial
rooting of its Eurasian versions, I will
argue, has been underestimated.

Although anti
-colonial nationalism as mobilizing doctrine was clearly visible, much less
evident was its possible naturalization as state ideology of territorial
solidarity.
Ethnicity at once codified and constructed yet covered and concealed by
colonial autocracy, offered an even more inscrutable itinerary. The goal of
this paper is to examine the evolving forms and uses of nationalism and
ethnicity in Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century

Many of the leading students of nationalism, such as Anthony Smith or

Walker Connor, dismissed territorial nationalism in Africa as
inauthentic, lacking the ultimate ethnic origin around which the constitutive
myths of shared history and ancestry took form. In taking stock of the idea
of nationalism in Africa fifteen years ago, I found that the discursive
energies mobilized by the struggle for independence had dissipated, and that
nationalist thought appeared moribund.
Puzzle 1:
I would suggest that the persistence of a kind of
territorial attachment, even in the face of state decline or collapse,
demonstrates that state nationalism is more deeply implanted than many
had believed. To my mind, this is best characterized as “banal nationalism,”
naturalized at a sub-conscious level.
Puzzle 2:
The answer to the second puzzle – the reticence of ethnicity before the
temptations of nationalism – is
partly found in the basic nature of cultural consciousness in Africa. The
fluidity and complexity of ethnicity
inhibit any tendency to assert maximal rights. In comparison with ethic
forms elsewhere, which have travelled the ethnonational route, ethnicity in
Africa tends to have less highly elaborated cultural ideologies; its
primordial dimensions are more weakly affirmed .In coming to terms
with their multi-cultural reality, states have become more sophisticated in
accommodating their diversity

However, contrary trends are observable. Some major ethnic groups may
well become ethnonational. Such groups as the Zulu in South Africa, the
Ganda in Uganda, the Yoruba and Igbo in Nigeria, the Oromo in Ethiopia
have well-developed cultural ideologies, and come close in their recent
political claims to embracing an ethn- national agenda. Yet it remains
striking that demands for ethnic secession are rarely heard in Africa.
Separatist movements almost invariably base their claims upon an existing
administrative subdivision: the former Eastern Region for Biafra, Casamance
in Senegal, and the three southern provinces for separatists in Sudan,
Katanga, and the Anglophone region of Cameroon.

Ethnic Politics in Africa: Change and policies, anthropological studies, and

Continuity
MARINA OTTAW
African governments remain unwilling to
confront the implications of
this worldwide surge in manifestations of
ethnic nationalism. Such an attitude
is particularly dangerous at present because
the political change under
way almost everywhere in Africa- a change
optimistically dubbed a
"process of democratization"-has made
ethnic tensions more acute in
many countries by destroying the
mechanisms that have regulated ethnic
relations and kept conflict in check in the
past.
This chapter seeks to analyze the changing
nature of ethnic politics in
Africa and the broader trends of '?!'.hich .!!
is a _part. It als£_argue1 that an
acceptance of the -inevitability-and indeed
the Jegitimacy-of ethnic identitie~
is a precondition to finding means of
preventing violent conflicts su_s;h
as the one that devastated Rwanda and those
that are threatening similar
catastrophes in several other countries.
Nationalism was seen as a European
phenomenon,
tribalism as an African one. – did not
acknowledge the African ‘natural group’
as the basis of the nation-state.
In Africa, a combination of socioeconomic
change, missionary language
deliberate attempts by the
colonial authorities to establish a workable
administrative framework
caused Africans to move beyond narrower
identification with a lineage or a
clan and to see themselves as members of
large and newly invented tribes.
However, while striving to promote a
common national-level identity
among their citizens at home, the colonial
powers usually sought to keep
Africans divided into separate tribes.
Tribes are not ‘primoridal’ and can be
changed (page 3)
But respect for colonial boundaries had a
less-noticed domestic dimension as well,
with
authoritarian implications: African states
were telling their citizens that
they had no right to self-determination.
Igbos were told not only by the
Nigerian government, but also by the
overwhelming majority of other
African co~ntries, that no ~atter how bad
things might be in Nigeria, they
had no choice but to remam part of the
country.
Some countries, particularly
those blessed with the absence of a
numerically or economically dominant
group, such as Tanzania, experienced little
ethnic tension.
Ethnic nationalism has once again become
salient, destroying the optimistic
assumptions prevalent in the 1960s that it
would fade and be replaced by a less
threatening civic nationalism
At the extreme, there are
countries like Somalia and Liberia, where no
central authority controlled
even the capital city. But there is also a gray
area, encompassing countries
in which a central government still
nominally exists, but controls only a
limited area and sees its authority and
legitimacy challenged even there.
Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda, and Zaire
(now the Democratic Republic
of the Congo) all fall in this category.
The conflicts that have caused these
countries to collapse, or to come
close to it, are not purely ethnic or "tribal,"
in the sense of reflecting blind
ancestral hatreds that spontaneously burst
into violence. Such pure ethnic
conflicts do not exist anywhere. But all of
these conflicts have, or have
acquired, a strong, and in some cases
blatant, ethnic dimension that cannot
be ignored.