Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics 9781626371217

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SUBNATIONALISM IN AFRICA

SUBNATIONALISM IN AFRICA Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics Joshua B. Forrest

Published in the United States of America in 2004 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2004 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved by the publisher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forrest, Joshua. Subnationalism in Africa : ethnicity, alliances, and politics / Joshua B. Forrest. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58826-227-8 (alk. paper) 1. Regionalism—Africa. 2. Africa—Politics and government—1960– . 3. Africa—Ethnic relations. 4. Ethnicity—Political aspects—Africa. I. Title. JQ1873.5.R43F67 2004 320.54'096—dc21 2003047048 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

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List of Maps

1 The Rise of Subnationalism in Africa

1

2 The Historical Context

25

3 The Contemporary Context

53

4 Cultural Mosaics

77

5 Persistent Regionalism

105

6 Secession Achieved

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7 Rebelling Alone

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8 Leaders and Rebels

175

9 Reclaiming the Kingdom

195

10 Back Toward the Future

213

11 Reconstructing African Polities

235

Bibliography Index About the Book

255 273 279

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Maps

Cameroon Côte d’Ivoire Mozambique Sudan Senegal and Casamance Democratic Republic of the Congo Eritrea Somaliland and Somalia Ethiopia Nigeria, 1966 Angola Namibia South Africa Ghana Ugandan Kingdoms and Kingdom Claimants Nigeria

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62 63 64 79 89 107 134 141 155 160 177 183 202 218 221 225

1 The Rise of Subnationalism in Africa

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his study investigates the rise of subnationalism in contemporary Africa, focusing on the process of political mobilization by regionally based forces. Subnationalist movements aim to widen the degree of political autonomy of a particular region, achieve outright territorial autonomy within an existing nation-state, or secede from that nation-state and establish a new nation. Although there are as yet few examples of outright secession in Africa, it is the argument of this study that a growing tendency toward regional assertion and autonomy seeking is gradually posing a significant challenge to African nation-states. I argue that in analyzing the mobilization of subnationalist movements, it is crucial to distinguish between uni-ethnic and interethnic forms of regional autonomy seeking. Uni-ethnic movements are based on alliances created among activists pertaining to a single ethnic group, while interethnic movements pursue regional autonomy on the basis of alliances among activists from two or more such groups. The alliance building aspect of uni-ethnic and interethnic movements represents an important and overlooked aspect of the study of subnationalism. I further suggest that while colonial states in Africa reshaped the structure of macro-level politics and often transformed patterns of social identity, in a number of regions the political basis of mobilization reflects considerable consistency with precolonial patterns of alliance building. In Chapter 2, I argue that collaborative political behavior in precolonial times—among villages, localities, groups, leaders, and polities—provides a historical and cultural subtext for 1

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the assertion of regional autonomy (the term subtext is further discussed below). In contemporary times, these older forms of collaboration are becoming increasingly manifested through panterritorial subnationalism. In this respect, cultural patterns of social behavior provide an overlooked but important guide to understanding the nature of today’s collaborative politics. At the same time, this study makes clear that alliance building and precolonial traditions cannot explain the rise of these autonomyseeking movements; nor can they adequately account for these movements’ expansion. An accurate assessment of the emergence of African subnationalism must underline four overarching factors that were especially manifest during the colonial period, as well as a number of more particularistic elements that emerged after independence and help to explain these movements’ expansion. The four overarching causative factors are a history of state intervention and constructivist manipulation of regional affairs, long-term economic inequities that reflect a materialist influence on movement formation, individuals’ conscious or ascriptive adherence to ethnic or regional identity patterns, and the instrumentalist leadership of movement elites. When ascriptive and instrumentalist political behavior coincides with the evolution of constructivist and materialist factors, the conditions for subnationalist movement mobilization are especially favorable. Ascriptive adherence, instrumentalist maneuvering, colonially engineered favoritism in the treatment of particular regions and ethnic groups, and territorially inequitable redistributive policies all have been factors, to various degrees, in the generation of stateregional tensions and have helped to lay the political groundwork for the emergence of autonomy-seeking movements. These four overarching processes help us to understand in a general sense why subnationalist movements emerge, while precolonial cultural patterns provide a subtextual guide to the behavior of many subnationalist actors. However, additional factors specific to particular social contexts, most of which emerged in the postcolonial period, must be taken into account if we are to fully explain the growth and increasing impact of these movements. In Chapter 3, I make clear that alterations in the international state system, a weakening of infrastructural and political ties between central states and regional territories, improvements in rebels’ organizational capacity and in their ability to respond effectively to locally specific social expectations all proved critical elements in the spread of autonomyseeking movements in recent decades. My analysis suggests that uniethnic and interethnic subnationalist movements that expand and

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endure tend to be characterized by a high organizational capacity and the ability to adapt to regional preferences and measure up to popular expectations. This synchronization between movements and local societies, through which locally legitimate leadership structures are respected and are fitted into regional patterns of interpersonal and intergroup interaction, is a postcolonial development that reflects increasing sophistication on the part of movement leaders. These particularistic changes are important to emphasize, for they direct our attention to social and local contexts and to movement actors’ behavior rather than emphasizing broad socioeconomic, historical, or institutional factors alone. The full panoply of overarching and particularistic factors that help to explain the rise and expansion of subnationalism in Africa reflects influences from both “above” and “below,” that is, the influence of larger political actors such as the state, as well as influence that results from the micro-level behavior of regional organizations and actors. Indigenous political culture helps to provide a crucial subtext to our appreciation of the rise of African subnationalism. Cultural variables may in some cases help to create a supportive environment for subnationalism, especially where collaborative political exchanges have proved predominant in past epochs. I use the term subtext to suggest that political culture is not more determinative than the four overarching factors; nor is it necessarily more influential than specific postcolonial developments such as weakening state-society linkages and improvements in rebels’ organizational capacity. Rather, the influence of core indigenous values and precolonially derived cultural patterns can, in a general sense, provide indirect support in key moments of autonomy-seeking movements’ development for certain types of exchanges and collaborations that prove important to those movements’ expansion. Thus, attention to recent political changes and colonially originated economic and state-related factors should not cause us to minimize behind-the-scenes cultural influence; we should pay attention to the way in which regional actors go about the process of movement mobilization and expansion and what that may reflect about their values. Particularly within political science, the preoccupation with statecentered political change, economic causation, and the performance of political systems has tended to occlude more grassroots-oriented attention to indigenous values.1 A goal of this study is to acknowledge the influence, however indirect and subtextual, of “deep culture” and of the capacity of local actors to contribute to the making of their

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own history, without undervaluing the clearly critical and often determining role of broader political and economic factors in generating subnational movements. The inclusion of precolonially originated culture into a perspective that recognizes the overarching significance of state-mediated behavior, colonially induced economic change, and ascriptive and instrumental elements, as well as specific postcolonial influences, represents an especially balanced approach that facilitates the identification of shared elements between uniethnic and interethnic movements. These shared elements between uni-ethnic and multiethnic subnationalist movements include the tendency of both to ground their autonomy-seeking assertions in a historical territorial claim. Such claims are typically rendered in patterns of mobilization that incorporate a broad variety of localities and of leaders and villagers within a region, whether they claim adherence to a common ethnic group or whether they adhere to multiple different ethnic groups. Movement participants commonly claim precolonial linkages, whether those linkages are real or imagined. From a cultural or values-based perspective, the central motif undergirding the most successful autonomyseeking movements tends to be alliance building among regionally based partners. In making this point, I do not mean to minimize the role of colonial or capitalist-imparted values such as unilateralist individualism. My perspective regarding the impact of precolonial and colonial history is that subnationalist movements can be distinguished in part by the extent to which alienated individualism and pecuniary greed define leadership choice, but also by the extent to which cooperative precolonial values and social practices have percolated through the colonial era and into the postcolonial period. Both coalition-oriented behavior and socially alienating unilateralism are present among movement actors. The rejection of accommodation and pursuit of factional violence by some regional groups should not dissuade us from acknowledging that other activists, proceeding with more political subtlety, do embark on a coalition-oriented strategy, one that tends to reflect a culture of panterritorial compromise that predates the colonial and postcolonial experiences. Here is where indigenous political culture makes its mark on subnationalist behavior—not necessarily exerting a predominant influence, but exerting an influence nonetheless that has generally been ignored or minimized. These latter social practices provide a deeper cultural basis for cooperation among regional actors with disparate locational or ethnic affiliations.

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These points will be more fully developed in subsequent chapters. First it is helpful to probe a bit more fully into the distinctiveness of the concept of subnationalism and its utility in encompassing both uni-ethnic and interethnic regional movements.

Subnationalism, Autonomy, and Secession In this study the term subnationalism refers to movements by regional actors to pursue greater autonomy within the existing nation-state, a relatively loose degree of political separatism, or outright secession. An important advantage of the relatively broad conceptualization of subnationalism adopted here is that it allows us to acknowledge that for practical reasons or because of ideological shifts, the specific goals of movement leaders vary—sometimes significantly—over time. I prefer the term subnationalism to nationalism because I am discussing movements occurring on a scale that is “below,” or within, an established nation-state and because many movements treated here aim only for regional autonomy rather than the establishment of a new nation. However, it should be recognized that some specialists on nationalism would likely favor interpreting the movements discussed in this book as nationalist rather than subnationalist because within these movements are the kinds of aspirations on which, given further political developments, a separate nation could be founded, even if a particular movement does not explicitly aim for national sovereignty at a given historical moment.2 The advantage to our subnationalist approach is that in the African context, the struggle for territorial autonomy is often characterized by specific regional goals that involve acceptance of incorporation into larger national entities even in the long term.3 This issue may be partially linked to the preoccupation of many who study nationalism with the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. A civic, or liberal, type of nationalism, according to this perspective, is based on a common commitment to participation in a large-scale “imagined community” that links people horizontally in a shared legalistic, rights- and rules-based framework. In contrast, it is argued, ethnic nationalism is based on the assumption of a shared popular history that predates the formation of a state so that ethnic identity becomes the basis on which the nation-state is created.4 For example, Anthony D. Smith notes the distinction between “territorial separatism, based on political boundaries and geography,”

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which generates a sense of political uniqueness, and “ethnic separatism,” based on “cultural distinctiveness” and “the reality or myth of unique cultural ties.”5 For Smith, territorial separatism assumes the character of civic nationalism based on universal respect for legal rights and duties, a shared economy, a uniform educational system, and an enduring commitment to specific physical boundaries. Ethnic separatism “sees nations as named human populations claiming a common ancestry,” a myth of common descent, and shared culture and traditions. Smith further argues that in the contemporary world territorial and ethnic separatism have fused into nationalist movements, with nationalism being “founded on ethnic elements” who are aspiring to establish territorially based civic nations.6 The present occurrence of an ethnic “revival” reflects the fact that since decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Smith, the fusion of ethnic and nationalist aspirations has spread to most of the third world, ensuring that ethnic nationalism would develop into a global phenomenon.7 However, Smith’s fusion of civic and ethnic/cultural nationalism is of limited value in understanding African subnationalism, as neither uni-ethnic nor interethnic movements are likely to lead to a civic form of nationalism based on legal equality that would set the stage for modern state-building on Smith’s terms. In Africa the formation of autonomy-seeking movements based on intraethnic alliances or interethnic relations, while often territorially grounded, bears little resemblance to the civic nationalism noted by Smith. Instead, the movements tend to reflect a distinctively African cultural emphasis on respect for locally specific autonomy within a set of territory-wide identities. Even if subnationalist movements in Africa tend to behave in ways different from the unified civic nation-building model suggested by Smith, they nonetheless are often justified on an explicitly panterritorial basis. Geographer Jan Penrose, referring to movements in various parts of the world, has written eloquently on the link between territorial space and peoples’ emotional bond to the homelands where their ancestors are buried. This tends to localize territorial residents with respect to particular land areas across generations and into the future and helps to explain their interest in political autonomy. Penrose argues that the values specific to territorial adherence may be a basis on which the validity of the nation-state as a political system will increasingly be challenged.8 Helpfully, Walker Connor has pointed out that territorial secessionist movements can generate political systems that either reflect a

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singular ethnonationalist identity or are “multinational” in character.9 Indeed, subnationalist movements in Africa have generally reflected patterns of behavior and belief that would be likely to lead to panterritorial identities on a uni-ethnic or interethnic basis. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary point out that the majority of secessionist movements in the world are pluralistic in character because uni-ethnic identity and territorial region rarely coincide. 10 This provokes us to inquire: For those movements that incorporate a plural mix of ethnic groups, what is the nature and what are the patterns of interethnic ties that are created along the way toward the assertion of autonomy? In what ways do these ties affect the outcome of the movement? The civic-versus-ethnic distinction posited by Smith does not sufficiently grapple with these queries; nor does it effectively address the fact that movement goals frequently change. The emphasis on subnationalism in the present study is especially useful precisely because subnationalist movements often slip between autonomyexpanding and secessionist goal orientations. Because subnationalism includes both uni-ethnic and interethnic movements, it further contributes to the robustness of our conceptualization and more accurately reflects political change in contemporary Africa. From a broad conceptual perspective, autonomy refers to the goal of movements seeking greater self-rule within an existing nation-state, while secession refers to the goal of movements seeking to establish a new and sovereign nation.11 Yash Ghai suggests that autonomy is “a device to allow ethnic or other groups claiming a distinct identity to exercise direct control over affairs of special concern to them, while allowing the larger entity those powers which cover common interests.”12 Secession, by contrast, as Viva Ona Bartkus writes, is “the formal withdrawal from an established, internationally recognized state by a constituent unit to create a new nation.”13 Still, it is important to emphasize the difficulty of maintaining a clear distinction between subnationalist movements that are pursuing autonomy and those that are pursuing secession because, for practical reasons such as changes in state power, alteration of movement leadership or membership, and varying organizational capacities, specific movement goals may be altered from one time period to the next. Movements may make the strategic choice to become secessionist when they are at peak strength and subsequently revert to autonomy seeking when in decline. As Ghai argues, the utility of distinguishing between groups struggling for autonomy and those pursuing a quest for a separate nation “is doubtful since there is an easy

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progression from one to another.” 14 As a result, I find it more compelling to refer to movements that, in a general sense, aim to create a fuller expanse of political autonomy as subnationalist, whether or not movement leaders extend this into an outright call for secession. Those who focus on the study of secession also rarely devote substantial attention to the question of interethnic relations. In a recent work, for example, Bartkus introduces the concept of “distinct communities” that are distinct from the rest of the nation and are characterized by their effort “to alter their political circumstances.” In his rational-choice analysis of secessionist movements, Bartkus argues that these “distinct communities” weigh the benefits and costs associated with remaining within a nation-state against those of seceding from it.15 However, he ignores the internal complexities of the growth and evolution of these movements, provides virtually no attention to social relations within given regions or territories, and fails to disaggregate the nature of elite-mass relations within these amorphous “distinct communities.” As a result, the distinction between uni-ethnic and interethnic subnationalist movements is both conceptually and descriptively absent from Bartkus’s study. The social and historical evolution of subnationalist movements is too complex—with many complicating subtleties and divisive or shifting internal dynamics—to be reduced to an epistemologically narrow cost-benefit analysis that marginalizes movement alliance building. Recently, James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin employed an unusually sophisticated rational-choice perspective to suggest that in Africa as elsewhere most interethnic interactions are characterized by cooperation rather than conflict.16 In a broad sense, this point is consistent with the approach adopted here; however, their relative inattention to political context and to culture make it necessary to employ a broader range of both overarching and contextually relevant factors in explaining the recent rise of Africa’s uni-ethnic and interethnic subnationalist movements. In the following section, the process of subnationalist mobilization is analyzed in terms of four overarching mobilization factors; in Chapter 2 the focus shifts to a discussion of historical factors; and Chapter 3 highlights specific changes in the post-colonial period that help to account for the development of contemporary subnationalism in Africa.

Subnationalist Political Mobilization Once again, subnationalist mobilization in Africa can be understood in terms of commonly—but not necessarily—overlapping manifestations

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of four overarching processes: ascriptive adherence to particular identity patterns, instrumentalist manipulation by regional political leaders, changing situational circumstances and the conscious constructivist role of state elites, and economic ethnoregional inequality and material struggles over resources. Each of these processes helps to explain why autonomy-seeking movements are ignited and why regional rebels struggle to carve out a greater degree of autonomy or attempt to secede from a nation-state. Ascriptive Identity From an ascriptive or corporatist—or primordial—perspective, it may be suggested that ethnic or regional groups become politically mobilized in order to promote the collective interests of the group vis-à-vis outsiders, such as the state.17 Here the porousness and fluidity of ethnic-group boundaries is recognized, but at the same time the cohesive potency of the self-perception of group boundedness is underlined.18 This self-perception stems from a shared sense of ingroup adhesion based on trust, custom, familiarity, belonging, and an assumption of collective identity derived from common descent, territorial affiliation, or both. Ascriptive cohesion has the potential to generate activism especially, but not exclusively, in a context in which mutual fear and suspicion are reinforced over time. This reflects the practical reality that in such a context a group’s physical security is perceived to be at enormous risk, and group members come to assume that the only way to reestablish security is through collective mobilization.19 However, ascriptive politics in Africa may also generate a sense of collective self-worth and self-assuredness that can lead some communities to pursue alliances without fear of a loss of identity, cultural and political autonomy, or security. Thus, we discuss how some movements broaden their appeal to people from a variety of geographic and ethnic backgrounds by incorporating those people as political partners while simultaneously mobilizing internal supporters through ascriptively based ties and symbols. In this respect, although ascriptive politics and group-based subnationalism lead to uni-ethnic movements in some cases, they contribute to interethnic subnationalism in others. Instrumentalist Leadership The second overarching factor emphasizes that the link between corporate ethnic consciousness and activism often takes place through

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instrumentalist leadership, or the mass-manipulation techniques of regional leaders who urge their followers to become mobilized on an ethnic basis.20 A focus on instrumentalism shifts the analysis of subnationalism toward the decisions, behavior, strategies, and motives of ambitious elites, many of whom are motivated principally by prospects for their own advancement, rather than by collective interest.21 Instrumentalist politics sometimes also plays an important role in the emergence of internal divisions within regional movements, as we shall see. Instrumentalist and ascriptive influences are in many cases intimately interlinked. As Jean-François Bayart argues, ethnic group behavior implies a dynamic interaction—what he calls “double action”—between elites’ goals and individuals’ conceptualization of identity.22 This identity issue can prove important because for a regional movement to gain political momentum, it needs to reflect the general belief system of the host society in which it operates.23 However, most host societies at the regional level in Africa are multiethnic in character, which means that host-society fit necessitates attention to a broad, complex range of political and historical influences. Situationalism and Constructivism Inquiry into the historical and social dynamics of regional mobilization often reveals a changing array of influences and situational contexts reflecting fluctuations in social identity and political power. One aspect of these fluctuations is that identity patterns often prove fluid or overlapping; in this respect, the extent to which a particular identity emerges and becomes politically mobilized reflects particular circumstances that occur in the processes of nation-state formation, state intervention, leadership decisionmaking, colonialism, and the ebb and flow of political conflict.24 The contextual nature of these processes is important because “the behavioral significance of ethnicity” is contingent on “the specific configurations of particular confrontations” through history.25 These changing situational challenges are especially apparent with regard to interethnic movements, which commonly are characterized by major shifts in component elements and political goals, often as a consequence of altered circumstances. Donald Horowitz relies on a situational analysis to explain how colonial-era ethnic and social stratification led to uni-ethnic regional political activity after independence. He explains that in “unranked ethnic systems,” in which ethnic groups were treated unequally, the worst-treated groups constituted “incipient whole societies” that

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eventually aimed for autonomy or secession from the state.26 Here the emergence of subnationalism reflects a historical situation in which states imposed unranked ethnic systems, and excluded groups who lay outside the mainstream of state power aspired to full-scale autonomy or secession in the postcolonial period. Donald Rothchild has explored efforts to manage ethnic conflict in Africa in an unusually sophisticated analysis that takes into account a situationally changing complex of colonial historical experiences; unequal resource allocation; and the attitudes of ethnic group members, ethnoregional leaders, and state elites. He suggests that the single most critical variable is decisionmaking on the part of ethnic group cohorts, ethnic representatives, and state rulers, especially in terms of their responses to the changing situations provided by political compromise offers, demands, and bargaining opportunities.27 The constructivist perspective incorporates many elements of the situational approach while focusing on the extent to which subnationalist movements are shaped by powerful actors, such as the central state, and by definitive, clear-cut turns of history. In regard to ethnicity, constructivists emphasize the policy influence of central states in generating and crafting new or altered identity patterns, especially in those cases where the local populace lacks a historically consistent or embedded identity.28 With its emphasis on historical conjunctures, the constructivist perspective represents to some extent an expanded form of situationalism, but constructivist analysis is embued with an especially strong sense of purposeful, politically driven manipulation by large, dominant forces, especially the state.29 Such historical forces “construct”—in the sense of shaping or managing—regional political activism.30 Constructivists stress the multiplicity of identities that pertained in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial Africa31 and emphasize that ethnic identity tends to be only one among a large number of shifting self-images that may be altered due to a variety of social, economic, and political influences.32 John Lonsdale describes how colonial and postcolonial African states manipulated the African social order, consciously compartmentalizing Africans into ever more narrow ethnic and regional containers while giving succor to instrumentalist leaders. In this respect, colonial and postcolonial states and Westernized intellectuals constructed idealized accounts of “tribal” identity that were embraced by regional political manipulators and state rulers.33 This helps to account for the intense politicization of ethnicity and of regionalism today. A hard-line or radical version of constructivism minimizes the political significance of ethnic identity entirely, suggesting that “ethnic

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identities are merely a small fraction of the many identities mobilized in the postcolonial politics of everyday life.”34 In the formulation of the influential analyst Achille Mbembe, contemporary Africans mobilize “not just a single ‘identity,’ but several fluid identities which, by their very nature, must be constantly ‘revised’ in order to achieve maximum instrumentality and efficacy.”35 This more fluid approach clearly captures a significant aspect of social change in contemporary Africa, and it helps to explain why in so many subnationalist movements, ethnic group members become open to the formation of political relationships with regional cohabitants from differing ethnic backgrounds. However, the more hard-line versions of constructivism fall short of explaining the historical continuity of uni-ethnic mobilization patterns where they do occur.36 Hard-line constructivists’ embrace of fluidity as an exclusive, constant, and primary identity motif represents an intellectual overreaction against the old colonial-era notion of a stagnant, timelessly primitive tribe. To understand regional mobilization, it is important to acknowledge the potential role of ascriptive political consciousness. An exclusive focus on malleability can limit the appreciation not only of uni-ethnic subnationalist movements, but also of interethnic movements among groups who retain a strong sense of their respective corporate identities even as they enter into regionally based, informal multigroup compacts. With regard to uni-ethnic mobilization, we may query with Connor: If one’s personal identity is so fluid that it is constantly changing and ethnic identity undergoes perpetual metamorphosis, then why and how does ethnic cohesion function so as to lend support to uniethnic movements when they do arise?37 Anthony D. Smith emphasizes the potential for group history to serve as a basis for such cohesion. He points out that uni-ethnic myths “all refer back to a past state of affairs, often in the distant past, an age that is usually seen as pristine or golden” and that serves as a “dramatic narrative” to link together the members of an ethnic community through time. Smith counters the notion that ethnicity is based simply on invented traditions, insisting that “traditions may be ‘invented,’ but they only last if they have resonance” and if there is “some cultural-historical basis” for them to capture the loyalty of the members of an entire cultural community.38 Overall, I concur with mainstream constructivists who assert that state-engineered interactions in the evolution of subnationalism are of enormous significance. Still, subnationalist movements can be fully appreciated only if we also take into account ascriptive and

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instrumentalist factors; furthermore, it is crucial to consider the role of inequality and the struggle over resources. Materialism The globalization of capitalist trade relations has spurred higher levels of social competition, which in turn plays a role in generating regional resentments and greater demands for autonomy. 39 Incorporation of ethnic or territorially identified groups into a market economy in a subaltern position and long-term downturns in occupational opportunities can lead people to reject nation-state incorporation. 40 Many participants in subnationalist movements are young people who are frustrated by the lack of upward social and economic mobility in their region; long-time regional disparities in economic development can eventually help to provoke territorially based disquiet, as it has among anglophones in northwest and southwest Cameroon.41 Subnationalist conflicts evolve in part as the consequence of resource-based competition, with groups in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere struggling over the distribution of goods by the state or because they have been left out of the state’s development trajectory altogether.42 A compelling argument regarding the significance of social class in particular is made by Jaqueline Klopp, who links the rise of Nandi subnationalism with the intensification of land dispossession in Kenya. Klopp makes clear that the Nandi movement of the 1990s is a case of local resistance by an impoverished people against land transfers to elites connected with the regime of President Daniel arap Moi. Moi’s intensification of repression against multiethnic communities with smallholder land access represented an attempt to isolate regime opponents on an ethnic basis so as to facilitate their economic marginalization and the dispossession of their land, which was then redistributed to wealthy regime supporters. Nandi subnationalism emerged out of efforts by impoverished land squatters and other marginalized strata to resist this state-led effort at politically charged landgrabbing.43 Overall, economic factors clearly contribute to political mobilization among subnationalist actors, especially in a context of longterm inequality or exploitative repression by state elites. In this study I pay close attention to the role of economic issues, particularly when they coincide with leadership strategies, mass emotion, and a history of central state repression. In such instances, economic issues serve as a key overarching variable, particularly when central states exploit

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or ignore entire regions, as the cases of Casamance and southern Sudan make especially clear.44 It is evident, then, that ascriptive adherence, instrumental leadership, state intervention, and materialistic inequities are all critical overarching factors in the emergence of autonomy-seeking movements, particularly when these factors are simultaneously active at a given historical moment. However, they are not all present to the same degree in each movement; although each of these factors typically plays some role in generating subnationalist mobilization, the relative significance of the factors may vary considerably. With these points in mind, we may now proceed to focus on the role of indigenous alliance building, which is in turn suggestive of subtextual cultural influences.

Subnationalism, Alliance Building, and Culture Durable subnationalist movements in Africa generally reflect the creation of alliances among separated communities, diverse intragroup political factions, multiple identity groups, or different lineages within a single group. Most small-sized uni-ethnic movements need to broaden their base to include an array of allies in order to ensure the movement’s survival and expansion; they therefore often evolve into interethnic movements. This mobilization pattern reflects the combination of a quest for autonomy by an inner-core ethnic group with an effort to reach out to form alliances with other groups and social units. Regional political movements characterized by internal coalitions are more likely to generate sustainable forms of territorial subnationalism than are narrowly formed movements that dismiss the potential for constructing political partnerships. Barrington Moore’s particularly insightful analysis of political development can help us to draw broad parallels between political change and historical shifts in power in Africa with those in Europe and Asia. Although Moore’s prime historical movers are social classes, not subnationalist movements, a great deal can be gained from his understanding of the importance of political coalitions in the development of social movements that successfully challenge existing national power structures. Moore holds that the strength of a social class is to be measured by the nature of its relations with other social classes, and that class power is augmented when political links among different classes are consolidated, even for relatively limited time periods.

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This “fusion of grievances” among class actors is central to Moore’s explanation of social rebellion.45 A similar alliance-building strategy takes place in the development, expansion, and duration of a growing number of regionally based movements in Africa. Here, however, such broad alliances are created within as well as among ethnic groups, producing subnationalist movements defined by interethnic relations or formed among factions, communities, and lineages within a single group. Constructive interactions among different identity groups is a consistent theme in the historiography of precolonial Africa. It was precisely a reliance on the gradual incorporation of multiple communities through the creation of intergroup compacts with regional and local leaders that enabled African states to grow in size and political power over the course of centuries. Core values in precolonial Africa were further reflected in political practices that prioritized local autonomy and political self-rule, whether this involved members of a single group or of multiple groups inhabiting the same territorial space. At the microsociological level, societies valued trustworthiness gained through interpersonal interactions over time. Relations within and between Gisu communities in Uganda, for instance, were marked by “generalized reciprocity” based on personal “vitality,” respect for individual autonomy, and practices such as joke telling that emphasized social restraint.46 Trusting mutual respect at the interpersonal level generated a precolonial African political culture characterized by “simultaneous openness and localism,” a set of social relations defined by constructive interactions among peoples with different identities, which did not diminish the fundamental commitment to autonomy that most communities cherished. In the colonial period the specific nature of identities often changed, generally in a narrowing, more bounded direction, but the fundamental social emphasis on interaction and territorial communities did not uniformly diminish. In some areas, in fact, “the networks of interaction” widened, peasant societies helped to determine their own identity patterns, and interethnic exchanges expanded in a variety of directions despite macro-scale political transformations.47 These practices were not universally overturned during the colonial period, so later it would be possible for some movements to rely, at least in part, on intergroup alliance building to ensure regionwide popular support and to expand their political impact more generally.48 Still, this confluence of intergroup strategies was by no means universally embraced by autonomy-seeking movements, especially

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not at their early stages. Indeed, it is crucial to acknowledge the significance of the colonial impact and the implantation of a newer value structure that prioritizes the self rather than the community, makes possible violence for its own sake, and legitimates political ambition disconnected from social roots. More recently imparted values reflecting social alienation and zero-sum economic competition contribute to a decidedly mixed political culture today and ensure that many leaders remain determined to pursue a political course of action that defies the potential for alliance construction. Internal factionalism, narrow elite attitudes, and a preoccupation with disputes among neighboring groups characterize a large number of autonomyseeking movements, particularly those that are unsuccessful, but also some that have endured. Nonetheless, in a number of regions a partial cultural “reAfricanization” is occurring, both consciously directed as well as reflecting a deeper historical process through which precolonial values are circulating back into the contemporary political world. This process includes the gradual construction of informal agreements that build on a cultural wellspring of alliance-building traditions. Some movements are distinguished by relative inclusivity that stems from factors that go beyond sheer political utility and reflect the subtextual, indirect influence of underlying political values that have precolonial origins. Thus, not only colonial but also precolonial values and patterns of behavior bear on the dynamics of subnationalism in Africa. Recent analyses have asserted that Africa’s political culture is uniquely defined by “negative” values, such as, according to Daniel EtoungaManguelle, a predisposition toward backward-looking passivity, social hierarchy, and authoritarianism, or, according to Jeffrey Herbst, values predicated toward unambitious state-building and political minimalism. Herbst shares with Etounga-Manguelle a certain disparaging rejection of African culture as having failed to promote political or economic success. According to Herbst, precolonial kings, colonial governors, and postcolonial presidents have all been “unwilling and unable to change the landscape,” to enforce their rule on a systematic basis, and to replace local claimants to power in rural areas with state officials. These “unwilling” political leaders lack the drive and ambition to build states with political control enforced in all parts of the claimed territory. They are “unable,” Herbst says, because of the difficult physical terrain—but he repeatedly makes clear in his comparisons with Western Europe that this obstacle is not

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really a physical blockage so much as a cultural and psychological predisposition toward unaggressive political leadership.49 Both Etounga-Manguelle and Herbst define successful politics in narrow terms, signifying especially the building of powerful centralized states that achieve clear-cut sovereignty throughout their claimed territorial boundaries and proceed to develop “modern” societies that look and act like Western political systems, reflect Western institutional forms and values, and succeed at capitalist advancement. In setting forth these views, both authors fail to adequately appreciate the success of precolonial societies in constructing large, powerful states and empires, some of which rivaled the Roman Empire in time span and were able to accrue vast amounts of wealth while militarily defeating external challengers over the course of centuries.50 Moreover, Etounga-Manguelle and Herbst are overly focused on elites, abjuring a bottom-up, grassroots understanding of political change.51 Contrary to the assertions of Etounga-Manguelle and Herbst, African politics and history offer a considerable record of precolonial political ambition and success built upon a cultural bedrock of core values centered on a combination of local autonomy and cross-group cooperation. African communities are not inherently inward-looking, for alliance construction is one of the most—if not the most—consistent themes in the history of the continent. People who embrace subnationalist movements have decided to create their own historical agenda and reject the idea of immutable fate. These movements also signify a resounding rejection of the wide social distance separating nation-state leaders from ordinary individuals, with communities responding positively to in-the-field linkages with regional forces created by the most effective movements. Finally, autonomy-seeking movements often benefit from reaction to the deeply unpopular authoritarian practices national leaders all too often engage in. In turning to “deep culture” for help in understanding part of the logic involved in the growth of subnationalism in contemporary Africa, I embrace the view recently put forth in a joint Harvard-MIT scholarly study that suggests that “in the long run culture has an important influence on political institutions” and on a wide variety of political behavioral patterns.52 This is because social and political values “guide social action” by making sense of the world for a given community and “by providing socially sanctioned rationales for actions that are justified to oneself and others.”53 Nonetheless, this attention to and recognition of political culture does not mean that I believe it necessarily plays a decisive role in explaining the mobilization of subnationalism in Africa.

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Colonial legacies, economic inequity, and ascriptive and instrumentalist political forces should be accorded analytic and explanatory primacy. Still, the subtle distillation of precolonial values has borne a noteworthy subtextual influence. Taking note of these various manifestations, I argue that the conveyance of values through the colonial period into the postcolonial period involved neither a large-scale historical “jump” nor wholesale cultural transmission. Rather, partial, tributary lines of culture representing fundamental values in various regions were passed on in the way that people interacted at the grassroots level of society. Colonialism and contemporary capitalism altered the character and behavior of African societies in a large number of ways, and people often came to interact in a manner that represented a substantial break with the values and modes of behavior that had predominated in the past, but this was not necessarily a thoroughgoing, comprehensive social transformation. In recent years, as central state power has receded and the appeal of Western social and political forms of power and authority has diminished, remnants of Africa’s ancient forms of cultural representation have begun to reemerge in some regions through the partially altered rough exterior of rural society. These include values emphasizing local autonomy, bargaining and compromise, interpersonal trustworthiness, and mutual respect. These values are at variance and in competition with more predatory values. Both sets of values influence the flow of autonomy-seeking movements in Africa today, and the manifestation of values reflecting social alienation ought not deceive us as to the continuing impact of alternative, cooperation-oriented cultural priorities.

Ethnonationalist Irredentas Subnationalist movements have the potential to merge with or evolve into irrendentist uprisings, either as interethnic networks expand or as uni-ethnic movements link up with ethnic cohorts in bordering nations. During the initial decades of the postindependence period, even though ethnic groups were commonly located across national borders due to the artificiality of colonial-era map making, few subnationalist movements evolved into cases of cross-border irredentism. Exceptions include the Togoland Liberation Movement seeking to unite the Ewe of Ghana and Togo; the Somali Liberation Movement aiming for unity among the Somalis of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia; the Afar Liberation Movement established to join together Afars living in Djibouti and Ethiopia (including what is now the

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nation of Eritrea); and a brief call by Yoruba activists in western Nigeria for unity with the Yoruba of Benin.54 But most conflicts in Africa did not transgress national borders. Two major reasons account for this relative paucity of irredentist movements. First, colonialism had left a sufficient impact to create meaningful differences between members of the same group living in different countries. A process of “gradual estrangement” of ethnic affiliates across common borders reflected country-specific exposure “to different administrations, educational systems, colonial languages, markets, currencies, economic policies, mass media, and political orientations.”55 Thus, for example, among the Hausa of Nigeria and Niger, the Swazi of South Africa and Swaziland, and the Bakgatla of Botswana and South Africa, divergent commitments emerged among members of the same ethnic group.56 Second, through the 1980s the international community provided significant military and political support to African states seeking to repress movements that threatened to widen across borders.57 Thus, ethnic irredentism was less common in Africa than might be assumed given the prevalence of interstate ethnic group coresidency. However, in the 1990s, a number of factors, including the progressive degeneration of state infrastructures (see Chapter 3), raised the spectre of African cross-border irredentism more intensively.58 Irredentism has now become part of the process of nation-state fragmentation, and like subnationalism it will likely increase in intensity in subsequent decades. Subnationalist and irredentist movements may even prove mutually reinforcing. Throughout this study I recognize the irredentist potential, and where applicable I incorporate it into the analysis; this is especially the case regarding eastern Congo (see Chapter 5). However, the principal analytic focus of this work remains the genesis of regionally assertive movements, with a growing number of movements based on territorial claims. That remains the predominant trend, although irredentist pressures are, like subnationalism, likely to expand.

Conclusion The chapters that follow examine the evolution of uni-ethnic and interethnic African subnationalist movements. These movements are generated by a complex combination of causes, some of which are located in the colonial experience, some of which reflect precolonial cultural patterns, and most of which are marked by economic factors and by postcolonial shifts in the quality of state-regional relations. A

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central element in the relative success of these movements—both uni-ethnic and interethnic—is their reaching out to form territorywide partnerships among a variety of actors. However, the politics of alliance building is not always sufficient to overcome internal and external movement-fracturing challenges. State intervention and ascriptive, instrumentalist, and materialist factors make possible an overarching appreciation of the process of subnationalist movement causation. In addition, a number of specific postcolonial variables—including a changing international context, nation-state breakdown, increases in organizational competency, and improved quality of the relations between movements and their mass base—are important for understanding the reasons these movements gradually began to expand in recent years. But beneath the surface of both the overarching causative factors and specific postcolonial variables regarding movement expansion, precolonially derived culture in Africa plays a subtextual, indirectly influential role in a growing number of movements.

Notes 1. For an exception, see Lisa Weeden’s unusually nuanced general treatment of political culture. She examines a broad variety of historical influences in the creation of culture and emphasizes grassroots actors’ fluctuating perceptions. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002). 2. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 3. A similar point is made by Thomas Spira in Nationalism and Ethnicity Terminologies: An Encyclopedic Dictionary and Research Guide, vol. 1 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1999): “Sub-Nationalism,” 530, and “Territorialism,” 645. 4. David Little, “Belief, Ethnicity, and Nationalism,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1, no. 2 (1995); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1789: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 5. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 12–13. 6. Anthony D. Smith, “The Myth of the ‘Modern Nation’ and the Myths of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, no. 1 (1988), 9–10. 7. Smith, Ethnic Revival, 21. 8. Jan Penrose, “Nations, States, and Homelands: Territory and Territoriality in Nationalist Thought,” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (2002), 281, 292, 294.

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9. Connor, Ethnonationalism, 78–79. 10. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “The Macro-Political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict,” in The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, ed. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 12–13. 11. Spira, Nationalism and Ethnicity Terminologies: “Autonomy,” 42, and “Secession Stricto Sensu,” 550. 12. Yash Ghai, “Ethnicity and Autonomy: A Framework for Analysis,” in Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States, ed. Yash Ghai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 8. 13. Viva Ona Bartkus, The Dynamic of Secession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3. 14. Ghai, “Ethnicity and Autonomy,” 7. 15. Bartkus, The Dynamic of Secession, 10. 16. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996). 17. Donald L. Horowitz, “The Primordialists,” in Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World: Walker Connor and the Study of Nationalism, ed. Daniele Conversi (London: Routledge, 2002), 78; Robert Jackson, Plural Societies and New States: A Conceptual Analysis (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1977), 17. 18. Connor, Ethnonationalism, 214–217; Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 51–52, 66, 72; Joseph Rothschild, Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 125; Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 5, 11, 48–49, 137–139; Cynthia H. Enloe, Ethnic Conflict and Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 274. 19. Stephen M. Saideman, “Is Pandora’s Box Half Empty or Half Full? The Limited Virulence of Secessionism and the Domestic Sources of Disintegration,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 20. A classic study embracing this approach is Paul Brass, Ethnic Groups and the State (London: Croom Helm, 1985). 21. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, “Spreading Fear: The Genesis of Transnational Ethnic Conflict,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 19–21; Donald Rothchild, “Interethnic Conflict and Policy Analysis in Africa,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 9, no. 1 (1986); Brass, Ethnic Groups and the State. 22. Jean-François Bayart, L’illusion identitaire (Paris: Fayard, 1996). 23. Christopher Clapham, “Introduction: Analysing African Insurgencies,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 11–14. 24. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 36–38; Enloe, Ethnic Conflict and Political Development, 2–3, 5.

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25. Rothschild, Ethnopolitics, 130. 26. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 31. 27. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 31, 36–38, 63–65. 28. Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald, and Malcolm Chapman, eds., History of Ethnicity (New York: Routledge, 1989); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 29. Crawford Young, ed., The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism. The Nation-State at Bay? (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); David Brown, “Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on State and Society,” Third World Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1989); Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., Invention of Tradition. 30. Edwin N. Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister, eds., The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Crawford Young, “Evolving Modes of Consciousness and Ideology: Nationalism and Ethnicity,” in Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. David E. Apter and Carl G. Rosberg (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994); M. Catharine Newbury, Ethnicity, Class, and Political Change in an African State: The Cohesion of Oppression in Rwanda (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 31. A particularly insightful set of constructivist arguments may be found in Paris Yeros, ed., Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999). See also Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994); and Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 32. On this point see especially Thomas Hyland Eriksen, “A Non-Ethnic State for Africa? A Life-World Approach to the Imagining of Communities,” in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 51–52; and Terence Ranger, “Concluding Comments,” in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999). 33. John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought,” in Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, ed. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (London: James Currey, 1992), 329–331, 460, 463. 34. Richard Werbner, “Multiple Identities, Plural Arenas,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 1. 35. Achille Mbembe, “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,” Africa 62, no. 1 (1992), 5, cited in Werbner, “Multiple Identities,” 1.

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36. Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman, eds., Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 37. Connor, Ethnonationalism, 43. 38. Smith, “Myth of the ‘Modern Nation,’” 11, 18. 39. Connor, Ethnonationalism, 35–36; Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 27–28; Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 40. John Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 137. 41. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 76–77; Ernst Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 199; Piet Konings and Francis Nyamnjoh, “The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 2 (1997), 214. 42. On this point, see John Markakis, “Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa,” in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 67, 69–70; and John Markakis, “Ethnic Conflict and the State in the Horn of Africa,” in Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, ed. Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994). Eritrea, Oromia, and Tigray are discussed more fully below. 43. Jacqueline M. Klopp, “Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism? The Struggle for Land and Nation in Kenya,” African Studies 61, no. 1 (2002), 269–294. 44. See Chapter 4. 45. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966), xi, xvii, 479. 46. Suzette Heald, Controlling Anger (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), 7, 74–75, 212, 223. 47. Ranger, “Invention of Tradition Revisited,” 28–29. Ranger is referring to Steve Feierman’s work on the Shambaa kingdom, which is discussed in Chapter 2. 48. In addition to the many examples of ethnic cooperation presented in this work, for a seminal study of cooperation and bargaining in Africa and its political impact, focusing on race relations (emphasizing blacks’ political restraint vis-à-vis whites in Kenya), see Donald Rothchild, Racial Bargaining in Independent Kenya: A Study of Minorities and Decolonization (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). 49. Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, “Does Africa Need a Cultural Adjustment Program?” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, L’Afrique—a-t-elle besoin d’un programme d’ajustement culturelle? (Ivry-sur-Seine: Editions Nouvelles du Sud, 1990); Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4.

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50. This point is more fully developed in Chapter 2. 51. Herbst, States and Power, 157. 52. Lawrence E. Harrison, “Why Culture Matters,” introduction to Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xvii–xxxiv, xxviii. This Culture Matters volume was generated by the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and the Joint Society for Political Development of MIT and Harvard. 53. Thomas S. Weisner, “Culture, Childhood, and Progress in SubSaharan Africa,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 148. 54. Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 35–36, 38; on Somali irredentism see Edmond J. Keller, “Transnational Ethnic Conflict in Africa,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 278–279. 55. Benyamin Neuberger, “Irredentism and Politics in Africa,” in Irredentism and International Politics, ed. Naomi Chazan (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 105. 56. Ibid., drawing on William F. S. Miles, “Self-Identity, Ethnic Affinity, and National Consciousness: An Example from Rural Hausaland,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 9, no. 4 (1986); S. Touval, “Partitioned Groups and Inter-State Relations,” in Partitioned Africans, ed. A. I. Asiwaju (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985); R. F. Morton, “The Bakgatla Baga Kgafela of Bechuanaland,” in Partitioned Africans, ed. A. I. Asiwaju (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985). See also William F. S. Miles, Hausaland Divided: Colonialism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994). 57. Donald Horowitz, “Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections,” in Irredentism and International Politics, ed. Naomi Chazan (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 18. 58. Edmond J. Keller, “Transnational Ethnic Conflict in Africa,” 278.

2 The Historical Context

I

n this chapter I argue that intergroup cooperation was so extensive during the precolonial period that it came to represent a fundamental value within Africa’s political culture. At the same time, I query the extent to which such a value system endured the culture of social alienation and monetary individualism introduced during the colonial period. This question of cultural values is of relevance to the study not only of interethnic subnationalist movements but also of uni-ethnic subnationalism. While ethnicity may provide an ascriptive basis for mobilization, large groups are often characterized by internal diversity that reflects various political commitments, lineage cleavages, ideologies, and class and occupational backgrounds, as well as differentially located communities. It is, therefore, important to determine whether cooperatively oriented culture and attitudinal sets have been embraced by ethnic comembers, or whether zero-sum factional or leadership discord predominates. This question has further significance when uni-ethnic movement participants perceive an opportunity to expand by cooperating with people from other groups in the same region. To what extent is the dominant group in a region willing to entertain the possibility of incorporating people of other ethnic origins into a subnationalist movement? A second set of debated inheritances is also of relevance for this historical discussion. To what extent do subnationalist movements in Africa call upon precolonial linkages or memories in their effort to mobilize uni-ethnic and interethnic actors? Do regions and identity groups have political traditions descended from precolonial polities that can serve as a historical basis on which autonomy-seeking movements 25

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can claim territorial political legitimacy? Or are such histories artificially constructed from the imaginations of instrumentalist elites using colonially introduced notions of regional or ethnic continuity?

Precolonial-Colonial Continuity? Since the publication of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition in 1983,1 international scholars have asserted that uni-ethnic subnationalists tend to promote an imagery of a pristine past based on fictitious events gleaned out of elements of ancient mythology. However, in some cases, there is at least a partially accurate correspondence between the lived past and a group’s history as recorded in oral tradition. This is the case, for example, with the Basques, among whom subnationalist ideology, on the one hand, and anthropological and historical tradition, on the other, developed in synchronistic fashion.2 Is it possible that there are groups in subSaharan Africa whose “collective consciousness” similarly accords with historical findings on their ethnoregional origins?3 Many analysts insist that collective identities prior to the colonial era cannot be considered ethnic because ethnic groups, per se, did not begin to form until the confrontation between administrators and rural people took place during the course of colonial state building.4 This is the meaning of Terence Ranger’s original essay regarding the colonial-era invention of tradition, in which he proposed that ethnicity becomes relevant only upon the conscious colonial naming of ethnic groups for the purpose of social classification, social control, and economic exploitation.5 In a later essay Ranger revised his position, rejecting a hard-and-fast point of ethnic creation and instead emphasizing the social and temporal “fluidity” of African identity formation. However, this revision did not alter the conclusion that the colonial state was central in the crafting of African ethnicity.6 Is ethnicity, then, a valid social category in the study of precolonial Africa, one that can provide intellectual support to subnationalists who are asserting strong precolonial-colonial-postcolonial linkages? According to John Lonsdale, in eastern Africa “ethnicities used to co-exist in a non-competitive manner. . . . Linguistic and cultural difference operated in complementary rather than competitive spheres of life.” Lonsdale argues that each ethnic group in precolonial eastern Africa had developed its own “moral economy,” that is, a distinctive value system that served as a “means of judging civic virtue” and that in turn was “clothed in ethnic difference.” People did

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think of themselves “in ethnic terms,” but “not all the time,” thus reflecting the extensive interactions they had with other groups.7 In his third and most recent essay on the topic of ethnic identity, Ranger provides a similar way of approaching the issue, stressing that in precolonial Africa people were shaped by a number of different identities simultaneously, including those defined by chiefdomship, kingdom, empire, and religion—as well as ethnicity. Ranger emphasizes that ethnic identity was typically “latent” and evolved into “fully developed ethnicity” only when one particular language not only achieved dominance over others but was utilized by “a powerful ideological elite . . . as a criterion of membership of the collectivity.”8 For example, argues Ranger, Zulu conquest in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries led to the formation of ethnic groups in two ways. First, the term Nguni, which had previously referred to authority holders in small chiefdoms, now was adopted by Zulu leaders and extended to refer exclusively to members of the Zulu ruling lineage. Second, communities conquered by the Zulu and forcibly incorporated into the Zulu kingdom were distinguished from the Nguni by reference to names—such as that of the Amalala, a peripheral group. The creation of ethnic groups through Zulu conquest reinforced patterns of ethnic domination by Zulu rulers and underlined the political marginality of the peripheral ethnic groups.9 In this case, ethnicity did become a socially significant form of identity in precolonial southern Africa, and it is on precisely this basis that Zulu subnationalists base their arguments in the contemporary era. The debate over the character of precolonial identities is directly linked to the question of ethnic creationism by colonial states. Lonsdale argues that this process of state intervention was manifested in colonial state leaders’ conscious efforts to utilize ethnic imagery in order to temper Africans’ mobility and to “tribalize” them by consigning them to particularistic regional and ethnic identities. This process was intensified both before and after independence through the manipulative politics of instrumentalist political leaders. Uniethnic subnationalism emerged, according to this constructivist perspective, in part as a consequence of the compression of erstwhile non-competitive groups into ethnically defined hierarchies established by the colonial state; the resultant zero-sum competition generated confrontational “political tribalism.”10 There is a great deal of accuracy to this interpretation; however, hard-line constructivists take the argument further, insisting that colonial state intervention generated such overwhelming change that

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it ensured a decisive, universal break between precolonial and colonial-era identity patterns.11 The problem here is that such a break is unlikely to have occurred in all locales or so completely. The transition was in many cases piecemeal, partial, and zigzagged in geographic impact. As a result, some contemporary African ethnic groups are as capable of locating their collective identities in precolonial contexts as European ethnic groups are able to trace their derivations back to ancient times.12 Certain aspects of social and cultural lineages enable contemporary peoples to identify with specific precolonial collectivities.13 Subnationalists may therefore assert with at least some degree of historical legitimacy that even if identities did not always congeal as ethnic groups in precolonial Africa, there may not have been as clean a break in social continuity as hard-line constructivists presume. It ought to be possible at least in some cases to link contemporary regions and identities to precolonial political, linguistic, and cultural units. It is analytically helpful to distinguish ethnic groups that originated in precolonial times from those that came into existence during the colonial era. This point is illuminated with particular clarity by Crawford Young, who demonstrates that in Uganda there are examples of both precolonial-colonial continuity and colonial stateengineered ethnic creationism. In the Buganda kingdom, “Ganda identity was well developed” prior to colonialism and was sharpened through kingdom-wide military conscription and the Ganda royal court’s monopoly on political power and social status. The Luganda language helped to reinforce social integration, while Ganda religious leaders promulgated a belief system that entrenched a common worldview.14 During and following the colonial period, Ganda elites remained secure in their knowledge that they had “not lost their identity” and that, in the words of the kabaka, or king, Mutesa II, they had “‘a common language, tradition, history and cast of mind.’”15 This corporate pride was reinforced by the continuity of territorial self-administration that pertained in Buganda. The precolonialcolonial continuity in Ganda identity provided a particularly coherent basis on which subnationalism in postcolonial Uganda would be constructed. At the same time, however, British administrators virtually invented ethnic groups and created new districts in other parts of Uganda. Thus, neither the Kiga nor the Gisu hark back to a common collective identity formed in precolonial times; similarly, the Acholi, Busoga, and Ankoli were each grouped into their own newly named district by British administrators seeking to provide administrative

The Historical Context

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oversight to a diversity of chiefdoms.16 Similarly, in equatorial Africa, in some cases identity markers essentially reflected bureaucratic creativity, while in southern Gabon and parts of rural Congo, identity did reflect collective consciousness that predated colonial influences.17 Many ethnic groups in Africa were reshaped or relocated as a consequence of state policies and economic changes wrought during the colonial period, but they often retained a significant portion of their precolonial identity. Thus, overarching constructivist, materialist, instrumentalist, and ascriptive forces are important to subnationalism, which is also informed subtextually by precolonial identity affiliations. In some instances this mixed inheritance facilitates subnationalist mobilization, but in other cases it renders such mobilization exceptionally difficult or impractical. The Congolese Bakongo, for example, a people whose origins lie in the ancient Kongo kingdom, became ethnically subdivided in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries into such groups as the Yombe, Manianga, Ntandu, and Ndibu. This process reflected a convergence of conscious colonial policies, including the subdivision of the former Kongo kingdom into separate church mission zones, and the differential economic impact of Belgian railway construction in Congo in the 1890s. The new divisions within the Bakongo community accentuated and intensified differences among subgroups, including urban-versus-rural separations and socioeconomic cleavages. This delayed and rendered more complex the generation of a pan-Bakongo political movement.18 Still, a sufficiently strong legacy of Bakongo cultural and linguistic unity remained embedded in the region to provide a popular basis for the subnationalist mobilization of the Bakongo people around the symbols of their ancient polity and language during the period of the Belgian Congo’s decolonization. A similar process unfolded with regard to the Luba-Kasai and Lulua of eastern Congo. The sixteenth century witnessed the formation of a Luba empire spanning an area that included substantial portions of the present-day Katanga and Kasai regions. There was no distinction between groups that came to be known as the LubaKasai and the Lulua until the latter portion of the nineteenth century, when slave and ivory trading with Angolans led to the targeting of some communities in the Luba empire for capture as slaves while others participated in the trade as allies of the Angolan traders. The Angolanlinked Luba communities later came to be known as the Lulua, some of whom also developed connections with Belgian officials, while the Luba communities who had been targeted for exploitation emerged as

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the Luba-Kasai. Separate Lulua and Luba-Kasai identities became consolidated only in the 1890s, when thousands of Luba-Kasai people from uprooted communities migrated to European-dominated areas and gradually became integrated into colonial urban social and economic frameworks, while the Lulua consolidated their power in rural Kasai.19 Thus, it was the intersection of internal indigenous social change with the widening colonial social, economic, and political impact that led to the crystallization of Luba-Kasai and Lulua identities toward the turn of the twentieth century. Later, this would bear significantly on subnationalism in eastern Congo. The case of the Yoruba is also of interest here. Yoruba-speaking peoples shared in common a culture, a religion, and social institutions of precolonial derivation and had created political systems that proved similar “in dynastic tradition” and “provided a certain idiom for interkingdom relations.” But a singular, collective Yoruba consciousness did not yet exist, and it was not forged until the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when a number of kingdoms previously allied with Benin changed their allegiance and identity to that of Yoruba-speaking Oyo for strategic purposes. Then, over the course of British rule in Nigeria, colonial influences—particularly economic integration—intensified a common Yoruba ascription among a broad range of peoples in western Nigeria.20 Thereafter, Yoruba collective consciousness reflected both the colonially influenced corporate identity and cultural and political elements transmitted from the precolonial era; these have combined to inform contemporary Yoruba regional activism. Finally, the case of the Zulu kingdom is particularly instructive in this debate. Those who embrace a hard-line constructivist position, led especially by Julian Cobbing and Daphna Golan, assert that the rise of Shaka Zulu’s empire in the early 1800s was immensely exaggerated, mostly reflecting an effort by white settlers to justify white rule by conceptualizing Africans as powerful savages and an effort by Zulu activists to provide a basis for uni-ethnic subnationalism. 21 According to this perspective, there was no large and powerful Zulu kingdom, but rather a brief set of wars resulting from the economic and political impact of settler expansionism; Shaka Zulu’s image as empire builder was “imagined” post facto for political purposes.22 This position is now challenged by research that provides a more nuanced interpretation that accepts the influence of settler expansion but also makes clear that the Zulu empire did expand—even after Shaka’s death in 1839—to dominate a large number of peoples over a wide swath of territory.23 There really was a Zulu empire that grew

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impressively in power and influence over a fifty year period, and Zulu subnationalist mobilizers can call upon this empire today for historical reference, even if they exaggerate the extent of its political potency and underemphasize the influence of the settler economy. These instances point to the validity of a multiplicity of perspectives that incorporate constructivist and ascriptive influences as well as economistic and instrumentalist factors, in varying degrees depending on the particular historical context. Some regions and groups can indeed trace their origins to precolonial times with some measure of surety, but the very process of identity marking has been transformed in important ways by colonial state influences and economically induced change.

Precolonial Interethnicity, Localism, and Political Tradition Beyond the debate regarding linkages to precolonial communities, it is important to focus on broader underlying values, traditions, and modes of life that have subtextual implications for our appreciation of the recent expansion of subnationalism. Despite occasional wars, in the precolonial era people spent most of their time engaged in productive trade relations, social interchange, and political alliance building. In the centuries preceding A.D. 1000 in equatorial Africa, for example, cooperation proved the single most predominant mode of human intercourse, especially with regard to economic exchange and intermarriage among different groups of migrants. At the same time, these intergroup relations did not diminish the inheritance of more particularistic social and political practices based on locality, territory, and kinship. Thus, two processes occurred simultaneously: on the one hand, interlocal exchanges enriched and transformed aspects of equatorial identity, producing a “convergence” into a common, widely shared cultural set of traditions that linked together people in a large territorial domain. Second, despite this broad cultural convergence, village-based groups came to be characterized by an enduring sense of individualized, independent community that was manifested by devotion to the “founder” of the “House,” a continuity of age-grade links, circumcision rituals, lineage-based social ties, and local political councils. When villages disbanded, this sense of community provided to a particular group an “esprit de corps” that was reinforced through the concept of “legitimate succession” of House leadership roles on the basis of patrilineal and economic inheritance rules.24

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The simultaneous existence of a widespread shared culture and locally individualized communities gave rise to the formation of territorial “districts” defined by the burial sites of ancestors. These districts provided a geographical sense of identity to equatorial African groups that persisted through the nineteenth century; they evolved as alliances of politically created Houses led by the descendants of the perceived founders of specific lineages.25 This process became intensified as the population increased, so political development reflected the growing need for the “social management of larger and larger groups.” This took place through an increasingly sophisticated harmonization of interests involving “better-defined channels for the use and devolution of power.”26 This process for equatorial Africa was characterized by the retention of autonomy by both individual communities and specific Houses within the alliances. Such autonomy within alliances provided the cognitive and strategic basis for the construction of kingships from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, such as those among the Nzakara and Azande.27 State building largely involved the creation of federated alliances, making possible the retention of local authority while assuring local Houses of a stake in the system. This process evolved into a distinctly African political culture or tradition based on the concepts of localism-in-polity and alliance building; it provides a subtextual, values-based context for the genesis of modern interethnic alliances in recent subnationalist movements. Aspects of this cultural tradition were manifested in ancient Africa even at times when large states and empires were not constructed and so-called stateless societies emerged instead. In these cases, social mechanisms such as age-grade groupings and secret societies were created that drew people together from across different geographic, language, and lineage stems. Such social organizations performed political, judicial, and religious functions that ensured the development of cross-cutting networks apart from kinship and lineage ties. At the same time, within single ethnic groups, such as among the Tiv, kinship segments tended to be balanced or coordinated in a way that ensured that each lineage would retain autonomous authority within a particular social sphere—such as landholding or performing religious rites—while negotiation and bargaining would form the basis of relations among lineage heads.28 Richard G. Dillon’s research into the complex stateless and “uncentralized” society of the Meta of Cameroon reveals the existence of social mechanisms of intervillage and interlineage cooperation, conflict resolution, and intermarriage. Periodic assemblies were

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convened in precolonial times that united Meta people from fifteen separate lineages and from widely dispersed communities so they could use “their collective voice to ward off generalized threats, such as epidemics.” At the same time, the emphasis on local autonomy was revealed in the social restraints placed on fon, or local chiefs. Some fon “were accorded a vague seniority” and mystical abilities, but this did not enable “them to control decision-making at the society level.” When fon sought to expand their power beyond their modest geographical jurisdictions they would be set back by “the resistance of the public and the opposition of rivals.” This suggests the extent to which “anti-authoritarian values” permeated political relations in the intervillage sphere, producing a “loose and flexible” Meta polity.29 Throughout equatorial Africa, cultural dynamics underlining local autonomy, intervillage cooperation, and trust-based transactions between lineages and groups did not lead to static societies but rather generated an inherent adaptability on the part of local communities. This adaptability reflected the fact that communities were able to incorporate new ideas and new cultural practices introduced by outsiders without compromising their cultural identity. In the political sphere, adaptability was manifested especially in regard to the ability of communities to forge new alliances with politically dominant Houses for the purpose of common defense. Because such alliances were based on strategic cooperation, armies returned to their respective communities after battle, ensuring the fundamental political autonomy of each village. This process, occurring over the course of centuries, helped to generate an enduring political culture centered on autonomy at the House level within the context of a multi-House district—and, in turn, on district autonomy within the context of multidistrict kingdoms. This did not, however, preclude necessary social, economic, and military cooperation among districts and households.30 One of the clearest manifestations of autonomy at the district and House levels was the presentation of a leopard’s spoils—the symbol of ultimate (violence-wielding) power—to the community leader rather than to a higher political authority.31 Among the Meta, the leopard evoked a mystical potency, and the village head enjoyed exclusive access to the entrails of a slain leopard, from which he derived power, but this power did not extend beyond the village level.32 In the Niger delta in the late seventeenth century, despite enormous changes in the political economy of the region, “separate villages continued to be independent, each ruled by a chief and council and constituting so many micro-states.”33 A form of common governance was the secret society known as the ekpe, or leopard society,

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through which villages engaged in unified actions when necessary, but these occasional actions took place only in reaction to calamitous events, such as wars, and did not mitigate the fundamentally decentralized structure of authority that obtained in the delta. At the same time, relations of trust were constructed through centuries of negotiated interactions and ties crafted among individual leaders and members of different, households, villages, and districts. These trust-based relations reflected a political culture geared toward compromise and loose ties among decentralized political entities. This type of culture is the only context in which the autonomy within kingdoms could work: kingdom officials had to trust that local “Big Men” normally not under their direct control could be counted on when necessary to rally fighters to confront a common enemy.34 In this way, trust-oriented agreements produced an equatorial African tradition marked by decentralized regional kingships and autonomous localities. One aspect of this political tradition was the coining before 1400 of a specific term for allies. In some cases, repeated contact with allies resulted in the fusion of entire lineages and communities, eventually leading to the creation of large-scale polities marked by tightly interwoven familial and leadership structures. In other cases, alliances remained pragmatic and did not produce larger political entities. But where large kingships were produced, they were typically characterized by clan and lineage cooperation, which took place through meetings to discuss “matters of common concern.”35 In some cases this led to the formation of networks of regional alliances and to empire building in a context of individual self-rulership. For example, in Hausa-speaking areas of what later became northern Nigeria, towns that had initially emerged between A.D. 1000 and 1300 as marketing centers (such as Katsina, Kano, Zaria, and Gobir) were walled in for defensive purposes in the 1400s. However, these towns remained linked through political relations, which made coordinated military activities possible. Similarly, in the fifteenth century the Maravi empire south of Lake Malawi was a “loose confederation of chiefdoms held together by their common interest in long-distance trade.” In central Africa the “loose Lunda empire” proved able to expand from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century by incorporating many different groups; it did so by granting “Lundahood” to the leaders of each of the newly incorporated groups.36 Each such group, for example, the Kazembe and the Yaka, functioned autonomously and was able to retain its own leaders; only the provision of occasional tribute was required to ensure retention in the Lunda imperial sphere.

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One could raise the counterargument that state making took place in large measure through violent conquest, but as Philip Curtain and his colleagues insightfully point out, many political leaders accepted annexation voluntarily in order to partake of the benefits of formal integration into a larger polity.37 In doing so they continued to build on a political tradition marked by autonomy within the polity and by alliance formation. As late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the building of indigenous political institutions in equatorial Africa—including the formation of new allied federations and the restructuring of kingships—reflected African leaders’ respect for the fundamental autonomy of “the three units of the western Bantu tradition”—the House, the village, and the district. New political institutions crafted during this time reinforced the deeply ingrained practice of political decentralization.38 Indeed, among Mbundu speakers in the highland areas of what is today central and southern Angola, a powerful “attachment to locality” was engendered through the construction of “fortress-like sites” in village centers for defensive purposes, but “numerous alliances” were also made with neighboring leaders from non-Mbundu ethnic backgrounds, including Lozi and Msiri. A key reason for such alliance making was the determination to preserve Mbundu independence and local autonomy, but at the same time, members of royal Houses of different ethnic backgrounds commonly intermarried. The importance of locality was reflected by the Mbundu practice of selfidentification in terms of local names such as Viyenos or Wambus, but this did not hinder interethnic trade and political cooperation.39 Similarly, political relations at the village level in precolonial Kongo were grounded in locally defined lineage ties, with intervillage links based on descent from couples who had intermarried in previous generations. The localistic orientation of village politics and of intervillage relations “preceded the founding of Kongo and outlasted its demise” in the eighteenth century, then continued “right on into the colonial era.” After the kingdom of Kongo weakened in the eighteenth century, diplomacy, compromise, and new political alliances among regionally centered powerholders would provide the basis for an explicitly decentralized kingship.40 David Newbury’s study of the precolonial Ijwi kingdom emphasizes the ties that ruling lineages crafted with commoner clans on Ijwi Island as well as with families from other ethnic groups on mainland Rwanda. Intermarriage was the most frequent and important form of interclan exchange and alliance formation within Ijwi and between Ijwi clans and mainland Rwandans; blood pacts for the creation of trust among traders from different clans were additional

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forms of cross-group interchange, as were cattle contracts. At the same time, however, the kingship itself functioned through the assignation of different social roles to different clan groups, enabling each clan to retain a particularistic ascriptive group and localistic identity. This combination of local and group particularism with mechanisms of social interchange as a basis for kingly authority building reflects a common political culture emphasizing autonomy and sovereignty throughout the area of precolonial Rwanda.41 The precolonial Lunda empire achieved a “remarkable capacity to extend its tributary network,” explains Edouard Bustin, by “leaving local land chiefs in position while incorporating them into a hierarchized fiscal structure.” This resulted in Lunda’s “spectacular territorial expansion,” which was “predicated upon its ability to absorb . . . micropyramidal authority structures into its own larger pattern of vertical relationships.” 42 In Chapter 5, I argue that the secession of Lunda-dominated Katanga province from postcolonial Congo (Kinshasa) reflected a reemergence of this pattern of heterogeneous incorporation. More generally, it has been argued that the ability to maintain “cohesion among a myriad of autonomous units” represents “the most original contribution of western Bantu [equatorial African] tradition to the institutional history of the world.”43 However, historical research outside of equatorial Africa makes clear that this alliance-building, localism-in-polity political culture was similarly embedded in the traditions of most peoples across the continent. Thus, much of the precolonial history of West Africa, East Africa, and the Horn of Africa was shaped by empire building and polity construction on the basis of political linkages forged among different localities and ethnic groups. The multiethnic, interlocal character of polities in these various African zones proved a crucial source of political strength and typically reflected cultural exchanges between power-holding groups and groups that became incorporated into the polity. This dynamic interplay often gave rise to highly durable patterns of political integration and coordinated empire building. For example, in the 1730s, the largest empire in Africa south of the Niger river, known as Kong, in present-day Côte d’Ivoire, was created by Malinké traders of Soninké origin called juula. This empire stretched hundreds of miles west and north and included a large number of different Islamic and non-Islamic ethnic groups that embraced certain Malinké customs while contributing new cultural elements to Kong society.44 Farther south, the precolonial state of Ndebele was characterized by the inclusion of “a great variety of linguistic and

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‘ethnic’ groups,” and Ndebele rulers embraced symbols and cults that originated among the non-Ndebele groups.45 And the powerful Maasai succeeded in dominating the Rift Valley and other parts of Kenya not only by assimilating other groups, but especially by constructing and consolidating an elaborate system of alliance-based, negotiated political and social relations among and within the “sub-clusters” of the Maasai ethnic community.46 The West African Asante state, founded in 1680 near what later became the Gold Coast, established integrative political and judicial institutions precisely in order to link together “kinship-oriented microstates.”47 The informal political practice of alliance building became institutionalized in the organizational structures of Asante, strengthening the state’s power and extending its diplomatic influence.48 This was commonly the case within empires marked by dominance by a single lineage group, such as ancient Mali, where political practice provided for substantial compromise—and, as a result, conflict reduction—among differing branches of the royal Keita lineage.49 To an especially dramatic extent in terms of its regional power, impact, and extent of ethnic inclusion, the ancient West African kingdom of Gabu in the Senegambia, formally a tributary to the larger Mali Empire, proved a remarkably successful polity that over the course of six centuries gradually spread its influence to incorporate a vast array of localities and groups that retained their relative political, social, and linguistic identity and autonomy.50 Immediately south of Gabu in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the state of Bundu, which became renowned for its political tolerance and inclusivity—so much so that numerous peoples migrated into Bundu precisely to take advantage of the local autonomy typically granted by Bundu’s Sissibe rulers. The Muslim Sissibe elite had adopted a pragmatic, peaceful style of rulership that provided the same rights and benefits to Islamic ethnic groups such as the Fulbe and Mandinka as it did to non-Islamic groups such as the Wolof.51 In east-central Sudan, the Bagirmi state incorporated a mix of Barma; Fulani; Arabic-speaking peoples such as the Assale and Kozzam; and small numbers of Hausa, Bornuans, and Sara. In Bagirmi the Barma reigned politically, Arabic speakers cultivated grain crops, and the Fulani specialized in pastoral production—a set of interethnic political and economic relationships that dated from 1522 to 1897. Interethnic marriages and the appointment of Fulani to bureaucratic posts made clear the acceptance of the Fulani within Barma society. 52 In West Africa cooperation across mercantile circuits formed a

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crucial base on which to build political systems. It was no coincidence that early states were located on ecological borders, for example between savanna and desert areas, where cattle and horses were exchanged for millet and rock salt was traded for gold or kola nuts. Such early (pre–A.D. 1000) states as Takrur, in central Senegal; Gao, near the Niger River; and the Kanuri federation, north of Lake Chad, were marked by political structures that facilitated exchange among peoples who had access to different types of ecological resource bases and had been cooperating economically at the interpersonal level for centuries.53 Such exchanges in the east-central Sudan led to alliances and strong polities that endured for half a millennium, surviving much of the political turmoil and warfare that took place during the eighteenth century.54

Convergence, Hybridity, Exchange This dual pattern of simultaneous intergroup incorporation and local identity reinforcement was by no means uniformly reproduced; sometimes an exchange of cultural practices and ideas was sufficiently intensive between two societies that the culture and social practices of both merged to create a new ethnic identity.55 Ranger refers to this as hybridity and emphasizes its centrality in social and political life throughout the African continent “for hundreds of years.”56 In an influential study Jean-Loup Amselle takes this argument further, challenging the very concept of ethnicity by arguing that it renders impossible an appreciation of the fluidity of identity patterns in precolonial Africa, which are reflected by amorphous logics of social expansion and retraction and the production of “indissociable” syncretisms.57 However, many groups did tend to place limitations on the acceptance of changes that they believed would lead to an overly quick or thoroughgoing transformation and a consequent loss of particularistic cultural or local identity. Cross-group exchanges occurred in a way that enabled each group to carefully preserve a sense of its local specificity and cultural self-definition. Thus, for example, the ancient Ewe and Akan of what are today Ghana and Togo enjoyed “centuries of historical interaction” with the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria that led to the mutual embrace of various cultural practices and ideas without compromising the distinctiveness of Ewe, Akan, or Yoruba society.58 Intermarriage between Ngemba-speaking eastern Bamenda groups in precolonial Cameroon and members of larger Chamba polities did not lessen their respective group identities.59

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On Ijwi Island near Rwanda, multiple social mechanisms were utilized to integrate non-kin from new immigrant groups into the social nexus of the islands, but in a way that reinforced rather than dissipated clan group identities. 60 In eastern Africa, social and economic relations between Maasai and Arusha, and between Maasai and Kikuyu, involved extensive interpersonal transactions, ageset rituals, economic exchanges, temporary coresidence, and intermarriage. However, when Maasai participated in such processes, they “shifted” or “straddled” ethnic lines of demarcation while defending, negotiating and reproducing their own ethnic boundaries.61 In Malawi, intermarriage between Chewa and Ngoni villagers rendered “local ethnic identities somewhat varied and negotiable,” but it did not dissipate them.62 Within the geocultural expanse of central Africa are some of the most remote peoples of the Congolese rain forest. Their interactions provide particular insight into both the relative openness of constructive intergroup relations and the consolidation of ethnic distinctiveness. According to a study by anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker, Efe foragers and Lese farmers engaged in a highly intertwined set of social and economic interactions that became institutionalized through the formation of individualized “Houses.” Each House was dominated by a Lese male but included Efe in two ways: through intermarriage between Lese men and Efe women and through the pairing of a Lese man with an Efe man, with the two becoming partners living in separate physical homes but considered members of the same social House.63 Members of each ethnic group—Efe and Lese—upheld the boundaries of their respective group identity, with particular rules structuring the Efe-Lese relationship at the individualized level in regard to spatial relations and economic roles and exchanges. For example, Efe men provided their Lese male partners with forest products such as fruit and arrows, and Lese men provided their Efe male partners with metal pots and pans. The Efe-Lese House is “structured by underlying oppositions” and ethnically specific roles that continually reassert ethnic boundaries. Thus, the House is the locus for the construction of ethnic identity even as the House members are engaged in multiple, intimate social and economic relations that involve the crossing of ethnic boundaries.64 However, in a number of cases in various parts of Africa, the culture of a host society emerged as so dominant that the ethnic boundaries of the incorporated group dissolved, whether because of the numerical size or political preeminence of the host society or because outsiders

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were grateful that they had been accepted into the host society—or both. This did not lead to the production of a hybridized new identity group, but rather had the effect of increasing the size of the host group. Some cultural features of the incorporated group were accepted and internalized, but the culture of the host group remained predominant. One example is that of the Oromo, whose “incorporation or adoption of strangers, both individually or in groups, has been constant throughout Oromo history.”65 Interethnic marriages involving Oromo were common at the ordinary village level as well as between elites from Oromo and non-Oromo (such as Amharic or Tigrayan) backgrounds. Outsiders who married into Oromo society became part of their host Oromo family and adopted their social and religious practices; this resulted in “Oromozation.”66 Similarly, Igbo (or Ibo) groups along the Aro and Niger rivers, such as the Aro Nde-Izuogu and nde-Eni, absorbed large numbers of people from other groups through voluntary intermarriage and immigration, as well as occasionally through violence.67 Because they were so numerous in the Cross River and lower Niger areas, the Igbo “tended to absorb” members from other groups and incorporated those new members into Igbo cultural and social practices; that is what occurred with people who had earlier identified themselves as Igala, and with what had been the Niger kingdom of Abo: both became Igbo over time. In the coastal and riverine areas of Guinea-Bissau, the effort to expand rice-farming zones led the Balanta into ever greater contact with neighboring peoples (Biaffada, Papel, Nalu, Baïnuk, and Cassanga), from whom they typically sought permission to work the land rather than attempting violent conquest.68 Over time, intermarriage and Balanta cultural influences led to cultural absorption; it was generally the case that where Balanta intermarriage was common, Balanta ethnic practices predominated. This Balantazation occurred voluntarily and paved the way for Balanta expansion and predominance in many of Guinea-Bissau’s riverine areas.69 The anthropologist Filip de Boeck describes a process of “intercultural exchange” involving the Lunda people of Congo (the former Zaire) wherein Lunda political institutions and cultural value systems have historically been fashioned “to incorporate outside influences” and individuals of non-Lunda origin. A political system based on “real, putative or fictive consanguinity” makes it possible to construct “an intricate web of political relations” through which nonLunda become “an essential part” of the Lunda political order.70 Thus, the “creolisation” of cultural elements does not necessarily produce a dissolution of ethnic boundaries. Indeed, Igboization,

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Malinkization, Balantazation, and Lunda cultural absorption all occurred in ways that reflected long-standing African practices of interethnic exchange and did not necessarily detract from the social identity of the absorbing group. Still, the identity of the group undergoing incorporation was commonly altered in important ways. This alerts us to the dual character of the incorporative process: the absorbed group is transformed but retains a measure of its social identity, and the host culture is reaffirmed and expands. As Harald Tambs-Lyche suggests, “creolisation and boundary-maintenance, ultimately, should be seen as two sides of the same coin.”71 Precolonial African political culture was sufficiently open to external influences to welcome absorption, synergetic transformation, and internal social evolution. This can especially be seen among the Shambaa of Tanzania, where the “unbounded” character of local society in the precolonial period reflected a dynamic and consistent interpenetration of local and global forces.72 The Shambaa preserved their intellectual and political autonomy and local identity precisely by engaging in local discourses on rain and politics in the Shambaa language, outside the purview of non-Shambaa actors. Even as Shambaa society changed so as to incorporate substantial elements from the wider world, fundamentally consistent patterns of local discourse and historically legitimate mechanisms of Shambaa conflict resolution were reproduced. It was the high degree of mutual respect among various ethnic communities that made intermarriage so common in precolonial Africa in the first place and that formed the basis of political alliance making and contributed to the evolution of the localism-in-polity tradition. This is especially important because of the subtextual relevance of values and practices embedded in the African social order for the construction of political alliances and interethnic exchange within contemporary subnationalist movements.

Ancient Political Systems: Duration, Power, Ambition An additional issue to consider regarding historical transmission is the extent of the durability and political potency of precolonial social and political alliances. This is significant because if elements of the culture that predominated in ancient Africa survived into the contemporary period, we must take the historical precedent of sustainable alliance building into account when analyzing subnationalism. This is especially important in the light of new challenges set forth

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by analysts of contemporary African politics who argue that the extent, intensity, and durability of political-system building was limited by values that have predominated throughout African history— for example, inward-oriented attitudes (Daniel Etounga-Manguelle) and disinterest in exerting expansive political control (Jeffrey Herbst).73 Instead, I argue that it was precisely the reliance on the gradual incorporation of a diverse network of externally oriented identity groups and political institutions, and continued dependence on trustworthy regional and local leaders, that constituted the bedrock for African states’ expansion and enabled the strongest such polities to endure and prosper. Thus, the Lunda empire in central Africa and the Mali kingdom in West Africa, both of which established complex systems of loose provincial administration and incorporated multiethnic regional elites, rose during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (or earlier) and proved dominant until the nineteenth century; the kingdom of Benin held sway over the Nigerian coast for four centuries (the fifteenth to the eighteenth);74 and Ghana emerged in A.D. 400 and lasted as a strong empire for more than six hundred years.75 In Shaba, “the roots of elaborate political organization go back to the eighth century A.D., and out of these developed a cluster of states” by the thirteenth century.”76 The Kongo kingdom, based on interprovincial alliances, emerged at least as early as the thirteenth century and lasted six hundred years, until the end of the nineteenth.77 The Saifa-run kingdoms of Kanem and Bornu in east-central Sudan, which began to emerge gradually after A.D. 900, reflected continuous rulership by a single group of mai, or governors, from A.D. 1100 until 1846.78 The territorial reach of some of these empires surpassed that of polities on the European continent during the Middle Ages, and in a number of instances grew larger than the size of European states during the early modern period. According to fourteenth-century Arabic documents, ancient Mali stretched from Gao west to the Atlantic, north to cover most of the Sahara, and south into the tropical forestland—an area as large as the western division of the Roman Empire, which encompassed most of what is today western Europe. Similarly to Rome’s, Mali’s long-term influence was reflected in the extent to which the predominant language within the empire, Malinké, came to be spoken as the first language of an enormous diversity of peoples. Ancient Ghana encompassed an area extending from the Niger River to the Atlantic Ocean and had at its disposal some two hundred thousand fighters. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Kanuri federated empire achieved enormous geographic size—between its Lake

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Chad base, the upper Nile, and North Africa—largely on the basis of peaceable exchanges.79 Herbst exaggerates the extent of European success and undervalues the breadth and duration of precolonial African expansion. In both precolonial Africa and medieval and early modern European states, the core areas of hegemonic control were highly circumscribed; the ambition to achieve imperial expansion was as potent a political factor in Africa as it was in Europe.80 African polities were able to organize regular military campaigns that protected their mechanisms of wealth accumulation and territorial expansion for centuries, as were their European counterparts. Reliance on alliance making as a strategy of political-system building and trade expansion produced enormous political success, and values oriented toward exchange, cooperation, and incorporation helped to ensure the enlargement of effective administrative and economic systems. This suggests the potential utility of trust-based authority construction in Africa, a point that has relevance for our appreciation of emerging subnationalist movements, as well as for an understanding of the more general issue of historical transition.

Political Culture and Historical Transition I am not arguing here that precolonial cultures endured unscathed into the postcolonial period, but rather that some political values are of particular relevance to the formation and longevity of certain subnationalist political movements and help to explain their federated character. In this respect, Jan Vansina’s comments at the conclusion of his classic study of equatorial African political tradition are especially germane. He notes that after the military conquest of African societies by Europeans, accomplished by the 1920s, colonial states began to wreak a profound transformation of indigenous political culture.81 However, he makes clear that the transformation was not total. Thus, although the old political culture was transformed, some precolonial values did persist and would form part of a hybrid new political tradition reflecting a juxtaposition of ancient African and contemporary Western values, “cognitive views,” and influences.82 Indeed, Dillon’s investigation of the Meta suggests that between precolonial times and 1970 significant change did occur, but “much of the form of precolonial political organization was preserved,” including a chieftaincy system that reflects “the basic lineage organization of society.”83 In a different way “peasant intellectuals” in

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Shambaai, Tanzania—a broad range of people with social significance and influence, such as teachers, artists, healers, leaders, and bureaucrats, who served as intermediaries between the local community and the broader state—were strongly influenced by external notions of politics while at the same time relying heavily on historically consistent value emphases with precolonial origins.84 For example, the question of the abundance or absence of rain remained a critical cornerstone of politics and intellectual thought in Shambaai throughout the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. How to explain “harming” the land (rendering it unproductive, bringing political conflict) and how to appreciate the restoration of the “health” (productivity and peace) of the land represented a consistent philosophical underpinning of Shambaa identity. By the postindependence period, new ideas had been introduced by outsiders, but a historical belief in the responsibility of lineage elders to ensure the land’s agricultural productivity and the peoples’ health remained the central benchmarks of political authority.85 Similarly, what Lonsdale refers to as a struggle over the meaning of “civic virtue” within the Kikuyu community—that is, over the preferred notion of a “good person” and over what the goals of the community ought to be—reflected the fact that people reacted in a variety of contested ways to the challenges presented by colonialism and by colonial capitalism, but that the process of this contestation assumed distinctive Kikuyu forms. These included calling upon ancient notions of morality to allow Kikuyu “levellers” to challenge Mau Mau political leaders by referring to older norms of social accountability, social equality, and community responsibility.86 By making this challenge, the Kikuyu defined their own ethnic identity, with the debate over civic virtue thereby reflecting the Kikuyu moral emphasis on diversity of thought.87 A parallel can be drawn between the contestations of Kikuyu and Shambaa identity, that emerged in their particular internal moral and political debates, and the process of identity particularism seen in the political culture of the Bakongo. From the sixteenth century, or earlier, kingship claims regarding absolute power were countered by the philosophy of governance requiring popular consent. Both notions were expressed in the seventeenth century by the Bakongo, and both ideas are debated within Bakongo society in contemporary times. Despite the profound changes that have taken place within Congolese society, the Bakongo share a culture characterized by belief in a collective original voyage involving the crossing of a large river and by the use of certain rituals meant to express chiefly power.88 The broad continuity of

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precolonially originated social practices and cosmology has influenced contemporary debates over the appropriate direction of political change and has played a role in the generation of Bakongo subnationalism. Historically reinforced political traditions were not lost in the turbulence of the colonial period and the postcolonial transition elsewhere in Congo either; on the contrary, “Many aspects of the traditional modes of sociopolitical and cultural interaction and exchange recur” in Lunda exchanges with the centralized state. This includes the traditional Lunda chief’s donning of spectacles resembling those of then-president Mobutu—even as Mobutu himself sported the Lunda leopard bonnet. Such cultural exchange was also visible organizationally: Lunda meetings of paramount chiefs appeared to imitate the style of meetings of Mobutu’s ruling political party rather than traditional gatherings. It was precisely through such cultural borrowing that the Lunda were able to reaffirm the validity of “their own social organisation and their own culturally determined categories and classifications” and to relegitimize symbols of authority “on their own terms.”89 The Lunda political system was indeed reinforced and strengthened: the absorption of state practices was viewed as an extension of the Lunda political order and of the authoritative networks that constitute it.90 Such sociopolitical absorption contributed to the reintensification of subnationalist mobilization in Lunda areas of the Congo during the 1950s and 1960s, and again in the 1990s. These points are particularly relevant for our discussion because what Vansina refers to as the capacity for “periodic renewal” of equatorial Africa’s older tradition91 and what Ranger refers to as peasants’ ability to “make their own enlarging uses of ‘tradition’”92 may conribute to a historical and social subtext that helps to explain the rise of subnationalism in Africa. Although individualistic, socially detached values have helped to shape political culture in colonial and postcolonial Africa, older values centered on local autonomy, negotiation, and respect-based networks of cooperation have increasingly been brought into play in the formation and expansion of uni-ethnic and multiethnic subnationalist movements.

Conclusion One important historical tradition in precolonial and colonial Africa, then, is that of interethnic cooperation and alliance building. This tradition was built not only on cultural and social practices of interlineage

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exchange, interethnic marriage, and social incorporation, but also on an explicit localism-in-polity form of political organization that was not entirely left behind in the wake of the colonial interlude. This localism-in-polity political model formed the basis of the crafting of durable empires; in contemporary times it is manifested indirectly and subtly in the way in which people engage in the politics of regional assertion. This political tradition thus subtextually contributes to the mobilization of autonomy-seeking movements. Despite ethnic hybridization, the localism-in-polity political tradition made it possible for outsiders to be incorporated while the host community retained potent cultural markers to define its coherence. It was precisely this flexibility that helped to inspire a wide variety of communities to participate in subnationalist movements during the postcolonial period. This suggests the limitations of a hard-line constructivist perspective and the importance of taking into account the ability of African societies to struggle to uphold their political autonomy. Identity patterns and grassroots political decisionmaking are not simply determined “from above” by state builders and instrumentalist leaders, but are also shaped “from below” by peasant intellectuals, community activists, and socially significant age-group leaders. Subnationalist movements spring up in part as a reaction against broad regional and ethnic inequities created by long-term government policies; at the same time, some movements also reflect aspects of Africa’s distinctive emphasis on intergroup negotiation and compacts. The historical break between the precolonial and postcolonial periods was not as clean as some suggest, although the link between the two periods is by no means as linear as primordialists often assume and instrumentalist subnationalist leaders tend to assert. The wide-ranging types of subnationalist behavior in Africa make clear that political transition is informed by multiple cultural pressures and impacts. Intervention by state leaders impels an important corrective to the view that subnationalism evolves from a coincidental set of situations or from ascriptive cohesion alone. Regionally assertive movements emerged out of a historically generated set of influences through which autonomy became important, reflecting a confluence of factors. Precisely because of the transformations wrought by colonialism and Western capitalism, we need to recognize the partially successful implantation of Western cultural values and the extent to which some ethnic and regional political leaders are motivated by greed and material accumulation disconnected from their particular

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social bases. Individualized personal power acquisition, zero-sum political reasoning, and a self-oriented political calculus have all played significant roles in the evolution of autonomy-seeking movements in postcolonial Africa. Thus, the contemporary reality in Africa is one of contested value systems: modernist, capitalist, self-oriented values compete with historically embedded bargaining, alliance, community-oriented values. This contest is manifested in shifting priorities, goals, and behaviors within subnationalist movements. African political culture reflects multiple influences. Westernized values and the conflict-generating antagonisms created by a century of exploitative state rulership have not supplanted older, precolonial political values, but these older values often do not predominate. Ethnic conflict, instrumentalist manipulation, and internal factionalism in subnationalist movements are common; however, there are indications in some movements of patient alliance building and gradually increasing interethnic and interlocal cooperation. Uni-ethnic and interethnic subnationalist movements that expand and endure both tend to create links among politically disparate and locationally separate participants. Subnationalist movements have a better chance of expanding when there is a convergence between panterritorial beliefs and goals, on the one hand, and the behavior and ideology of a movement’s leaders, on the other. The synergetic leader-mass evolution of a collective regional commitment to autonomy expansion is a central element in this process. Overall, then, both uni-ethnic and interethnic subnationalism reflect gradual percolations of a precolonial political culture oriented toward cooperation, compacts, and a localism-in-polity tradition, despite the more conflictual and pecuniary characteristics that also help to define the behavior of subnationalist actors. Notes 1. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 2. William A. Douglass, “A Critique of Recent Trends in the Analysis of Ethnonationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, no. 2 (1988), 199, 203; see also William A. Douglass, “Introduction,” in Basque Politics: A Case Study in Ethnic Nationalism, ed. William A. Douglass (Reno, Nev.: Basque Studies Program, 1985). 3. Ronald L. Atkinson, “The (Re)construction of Ethnicity in Africa: Extending the Chronology, Conceptualisation, and Discourse,” in Ethnicity

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and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 15–44. 4. See Thomas Hyland Eriksen, “A Non-Ethnic State for Africa? A Life-World Approach to the Imagining of Communities,” in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 49; Patrick Harries, “The Roots of Ethnicity: Discourse and the Politics of Language Construction in Southeast Africa,” African Affairs 87, no. 346 (1988); Richard Fardon, “African Ethnogenesis: Limits to the Comparability of Ethnic Phenomena,” in Comparative Anthropology, ed. Ladislav Holy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); John Iliffe, “The Creation of Tribes,” in A History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 5. Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 6. Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994). 7. John Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 136, 137, 139. 8. Terence Ranger, “Concluding Comments,” in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, ed. Paris Yeros (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 135–139. 9. Ranger, “Invention of Tradition Revisited,” 30–31. 10. Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism,” 137–138. 11. For examples, see Eriksen, “A Non-Ethnic State for Africa?”; Harries, “Roots of Ethnicity”; Fardon, “African Ethnogenesis”; Iliffe, “Creation of Tribes.” 12. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 148–149. 13. Atkinson, “(Re)construction of Ethnicity,” 33. 14. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 224–225, 226. 15. Kabaka Mutesa II of Buganda, cited in ibid., 226. 16. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 229. 17. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 19–20, 227. 18. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 168–170. 19. Ibid., 175–176. 20. J. D. Y. Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s–1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 15, 29, 162, 222–23, 258. 21. Julian Cobbing, “The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo,” Journal of African History 29 (1988); Daphna Golan, Inventing

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Shaka: Using History in the Construction of Zulu Nationalism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 1994). 22. Dan Wylie, Savage Delight: White Myths of Shaka (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2000); Carolyn Hamilton, ed., The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1995). 23. Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998). For a full discussion of this debate see John Wright, “The Making of New States, 1760–1840,” in The Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 24. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 69, 93–94, 79–80, 103–104. 25. Ibid., 82. 26. Philip Curtain, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson, Jan Vansina, African History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 35. 27. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 116. 28. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 83. 29. Richard G. Dillon, Ranking and Resistance: A Precolonial Cameroonian Polity in Regional Perspective (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 1, 227, 239, 246, 262. 30. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 104–105, 109, 116, 117, 154–155, 173, 253. 31. Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 213; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 117. 32. Dillon, Ranking and Resistance, 133–134. 33. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 246. 34. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 104–105, 109, 173, 253. 35. Ibid., 113, 159. 36. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 115, 254, 255. 37. Ibid., 33. 38. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 184, 236. 39. Linda Heywood, Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2000), 4–5, 19, 21. 40. John K. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 31, 52–53, 103, 114, 116, 117. 41. David Newbury, Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Lake Kivu Rift, 1780–1840 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 38, 103, 120–121, 134–137, 166, 174, 179, 184, 198, 219, 226. 42. Edouard Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule: The Politics of Ethnicity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 226. 43. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 237. 44. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 234. 45. Terence Ranger, “Invention of Tradition Revisited,” 40. 46. J. E. G. Sutton, “Becoming Maasailand,” in Being Maasai, ed. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993),

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39; John G. Galaty, “Maasai Expansion and the New East African Pastoralism,” in Being Maasai, ed. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 72, 78, 84. 47. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 237. 48. Joseph K. Adjaye, Diplomacy and Diplomats in Nineteenth-Century Asante (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996). 49. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 112. 50. See Chapter 4; also see Carlos Lopes, Kaabunké: Espaço, território e poder na Guiné-Bissau, Gâmbia e Casamance pré-coloniais (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descombrimentos Portugueses, 1999). 51. Michael A. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 24–25. 52. Stephen P. Reyna, Wars Without End: The Political Economy of a Precolonial African State (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1990), 51, 54, 60–67. 53. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 84. 54. Reyna, Wars Without End, 69. 55. Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism”; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 69. 56. Terence Ranger, “Colonial and Postcolonial Identities,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 274. 57. Jean-Loup Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 47, 56–57, 161. 58. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 258, 238. 59. Dillon, Ranking and Resistance, 39. 60. Newbury, Kings and Clans, 50, 103–104. 61. Thomas Spear, “Being ‘Maasai,’ but not ‘People of Cattle,’” in Being Maasai, ed. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 122–23, 125; John G. Galaty, “‘The Eye that Wants a Person, Where Can It Not See?’ Inclusion, Exclusion, and Boundary Shifters in Maasai Identity,” in Being Maasai, ed. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 177, 183–84, 187, 191–92. 62. Harri Englund, “Between God and Kamuzu: The Transition to Multiparty Politics in Central Malawi,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 115, 130. 63. Roy Richard Grinker, Houses in the Rain Forest: Ethnicity and Inequality Among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 4, 16, 111. 64. Ibid., 76, 96, 202. 65. P. T. W. Baxter, “Ethnic Boundaries and Development: Speculations on the Oromo Case,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 248.

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66. P. T. W. Baxter, “The Creation and Constitution of Oromo Nationality,” in Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, ed. Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 176. 67. G. Ugo Nwokeji, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Population Density: A Historical Demography of the Biafran Hinterland,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 3 (2000), 630–631. 68. Walter Hawthorne, “Migrations and Statelessness: The Expansion of the Balanta of Guinea-Bissau, 1900–1950,” in Migrations anciennes et peuplement actuel des Côtes guinéennes, ed. Gérald Gaillard (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000). 69. Diana Lima Handem, “Nature et fonctionnement du pouvoir chez les balanta brassa,” thèse de 3ème cycle, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1985. 70. Filip de Boeck, “Postcolonialism, Power, and Identity: Local and Global Perspectives from Zaire,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 86. 71. Harald Tambs-Lyche, “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Nordic Schools of Approach,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 61, 70. 72. Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 35, 43–44. 73. Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, L’Afrique-a-t-elle besoin d’un programme d’ajustement culturelle? (Ivry-sur-Seine: Editions Nouvelles du Sud, 1990); Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 74. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 112, 254–257, 240. 75. Chiekh Anta Diop, Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States (Westport, Conn: Lawrence Hill, 1987), 47; Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 33. 76. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 33. 77. MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture, 213; Thornton, Kingdom of Kongo, 49. 78. Reyna, Wars Without End, 163. 79. Diop, Precolonial Black Africa, 90–92; Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 81, 111–112. 80. In regard to the relative degree of autonomy achieved by localities in medieval and early modern Europe, see especially Charles Tilly and Wim P. Blockmans, eds., Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994); for a comparison of Europe and Africa on this issue, see Joshua B. Forrest, “An Asynchronic Comparison: Weak States in Post-Colonial Africa and Medieval Europe,” in Comparing Nations: The Pendulum Between Theory and Substance, ed. Mattei Dogan and Ali Kazancigil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994).

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81. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 237. 82. Ibid., 247, 260. 83. Dillon, Ranking and Resistance, 16. 84. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals, 5, 13, 18. 85. Ibid., 69, 76–78, 143, 250, 153, 195, 214–15, 227. 86. Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity and Political Tribalism,” 142–143, 139, 148–149. 87. John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: The Problem,” in Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, ed. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (London: James Currey, 1992), 266; John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Mau Mau Political Thought,” in Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, ed. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (London: James Currey, 1992), 319. 88. MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture, 213, 76, 203, 227. 89. Boeck, “Postcolonialism, Power, and Identity,” 86, 84, 90. 90. Ibid., 86–87. 91. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 258. 92. Ranger, “Invention of Tradition Revisited,” 23.

3 The Contemporary Context

T

he historical evolution of uni-ethnic and interethnic discontent on a panterritorial basis has provided a favorable political environment for subnationalist mobilization: colonial state intervention; ascriptive and material concerns; instrumentalist leadership; and, subtextually, enduring patterns of precolonial culture have each contributed to the emergence of modern subnationalism. Still, the process of creating regionally assertive movements that are politically potent, durable, and effective at securing territorial autonomy has represented an imposing challenge. In this chapter I delineate the principal hindrances to the development of subnationalist movements, especially in the early phases of the postcolonial period, then indicate the main reasons why subnationalism has nonetheless been emerging with growing frequency in recent years. Ascriptive, instrumentalist, situational-constructivist, and materialist frameworks are useful in aiding a broad understanding of movement mobilization; below I identify more particularistic factors that have favored the recent rise of subnationalism. In the early years following postcolonial independence, government co-optation, the predominance of an international system that supported existing states, and the pursuit of a dual autonomy-plusstate-access strategy all contributed to keeping subnationalist mobilization at nonthreatening levels. Later, autonomy-seeking movements gained momentum for a number of reasons. These include state leaders’ loss of external backers due to the end of the Cold War, the failure of most African states to generate a strong sense of nationhood, the dramatic weakening of state infrastructures, and improvements in 53

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rebels’ organizational capacity and their ability to synchronize their social behavior with the norms of local societies. In some cases, this local synchronization may involve a retraditionalization of political power, which is occurring in various rural locales. The subtext of a coalition-oriented political culture is an underlying influence in a growing number of movements.

Factors Hindering Subnationalism in Africa At the time new nations were being created through decolonization in the late 1950s and early 1960s, regional politicians in various parts of the continent sought to take advantage of the flux associated with the process of political transition by creating subnationalist movements. As many as eighteen such movements sprang to life in Africa during this time period. However, political momentum swung quickly in favor of strengthening central state authorities, which were now becoming Africanized and being accorded broad national support. The independence-era secessions proved relatively fleeting as states retained the capacity to suppress them with army, police, and military units. The state-dominant system erected by the colonialists and bolstered by the postindependence international norm of state reinforcement was adequate to hold subnationalism at bay in most nations.1 The reluctance of the United Nations (UN), and the superpowers in particular, to support or condone subnationalism often convinced regional and ethnic elites to focus their political efforts within the current state system. This international disfavoring of subnationalist uprisings was given special impetus by the vibrancy of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States both had a vested interest in bolstering states that proclaimed loyalty to their respective ideologies. Moreover, African presidents represented by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), who had their own political interests in mind, strongly supported maintaining the integrity of the national borders that the postindependence African states had inherited.2 Second, social convergence and social change have been so pervasive that in many parts of the continent “it is unthinkable that an African ethnic group would insist on independence (i.e., self-determination) on an ethnic or cultural basis.”3 In many cases, the extent of ethnic group malleability and hybridity is such that a single group cannot endure long enough to begin to mobilize on a panterritorial basis. In other cases, regions are characterized less by hybridity than

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by high levels of pluralism—that is, very large numbers of small, separate identity groups. In extreme cases of pluralism, regions become so densely “packed” that the social complexity and disunity help to prohibit the rise of subnationalism.4 The Chadian situation is especially instructive in this regard because it would appear that the historical division between the predominantly Muslim, Arabized north and the largely Christian and animist south would prove fertile ground for regional separatism in the postcolonial period, especially considering the rapid decline of central state capacity. The north-south division in Chad is based in part on religion, in part on a long history of slave raiding by northerners, and in part on distinct ways of life, with pastoralism in the north and a crop-growing farming economy in the south.5 However, the north-south split did not lead to regionwide secession movements by either the north or the south because the population of each region is subdivided into more than one hundred ethnic groups marked by exceptional levels of social segmentation and by the lack of a continuous history of coalition building. This helps to explain why, in both precolonial and postcolonial times, Chadian politics has been marked, more than politics elsewhere, by factionalism and by the meteoric rise and fall of personal rulers with narrow support bases.6 The proliferation of intragroup and intergroup conflict and the absence of a tradition of alliance construction have precluded the rise of sustainable subnationalism. In contexts that were historically defined by pluralistic interethnic cooperation and alliance building, colonial state policies that strongly favored ethnic competition sometimes mitigated the level of cross-group collaboration and undermined the long-term prospects of a subnationalist movement. For example, in colonial Kenya, some Kikuyu argued in favor of encouraging non-Kikuyu to join with the Mau Mau rebellion and actively recruited within Embu, Meru, and Maasai communities. But this recruitment often came at a price: many Mau Mau leaders argued that non-Kikuyu who joined the Mau Mau movement would “need to think of themselves as Kikuyu”—an attitude that led most Embu, Meru, and Maasai to reject the Mau Mau despite a long-standing tradition of interethnic cooperation.7 A third factor centers on the inability of some movement leaders to overcome internal factionalism based on social and political divergences. To continue with the Mau Mau example, John Lonsdale describes with erudition how competition within the movement over strategy reflected social-class differentiation as well as fundamental philosophical disagreement. On one side stood a loose coalition of

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young, landless Kikuyu peasants, urban workers, and traditional chiefs struggling to restore a moral vision of a broad-minded, inclusive Kikuyu political culture oriented toward civic virtue. They were opposed by relatively conservative, formally educated elites and chiefs who embraced a narrow, utilitarian political vision of Kikuyu activism. The end result was a people so profoundly politically bifurcated that in the postcolonial period Kikuyu collective action dissipated into the ultracompetitive maelstrom of “political tribalism.”8 Elsewhere in Africa as well—in the southern Sudan, in Nigeria’s Ogoni movement, and in Namibia’s Caprivi region—the evolution of intragroup divisions based on political and sociohistorical divergences often prevented the emergence of unified subnationalist fronts. A fourth variable inhibiting the growth of subnationalist movements was central-state elites’ ability to manipulate ethnic and local leaders in favor of the states’ political interests. As Cynthia Enloe has noted regarding state leaders throughout the world, power holders often employ an “ethnic security map” that enables them to intervene in ethnic politics in a way that optimizes state rulers’ power.9 Donald Rothchild suggests that this has been especially the case with states that have been able to devote resources to the provision of political and material enticements in order to deflect and diffuse ethnoregional mobilization. Thus, in Ghana, Zambia, Botswana, and Côte d’Ivoire during the 1970s and 1980s, evenhanded bargaining on the part of state and ethnic elites, along with incorporative and power-sharing strategies, produced accommodative solutions to ethnoregional disquiet.10 Edmond J. Keller similarly emphasizes African state leaders’ employment of “redistributive policies” to clientelistically satisfy ethnic elites.11 A fifth factor is the fragility that increasingly characterizes public bureaucracies in Africa. This decreasing capacity of the government sector has resulted in “weak” or “soft” infrastructures that are unable to effectively implement public policies, to enforce national laws, to collect and redistribute fiscal resources, or to provide social services on a nationwide basis.12 In a number of cases this state fragility has meant that national political leaders have had to bargain informally with strong regional elites.13 Particularly during 1970s and 1980s, this produced “polyarchical regimes” marked by bargaining and reciprocal deal making, with many regional elites subsequently deciding not to pursue greater autonomy.14 One example is that of Zanzibar’s relationship with Tanzania. Despite Zanzibar’s territorial separation and cultural distinctiveness, it received so many political and economic advantages from the state,

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including access to high-level bureaucratic posts and to the presidency itself in the 1985–1995 period (Ali Hassan Mwinyi) that separatism was no longer worthwhile, despite occasional expressions of dissatisfaction.15 In other countries, the state became dependent on the support of regional elites. One example is the relative power that Senegalese marabouts (Islamic religious authorities), wielded in their dealings with their country’s ruling Socialist Party: presidents Senghor and Diouf depended on marabout acquiescence for nearly four decades.16 As part of this process, regional actors in Africa who have aimed for autonomy have sometimes been able to achieve it on a de facto basis while also remaining influential within the central government. This combination severely dampens regionalists’ impulse for secession. One example is the Balanta of Guinea-Bissau, a people whose identity is intimately linked to the local autonomy of their respective villages and to their collective rejection of external intervention in regional political matters. At the same time, Balanta soldiers and political actors have regularly sought to exert influence within national political institutions, and recently Balanta aspirants to power secured control at the presidential and ministerial levels.17 This occurred even as village autonomy was reinforced in predominantly Balanta regions. One reason secession has not occurred in GuineaBissau is precisely this success of the Balanta in assuring their local self-rulership. Other groups in Africa have similarly employed a dual strategy of rural autonomy and access to state power. During the 1960s, ethnically based political parties in Uganda mobilized their supporters to support particular national-level politicians with the specific understanding that state access would facilitate ethnoterritorial autonomy.18 In Malawi, President Kamuzu Banda built a power base centered in a Chewa ethnic core located in the central region, making possible Chewa control over regional institutions while also favoring the promotion of Chewa functionaries within the central state.19 One of the more interesting examples of this combination of regional assertion and state access is that of the Shona of Zimbabwe. David Lan argues that the war against the colonial state of Rhodesia was set in motion by Shona youth who became mobilized to fight the white-ruled state when they called on Shona ancestors affiliated with specific regional territories for protection and support. Shona priests, who were believed to be able to mediate the spirits of the ancestors, were accorded leadership roles within the guerrilla army and proved capable of provoking Shona villagers to fight in part because the

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villagers were convinced that their ancestors wanted their lands, considered spiritual terrain in the provinces, taken back from the whites.20 Nonetheless, as the guerrilla struggle unfolded it became clear that for practical reasons Shona combatants needed to ally with other ethnic groups, such as the Ndebele, in order to ensure military victory over the Rhodesian armed forces. The struggle thus assumed the guise of a multiethnic war rather than a Shona movement. After independence, however, it became clear that Zimbabwe’s political leadership would be dominated by Shona who embraced the explicitly Shona character of the Zimbabwean state, despite the rhetoric emphasizing a multiethnic Zimbabwean nation.21 President Robert Mugabe appointed a cabinet marked by a balance among Shona subgroups; but this fair-mindedness was not extended to other ethnic groups. As Mugabe began to confront opponents to his autocratic rule, he relied heavily on the Shona-dominated armed forces and on his political support base in the rural Shona heartland, while also attending to intra-Shona alliance building.22 The recent land confiscations should be understood not only as a reflection of a presumption of entitlement to state access, but also as a means of satisfying Shona identity claims related to historical control over spiritual territory. In Zimbabwe as in Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, and Malawi, a single ethnic group managed to combine an ethnically explicit reassertion of regional or territorial control with strong influence within the central-state power nexus. Because of this dual achievement of ethnoregional domination and state access, there was little motivation for organizing a subnationalist drive. As in other parts of the world,23 so too in Africa: government soldiers may pursue an informal strategy that aims at relative territorial autonomy for their own group while also seeking to influence the higher units of state rulership. These points provide support for Stephen Saideman’s notion of an “ethnic security dilemma”; he writes that ethnic groups base their decision on whether to secede or remain within a nation in part on the state’s ability to provide them with “economic, physical, and political security” vis-à-vis other groups. Group members need to be certain that their jobs and economic opportunities will not be lost to members of another group, that political conflicts will not become life-threatening, and that they will not be at a political disadvantage in comparison with other groups. These three forms of security are believed to be enhanced by access to state institutions and resources. Ethnic groups commonly perceive that “If my group does not capture the state, someone else’s will, and then we will be at the mercy of the

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state.” If this marginalization and insecurity occur, autonomy-seeking rebellion can result. However, where state power is relatively fragile, de facto regional autonomy may provide sufficient security to forestall the emergence of a subnationalist movement.24 Finally, it has been argued that where “warlord states” have emerged in such countries as Liberia and Sierra Leone, individual strongmen have created networks of rulership based on clandestine commercial ties with those who control access to lucrative resources at home and abroad.25 When African strongmen, motivated above all by a quest for personal rule and wealth accumulation, take advantage of a state’s exceptional infrastructural and political weaknesses and seize national power, they are able to utilize these commercial ties to link together power holders in various territories. Such warlords’ overriding commitment to a particularly dehumanizing form of economic exploitation reduces the potential for subnationalist movements to arise. The warlord phenomenon does help to explain why regionally assertive movements have not developed in a number of nation-state contexts, but warlord politics is not the predominant form of politics in most of Africa. Political power in Africa is also, and ever more visibly, constructed on the basis of regional coalitions grounded in pragmatic, community-based, territorial movements.

Factors Favoring Subnationalism in Africa In some countries serious subnationalist movements did appear in the 1960s and 1970s—in southern Sudan, Eritrea, Katanga, and eastern Nigeria. These were exceptional cases during that time period; in more recent times such movements have proliferated, with an ever-larger segment of the African continent affected in the 1990s and early 2000s. A number of factors are now helping to tilt African political dynamics in a direction that is proving increasingly favorable to the emergence and sustenance of regionally assertive movements. These factors include changing international norms, extreme state decay, breakdown of national infrastructures, intramovement organizational strengthening, and in some areas a retraditionalization of political power. A shared political culture represents a favorable subtextual historical element that gains significance as autonomy-seeking movements expand. In the first place, as Raju Thomas, John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Marina Ottaway, and Crawford Young have each pointed

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out, the collapse of nation-states in eastern and central Europe—the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia—altered the international political context and expectations in the post-1989 period.26 The explosion of movements demanding full or partial autonomy in eastern and central Europe appeared to render the state no longer universally inalterable as a sovereign political entity, and a more flexible view of nationhood garnered international legitimacy. The international context no longer necessarily favors state preservation when secession looms, so space has been created for the potential realization of the autonomy sought by movements in Africa and elsewhere.27 As subnationalist efforts have proven increasingly successful around the globe, the new international system has become more likely to tolerate rearranged polities, in turn generating “a further incentive toward secession.”28 A second factor, also international, is the demonstration effect: inhabitants of a region becoming especially motivated to press their cause for autonomy when they learn of the success of such movements in neighboring states or in other parts of the world.29 In the contemporary era of mass communications, the rapid and worldwide transmission of the details of movement activities may well be helping to provide political stimulus to subnationalist movements in Africa. In those geographic areas that are in close proximity to rebellious regions, a process that David Lake and Donald Rothchild refer to as “diffusion” may help to advance the spread of rural uprisings.30 Stephen Saideman, discussing the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, urges caution in assuming a direct demonstration impact. He points out that while successes elsewhere may encourage some activists to pursue secessionist objectives, other activists may observe violent outbreaks and conclude that the costs are too great.31 In Africa, the mortal risk posed by rebellion may have played a role in quieting some regional forces, but it should also be considered that the international transmission of news about successful secessions in eastern Europe may have helped to provide additional impetus to the aspirations of a growing number of regional political activists. A third favorable variable centers on the problem of severely weakened government administrations: while state decline can place ethnic groups in a strong enough position to bargain with government leaders and to carve out a degree of autonomy while accepting the legitimacy of the existing state, it is also the case that when decay of central government institutions proceeds far enough the potential for exit from the state increases considerably. In various parts of the world, dramatic declines in bureaucratic competency,

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policy implementation, and rule enforcement have facilitated the ability of regional activists to mobilize a discontented populace.32 Furthermore, declining state power often translates into a weakening of national armies and police forces, as well as rural rebels’ greater access to modern weaponry.33 This factor helps to explain recent rebel advances in Côte d’Ivoire, where increasingly well-armed antigovernment forces took advantage of state decline to seize control of nearly half the country in late 2002.34 In the context of waning central-government power, bargaining cannot easily be replaced by an effective coercive response.35 Fourth, in consequence of the growing fragility of state institutions, building a coherent nation-state, which had never been the goal of colonial rulers, has become an increasingly untenable goal for postcolonial rulers.36 African states have enjoyed only minimal, intermittent success in establishing nationalism as an ideology devoted to the integrity of the nation-state, and few Africans have internalized a primary commitment to and identification with the nation-state as a political ideal, although some have. 37 In a process that Gamal Adam refers to as “exclusive nationalism,” African governments tend to articulate nation-building ideas while enacting policies that widen state-society divisions, including those between privileged capital cities and economically marginalized regions and ethnic groups.38 This helps to explain the expansion of separatist movements in Casamance, southern Sudan, Oromia, Biafra, the delta region of Nigeria, Eritrea, Somaliland, and the Congolese regions of Kasai and South and North Kivu.39 Long-term economic neglect in the context of a state discourse emphasizing national unity also informed regionally anchored rebel movements in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mozambique. In 1961, francophone East Cameroon and anglophone West Cameroon were administratively conjoined to become the Republic of Cameroon; since that time, the national government has been dominated by francophone leaders who have done little to stimulate economic development in the west or to incorporate westerners into national political institutions. Anglophones’ growing sense of exclusion and marginalization was noted especially in their complaints that although most of the country’s oil was extracted from western provinces, few of the benefits were being locally reinvested. National political leaders did little to mollify growing anglophone alienation; the 1972 subdivision of the west into the North West and South West provinces—upheld by President Paul Biya in a 1996 decision—was enacted in large part to divide anglophone politicians. The

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CAMEROON CHAD NIGERIA CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC ATLANTIC OCEAN GABON

CONGO

impact, however, was to exacerbate anglophones’ conviction that the central state sought essentially to exploit and manipulate westerners.40 By the 1990s, a major subnationalist movement had emerged that would soon capture the loyalty of a growing portion of westerners, including a wide span of anglophone ethnic groups. This is a territorially based movement marked by the multi-ethnic affinity of anglophones in North West and South West provinces. The state’s consistent antagonism toward the movement and its refusal to enter into discussions regarding autonomy for the western provinces helped to harden the separatist convictions of movement members.41 Rebels from the northwest region attacked government institutions in 1997 and 1999, and pro-secession demonstrators, especially alienated youth, mobilized repeatedly in northwestern cities in the early 2000s.42 This rising movement is a clear indicator of the failure of Cameroonian nation-state consolidation and the growing inability of state institutions to stem the tide of subnationalist assertion. In Côte d’Ivoire the central state was dominated for decades by southerners (in particular members of an Akan minority) whose policies tended to neglect the northern regions. Those regions’ mostly Muslim inhabitants were disparaged by state leaders as “foreigners” because they include a large number of Burkinabé, Guinean, and Malian immigrants. Longtime president Félix Houphouët-Boigny consolidated a north-south division, with northern regions being marginalized in terms of economic development and religion. For example,

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GUINÉE

GHANA LIBERIA ATLANTIC OCEAN

CÔTE D’IVOIRE

Catholicism was accorded pride of place while Islam was largely ignored. The contemporary civil war in Côte d’Ivoire, which began in 1999 and continues into 2003, has been fought by an alliance of northern rebels, mostly alienated youth and ex-soldiers who have tired of the north’s marginalization.43 Rather than seeking secession, they aimed to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, a southerner, and to gain control of the government. After the rebels had secured control of half the national territory, French soldiers defending Gbagbo established a line of military partition across the country to protect the south, effectively leaving the northern regions in rebel control.44 This armed struggle is indicative both of long-term state neglect serving to generate regionally anchored rebellion and of the extent to which the failure of nation-state integration and the diminished institutional capacity of the state can make it possible for a rebel alliance to seize control of vast territories. The case of Mozambique provides an especially interesting example of the political implications of the existence of strong territorial identities in the context of a poorly integrated nation-state.

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INDIAN OCEAN

ZAMBIA

ZIMBABWE

INDIAN OCEAN

SOUTH AFRICA

MOZAMBIQUE

Barry Schutz argues that Portuguese colonialism never amounted to more than a “very thin national veneer” in most of the Mozambican countryside.45 M. Anne Pitcher suggests that after independence, state decline occurred to such an extent that rural zones came to be marked by de facto self-reliance and dependence on traditional leaders.46 The enduring superficiality of nation building in Mozambique and the real-life restriction of state power to the capital city of Maputo and the provincial capitals left wide reaches of the countryside “increasingly vulnerable to potential separatist/secessionist movements.”47 Thus, although the rebel movement Renamo (Mozambican National Resistance) aimed for national power, it concentrated its mobilization efforts in the northern regions of Capo Delgado and Nampula

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because the national government had little presence in areas far removed from the southern capital. Ethnopolitical and territorial factors converged here: Renamo recruited fighters from Mozambique’s northern provinces and to some extent from its central provinces, especially among Shona and Ndau peoples.48 In northern and central territories, dissatisfaction with national-government inadequacies, the state’s repeated condemnation of locally popular traditional leaders, and resentment over perceived domination of the state by southernbased Shambaa enabled Renamo to build regional bases of support in the early-to-mid-1980s.49 Moreover, Renamo leaders, operating “within the moral boundaries of society,” embraced the political legitimacy of Ndau chiefly rule and social norms, and Renamo cadres intermarried with the local Ndau populace.50 Renamo’s district-level leaders were appointed from among the inhabitants of Manica, Sofala, Tete, and Zambezia provinces; and most Renamo officials, including its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, were conversant in the Ndau language.51 By aiming to integrate the movement with local society, Renamo succeeded in generating local support throughout much of the northern and central territories. However, in some locales support for Renamo was mixed or unenthusiastic, and in these areas Renamo leaders relied on brutal recruitment tactics and extreme terror to ensure its political dominance: they destroyed schools and health centers and used torture.52 These tactics reflected the political immaturity of Renamo leaders, especially during the early phases of the struggle, as well as the fact that the use of violence was condoned and perhaps even encouraged by the South African and U.S. governments, which assisted Renamo and provided it funds.53 As a result of the widespread use of such violent tactics against villagers in some areas, and because its external backers began to cut their ties to the organization as the Cold War came to a close, Renamo’s support base weakened through the late 1980s. By 1992, Renamo leaders determined that the organization could survive politically only if it abandoned its armed struggle and participated in new national elections. When elections were held in 1994 and 1999, Renamo obtained substantial parliamentary representation (119 seats compared to 129 seats for Frelimo, the ruling party, in the latter vote), reflecting the persistence of strong support in the central and northern areas.54 As a consequence of the underdevelopment of the country’s transportation and communications infrastructure, the continuing drop in the nation’s overall economic production and output, and

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poorly implemented privatization programs, the Mozambican nationstate remains extremely fragile and government structures are displaced from most of the rural populace.55 Mozambique is considered the poorest country in the world. Half its government budget is derived from development aid, and government services’ profound dysfunction and decay are dramatized by the government’s inability to contend with floods and other environmental catastrophes. Rural areas in substantial portions of the central and northern regions are functioning on a self-reliant basis. The country’s infrastructural fragmentation means that despite the incorporation of Renamo into the state-approved political process, the sinews of nation-state coherence remain only tenuously fastened. The conditions of structural fragility and disenchantment in the central and northern regions that helped to facilitate the rise of a guerrilla movement in the 1970s and early 1980s have become further exacerbated in the early 2000s, and the potential for a recurrence of regional mobilization remains large. In the rest of Africa, state atrophy and the failure of nation-state integration vary in extent and pervasiveness, but these are critical variables in the recent emergence of rebel movements. Inadequate attention to nation building, in combination with states’ infrastructural degeneration, has opened the door for autonomy-seeking regional mobilizers to advance their cause more assertively. While some of these regional movement leaders accept the legitimacy of the existing state structure, they may accept that legitimacy only in its broadest outlines and on condition of actual autonomy at the regional level. Other movement mobilizers reject existing nation-state structures altogether. Improvements within regional autonomy movements are a fifth factor facilitating their rise. In recent years, insurgents in Africa have improved the organizational coherence of their movements, have begun to select more effective leaders and to recruit better-trained partisans and higher-quality mobilizers, have generated greater loyalty among participants, have become more effective politically, and have improved the technical aspects of their military operations.56 These internal changes help to account for the expansion of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the Tuareg separatist movement in northern Mali, and other movements discussed in the chapters that follow.57 Sixth, in some cases, what may be called the contemporary retraditionalization of local-level political power can sometimes work to the benefit of autonomy-seeking movements. Retraditionalization

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refers to the ceding of local authority back to locally legitimate chiefs, elders, headmen, and community political institutions. This is not yet a sufficiently widespread phenomenon to be considered a major factor in the rise of subnationalism. However, locally rooted power structures and individual chiefs can provide communities with a well-grounded basis for ending informal state-ethnic bargains and can provide a mechanism of linkage between localities and regionalmovement mobilizers. In Chapter 10, I discuss more fully the potential political consequences of the growing activism of traditional leaders. Here I note that traditional leaders are playing an increasingly important role in African politics precisely because of the difficulty so many governments face in asserting their authority in rural areas. Throughout much of Africa, local chiefs have strong potential to influence regional politics because they often are responsible for brokering disputes among social elites and because they retain control of the allocation and distribution of many rural land tracts.58 While chiefs rarely act as mobilizing agents, in some instances they serve as part of the grassroots political foundation for both uni-ethnic and multiethnic subnationalist movements. This is more the case today than in past decades, as the example of southern Sudan, discussed in Chapter 4, suggests. Ethnic pluralism can also play a positive role in the formation and evolution of a regional political movement. On the one hand, an especially high degree of social fragmentation in a given territory can act as a disincentive to subnationalism. On the other hand, a highly pluralistic social context can help to make possible the formation of a strong coalition in support of a regionally based movement. This is particularly the case where a culture of political cooperation is valued more highly than socially alienated personalism. The historical persistence of a value structure that emphasizes cooperation may help to account for the fact that some autonomy-seeking movements are presently being manifested in interethnic form. In such cases, a single core group often instigates the movement and may rely in part on uniethnic identity issues that are particular to that core group, but at the same time the movement’s leaders reach out to form supportive linkages, networks, and alliances with other communities in the region. A particularly telling case regarding the activation of interethnic politics in a context of subnationalism is that of Kenya’s ethnically plural Rift Valley in the 1990s. Jacqueline Klopp explains that the state-led ethnic cleansing campaign against Kikuyu and regime opponents from other groups provoked a “trans-ethnic politics of cooperation” among

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Rift Valley activists. The core activist group was comprised of Nandi who were determined to pursue a politics of interethnic cooperation with Kikuyu and other groups. In doing so, they defied state-led efforts to disrupt Rift Valley multiethnic farming communities. This interethnic cooperation was manifested in, among other activities, the holding of large political rallies in which Nandi linked arms with people from other ethnic groups as “a potent symbolic gesture” to demonstrate their alliance against Moi’s repressive efforts to undermine multiethnic solidarity in the valley.59 Nandi subnationalism, then, took the form of an explicit effort to distance the Nandi people from Moi’s anti-Kikuyu ethnic cleansing drive, to celebrate the peaceful and cooperative character of Nandi society, and to reinforce an historically pluralistic alliance between Nandi and other groups in the Rift Valley. Cabinda and the Western Sahara provide similarly noteworthy examples of subnationalist mobilization within a political culture defined by long-standing interethnic cooperation. Cabinda’s distinctiveness reflects its territorial separation from Angola by a sliver of Congolese land, its treatment by the Portuguese as a special administrative enclave, its access to enormous oil reserves, and the fact that Cabindans from different ethnic origins have historically cooperated in their struggle against external intervention. From 1606, when Portuguese navigators established treaties with the Cabinda kingdoms of Cacongo, Luango, and Ngoio, ethnic groups associated with these kingdoms fought to uphold Cabinda’s autonomy when faced with external challengers.60 The interethnic Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), created in 1963 along with the other national independence movements in the Portuguese colonies, aimed at securing Cabindan independence as a separate enclave. In 1975, this struggle came to be directed against the Angolan government, led by the Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola (MPLA), because the government insisted on retaining control over Cabinda as a part of Angolan territory. In recent years, FLEC has intensified its subnationalist efforts and has mobilized growing numbers of Cabindan rebels despite a split within the movement over whether it should pursue autonomy or secession. This internal ideological division does not negate the linkage between Cabinda’s overriding history of territorial assertion and its deeply rooted multiethnic political culture. Between 2001 and 2003, FLEC expanded its territorial control over rural parts of the Cabinda enclave.61 Older cultural and economic traditions play a role in Western Sahara, where the Reguibats, Ouled Delim, Ouled Bou Ba, Tekna, and

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others share “a sense of unity” as Sahelian herding communities. The leaders of the POLISARIO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet el Hamra and Rio de Oro), which has been fighting a secessionist war against Spain (beginning in 1973) and Morocco (as of 1979), have made strenuous—and effective—efforts to mobilize fighters by drawing frequent reference to older practices of Saharan interethnic exchange and military defense.62 As a result, this secessionist movement has been able to recruit and deploy armed militants who share an historically rooted territorial affiliation to the Western Sahara. Moroccan king Mohammed VI’s November 2002 rejection of the possibility of a popular referendum on independence in Western Sahara makes it likely that the armed struggle for independence will continue.63 These examples suggest that the subtextual cultural element discussed in Chapter 2 can be especially relevant when the factors discussed in this section come into play. When this occurs, political culture can help to create territorially based interlinked power nodes and contribute to the expansion of politically assertive movements. More generally, the subtextual impact of historically generated cultural priorities are often manifested at the interpersonal level, with important implications for political behavior. Anthropologist Thomas S. Weisner points to value systems that emphasize “cooperation with others” and “interdependence skills,” which are inculcated within African societies through parental styles of child-rearing. He explains that “child caretaking often occurs as a part of indirect chains of support in which one child assists another, who assists a third. . . . Children look to other children for assistance and support as much or more than to adults. . . . Mothers provide support and nurturance for children as much by ensuring that others will consistently participate in doing so as by doing so directly themselves.”64 These behavioral patterns generate a “culture complex” characterized by “socially distributed support” that becomes apparent in “multiple affect and attachment patterns.” Weisner suggests that such a cultural base has proven facilitative of intermarriage, which in turn helps to account for the territorial expansion of eastern African societies from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.65 Other observers have pointed out that prior to the 1990s, the sociocultural tradition in Kenya was for children from all of the country’s different ethnic groups to play with one another.66 In the 1990s, the outbreak of politicized violence in Kenya diminished the amount of time children of different ethnics groups played together—but not before the values that gave rise to these play patterns in the first place helped to generate widening multiethnic political activism.

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To be sure, culture by no means has a determining influence on political behavior; the overarching and particularistic variables discussed earlier—including state intervention and ascriptive, instrumentalist, and economic influences—often prove more decisive. This is why I analyze culture’s subtextual, indirect impact. However, deeply rooted values, interpersonal dynamics, and underlying assumptions about how one ought to relate to one’s neighbors can provide a psychological and sociological framework, a mode of thought and action, that in some areas is favorable to a spirit of cooperation, sharing, and mutual dependence. This, in turn, helps to explain the personal and attitudinal basis for the formation of networks and alliances across localities and among different identity groups in a number of African regions. Where such values are predominant and where particular political grievances are widely shared, indigenous social practices can act as a facilitative subtext regarding the creation of intergroup ties and informal territorial compacts in the course of regional movement mobilization.

Conclusion The political momentum in Africa has begun to swing toward the expansion of subnationalism and away from state-centric political overrule. In rural areas in much of the continent a growing number of movements are asserting political power on a regional basis. Reasons for this expansion include a shift in international tolerance for subnationalism and a severe weakening of the administrative linkages that previously provided for at least a minimal structural coordination within African nation-states. Furthermore, territorially based leaders have improved the organizational coherence of their rebel movements; in some cases, a strengthening of older, communitybased traditional authority structures has aided movement mobilizers. Ethnic pluralism in a common cultural alliance-oriented framework can, from the perspective of fundamental values and intercommunity behavior, provide a social and historical background that is favorable to the mobilization or expansion of subnationalist forces. Still, subnationalist movements continue to face numerous political obstacles in attempting to widen their support bases and to effectively confront centralized states. 67 National governments, however weakened, are not about to acquiesce to subnationalist challenges, and they can still marshal considerable armed force. Many areas in

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rural Africa are characterized by such extensive social fluidity that neither uni-ethnic forces nor interethnic alliances are able to cohere. Moreover, states continue to intervene in regional politics to create antagonisms among local actors, which can become internalized as factional disputes that prevent organizational success. Finally, the weakening of state infrastructures can generate de facto regional autonomy and make the state vulnerable to ethnoregional political forces in a way that deflates the potential for territorial mobilization. Despite these problems and hindrances, autonomy-seeking movements are appearing with growing frequency in an ever-larger number of African nation-states. In the following chapters I focus on the main factors involved in the genesis and growth of different types of subnationalist movements and provide evidence of the mechanisms of movement expansion, making clear why some interethnic and uni-ethnic movements have proven durable while other movements have subsided. Interethnic movements are the subject of Chapters 4–6. They are grouped into three broad categories: in Chapter 4 I analyze “cultural mosaics” that reflect the combination of ethnic heterogeneity and economic underprivilege, in Chapter 5 I discuss movements with lengthy historical precedents as tradition, and in Chapter 6 I analyze movements that have led to the creation of breakaway new nations. In Chapters 7–8 I turn my attention toward uni-ethnic subnationalism. I discuss groups that have declined to pursue alliances in Chapter 7, movements in which instrumentalist leaders have played significant mobilizational roles in Chapter 8, and cases in which an effort to reassert a once-predominant role has aided movement expansion in Chapter 9. In Chapter 10 I demonstrate the significance of retraditionalization for subnationalism, and in the book’s conclusion I link the central themes of this study to a reconsideration of the future of the nation-state in Africa.

Notes 1. Crawford Young, ed., The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay? (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 29, 228; Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 22. 2. Neuberger, National Self-Determination, 26. 3. Young, Rising Tide; see also Crawford Young, “Comparative Claims to Political Sovereignty: Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea,” in State Versus Ethnic

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Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 228. 4. Dunstan M. Wai, “Sources of Communal Conflicts and Secessionist Politics in Africa,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 1, no. 3 (1978), 301. 5. Mario J. Azevedo, “Ethnicity and Democratization in Congo and Chad (1945–1995),” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 159–160, 170. 6. William J. Foltz, “Reconstructing the State of Chad,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 17–18; Raymond W. Copson, Africa’s Wars and Prospects for Peace (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 63–64; Stephen P. Reyna, Wars Without End: The Political Economy of a Precolonial African State (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1990). 7. John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought,” in Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, ed. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (London: James Currey, 1992), 347–348, 449. 8. Ibid., 317, 364, 410–411, 417, 456, 460, 463. 9. Cynthia H. Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), ix, 15. 10. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 11–14, 42–43, 78–82. 11. Edmond J. Keller, “The State, Public Policy, and the Mediation of Ethnic Conflict in Africa,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 256, 263. 12. William Reno, “The Distinctive Political Logic of Weak States,” in Warlord Politics and African States, by William Reno (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998); Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 17–18; I. William Zartman, “Introduction: Posing the Problem of State Collapse,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. Willam Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Joshua B. Forrest, “An Asynchronic Comparison: Weak States in Post-Colonial Africa and Medieval Europe,” in Comparing Nations: The Pendulum Between Theory and Substance, ed. Mattei Dogan and Ali Kazancigil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994). 13. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 31; Donald Rothchild, “Hegemony and State Softness: Some Variations in Elite Responses,” in The African State in Transition, ed. Zaki Ergas (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 126–128. See also Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola, “Managing Competing State and Ethnic Claims,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983). 14. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 12–14, 72; Rothchild, “Hegemony and State Softness,” 122–126.

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15. Julius E. Nyang’oro, “Civil Society, Democratization, and State Building in Kenya and Tanzania,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 188. 16. Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Saints and Politicians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Lucy Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970). 17. Joshua B. Forrest, “Guinea-Bissau,” in The Postcolonial History of Lusophone Africa, ed. Patrick Chabal (London: Hurst, 2002), 259–260; Joshua B. Forrest, “Guinea-Bissau Since Independence: A Decade of Domestic Power Struggles,” Journal of Modern African Studies 25, no. 1 (1987). 18. Nelson Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics, with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 151, 153. The Ugandan case is further discussed in Chapter 10. 19. Leroy Vail and Landeg White, “Tribalism in the Political History of Malawi,” in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, ed. Leroy Vail (London: James Currey, 1989), 179–181. 20. David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985), 56–57, 106, 113, 145, 152. 21. Ibid., 221–222, 228. 22. J. Stephen Morrison, Terrence Lyons, and Jennifer Cooke, “Time for Concerted International Action on Zimbabwe,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., 2001, 8. 23. Cynthia H. Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers, 187–198, 209. 24. Stephen M. Saideman, “Is Pandora’s Box Half Empty or Half Full? The Limited Virulence of Secessionism and the Domestic Sources of Disintegration,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 135. 25. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 45–77, 217–228. 26. Marina Ottaway, “Nation Building and State Disintegration,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999); Raju G. C. Thomas, “Nations, States, and Secession: Lessons from the Former Yugoslavia,” Mediterranean Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1994); John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “The Macro-Political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict,” in The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, ed. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (London: Routledge, 1993), 14; Young, Rising Tide. 27. Viva Ona Bartkus, The Dynamic of Secession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 205; Ottaway, “Nation Building and State Disintegration,” 83, 90–92; McGarry and O’Leary, “Macro-Political Regulation,” 14. 28. Bartkus, Dynamic of Secession, 205. 29. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 172.

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30. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, “Spreading Fear: The Genesis of Transnational Ethnic Conflict,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 24, 26. 31. Saideman, “Is Pandora’s Box Half Empty or Half Full?” 129, 138. 32. I. William Zartman, “Introduction: Posing the Problem of State Collapse,” 1, 8–9. 33. This point is made with particular clarity in James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003), 75–76, 80. 34. “Côte d’Ivoire,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 11 (2002), 15086; Paul Welsh, “Ivory Coast: Who Are the Rebels?,” BBC News, 30 November 2002, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2531715.stm. 35. Rothchild, “Hegemony and State Softness.” 36. Basil Davidson, Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (New York: Random House, 1992). 37. Ottaway, “Nation Building and State Disintegration,” 85–86, 88. For a powerful counterargument, see Crawford Young, “Nationalism and Ethnicity in Africa,” in Review of Asian and Pacific Studies, no. 23 (2002): 1–19. 38. Gamal Adam, “Exclusive Nationalism and the Upsurge of Ethnicity,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Laval University, Québec, Canada, 27–30 May 2001. 39. These movements are all discussed in subsequent chapters. 40. Piet Konings and Francis Nyamnjoh, “The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 2 (1997), 214–215. 41. Bongfen Chem-Langhee, “The Road to the Unitary State of Cameroon 1959–1972,” available at http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Chilver/Paideuma/ paideuma-Introdu.html. 42. Aboya Endong Manasse, “Menaces sécessionistes sur l’état camerounais,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2002, 12–13; see also Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, “Construction and Deconstruction: Anglophones or Autochtones?,” Ethno-Net Africa Publications, 1999, available at http://www.ethnonet-africa.org/pubs/p95konings.htm. 43. Tiemoko Coulibaly, “Lente décomposition en Côte d’Ivoire,” Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2002, 24–25. 44. “Côte d’Ivoire,” Africa Research Bulletin; Paul Welsh, “Ivory Coast.” 45. Barry Schutz, “The Heritage of Revolution and the Struggle for Governmental Legitimacy in Mozambique,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 113. 46. M. Anne Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence to the Millennium,” in The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa, ed. York Bradshaw and Stephen N. Ndegwa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 192. 47. Schutz, “Heritage of Revolution,” 113. 48. Ibid., 117. 49. Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence,” 194; Copson, Africa’s Wars, 40.

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50. Jessica Schafer, “Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?” African Affairs 100 (2001), 233. 51. Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence,” 194; Elizabeth MacGonagle, “The Ethno-Politics of ‘Being Ndau’ in Mozambique and Zimbabwe,” paper presented at the Northeastern Workshop on Southern Africa, Burlington, Vermont, 20–21 April 2001. 52. Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence,” 193–194. 53. Schutz, “Heritage of Revolution,” 116. 54. Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence,” 195, 203–204; Schutz, “Heritage of Revolution,” 119. 55. Ibid., 189, 201–202. 56. Christopher Clapham, “Introduction: Analysing African Insurgencies,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 8–9. 57. See Chapters 4, 6, and 9 below. Crawford Young, “Contextualizing Congo Conflicts: Order and Disorder in Postcolonial Africa,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 25. 58. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 184–90, 193–194; Joshua B. Forrest, “The Quest for State ‘Hardness’ in Africa,” Comparative Politics 20, no. 4 (1988). 59. Jacqueline M. Klopp, “Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism? The Struggle for Land and Nation in Kenya,” African Studies 61, no. 2 (2002), 284, 286. 60. Cabindans also cooperated with Portuguese settlers to ensure Cabinda’s status as a specially recognized trading port. 61. Thomas Turner, “Angola’s Role in the Congo War,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 87; David Birmingham and Terence Ranger, “Settlers and Liberators in the South,” in History of Central Africa, vol. 2, ed. David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin (London: Longman, 1983), 346, 362; Jarig Bakker, “FLEC (Cabinda, Angola),” 4 May 1998, available at http://fotw.net/flags/ ao}flec1.html; “Cornered Rebels May Lash Out in Cabinda,” Global Policy Forum, UN Security Council, 12 February 2001, available at www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/2001/0212ango.htm; “Província de Cabinda,” LAN Serviços [Portugal], 5 March 2003, available at http://lan.online.pt/ Cabinda.htm. 62. Copson, Africa’s Wars, 80; Alain Antil, “Une dimension mal connue du conflit du Sahara occidental: La position de la Mauritanie,” Afrique Contemporaine, no. 201 (2002), 84. 63. “Western Sahara: Referendum in Jeopardy,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 11 (2002), 15091. 64. Thomas S. Weisner, “Culture, Childhood, and Progress in SubSaharan Africa,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 145, 150. 65. Ibid., 150, 146.

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66. Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule: State-Sponsored Ethnic Violence in Kenya (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), 80, cited in Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, “A Lost Generation? Youth Identity and State Decay in West Africa,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 63. 67. See especially Young, “Nationalism and Ethnicity in Africa.”

4 Cultural Mosaics

I

n this chapter I examine two large subnationalist movements that emerged within regions marked by high levels of ethnic heterogeneity and a history of economic underprivilege in comparison to the core, urbanized areas of their respective nation-states. In both the southern Sudan and the Casamance region of Senegal, a large number of ethnic minorities carved out a considerable degree of autonomy—both within each region and at the community level—while consolidating long-standing practices of interethnic cooperation. I use the term cultural mosaic to capture the imagery of large territories historically defined by the plurality of their ethnic groups, which in precolonial times forged a political culture characterized by interpersonal interchanges, marketing relations, and a shared political preference for separate, autonomous village-level authority structures based on segmentary organization rather than centralized kingships. These mosaic-like territories were each confronted by large, hostile external forces—slavers from northern Sudan and Gabu Empire armies in the case of the Casamance. These confrontations generated territory-wide alliances of resistance while infusing the precolonial cultures of southern Sudan and of Casamance with a panregional sense of besiegement and sufferance. Subsequently, each of these territories was forcibly incorporated into a newly established colonial rubric—British Sudan and France’s Senegal, respectively—and the two colonial powers regarded these territories as backward in relation to regions geographically closer to the colonial capital cities. Southern Sudan and Casamance would both be treated with a combination of military-administrative harshness 77

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and economic-developmental indifference. At the micro level, people in these regions resisted colonial demands, refusing engagement with colonial representatives, evading taxation, and to a large extent preserving village-level autonomy. At the same time, regionwide mistreatment and underprivilege reinforced common territorial resentment against the centralized elite based in Khartoum and Dakar, respectively. After independence in each case, in the context of historically entrenched economic inequities, what were perceived to be oppressive policies of the new urban-centered regimes helped to stimulate the generation of subnationalist movements. As each of the movements developed, multiple influences ensured that ethno-ascriptive mobilization, internal factionalism, and leadership instrumentalism would coincide with long-standing tendencies toward interethnic cooperation.

Sudan Southern Sudan is a large territorial domain with distinct historical, cultural, and religious characteristics that set the region substantially apart from the politically predominant north. While northern Sudan has been dominated since precolonial times by Islamized Arabic peoples, the south is populated by a large number of animist and Christian groups. The largest and best-known group are the Dinka, who today number about 2 million. The Dinka share with other southern Sudanese a history of resistance against northern domination.1 Other southerners include: in the Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile provinces, the Shilluk, Auak, and Nuer, whose social institutions and identity reflect a complex set of relations between cattle and people;2 in Equatoria province, the Murle, Didinga, Boya, Toposa, and Bari; and in the southwest, the Azande, Kreish, Bongo, Moro, and Madi.3 Many of these smaller groups suffered particular devastation during the Arab slave trade, while the numerous and well-organized Dinka military units were able to marshal a more effective defense.4 For the most part, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and other southerners enjoyed cooperative political and economic relations with each other, and village leaders from different ethnic groups would frequently meet together to resolve differences. Low-level fights broke out occasionally between some communities, often over accusations of cattle theft, but these fights were typically short-lived and involved minimal loss of life. Pervading the south was a cultural commitment to community-level autonomy that functioned to restrict the breadth

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and intensity of warfare. The precolonial history of interethnic coordination against attacks from the north gave rise to prophetic traditions passed on through sacred songs and oriented toward the collective, intergroup liberation of the south from northern domination.5 During the twentieth century, the advent of British colonial rule led to a rigid administrative reinforcement of north-south separation, with northerners needing special permission to travel or conduct business in the south and southerners being accorded a distinct and less well-funded educational system.6 The northern provinces of Khartoum and Kassala absorbed three-quarters of the country’s industrial projects and were the site of a vast share of communications and transportation infrastructure and development projects. Political institutions were similarly concentrated in the north, while the south remained under the control of military commanders. 7 However, the British never established the kind of thoroughgoing political control over the south that they did over the north, so communities were able to preserve their fundamental political and cultural autonomy.

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Some southerners, most notably Dinka leader Deng Majok, worked hard to extend southerners’ tradition of interethnic peacemaking to forge workable political relations with northern Arab communities.8 This helped set the stage for north-south political negotiations over federalist arrangements during Sudan’s decolonization. After independence in 1956, however, northern politicians abandoned negotiations, and soon thereafter, in November 1958, the armed forces staged a coup d’état and seized control of the government.9 Antisouthern sentiment pervaded the new military regime, with overt repression of southerners occurring regularly in a process that southerners increasingly believed was guided by the regime’s determination to forcibly Islamize the south.10 Meanwhile, the southern provinces of Upper Nile, Equatoria, and Bahr el Ghazal remained excluded from representation in central government institutions and were not accorded substantial economic development investment.11 This political exclusion and the continuity of regional underdevelopment helped to ensure the generation of the subnationalist rebellion by southern forces that has continued now for nearly forty years.12 The intensification of Khartoum’s exploitation of the south’s oil resources during the 1990s and early 2000s intensified southerners’ sense of grievance, and oil profits enabled the central government to strengthen its military capacity.13 Nonetheless, the rebels marshaled impressive battlefield contingents against Khartoum in an effort to break free from the state’s rigid rule. This rebellion has been soldiered both by uni-ethnic forces (of the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and others) and by multiethnic resistance groups that have sought greater panregional autonomy or secession. In recent years, the southern Sudanese subnationalist movement has been marked by two contradictory tendencies. First, instrumentalist manipulation by ethnic elites has exacerbated resentment on the part of smaller groups, such as the Nuer and Shillock, against the political domination of the Dinka, while at the same time intensifying separate uni-ethnic movements by the Dinka and Nuer. Second, at the grassroots level traditional leaders have taken it upon themselves to forge interethnic coalitions involving Dinka, Nuer, and smaller groups by organizing repeated meetings. Traditional chiefs have obtained substantial popular support from villagers in their effort to restore the historical bonds between the various ethnic groups in southern Sudan, despite the intense infighting occurring among political elites.

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The Movement’s Evolution As the postcolonial period began, southerners made clear their determination to prevent “cultural-assimilationist conquest” by the north.14 Through much of the 1960s, southern guerrilla fighting units called Anya-Nya operated in separate groups in their respective home areas, but they remained tenuously linked, and the leadership of the movement was fragmented.15 Rebel leader Joseph Lagu, based in eastern Equatoria, managed to consolidate support among the differing Anya-Nya fighting groups by 1971, making possible the formation of the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM).16 This movement had more than ten thousand fighters under its command in the early 1970s, with units mobilized from various ethnic groups located across the south.17 Although some rebels wanted to fight for full secession, the SSLM decided that they would accept peace within a unified Sudan once full political and fiscal autonomy was granted to the southern provinces of Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria, and the Upper Nile.18 The central government initially agreed to southern autonomy, but the Jaafar Nimeiri regime failed to allow it and instead intervened extensively in the administration of the southern region during the mid-to-late 1970s.19 In the early-to-mid-1980s, three factors converged that would ensure the resumption of subnationalist warfare. First, Nimeiri decided to divide the southern provinces into smaller entities, making clear his abandonment of his previous commitment to southern self-rule and suggesting his determination to ensure perpetual southern fragmentation. Second, Nimeiri ordered that Islamic law be imposed throughout the nation, including the non-Islamic south. Finally, the Sudan government’s blockage of relief aid during the 1983–1986 drought gave the appearance that the north was trying to starve the south.20 As southerners returned to the battlefield this time, they formed a new rebel organization, the SPLM-SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–Sudan People’s Liberation Army), headed by John Garang de Mabior, an effective and well-respected general. Although most of his fighters were Dinka, Garang aimed to create a multiethnic, independent new nation, which he termed the “Republic of Azania” and which would be distinguished as “a confederacy of Nilotes and Equatorians.”21 Despite this multiethnic goal, the fact that most of his commanders were Dinka was a problem that would soon lead to serious factional splits.

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Under Garang’s management, the SPLA reorganized and improved its military capacity through the 1980s, imposing tighter control over the previously largely autonomous Anya-Nya fighting groups, which were renamed “Anya-Nya II” and incorporated into the SPLA. By the late 1980s, the SPLA was able to mobilize large divisions, each with thousands of men, and would win control of most of the rural areas in the south while capturing large quantities of weapons and supplies.22 Despite these military achievements, Garang’s goal softened: instead of aiming for full independence, he seemed willing to accept the idea of a coherent Sudanese nation-state if the south were granted autonomy. However, the national government of Sudan, led as of 1989 by Islamic hardliner Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, refused to compromise. The new regime was even more determined than its predecessor to win back control of those areas conquered by the SPLA and to impose a strict version of Islamic law throughout the country.23 Meanwhile, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, political splits developed in the SPLM-SPLA that undermined the movement’s interethnic unity. Commanders Riak (or Riek) Machar, Lam Akol, and Kerubino Kuanyin Bol each headed a breakaway faction that included many Anya-Nya fighters and complained of Garang’s determination to control the SPLM-SPLA without adequate input from participating units. By 1991, Machar, Akol, and Bol also claimed to be aiming for full secession and independence rather than accepting Garang’s goal of southern autonomy within a unified Sudan.24 Akol is Shilluk, and Machar is of Nuer identity; both complained of Dinka predominance at all levels of the SPLM-SPLA.25 Machar and Akol created what they called SPLA-United—later renamed Southern Sudan Independence Movement—and attacked Garang’s SPLMSPLA forces, while Bol consolidated his fighters separately in the Bahr el Ghazal provinces and fought against SPLA troops there.26 Beginning in 1992, despite their purported commitment to full secession, both Machar and Akol aligned with the Sudanese government of Bashir in a joint effort to defeat Garang’s SPLM-SPLA. This was dramatized by Machar and Akol’s signing in 1996 of a political charter that confirmed their commitment to a unitary Sudanese state.27 How could Machar and Akol criticize Garang for wanting “only” autonomy rather than full secession, on the one hand, while accepting arms from Khartoum and coordinating their anti-SPLA military attacks with the Bashir regime, on the other? Such coordination suggests that Machar and Akol did not have a principled commitment to

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either secession or a multiethnic southern Sudan. They were willing to settle with Khartoum for much more limited benefits, including the provision of arms and munitions to ensure their survival as leaders of ethnic militias.28 For both Machar and Akol, the perceived collective security of the Nuer and Shilluk vis-à-vis the Dinka superseded the pursuit of pansouthern autonomy. Machar’s fighters continued to launch attacks not only against the SPLM-SPLA but also against Dinka civilians in battles that took on the appearance of a Dinka-Nuer war.29 Leaders of additional small-scale ethnic factions fighting the SPLM-SPLA followed Machar and Akol by signing unity agreements with the Sudanese government in 1997. These included Kerubino Kuanyin Bol of SPLA-United, Theophilus Ochang of the Equatoria Defence Force, Kwac Makuie of the South Sudan Independence Group, and Samuel Aru Bol of the Union of Sudanese African Parties. They agreed, according to the terms of the 1997 accords, that they would fight under the coordinated command of Riak Machar. However, a unified military command of these “rebels among rebels” was not created.30 While engaged in this “inner war” with its southern rivals, the SPLM-SPLA remained by far the dominant military force in the south and continued its fight against northern troops. As neither side was able to gain a decisive military victory, there was little potential for resolution at the end of the 1990s.31 As the Sudanese central government profited from robust oil revenues—they were estimated at $500 million in 2000—the Bashir regime’s ability to pursue its attacks on southern opposition forces was strengthened. However, the political alienation of northern ethnic minorities such as the Nuba and the Ingassana resulted in the political and military alignment of these minority groups with the SPLM-SPLA—which, in turn, helped to boost the fighting ability and territorial reach of the SPLA.32 In June 2001, a peace summit held in Nairobi brought together key figures, including John Garang of the SPLM and Khartoum government officials, but it did not lead to an agreement. Even during the summit the SPLA claimed to have captured Raja, an important town in Bahr el Ghazal province.33 Throughout 2002 talks were held intermittently even as intensive battles took place.34 Among southern forces, the quest for personal power and for the achievement of individual leaders’ instrumentalist goals, along with each group’s security concerns, has helped to ensure a high degree of factionalism. Furthermore, southern Sudan has a political tradition of micro-level decentralized autonomy. This value has endured since precolonial times, and it may account, at least in part, for Nuba

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commanders’ determination to maintain an independent sphere of decisionmaking and for their friction with SPLA commanders even though greater military success had previously been achieved against government armies when Nuba and SPLA battalions coordinated their efforts with one another.35 This raises the question of whether political factionalism among southern Sudanese forces has produced such a hardening of ethnic divisions that there is no longer potential for pansouthern unity. Attention to leadership claims, elite-mass relations, and the political behavior of traditional authorities and villagers sheds some light on this query. Uni-Ethnic Subnationalism or Pansouthern Regionalism? Considering the proliferation of ethnically defined fighting factions in Sudan and the numerical predominance of the Dinka within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, is the SPLM best interpreted as a Dinka uni-ethnic subnationalist movement? There is no mention of Dinka identity in SPLM literature, the SPLM leadership includes members from non-Dinka ethnic groups, and the SPLM makes a point of publicly underlining the broad, multiethnic, regional basis of its struggle.36 It has forged alliances with a broad range of other southern Sudanese groups opposed to northern hegemony, including those with non-Dinka support bases, despite the breakaway of some factions.37 In terms of the movement’s goals, the SPLM has repeatedly declared its intent to render a unified Sudan more ethnically representative and to facilitate the achievement of southern autonomy, and it appears to reject outright secession.38 However, many educated Dinka with ties to the SPLM think that the official emphasis on autonomy rather than secession is a tactical strategy and that the SPLM leadership may well aspire to full secession regardless of leaders’ public statements emphasizing national unity.39 I would suggest that the SPLM can be viewed as a largely Dinka political movement that aims for both ethnic self-rule and collaborative panregional autonomy expansion. The broader goal of autonomy appears to be genuinely held by many SPLM leaders and supporters,40 despite the fact that some leaders would prefer that it occur within the context of a unified Sudan. Competing personal ambitions played a key role in the political split between Garang and Machar, and since that time, each leader has sought to play on the fears of his respective ethnic community (Dinka and Nuer) by accusing the other

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of seeking communal predominance.41 Both leaders’ accusations are well-founded. Despite the oft-repeated claim regarding multiethnicity and a broad southern movement, the SPLM pursued an intensive behind-the-scenes effort to rally Dinka at the grassroots level with explicitly ethnic appeals, while Machar’s commanders similarly organized the Nuer peasantry on the presumption of Dinka aspirations to dominate the entire south. This translated into the military mobilization of thousands of Dinka and Nuer fighters into separate political camps and resulted in a serious subsidiary war that damaged what remained of the southern economy and resulted in the destruction of hundreds of villages in both Nuer and Dinka areas. Garang’s and Machar’s movements sought to actively drum up Dinka and Nuer enmity. Field commanders loyal to each side prevented village-to-village communication across Dinka-Nuer borders, and commanders on both sides ordered fighters to engage in cattleraiding in order to intensify the economic component of the struggle and thereby encourage more villagers to take up arms.42 According to M. A. Mohamed Salih, in the eyes of the Dinka peasants themselves, it appeared that the SPLM was a movement determined to protect the communal security of the Dinka people in the face of northern oppression. Today, “most Dinka regard the SPLM as the carrier of their own concerns and aspirations.”43 Recent field work by Jok Madut Jok and Sharon Elaine Hutchinson provides particular insight into the consolidation of Dinka ethnopolitical identity as fighting expanded through the 1990s. Many Dinka peasants—particularly young men—were persuaded by the SPLM’s argument that attacks from Machar’s forces made clear the Nuer people’s abandonment of the antinorthern movement and their collective enmity toward the Dinka. These young men became the active new recruits of the SPLA, the SPLM’s military forces. A similar process took place among members of the Nuer peasantry who lent their newly militarized support to their leaders, especially Riak Machar, in their struggle against what they perceived to be a Dinka political effort to achieve southern-region hegemony. Machar’s Nuer commanders persuaded a growing segment of Nuer peasants that attacks against Dinka were necessary in order to recover cattle stolen by Garang’s forces and because the Dinka under Garang were in pursuit of the political domination of the south.44 The SPLA commanders created Dinka “cattle guards,” militia that attracted young Dinka men because they presented an opportunity for them “to redeem their dignity” vis-à-vis the Nuer by raiding Nuer villages, as well as to obtain fresh livestock. The counterpart

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to these Dinka cattle guards in Nuer areas was the “White Army,” comprising armed youth who were responsible for protecting Nuer cattle herds but operated largely at their own discretion. In both cases young men were provided with AK-47s; were granted considerable autonomy, which often led to difficulties in terms of central command; and were allowed and encouraged to attack their purported ethnic enemies. In doing so they became immersed in a culture of “ethnicized violence.”45 By the late 1990s, the predominantly Dinka SPLA controlled Equatoria and Bahr el Ghazal provinces, while the Nuer, organized by Machar, held most of the rural areas of Upper Nile province. However, this instrumentalist-cum-primordialist realpolitik masks a different, and in some senses a deeper, politicization: at the village level, a growing number of people from both groups became disgruntled with their respective leaders and emphasized their desire for peace and Dinka-Nuer unity. These Dinka and Nuer villagers underlined the extent to which their leaders were using overly violent means to pursue self-serving goals; they blamed the intrasouthern violence on the power-mongering personalities of Garang, Machar, and allied elites; and they argued that village chiefs’ traditional conflict resolution skills should be substituted for continued interethnic warfare.46 According to Hutchinson, many Nuer and Dinka made clear that by instigating violence against innocent and unarmed villagers from their own and other groups, Garang and Machar had violated fundamental legitimacy norms and had thereby betrayed popular expectations of local governance.47 Despite their embrace of the SPLM, many ordinary Dinka are conscious of their long history of economic and political cooperation with a broad variety of communities in the south and believe strongly in the need to forge a common southern struggle for regional selfassertion.48 In part as a consequence of their decentralized traditions, communities in the south are reluctant to embrace the commandoriented organizational structure of the Machar and Garang forces.49 This helps to explain why a growing number of ordinary Nuer peasants decided to abandon Machar after he signed the 1996 pact with the Sudanese government. Similarly, many Dinka villagers lost confidence in Garang due to his authoritarian rulership style or because they did not want to continue suffering from attacks by Nuer militarists. A growing segment, and possibly a majority, of peasants and village chiefs throughout the south had tired of the fighting by the late 1990s, perceiving that the internal warfare was not a cause worth dying for. They believed in a common struggle against the

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Islamic north and preferred that peace-with-autonomy be pursued without reliance on violence.50 The historical and cultural context of interethnic cooperation provided an important subtext for this process. The history of cooperation is grounded in prophetic traditions passed on through storytelling, song, and religious prophecy. 51 One particularly influential prophet, named Wutnyang Gatakek, promoted the idea of a religiously inspired historical mandate for Nuer, Dinka, and other southern groups to set aside their differences.52 These peasants now believed that Nuer-Dinka warfare should be halted.53 To this purpose, in 1997 Dinka spiritual leaders made a pilgrimage to a Nuer village, but as they approached, they were thwarted by Machar’s fighters. Other village elders, chiefs, and community leaders continued to pursue peace-making efforts. In June 1998 and January–March 1999, Dinka and Nuer village chiefs made a concerted effort to forge a compromise, meeting for lengthy sessions to carve out a peace agreement.54 The Nuer chiefs took an exceptional risk by entering Dinka territory for the purpose of the conference. They openly disparaged the military commanders’ inability to resolve intrasouthern disputes and accused them of having self-serving goals. They insisted that “It is not our war at all!” and that it should be stopped.55 Surprisingly, some SPLA Dinka commanders provided logistical assistance by overseeing the chiefs’ meeting. In private interviews, these commanders confided that both they and some of Machar’s commanders would be willing to achieve a compromise and unite their forces, but that Garang and Machar have no such interest. Perhaps fearing preemption by the chiefs, and apparently convinced that their long-term political interests rest on uni-ethnic recruitment, Machar and Garang ordered attacks on their opponents’ villages.56 Nonetheless, the popular commitment to interethnic reconciliation was strongly held at the village level.57 The conferences succeeded in pressuring Dinka and Nuer military forces to restrain some of their most ardent commanders. During follow-up “People-toPeople” conferences held in October 1999 and May 2001, some military units were convinced to abandon Garang and Machar altogether, and Nuer-Dinka tensions in communities west of the White Nile were calmed. The prospect of a workable peace agreement among southerners generated by these popular conferences provoked the northern Sudanese government to become concerned that a unified southern front might emerge. As if in response, a popular prophet by the name of Gai Riang lobbied for the convocation of yet another peace conference in mid-2001 to press military leaders to reach an accord.58

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This groundswell of popular mobilization for interethnic collaboration helped to set the stage for a major meeting of representatives of Garang and Machar, who signed a broad peace agreement in January 2002, to great international fanfare.59 Internal popular pressure proved a considerable factor in the achievement of this new accord, in which Garang and Machar agreed to struggle jointly against northern encroachment. The history of accord making in southern Sudan is not promising, and this agreement may also prove fleeting, but the extent and impact of grassroots mobilization for a pansouthern interethnic political movement has been impressive. Several facts are clear, then, in regard to southern Sudan: First, there is a long precolonial history of interethnic cooperation, coordination, and unity against the north. Second, recent militarization along ethnic lines was due to instrumentalist personal leadership and resulted in intergroup warfare within the south. Third, both the Dinka and the Nuer populations are divided between those who perceive that their security interests will be best realized if they remain committed to their respective uni-ethnic movements and those who insist on forging peaceful reconciliation among the various ethnic groups. Fourth, popularly organized peace conferences held in the late 1990s and early 2000s reflected intensifying grassroots demands for interethnic collaboration. In sum, in southern Sudan instrumentalist discord and ascriptive mobilization compete with a strong pull toward interethnic unity. This dyad is not unusual in African subnationalist rebellions. In the Casamance as well, the resurgence of ascriptive identity and uni-ethnic proselytizing characterized the region’s rebel movement at the same time as alliances were being pursued by a broad panregional spectrum of disaffected youth and peasants.

Casamance Like the liberation movement in southern Sudan, the secession effort in Senegal’s Casamance evolved out of a shared territorial history of repression by the national government during the colonial and postcolonial periods. The struggle in Casamance is led by Diola elites who mobilize ethnic comembers while seeking to build an interethnic movement across the Casamance region. The precolonial kingdom of Gabu serves as an important historical reference point: the Diola strongly resisted the centralized rulership of Gabu just as they later resisted centralized state rule by the French in the colonial era and by the francophone Wolof in the contemporary period. In all

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three time periods strong political, social, and economic links were created among a variety of decentralized, stateless groups in the Casamance region (Mandjack, Balanta, Cassanga, Papel, Mancanye, Susu and Baïnuk), through which the political foundation for autonomy-seeking resistance was established. The contemporary effort began in 1980, when the MFDC (Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance) was created, and guerrilla violence against the Senegalese state commenced in 1982. Since that time up to one thousand people have been killed— mostly rebels and Senegalese soldiers, but also some civilians—and thousands of ordinary villagers have been displaced. When violence peaks, as it did in mid-1997, virtually all normal economic and transportation activities come to a halt, although the Senegalese state has tried to conjure up the appearance of normalcy.60 The Dakar government has relied on jailings, military force, and repression of villagers to uproot the rebels. MFDC leader Diamacoune Senghor was arrested in late 1982, and local protests followed. When protesters became more assertive in December 1983, Senegalese troops reacted by arresting and torturing them and by barging into villages and abusing local women.61 MFDC activists spoke openly of revenging these attacks. The MFDC-led subnationalist movement reflects a long history of tensions between the central state and Casamance that is marked by multiple social, ethnic, and economic causative factors. In the first

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place, the movement represents a regional reaction by decentralized communities against the longtime hegemony of the hierarchical model of central-state rulership. After France assumed control of the Casamance region in the late 1880s, the resistance against the kingdom of Gabu was transferred to the French, who, like the Mandinka in Gabu, attempted to dominate the Casamance region by imposing a centrally organized political system. Then upon Senegal’s independence in 1960, the Wolof speakers, who appeared to predominate within the Dakar-based national government, inherited from the French the Casamancian-defined image of hierarchical centralizers and illegitimate dominators of the Casamance region. The popular reaction against “Wolofization” helped to reinforce a sense of cultural unity in Casamance and contributed to the rise of multiethnic resistance.62 Today’s movement is only the most recent iteration of the historical confrontation between a hierarchical, centralist society and a segmentary, egalitarian society, a confrontation that has evolved for centuries. A second causative factor is that “mandinguisation,” or “Malinkization,” produced a high level of Mandinka cultural influence.63 This diffusion of social aspects of Mandinka society was reflected in the generalized use of iron in initiation ceremonies and the adoption of particular weaving patterns and dye-making styles by peoples throughout Gabu-influenced areas.64 A large number of egalitarian local societies resisted direct political incorporation into the Gabu kingdom, but in many respects the contemporary rebellion reflects this shared regional culture and territory-wide particularisms. Third, among these same decentralized societies in the Casamance, interethnic social and economic relations were generally of a constructive, mutually supportive nature, and intermarriage was common, leading to the emergence of a new ethnic identity, Diola, through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.65 Fourth, Casamance had a troubled relationship with Dakar. French administrators of the Casamance repeatedly complained of local people’s refusal to accept French authority, referring to them as “anarchic” for this reason.66 Diola military battles with the French in the nineteenth century, assassinations of local administrators at the beginning of the twentieth century, and opposition to rice requisitions during World War II repeatedly demonstrated Casamancians’ determination to assert local and regional control. This resistance was sufficient to force a delay of the administrative incorporation of Casamance into the rest of Senegal until 1939.67 Surprisingly, the Catholic Church played a role in reinforcing Casamancians’ shared regional identity and opposition to Dakar. Religion

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does not form an especially significant dimension in the rebellion: most Diola are animists, some are Catholic, and a significant number are Muslim. However, the Church’s partial penetration of religious life in Casamance provided an important contribution to the region’s cultural distinctiveness vis-à-vis the Islamic-dominated north. This influence is notable in speeches by MFDC leader Diamacoune, himself a priest, who speaks of Catholic missionaries as having played a liberating social and educational role, in marked contrast to the hegemonic political designs of the colonial state.68 Fifth, the struggle has an economic dimension. The implementation of the Senegalese Law of National Domain within Casamance not only deprived the Diola of their right to control their rice wetlands, ancient forests, and waterways, but also resulted in the distribution of some Casamancian land to people who originated in the north.69 This loss of historical land provoked pan-Diola outrage, which contributed to popular support for the rebellion. People also resented unemployment, the absence of economic investment, and the lack of overall development in the region. Casamancians are convinced that relative to other Senegalese regions Casamance has fewer roads, hospitals, and schools; that revenues extracted from Casamance are not locally reinvested; and that farmers are underpaid for their groundnuts and other cash crops.70 Indeed, the majority of participants in the MFDC are alienated educated youth who attempted to become integrated into the national economy but could not find employment, and who believed that their economic marginalization reflected active anti-Diola, anti-Casamancian discrimination.71 This, along with the state’s rejection of the idea of Casamancian particularism, was a crucial factor in the generation of the MFDC-led rebellion.72 Diola Identity, the MFDC, and Casamancian Multiethnicity Considering this macrohistorical context, is the Casamancian rebellion a Diola uni-ethnic movement or a panregional multiethnic rebellion? Many ordinary Casamancians openly assert that the movement is dominated by Diola activists.73 It is true that most MFDC political leaders and military commanders are Diola and that the southern front of the MFDC is entirely Diola. Joining the rebels in the forests and fighting Senegalese troops is “seen as an initiation into modern Diola manhood”74 and “a Diola right of passage.”75 During peak moments of conflict between MFDC fighters and Senegalese troops, Diola women brandish traditional Diola amulets and gourds, which

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signify fertility and strength in Diola society. 76 Many Diola believe that they are reclaiming their particularistic ethnic identity and autonomy through this struggle.77 A 1983 act by the Senegalese police helped to focus attention on Diola uni-ethnic political consciousness. Every twenty-five years, the Diola perform an important ritual ceremony known as bukin. When this ceremony was held in December 1983, Senegalese police purposefully entered the Diolas’ sacred woods, called Diabir, and disrupted the proceedings so as to intimidate Diola activists. Young men at the scene reacted violently, killing three soldiers with machete blows.78 This incident helped to link the antistate, separatist movement with specifically Diola ethnic identity, and the Diabir sacred woods served henceforth as a powerful symbol of Diola unity and resistance.79 Still, many ordinary Casamancians see the rebellion as territorial and multiethnic in nature—including Diola who assert that they have embraced people from other ethnic backgrounds who have supported the MFDC-led movement. Members of minority groups such as the Mandjack have indicated in interviews with an academic researcher that they are strongly supportive of the MFDC-led movement. Even a number of Casamancian Mandinka, members of a group that is historically characterized by hierarchical power structures that the Diola and other segmentary groups reject, have now suggested that they favor the movement.80 Panregional solidarity shared by Diola, Mandjack, Balanta, Baïnuk, Susu, Papel, and Bambara, as well as some Fulbe and Mandinka is visible at soccer matches where Casamancian fans from all of these ethnic backgrounds sit together and root conjointly, while people from northern Senegal sit apart from the Casamancians.81 The fact that large numbers of non-Diola—most notably, Fulbe—massed in the Diola royal village of Oussouye to participate in a specifically Diola initiation festival called kahat in December 2001 is strongly suggestive of a sense of interethnic solidarity and support in Casamance. This solidarity is similarly reflected by a shared ethic that pervades Casamancian territory—and is particularly noticeable among Diola, Mandjack, and Balanta—that places moral limits on the extent of appropriate accumulation of personal resources. According to this ethic, no one should become too rich or flaunt their wealth over others.82 Considering the depth of this belief, the fact that the economy of Ziguinchor, the capital city in the Casamance, is dominated by traders from Dakar bent on individual wealth accumulation is profoundly resented throughout the region.83 It helps to

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explain why Casamancians popularly view the MFDC as being made up of “Robin Hoods” who fight for social justice on behalf of Casamance as a whole.84 MFDC fighting brigades are often made up of people from different ethnic origins, as suggested by the fact that 60 percent of MFDC prisoners held by Senegalese authorities in the early-to-mid1990s were non-Diola.85 To be sure, this was not a representative sampling of MFDC fighters; the majority of MFDC combatants are Diola. But this ethnic sampling of prisoners indicates that some brigades are ethnically plural. This multiethnicity and shared regional culture does not lessen the simultaneous impact of Diola uni-ethnic subnationalism. Diola partisanship and multiethnicity coexist constructively in the Casamancian separatist movement. There is not any necessary contradiction in this dualism; the struggle is both panregional and uniethnic, which helps to account for the movement’s strength, expansion, and durability. It is clear that MFDC leaders rely heavily on the symbols of Diola identity, culture, and spirituality. Diamacoune Senghor, the single most important leader of the MFDC, has used written texts to support the idea of Diola historical rootedness in Casamance.86 MFDC pamphlets underline the exploitation of the Diola by northerners, and according to anthropologist Ferdinand de Jong, Diamacoune’s discussion of Diola exploitation resonates significantly with MFDC partisans.87 As early as the 1970s, prior to the MFDC rebellion, Diamacoune’s radio programs repeatedly discussed the importance of Diola prophets who operated during the colonial period as a vehicle of Diola revivalism; by the 1980s and 1990s Diamacoune was decorating himself with traditional Diola beads and was wearing a red feather, symbolizing Diola military potency. Moreover, the armed wing of the MFDC, Attika, created a map of what they refer to as the Diola Republic, which includes all of southern Casamance as well as the predominantly Diola Guinea-Bissauan province of Saõ Domingo.88 This implies that some fighters within the MFDC embrace a pan-Diola neo-irredentist political vision that extends to adjacent territory. At the same time, however, MFDC leaders refer in their speeches and written tracts to a future independent Casamance that is grounded in an explicitly multiethnic framework. In a sixty-eightpage document, MFDC leaders insist that the new “Casamancian State” will be “multi-national” in character, reflecting the “multiethnic” structure of society. They write that the Casamancian state

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will consist of a “federation of populations taking part in decisions through which they forge their common destiny.” Such a federation is to be based on the fact that “Diolas will always be Diolas” and “Peuls [Fula] will always be Peuls,” but the MFDC believes that these two groups, like other Casamancians, share a common destiny. It stresses Casamancians’ long history of accommodating immigrants from various ethnic groups and contends that Casamance “will always be a land that is welcoming of immigrants.”89 In these ways, the MFDC uses both multiethnic and uni-ethnic regionalism in pursuing their mobilization efforts, consciously shifting back and forth between Diola identity markers and a more panterritorial approach. Inside the MFDC As the separatist movement developed through the 1980s and 1990s, its political and organizational capacity increased in terms of both functional specificity and geographical distribution. The MFDC came to be divided between southern and northern military fronts, with fighting units headed by lieutenants. The political headquarters were established in Ziguinchor, but there are spokesmen throughout the Casamance and in Dakar, and the MFDC has diplomats in France, Switzerland, and elsewhere who articulate its cause energetically.90 However, the MFDC has recently been weakened by the emergence of serious internal divisions. One set of divisions is based on differences in goals: part of the MFDC leadership demands full “national independence” for the Casamance,91 while other leaders aim for greater autonomy within the Senegalese nation-state but with a more equitable treatment of Casamance by the central state and a more generous distribution of state resources.92 To a large extent, this difference in goals reflects historical differences between northern and southern Casamance. Malinkization proved more thoroughgoing in the zone north of the Casamance River than in the southern part of the region, where this process was resisted more intensively. This dualism was reflected in relations with the French colonial state: southern Casamancians tended to reject various aspects of francophone social influence more stridently than their northern Casamancian counterparts. It is no coincidence that it was in this southern Casamancian zone that a prophetic movement headed by Diola “Queen” Aline Sitoe Diatta appeared during the 1940s—a movement centered around the struggle against taxes and against forced recruitment into France’s black army contingents.93 Today the ensemble of

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social practices and animist beliefs that are distinctly Diola, referred to locally as awasena, continue to characterize southern Casamancian society, while northern Diola are typified by a looser sense of identity and have embraced aspects of francophone society. This background enables us to appreciate the significance of the 1991 MFDC division into separate northern and southern military fronts. Although the separation increased the fighting capacity of the MFDC, it helped to reinforce internal differences over movement aims. The northern front was more open to compromising with the Senegalese state, while the southern front was more hard-line and radical. Thus, it was the northern front that signed a cease-fire pact with Senegal in 1993, while the southern front remained intransigent. These differences also explain why the headquarters of Attika, the armed branch of the MFDC, were centered in the south.94 By November 2001, the split was reflected in a leadership struggle: northernfront head Sidy Badji was designated by some of the MFDC hierarchy to become the MFDC secretary-general, but overall leader Diamacoune rejected his appointment.95 Badji, in turn, denounced Diamacoune’s rejection and retained significant support among MFDC cadres. The north-south MFDC division has not dampened overall popular support for Casamance separatism, and it can even be argued that this internal dualism has helped to attract both radical and moderate supporters. Diamacoune has played a crucial mediating role and serves as a unifying symbol for both MFDC wings.96 Meanwhile, despite regionalization reforms in Senegal, the state’s consistently repressive reaction has also helped to sustain the vitality of antiDakar sentiment. State Reaction: Regionalization and Repression The regionalization reform implemented by the Senegalese state as of late 1996 was enacted in part as a mechanism to resolve the Casamance conflict. According to the dictates of the reform, Casamance was divided in half. Western Casamance was renamed Ziguinchor; the eastern half was renamed Kolda. The guiding logic was to administratively isolate the separatists and at the same time defuse the regionwide reach of the movement.97 The superficial and politically motivated character of the reform and the state’s determination to persist with its repressive tactics were only too evident. For example, in October 1997 three to four thousand Senegalese soldiers were sent from their bases in Dakar to

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reinforce battalions stationed in Casamance for the explicit purpose of carrying out waves of attack against Diola villages deemed supportive of the MFDC.98 These attacks made a mockery of regionalization reform as thousands of villagers were forced to flee the region, traveling either south into Guinea-Bissau or east into Gambia. The MFDC responded by carrying out reprisal attacks against Senegalese troops. The fighting caused substantial destruction: between 1982 and 1998, 231 entire villages were abandoned, and approximately 27,000 villagers fled the region.99 The Casamance’s normally prolific food production—the region is historically the breadbasket of Senegal— dropped off significantly due to insecurity, abandonment of fields, and producers’ difficulty in finding marketing outlets.100 There is no evidence that the regionalization reforms have had a positive political or economic impact in Casamance, and the government’s plodding, inept response to a boat disaster along the Casamance River that left at least fifteen hundred mostly Diola people dead in September 2002 only intensified anti-Dakar popular sentiment.101 MFDC Endurance MFDC politicians periodically engage in negotiations with government representatives, and cease-fires are produced occasionally, but radical MFDC lieutenants nonetheless press ahead with the armed struggle.102 The election of Abdoulaye Wade to the presidency of Senegal in March 2000 created a measure of hopefulness that a workable peace agreement could be ironed out in Casamance because Wade had appeared especially flexible on the issue of regional autonomy during the presidential campaign. However, his election did not result in a letup in the secession struggle. In April 2000, a month after the election, the Senegalese armed forces engaged in two battles with MFDC rebels that produced a total of fifteen dead.103 The MFDC has repeatedly proved its ability to operate with a significant degree of mobility and has established an ongoing military presence in Ziguinchor and Kolda regions.104 In February 2001, changes within the MFDC leadership augured a hardening of the group’s radical position. According to a written statement signed by MFDC head Diamacoune Senghor, three MFDC leaders who were considered moderates because they were more willing to negotiate with the Senegalese state were removed from their posts. 105 In May 2001, battles broke out in the Casamancian villages of Dibidione and Sindian (near the Gambian border).106 Several Senegalese soldiers

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were killed and a large number were wounded; at least several dozen rebels were also killed, and two thousand villagers fled to the Gambia.107 The fact that the Senegalese army openly admitted that it had tried to locate and destroy a radical MFDC commander and the fact that the army attacked entire villages in the process is likely to have further generated popular support for the radical wing.108 It certainly did not produce a letup in MFDC attacks. A September 2001 rocketpropelled assault on a Senegalese outpost at Nyassa wounded seven soldiers; MFDC rebels followed this up with a quick strike in Ziguinchor in January 2002, during which they killed a soldier and wounded several others before escaping back into heavily wooded areas.109 Martin Evans writes that “the Senegalese army thus still lacks the means to clear the rebels out of the forest.”110 Indeed, the MFDC has demonstrated an impressive military prowess—not only on the part of the radical southern front, but also by the northern front, which now controls a substantial degree of Casamancian territory in the Bignona region, which is rich in natural resources.111 The northern front has proved capable of defending its control over this area against attacks by the Senegalese army, while the southern front has established a string of military bases on both sides of the border with Guinea-Bissau. The MFDC has furthermore manifested considerable organizational proficiency, despite division in its leadership. De Jong attributes this to the MFDC’s success in sustaining an internal culture of secrecy, which reflects the historical importance of secrecy in Diola society.112 At the same time, the secession struggle as a whole has succeeded both by galvanizing Diola as a uni-ethnic core and by establishing supportive ties with members of other groups in Casamance.

Conclusion In both Casamance and southern Sudan, subnationalism within culturally plural and historically underprivileged territories has taken the form of resistance by multiple ethnic groups led by a dominant ethnic core. Both movements have, through violent rebellion, carved out a sphere of regional autonomy despite continued repression, and both reflect a history of inequitable economic investment by the central state. The movements are different, however, in that the MFDC in Casamance has enjoyed greater success in forging interethnic links

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in order to more effectively confront the central government. The extent to which southern Sudan’s fighting forces will be able to present a unified front is not yet clear. Although outright secession appears improbable in either Casamance or southern Sudan, in both cases the emergence of panregional resistance has proved key to political success despite the uni-ethnic maneuverings of some movement leaders. In both cases, although more so in southern Sudan than in Casamance, a disjuncture between elites and ordinary civilians was marked by movement leaders’ pragmatic alternation between uni-ethnic subnationalism and multiethnic territorial separatism, in contrast to villagers’ emphatic embrace of the latter. In both cases people at the village level demonstrated a drive for interethnic cooperation and peaceful exchange and shared a sense of territorial oppression. At the leadership level of each movement, instrumentalist maneuverings and power mongering, especially in Sudan, proved harmful to the struggle, but by no means fatal. One reason was that the central state, based in a distant capital city, relied on various deceptive administrative and political ploys, such as the “regionalization” of Senegal and the “redistricting” of Sudan, to mask the continuation of economic exploitation. People throughout Casamance and southern Sudan are convinced that valuable local resources—oil in Sudan, agricultural and forest-based resources in Casamance—are being extracted without compensation in the form of adequate investment or development. This panregional sense of economic injustice merged with popular outrage over consistently violent repression by national armies to provoke ever-widening support for the respective rebel movements. Overall, both the Casamancian and southern Sudanese movements are characterized by patterns of cooperation across ethnic lines and by a need for ascriptively perceived political, economic, and physical security. The cultural mosaics within each region have been confronted by hostile external powers that have sought centralized state dominance and have economically exploited these regions over time. The turn toward secessionism reflects this combination of state-generated, materialist, ascriptive, and instrumentalist factors as the two movements are characterized by the predominance of a single group that seeks redemption within a broad, interethnic, panregional alliance.

Notes 1. M. A. Mohamed Salih, “The Ideology of the Dinka and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement,” in Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of

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Africa, ed. Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 189; Dunstan M. Wai, “Geoethnicity and the Margin of Autonomy in the Sudan,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 307. 2. Sharon E. Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 60. 3. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 215. 4. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 492. 5. Sharon E. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God? Religious and Political Dimensions of the Post-1991 Rise of Ethnic Violence in South Sudan,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 2 (2001), 326. 6. Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 30. 7. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 215–216. 8. Francis Mading Deng, The Man Called Majok: A Biography of Power, Polygyny, and Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 227, 231, 275–277. 9. Douglas H. Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Problems of Factionalism,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 55; Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 496. 10. Wai, “Geoethnicity,” 306–308. 11. Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 55; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 64, 76, 215. 12. Salih, “Ideology of the Dinka,” 189; Wai, “Geoethnicity.” For detailed depiction of various phases of the war, see Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Africa’s Thirty Years War: Chad, Libya, and Sudan, 1963–1993 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999). 13. Gérard Prunier, “Paix introuvable au Soudan,” Le monde diplomatique, December 2002, 11. 14. Wai, “Geoethnicity,” 306. 15. Johnson, “The Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 55–56; Wai, “Geoethnicity,” 309; Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 497–498. 16. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 219. 17. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 498, 500. 18. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 222, 227–229; Wai, “Geoethnicity,” 317. 19. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 234–235; Wai, “Geoethnicity,” 319–320. 20. Francis Mading Deng and Larry Minear, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 44; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 236–237. 21. Robert O. Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists: From the Conference Tables to the Battlefields in the Sudan,” African Studies Review 42, no. 2 (1999), 112.

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22. Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 58–59. 23. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 237. 24. Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists,” 112; Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 61, 62–63. Additional breakaway Nuer factions also emerged, including those headed by William Nyuon, involving Equatorian and Nuer troops, and a faction of Nuer fighters led by Paulino Mathip. See Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 64. 25. Jok Madut Jok and Sharon Elaine Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War and the Militarization of Nuer and Dinka Ethnic Identities,” African Studies Review 42, no. 2 (1999), 137; Johnson, “Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army,” 61, 63; Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists,” 112; Deng and Minear, Challenges of Famine Relief, 133. 26. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 238. 27. Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists,” 112–114, 121. 28. Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 64–65. 29. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 138. 30. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 322; Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists,” 121 n. 2; Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 65. 31. Collins, “Africans, Arabs, and Islamists,” 106, 121. 32. Francis M. Deng and J. Stephen Morrison, “U.S. Policy to End Sudan’s War. Report of the CSIS Task Force on U.S.-Sudan Policy,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001, 4, 8; “Oil, Religion, and Human Rights: Death Knocks Twice,” Africa Confidential 42, no. 7 (2001), 5. 33. “Summit on Sudanese Civil War Does Little to Reach Cease-Fire,” Washington Post, 3 June 2001. 34. Prunier, “Paix introuvable,” 11; “Sudan: Peace Talks Suspended,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 9 (2002), 15016. 35. “Oil, Religion, and Human Rights,” 5. 36. Salih, “Ideology of the Dinka,” 197; Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 136; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 215–216. 37. Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 71–72. 38. Salih, “Ideology of the Dinka,” 197; Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 138. 39. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 138. 40. Johnson, “Sudan People’s Liberation Army,” 72. 41. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 128. 42. Ibid., 130, 137. 43. Salih, “Ideology of the Dinka,” 198–199. 44. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 133. 45. Ibid., 126, 135. 46. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 320–321; Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War, 139. 47. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 321. 48. Francis M. Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995). 49. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 138. 50. Ibid., 130, 143.

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51. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 326. 52. Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas, 338–341. 53. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 131–133. 54. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 324; Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 127, 142. 55. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 324. The quotation is of a Nuer chief. 56. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 143, 137, 142. 57. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 324; Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War,” 143. 58. Hutchinson, “A Curse from God?” 325, 329. 59. Matthias Muindi, “Sudan: Unity at Last, or Just a Smokescreen?” Africanews (January 2002), available at www.peacelink.it/afrinews/70_issue/ p9.html. 60. Geneviève Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller’: Le conflit ethnorégional casamançais et l’état sénégalais,” Ph.D. diss., University of Montréal, 2000, p. 2 of the introduction. 61. Ibid., pp. 7–8 of Chapter 6. 62. Ibid., p. 10 of Chapter 2, and p. 6 of Chapter 5. 63. Carlos Lopes, Kaabunké: Espaço, território e poder na GuinéBissau, Gâmbia, e Casamance pré-coloniais (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1999), 150; Joye Bowman, Ominous Transition: Commerce and Colonial Expansion in the Senegambia and Guinea, 1857–1919 (Brookfield, Vt.: Avebury, 1997), 13. 64. Lopes, Kaabunké, 150–152. 65. Ferdinand de Jong, “The Making of a Jola Identity: Jola Inventing Their Past and Future,” in Proceedings CERES/CNWS (Utrecht, Neth.: CERES, 1995). 66. Sévérine Aweningo, “Identités et Casamançais,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Laval University, Québec, 27–30 May 2001. 67. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” 14. 68. Vincent Foucher, “La guerre des dieux? Religions et séparatisme en Basse Casamance,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002, 3, 7. 69. Joseph van der Klei, “Involution as the Outcome of Local-Culture and I.M.F. Policy in Casamance (Senegal),” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002, 5, 7. 70. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 15 of the introduction, p. 6 of Chapter 6. 71. van der Klei, “Involution,” 3; Foucher, “Guerre des dieux?” 6, 9. 72. Jean-Claude Marut, “Les racines mondiales du particularisme casamançais,” presentation at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002. 73. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 2 of Chapter 6.

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74. van der Klei, “Involution,” 8. 75. Ferdinand de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy in Casamance,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002. 76. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 14 of Chapter 4. 77. Aweningo, “Identités et Casamançais.” 78. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 4 of Chapter 4. 79. van der Klei, “Involution,” 7. 80. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 3 of Chapter 6. 81. Ibid., p. 17 of Chapter 2. 82. Jordi Tomàs i Guilera, “Le roi d’Oussouye et la reprise de la tradition joola: Une troisième voie?” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002; Gasser, “Manger ou s’en aller,”” p. 21 of Chapter 4. 83. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 3 of Chapter 5, p. 21 of Chapter 4. 84. Foucher, “Guerre des dieux?” 9. 85. Jordi Tomàs I Guilera, personal communication, as part of “Contested Casamance,” a special session on the Casamance at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2001. 86. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 17 of Chapter 2, pp. 1, 5 of Chapter 6. 87. de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy.” 88. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 12 of Chapter 6. 89. Mamadou Nkrumah Sané, Ousmane Tamba, Christian Chipenda, and Jean-Marie François Biagui, Casamance Kunda: Ce que nous attendons de la Casamance Indépendante (Lyon, France: Editions Artisanales, 1995), 18, 19, 64–65. 90. Jean-Claude Marut, “Casamance: les assises du MFDC à Banjul (22–25 juin 1999),” Afrique Contemporaine, no. 191 (1999), 75. 91. Sané, Tamba, Chipenda, and Biagui, Casamance Kunda, 14. 92. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 4 of the synopsis, p. 14 of Chapter 6. 93. Ibid., p. 14 of Chapter 6; de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy.” 94. de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy.” 95. “Casamance Rebels Row over Leadership,” BBC News, 7 November 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1642305.stm. 96. de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy.” 97. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,” pp. 1, 9 of Chapter 3. 98. Ibid., p. 25 of Chapter 4. 99. Ibid., p. 30 of Chapter 4. 100. Joseph van der Klei, Martin Evans, and Hassane Drame, “Contested Casamance I—Agriculture and Economic Development,” panel at Canadian Association of African Studies meeting, Toronto, 31 May 2002. 101. “Sur le naufrage du ‘Joola,’” Le monde diplomatique, December 2002, 36. 102. Marut, “Casamance,” 76. 103. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 5 of synopsis.

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104. Martin Evans, “Senegal: Wade and the Casamance Dossier,” African Affairs 99, no. 397 (2000), 652. 105. “Senegal’s Rebels Change Leadership, Moderates Out,” Washington Post, 13 February 2001. 106. “Report: Senegal Clashes,” Washington Post, 26 May 2001. 107. “Fighting in Senegal’s Casamance Province Drives Thousands to Gambia,” EuropaWorld, 25 May 2001, available at http://www.europaworld.org/issue36/fightinginsenegal25501.htm. 108. “Wade Seriously Endangers Casamance Peace Process,” afrol.com, 1 October 2001, available at http://www.afrol.com/News/sen012_wade_ casamance.htm. 109. “Casamance Rebels Attack Town,” BBC World News, 4 January 2002, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1743090.stm. 110. Evans, “Senegal: Wade and the Casamance Dossier,” 657. 111. Martin Evans, personal communication, Toronto, 31 May 2001. 112. de Jong, “Practices of Secrecy.”

5 Persistent Regionalism

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ome regions in Africa are characterized by a long history of persistent political self-assertion and, in notable contrast to Casamance and southern Sudan, by relative economic privilege. The principal objects of our inquiry in this chapter are movements that evolved in the Katanga and Kasai regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—the former Zaire, which I will hereafter refer to as the Congo—where movements that percolate with historical regularity tend to derive powerful ideological inspiration from precolonial polities, reflect regional idiosyncrasies imparted by their colonially introduced economic roles, and benefit enormously from the fact that the Congolese nation-state has not achieved effective internal infrastructural integration. Interethnic cooperation forms an important part of the drama of persistent regionalism, reflecting the distinctive culture and heterogeneity of eastern Congolese society, but uni-ethnic assertion and leadership instrumentalism are also significant. Toward the end of the chapter, I also offer a brief comparative example of persistent regionalism in upper West Africa, here referring to the enduring impact of the ancient kingdom of Gabu and the potential restoration of its broad features. In both eastern Congo and former Gabu, territory-wide political cultures, populations, and economies have significantly informed a continuity of political assertion over time.

Regional Assertion in Eastern Congo The colonial and postcolonial Congo has been marked by a plurality of regional rebel movements, especially in the east; those of Katanga 105

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and Kasai have been the most prominent. The Luba-based autonomyseeking movement in Kasai region seeks justification partly in reference to the ancient Luba kingdom. During the 1990s, Luba created military units to fight invading Rwandans, who had entered the region on behalf of the Congolese government. Despite political intervention on the part of the central state, Kasai forces succeeded in fending off both the invaders and Congolese troops, and the result was de facto political autonomy for Kasai. Katanga region is distinguished to an even greater extent by a history of repeated defiance: against Belgian colonial rule, against “Mobutism” after independence, and against the two Kabila regimes in the 1990s, during which it strongly asserted its own regional interests. Lunda ethnic pride here merges with a pan-Katanga sense of specialness derived both from the memory of a strong precolonial Lunda polity, however exaggerated in the minds of regional leaders, and from a century of colonial-era economic development based on mining. Katangan subnationalism was manifested especially in the formation of a political coalition, CONAKAT (La Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga), that succeeded in generating a powerful secessionist movement in the late 1950s and persisted through the mid-1960s because of its ability to gain the support of smaller ethnic groups, such as the Bayeke. This movement regained momentum in the 1990s in the context of the weakening of Mobutu’s government and the chaos created by the two Kabila regimes. As in the past, it is based on a Lunda ethnic core, but the movement’s strength has been its success in incorporating ethnic minorities. Today the Congolese nation, which has struggled since the dawn of colonial rule to piece together widely distant regions, is increasingly marked by an institutional and political gap between the capital city of Kinshasa and its more peripheral provinces, especially Katanga and Kasai, and also North Kivu and South Kivu. The nation-state has been virtually sliced in half, with the eastern half effectively delinked from the Kinshasa-controlled western half, and with each eastern province increasingly behaving as a separate political entity. What Crawford Young observed in 1965, that “the eastern part of the country remains significantly less integrated with the rest than during the colonial period,” reflected already-well-established patterns of regional assertion that by the late 1990s had become conflated with a generalized weakening of interregional ties. In Katanga and Kasai, autonomyseeking and anti-Mobutu movements in the 1960s and the 1990s were constructed in part upon a uni-ethnic logic, in part upon territorial logic, and in part upon long traditions of interethnic cooperation. A

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history of regional resistance helped to place these regions in a position to carve out multiple spheres of political autonomy even during the Mobutu period. With Mobutu’s downfall, the functional integrity of the Congolese nation-state was increasingly called into question, as central Africans now appeared to be initiating a reconstruction of the local political map according to a regionally distinct logic rendered especially complex by changing patterns of irredentism and external intervention.

Pluralism, Alliances, Economics According to historians and ethnographers, the political entity now known as the Congo was made up of some 250 ethnic groups; in fact, so many groups were located within the same areas that specialists developed terms such as cultural regions and cultural clusters to capture the extensiveness of the social, historical, linguistic, and political webs of relations that had developed. 1 The ethnically heterogeneous region of Katanga is territorially far removed from the Congolese capital of Kinshasa and represents the Congo’s most economically advantaged and politically defiant region. A subnationalist movement predicated on the region’s longtime self-perceived exceptionalism was initially dominated by Lunda political elites, but in 1958 these Lunda elites created the political party CONAKAT, through which they succeeded in obtaining the support of ethnic minorities, including especially Tshokwe and Bayeke, as well as Ndembu, Lwena, Basonge, Bena Marunga, Minungu, and others.2 This alliance building helped to strengthen Katanga’s secessionist movement through the 1960–1963 period, during which time the region lay virtually outside the political rubric of the Congolese nation-state.3 A broad spectrum of chiefs from different parts of Katanga were included in the separatist Katangan government and provided with substantial local powers. Ten chiefs from different ethnic origins initially became ministers of state of Katanga, and this group was broadened in August 1960 to include twenty chiefs grouped into a grand council. Such incorporative efforts led one observer to comment that the Lunda leader of Katanga’s secession, Moise Tshombe, had “transcended ethnic affiliations.” Persistent, though only partially successful, efforts were also made to create ties with potential allies outside Katanga, including Salampasu chiefs in Kasai and Lunda groups in Angola and northern Rhodesia.4

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Like the Casamance’s separatist leaders, who balanced Diola uni-ethnic subnationalism against panterritorial interethnic unity, Tshombe made prominent reference to the ancient kingdoms of the Lunda, Luba, and Bayeke while cultivating pan-Katanga support.5 When Tshombe declared Katanga’s secession in July 1960, he discussed the precolonial cooperation of the Luba, Bayeke, and Lunda kingdoms and emphasized that they had been allies for centuries.6 In a July 1962 speech, Tshombe referred to “‘three monarchies which were not only bound by family, economic and social links, but, and this is by far the most important, their historic destiny had been linked for centuries.’” Tshombe suggested that Katangan independence represented only the most recent “manifestation of this common historic destiny.”7 The precolonial “loose Lunda empire” was indeed marked not only by cooperation with other kingdoms, but also by considerable local autonomy. Incorporated Lunda were treated as “partners,” and different provinces were allowed to achieve “Lundahood,” a transition symbolized by the presentation of a cowbelt.8 Between September 1960 and August 1961, when the Congolese national government was seriously fractured and Katanga consolidated its independent government, Tshombe initiated negotiations with Kinshasa to create a “loosely confederal Zaire” based on the “complete sovereignty of each member state.”9 The correspondence with the political model of Lunda confederacy inherited from ancient times is striking. In the end, the Kinshasa government rejected the proposal, but this did not stop CONAKAT from pursuing support from other provinces. Belgian colonial politics and economic history played an important role in shaping the context within which regional assertiveness emerged. In 1891 Belgium granted the Katanga Company political privileges and land rights covering one-third of the region, administratively and politically setting Katanga wholly apart from the Congo Free State.10 Through the early decades of the 1900s white settlers, motivated mainly by opportunity to exploit the region’s vast mineral resources, sought to strengthen Katanga’s status as an autonomous dominion.11 In 1910 the Belgians granted Katanga a vice governorgeneral with special political powers nearly rivaling those of the Congo’s governor-general; the construction of a railway line from Katanga to South Africa in the same year linked the region more directly to South Africa than to Kinshasa.12 In 1920 white settlers, miners, and missionaries coalesced to lobby the Belgians for full separation from the Congo, and “the European community’s sense of a Katanga

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particularism” was reinforced through civil service organizations and settler interest groups that proliferated through the 1940s–1950s.13 As the colonial period drew to a close and African elites emerged, this history of regional assertion added to precolonially derived territorial ties. The end result was a strong panregional identity that motivated political movements in the 1950s, as well as subsequent secessionist drives in the early 1960s and in the 1990s. In Kasai colonial intervention produced an especially divisive outcome. In the late 1950s state officials’ active collaboration with Lulua activists resulted in the expulsion of Luba from Luluadominated areas of rural Kasai. Approximately a million Luba consequently returned to their home areas in southern Kasai, ensuring a correspondence between intraregional forced resettlement and ethnic identity. The enmity provoked by this process foreclosed the potential for a Luba-Lulua alliance. This, in turn, weakened Kasai’s secession movement when it emerged after independence. Similarly, the integration of many educated and skilled Luba into colonial economic and bureaucratic circles delegitimized the Luba in the eyes of less successful ethnic groups in Kasai.14 As a consequence, it was difficult for Kasai secessionists to pursue interethnic alliances in the 1960s. State-influenced socioeconomic differentiation would prove important in Katanga, despite the region’s long history of coalition building and CONAKAT’s success in extending this tradition. LubaKasai had migrated to Katanga in the early colonial decades to work in the labor-intensive mining industry; this enabled many of them to accumulate resources and to become integrated into colonial educational and bureaucratic structures.15 By the late 1950s, when CONAKAT was created, the Luba-Kasai had become entrenched in Katanga’s provincial government and economy as a relatively privileged minority. However, the majoritarian Lunda and CONAKAT viewed the Luba-Kasai disparagingly as unwelcome foreign immigrants to Katanga and resented them because of their quasi-elite status and their access to mining jobs that CONAKAT supporters felt should have gone to “authentic Katangans.”16 Thus, despite CONAKAT’s coalition-based strategy and its effort to move toward a broader, confederal national arrangement, colonial economic development had spurred significant tensions between Lunda and Luba-Kasai. Except for Luba loyal to Chief Nybembo, most Luba-Kasai political leaders eventually decided to abandon CONAKAT’S alliance, and a separate Luba-Kasai political party was organized, the Association des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT), which proceeded to consolidate power in the isolated enclave of

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northern Katanga.17 BALUBAKAT launched a separatist revolt against the secessionist Katanga government and declared northern Katanga the “Province of Lualaba” in October 1960.18 The BALUBAKAT separatism-within-the-secession should be regarded as multiethnic rather than exclusively Luba-Kasai, as the latter won the support of most Bahemba and Babemba and part of the Tshokwe community.19 The context of this multiethnicity reflects the prior emergence of “a large cultural zone in northern Katanga whose historical tradition is tied to the Luba empire”—so much so that the term Luba is locally utilized as an identity referent by different ethnic groups.20 That context is also tied to “a long tradition of rebellion” in northern Katanga, beginning with the anticolonial revolts of 1925.21 In 1962 the Katangan CONAKAT-led secessionist government began to launch attacks against the northern Katangan BALUBAKAT rebels.22 After CONAKAT’s initial military success, the BALUBAKAT revolt received external support from Kinshasa and the United Nations; this helped to weaken the Katangan government and by 1963 ensured the defeat of CONAKAT forces and the collapse of the secession.23 Ultimately, CONAKAT’s prior success in alliance construction with ethnic minorities, though impressive, proved inadequate for overcoming its political estrangement from the Luba-Kasai. The resultant internal conflict was a key factor in the secession’s undoing.24 Meanwhile, a new, distinct Luba-Kasai movement emerged in South Kasai region; it was based on the memory, however strained and geographically inaccurate, of the sixteenth-century Luba empire.25 That empire had been characterized by the high prestige accorded to Luba elites by neighboring non-Luba peoples.26 This movement, led by Albert Kalonji, produced a declaration of South Kasai independence in September 1960, with Kalonji proclaiming himself emperor and creating a Luba-Kasai assembly of chiefs. Most Luba chiefs initially acquiesced to the new Kalonji-led secessionist government, as they were granted significant political influence within the South Kasai government and provided with jobs for their respective communities. Non-Luba chiefs also benefited from economic opportunities provided by Kalonji, and they joined his government as well. Many of these chiefs provided young fighters for Kalonji’s secessionist army, adding to the already large contingents of Luba fighters. Some recruits were alienated Congolese former soldiers who hailed from Bemba, Lenze, and Basalampasu ethnic backgrounds.27 However, in a growing number of Kasai localities colonial influences resulted in the dissipation of hierarchical patrilineal authority,

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and more decentralized individualized chiefships were established instead. These new chiefs were more reluctant to accept Kalonji’s leadership, especially once it appeared that he intended to exercise his authority in a way that excluded most chiefs from participation in policymaking.28 The result was an internal fracturing of the secession movement, with a growing number of chiefs and young Kasai bolting from Kalonji’s movement, and this process was exacerbated by central-state intervention and repression. By the end of 1962 the extent of internal factionalism had ensured the demise of the LubaKasai secession. Thus, for the South Kasai rebels, partial early success at interethnic alliance building was eventually compromised by leadership faults and decisionmaking errors. The assertion of Bakongo subnationalism in northern Congo in the late 1950s via the formation of ABAKO (Association of the Bakongo) provides an intriguing case for comparison. ABAKO functioned as an alliance of Bakongo subgroups—the Yombe, Manianga, Ntandu, and Ndibu—and explicitly called upon a “cultural ideology” based on the Kikongo language and the political accomplishments of the ancient Kongo kingdom of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ABAKO projected an irredentist image of this ancient Bakongo domination over a large area stretching from Cameroon in the north, to the Kasai river in western Congo, to Angola in the south—a territorial domain that would serve as ABAKO’s locale for the establishment of a separatist Kongo state.29 In doing so, they relied on versions of Kongo history that had been constructed by European Catholic missionaries to underline the intellectual and moral character of Kikongo speakers. Interestingly, recent research lends support to the possibility that precolonial Kongo did in fact encompass northwestern Angola: Wyatt MacGaffey found that the bodies of deceased chiefs were smoke-dried before burial, suggesting the probable spread to that area of the Bakongo culture that practices the same burial procedure.30 John Thornton’s study similarly suggests that Kongo encompassed much of northern Angola and western Congo. After four centuries of successful authority construction, internal disputes in the nineteenth century forced Kongo kingdom rulers to flee to different redoubts in the countryside. This dispersion resulted in the creation of political networks among these newly resettled exrulers throughout much of the northern Congo and beyond, and in the establishment of a distinct Bakongo identity united by a shared belief in descent from a common ancestor.31 While establishing alliances among a variety of Bakongo subgroups, ABAKO nonetheless failed to reach out to other, non-Bakongo speaking groups. Considering the extent of ethnic pluralism in the

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northern zone, this failure helped to weaken the cause of Bakongo separatism after 1960. By that point, it had become clear that despite ABAKO’s political success in mobilizing Kikongo-speaking subgroups favoring Kongo autonomy, because that alliance had not expanded beyond its Bakongo ethnic core, it was not strong enough to outmaneuver other political actors in greater Kinshasa. After 1965, President Mobutu Sese Seko banned ABAKO and other ethnic political groups, and carried out sustained repression to ensure ABAKO’s demise.32 Mobutu’s ban represented the endpoint of ABAKO’s process of political weakening, which had been set in motion by its inability to forge broader interethnic ties. The rural-based provincial rebellion led by Pierre Mulele in Kwilu similarly made clear the crucial role of alliance formation. Mulele’s rebellion, based on intensive support from his own Mbunda group, proved particularly successful in its initial phases precisely because of his ability to forge ties with neighboring Pende. A central factor in the consolidation of these ties was a long history of interethnic exchange between the Mbunda and Pende, reflected both in intermarriage and in the forging of anticolonial military resistance efforts during the late nineteenth century. This legacy of interethnic cooperation in resistance extended to a 1931 revolt and to early political party activity in the 1950s.33 However, the fate of the Mulelist rebellion against the provincial government in Kwilu depended very much on the extent to which the Mbunda-Pende alliance could be extended to include other Kwilu provincial groups, particularly the Ding, Cokwe, Yanzi, Mbala, and Ngongo.34 Some Ding communities did ally with the rebels, but most members of the other groups calculated that their interests would be better served if they avoided association with the Mulelists. The Mbala and Ngongo in particular had achieved some economic and bureaucratic upward mobility in the Kwilu regional government and chose not to associate with the rebels. The end result was the Mulelists’ inability to construct a broader alliance. The Mbunda-Pende fighters subsequently declined in political and military effectiveness and were eventually defeated by government forces. The national bureaucracy, meanwhile, had been weakened by the multiplication of regional upsurges, so that Kinshasa found it increasingly difficult to implement policies in a range of social domains; most social policy responsibilities became transferred to the provinces.35 Out of pragmatic necessity provincial autonomy became the shared presumption upon which the nation-state’s integrity was preserved. This strengthened the hand of subnationalists and antiMobutu rebels despite the president’s unending efforts to reassert centralized rule.

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The Role of the Postcolonial State Mobutu crafted an ethnically balanced national cabinet and civil service, but this was not reflective of his region-level ethnic policies, which were instrumentalist in nature. His interventionist, manipulative style often produced an intensification of ethnic polarization.36 He reproduced the colonial divide-and-rule pattern of stoking ethnopolitical flames and reinforcing the leadership of local elites willing to do his bidding. Even so, violent percolations occurred that reinforced a sense of Katangan assertiveness. In 1977 and 1978, the Front de Liberation National Congolais (FLNC) mobilized Katangans in Angola, and in Zambia in 1978, who fought and defeated Zaire’s army inside Katanga region. The “Katanga gendarmes,”— troops loyal to Tshombe who had fled Katanga upon the defeat of the 1960–1963 secession effort—had regrouped and played a crucial role in these two rebellions.37 In both 1977 and 1978, the Katangan fighters—now called Katangan Tigers—were defeated only after French and Belgian troops, and Moroccan troops in 1977, were flown in to do battle. In the 1990s severe central-state decay encouraged a resurgence of political activism that coincided with an intensified activation of regionalists and ethnic mobilizers. A Lunda “ethnic revival” took place in Katanga at the same time as Lunda Katangan activists attended the national conference of anti-Mobutu delegates in Kinshasa to press for greater political reforms, including regional autonomy.38 Katangan delegates were the first to abandon the national conference when they began to sense that their concerns were marginalized, and their withdrawal caused a major rupture in the proceedings. Katanga region then declared its autonomy in December 1993.39 This led John F. Clark to accurately predict, in 1995, that Katanga would become one of the first regions to seek independence from Congo after Mobutu’s demise.40 Throughout the 1990s, power struggles further exacerbated the disarticulation of the national political system and accentuated the growing pull toward regionalist assertion. Nguza Karl-I-Bond alternatively served as Mobutu’s prime minister and as opposition leader, heading the prodemocracy national conference from 1991 to 1992 and becoming the conference-appointed prime minister. However, tensions surfaced between Nguza and Etienne Tshisekedi, a longtime Mobutu-opposition politician, and the national conference decided to remove Nguza as prime minister in August 1992, replacing him with Tshisekedi. This leadership confrontation bore significantly on the

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evolution of internal politics within Katanga, with Lunda-Luba tensions becoming exacerbated because the Lunda blamed Nguza’s misfortune on anti-Lunda discrimination.41 When Nguza returned to Katanga, he mobilized his Lunda supporters to assert their regional political autonomy, and this led to yet further heightening of Lunda-Luba tensions. Tshisekedi, as the conference-elected prime minister of Zaire, came to be viewed as illegitimate by the Mobutu regime, which orchestrated a political campaign against Tshisekedi and arranged violent attacks against members of his ethnic group—the Luba in Katanga—and the ouster of one hundred thousand Luba from their homes.42 The momentum of Lunda-Luba violence accelerated, deepening Lunda interest in asserting greater regional autonomy so as to reduce the potential for the central state to continue to intervene politically in Katanga.

Institutional Decay, Subnationalism, Irredentism Even as Mobutu continued to strive to manipulate regional affairs so as to crush dissent, the institutional fiber of the Congolese nation-state had decayed to the point that central-state public policies were nearly impossible to implement. Communications links virtually ceased to function, transportation became problematic, and the organizational incoherence and fiscal paralysis of the armed forces became increasingly evident. Decades of bureaucratic corruption and insolvency had taken their toll.43 Politically, local chiefs were able to defy centralstate directives, ensuring the failure of various territorial reform measures. The administration of the regional territories came to be defined by functional ineffectiveness and administrative inertia.44 By the early 1990s, Katanga, Kasai, and other Congolese regions began to take advantage of this situation in the regions to insist on greater autonomy.45 With Mobutu’s approval, Katanga’s governor as of 1991, Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, craftily promoted a limitedautonomy movement while encouraging violent attacks against LubaKasai immigrants, specifically in order to keep the anti-Mobutu opposition divided. However, this Machiavellian scheme backfired in many respects, and it ultimately helped to unleash a deeply rooted regionalism that coincided with a massive anti-Mobutu armed rebellion occurring throughout eastern Congo. The economic context of this rebellion should be emphasized, with particular regard to the Congo’s inadequate structural integration. The country’s economy was defined by export-oriented mining

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and agricultural cash-crop enclaves that were disconnected from other productive sectors, reinforcing interterritorial disarticulation in much of the country. Although integrative steps toward the creation of internal linkages were reflected in the development of railroads, paved highways, and riverine transport systems, these had deteriorated markedly by the 1990s, rendering many areas increasingly isolated. In reaction, regions became characterized by the expansion of “exchange, barter or contraband networks” that took full advantage of the “growing irrelevance of porous national borders.”46 This, in turn, led to intensified trade links between residents of Congo’s peripheral regions and populations in neighboring countries—Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, the Sudan, Central African Republic, and Congo-Brazzaville. By the mid-1990s, open rebellion against the Mobutu regime and in favor of greater autonomy had broken out in a growing number of regions, representing one-third of the country: North and South Kivu, Katanga, Maniema, and a large area extending north and west of Kisangani.47 The social and economic links between outer Congolese regions and regions in adjacent nations now assumed political form: alliances were created between mobilized Congolese groups within each of these regions and neighboring national governments.48 A number of regional rebel groups gradually became allied within an anti-Mobutu coalition led by Laurent Kabila. This interethnic, interregional rebel front was known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) and operated with increasing organizational and military effectiveness.49 Kabila was adept at pursuing interethnic allegiances both within and outside Congo; this capacity harks back to his pursuit of local anti-Mobutu allies in the 1960s; his extensive early contacts with Ugandan, Rwandan, and Tanzanian leaders; his trading ties extending throughout East Africa; and perhaps his own origins as the offspring of a LubaLunda marriage in Katanga. 50 Rwanda’s and Uganda’s involvement in the alliance added greatly to the alliance’s fighting capacity. Still, the mayhem associated with the alliance’s success exacerbated the fragmentation of the Congolese nation-state in the mid1990s and helped to unleash a potpourri of uni-ethnic forces fighting for particularistic interests. Now that the door to cross-border political alliance formation had been swung wide open, some of the uni-ethnic forces obtained support from ethnically linked actors in neighboring states. Among the most noteworthy of these cases was in Kivu, where Bahunda and Banyanga, who share close ethnic ties, came into conflict with their longtime rivals, the more economically

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successful Banyamulenge—Tutsi settlers historically centered in Mulenge, South Kivu. In the 1990s the term Banyamulenge would broaden to reflect the fact that Tutsi inhabitants of North and South Kivu had consolidated forces to oppose the Bahunda and Banyango. 51 Fighting began in 1993, and by the late 1990s the prospect of a Kivu breakaway and linkage to Tutsi-led Rwanda loomed large due to the military successes of Banyamulenge-Rwandan Tutsi allies who promoted Tutsi irredentism.52 This Kivu rebellion would soon be confronted by the consolidation of Hutu opposition forces. Nearly half the population of North Kivu is of Rwandan origin, both Tutsi and Hutu; significant numbers of Hutu also live in South Kivu, as well as in southern Uganda. Some of the Hutu in North and South Kivu have lived there since precolonial times, although most migrated from Rwanda or Uganda during the colonial period to work as farm laborers. In 1994 approximately 1 million Hutu migrated to the two Kivu provinces when they fled Rwanda as Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-based Rwanda Patriotic Front assumed control of that country.53 Interahamwe Hutu militia who had migrated to North Kivu sought to establish an irredentist alliance with Hutu fighters in Burundi. In 1996, when Interahamwe militia attacked and killed hundreds of Kivu Tutsi, the Hutu militia received encouragement from the Congolese governor of North Kivu. As many as a quarter-million Tutsi residents of Kivu fled the province, most making their way to Rwanda. The predominantly Tutsi Rwandan national army responded to the Interahamwe attacks in the Kivu provinces by marching into North and South Kivu and, working in alliance with remaining Banyamulenge fighters, massacring between thirty thousand and two hundred thousand Hutu living in refugee camps there.54 The political mobilization of the Congolese Tutsi clearly had assumed dramatic significance, with catastrophic implications for the Hutu of Kivu. Meanwhile, all the Banyamulenge, including both Tutsi who claimed precolonial roots in the Kivu area and those who had migrated there during the colonial or postcolonial period, were demanding, but not receiving, formal recognition as Congolese citizens.55 Their alienation from provincial Kivu political leaders and from the Mobutu regime at the national level is crucial to an appreciation of Banyamulenge support for Laurent Kabila’s growing rebel front.56 Kabila’s allied forces had expanded into a network of antiMobutu organizations in eastern Congo stretching across Katanga, Kasai, and North and South Kivu, and it now also included significant

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participation by Banyamulenge fighters, as well as a Kuba militia from southeast Kasai, half a million Luba, Mai-Mai (Mayi-Mayi) fighters (disaffected Kivu youths oriented toward spiritism), and Rwandan and Ugandan support troops.57 Between October and December 1996, Kabila’s rebel alliance routed undisciplined and unmotivated Congolese troops and established political control throughout the eastern regions.58 One component of the alliance in Katanga was the “Katanga Tigers,” the armed remnant of secessionists who had fled to Angola in 1964 and had launched attacks in Katanga in 1977 and 1978. They returned to Katanga in February 1997 to again battle Mobutu’s army, and this time their organizational power and military capacity were strengthened by the use of modern weaponry and equipment from Angola, by the inclusion of experienced Angolan field commanders, and by the incorporation of refugee fighters hailing from a broad range of Congolese regions. They bested Mobutu’s army, helped ensure the capture of Kisangani, and were popularly viewed in Katanga as authentic sons of the soil.59 Continued battlefield successes by Kabila’s allied forces during subsequent months forced Mobutu to flee the country in May 1997, at which point Kabila assumed national power in Kinshasa. Core units of Congolese Tutsi fighters and of Rwandan soldiers had become so important to Kabila militarily that they were accorded key positions in the newly established government. However, “the presence of so many prominent Tutsi and Banyamulenge in his regime did not sit well with most Congolese citizens” and even led to street attacks against Tutsi in Kinshasa, so Kabila reversed course and proceeded to marginalize Tutsi and Banyamulenge from his government.60 To further shore up his standing among Congolese, Kabila decided not to recognize the Tutsi as Congolese citizens—thus replicating the national ostracism they had endured under Mobutu’s reign. This was a strategic error, considering the extent to which Kabila had relied on the Congolese Tutsi fighters and the Rwandan armed forces to help ensure the stability of his rule in the early weeks and months following his capture of state power, especially in the eastern provinces, but also in Kinshasa. 61 Many of the Banyamulenge who had previously fought for Kabila now turned against him; at the same time, Rwandan President Paul Kagame reacted to Kabila’s snub and his refusal to grant Congolese citizenship to the Banyamulenge by sending Rwandan troops to support already-active anti-Kabila forces in eastern and central Congo.62 This rapidly proved important in South Kivu, where Banyamulenge fighting for provincial autonomy,

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now against Kabila’s government, were provided with considerable Rwandan military assistance.63 The provincial rebel fighters spearheaded by anti-Kabila Banyamulenge and supported by Rwandan soldiers overwhelmed the remaining Kabila loyalists in South and North Kivu, both of which fell to the new rebel alliance within a month.64 The anti-Kabila alliance was further strengthened by the active participation of Ugandan troops sent by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, which helped make it possible for the Banyamulenge and Rwandan forces to seize control of Maniema region by October 1998.65 Meanwhile, Kabila’s own now-reduced alliance was bolstered by the deployment of troops from Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola against the anti-Kabila rebels. The signing of a mutual-defense pact between Congo and these three nations reflected long-standing political ties between Kabila and the heads of state of those countries. It also reflected those nations’ economic interests in Congolese resources. For example, Kabila rewarded Angolan participation by granting Angola control of a significant portion of Congo’s oildistribution networks.66 Although peace talks produced a general cease-fire between rebel and government forces in July 1999 and a formal accord was signed in December 2002, the prospects for disarmament of the rebel (anti-Kabila) forces and the reestablishment of government authority in many of the regions remained slim. 67 The increasing unpopularity of the Kabila regime had only exacerbated the alienation of the peripheral regions from the state.68 In March and December 2002, more fighting broke out in the Kivu regions, spurred by regional rebels who in the past had consistently received support from Rwanda.69 Adding to the intensity of the Kivu conflagration were the Mai-Mai, a separate rebel force of spirit-believers uniting a broad variety of minority ethnic groups—Banande, Banyanga, Batembo, Babembe, and others. The Mai-Mai oppose the Rwanda-linked Tutsi fighters in their region, are allied with local Hutu rebels, and strongly favor provincial autonomy.70 Edouard Bustin emphasizes that while remnants of a national Congolese identity and loyalty to the idea of a Congolese nation-state remain entrenched in parts of the core equatorial and Kinshasa areas, that is not the case elsewhere. Indeed, Katanga, Kasai, South and North Kivu, and Maniema pose a growing risk of de facto secession. One factor that would increase those regions’ prospects of de facto separation from Congo is their now well-developed links to neighboring nations, which may welcome a deepening of ties considering

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the rich bounty of mineral resources in eastern Congo.71 Access to Congolese diamonds has been a key motivation for Rwanda’s active military deployment in eastern Congo.72 Ugandan president Museveni’s enthusiasm for his country’s economic integration with central Africa is also worth underlining:73 Museveni’s position on this issue raises the possibility that east Congolese regions will eventually become economically incorporated into a broader east-central African marketing framework. There is considerable evidence that President Museveni has a strategic and political interest in securing a sphere of influence in Congolese regions that abut Uganda. Museveni took advantage of the Congo’s institutional decay to send the Ugandan army more than six hundred miles into Congolese territory in 1998, presumably to defend against attacks from anti-Ugandan forces operating from bases in the Congo. Like Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Museveni envisions building alliances not only between Uganda and Rwanda, but with discontented segments of the eastern Congolese populace as well.74 Since 1998, Ugandan and Rwandan military forces have challenged Kabila’s control over eastern Congo with considerable success.75 Despite the 2002 peace accords, Kagame, and the Rwandan regime more generally, shares with Museveni and the Ugandan government broad political and economic interests in Congo, as well as a sense of entitlement, on the basis of prior battle victories, to further expand their networks there.76 The external interventions from Uganda and Rwanda have exacerbated the widening chasm between Kinshasa and the peripheral regions. The political linkages that have been consolidated across borders are reshaping Congolese politics in a profoundly internationalized direction, and the impact of nation-state borders is diminishing in political relevance.77 Uganda and Rwanda now enjoy access to Congolese minerals, such as diamonds, gold, and coltan (columbitetantalite, used in the manufacture of electronic devices), and other forms of natural wealth, including wood, livestock, and coffee.78 A transportation infrastructure in the form of newly established airlines and trucking companies now links a multitude of revenue-generating industries in eastern Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda.79 President Museveni apparently hopes to construct a regional power web that includes eastern Congo. Historical and social links between the Banyankole people of southwestern Uganda and the Tutsi of Congo and Rwanda augment the potential of success for such a large-scale nexus.80 This scenario of a broad interethnic alliance linking much of northeastern Congo to Uganda, and the Kivu regions to Rwanda, is to

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some extent speculative at this point, but it is by no means implausible, especially considering the extensive degree of regional autonomy that has already been consolidated and that would facilitate this process.

Reflections on Congolese Fragmentation The eastern Congolese conflict of the 1990s was marked by a profound entrenchment of regionally specific political logics and a sharpening of the military and administrative disjuncture between the east and Kinshasa. But it is important to place this entrenchment and disjuncture in historical perspective. Let us recall the explosion of regional subnationalism that took place in the wake of the demise of Belgian colonial rule. The resultant “disequilibrium” opened the door to the pursuit of regional autonomy by engendering an “irresistible . . . temptation to use the opportunity for exit.”81 All Mobutu could do to retain nation-state integrity was to piece together fragile local support structures with assistance from excolonial European powers. By the 1990s, the weakening of Mobutu’s local and international support bases reopened the political door to an augmenting regionalization of power, manifested rapidly by the success of rebel forces in half the country—South and North Kivu, Katanga, and Kasai. These rebels supported the pro-Kabila forces in order to shed the remnants of Mobutu’s national army from their respective regions. Kabila himself and his close associates clearly aimed for national power, and they eventually seized it, but the formation of rebel alliances in the eastern part of the country helped to ensure a rapid and dramatic discombobulation of the nation-state’s administrative structure. Multiple foreign armed forces became involved in ways that deepened the regions’ attachments with bordering states rather than with Kinshasa. All of this ensured the growing incoherence of the Congolese nation-state and accelerated the process of regional “fissioning”—a process similar to that of the fragmentation that had occurred three and a half decades earlier, but now absent a viable means of containment. As it progressed, the subnationalist pull of the 1990s became simultaneously sharpened and blurred as foreign interventionist armies sometimes sided with secessionists and at other times backed local forces loyal to Kinshasa. Overall, however, the shifting terrain of interethnic linkages and coalitions, cross-border pact making, uniethnic irredentism, economic interest of foreign forces in Congolese

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resources, instrumentalist military assertions, and proliferation of rebel groups within and beyond eastern Congo collectively helped to accelerate the fragmentation of the Congolese nation-state. Intensively politicized ties created or reconsolidated among uni-ethnic and interethnic actors across borders in recent years reflects a new indigenous effort to restructure preexisting political arrangements in the wake of the Congo’s quasidismemberment.

Gabu Resurrected? Toward a Tripartite Federation The potential creation of cross-border networks or a set of interregional linkages in central and eastern Africa calls attention to its West African equivalent: the possible recreation of a version of the ancient empire of Gabu—an outer section of the Mali Empire that ruled over upper West Africa from the late fifteenth to the midnineteenth century. Signals emitted by political activists in the last few years suggest the possibility of reconstructing a facsimile of Gabu out of portions of what are today Senegal’s Casamance region, the Gambia, and northern Guinea-Bissau. In particular, some activists within the leading circles of the Casamancian separatist movement have given voice to the possibility of recreating a “Gabu Federation” along a Ziguinchor-Banjul-Bissau axis.82 The ancient Gabu Empire was based principally on a Mandinka ethnic leadership, but a wide diversity of groups married into the Gabu-dominated polity. Gabu’s rulers struck up alliances with groups located at the periphery of Gabu’s territorial expanse, groups that retained their distinct identities but provided annual tribute and soldiers to defend the Gabu kingdom against external enemies. 83 Militarily and politically, Gabu functioned as an interethnic alliance that mobilized fighters from a vast span of localities that remained politically affiliated with the Gabu leadership.84 Groups that resisted Gabu’s predominance—especially stateless societies including the Baïnuk, Balanta, Papel, Cassanga, Susu, and Mandjack—established social, military, and economic links with one another throughout the region of Casamance, Gambia, and GuineaBissau that would prove enduring.85 This provides a social context for understanding the basis upon which some Casamance separatists have called for the revival of a Gabu federation. Statements made by an MFDC partisan Mamadou “Nkrumah” Sané (or Sanha), indicate that after Casamance’s independence from Senegal is achieved, a three-way federation among Ziguinchor, Banjul, and Bissau could be

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in the making.86 From the Guinea-Bissauan side, the voice parallel to Sané’s is that of scholar Carlos Lopes, whose recent Portugueselanguage history of the Gabu Empire, though it does not explicitly advocate a renewed Gabu, strongly implies that there is a historical basis for such a federation in contemporary times.87 Through its words and behavior, the MFDC-led movement has raised the issue of cross-border linkages with particular visibility. MFDC leader Diamacoune Senghor has made statements that lend support to the idea that the Casamance is historically closer to the people of Guinea-Bissau than to the people of Senegal. To underline this point, he has repeatedly referred to Casamance’s prior incorporation into Portuguese Guinea.88 He has also publicly interpreted the ancient history of the Casamance as indicating that during the period of the Gabu kingdom, the region was integrated into a territory extending from the Atlantic to Mali.89 Diamacoune notes that “Casamansa” means “King of our House,” a term reflecting the Casamance’s linkage to the Gabu rulership. Diamacoune means to suggest the Casamance’s close historical ties to Gabu, which also implies the Casamance’s relative alienation from Dakar-based Senegal.90 The fact that tens of thousands of refugees from the fighting in the Casamance have found welcoming hosts in northern GuineaBissau adds support to this perspective.91 Specific references to “our brothers, the people of Guinea-Bissau” in MFDC statements are intended to further promote this cross-border linkage.92 It is clear that General Ansoumane Mané, the principal architect behind the army rebellion of 1998–1999 in Guinea-Bissau, strongly supported the Casamancians. Beyond Mané himself, a number of Guinea-Bissauan soldiers took major risks in order to sell weaponry to the MFDC rebels.93 One of the Guinea-Bissauan army commanders associated with Mané made a declaration in favor of holding a referendum in the Casamance regarding the region’s self-rule.94 Once the rebellion was fully in progress, one of the first major towns seized by the Guinea-Bissauan rebel soldiers was Bafatá, which historically has close social, economic, and ethnic ties with Casamancians.95 And during the rebellion, the MFDC sent a contingent of its own fighters to Bissau to join ranks with Guinea-Bissauan soldiers who were engaged in combat against Senegalese troops fighting on behalf of Guinea-Bissau president Nino Vieira’s unpopular regime.96 The Gambia, the third would-be participant in a Gabu tripartite alliance, has extensive political, social, ethnic, and trading ties with both Casamance and Guinea-Bissau that have intensified since the Casamancian rebellion began. Gambian president as of 1994, Yahya

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Jammeh, a Diola, has established a close rapport with the MFDC’s northern front, and he may have facilitated the provisioning of arms to that front. Also, an MFDC fighting contingent serves as Jammeh’s presidential guard in his home village of Kanilaye.97 Thus, there is strong mutual support among Casamance rebels, northern Guinea-Bissauans, and Gambians, but how realistic is hope for the creation of a renewed Gabu federation? Such a federation, which would, in theory, unite approximately a million Casamancians, a million Guinea-Bissauans, and half a million Gambians, appears politically unrealistic, at least in the immediate future. Following their civil war of 1998–1999, Guinea-Bissauans elected a popular civilian politician, Kumba Yala, as president, and Yala’s attitude toward the MFDC has been increasingly hostile. That he sought a rapprochement with France, which ardently supports retention of Senegal’s current borders, adds to Yala’s incentive to oppose the MFDC. Still, it is noteworthy that some local thinkers and political actors have raised the possibility of a Gabu alliance simply by placing the idea on the table for discussion. It would be overstretching the argument to claim that Casamancians, Gambians, or Guinea-Bissauans are organizing in a concrete way to politically reestablish a Gabu empire, but the history of common ties among these peoples reflects a social context that may prove favorable to the creation of a type of interregional political alliance based loosely on the Gabu federation model, especially if continued instability in the Casamance and Guinea-Bissau provokes local political leaders to more deeply consider such an eventuality.

Conclusion The historical legacy of regional resistance has wielded a continuing influence in much of Congo, particularly in Kasai and Katanga, but also in other regions, reflecting a confluence of factors that include precolonial linkages, colonial cartographic logic, weak nation-state infrastructures, leadership intervention, uni-ethnic assertion, and interethnic alliances. Despite a strong element of mystification on the part of instrumentalist leaders, certain precolonial images helped to stimulate and strengthen both interethnic subnationalism and uniethnic politics in a number of regions. These include the broadly structured and incorporative Lunda empire and the notion of a pluralistic consortium on which the CONAKAT-led movement in Katanga was based; the Luba empire for Luba-Kasai separatists and

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their allies in South Kasai; and the expansive ancient Kongo kingdom for Kongo subnationalists in northern Congo. Both Kwilu separatism and CONAKAT’s movement in Katanga, despite its eventual rejection of the Luba-Kasai, were also based on interethnic alliances. More recently, Kabila’s resistance efforts succeeded in the mid-1990s in large part because of his ability to string together an interethnic coalition in the east. At the same time, however, the failure of instrumentalist leaders to reach out and include a broader diversity of actors seriously diminished the political potential of many Congolese movements. Ambitious individual leaders’ and exclusivistic uni-ethnic actors’ reliance on utilitarian politics must be acknowledged. Recently, Hutu Interahamwe and Tutsi Banyamulenge have behaved in ways that render highly difficult the forging of superethnic coalitions. Congolese fragmentation in the 1990s generated multiple sets of swiftly changing compacts, many of which have brought Burundians, Rwandans, and Ugandans into direct political action in the east, multiplying the number and directions of regional alliances. The Congolese state itself has been an important player in this center-periphery chess match, beginning with the political gamesmanship of colonial cartographic strategizing. The early granting of special powers to Katanga set in motion a political quest for autonomy that would eventually, if unwittingly, serve as a role model for subnationalist assertion by other regions. The fundamental fragility of the Congolese bureaucracy, army, and communications and transport links facilitated the potential remobilization of regional forces and ultimately proved crucial to the explosion of regional rebellion and border porosity, with their multiple political ramifications, in the mid-to-late 1990s. Multiple factors contributed to the estrangement of eastern Congo from Kinshasa: the cross-border ethnic logic of the Hutu in Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi and of the Congolese Banyamulenge and Rwandan Tutsi in the same three nations; the personal and political ambitions of Rwanda’s Kagame and Uganda’s Museveni and their coveting of Congolese resources; and, more generally, the extensive economic ties across national borders, in contrast to the weaker economic linkages between Kinshasa and the regions. Over the long term, this construction of cross-regional and cross-border alliances on the basis of common political and material interests portends a strategic political realignment. Considering cross-border linkages among Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, and Casamance and the potential emergence of a Gabu-structured

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model of interregional authority, the situation in Congo to some extent parallels that of the proposed Gabu federation. A facsimile of such a prospect appears achievable, as in the Katanga and Kasai cases, because of the precolonial and colonial experiences of interethnic exchange among groups in the Gambia, Casamance, and Guinea-Bissau and their political implications regarding alliance formation in contemporary times. In both eastern Congo and upper West Africa, a further strengthening of localistic forces allied with various and changing external actors will render any emerging leadership structures fragile and transitory as the twenty-first century unfolds. A longer term trajectory, however, suggests the potential rise of macroscale alliances that in some ways reprise the ancient localism-inpolity model of rule, albeit set within an unstable postmodern mélange of alterable interethnic coalitions, multiple national armies, uni-ethnic subnationalism, irredentism, and instrumentalist violence set forth by an array of personalistic challengers. In central Africa as in upper West Africa, these variegated political forces are likely to eventually settle on a construction of loose political, economic, and strategic networks that fluctuate at first, but eventually obtain a more stable outcome, with existing regional centers likely serving as important polity hubs.

Notes 1. See John F. Clark’s enlightening article, “Ethno-Regionalism in Zaire: Roots, Manifestation, and Meaning,” The Journal of African Policy Studies 1, no. 2 (1995): 25–28; Jan Vansina, Introduction à l’ethnographie du Congo (Kinshasa: Editions Universitaires du Congo, 1965); Alan Merriam, “The Concept of Culture Clusters Applied to the Belgian Congo,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15, no. 4 (1959). See Chapter 2 of this book regarding ethnic interrelations in precolonial Congo. 2. Jules Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 277, 11, 25; Edouard Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule: The Politics of Ethnicity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 197; Clark, “Ethno-Regionalism,” 32. 3. Crawford Young, “Comparative Claims to Political Sovereignty: Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 219; Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 521. 4. Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule, 202–203, 237, 207. 5. Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 44.

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6. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 220. 7. M. Tshombe, “Discours prononcé par le president du Katanga à l’occasion de la fête du 11 juillet, 1962,” cited in Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo, 501. 8. Philip Curtain, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson, Jan Vansina, African History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 255. 9. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 203; Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 140. 10. Young, Politics in the Congo, 482. 11. Bogumil Jewsiewicki, “Rural Society and the Belgian Colonial Economy,” in History of Central Africa, vol. 2, ed. David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin (London: Longman, 1983), 107. 12. Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 9; Young, Politics in the Congo, 483. 13. Young, Politics in the Congo, 485–89, 494; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 201; Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 18; Clark, “EthnoRegionalism,” 32. 14. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 176. 15. Jewsiewicki, “Rural Society,” 109; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 201. 16. Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 11. 17. Ibid., 226; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 202. 18. Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule, 201; Young, Politics in the Congo, 542–544. 19. Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule, 202; Jean-Claude Willame, Patrimonialism and Political Change in the Congo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 54. 20. Crawford Young, personal correspondence, 27 June 2002; see also Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, 13. 21. Willame, Patrimonialism, 110. 22. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 204. 23. By mid-January 1963 Tshombe and his allied secessionist provincial ministers had fled Katanga for Rhodesia and announced the end of the secession. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 204; Young, Politics in the Congo, 543. 24. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 219. Subsequently, with order restored, a new region called North Katanga was established by Kinshasa, which aimed to reduce Katanga’s territorial reach and thereby its political strength and secessionist potential. 25. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 186–187. The area that became South Kasai had not actually been part of the Luba empire. 26. Curtain, Feierman, Thompson, and Vansina, African History, 254. 27. Willame, Patrimonialism, 65–66. 28. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 188. 29. Ibid., 168–170, 182–184, 185; Young, Politics in the Congo, 507. 30. Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 217.

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31. John K. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), xiv, 94. 32. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 199, 202, 186. 33. Ibid., 205. 34. Ibid., 206. 35. Young, Politics in the Congo, 529. 36. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 67; Clark, “Ethno-Regionalism,” 33–40. 37. Thomas Turner, “Angola’s Role in the Congo War,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 76; Christophe Goossens, “Political Instability in Congo-Zaire: Ethno-Regionalism in Katanga,” in Politics of Identity and Economics of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region, ed. Ruddy Doom and Jan Gorus (Brussels: VUB University Press, 2000), 250. 38. Filip de Boeck, “Postcolonialism, Power, and Identity: Local and Global Perspectives from Zaire,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 85. 39. Michael G. Schatzberg, “Hijacking Change: Zaire’s ‘Transition’ in Comparative Perspective,” in Democracy in Africa: The Hard Road Ahead, ed. Marina Ottaway (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 120. 40. Clark, “Ethno-Regionalism,” 44. 41. Schatzberg, “Hijacking Change,” 120–121. 42. Herbert Weiss, “Zaire: Collapsed Society, Surviving State, Future Polity,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 166. 43. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 87, 243–47, 273–274. 44. Thomas M. Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 62, 64; Young and Turner, Rise and Decline, 242–243. 45. Goossens, “Political Instability,” 255–256, 260. 46. Edouard Bustin, “The Collapse of ‘Congo/Zaire’ and Its Regional Impact,” in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 83, 84. 47. René Lemarchand, “The Crisis in the Great Lakes,” in Africa in World Politics: The African State System in Flux, ed. John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000), 325. 48. François Ngolet, “African and American Connivance in CongoZaire,” Africa Today 47, no. 1 (2000), 68; Bustin, “Collapse of ‘Congo/ Zaire,’” 84. 49. Ngolet, “African and American Connivance,” 68–69. 50. Kevin C. Dunn, “A Survival Guide to Kinshasa: Lessons of the Father, Passed Down to the Son,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John F. Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 54–55; Thomas Turner, “Angola’s Role,” 89.

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51. William Cyrus Reed, “Guerrillas in the Midst: The Former Government of Rwanda (FGOR) and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) in Eastern Zaire,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 143; Clark, “Ethno-Regionalism,” 43; René Lemarchand, “Preface,” in Politics of Identity and Economics of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region, ed. Ruddy Doom and Jan Gorus (Brussels: VUB University Press, 2000), 10. 52. René Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 325–326. 53. Ibid., 327, 331. 54. Reed, “Guerrillas in the Midst,” 142–144. Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 335, 329. 55. Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 334; Reed, “Guerrillas in the Midst,” 143. 56. Timothy Longman, “The Complex Reasons for Rwanda’s Engagement in Congo,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John F. Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 131. 57. Crawford Young, personal correspondence, 27 June 2002; Reed, “Guerrillas in the Midst,” 146; Jermaine O. McCalpin, “Historicity of a Crisis: The Origins of the Congo War,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John F. Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 46; Dunn, “Survival Guide to Kinshasa,” 56. 58. Reed, “Guerrillas in the Midst,” 147–150. 59. Turner, “Angola’s Role,” 82. 60. John F. Clark, “Explaining Ugandan Intervention in Congo: Evidence and Interpretations,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 2 (2001), 268, 279; Ngolet, “African and American Connivance,” 76; Dunn, “Survival Guide to Kinshasa,” 61. 61. Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 337–339; Bustin, “Collapse of ‘Congo/Zaire,’” 89. 62. Clark, “Explaining Ugandan Intervention,” 268, 271; Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 340. 63. Osita Afoaku, “Congo’s Rebels: Their Origins, Motivations, and Strategies,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 113. 64. Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 340. 65. John F. Clark, “Museveni’s Adventure in the Congo War,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John F. Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 329. 66. Turner, “Angola’s Role,” 85, 87. 67. Lemarchand, “Crisis in the Great Lakes,” 349; Ngolet, “African and American Connivance,” 82. On the accord, see Declan Walsh, “Congo Factions Sign Deal to End ‘Africa’s First World War,’” 17 December 2002, available at news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=362560. 68. Bustin, “Collapse of ‘Congo/Zaire,’” 85–86. 69. “Congo Peace Talks Hit by Walk-Out,” BBC World News, 14 March 2002, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1873410.stm; “Democratic Republic of Congo: Power-Sharing Deal,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 12 (2002): 15123–15124.

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70. Koen Vlassenroot, “Identity and Insecurity: The Building of Ethnic Agendas in South Kivu,” in Politics of Identity and Economics of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region, ed. Ruddy Doom and Jan Gorus (Brussels: VUB University Press, 2000), 277, 282–83. 71. Bustin, “Collapse of ‘Congo/Zaire,’” 85. 72. Longman, “Complex Reasons,” 136. 73. Clark, “Explaining Ugandan Intervention,” 276. 74. Ibid., 271–272, 281, 284; Clark, “Museveni’s Adventure,” 152. 75. Ngolet, “African and American Connivance,” 79–82. It is also the case that some Ugandan and Rwandan military units have scuffled with each other. 76. Regarding Museveni and Uganda on this point, see Clark, “Museveni’s Adventure,” 152; regarding Kagame and Rwanda, see Longman, “Complex Reasons,” 137. 77. McCalpin, “Historicity of a Crisis,” 47. 78. Mungbalemwe Koyambe and John F. Clark, “The Economic Impact of the Congo War,” in The African Stakes of the Congo War, ed. John F. Clark (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 204–205, 211; Turner, “Angola’s Role,” 77. 79. Koyambe and Clark, “Economic Impact,” 210. 80. Clark, “Explaining Ugandan intervention,” 284. 81. Young, Politics in the Congo, 546. 82. Jorge Heitor, “Conversações sobre o futuro de Casamansa decorrem na Gambia,” Revista/Expresso, 21 June 1999, 16; Gérald Gaillard, “GuinéeBissau: Un pas douloureux vers la démocratie,” Afrique Contemporaine, no. 191 (1999), 45. 83. Carlos Lopes, Kaabunké: Espaço, território e poder na GuinéBissau, Gâmbia e Casamance pré-coloniais (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1999), 170–173. 84. Joshua B. Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility: Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau (Athens: University of Ohio Press, 2003); and see Joye Bowman, Ominous Transition: Commerce and Colonial Expansion in the Senegambia and Guinea, 1857–1919 (Brookfield Vt.: Avebury, 1997). 85. Avelino Teixeira da Mota, “Les relations de l’ancien Cabou avec quelques états et peuples voisins,” in ÉTHIOPIQUES: Revue Socialiste de Culture Négro-Africaine 28 (October 1981), 158–159. 86. Heitor, “Conversações,” 16. 87. Lopes, Kaabunké. 88. Geneviève Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller’: Le conflit ethnorégional casamançais et l’état sénégalais,” Ph.D. diss., University of Montréal, 2000, p. 5 of Chapter 6. 89. Jean-Claude Marut, “Guerre et paix en Casamance: Repères pour un conflit, 1990–1993,” in Comprendre la Casamance: Chronique d’une intégration contrastée, ed. F. G. Barbier-Wiesser (Paris: Karthala, 1994), cited in Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 12 of Chapter 6. 90. Sévérine Aweningo, “Identités et Casamançais,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Laval University, Québec, 27–30 May 2001.

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91. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 76 of Chapter 4. 92. Jean-Claude Marut, “Casamance: les assises du MFDC à Banjul (22–25 juin 1999),” Afrique Contemporaine, no. 191 (1999), 79. 93. Gaillard, “Guinée-Bissau,” 51, 47. 94. Gasser, “‘Manger ou s’en aller,’” p. 28 of Chapter 6. 95. Gaillard, “Guinée-Bissau,” 47. 96. Martin Evans, “Senegal: Wade and the Casamance Dossier,” African Affairs 99, no. 397 (2000), 649. 97. Ibid., 655.

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ubnationalist movements in Eritrea and Somaliland were able to achieve de facto secession and to establish new autonomous governments. These two movements share certain characteristics with the cultural-mosaic subnationalist movements discussed in Chapter 4, including a tradition of interethnic exchange and a colonial experience marked by political repression and exclusion from economic development. However, the efforts in Eritrea and Somaliland proved remarkably and distinctively effective in terms of internal organizational coherence and coordination. They pulled together a unified alliance with dramatic impact and remained focused in their quest for independence. As a result, they were particularly well positioned to take advantage of declining central-state infrastructures and militaries in the early 1990s. The Eritrean movement was marked by the mobilization of nine different ethnic groups into a common secessionist struggle against the Ethiopian state. It was precisely the interethnic balance within the movement for Eritrean self-determination, along with a relatively coherent leadership structure, that represented the movement’s greatest strength. The Somaliland breakaway has been commonly, and wrongly, perceived as the action of a single ethnic clan, the Isaq. In reality, the Isaq group has received strong support from other clans and ethnic groups in the north. Since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and the generalized warfare that spread throughout the country, the interclan and interethnic character of northern Somalis’ armed struggle enabled them to form a common alliance. On this basis, they struggled for delinkage from the southern capital city of Mogadishu and were able to assert de facto secession by 1996. 133

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In both Somaliland and Eritrea, interclan and interethnic alliance building, steady intraorganizational improvements, and central-state decline were important factors in subnationalist movements’ ability to sustain their momentum over a considerable length of time and to succeed in their secessionist quests.

Eritrea The Eritreans are distinct from the groups we discussed previously because they did not form part of a shared political unit or partake of a common regional culture in precolonial times. It was only in the twentieth century—beginning in the 1940s—that Eritrea acquired a distinct political identity. Despite a history of extensive interethnic exchanges, Eritreans cannot call upon a social memory of a unified, regionwide precolonial political framework. Still, the peoples who inhabited what is today Eritrea did enjoy considerable intergroup relations and social and economic linkages and did experience multiethnic political coordination as participants in the Ottoman and Ethiopian empires. Eritrean consciousness developed from the 1940s to the 1980s as a direct consequence of, and in reaction to, Ethiopian imperialism.1 By the late nineteenth century, the Eritreans had suffered particularly brutal colonial conquest by Ethiopia, and the severity of economic oppression and political repression intensified and became systematized through the twentieth century as the Ethiopian state gained in institutional power.2 Little revenue was invested in the

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province as Emperor Haile Selassie focused economic development efforts on the Amharic-speaking provinces of Shoa, Addis Ababa, Gojjam, and Begemdir, contributing to the political alienation of Eritrea and other regions, such as Oromia.3 Eritrea acquired a degree of coherence as an administrative region, but it remained relatively fragmented internally, with Eritrean territory encompassing nine different ethnic groups.4 These include the Tigrinya (or Tigrinyans), making up approximately half the Eritrean populace with 1.9 million people, most of whom are Coptic Christians (some are Muslim); the Saho, totaling 140,000, mostly Muslims living along the coast; the Afar, numbering 300,000, an Islamic group that practices herding; the Bilin (or Bileyn), about 70,000, also largely Muslim; the Tigre, traditionally pastoralist and mostly Muslim, numbering 800,000 (and distinct from the Tigrinya); the Bani Amir (or Beni Amer), about 120,000 mostly nomadic Muslims along the border who have often intermarried with Tigre; the Kunama, about 140,000, an ancient people, some of whom recently converted to Islam while others converted to Protestantism; the Nara (or Nera), 63,000, whose lineage dates from at least the fourth century A.D.; and the Rashaida, a tiny Islamic community that recently immigrated from Arabia.5 Despite their distinctions, members of these groups intermarried and established extensive trading links. People of Tigre identity trace some of their lineage ties to the Tigrinyans and Saho. Large-scale migrations as a consequence of war or ecological disaster periodically resulted in ethnic cohabitation and mutual support. Tigrinyans spread from the Eritrean highlands to lowland areas because of grain shortages in the highlands, resulting in a large degree of Tigrinyan influence on the Tigre, Saho, and Kunama. And because both lowland and highland peasants needed a wide cattle-grazing area, “institutionalized mechanisms of mediation” were developed to make possible interethnic coordination of grazing patterns and to minimize the potential for conflict.6 Meanwhile, a broad cultural split emerged between Coptic Christian highlanders and Muslim lowlanders.7 For this reason, separate Christian and Muslim organizations were created to counter Italian and Ethiopian colonial rule in the 1930s and 1940s. This began to change in the 1950s, when political parties with broader visions began to take form, but even so, ethnic and religious factionalism continued to plague Eritrean activism.8 Muslim activists generated the first major pan-Eritrean movement in the 1940s and 1950s, the ELM (Eritrean Liberation Movement),

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which soon expanded to incorporate Christian activists and other members of most ethnic groups.9 In that initial burst of subnationalist activity, the notion of a pan-Eritrean sociopolitical entity was embraced by only a handful of political activists and members of the intelligentsia.10 Factional splits occurred within the ELM and splinter groups arose principally on the basis of ideological and strategic conflicts, such as disagreement about whether to seek unity with Ethiopia; this splintering also reflected Christian-Muslim tensions and, to a lesser extent, ethnic and linguistic divergences. Nonetheless, these rebels share one political common denominator: an effort to articulate a pan-Eritrean social identity and publicly assert the existence of an Eritrean “mother country.”11 Intellectuals used the press as an important forum for secessionist discourse,12 and on the cultural plane, singers began for the first time to produce ballads romanticizing a shared Eritrean past. This process expanded once the Eritrean armed struggle began in earnest in 1961. During the following two decades, mobilized fighters, although still divided into competing political camps, made important progress toward the construction of a shared Eritrean identity. All factions, despite their differences, proclaimed a commitment to the notion of common Eritrean nationhood and promoted this concept politically and culturally. After Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974 and replaced by a communist-inspired Derg, or revolutionary council, the central government continued its longterm war against Eritrea, facilitating activists’ ability to promote a pan-Eritrean identity.13 Politically, however, internal factionalism required resolution. One of the most important groups that had bolted from the ELM in 1961 was the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which would soon displace the ELM as the central rebel organization.14 The ELF, initially based in Bani Amir and Nara areas, succeeded in creating a wellorganized command structure that incorporated leadership representatives from various ethnic and religious backgrounds. Guerrilla fighting units, however, remained inadequately coordinated because they were grouped according to geographic zones that corresponded to ethnic and religious divisions.15 This reflected what was initially believed to be a strategic way of mobilizing diverse populaces, as well as the fact that soldiers did not intermingle easily when they were grouped in common units—for example, Christian fighters ate separately from Muslims. Problems with this zone-based fighting structure induced two ELF factions to abandon the ELF in 1970 and to create a new rebel

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group, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). A decade of guerrilla battles between the ELF and the EPLF ensued, with the EPLF emerging as militarily more powerful and usurping the ELF’s predominance. The EPLF subsequently consolidated its preeminence with a decisive military victory over the ELF in 1981. From this point forward, the EPLF would incorporate other Eritrean factions and unite them into a coherent, panregional liberation movement.16 Through the 1980s, the EPLF established participatory political assemblies for all of Eritrea’s ethnic and religious groups. The EPLF also undertook an internal reorganization of its fighting forces that resulted in substantial improvement of its military effectiveness.17 Furthermore, EPLF’s decisionmaking and communications networks came to be staffed by highly trained cadres. Following a 1987 meeting of the EPLF central committee, minority ethnic groups such as the Bani Amir and Bilin, which until the 1980s had to a large extent been affiliated with other political parties that were resisting Ethiopian rule, now obtained key posts in EPLF ruling circles. The technical training of fighters and political cadres was further emphasized, which bore positively on the EPLF’s military capacity. Throughout the decade, Eritrean battle victories against Ethiopian forces expanded the territorial reach of EPLF forces.18 The EPLF took advantage of its administration of widening “liberation” zones to initiate social, economic, cultural, and educational programs in most of the countryside.19 Village by village, it provided medical and veterinary services, created literacy groups, established judicial bureaus, facilitated transportation for merchants, and set up peasant militias.20 Also at the village level, they established political units, eventually called people’s assemblies, which were based on already-existing local authority structures that varied from one ethnic group to another. Through these units the EPLF sought to ensure representation of poorer peasants and women. In carrying out such functions, the EPLF generated the initial working elements of what David Pool refers to as “stateness,” while at the same time helping to provide unifying cultural and political motifs for the Eritrean people.21 Ruth Iyob similarly argues that through this process, Eritrea assumed real meaning and coherence as a nation-in-formation.22 This process likely reflects elements of an important precolonial legacy. Although there was no distinct Eritrean polity in precolonial times, people who played central roles in the recent mobilization became active within areas of Eritrea that had in ancient times experienced direct linkage to larger empires. In particular, the core leaders who founded the EPLF and steered it into becoming Eritrea’s

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dominant political party, and who coordinated the construction of a multiethnic guerrilla army originated from urban areas that had previously been part of the Ottoman Empire.23 Many of the EPLF’s initial leaders hailed from the towns of Massawa and Harqiqo, which had functioned as the administrative linchpins of the southeastern edge of the Ottoman Empire from 1557 to the mid-nineteenth century.24 Local ruling Tigre families that served as na’ib, or administrators, for the Ottomans had remained influential after the Ottoman period, and some of the descendants of these families became key EPLF mobilizers and eventually EPLF central committee members. Christians (especially Tigrinya) from the Eritrean highlands, who were among the most vigorous participants in the guerrilla fighting forces and whose leaders eventually joined with the EPLF, came from areas that in the late nineteenth century had been incorporated into the expanding Ethiopian empire. This prior experience had left the highlanders with a sophisticated and well-organized set of administrative committees and councils and a culture of “state-connectedness.”25 Thus, both Muslim urbanites and Christian highlanders who emerged as significant political and military actors within the EPLF had in earlier times been familiarized with the institution-building processes associated with establishment of a pluralistic state. These precolonial experiences are likely to have instilled in the activists a political consciousness associated with the construction of interethnic coalitions and cooperation in the process of large-scale political mobilization. I do not mean to suggest that either the Tigre lowlanders within the Ottoman empire or the Christian highlanders within the Ethiopian empire were treated fairly or avoided exploitation by their respective overseers. Indeed, it is evident that it was precisely Ethiopian misrule and repression that, more than any other single factor, stimulated Eritrea’s rebellion. However, the experience of having been incorporated into diverse, pluralistic empires and of having been exposed to the institutional mechanisms associated with maintaining them appears to have made a significant impact on Eritrean activists and helped to inform their organizational improvements and alliance building. Eritrean forces were increasingly effective through the 1980s, and in 1991 they succeeded in ousting the Ethiopian army from Eritrean territory. Eritrea declared formal independence as a nationstate in 1993. The newly installed Eritrean government then took rapid steps to promote the further coherence of an inclusivistic panEritrean identity. It issued identity cards that recognized Eritreans who were living outside the country, then held a national vote in

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April 1993 that confirmed popular support for independence: 99.8 percent of the populace approved independence, reinforcing a sense of national belonging.26 Leaders chose the camel as Eritrea’s symbol, quickly creating shared imagery that had pan-Eritrean historical importance: the camel has been economically essential throughout the country, and it had served as a crucial transport vehicle for the EPLF in its guerrilla war.27 The implementation of a nationwide secular educational system further encouraged a sense of Eritrean coherence, as has the mandatory incorporation of all eighteen-year-old Eritreans into the national military service.28 Cultural and ethnic pluralism have been recognized by the promotion of local and regional languages. Textbooks have been produced in all the country’s major languages, another political strategy that is intended to generate greater affinity to the nation-state.29 Despite Eritrea’s success in moving toward the construction of an inclusivistic and coherent nation, its political system has increasingly appeared to lack transparency and opportunities for popular input. This sends worrisome signals.30 Political organizations that are not affiliated with the ruling regime have either been strongly pressured to avoid critiquing the new government or have been suppressed by security forces.31 Furthermore, diplomatic relations with Ethiopia deteriorated markedly through the course of the late 1990s, in large part because of border disputes, but also, according to some accounts, because Ethiopia’s new rulers appeared to be attempting to reabsorb Eritrea.32 Warfare between the two countries erupted in the late 1990s, and after significant battlefield losses by Eritrea, the conflict was resolved through a settlement that was favorable to Ethiopia in terms of border placement. The war strengthened the domestic unity of the Eritrean nation-state, but it depleted the Eritrean government’s fiscal resources. Eritrea had entered the 1990s with a wellspring of collective enthusiasm, but the mood had sobered considerably by the conclusion of the decade. From the perspective of this study, the Eritrean liberation movement’s most important accomplishment was the effective incorporation of the region’s nine principal ethnic groups into a common secessionist struggle, and then into a single polity upon separation from Ethiopia. Despite the state’s recent political problems, the 1990s witnessed intensified collaboration among the country’s multiple identity groups. Even among Eritreans who had migrated to Sudan for economic reasons, supportive social networks reflecting “trust” and “trans-ethnic norms” were forged among people hailing from differing locational and communal backgrounds.33

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Although Eritrean political unity is the product of anti-Ethiopian armed struggle over the course of the past several decades, the multiethnic political order that has proved to be of such utility and value may be traced back, at least in part, to the complex organizational structures of the Ottoman and ancient Ethiopian empires. This provides a historical subtext for appreciating the extraordinary success achieved by the Eritrean liberation movement, particularly its creation of a workable coalition that was able to sustain a secessionist struggle and establish a new, inclusivistic nation. Beyond these historical linkages, the remarkable organizational capacity of the EPLF and the overall quality of its leadership must also be accorded significant explanatory recognition.

Somaliland The recent detachment of Somaliland from Somalia may be regarded as another example of successful territorial secession that, like the case of Eritrea, reflects a combination of internal intergroup alliance building and improvements in organizational and leadership quality. Somalis are made up of a single ethnic group divided among six major “clans”—the Hawiye, Darod, Isaq, Dir, Digil, and Mirifle. Together these Somali clans form an ethnic group because they share a common history, language, and religion and because they follow the same customs. The clans are important because as an ethnic group the Somali are characterized by an unusually high degree of internal segmentation; indeed, each clan is further divided into subclans, sub-subclans, and separate lineages. Despite this segmentation, Somaliland’s secession in 1991 was characterized by a process of alliance building among clans, subgroups, and other ethnic groups in the north. This secession, like that of Eritrea, was initially fomented by colonial misrule, regional policy inequities, and postcolonial state breakdown that facilitated the movement’s expansion. In colonial times the Somali people were divided among British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland (where the major portion resided), French Somaliland (Djibouti), part of Ethiopia (Ogaden province), and part of Kenya (the Northern Frontier district).34 British decisionmaking about colonial development gave British Somaliland low priority, and the region received little economic investment. Upon the end of British colonial rule in 1960, what had been British Somaliland was forcibly joined with Italian-colonized Somalia in the south, against the wishes of the northern Somali people: the 1961 constitutional referendum on

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the formation of Somalia was overwhelmingly defeated in northern Somalia, although it passed in the south. In late 1961, several months after northern Somalia’s administrative incorporation into the nation of Somalia, northern military officers attempted a secessionist coup, which failed.35 Northerners subsequently suffered underrepresentation in the national Somali bureaucracy located in Mogadishu and received fewer than their share of top-level political positions. The one major exception was northern politician Mohamed Ibrahim Egal (or Igaal), who acceded to the post of prime minister in 1967. His leadership generated intensified redistributional demands from the north, which mostly went unsatisfied, adding to northerners’ sense of marginalization. Once Siad Barre assumed the presidency in 1969, he began a campaign of repression against northerners that appeared to be aimed at generating unity among the southern clans, but his regime’s discriminatory policies against some clans within the south would subvert this plan.36 The repression in the north stimulated the formation in 1981 of the Somali National Movement (SNM), a secessionist political party,

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and Barre reacted by unleashing a war of destruction against numerous northern Somali towns.37 The SNM, although staffed mostly by Isaq, incorporated a number of different clan and subclan groups as well as ideologically differing factions, thus building upon a long history of “marriages and alliances” among clans and subclan groupings in Somalia.38 The SNM was thereby able to mobilize fighters in Isaq villages throughout northern Somalia.39 The decade of the 1980s witnessed considerable organizational and political development on the part of the Somali National Movement. Between 1981 and 1991 the SNM held six congresses, during which leaders were elected and internal organizational reforms were undertaken that improved SNM’s interunit effectiveness. Five different SNM chairmen were elected during this period—Ahmed Jiumale, Yusuf Madar, Colonel Abdulkadr Korsar, Ahmed Mohamud “Silanyo,” and Abdurahman Tuur. The coordination achieved by the congresses enabled the SNM to intensify and expand its military operations.40 The SNM had now developed the capacity to mobilize large fighting units incorporating soldiers from all Isaq clans and subclans. After suffering initial defeats in battles with central government forces, the SNM regrouped, this time reorganizing into more dispersed fighting units.41 The result was a series of military victories against the Barre regime’s forces. The Somali national army reacted by unleashing a systematic assault on northern villages, but the SNM counterattacked, forcing government units into ever-shrinking redoubts in the north.42 By 1989–1991, the SNM had succeeded in forcing the army to remain barricaded within a handful of military bases and towns, and the SNM assumed control of virtually all northern Somali rural areas.43 Somali army losses in the north coincided with the military success of southern-based clan forces opposed to the Barre regime, leading to the collapse of Barre’s national government in 1991. This was followed by the proliferation of fighting in Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia. The SNM took advantage of this disorder to assert control over all of northern Somalia.44 Attacks on the SNM by a handful of factions, particularly the Hawiye-dominated USC (United Somali Congress), as well as forces that had been loyal to Siad Barre, convinced the SNM to move quickly toward political secession. The declaration of the establishment of a separate new nation—the Somaliland Republic—took place in May 1991, and Abdurahman Tuur was subsequently elected as Somaliland’s first president.45 The Isaq were the main mobilizers behind the creation of the new Somaliland Republic; 46 proindependence mass demonstrations had made clear the extent of popular Isaq support for secession.

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However, representatives of other clans in the north were also significant participants in the move toward Somaliland’s secession, and especially in the consolidation of independence. The SNM congress held in February 1991 in the town of Berbera included not only Isaq elders, but also elders from the three principal non-Isaq clans in the north— the Darod-Dulbahante, Dir-Gadabursi and Darod-Warsangeli.47 At the February 1991 SNM congress, Darod-Dulbahante, Dir-Gadabursi and Darod-Warsangeli elders actively participated in the discussions and proceedings. The determination of the SNM leadership to pursue an inclusivistic strategy was made especially clear at the following SNM congress, held in Burao in May 1991, where Somaliland’s independence was announced.48 By that point the central committee was made up of representatives of all eight Isaq subclans—the Toljaclo, Ayub, Arab, Habar Awal, Habar Yunis, Idagale, Muse, and Habar Jeclo (including Sanbul and Imran lineages)—as well as the DarodDulbahante, Dir-Gadabursi and Darod-Warsangeli clans mentioned above.49 The number of SNM central committee members was expanded to ninety-nine, with the majority of the seats going to clan elders, which meant that the original, mostly Isaq, political leaders of the SNM became a minority within the ruling organ. In effect, the SNM was no longer a political organization but had become “part of a popular rebellion led by clan elders” from throughout the northern Somali region.50 This leadership expansion and the more representative organizational structure had an immediate impact on the SNM’s political decisionmaking. The SNM’s core politicians on the central committee, including President Tuur, had initially preferred to opt for northern regional autonomy rather than full secession, and had pursued a tentative alliance with General Aideed, the leader of the main political faction in Mogadishu. However, the SNM fighters and their village supporters favored independence and “participated actively in the debate” regarding secession versus autonomy at the May 1991 congress. Moreover, the newly selected ministers of the Somaliland government had been chosen according to clan and subclan representation and felt closely linked to their respective elders.51 Those elders, like the Isaq youth demonstrators and the guerrilla commanders, strongly favored full independence, and this upsurge of secessionist sentiment ultimately produced the declaration of Somaliland’s independence. Nonetheless, some elements within the major non-Isaq clans, particularly the Darod-Dulbahante and Darod-Warsangeli, rejected the SNM’s independence declaration and formed anti-SNM military units, which engaged in fighting with SNM forces between December 1991

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and April 1992.52 This provoked the SNM to more explicitly and emphatically promote Somaliland as a multiclan, pluralistic republic, and most of the upstart breakaway units rejoined the new government. Despite all of this political progress toward interclan unity, the formation of a single, unified Somaliland Republic army—the practical coming together of armed units from all of the attendant clan factions—did not proceed smoothly. Part of the problem was ongoing complications with simultaneous demobilization plans, as the SNM government lacked funds to pay for a large standing army and some fighters bolted from the Somaliland national army-in-formation and created several factional militias. This, in turn, contributed to intraSNM conflicts. Furthermore, some Isaq disliked President Tuur and accused him of heavy-handed leadership, adding to the crisis-laden atmosphere.53 Somaliland government officials devoted the better part of 1992 to negotiating peace arrangements with the opposing factional forces. A final agreement was brokered in November 1992, with elders from non-Isaq clans, especially the Darod-Dulbahante and Dir-Gadabursi, playing nonpartisan mediating roles. 54 A major national reconciliation conference was then held. It began in February 1993 and lasted three full months, allowing for ample discussion of complaints. The site of the conference was the town of Borama—selected precisely because it is a non-Isaq town and therefore represents neutrality for Isaq subclans while also signifying the inclusion of non-Isaq.55 Following the conference’s conclusion in May 1993, a vote was held by the newly created 150-member parliament, in which Omar Arteh and former prime minister Mohamed Egal ran against sitting president Tuur for the position of president of Somaliland. Egal obtained ninety-nine votes, a majority, and resumed his role as leader of Somaliland.56 Throughout the remainder of the 1990s, the SNM worked hard to promote the incorporative character of the government.57 For this purpose, Somaliland officials appointed leaders from different clans and subclans to the cabinet and made civil service appointments in approximate proportion to each clan’s population size. The parliament consisted of a seventy-five-member elected house of representatives as well as a seventy-five-member house of elders (Guurti) largely composed of traditional clan and subclan leaders. The house of representatives was responsible for most legislation, but the house of elders held the power of review to ensure that bills passed by the house did not violate Islamic principles. The house of elders was also responsible for arbitrating disputes among Isaq subclans and non-Isaq clans.

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Distinctively, the 150 members of the two houses of parliament were subdivided in proportion to population estimates of clan and subclan members in Somaliland. Each major clan and subclan was accorded a certain number of seats on the basis of the population figures for each group—an innovative form of consociational democracy. The allocation of seats is shown in Table 6.1. Not every aspect of the implementation proceeded smoothly: the Habar Yunis demanded more than eight seats, and after 1993 they boycotted parliamentary sessions in protest. Somaliland remains predominantly Isaq, and at the grassroots level the Isaq people appear to be motivated by a popular perception of clan pride. A handful of northern politicians, including former president Abdurahman Tuur, decided to abandon the new Somaliland government altogether and ally with the Mogadishu-based Somali strongman General Aideed. President Egal’s first term, which was scheduled to end in May 1995, was extended by eighteen months to enable him to deal with these concerns.58 Despite its independence, Somaliland was not diplomatically recognized by any nation. In addition, the administrative component of the government was constructed on a nearly vacuous physical foundation: in 1993, large blocks of buildings in the capital, Hargeisa, remained in ruins from previous battles, and Somaliland government

Table 6.1 Allocation of Parliament Seats in Somaliland Name of Clan/Subclan Habar Awal Arab Habar Yunis Idagale Ayub Toljaclo Habar Jeclo Total Isaq Darod-Dulbahante Dir-Gadabursi Darod-Warsangeli Dir-Isse Total non-Isaq Total parliamentarians

Number of Seats 16 13 8 8 6 4 33 88 23 21 9 9 62 150

Source: Adapted from Hussein M. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects for Democratization,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 271.

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ministries “lacked all essentials, from furniture to pens and paper, electricity and telephones.” Newly demobilized SNM fighters lacked the training and skills to contribute to economic reconstruction.59 And Tuur-affiliated armed rebels launched incursions against the new Somaliland Republic in the late 1990s. All of this raised major questions regarding the long-term viability of Somaliland’s independent status. Significantly, however, the consociational institutions that characterized the new government suggested a firm basis for interclan nation building. Non-Isaq clans had been incorporated into the highest levels of state leadership; in 1997 the new vice president was appointed from the non-Isaq Dir-Gadabursi subclan.60 Other signs of increased stability also proved promising: by the late 1990s Somaliland was producing its own currency and passports, six private newspapers were operating, and a supreme court had been established.61 Trading access to the Indian Ocean, the return of entrepreneurs from exile, and a steady flow of remittances from abroad augmented the country’s economic potential.62 By the early 2000s, Somaliland had significantly improved its administrative capacity, having established a reasonably wellfunctioning bureaucracy and a new police department.63 In June 2001, a national independence referendum was held, and voters overwhelmingly approved the country’s independent status.64 Somaliland’s political institutions made a smooth transition in May 2002 when President Egal died from natural causes and was replaced by his former vice president, Dahir Riyale Kahin. 65 In December 2002, the ruling Udup Party won multiparty national elections, and five different opposition parties each received a respectable percentage of votes.66 Moreover, in October 2001 Somaliland reached an accord with neighboring Djibouti regarding the free movement of people and livestock, perhaps a first step toward wider recognition of Somaliland’s independent status.67 Overall, Somaliland’s multiclan inclusivism has demonstrated substantial political resilience. The government’s consociational institutions are functioning effectively, the state has consolidated military control throughout its claimed territorial area, and the country’s future appears reasonably promising.

Somalia: A Comparative Perspective This discussion of Somaliland’s success at secession begs at least cursory attention to the starkly contrasting experience of southern

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Somalia (simply “Somalia” in international legal terms). The panSomali movement that arose in the 1950s and 1960s reflected an effort by southern elites to oust foreigners from the south. Precisely because of its instrumentalist nature, the profound superficiality of pan-Somali nationalism would be readily exposed, and the movement degenerated into political and personal rivalries in the 1970s, civil war in the 1980s, and state collapse by the early 1990s.68 Ultimately the dissolution of Somalia as a nation-state reflected the underlying superficiality of its state building; an integrated nation had not been constructed.69 As the country dissolved in the wake of the Barre regime’s collapse, networks were exposed that suggested a reinforcement of internal clan ties.70 Competition over distribution of the state’s resources coincided with clan elites’ mobilization to secure political power. Daniel Compagnon has described how clan-based armed factions were guided by a narrowly focused “political entrepreneurship” that reflected intense competition among personally ambitious leaders and conflict over scarce resources. President Siad Barre explicitly sought to create violent schisms among erstwhile allies through manipulative schemes and the provision of weaponry to selected faction leaders. This militarization of competition ultimately produced Barre’s downfall, but it also consolidated the political power of a new generation of modern-thinking, personally ambitious politicians.71 This underlines the fact that contemporary interclan warfare in southern Somalia does not represent a continuity of ages-old group rivalries, but rather reflects the instrumentalist use of lineage structures by upwardly mobile elites in pursuit of political power and material resources. The contrast with what occurred in Somaliland could not be more stark. In both cases clan and subclan factions mobilized to confront an abusive centralist authority, but the quality of leadership in Somaliland, the determination of the original Isaq separatists to broaden their movement beyond a narrow clan framework, and the commitment to inclusivity and to exit from the increasingly anarchic state of Somalia all played crucial roles in Somaliland’s secessionist success. In contrast, the proliferation of armed factional leaders in Somalia and their disinterest in looking past their own sectional and material interests in a context of comprehensive central-state collapse led to a wholly different outcome. This Somaliland-Somalia contrast is particularly interesting because it suggests that even within the same ethnic group, diverging regional cultures, colonial histories, leadership structures, and elite interests can produce starkly different political outcomes.

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Conclusion To a large extent, the successful secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia and the establishment of the separatist Somaliland Republic represent examples of what Viva Ona Bartkus refers to as “opportune moments” in which central-government collapse makes possible the achievement or near-achievement of secessionist goals.72 However, a full understanding of the cases of Eritrea and Somaliland also requires careful attention to the historically complex evolution of territorially based assertion, state-regional dynamics, rebel leadership capacity, and interethnic and interclan alliances. The Eritrean secessionist movement was characterized by the multiethnic incorporation of nine different groups forged in the struggle against Ethiopian overrule, despite substantial internal fragmentation along religious and linguistic lines through the initial decades of the struggle. Rebel leaders undertook a major cultural effort to emphasize pan-Eritrean identity with particular aggressiveness. This was translated first into battlefield successes against the Ethiopian army, and later into inclusivistic social programs. The process continued after independence in the shape of political reforms and nationwide policies. The recent war with Ethiopia helped to ensure progress toward nation-state consolidation. Despite the emergence of what appears to be a centralized and increasingly strong-handed political leadership, it should be recognized that Eritrea enjoyed extraordinary success in building a secessionist territorial rebellion into an independent nation-state. The precolonial cultural experience of the lowland cities that had been part of the diverse Ottoman empire may have indirectly had a lingering impact on the transmission of cultural pluralism and interethnic linkages as constructive pegs on which to build a stable political order. At the same time, the overall quality of the Eritrean leadership, including its ability to establish an organizationally effective panethnic leadership structure and to look past narrow, immediate goals and toward a more broadly based shared national destiny, should be accorded considerable analytic emphasis. Similarly, in the case of the Somaliland Republic, despite early factional struggles the predominantly Isaq leadership that created the Somali National Movement was determined to achieve territorial secession in a manner that included other clans and ethnic groups. Like the MFDC in Casamance, the SNM of Somaliland made an effort at pluralistic inclusion that only partially mitigated the initial appearance of uni-group predominance. For the Isaq of Somaliland,

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as for the Diola of Casamance, mobilization at the grassroots level involved identity-based ascriptive aspects. However, in both cases movement leaders were able to combine this with a strong effort to include members from other groups in the claimed territory. The on-the-ground reality of interethnic state building in Eritrea and Somaliland clearly and distinctively reflects especially highquality leadership, internal organizational improvement, and the effective political coordination of diverse movement participants.

Notes 1. Ruth Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868–1992 (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993). 2. Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 88–90, 94, 101; Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 49–65. 3. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 76–77. 4. Okbazghi Yohannes, Eritrea, a Pawn in World Politics (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991), 3, 6–8; Benyamin Neuberger, National SelfDetermination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 27. 5. Yohannes, Eritrea, 6–8; Alemseged Abbay, Identity Jilted, or ReImagining Identity? The Divergent Paths of the Eritrean and Tigrayan Nationalist Struggles (Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1998), 13, 23; “Ethnologue Report for Eritrea,” available at http://www.ethnologue.com. For analysis of linguistic and economic differences among these groups, see David Pool, From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 7–11, and David Pool, “The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 21. The Eritrean Tigrinyans share historical, linguistic, and cultural linkages with the Tigrayans of Ethiopia’s Tigray province. However, Tigrinyans developed separately within Eritrea and may be distinguished from Ethiopia’s Tigrayans. These Tigrayans are discussed more fully in Chapter 9. The Tigre of Eritrea are a separate ethnic group that is distinct from the Eritrean Tigrinyans and from the Ethiopian Tigrayans. 6. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 31–33. 7. Ibid., 34. Muslim lowlanders tended to be culturally and economically oriented toward the Arabian peninsula. 8. Ruth Iyob, “From Defiance to Democracy? Emergent Eritrea,” in African Democracy in the Era of Globalisation, ed. Jonathan Hyslop (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1999); Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 22–24.

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9. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 36; Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 103–104. 10. Iyob, “From Defiance to Democracy?” 255; Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 46–47; Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front”; and Abbay, Identity Jilted, 28–32. 11. Iyob, “From Defiance to Democracy?” 266–267, and Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 101, 103. 12. Abbay, Identity Jilted, 28. 13. Iyob, “From Defiance to Democracy?” 268, 272, 278; Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 24–25. 14. Crawford Young, “Comparative Claims to Political Sovereignty: Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 215. 15. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 51, 55; Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 23. 16. Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 131. 17. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 60–61, 150–152; Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, Chapters 8 and 9, especially pp. 130–131, 135. 18. Pool, From Guerillas to Government, 87; Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, 27–28; Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 131–132. 19. Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 130–131, 135. 20. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 30–31; 119–120; Abbay, Identity Jilted, 116. 21. Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 30–31. 22. Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 130–131, 135; Iyob, “From Defiance to Democracy?” 286. 23. Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 34. 24. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 27; Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 34. 25. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 28. 26. Ruth Iyob, “The Ethiopian-Eritrean Conflict: Diasporic vs. Hegemonic States in the Horn of Africa, 1991–2000,” Journal of Modern African Studies 38, no. 4 (2000); Iyob, Eritrean Struggle, 140. 27. Abbay, Identity Jilted, 228. 28. Ruth Iyob, “The Eritrean Experiment: A Cautious Pragmatism?” Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 4 (1997), 652, 656. 29. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, 185–87, and Pool, “Eritrean People’s Liberation Front,” 35. 30. Martin Plaut, “Political Turmoil in Ethiopia and Eritrea,” BBC World News, 5 June 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/ 1371175.stm. 31. James C. N. Paul, “Ethnicity and the New Constitutional Orders of Ethiopia and Eritrea,” in Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States, ed. Yash Ghai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 191. 32. See especially Iyob, “Ethiopian-Eritrean Conflict.”

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33. Gaim Kibreab, “Resistance, Displacement, and Identity: The Case of Eritrean Refugees in Sudan,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 2 (2000), 266, 281. 34. Hussein M. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects for Democratization,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 261; Peter J. Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession: The Death of Pan-Somali Nationalism,” in After Independence: Nationalism in Post-Colonial and Post-Communism States, ed. Lowell W. Barrington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). 35. Hussein M. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty Being Born?” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 74. 36. Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession”; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 74. Schraeder spells the prime minister’s name Mahammed Ibrahim Igaal; Adam spells it Mohammed Ibrahim Egal. 37. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 74. 38. Daniel Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements: The Interplay of Political Entrepreneurship and Clan-Based Factions,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 76. 39. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 76. 40. Ibid., and Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession.” 41. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 77. 42. Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession.” 43. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 76. 44. Raymond W. Copson, Africa’s Wars and Prospects for Peace (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 52–53. 45. Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession”; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 79. 46. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 82. 47. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 82; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 82. 48. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 82. 49. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 269. 50. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 77. 51. Ibid., 82. 52. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 269; Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 82; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 82. 53. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 82. 54. Ibid., 82–83. 55. Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 82. 56. Ibid.; Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 271.”Resumed” in that Egal had been northern Somalia’s first elected prime minister in 1960. 57. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 269, 270; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 79. 58. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 271, 276. 59. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 79, 80.

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60. Ibid., 76. 61. Adam, “Somalia: Problems and Prospects,” 272, 276; Adam, “Somalia: A Terrible Beauty,” 80. 62. Karen DeYoung, “Signs of Hope in Africa,” Washington Post National Weekly, 20–27 December 1999. 63. Roger Hearing, “Somaliland ‘Here to Stay,’” BBC World News, 5 February 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1154169.stm. 64. “Somaliland: No Way Back,” BBC World News, 4 June 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1367554.stm. 65. “Somaliland: Muhammed Ibrahim Egal,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 5 (2002), 14864. 66. “Somaliland Civic Elections,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 12 (2002), 15117. 67. Ali Nur, “Somaliland and Djibouti make up,” BBC World News, 22 October 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1613321.stm. 68. Schraeder, “From Irredentism to Secession.” 69. Anna Simons, Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995); David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987). 70. Simons, Networks of Dissolution, 198, 203. 71. Compagnon, “Somali Armed Movements,” 76, 83–86. 72. Viva Ona Bartkus, The Dynamic of Secession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 145.

7 Rebelling Alone

T

he subnationalist movements discussed thus far may be distinguished by the cultural-mosaic social contexts in which they evolved, by a lengthy tradition of interethnic resistance, or by the achievement of secession on the part of ethnically pluralistic movements. In contrast, the movements treated in this and the following two chapters reflect macro-level uni-ethnic corporatism emerging out of a history of colonially constructed uni-ethnic regional compartmentalization. The territories of the movements discussed in these chapters largely correspond with the land area dominated by people of a single ethnic identity. In the present chapter I focus on the organization of political movements that sought to take advantage of this context by rebelling alone, without relying on interethnic coalition building, but that succeeded at incorporating a wide span of intragroup participants who fundamentally shared their leaders’ subnationalist goals. I focus here on two large-scale regional groups, the Oromo of Ethiopia and the Igbo of Nigeria, and one smaller group, the Ogoni of Nigeria. For the Oromo and the Igbo, a combination of particularistic colonial-policy inheritances, local social institutions, and the ability to call upon impressive precolonial achievements provided important contextual factors in the development of the movements. In each case, the mobilization and common struggle of a broad range of individual actors, local communities, kinship structures, social classes, and lineages helped to ensure the movement’s expansion. For the most part, these movements also displayed a high quality of leadership, organizational capacity, strength of purpose, and political 153

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persistence. However, the Ogoni movement, while persistent, has been harmed in recent years by comparatively serious internal divisions. These uni-ethnic autonomy movements’ ability to persist and, in some cases, to carve out a measure of greater autonomy, can be attributed in part to the role of internal alliance construction. However, even in geographically large uni-ethnic regions and despite extensive internal alliances rebelling alone is unlikely to meet with success over the long term. The Ogoni and Biafran movements’ failure to adequately develop linkages with potentially supportive minority ethnic groups within their respective regions proved deleterious, in the end, to their autonomy-widening movements. The Oromo have been less needful of crafting interethnic alliances within Oromia, considering their numerical predominance, but do face broader political challenges.

Oromo and Oromia The precolonial polity of Oromia dates back to at least the fifteenth century, when Oromian confederations were established that would subsequently play important military and political roles in the Horn of Africa. Internally, Oromo society came to be distinguished by the gada system of political and social organization, marked by age-sets, participatory assemblies, advisory councils, and coordination of military actions through district officials and messengers. This system enabled the absorption of members of other ethnic groups into Oromo society, and it has been extended into contemporary times, when some Oromo men acquire non-Oromo wives by paying brideswealth.1 The gada system defined Oromo society from the fifteenth century (if not earlier) until the late nineteenth century—a five-century span during which the Oromo not only were self-ruling but also wielded one of the strongest armies in the Horn of Africa, exerting a dominating hold over significant portions of what are today Ethiopia and Kenya.2 The gada system helped to ensure the internal allegiance of the affiliated communities in part by employing a complex system of political checks and balances, including regularized succession and representation of component communities in ruling councils.3 Each gada was governed by an autonomous political unit known as a luba, which was principally responsible for conflict resolution, but also helped to ensure inter-gada coordination and cooperation.4 Such cooperation in turn provided the Oromo with the organizational

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capacity to mount effective military defenses against attacks from expansionist Islamic polities pressing in on the Horn of Africa.5 In a recent study of the Oromo precolonial political system, Asmarom Legasse makes clear that the Oromo people were also divided into two broad social, but not territorial, halves, or moieties, each of which established an assembly that cut across the gada agegroup units. In ancient times the principal moieties were the Borana and Barettuma. A two-part institution known as Quallu incorporated the top representatives of each of the two moieties and oversaw cooperation between the moieties, especially at times of war.6 Extensive regional and international trade links developed by Oromia over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries stimulated a gradual increase in internal economic differentiation and a decrease in egalitarianism.7 The Oromia confederation continued to be principally distinguished by its moiety and gada social and political structures until the 1860s–1890s, when Oromia was invaded and, for the first time, conquered by Ethiopian armies. Ethiopian control over Oromia was consolidated by 1900, after which time Oromia’s new rulers systematically dismantled the gada system and imposed a harsh and violent system of overrule. As much as one-fourth of Oromia’s land was confiscated,

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and thousands of Ethiopian settlers were allowed to assume control over much of this land. Oromo were forced to hand over their agricultural produce for little or nothing in return.8 Emperor Haile Selassie (1930–1974) continued these repressive policies, banned the use of the Oromo language in schools and in public, and instituted a policy of cultural Amharization in Oromia and other southern regions of Ethiopia.9 These policies generated resistance movements in Oromia, as they did in Eritrea and other regions. By the 1960s and 1970s, clandestine Oromo organizations were able to take advantage of the internal turmoil in Ethiopia caused by the increasing military success of the Eritrean liberation movement and by the rise of a domestic Ethiopian opposition. Ethiopian domination had persuaded some Oromo political and military elites to cooperate with the Selassie regime, but by the time a subnationalist movement had begun to develop, Amharic discrimination had provoked many of them to abandon Addis Ababa.10 Once Oromo political activists began pursuing their struggle in earnest by creating the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), these elites joined ordinary Oromo peasants, workers, merchants, students, and youth, who lent their support in rapidly increasing numbers. Between 1966 and 1974, as many as 2 million Oromo registered as members of the Oromo Liberation Front.11 The Ethiopian government responded with repression, which provoked yet higher levels of popular Oromo support for the liberation struggle, and Oromo territorial and cultural assertion intensified. As the OLF expanded, it declared its intention to achieve independence for Oromia and to reestablish the former gada system.12 Ethiopian rule had interrupted Oromo political mobilization for nearly a century, and it took painstaking organizational work on the part of the OLF to channel popular discontent into a cultural-territorial movement. In some of the peripheral areas of Oromia, where populations had become more dispersed, colonialism had ensured that the moieties would cease to function by the early 1900s. However, the structure and functioning of many moiety institutions endured in the central areas of Oromia through to the contemporary period. Kinship and lineage structures that had formed the core units of the ancient moieties were passed down through the centuries, and the continuing moiety influence passed from central to peripheral areas via ritual pilgrimages. This made it possible to reconstruct moiety institutions in those peripheral areas during the mid-to-late twentieth century, and these reconstituted moieties would prove crucial to the organization and coordination of the Oromo Liberation Front.13

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Oromo from a broad variety of occupational backgrounds attended political meetings, and drama, politically charged poetry, and traditional oratory furthered the sense of pan-Oromo integration.14 Asafa Jalata terms the expansion of Oromo music, poetry, oral traditions, and teachings an “Oromo cultural renaissance.”15 The Latinization of the Oromo alphabet in the 1970s and the publication of Oromolanguage books in the 1980s helped to provide a literary focus.16 Coinciding with this cultural revival were an internal military reorganization of the OLF and a proliferation of OLF fighting fronts within Ethiopia. In the 1980s, the OLF succeeded in wresting control over several small “liberated areas,” and there the OLF held local elections and established new health care and educational facilities.17 The conquest of the Ethiopian state by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991 and the formation of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) produced little change in Ethiopia-Oromia relations.18 The OLF tentatively joined with the EPRDF on the assumption that it would make good on the promise of regional autonomy, but to the OLF’s disappointment, the Tigray-dominated EPRDF decided to postpone planned regional elections in 1992 precisely because it was clear that the OLF would prove victorious. The OLF subsequently withdrew from the EPRDF-led ruling coalition and called for Oromia’s independence. The EPRDF responded by making clear its commitment to maintaining full control over Oromia.19 Elections were held in Oromia and in most Ethiopian regions at the end of 1992, but with only pro-EPRDF candidates on the ballots and with the largest and most popular party—the OLF—sidelined, the exercise was largely perfunctory.20 For many Oromo, this signaled the continuity of “AmharaTigray ruling class” domination and colonialism. Battles between OLF forces and the Ethiopian army were fought throughout the 1990s.21 The OLF and other, smaller, less well supported Oromo nationalist organizations were seeking full secession from Ethiopia, although some analysts believe that the OLF would have been willing to consider remaining within Ethiopia if Oromia had been granted meaningful autonomy.22 Although some Oromo did choose alliance with the EPRDF, the OLF tripled in size from the late 1980s to the early 1990s; with a total of about twenty-four thousand men under arms, it was soon able to expand its struggle against the Ethiopian central state.23 This struggle was marked to a large extent by ascriptive uniethnic subnationalism generated in part by the need to achieve group

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security and in part by a desire for cultural and territorial reassertion. Jalata has wishfully described Oromia as “the largest ethnonation in the Horn of Africa.” Although the region has not become independent, the term ethnonation does capture the degree of ascriptive intensity within the struggle.24 The OLF secession effort bears some similarity to the Eritrean case. Both movements developed as a direct consequence of, and in reaction to, the brutality of Ethiopian imperialism.25 However, whereas Eritrea is of recent political origin and developed a profoundly multiethnic nationalist movement, Oromian subnationalism harks back to a powerful set of Oromian polities many centuries ago. In this case, instrumentalist machinations are less relevant than a combination of shared-group revivalism with a continuity of exploitation on the part of the Ethiopian state under a series of centralist regimes. The organizational and military capabilities of the OLF appear to have improved through the 1990s and early 2000s, but it remains to be seen whether they are sufficient to enable the movement to hold a significant portion of territory, much less to enable all of Oromia to break free from Ethiopian control and establish a secessionist nation. The Oromo movement was given a political boost by the August 2001 defection of the speaker of Ethiopia’s upper house of parliament, Almaz Meko, an Oromo who accused the EPRDF of exploiting Oromia.26 The extent to which this political capital will be translated into wider OLF military success will be determined over the course of the next several years.

Biafra and Igbo Subnationalism The roots of assertion in the eastern region of Nigeria lay principally in the manner in which ethnically defined regions were created and enforced by British colonial administrators. The Biafran rebellion includes ascriptive and precolonial elements that compare favorably with the Oromian case, but in Nigeria it was more dramatically clear that the primary historical factor in the generation of subnationalism was the impact of colonial policies that explicitly encouraged political and economic competition among administratively segregated ethnoregions: the southeast (Igbo), southwest (Yoruba) and north (Hausa-Fulani).27 In the southwest and the north, the British governed through the administrative system of “indirect rule,” which enabled central state colonial staff to rely heavily on existing traditional hierarchies:

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Yoruba authority systems in the southwest and Hausa-Fulani Islamic polities in the north. Although some educated Yoruba did advance to lower and middle levels of the colonial bureaucracy in Lagos, the Igbo people in the southeast, who lacked a unified ruling elite and whose culture actively encouraged adaptability and change, proved especially receptive to Western educational, religious, and social influence.28 As a consequence, a large cadre of Igbo rose rapidly through the administrative system introduced by the British and established considerable influence within the state bureaucracy, the colonial armed forces, and nationwide petty trade networks. Their relatively privileged position was further enhanced when the British granted “internal self-government” to the eastern region in 1956, apparently meaning that the Igbo would enjoy relative regional autonomy.29 The perception of potential Igbo ascendancy generated a threat of northern rebellion as early as 1950, when Islamic emirs considered seeking secession if the north did not obtain half the seats in the newly established African parliament. This northern secession threat resurfaced in 1953 during disputes with southerners, Igbo and Yoruba, over the timing of independence, and again in 1960 when northern chiefs were concerned over the potential consolidation of Igbo domination of the federal government.30 Yoruba in the southwest reacted by counterthreatening to secede first. This occurred several times during the 1950s and early 1960s.31 During those decades most people had, and most political party leaders expressed, a relative commitment to the Nigerian national idea. Nonetheless, mobilizations by ethnoterritorial activists signaled that the interest in Nigerian nation building was not universally shared, and that regional departure remained a tempting political option in the minds of some. The achievement of independence in 1960 coincided with northerners’ winning of control of parliament and of the central state administration through the ballot box, which altered the ethnoregional relations of power significantly. As the first years of the independence period unfolded, some Igbo increasingly came to feel that northern politicians, elected officials, and administrators were slowly but surely diminishing Igbo access to administrative power and economic resources.32 Some Igbo civil servants in the early 1960s came to feel that Nigerianization was characterized more by northernization than by a regionally balanced Africanization of the bureaucracy.33 Repeated recalculations of the national census demonstrated massive population gains for Hausa-Fulani northerners, which provoked Igbo

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suspicion that northerners were tampering with the census to ensure increases in their parliamentary representation and therefore a lock on national political power. In this general context of rising ethnoregional tension, the armed forces began to display signs of internal fragmentation. Igbo officers observed with dismay the government’s pro-northern bias, accompanied by evidence of corruption and inefficiency. These factors conjoined in January 1966 to lead to a coup d’état by Igbo officers. During the coup a number of Hausa-Fulani northerners and several Yoruba were killed, including the country’s prime minister, the Northern Region premier, and the Yoruba Western Region premier; Igbo political leaders, such as the Eastern Region premier, were spared.34 Because twenty-five of the thirty military officers who participated in the coup were Igbo and a number of Hausa-Fulani political leaders were killed, most Nigerians were convinced that the coup was ethnically inspired even though the coup leaders publicly asserted the need to restore Nigerian unity and abolish corruption.35 Resentment among Hausa-Fulani, and to a lesser extent among Yoruba, deepened in May 1966 when the Igbo major general who assumed the presidency, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, announced his intention to abolish

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Nigeria’s states and to replace the federal system with a unitary national government.36 To many, this implied a consolidation of Igbo dominance over political life. Rank-and-file soldiers, many of whom were Hausa-Fulani or Tiv, an ethnic minority, were discontented over the ethnic fallout from the January coup, which included large-scale promotions of Igbo officers and the consolidation of Igbo predominance over the officer corps.37 These factors combined to provoke non-Igbo officers to respond by mobilizing for a countercoup, which was carried out a mere six months later. In the July 1966 countercoup President Ironsi was killed, along with 210 Igbo soldiers and officers.38 Some HausaFulani officers then decided to lead the north in secession from Nigeria, apparently perceiving the bureaucracy and the central components of the national economy to be hopelessly dominated by Igbo. Intensive deliberations by Hausa-Fulani officers, political leaders, and traditional authorities ensued in late 1966 over the question of northern secession. With the Hausa-Fulani segment of the military in control of the reins of national political power, the secessionist option lay at their doorstep.39 However, they were talked out of the option by northern civilians and emirs who feared that a civil war would ensue, and who may also have reasoned that it would be preferable to manage the vast resources of the existing Nigerian nation-state than to go it alone as a smaller ethnonation. In late 1966 and early 1967, the 2 million Igbo living in the Northern Region suffered a wave of violence unleashed by HausaFulani citizens angered at what they perceived to be an illegitimate Igbo effort in the first 1966 coup to gain control of the country. As many as fifty thousand Igbo were killed in the north during this period of reprisal.40 The extent of the anti-Igbo violence in the north, the fact that so many Igbo had returned to the Eastern Region, and the fact that the nation’s administrative institutions were now in the hands of northerners who appeared to be aggressively excluding Igbo convinced many local political and military leaders that the Eastern Region should secede from Nigeria.41 Subnationalist assertion now appeared necessary as an ethnicsecurity precaution. As anti-Igbo violence pervaded much of the country and Igbo were purged from the military and civil service, Igbo leaders suggested that departure from the Nigerian nation-state was a matter of collective survival.42 Furthermore, secession appeared feasible because the federal government no longer had any military influence in the Eastern Region and because oil production in the delta zone, which is within the Eastern Region, had just been initiated.

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Although the oil was located in ethnic minority areas, secession would allow the eastern rebels to attain control over the natural resource, which would provide a strong fiscal basis on which to construct a new nation.43 The principal actor in the secessionist movement was Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemaka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military commander of the Eastern Region, whose continued administration of the region enabled him to consolidate his control over the eastern military barracks. In the months following the July 1966 coup, he sought to negotiate with Nigeria’s new leaders, including President Yakubu Gowon, but Ojukwu refused to accept oversight by the Nigerian central government. Instead, he established an independent military headquarters in Enugu and began to order arms from abroad. In May 1967 he announced that the Eastern Region had become the new Republic of Biafra.44 The combination of a large, highly populous region with a unitary ethnic group and Ojukwu’s tightening of military control increased the possibility of sustaining the secession.45 Ojukwu had achieved enormous popularity in the Eastern Region as a consequence of his assertiveness vis-à-vis the central government, and on that basis he constructed Biafran government institutions that were broadly representative of the Igbo community and its political leaders.46 Once the Biafran uni-ethnic subnationalist struggle was fully engaged, intensive celebration of Igbo identity and culture through literature, theatre, poetry, and community gatherings provided particular emotive impetus to this moment of ascriptivist assertion.47 Here Igbo and Oromo subnationalism may be profitably compared: in both instances uni-ethnic mobilization within a geographically expansive region was characterized by an especially prolific outpouring of ethnically specific forms of poetry, song, oral history, and social discourse in ways that strongly reinforced the strength of purpose and cultural unity of the secessionists. Igbo culture and history provided a context favorable to interIgbo mobilization. According to historians, Igbo intercommunity linkages had been facilitated by Igbo social institutions: age-grade organizations, secret societies, a common language, a sophisticated and complex spirituality, and a strong political tradition of “individualism buttressed in a communal imunna,” or polity, with power checked by a plurality of decisionmaking bodies.48 Individualism was precolonially reflected by a commitment to the autonomy of relatively small-scale town-states or city-states. Precolonial Igbo culture also was characterized by a strong commitment to negotiation and

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bargaining, which helps to explain why relations among different Igbo communities were characterized by the establishment of specific rules regulating exchanges and by reliance on intermarriage to help ensure constructive ties.49 This negotiation principle was applied to relations with other ethnic groups as well. One historian describes the Igbos’ “astonishing talent for inter-group relations,” which allowed the establishment of constructive political relationships with neighboring peoples, including the Ohafia, the Edda, and the Abam. In fact, the Igbo and the Ibibio eventually combined to create the powerful polity known as Arochukwu. Igbo success in trade was due in part to economic deals with agriculturally productive groups such as the Ututo and Ihe and to participation in interethnic trade fairs held in Bende, Oguta, Uzuakoi, and Eke Agbaja.50 Igbo exerted significant political and cultural influence on the centralized monarchy of Benin without a loss of Igbo political autonomy and without diminishing Igbo emphases on individual achievement, heroism, and the importance of collective memory.51 This raises the question of the extent to which Igbo adroitness in constructing workable compacts with neighboring groups would translate into intergroup linkages that would strengthen Biafran subnationalism. In response to the May 1967 declaration of Biafran independence, the Nigerian government marshaled its military forces and struck first, in August 1967, just as Biafra was signing deals with international oil companies allowing them access to southeastern oilfields.52 The ensuing Biafran-Nigerian fighting lasted three years, and approximately 2 million people were killed.53 (The details of this war have been well-described elsewhere.54) After initial battlefield success, and despite receiving significant international support, the Biafrans were defeated; the Nigerians’ firepower and numerical superiority had proved overwhelming. Ojukwu left the country in January 1970, and the remaining Biafran commanders then surrendered.55 A central weakness of this secessionist struggle was the lack of support from the smaller, non-Igbo ethnic groups within Biafra that make up one-third of the region’s population: the Ibibio, Efik, Ijaw, and Ogoni, and others.56 Ojukwu and other Biafran leaders repeatedly emphasized the unity of all the peoples of Biafra, and these minority groups appeared either neutral or sympathetic to the Biafran cause in the opening months of the struggle, but as the war continued, a variety of Biafran militants began to openly and explicitly characterize the struggle as an Igbo uni-ethnic movement and not a

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panterritorial Eastern Region movement.57 Ethnic minorities grew increasingly fearful of living under Igbo dominance without recourse to a central state intermediary, and the Biafran government did not reach out to the ethnic minorities.58 The political choice made by some of the southeastern ethnic minorities proved especially significant because of their proximity to key resources; the Ogoni, for example, resided in parts of the coastal oil fields. As the war progressed and tensions between the Ogoni and Biafra rose, the Biafran government used military force to ensure Biafran access to the oil fields.59 This proved an immense strategic error because it sealed the ethnic minorities’ decision to back the Nigerian central state. As the Biafran-Nigerian war continued, federal army forces first targeted the ethnic minority areas within Biafra for penetration because they assumed that little or no resistance would be forthcoming; they were correct in this assumption, and it is likely that some members of those minorities joined with and assisted the federal Nigerian troops.60 Also contributing to Biafra’s strategic difficulties were its failure to marshal allied support from minorities elsewhere in Nigeria and to secure an adequate degree of assistance from Yoruba politicians in the large Western Region, although modest efforts to that effect took place during initial phases of the conflict.61 After some months of political ambiguity and repeated declarations of neutrality, the leaders of the Yoruba-dominated Western Region and of the ethnically diverse Midwest Region decided to ally with the federal government. This decision proved especially crucial.62 Although this profederalist stance was not shared by some Midwest Igbo army men, who were allied with Biafra, most ordinary Igbo in the Midwest Region chose to align with other ethnic minorities in that state. To a large extent, this reflected the Midwest Igbos’ long history of linkages to non-Igbo, harking back to their close affiliation with the precolonial kingdom of Benin.63 In 1967–1968 it negated the Biafrans’ politically expansive effort to establish a broader alliance with the Igbo of the Midwest. In July 1967, Midwest Igbo military officers seized control of that region in coordination with a Biafran invasion. This dual action placed the Biafran column in a position to pursue a direct route first to Ibadan, then potentially to Lagos, the Nigerian capital. However, because of the ambivalence of other Igbo in the Midwest Region and the lack of support for the Biafran cause on the part of various ethnic minorities, the Biafran commanders had to try to secure firmer control over the region before proceeding to Ibadan. This proved a tactical

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error because it produced a one-week delay that gave the Nigerian federal troops time to regroup in preparation to mount a successful defense of Ibadan. After this turning point in the war, Biafran forces would be pushed back ever more deeply into their own territory.64 The numerical significance of the 245 ethnic minorities of Nigeria makes clear their strategic importance: they make up more than one-third (34 percent) of the nation’s total citizenry; by contrast, the Hausa-Fulani make up 29 percent, the Yoruba 20 percent, and the (Biafran) Igbo, 16 percent.65 Ethnic minorities’ adherence to the federalist cause ensured that nearly two-thirds of the nation’s people would be devoted to the national government. Still, it was by no means assured that the Yoruba leaders of the Western Region and the minority ethnic leaders in the middle portions of the country would end up supporting the Nigerian state. Several months before the Biafran secession began, Chief Awolowo referred to northern troops in the west as “an army of occupation” and insisted that they withdraw.66 During that period immediately following the July 1966 coup, Awolowo; other Western Region political officials, including the region’s military governor; and the military governor of the southwest all considered breaking away from the Nigerian nationstate should the Eastern Region secede.67 However, President Gowon decided late in 1967 to reconfigure the nation into twelve states—six in the south (three each, east and west) and six in the north.68 With this decree, political leaders of the Yoruba believed that they would now have greater opportunity to carve out political power at the state level and that they would thus have a more meaningful stake in the Nigerian nation.69 Gowon also created a new federal executive council to serve as his highest-level advisory body, and he appointed western and midwestern leaders to serve alongside northerners. In doing so, the Gowon regime was able to co-opt the political leadership of the smaller states and the ethnic minorities, as well as many Yoruba political elites.70 In hindsight, it is evident that Biafra’s May 1967 announcement of secession set in motion a tug-of-war between Ojukwu and Gowon for the support of the country’s political middle—the ethnic minorities and the Yoruba. Gowon proved more politically adept at ensuring the loyalty of this political middle, and the Biafran leadership did not reach out sufficiently to the minorities in Biafra itself. These factors came to a head in January 1970, when the federal armed forces succeeded in reducing the area controlled by Biafran troops to a mere five thousand square miles, at which point the Biafrans had no choice but to surrender.71

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In retrospect, it is clear that the Biafran secession was characterized for three years by highly capable political organizations and strong and effective military leadership. At the same time, the movement represented an assertion of Igbo security interests, ascriptive self-reliance, and corporate celebration of identity. It can be argued that despite partial westernization and changes wrought by Igbo participation in British colonial institutions, Igbo precolonial political culture provided a contextual framework that proved helpful to the construction of supportive networks within Biafra during the secession. At the same time, it appeared that while this intra-Igbo culture remained strongly embedded in the body politic of the Eastern Region, the tendency toward external alliance building, so adeptly deployed in early precolonial times, had not survived the colonial implantation of zero-sum competitiveness. From a strategic perspective, in a region that is dominated by a uni-ethnic majority but is not exclusively uni-ethnic, this apparent historical break in the process of cultural transmission was one factor in the eventual defeat of the Igbo rebels. Biafra’s failure to sufficiently pursue the generation of interethnic ties, most notably within the Eastern Region, weakened the new nation militarily and politically, perhaps fatally. Ultimately, Biafra’s secession ought to be understood in terms of a combination of processes that include colonial state–crafted ethnoregional separatism, high-quality subnationalist organizational development and leadership, intraethnic coordination among Igbo communities, and potential access to petrodollars. At the same time, inadequate attention to alliance construction proved important to the secession’s outcome.

Ogoni The evolution of politics in the eastern delta and midwestern states of Nigeria since the mid-1960s has made the political importance of Nigeria’s ethnic minorities especially clear.72 In Taraba, Benue, Delta, Ondo, and other states, the politics of oil exploitation, environmental destruction, and the use of violence by federal authorities against ethnic minorities have provoked an intensification of subnationalist mobilization.73 Active movements include the Southern Minorities Movement, representing twenty-eight ethnic minorities in the delta states; the Movement for the Survival of Izon/Ijaw Ethnic

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Nationality; and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. 74 Here I focus on the Ogoni movement because it is suggestive of the importance of minority subnationalist mobilization in areas populated by a single small ethnic group. Although they had demonstrated their allegiance to the federal government during the Biafran revolt, the approximately half-million Ogoni people have periodically suffered violent repression by the central government from the 1970s through the present time. The root of the problem is the fact that the Niger delta area of Rivers state, the historical home of the Ogoni people, possesses massive quantities of oil—nearly half of Nigeria’s total supply.75 The Nigerian state has aggressively pursued the exploitation of these lucrative reserves; as a result, Shell Oil drilling rigs now occupy large sections of the Niger delta. Spills from these rigs—three hundred annually— have contributed to the pollution of local water resources, fishing areas, and land.76 Many Ogoni have been forcibly relocated to three local-government areas to make room for six enormous oil fields, and they have received no monetary compensation. Nor has revenue from the oil industry flowed back to the Ogoni in the form of employment opportunities or development projects; the region is one of the poorest in Nigeria.77 The Nigerian national state has repeatedly committed armed attacks against Ogoni political activists who have resisted this exploitation of local natural resources.78 The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), created in the early 1970s, has lobbied intensively in Nigeria and internationally to defend the Ogoni people against the Nigerian state’s exploitation of their region. The public visibility of worldrenowned Ogoni poet and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who served as MOSOP’s publicity secretary, helped to ensure rising public recognition of their plight.79 MOSOP’s 1990 declaration of an Ogoni Bill of Rights, in which political autonomy was formally asserted as a fundamental right, along with repeated public pleas for an end to repression, have contributed importantly to international condemnation of Nigeria’s oil policies in Rivers state.80 In consequence of their activities, MOSOP members and village demonstrators have been imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes killed.81 Nonetheless, through the 1990s, their protest activity intensified, and demonstrations became ever larger and more frequent, leading Shell Oil to temporarily suspend its drilling activities in Ogoni territory. Ogoni activism continued and included the launching of the Ogoni Survival Fund and the articulation of demands for ecological preservation and

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for governmental provision of local community development programs.82 A 1993 protest march brought together three hundred thousand Ogoni.83 Ogoni leaders began to insist on “full political and economic autonomy” for the their people and threatened to secede from Nigeria if they did not receive it.84 They were explicit about what they meant by autonomy: political control of Ogoni areas; the use of a fair portion of exploited economic resources for development purposes within the region; protection of the local environment; the right to the advancement of the Ogoni language, religion, and culture; and Ogoni representation in national political institutions. The Nigerian federal government reacted by heightening violent repression in the delta region, proscribing ethnic associations, and passing a treasonable-offenses decree according to which the death penalty may be imposed on ethnic-autonomy activists.85 It did not take long before the latter decree was employed against the Ogonis’ most celebrated autonomy advocates: in November 1995, Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders were executed by the military government of General Sani Abacha following a show trial and despite a major international outcry.86 In a December 1998 military operation an additional twenty-six Ogoni were killed and two hundred seriously wounded by Nigerian soldiers.87 Meanwhile, the MOSOP movement and Ogoni activists have been challenged both internally and in regard to their relations with their ethnic neighbors. Internal challenges have notably reflected a reaction by traditional Ogoni chiefs against the activism of some of the younger Ogoni political mobilizers. In 1994 this led to violence, including the deaths of four Ogoni chiefs at the hands of young militants.88 Ogoni tensions with a neighboring group, the Andoni, surfaced in part as a consequence of Andoni opposition to Ogoni mobilization, although Nigerian human rights activists suspected that government agents had helped to instigate the Andoni attacks.89 The resulting Ogoni-Andoni fighting killed as many as one thousand people in 1993, with government troops apparently firing on Ogoni.90 Tensions have remained high between the two groups since that time. The fact that the Ogoni movement has generated considerable opposition from chiefs and from other small Rivers state groups renders less likely the possibility that either internal political cohesion or interethnic alliances will emerge. Such alliances are especially important for small uni-ethnic groups that are seeking to politically mobilize against a central state. Despite the noteworthy achievements in obtaining international visibility and in creating an organizationally impressive movement with an articulate and capable leadership, the difficulty in forming internal and external alliances within Rivers

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state does not favor the long-term viability of the Ogoni movement or the achievement of its autonomy-seeking goals. The Ogoni subnationalist movement does, however, provide an indicator of the extent of subregional compartmentalization within Nigeria. In addition to the Ogoni and Ijaw movements in the delta region, ethnic minorities in the states of Southern Bauchi, Southern Kaduna, Taraba and Adamawa have become increasingly mobilized to counter the political domination of Islamic emirs by struggling for greater autonomy.91 This rising politicization in both north-central states and the oil delta zone, has, in turn, helped to refuel Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani mobilization of political elites along ethnoregional lines, a point that I further develop in Chapter 10.

Conclusion The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the Biafran secessionist movement, and the Ogoni Liberation Movement (OLM) are examples of subnationalism in which the major portion of a uni-ethnic group in a historically meaningful territory pursues autonomy-enhancing goals. In all three cases, the initial stimulus toward mobilization was provided by the legacy of central state colonial policies. The fact that some regions benefited economically and politically more than others created a context of regional inequity and perceived discrimination that proved crucial to the generation of secessionist efforts. At the same time, in all three cases collective security concerns, often articulated in ascriptive appeals, played a central mobilizational role. A contrast may be drawn with respect to precolonial linkages. Subnationalism in Ethiopia’s Oromo region was based in large part on uni-ethnic activism within a territory that politically harks back to the ancient Oromo confederation. In this respect, contemporary subnationalists have been able to draw generously on historical ties to a concrete precolonial polity. In contrast, in Biafra, precolonial linkages to the modern secessionist movement drew more upon indirect and cultural arguments regarding Igbo identity rather than upon a preexisting Igbo polity, and mobilizers were able to marshal an impressive cultural revival. In Biafra as in Oromia, the celebration of indigenous culture substantially strengthened popular support for and the political strength of the subnationalist movement. Significant similarities and differences emerged in regard to internal alliances. The Oromo and Biafran movements both succeeded in creating strong interlocality, interlineage, and, in the case of the Oromo, intermoiety networks linking together ethnic members within

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their respective regions. Each of these movements was in part defined by alliance building that took place internally and was based on strongly embedded social and historical traditions that were favorable to the construction of political compacts. In contrast to the Oromo and Igbo cases, the Ogoni movement became internally problematized due to a political falling out between mobilizers and traditional leaders, and the movement was to a large extent set back by the emergence and widening of intraethnic fissures. The Ogoni movement succeeded in creating ties with international supporters, but it did not go far enough in the pursuit of coalitions with other ethnic minorities within and outside of its own delta region. Here a strong parallel with the Biafran case pertains: the absence of coalition building within the Eastern Region proved critical to the fate of Igbo secessionism. For the Oromo, the issue of building links with intraregional minority ethnic groups has little relevance, considering the virtual absence of other identity affiliations in the region. The Oromo Liberation Front made a significant effort at external alliance building by participating in the Ethiopian unity government after the fall of the Derg (ruling council), but this proved short-lived, as the OLF was denied a meaningful policy role. To this day the OLF carries on its mobilization efforts even though it is faced yet again with a hostile and intolerant Ethiopian central state— a repressive context similar to the one in which Ogoni activists must operate in Nigeria. To appreciate the political impact of these three movements, it is necessary to accord credit to the comparatively high quality of Oromo, Biafran, and Ogoni political and organizational units. In all three cases, a great deal of success was achieved by linking elite mobilizers together in a capable managerial body. Effective organizational institutions were fortified with impressive leadership abilities, providing the Oromo, Igbo, and Ogoni movements with reasonable institutional coherence. At the same time, a preexisting correspondence between territory and identity, precolonial social traditions, and concerns over collective security proved significant factors. In the following chapter, I investigate the extent to which uniethnic, regionally based movements in Angola and Namibia shared these movement characteristics.

Notes 1. Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868–1992 (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 16–17,

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19–20, 22, 23–24; P. T. W. Baxter, “The Creation and Constitution of Oromo Nationality,” in Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, ed. Katsuyoshi Fukui and John Markakis (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 180, 175–177. 2. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 16, 21, and Asmarom Legasse, Oromo Democracy: An Indigenous African Political System (Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 2000), 30, 75. 3. Asafa Jalata, “The Struggle for Knowledge: The Case of Emergent Oromo Studies,” African Studies Review 39, no. 2 (1996), 113. 4. Legasse, Oromo Democracy, 117. 5. Jalata, “Struggle for Knowledge,” 112. 6. Legasse, Oromo Democracy, 31–33, 151–152, 97, 134, 136, 160. 7. Mohammed Hassen, The Oromia of Ethiopia: A History, 1570–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Mordechai Abir, “The Emergence and Consolidation of the Monarchies of Enarea and Jimma in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 6, no. 2 (1965). 8. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 16, 23, 52–73, 103; Baxter, “Creation and Constitution,” 169. 9. Mohammed Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities for Peaceful Democratic Process,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 235–236. 10. Ibid., 237–239. 11. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 116, 122, 140, 146; Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 241. 12. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 151; Baxter, “Creation and Constitution,” 177, 180, 183–184. 13. Legasse, Oromo Democracy, 168, 172–173, 184, 188. 14. Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 242; Baxter, “Creation and Constitution,” 169, 171; P. T. W. Baxter, “Ethnic Boundaries and Development: Speculations on the Oromo Case,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 256. 15. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 160–163. 16. Jalata, “The Struggle for Knowledge,” 114. 17. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 169–170. 18. Edmond J. Keller, “Remaking the Ethiopian State,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 135–139, 130–132. 19. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 177, 182–183; Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 250. 20. Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 252; Marina Ottaway, “Democratization in Collapsed States,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 239. 21. Hassan, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 250; Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 185, 188–189.

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22. Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 251. 23. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 193; Keller, “Remaking the Ethiopian State,” 135; and Edmond J. Keller, “The Ethnogenesis of the Oromo Nation and Its Implications for Politics in Ethiopia,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 33, no. 4 (1995), 632. 24. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, xi, 2. 25. Ruth Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 88–90, 90, 94, 101; Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, 49–65. 26. Nita Bhalla, “Ethiopia Downplays Official’s Defection,” BBC World News, 15 August 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/ 1493399.stm. 27. I am discussing broad ethnoregions here. Igbo did live in some Yoruba and Hausa dominated cities. And a fourth region, the midwest, although ethnically mixed, was to a large extent politically and administratively dominated by Igbo. 28. Mazi Njaka, Igbo Political Culture (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 52–53, 60. 29. Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 231. 30. Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 76. 31. Oladimeji Aborisade and Robert Mundt, Politics in Nigeria (New York: Longman, n.d. [1999]), 118. 32. Ibid., 17. 33. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 466. 34. Ibid., 469. 35. Ibid., 468–469. 36. Richard L. Sklar, “Crises and Transitions in the Political History of Independent Nigeria,” in Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, ed. Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 20. 37. Robin Luckham, The Nigerian Military: A Sociological Analysis of Authority and Revolt, 1960–67 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); N. J. Miners, The Nigerian Army, 1956–1966 (London: Metheun, 1971); S. K. Panter-Brick, ed., Nigerian Politics and Military Rule (London: Athlone, 1971). 38. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 470. 39. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 18. 40. Ibid., 19; Sklar, “Crises and Transitions,” 21. 41. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 470. 42. Crawford Young, “Comparative Claims to Political Sovereignty: Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 207. 43. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 471.

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44. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 19–20. 45. On the confluence of ethnicity and regional size, see Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 46. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 20. 47. This is described by Chinua Achebe, as cited in Baxter, “Creation and Constitution,” 171. 48. Njaka, Igbo Political Culture, 10, 66; Isichei, History of the Igbo People, 22; John N. Paden, “Nigerian Unity and the Tensions of Democracy: Geo-Cultural Zones and North-South Legacies,” in Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, ed. Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 248. 49. Njaka, Igbo Political Culture, 14, 61–62, 65, 69–70. 50. Isichei, History of the Igbo People, 58, 62–63. 51. Isidore Okpewho, Once Upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 32, 59, 117–118, 179–181. 52. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 20. 53. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 10. 54. Luckham, Nigerian Military; Panter-Brick, Nigerian Politics. 55. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 21. 56. Ibid., 20; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 210. 57. Neuberger, National Self-Determination, 53; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 205. 58. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 472. 59. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 20. 60. John Boye Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil? The Politics of Ethnicity in the Niger Delta of Nigeria,” Africa Today 47, no. 1 (2000), 33; Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 472. 61. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 219. 62. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 20. 63. Okpewho, Once Upon a Kingdom; Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 473. 64. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 210. 65. Figures are from Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 63. 66. Citation from Neuberger, National Self-Determination, 76–77; see also Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 118. 67. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 118; Young, “Comparative Claims,” 207. 68. Sklar, “Crises and Transitions,” 21. 69. Larry Diamond, “Nigeria: The Uncivic Society and the Descent into Praetorianism,” in Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, 2nd edition, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 428. 70. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 118.

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71. Young, “Comparative Claims,” 210. 72. Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil?”; Rotimi Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration in the Nigerian Federation,” in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 98. 73. Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil?” 32, 42; Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration,” 98, 100. See map of Nigeria p. 225. 74. Michael Watts, “Black Gold, White Heat: State Violence, Local Resistance, and the National Question in Nigeria,” in Geographies of Resistance, ed. Steve Pile and Michael Keith (New York: Routledge, 1997), 63. 75. Ibid., 52. 76. Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil?” 39; Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 149. 77. Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil?” 37; Watts, “Black Gold, White Heat,” 52; S. Cayford, “The Ogoni Uprising: Oil, Human Rights, and a Democratic Alternative in Nigeria,” Africa Today 43, no. 2 (1996). 78. Julius O. Ihonvbere, “Militarization and Democratization: Nigeria’s Stalled March to Democracy,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 113. 79. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 149. 80. Watts, “Black Gold, White Heat,” 60. 81. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 150. 82. Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration,” 98–99. 83. Watts, “Black Gold, White Heat,” 61. 84. Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration,” 99. 85. Ibid. 86. Ihonvbere, “Militarization and Democratization,” 113. 87. Ejobowah, “Who Owns the Oil?,” 30. 88. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 150; Anna Zalik, “Keeping the Peace in the Niger Delta,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002. 89. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 206. 90. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 150. 91. Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration,” 100.

8 Leaders and Rebels

I

n this chapter I deepen my probe of uni-ethnic regionalism by focusing on territorially anchored movements characterized by instrumentalist leadership. Like the uni-ethnic movements considered in the previous chapter, the movements discussed here were generated in the context of geographic isolation, economic disadvantage relative to other regions, and a long-term process of central state delegitimation. But as these regional movements evolved, something different proved crucial to their strategic choices and outcomes: they were headed by leaders whose personal and political purpose appeared to be at least as much a matter of their own advancement as it was a matter of the advancement of their ethnoregion. The objects of my inquiry in this chapter are the UNITA-led rebellion in the Angolan highlands and the Caprivi secession in Namibia. The Angolan highlands are an especially large geographic area in Africa, which have been dominated by Ovimbundu linguistic and cultural forms for many centuries. This has given rise to a strong continuity of local lineage lines, an emphasis on village-level autonomy, and regionally distinct value systems and patterns of community organization and behavior. During the latter stages of colonial rule a new political party emerged: UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) was intimately linked to Ovimbundu political and social structures and to the Angolan highlands’ distinctive regional character. However, UNITA’s success reflected its leadership’s reliance on manipulation and the use of brutal violence against purported internal enemies and a variety of external opponents. UNITA did not explicitly call for Ovimbundu separatism or secession; rather, its leaders expressed a strong commitment to national-scale 175

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political models of shared nation-state rule. However, UNITA leaders also frequently retreated into the relative comfort of ethnoregional politics and ascriptively based Ovimbundu political mobilization. The Angolan highlands’ great distance from the capital city of Luanda and the fact that this large area is ethnically contiguous proved key sources of political and military strength for the movement. UNITA benefited enormously from the highlands’ embeddedness in Ovimbundu history—so much so that its rise may be regarded as having been ultimately dependent on Ovimbundu territorialism. In contrast, the overarching goals of the Mafwe rebels in the Caprivi region of Namibia were more explicitly secessionist. The Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) rose up in the mid-1990s then virtually disappeared by the early 2000s, having proved unsuccessful for a number of reasons. First, the movement had made an inadequate effort at organizational preparation, in stark contrast to UNITA, the Oromo Liberation Front, and the Biafran liberation movement. Second, the Mafwe dominate only about half the region of Caprivi, and their control over the region has been strongly contested by the Basubia ethnic group for more than a century. The Angolan highlands, in contrast, are dominated by Ovimbundu both numerically and politically. Third, Caprivi is a tiny region, and its secessionist movement, based on a handful of supporters, proved militarily disorganized and incompetent. In this respect as well, the CLA differed from UNITA. Still, both the Angolan highlands and the Caprivi region are geographically remote from the purview of the central state administration of Angola and Namibia, respectively. The rebel movements in both cases were made up of militants who shared a common ethnic identity and whose single greatest strength was self-reliance born out of a collective territorial assertion. Both movements were headed by leaders so bent on personal power acquisition that the extent to which the collective interests of their respective identity groups played a role in their political decisionmaking was not always clear. In these respects, the lengthy Ovimbundu-based rebellion in the Angolan highlands and the briefer Mafwe-based Caprivian uprising on the outer edge of the Namibian nation-state bear significantly on our understanding of contemporary subnationalism.

The Angolan Highlands: Ethnoregional Correspondence Angola, like Nigeria, was compartmentalized into large, ethnically segmented and unequal regions during the colonial era. Also similarly

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to Nigeria, the formation and mobilization of Angolan political parties reflected a tripartite ethnoregional division. However, in contrast to Great Britain in Nigeria, in the 1960s Portugal refused to consider the possibility of decolonization. As a result, Angola’s struggle for national independence took the form of anticolonial warfare. The Angolan war against the Portuguese was fought primarily by three political parties based in three different regions. The MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), was rooted in the north-central region, which is principally populated by the Mbundu, who make up about 25 percent of Angola’s people, although the party was dominated by a mestiço elite. The FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), headed by Holden Roberto, was based for the the most part on support of the Bakongo, who make up 13 percent of Cabinda DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

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the national populace. UNITA’s support base was the Ovimbundu people, who make up 35 percent of Angola’s populace and are the largest single group. Most Ovimbundu are located in the highlands, although a considerable number have migrated into the capital city and regional towns.1 These three political parties could not reach agreement on central state rulership after the Portuguese departed the colony, and war among them commenced as the colonialists began their retreat.2 The MPLA was initially the weakest of the three groups militarily, and it was further fractured by internal strategic and ideological differences; nonetheless, it emerged at independence in 1975 as capable of winning control over Luanda, the capital city, with its predominantly Mbundu populace. The FNLA proved organizationally unable to regroup and was soon defeated by the MPLA. The MPLA government then became engaged in a widening civil war with UNITA—a war that was fought continuously until 1991, when a Portuguesebrokered agreement produced a temporary lapse in the fighting. Significant external mediation helped carry the peace through to the national elections of 1992. These elections; the highly complex history of internationally brokered mediation efforts; and external intervention by outside actors including Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, the United States, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Portugal, are extensively treated elsewhere.3 Despite mediation efforts, the profoundly essentialist and inflexible nature of the positions taken by both UNITA and the MPLA helped to ensure that warfare would be the dominant motif in Angola through the remainder of the 1990s and into the first decade of the new millennium. Leaders of UNITA and the MPLA accused each other of harboring “tribalist” antagonisms. Jonas Savimbi, for example, instrumentally played “the political-ethnic card” by mobilizing support through Ovimbundu ethnic appeals.4 He possessed an extraordinary leadership capacity for galvanizing Ovimbundu villagers to support UNITA as an ethnically representative political party. Savimbi effectively utilized demagoguery, his personal charisma, and at times statesmanship, invoking Ovimbundu language, customs, and history to inspire support for UNITA. In this respect Savimbi was successful, and UNITA became “an instrument of rural sentiment and pride for the Ovimbundu.” Ovimbundu support for Savimbi’s movement indicates a certain historical continuity in the Angolan highlands, reflecting links with precolonial Ovimbundu polities, shared suffering under the torment of Portuguese colonialism, and armed mobilization for the national independence

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struggle. During the colonial period, many people turned to Ovimbundu religious practices, seeking advice from spiritual healers called kimbandas in order to “restore moral order.” Thus “the Ovimbundu moral universe” was explicitly used as a “psychological shield which gave the population a level of self-respect and allowed them to confront” their domination and exploitation by the Portuguese.5 Meanwhile, a growing number of Ovimbundu received formal schooling, and some took blue-collar or clerical positions in the town-based colonial economy. Although many had turned to traditional religious practices, others embraced the teachings of Protestant churches, being particularly attracted to those churches’ promotion of an egalitarian religious ethic. From the 1920s to the 1950s, these urban workers and Protestants identified themselves as Ovimbundu with growing assertiveness, and in doing so further helped to consolidate a pan-Ovimbundu consciousness.6 In this respect, precolonial Ovimbundu religious practices and the spread of Protestantism both operated in a way that reinforced Ovimbundu identity and helped to consolidate it in contradistinction to the colonial world. Many of the chiefs whom the Portuguese selected to serve as local rulers, sobas and sekulus, were members of precolonial Ovimbundu chiefly lineages. It was intended that these chiefs would collaborate with the administration. Some of them lost their standing because of their procolonial collaboration; others did not actively collaborate, but managed to remain in their traditional posts. Overall a great deal of political continuity occurred at the village level because these sobas and sekulus managed to carry out the same kinds of functions—land tenure allocation, dispute settlement, and so on— for which they were responsible during precolonial times.7 Each soba and sekulu was assigned a small district corresponding closely to one of the precolonial era sobados, or districts, that had existed within the Ovimbundu states in the highlands prior to the Portuguese conquest. That older authority system was grounded in a loose Ovimbundu confederation that maintained a very strong emphasis on local autonomy.8 States such as Bihé and Mbailundu developed extensive trading networks during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were based principally on exchange of ivory, cattle, and slaves, and they used their growing wealth to strengthen their armies and their independent political systems.9 That independent tradition and the relative autonomy of Ovimbundu highlanders were maintained during the colonial period despite Portugal’s implementation of a variety of exploitative policies.10

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Resentment over colonial policies further contributed to regional solidarity; these policies included forced labor, crop requisitions, and the confiscation of historically meaningful land areas (526,270 hectares over 2,000 square miles were appropriated for settlers’ use in Huambo district alone).11 After Angola’s independence in 1975, macro-level Ovimbundu alienation from the central state only intensified. Creole domination of the MPLA, national political institutions, and the military lent the appearance of an ethnically exclusivistic policy; for many Ovimbundu, this was directly linked to the fact that the government invested little economic development aid in the highlands.12 From the 1970s to the 1990s, many people in the highlands reacted to what they assumed to be central state indifference by further embracing the Ovimbundu moral universe. Ovimbundu parents recounted oral histories of the power, independence, and conquests of precolonial Ovimbundu states, and however exaggerated those oral histories may have been, they ensured an element of cultural connection to the precolonial past. All of this would eventually contribute importantly to UNITA’s ability to mobilize Ovimbundu and to build a powerful movement based largely in the highlands. The fact that UNITA leaders themselves hailed from identifiable precolonial Ovimbundu lineages reinforced this territorial link in the political realm and helped to ensure UNITA’s legitimacy in the eyes of many Ovimbundu.13 For three decades, UNITA demonstrated an ability to marshal a wide range of Ovimbundu from different class and occupational sectors into its movement, including educated urban employees, civil servants, teachers, students, and workers, as well as local chiefs, ordinary peasants, Protestant pastors, and members of village-based organizations.14 The fact that UNITA’s organization structure and these socioeconomic groupings that made up its support base were found in the historical geoterritorial center of the Ovimbundu collectivity was strongly suggestive of its regionally based character. UNITA appeared to be a defensive protector of the highlands. UNITA’s success was also due in part to the wielding of instrumentalist violence by the movement’s leadership. UNITA repeatedly carried out acts of repression and brutality against Ovimbundu dissidents.15 When an important segment of the Ovimbundu opposed Savimbi, he responded with torture and terror in order to consolidate UNITA’s power.16 UNITA relied on violence against unarmed Ovimbundu civilians—killings of recalcitrant villagers and urban residents presumed to be UNITA opponents. UNITA commanders also enforced autocratic control over certain mountain ranges, where it directed the mining and marketing of diamonds. These factors strongly suggest that

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the movement expanded at least in part because of its strong-armed personalistic militarism. UNITA faced an unanticipated challenge when fighting produced a significant displacement of Ovimbundu and members of other groups into the capital and the provincial cities of Angola until nearly half the national populace resided in urban areas. The migration led to a substantial measure of “cultural fusion,” or interethnic mixing. This gave the MPLA, which controlled the cities and towns, a more ethnically pluralistic hue than it had at the start of the conflict. By the end of the 1990s, approximately half the Angolan national army was made up of Ovimbundu, with the rest representing a diverse assortment of ethnic backgrounds.17 Nonetheless, an Ovimbundu ethnopolitical consciousness was consolidated among a large core of UNITA supporters in the highlands during the course of UNITA-MPLA warfare. UNITA created an effective organizational structure that became intermeshed with local community institutions in rural highland areas. In addition to approximately thirty thousand party cadres, UNITA’s organizational hierarchy encompassed the “traditional village structure,” including elders organized into “village committees” responsible to chiefs “appointed by the party.” At the political head of the party was the thirty-fivemember Political Bureau and Central Committee, followed in descending hierarchical order by regional committees and village committees. Sufficient institutional capacity was created for the party to be able to provide some health care and educational services to villagers in core support areas.18 What were UNITA’s ultimate political goals, and what do these tell us about the party’s regional character? Would UNITA’s leadership have been content with the compartmentalization of Angola into two or more ethnostates? Or did UNITA aim for central state capture and rulership over all of Angola? There is little doubt that ultimately Savimbi was determined to achieve the latter. He rejected the MPLA victory in the 1992 election, in which President José Eduardo dos Santos obtained 49.57 percent of the vote to Savimbi’s 40.6 percent, forcing a run-off—which Savimbi refused to participate in. 19 These elections enabled the MPLA to claim a democratically sanctified right to rule the country, but Savimbi subsequently declined the opportunity to serve as Angola’s vice president, deciding instead to resume the war.20 It is highly likely that his decision reflected UNITA’s intention to win total state power. In 1993 UNITA expanded its control from about half to about 70 percent of Angola’s territory. Soon thereafter the MPLA government

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was able to push back UNITA’s forces and defeat them on multiple fronts. The MPLA’s battlefield successes convinced Savimbi to sign an accord in 1994 that called for UNITA’s demobilization and incorporation into the Angolan national army, as well as the placement of eleven top UNITA officials in leading bureaucratic positions within the national government. UNITA leaders were to control four ministries and head three regional governments, in Uige, Lunda Sul, and Cuando Cubango.21 However, only parts of the 1994 accord were actually implemented. A partial demobilization of UNITA troops occurred, but the major portion of the organization’s fighters remained in the field. Savimbi personally refused to join the new government, and in 1998 UNITA-MPLA warfare resumed in the northern and central parts of the country, continuing into the new millennium. In command of some sixty thousand troops and enriched by the trade in precious minerals, UNITA’s army secured an enormous modern weapons cache and by 2000 had regained control of zones totaling nearly twothirds of Angolan territory.22 A major reversal occurred in February 2002. The Angolan army gained access to sophisticated telecommunications interceptors and was able to locate Jonas Savimbi’s position, mobilize troops in that area, and overwhelm the local UNITA troops. In the process, the longtime head of UNITA was killed.23 By April 2002, most UNITA troops either had been defeated or had stopped fighting, and in May of that year UNITA announced that it was abandoning the armed struggle and would participate peacefully in future national elections.24 UNITA has weakened considerably as a political movement and appears to be splitting into several factions; the extent to which some rebel brigades now in hiding may hold out hope of eventually resuming the war remains uncertain. Despite the movement’s decline, it should be recognized that for four decades, UNITA achieved enormous success as a rebel force grounded in a territorialized socioinstitutional base of support in the highlands. Future political arrangements will have to take cognizance of the long and distinct history of local-autonomy assertion in the highlands.

Namibia’s Caprivi In the late 1990s, a secessionist movement emerged in Namibia’s Caprivi region that would produce several surprise attacks in the region’s capital city. The movement was uni-ethnic in composition,

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with only Mafwe participants. In contrast to the UNITA movement in Angola, the Caprivi movement would disintegrate as quickly as it arose. The Caprivi case indicates the prevalence of the subnationalist appeal in Africa today, but also highlights the importance of intramovement limitations to secessionist success. Namibia, previously known as South-West Africa and colonized by South Africa, suffered the same apartheid ethnoregional homeland policy from the 1960s to the 1980s that had been imposed within South Africa itself during that time period. 25 The Namibian regions of Caprivi and Hereroland both appeared to benefit from this system, but for different reasons. Caprivi served as the central base of operations for the South African armed forces in Namibia, which were fighting against a violent anticolonial movement led by the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO). Thus, Caprivi was showered with military-related economic investments, including road building and agricultural development projects.

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In Hereroland, the South Africans encouraged farmers to raise and market vast quantities of livestock specifically for the dairy and meat markets in Namibia and in South Africa.26 As a result, producers in Caprivi and Hereroland had been closely integrated into colonial trading circles. This was reflected in the political realm by the formation of homeland-based political parties that were willing to function within the confines of Namibia’s South African–managed political system. These Caprivian and Hereroland parties formed an alliance, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), which won representation in 1977 in a legislature established in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital city. This provided an electoral hue to an otherwise rigidly controlled autocratic system of ethnoregional segregation.27 Meanwhile, a nationwide, multiethnic rebellion led by SWAPO, beginning in 1960, challenged the apartheid system and South African control over Namibia.28 The rebel movement eventually won broad popular support and considerable international attention. Coupled with external mediation by the United Nations, the United States, and European powers, it eventually led to South Africa’s abandonment of apartheid in Namibia and its agreement to withdraw its political control over Namibia, which gained independence in 1990 following 1989 national elections in which SWAPO was victorious. During the postindependence period, with SWAPO in power, the assumption became widespread among people in both Caprivi and Hereroland that the national government was not investing economic resources in their regions to the extent that it was investing elsewhere. Also, despite a relatively solid representation from these regions in the new government,29 it was popularly assumed that their people were generally excluded from the nation’s highest political posts. Such dissatisfaction with the SWAPO-led government enabled the opposition DTA to win control of the regional governments of Caprivi and Omaheke (the new name for a large portion of former Hereroland) in the 1992 elections. Through the 1990s, Herero discontentment remained largely confined to complaints by Herero chiefs or by DTA representatives on the floor of the Namibian National Assembly or to the media. There has never been a sign that these complaints would snowball into a subnationalist movement. The integration of Herero traditional leaders and politicians into the nation-state has been comprehensive and unquestioning.30 In contrast, in Caprivi, serious violence broke out repeatedly during the 1990s, reflecting the extent to which antigovernment factions had rejected the legitimacy of Namibia’s political system.31 A secessionist

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movement emerged by the end of that decade. What explains the appearance of a breakaway movement in Caprivi and the absence of one in Omaheke (former Hereroland) when both regions share a history of opposition to the SWAPO-led government? One crucial factor is the nature of the economic link between Herero farmers and central Namibia. Herero cattle farmers have historically received unusual benefits from their association with Windhoek: private land tracts were permitted, through the granting of special permits, for the purpose of commercial cattle farming during the colonial period.32 Omaheke’s proximity to Windhoek ensured a tightly integrated social and educational nexus between Herero and the capital city. The Herero people have for many years felt socially attached to the cultural fabric of the Namibian nation, and Herero chiefs and headmen have served on numerous national interethnic policy boards and commissions during the postindependence period.33 In contrast, Caprivi has historically been isolated from the mainstream of Namibian social and economic life, in large part because of its territorial position—it is the region farthest in distance from Windhoek, and Caprivi has closer ethnic linkages to Zambia than it does to the rest of Namibia. Apart from a number of commercial farms initially established by South African investors, the vast portion of Caprivi’s economy is also more closely linked to Zambian trade routes than to Namibia. The traditional authorities in Caprivi region, while respected by the Windhoek government, have not participated as extensively as Herero traditional leaders in political meetings in the nation’s capital. Caprivian traditional leaders have tended to focus on affairs within their own region to a more dramatic extent than the Herero chiefs. Moreover, whereas Omaheke was dominated by the Herero, Caprivi region has been more or less evenly divided between two different ethnic groups: the Mafwe and the Basubia. Both these groups belong to the Lozi language cluster, which characterizes Caprivi, much of western Zambia, and parts of Botswana. This broad Lozi affiliation has led some analysts to misinterpret the Caprivian secessionist movement as a pan-Lozi irredentist effort to create a new Lozi ministate.34 But there has been little or no evidence of such a movement by Lozi speakers in Zambia or Botswana. Although the Basubia and the Mafwe share a common ancient history and language within the Caprivi region, for more than a century these two groups have been led by separate chieftainships, and their societies have come to be organized in such distinct and starkly contrasting ways that Mafwe and Basubia are now more accurately analyzed as separate

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ethnic groups. This is one case in which the cultural transmission of a common precolonial inheritance was broken by political and situational change. Socially, religiously, and culturally and in terms of youth groups, internal segmentation, and education, the Mafwe and Basubia became immersed in separate and competitive institutions. Politically, their respective village chiefs became organized under different ethnic leaderships, and Mafwe and Basubia leaders have been at odds for many years over land demarcations and other issues. During the early years of South African rule over Namibia, administrators of Caprivi appointed by Pretoria had great difficulty grappling with Mafwe-Basubia disputes. To cite one example, the superintendent of Caprivi, E. P. Britz, appointed by the South African government, sought in 1930 to hold a meeting with the Mafwe chief Mamili and the Basubia chief Chikamatondo to resolve a MafweBasubia boundary dispute, but he was unable to make any progress in the mediation. Fifty-two years later, in 1982, with Namibia still under South African administration, a commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the very land dispute that Britz had tried to resolve in 1930. The 1982 commission found that this dispute reflected a broader disagreement between Mafwe and Basubia, extending back to the 1880s, regarding the placement of boundaries dividing their respective land areas throughout Caprivi region.35 This intraregional Caprivian strife was intensified by the politicization of ethnic identity that occurred during the apartheid era. Most Mafwe ended up supporting the DTA, while most Basubia adhered to SWAPO. During the anticolonial liberation struggle waged by SWAPO, Mafwe-Basubia tension was especially high, and this ethnic politicization did not diminish in the postcolonial period. Indeed, as SWAPO assumed national power, pro-DTA Mafwe became convinced that Basubia SWAPO elites in Caprivi would wreak revenge on them. These fears and mutual suspicions led to serious conflicts throughout the 1990s. Water shortages developed because Basubia staff of the Department of Water Affairs feared transporting diesel fuel to a water-pump generator in Kongola, a Mafwe area.36 A plan for Basubia and Mafwe school inspectors to co-inspect one anothers’ schools went awry when Mafwe chief Boniface Mamili held a meeting at which he urged his people not to allow Basubia inspectors into the area, and a fistfight among members of the two groups ensued.37 In turn, Basubia chief Joshua Moraliswani provoked violence by declaring himself paramount chief of all of Caprivi region, implying Basubia domination over the Mafwe.38 Mafwe chief Mamili subsequently sought to

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force nine Basubia headmen living under his jurisdiction to either attend traditional Mafwe khuta meetings or to pay fines for failing to attend.39 Basubia tribal councilor Robert Sinvula responded that the Mafwe chieftainship had its origin on “foreign” soil—that is, in Zambia—and that Mafwe in Caprivi must obey Basubia leaders.40 The Caprivi separatist movement that emerged in 1998 was predicated in large part upon this lengthy history of Mafwe-Basubia disputation. It also reflected the region’s geographic, economic, and social isolation and especially the internal DTA-SWAPO split. The politicization of this division through pro-DTA partisanship by Mafwe activists and pro-SWAPO tendencies on the part of many Basubia was central to Mafwe alienation from the central state. However, the personal power aspirations of secessionist leader Mishake Muyongo must also be considered a major factor in the rise of Caprivi subnationalism. Muyongo ascended through the ranks of Caprivian party politics in the 1980s, and eventually emerged at the national level as a prominent DTA party cadre. When longtime DTA head Dirk Mudge stepped away from politics in 1993, Muyongo was chosen to be his replacement. As leader of the country’s main opposition party, the articulate Muyongo played a highly visible role by opposing SWAPO policy proposals in parliament. During the 1990s, the DTA’s political fortunes declined, its representational strength in parliament diminished, and Muyongo’s chances of ever winning the presidency appeared increasingly slim. At some point in the late 1990s, he surreptitiously began to discuss with Mafwe activists in Caprivi the possibility of organizing a regional separatist movement. In 1998, news reporters uncovered information that raised suspicions that Muyongo had organized a secret meeting of Caprivian secessionists in South Africa. Due to these suspicions, Muyongo was formally removed as DTA leader in October 1998; immediately afterward he fled to Botswana.41 The Namibian government, determined to uproot any potential secessionist activity, sent troops to Caprivi to arrest possible organizers, and the general atmosphere of intimidation provoked 2,450 Caprivians to migrate over the Botswana border. In February 1999, the Botswana government granted formal asylum to fifteen Caprivi political activists who feared persecution by Namibia, including Mafwe chief Boniface Mamili, former regional governor of Caprivi John Mabuku, and popular radio deejay Stephen Mamili. Several hundred other Caprivians emigrated to Botswana, but most had no connection to the Muyongo separatists; they migrated to avoid harassment by Namibian soldiers.42

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Muyongo’s subnationalist activity now became overt. In early 1999, with several dozen supporters, Muyongo created the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA). After February 1999, members of the CLA returned to Caprivi for the explicit purpose of launching armed attacks on Namibian police stations; they hoped that such attacks would generate a popular uprising in support of secession from Namibia. The CLA attacked a police station in Katima Mulilo, the capital of Caprivi region, on 2 August 1999. The poorly trained rebels were routed by the police, and fourteen of them were killed.43 This attack provoked the Namibian army to sweep through the Caprivi region in large numbers to root out members of the CLA. About two hundred suspects were arrested; and some CLA fighters managed to flee to Botswana. Of those arrested, 115 were charged with treason, and five others with lesser crimes.44 The police tortured some of the jailed activists shortly after their arrest in order to obtain confessions.45 Anti-Basubia sentiment proved strident among the CLA prisoners. When they heard in August 2000 that a judge had postponed their treason trial for six months, they declared that the decision was an example of anti-Mafwe discrimination by the government. One of the accused, an eighteen-year-old who proudly articulated his adherence to the CLA and who brandished a poster favoring Caprivian national independence, shouted in court, “We don’t want to see even an eye of Wambos in Caprivi.” 46 Wambos is a disparaging term for the Ovambo—Namibia’s majority ethnic group who the Mafwe believe dominate the Namibian central state and who are presumed to be political allies of Caprivi’s Basubia. Despite the prisoners’ strongly professed secessionist sentiments, the movement appears to have dissipated during the early 2000s. Since a September 1999 incident in which three CLA fighters were killed in a shoot-out,47 there has been no further violent activity; nor has there been any evidence of mobilization by the CLA or by potential sympathizers. Muyongo and several other CLA leaders eventually left southern Africa altogether, resettling in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe. To be sure, CLA hardliners held their commitment to their secessionist cause firmly. Six months after the August 1999 police-station attack, thirteen prisoners awaiting trial entered court shouted “Viva Caprivi” several times. One of them rose to state, “We, the Caprivians who are here, strongly believe that Caprivi must be independent,” and thirty-two of the defendants asked that court papers be changed to show “Caprivi” as their nationality rather than “Namibia.”48

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Beyond these jailed activists, however, and a handful of CLA leaders who resettled abroad, the mantle of subnationalism was not taken up by Caprivians. Considering the deeply rooted nature of Mafwe-Basubia tensions, it is conceivable that popular Mafwe sympathy for the CLA is strongly held in parts of Caprivi. However, the relatively unsophisticated quality of movement leadership and the limited amount of time organizing in Caprivi itself proved critical to the CLA’s lack of mobilizational success. All of the years Muyongo spent in Windhoek left him too removed from regional Caprivian politics, and Muyongo’s abrupt change of political stripes in the late 1990s—from parliamentary leader of the national opposition to secessionist rebel—was followed too quickly by a military attack. Compared to the other movements we have examined, Muyongo’s CLA lacked the leadership quality and organizational strength necessary to pursue a serious secessionist movement. The instrumentalist personalism of Muyongo was not matched by his or the CLA’s organizing skills. Moreover, the CLA could not overcome—and did not seek to overcome—ethnic tensions between Mafwe and Basubia. Without an interethnic alliance between these two groups that share Caprivian territory, it is difficult to imagine how a secessionist movement could have proved successful.

Comparative Conclusions Both Portuguese-run Angola and South African–administered Namibia had divided their respective colonies into ethnoregions. They had failed to adequately integrate the Ovimbundu northern highlands of Angola and the Mafwe and Basubia–dominated Caprivian region of Namibia into their respective colonial societies or into the infrastructure of the central state. Neither Caprivian participation in the DTA’s colonial-era regional party alliance nor a small degree of political collaboration between Ovimbundu traditional leaders and colonial authorities offset the overwhelming sense of marginalization within Caprivi and within the Angolan highlands. The fact that the political parties that assumed national power in Windhoek and in Luanda after independence were diametrically opposed to political actors in Caprivi and in the Angolan highlands added palpably to the profound sense of marginalization in each of those regions. However, these factors do not adequately explain the fundamental differences in the evolution and outcome of these movements.

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Here it is important to underline differing leadership and organizational capacities; the uni-ethnic regional congruence in the Angolan case and the biethnic regional context in Caprivi; and the long-term devotion to internal alliance construction on UNITA’s part in contrast to the too-rapid mobilization attempted by the CLA. Mafwe subnationalists did not enjoy the relative luxury of uniethnic regional coherence. While the CLA movement itself was uniethnic, it lacked a congruent ethnoterritory within which it could mobilize. In contrast, the Ovimbundu were predominant in the Angolan highlands, and they were able to draw upon a deep reservoir of precolonial polity-building success. UNITA’s focus on incorporating village chiefs into the base level of the movement proved helpful in restimulating a perceived precolonial link. Savimbi’s leadership adroitness in channeling an intensive correlation between Ovimbundu identity and UNITA as a political party was also a key element in UNITA’s relative success. UNITA’s organizational efficiency must also be accorded explanatory emphasis. The Mafwe of Caprivi proved much less successful in this respect, in large part because the CLA failed to spend adequate time working with people at the village level, so there was no ready social basis for drawing a widely shared political link between the Caprivi secession movement and the precolonial Lozi kingdom. Nonetheless, an interesting parallel may be constructed here between Jonas Savimbi and Mishake Muyongo, both of whom were motivated by a personal quest for political power. This ambition merged with a high level of personal charisma to enable both men to begin the process of regional movement building. The difference between the two men is that Savimbi never quite abandoned his commitment to the Ovimbundu highland operational base, while Muyongo spent much of his political life outside the Caprivi region. The centrality of the individual leadership factor in the Caprivian case should not be underappreciated. For some two decades, Muyongo was happily ensconced in the Namibian capital city as a DTA cadre and eventually became the party president. His late-1990s pursuit of Caprivian secession and his de facto abandonment of his career in the DTA appeared directly linked to the increasingly obvious impossibility that he would fulfill his Namibian presidential ambition. When his advance was blocked at the national level, he shifted his ambition back to his region of origin, but without the political preparation that comes from decades of intraregional mobilization. Savimbi similarly had been motivated to a large extent by an instrumentalist quest for personal power and was ultimately aiming

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for national political dominance. But over the course of some forty years, Savimbi always strategically directed UNITA’s mobilization from within the Angolan highlands that were his political base and his principal source of political power. He displayed an unbending commitment to the region as the centerpiece of UNITA’s political mobilization. In this regard, Savimbi’s instrumentalist success contrasts markedly with the brief run of his Namibian counterpart. As an organization the CLA was tiny, weakly organized, and not infrastructurally connected to a wide range of communities in Caprivi region. By comparison, UNITA built a large cadre of supporters who eventually became linked to village institutions, including traditional leaders and various Ovimbundu organizations. In this respect, UNITA shared with Ethiopia’s Oromo Liberation Front the key advantage of being able to construct internal alliances among differing factions, communities, and individuals. This was important for building a territorially based movement capable of seriously challenging the central state. The contrast with the Caprivi case was, in the end, especially stark. Notes 1. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 113, 114. 2. John A. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution: Exile Politics and Guerilla Warfare, 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979). 3. See especially Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 111–145. 4. Ibid., 114, 135; see also Horace G. Campbell, “Militarism, Warfare, and the Search for Peace in Angola,” in The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa, ed. York Bradshaw and Stephen N. Ndegwa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 176. 5. Linda Heywood, Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2000), 60–61. 6. Ibid., 56. 7. Ibid., 36, 135. 8. Ibid., 20–23, 36. 9. Philip Curtain, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina, African History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 430. 10. Heywood, Contested Power, 27, 29. 11. Ibid., 148, 160. 12. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, 275–276. 13. Heywood, Contested Power, 30, 155, 173, 183. 14. Ibid., 170–171, 204. 15. Ibid., 213.

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16. Campbell, “Militarism,” 164, 174–176. 17. Tony Hodges, Angola from Afro-Stalinism to Petro Diamond Capitalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 21, 23–28; Heywood, Contested Power, 212. 18. Heywood, Contested Power, 184, 193, 213, 214. 19. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 114, 112, 135. 20. Hodges, Angola, 72. 21. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 112, 134–138. 22. Campbell, “Militarism,” 165–166, 179. On Savimbi’s control of trade in precious minerals and on the use of illegal diamond markets to ensure a steady cash flow, see Hodges, Angola. 23. Antonio Teixeira, untitled posting in Diario de Noticias (Lisbon), 26 February 2002. 24. “Angola: A Military Force Extinguished,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 8 (2002), 14966; Keith Somerville, “Unita Cleans Up Its Act,” BBC News, 21 August 2002, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/ 2205842.stm. 25. Joshua B. Forrest, Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Regional Institutions (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1998), 33–40. 26. Joshua B. Forrest, “Land, Agriculture, and Racial Inequality in Colonial South West Africa,” Historia: The Journal of the Historical Association of South Africa 46, no. 2 (2001). 27. Forrest, Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Regional Institutions, 34. 28. Colin Leys and John Saul, eds., Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995). 29. Joshua B. Forrest, “Ethnic-State Political Relations in Post-Apartheid Namibia,” The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 32, no. 3 (1994), 302. 30. Forrest, Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Regional Institutions, 267. 31. Forrest, “Ethnic-State Political Relations,” 314. 32. Forrest, “Land, Agriculture, and Racial Inequality”; Joshua B. Forrest, “Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Agricultural Bureaucracy Restructuring,” Journal of African Policy Studies 5, no. 1 (1999). 33. Forrest, “Ethnic-State Political Relations,” 311–313. 34. For example, see “Namibia: The Lozi Lost,” The Economist, 4 September 1999. 35. Calicious Nawa, “‘Undefined Border Causes Conflicts,’” New Era [Namibia] 1, no. 106 (5–11 August 1993), 7. 36. Clement Nawa, “Now Water Crisis Hits Caprivi,” New Era 1, no. 6 (15–21 August 1991), 1. 37. Calicious Nawa, “Caprivi Principal Suspended,” New Era 1, no. 15 (17–23 October 1991), 1–2. 38. Calicious Nawa, “Caprivi Showdown Looms,” New Era 1, no. 16 (24–30 October 1991), 1–2; and Chitwafwa Manyando, “Open Letter to the President,” New Era 1, no. 17 (31 October–6 November 1991), 12. 39. Frederick Simasiku, “Headman Detained for Rejecting Fines,” New Era 1, no. 92 (29 April–5 May 1993), 8.

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40. Frederick Simasiku, “Subias Scoff at Eviction Order,” New Era 1, no. 92 (29 April–5 May 1993), 1–2. 41. Chrispin Inambao, “Asylum for Muyongo,” The Namibian, February 1999. 42. Ibid. 43. “Namibia: The Lozi Lost”; Tangeni Amupadhi, “Three Rebels Killed,” The Namibian, 3 September 1999. 44. “The Caprivi 115—So Far,” The Namibian, 26 January 2000. 45. “Caprivi Tortures ‘Internal Matter,’” The Namibian, 29 March 2000; “‘Caprivi Cops’ Torture Dockets Handed Over,” The Namibian, 27 July 2000; “Caprivi Accused Tell of Torture,” The Namibian, 21 September 2000. 46. “Tribal Tempers Flare at Separatist Hearing,” The Namibian, 1 August 2000. 47. Amupadhi, “Three Rebels Killed.” 48. “Separatists Accused in Court,” The Namibian, 25 January 2000.

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ome subnationalist movements based on uni-ethnic groups aim to reclaim a self-perceived rightful position of political and historical preeminence. These groups at one time enjoyed exclusive autonomy within their respective territories or dominated the nation as a whole and now seek to reclaim that power on a uni-ethnic basis. They are distinct from the uni-ethnic movements discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 with special regard to the movement’s leaders implicit or explict effort to link their contemporary goals with their prior political supremacy. In the cases of the Zulu and the Afrikaners of South Africa, the sense of rightful rulership emerges directly out of the colonial period, when each of these groups not only enjoyed political predominance in their claimed territories but also allied with or were directly part of the ruling central colonial state. This experience with central state rulership reinforced political leaders’ self-perceived legitimacy as claimants to territorially based power. Tigrayan regional autonomy extends farther back than the twentieth and late nineteenth centuries, when the Tigrayans were dominated by the Amhara, to the ancient Ethiopian empire within which Tigrayans enjoyed a combination of regional self-rule and a sharing of central power with the Amhara. Part of the inspiration for twentiethcentury Tigrayan subnationalism was a sense that they had been betrayed by their Amharic co-rulers of that ancient empire and were then oppressed by those same Amhara through the course of the twentieth century. Their prior lengthy experience as rulers of ancient Ethiopia provided the Tigrayans with a sense of legitimacy and entitlement not only to restore their rule over Tigray province, but also to 195

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reclaim power over Ethiopia as a whole. In this respect, subnationalism in Tigray coincides with a complex, historical self-perceived mandate for rule that extends beyond the Tigrayans’ ethnoregion.1 Like the Tigrayans of Ethiopia, the Zulu of South Africa claimed political power on the basis of the existence of a large, powerful precolonial kingdom. This idea was given special resonance during the apartheid period, when the South African state, defined by an essentialist logic, gave support both to the idea of an ethnic Zulu kingdom and to the reality of Zulu traditional leadership. South Africa accorded Zulu leaders control over KwaZulu-Natal in return for their political collaboration. Meanwhile, the South African state was itself grounded within a political system geared toward ethnic Afrikaner predominance. In the country’s transition to democracy in the 1990s, hard-line subnationalists among the Afrikaners and Zulu each clamored for a separate, ethnically defined homeland based on the general locations of early Boer and Zulu states. This represented an effort to claim a kind of historical tribute to their prior political rulership, while protecting their corporate ethnic integrity and the political interests of the movements’ leaders.

Tigrayan Subnationalism As a cultural and political unit, Tigray may be traced back to the first millennium A.D., when it formed the major part of the Axumite empire. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Tigrayan emperor Yohannes IV held power in Ethiopia and ruled over the Amhara, but after Emperor Yohannes’s death in 1889, the Amhara ousted the Tigrayans from power and achieved dominance over central Ethiopia and Tigray province. Tigrayan elites were forcibly marginalized, and the Amhara used the bureaucratic and military powers of the Ethiopian state to exploit the Tigrayan people, although some collaborationist Tigrayan elites retained important political responsibilities. 2 Modern Tigrayan political activism did not begin to emerge until the 1930s, when Amharic predominance combined with Italian colonialism to produce an especially severe level of social and economic oppression in Tigray, which worsened after the Italians departed. A process of Amharization under Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was attempted, which included the forced use of the Amharic language under the pretension of the creation of a “national,” pan-Ethiopian, identity. Tigrayan harvests and tracts of Tigrayan land were confiscated, and Tigrayan elites were jailed or forced to conform to Selassie’s dictates.3

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In 1943, a rebellion led by Tigrayan rebels known as Woyene succeeded in temporarily winning military power in Tigray province.4 Although eventually it was crushed by the Ethiopian armed forces, the rebellion’s significance lay in its historical legacy, for in later years it helped to inspire Tigrayan youth, who called upon the Woyene memory when regional mobilization was reinitiated.5 Meanwhile, Tigrayans were forced into a position in which their only hope of receiving resources from the national government was to work within the Amharic-based polity, to lobby Addis Ababa’s political rulers, and to compete with other ethnic groups in an Amharicdominated state.6 These experiences under Selassie’s long rule led to a reintensification of cultural bonds among Tigrayans—bonds forged through the common experience of growing deprivation, economic misery, and political repression.7 As in the cases of the Oromia and Eritrea, so too regarding Tigray, the 1974 ascension to power in Addis Ababa of a Derg (ruling council) professing a commitment to Marxism did not alter the fundamental pattern of Amharic political domination and exploitation that had obtained since the late nineteenth century.8 The economic policies of the Derg in Tigray were based on heavy taxation, the forcible procurement of agricultural surpluses, and government confiscation of land. The Tigrayan peasantry, suffering from economic exploitation and lacking political links to the Ethiopian state, proved prepared to support Tigrayan subnationalists when a serious rebel movement arose. Tigrayan activists made clear that they aimed at securing Tigrayan autonomy, while at the same time they articulated a claim over “Ethiopia” writ large. Initially, different Tigrayan political groups expressed a variety of views regarding the extent of their interest in obtaining control over the Ethiopian polity.9 Once the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had surfaced as the leading rebel party, they made clear that regional self-rule was their first priority, but conceptualized their political interests as being implicitly inclusive of Ethiopia as a whole. Why did the Tigrayans not aim for secession alone, as did their Eritrean and Oromian counterparts? A central reason is that the Tigrayans believed that they could end a century of Amharic domination and repression and ensure the permanent security of Tigray only by capturing control of the Ethiopian national government in Addis Ababa.10 A second reason for the TPLF’s determination to widen its struggle beyond Tigray is the Tigrayans’ prior history of holding centralized political power in the ancient Ethiopian empire. On the basis of

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interviews with Tigrayan ordinary citizens and political leaders, Alemseged Abbay concludes that Tigrayans’ conceptualization of a “pristine past” is strongly and directly associated with the memory of their political domination over Ethiopia and that this conceptualization forms part of their self-idealized identity.11 Tigrayans’ inheritance of a perceived right to rule was severely tested by Amharic predominance, but when the chance to restore their former control over Ethiopia arose, they were ready to reclaim what they perceived to be their rightful place as Ethiopia’s state managers. 12 This entitlement factor had remained embedded in the Tigrayan political psyche, preventing them from feeling inferior as a people when they were under Amharic and Italian rule, and contributing to their belief that Tigrayan rule over Ethiopia was a natural, historically legitimate political goal.13 TPLF’s leadership competency and intraethnic alliance building proved significant aspects of the movement’s expansion. Within Tigray a pragmatic attitude toward alliance building was adopted among different communities and local leaders. In areas controlled by the TPLF, land reforms, educational programs, and judicial changes were implemented that benefited peasants and encouraged further support for Tigrayan subnationalism. The setting up of peasant councils and the incorporation of ordinary villagers into leadership roles on those councils also furthered the mobilization effort.14 The TPLF’s steady improvement in combat capacity enabled them to best the Derg’s forces in major battles in 1988 and 1989, thereby securing control over Tigray. The TPLF also established ties with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), and there was some effort at military collaboration and coordination. But the TPLF uniquely targeted the Ethiopian central state for conquest, and in 1991, with help from the EPLF, it defeated the Ethiopian army altogether. This victory enabled the TPLF to gain command over the Ethiopian nation-state.15 It would be reasonable to predict that given the Tigrayans’ longterm suffering the TPLF would use its hold over central state power to bolster the economic, social, and political well-being of Tigray region. However, Tigrayan political control over Ethiopia did not immediately translate into a flurry of privileges for Tigray province. The continued prevalence of Amharic officials in the central state’s bureaucracy, considered a symbol of tolerance by the Tigrayan-led national government, helped to forestall a rapid, wholesale transfer of resources to Tigray. But as the 1990s progressed and Tigrayan political leaders consolidated their control over Ethiopian ministries,

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major development projects were indeed implemented in Tigray. These included commercial agricultural farms as well as incentives for private entrepreneurs to invest in industrial projects and water conservation programs. In 1995, part of the Ethiopian national government leadership was transferred to Tigray region, purportedly to lend political support to the new development efforts there, but also to symbolically suggest that Tigray would now be the new focal point of Ethiopian political power.16 From 1992 to 1994, the Tigray-led Ethiopian government embarked on a much-touted plan to decentralize power, dispersing it among ten ethnoregions in a process that was to result in substantial autonomy for locally elected politicians.17 The largest ethnoregion was that of Oromia, with 220 districts out of 600 nationwide, reflecting the fact that at least 35–40 percent of Ethiopia’s 59 million people are Oromo. The other ethnoregions were Tigray, Amhara, Benshangul-Gumaz, Afar, Somali, Southern Ethiopia People’s, Gambela, and two regions that were made up of designated chartered cities, Harar and Addis Ababa (Addis Ababa was also recognized as a federal district). Although ethnic identity was the principal criterion on which the creation of regions was to be based, only four regions, Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, and Somali, are dominated by a single group; most of the others are marked by ethnic heterogeneity—such as Southern Ethiopia People’s region, with forty-five ethnic groups. To overcome this complexity, the national government essentially defined ethnicity by reference to the dominant language in a given region. The lack of correspondence for many groups in six of the ten regions between ethnic identity and official language designation did not preclude the government from requiring people to register as members of their respective region’s designated language group. 18 In doing so, rather than drawing a closer correspondence between ethnicity and territory, the national state in effect generated higher levels of political discontentment and accelerated the process of state-regional alienation. Even in the four regions in which the new ethnic and political designations corresponded, the Tigray-dominated state quickly became embroiled in center-regional disputes as most genuinely popular political parties—including that of the Oromo—refused to accept the new administrative system the Tigray had devised (see Chapter 7). The TPLF-led government, now reorganized as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), intervened extensively in regional affairs, despite the formal decentralization policy.19 At the same time, Tigrayan EPRDF leaders asserted

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their control over the media and over the electoral process.20 Ethnically defined front organizations (termed “People’s Democratic Organizations”) loyal to the EPRDF government were created in each new region, while repression against regime opponents became increasingly violent.21 Each of the ethnic federations within the new Ethiopian polity was affiliated to the Tigray-dominated EPRDF.22 What, then, does Tigrayan domination of the Ethiopian state suggest in terms of our understanding of subnationalist movements? What is the outcome of the Tigrayan struggle, particularly when contrasted to that of other uni-ethnic movements, such as those led by the Eritreans, the Oromo, the Igbo, the Ovimbundu, and the Mafwe? The Tigrayan and Eritrean movements each achieved their respective goals. The EPLF aimed for a secessionist outcome in which a new nation-state would be born, and this is exactly what occurred. The TPLF, after regaining territorial control of the Tigrayan region, elected not to seek secession but rather to capture power over the entirety of Ethiopia. Here precolonial experience is important. The Tigrayans in ancient times ruled over a large part of the Ethiopian empire; they controlled territory that encompassed a far broader area than the Tigrayan ethnoregion. This prior experience of serving directly as part of the rulership of a large empire helps us to appreciate why Tigrayan leaders broadened their goals to aim for central state capture. Like the EPLF, the OLF (of Oromia), and the Biafran secessionist movement, the TPLF was a uni-ethnic subnationalist movement that became mobilized through the consolidation of internal, intraregional alliances. The forging of ties among Tigrayan politicians, local leaders, community-level elites, businesspeople, union activists, students, and age-group lineage heads was undertaken with patient political persistence during the latter decades of Selassie and Derg overrule. The establishment of these ties bolstered the organizational strength of the TPLF and helped set the stage for its military successes. Nonetheless, the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government has proved less than accommodating to its would-be ethnoregional allies. Ethiopia’s long-term viability as a Tigrayan-dominated state may well hinge on the extent to which Tigrayans adopt a more compromising attitude regarding meaningful subnational autonomy for Oromia and other regions. Intraethnic alliances may suffice for subnationalist mobilization in uni-ethnic regions, but interethnic alliances are critical for consolidating a broader nexus of political rulership. In this respect, the TPLF’s gamble in reaching beyond territorial separatism and attempting to institutionalize its hold over the Ethiopian state

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without forging meaningful interethnic alliances represents a high-risk political venture.

South Africa: The Zulu and Afrikaner Movements Uni-ethnic subnationalism in South Africa originates from two largely differing sources; one is the white Afrikaner notion of ethnic and racial superiority, and the other is a complex combination of selfperceived ethnogenesis and instrumentalist opportunism among Zulu mobilizers. As in the case of the Tigrayans, the origins of uni-ethnic ideologies propagated by Afrikaner and Zulu activists may be located in a sense of rightful territorial rulership based on historical claims. However, in contrast to the Tigrayan case, uni-ethnic movements in South Africa eventually declined in political significance. Afrikaner Subnationalism Afrikaner subnationalists’ commitment to independent Boer ministates may be traced to early Calvinist-based ideas of racial and religious superiority, and their ascriptive cohesion hardened through political conflicts with indigenous armies and with the British. From the 1910 creation of the South African state through 1948, Afrikaner politics were defined ever more intensively by recourse to political party organizing, culminating in the electoral capture of state power by the National Party in 1948 and the ensuing promulgation of racist exclusivity.23 The South African apartheid state was constructed in a way that ensured an overwhelming monopoly of political and economic power by the Afrikaner ruling elite, which consolidated its dominance through a system of racial segregation and ethnically defined homeland governance. By the 1970s, the apartheid system was being seriously confronted by multiple internal and external challenges, and it began to falter. In an effort to preserve its political power, the National Party shifted from a Boer nationalist discourse to one of multicultural development.24 In the 1980s, the political mainstream in whitedominated South Africa veered ever more steadily toward reform and compromise, abandoning the apartheid system in 1985 and proceeding with negotiations toward full-scale democratization in the early 1990s. As these processes unfolded, the Afrikaner community had to make a choice between supporting the reform process or receding into a defensive political posture by seeking ethnic refuge in the

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Conservative Party and in a range of newly formed separatist Afrikaner groups. Most Afrikaners opted to support a politics of accommodation and reform. The separatists, in political retreat and increasingly viewed as extremists within their own community, still believed that they were entitled to rule over other groups, but they were now, out of necessity, willing to settle for a last-gasp recourse: the establishment of secessionist Afrikaner homelands located in general proximity to one or more of the early Boer states. Thus, for example, in the 1980s a political party called Boerstaat aimed to resurrect the Transvaal and Orange Free states, with white and black populations redivided into separate areas.25 This proposal appeared to garner little interest and few supporters. A handful of separatist parties attracted more attention. One, known as Afrikanervolkswag, proposed the idea of a white homeland constructed in an area of low population density, such as the northeastern Cape near the Orange River. The Conservative Party aspired to a large-scale white homeland that would include western Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and Northern Cape province. The Freedom Front alliance led by General Constand Viljoen pressed for the creation of an as-yet undefined white homeland.26

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The fact that at least four subnationalist parties were competing for the diminishing attention of Afrikaners suggests that a high degree of fragmentation characterized the separatist movement, a problem that lessened its mobilizational capacity. Nonetheless, early in the negotiations between the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party over the democratization process, Nelson Mandela, seeking to ensure political stability, stated that he would not foreclose the possibility of a white homeland. Secret, informal meetings were held in 1992–1993 between the ANC and the Afrikaner Weerstansbeweging (Afrikaner Movement of Resistance, or AWB).27 That was the closest the separatists would come to obtaining an Afrikaner ethnostate, for those secret talks ended in impasse.28 At the formal talks leading to the creation of a new constitution political parties that were viewed as extremist or as possessing little public support were excluded from the final rounds of official negotiations. Independently, the Conservative Party now proposed a confederation of states whose policies would be decided through treaties, but the idea was not seriously considered. By the time of the transition to a multiracial, multiparty democratic national government in 1994, the secessionists had become marginalized even within the white South African political milieu. 29 This was especially manifested in the lack of white support for the AWB’s effort to defend the principle of ethnic separatism in March 1994, when it mounted what turned out to be a vain military effort to protect the autonomy of Bophuthatswana homeland. The fact that AWB gunmen were routed by black South African troops dramatized the likely futility of a violent separatist struggle. The Freedom Front reacted to the Bophuthatswana event by deciding to participate in the April 1994 elections.30 The vast majority of whites decided to cooperate with or at least tolerate the ANC-dominated government and did not regard secession as a viable option. In a 1994 poll, only 4 percent of whites expressed support for a white-ruled separatist state.31 The fact that Afrikaners increasingly manifested a “hybridized” culture with heterogeneous traits and identities helps to place in sociological context this declining support for subnationalism.32 Moreover, the compromising nature of South Africa’s post-1994 democratic leadership helped to ensure that white Afrikaners would not feel overly threatened. At the same time, white business interests had come to depend on the smooth functioning of a racially integrated economy, which implied cooperation with the ANC-led government.33 The proliferation of racially and ethnically diverse civil society organizations further

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contributed to the diminution of support for Afrikaner separatism.34 Indeed, between the 1994 and 1999 national elections, the Freedom Front’s share of the vote declined from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent.35 Although Boer extremist groups such as the Cape Party and Nasionale Krygers (National Warriors) claimed in November 2002 to be organizing a separatist campaign in Cape province,36 the overwhelming peripheralization of white secessionists within their own community makes it likely that Afrikaner subnationalism will continue to dissipate as a political force. Zulu Subnationalism During the four decades of apartheid in South Africa, black Africans’ resistance to state oppression, forcible relocations, and human rights abuses was for the most part channeled into a broad pan-African, multiracial, and multiethnic movement led by the African National Congress.37 As anti-apartheid resistance assumed the form of an integrated, incorporationist common cause, and because of the widespread enmity toward the homeland policy of the apartheid system, which had forcibly segregated non-whites into ethnically defined areas, most black Africans rejected the idea of uni-ethnic subnationalism as a political strategy.38 There was, however, one exception to the groundswell of support for the ANC: the Zulu subnationalist movement led by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The Zulu are the largest single ethnic group in South Africa and represent 29 percent of the total population.39 The Zulu subnationalist movement has been based in KwaZulu-Natal province, which was earmarked as a Zulu homeland under apartheid. In recent years, the IFP has promoted a subnationalist Zulu ideology, but it has been challenged by the multiethnic perspective of the ANC.40 Historically, the IFP has been favored in this political confrontation because the KwaZulu ethnic homeland offered at least partial resonance with the precolonial Zulu empire, however exaggerated contemporary IFP reconstructions of a unified precolonial Zulu culture may be. Zulu subnationalists base their claim to a uni-ethnic right to rule this area explicitly on their historical link to the nineteenth-century Zulu nation, which was expanded under the reign of King Shaka Zulu to encompass a significant portion of what is now eastern South Africa. During the apartheid era, with the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit consent of Pretoria, the IFP and Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi rose to power and ruled over the

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KwaZulu homeland government in large part by creating and empowering political and military organizations and violent youth groups imbued with the ideology of this historic Zulu subnationalism.41 Although traditional Zulu chiefs initially distrusted the IFP, many of those chiefs were gradually incorporated into the movement. This was mutually beneficial: the chiefs dispensed significant patronage, which helped the IFP, and the IFP wielded increasing political and military potency, which helped the chiefs. Through the 1980s, Zulu chiefs played a central role in helping to ensure IFP’s political control at the grassroots level within KwaZulu. However, Buthelezi also crafted political ties with the apartheid regime and with the ANC at different strategic moments during the 1970s and 1980s.42 Buthelezi wavered during this period between ascriptive territorial subnationalism and overtly opportunistic instrumentalist maneuvering. At one point, Buthelezi spurned an offer from the apartheid regime to allow the IFP to create a fully independent state because he felt that the Zulu would have more to gain by remaining part of South Africa.43 This made it appear as though Buthelezi was guided more by personal entrepreneurship than by subnationalist commitment. Still, during the democratization negotiations of the early 1990s, Buthelezi insisted strongly on “Zulu self-determination,” by which he meant that KwaZulu-Natal province should not be subject to laws passed by the national parliament.44 The IFP advocated “complete regional autonomy,” according to which states would be able to veto federal proposals, and during the election period it repeatedly invoked Zulu self-determination even though it was not officially running.45 Twenty thousand Inkatha supporters rallied to show their support for separatism in April 1994.46 Buthelezi was supported by, and in turn lent his support to, Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini.47 To win Buthelezi’s participation in the new political arrangement, the ANC agreed to include a constitutional provision that officially recognized the status of the Zulu king and the “Kingdom of Kwazulu.”48 This compromise secured Buthelezi’s last-minute acquiescence and the participation of the IFP in the April 1994 elections. Moreover, President F. W. de Klerk transferred nearly twelve thousand square miles of state land to the exclusive trusteeship of the Zulu king just prior to the 1994 elections. This provided the kingship with an important territorial legal claim. Buthelezi continued to proclaim a commitment to Zulu subnationalism in KwaZulu-Natal province after the elections.49 IFP leaders in KwaZulu-Natal appeared decreasingly interested in holding a

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share of national power, and in the courts they continually pressed for greater provincial autonomy.50 However, the IFP’s augmented regional political power and the new lands bestowed on the Zulu king added to the IFP’s incentive to remain committed to the South African nation-state. Also, even though the IFP dominates the provincial government, popular support for the party is not absolute; the ANC captured 32 percent of the 1994 provincial vote.51 Zulu speakers are now widely dispersed throughout South Africa, and many of them have little or no affiliation with KwaZulu-Natal province. This political diversification and geographic dispersion of the Zulu community weakens the drive for provincial subnationalism.52 Defusing Subnationalism in South Africa The structure of the postapartheid political system also contributed to the declining prospects of uni-ethnic subnationalism in South Africa. The compromises forged during the negotiations gave rise to a proportional-representation-based electoral system whose inclusivistic, quasiconsociational character augmented the likelihood of continued mutual tolerance. The IFP and National Party joined the ANC in a multiparty cabinet after 1994, with Buthelezi named minister of home affairs and de Klerk appointed vice president. In South Africa’s new voting system, any political party receiving at least 5 percent of National Assembly votes is included in the cabinet. In the 1994–1999 period, the twenty-seven-member cabinet included eighteen ministers from the ANC, six from the National Party, and three from the IFP, ensuring coalition rule.53 Furthermore, IFP and ANC officials crafted provincial constitutions that augmented the new provinces’ legislative autonomy.54 In May 1996, the government stipulated that the nine provinces were to be accorded devolutionary powers, including the power to provide services related to agriculture, education, housing, welfare, police protection, traditional authority, and trade. Although revenue from the central government accounts for 96 percent of provincial budgets, provincial revenue raising through gambling taxation and vehicle licensing was decreed legal. Some governments have now borrowed from local banks, providing a measure of independent fiscal capacity.55 The IFP, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, and the National Party, particularly in Western Cape province—as well as some ANC provincial leaders in the remaining seven provinces—have pressed for further provincial rights and an increased distribution of resources to the provinces.56 But they have done so in a way that embraces the

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national political framework and entrenches their political interests within that structure. They have been given a significant stake in the existing political system, dramatically reducing the probability that a provincially based secessionist movement will develop in KwaZuluNatal or elsewhere.57 South Africa’s political system is by no means stable, and some analysts contend that the consociational tenor of the 1994–1999 political system has already proved “illusory.”58 In 1996 the National Party withdrew from the ANC-dominated cabinet due to its lack of influence over government policy, thus abandoning the quasiconsociational arrangement.59 However, Zulu voices favoring a subnationalist solution have increasingly become muted.60 Inkatha’s decreasing political momentum, the country’s economic integration, and the approval of quasidecentralized regions have helped to ensure that pleas for secession appear politically unattractive. Both Afrikaner separatism and Zulu subnationalism are in abeyance, and they may well have run their course.

Conclusion Tigrayan, Afrikaner, and Zulu subnationalism are linked through the fact that they each played a prior role in ruling over a centralized polity. Each of these three movements secured a different political outcome that was, to a great extent, the result of ascriptive beliefs, historical-constructivist factors, the extent of instrumentalist maneuvering, and the overall political competency of each movement. Despite the fact that the Tigrayan uni-ethnic movement initially was based on internal alliances, the Tigrayan political leadership pursued its uni-ethnic vision in a way that did not allow the generation of a collaborative interethnic coalition. It was precisely because this uniethnic movement had precolonial experiences and memories, even if partially constructed, of dominance over a multinational polity that Tigrayans felt historically entitled to restore a macro-level political exclusivity. But exclusivistic political attitudes among the TPLF today make it likely that political conflict will eventually revisit Ethiopia and generate continued challenges for the predominantly Tigrayan rulership. Afrikaner subnationalists could not possibly have hoped to reestablish their prior dominance over South Africa, and Zulu Inkatha mobilizers were forced to contend with a potent and popular multiethnic new government. The integration of most Zulu and Afrikaners

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into the broader, pluralistic nation-state fatally compromised those movements. The fact that the Zulu, Afrikaner, and Tigrayan uni-ethnic movements all failed to forge serious political alliances with neighboring groups helped to diminish their long-term political potency.

Notes 1. The Tutsi of Burundi and Rwanda also fought repeatedly to restore the preeminent political position in those countries that had been bestowed upon them by the Belgians during most of the colonial era. However, unlike that of the Tigrayans, the Tutsi struggle for power in Burundi and Rwanda is not informed by regional logic; rather, it reflects competition with the Hutu for nationstate dominance. Thus, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict does not fit into a subnationalist analysis, which is why I do not discuss it at length here. For an insightful and provocative argument regarding “dual nationalism” in Rwanda, see John F. Clark, “Rwanda: Tragic Land of Dual Nationalisms,” in After Independence: Nationalism in Post-Colonial and Post-Communist States, ed. Lowell W. Barrington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). 2. Alemseged Abbay, Identity Jilted, or Re-Imagining Identity? The Divergent Paths of the Eritrean and Tigrayan Nationalist Struggles (Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1998), 2, 5, 45, 152, 191–92. 3. James C. N. Paul, “Ethnicity and the New Constitutional Orders of Ethiopia and Eritrea,” in Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States, ed. Yash Ghai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 184. 4. Abbay, Identity Jilted, 51. 5. Paul, “Ethnicity and the New Constitutional Orders,” 178. 6. John Young, “The Tigray People’s Liberation Front,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 37. 7. John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 30, 53, 65, 71, 75–76. 8. Young, “Tigray People’s Liberation Front,” 41; Young, Peasant Revolution, 31, 95. 9. There was also some support for an irredentist Tigrayan/Tigrinyan nationalism between Tigray and a part of Eritrea in which Tigrinyans predominate (recall here that Tigrayans of Ethiopia and Tigrinyans of Eritrea are historically and culturally linked). However, this movement dissipated as the interethnic Eritrean subnationalist movement evolved. On this point especially see Abbay, Identity Jilted, 113. 10. Ibid., 197–200. 11. Ibid., 181, 191–192. 12. Young, Peasant Revolution, 31–32; Young, “Tigray People’s Liberation Front,” 40, 50.

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13. Abbay, Identity Jilted, 187, 192–93. 14. Young, Peasant Revolution, 33, 117, 142–143, 172–173, 194; Young, “Tigray People’s Liberation Front,” 43, 51. 15. Young, Peasant Revolution, 165–170; Young, “Tigray People’s Liberation Front,” 47–49. 16. Young, Peasant Revolution, 197–198, 199, 200. 17. John M. Cohen, “Decentralization and ‘Ethnic Federalism’ in Post–Civil War Ethiopia,” in Rebuilding Societies After Civil War, ed. Krishna Kumar (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 138, 142; Edmond Keller, “Remaking the Ethiopian State,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 134. 18. Ibid. 19. Paul, “Ethnicity and the New Constitutional Orders,” 190; Young, Peasant Revolution, 210. 20. Young, Peasant Revolution, 211; Marina Ottaway, “Democratization in Collapsed States,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 239. 21. Mohammed Hassen, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities for Peaceful Democratic Process,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 244, 246; Keller, “Remaking the Ethiopian State,” 137; Ottaway, “Democratization in Collapsed States,” 239. 22. John W. Harbeson, “Is Ethiopia Democratic? A Bureaucratic Authoritarian Regime,” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 4 (1998). 23. Shula Marks, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Nationalism and Ethnicity. Black and White Nationalisms in South Africa: A Comparative Perspective,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 116–117, 121. 24. Ibid., 121. 25. Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, “South Africa: The Opening of the Apartheid Mind,” in The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation. Case Studies of Protracted Ethnic Conflicts, ed. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (London/New York: Routledge, 1993), 244. 26. Heinz Klug, “How the Centre Holds: Managing Claims for Regional and Ethnic Autonomy in a Democratic South Africa,” in Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States, ed. Yash Ghai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 103; Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 205. 27. Kenneth W. Grundy, “South Africa: Transition to Majority Rule, Transformation to Stable Democracy,” in The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa, ed. York Bradshaw and Stephen N. Negwa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 39.

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28. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 206. 29. Adam and Moodley, “South Africa: The Opening,” 247. 30. Grundy, “South Africa: Transition to Majority Rule,” 39. 31. Steven Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” in Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 564. 32. Piet Erasmus, “White Afrikaners’ Search for New Identities,” presentation at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Laval University, Quebec, 17–30 May 2001. 33. Adam and Moodley, “South Africa: The Opening,” 229; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 562, 569. 34. Adam and Moodley, “South Africa: The Opening,” 229; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 562, 569; Heribert Adam and Kanya Adam, “The Politics of Memory in Divided Societies,” Chapter 3 in After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 46. 35. Grundy, “South Africa: Transition to Majority Rule,” 40. 36. “South Africa: Far Right Attacks,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 11 (2002), 15067–15068. 37. Marks, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches,” 119–120; Adam and Adam, “The Politics of Memory,” 46. 38. Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 101. 39. Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 533. 40. Marks, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches,” 108; Gerhard Maré and Georgina Hamilton, An Appetite for Power: Buthelezi’s Inkatha and South Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 42. 41. Daphna Golan, Inventing Shaka: Using History in the Construction of Zulu Nationalism (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 14; Maré and Hamilton, An Appetite for Power, 58, 74–75, 198–213. See also my discussion in Chapter 2 of controversies in the interpretation of Zulu nation building. 42. Maré and Hamilton, An Appetite for Power, 59–60, 88–91; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 542, 544–545; Golan, Inventing Shaka, 12–13. 43. Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 544–545. 44. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 207. 45. Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 104; Timothy D. Sisk, “Electoral System Choice in South Africa: Implications for Intergroup Moderation,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1, no. 2 (1995), 195; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 551. 46. Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 103. 47. Ibid., 107; Gerhard Maré, Ethnicity and Politics in South Africa (London: Zed, 1993), 98, 102. 48. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 208. 49. Larry A. Swatuk, “Remaking the State: Assessing South Africa’s Developmental Agenda,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa,

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ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 218. 50. Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 110–111; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 559. 51. Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 562. 52. Laurence Piper, “Nationalism Without a Nation: The Rise and Fall of Zulu Nationalism in South Africa’s Transition to Democracy, 1975–99,” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 1 (2002), 86–87; Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 101. 53. Sisk, “Electoral System Choice in South Africa,” 198; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 209, 44, 53–54. 54. Swatuk, “Remaking the State,” 213. 55. Grundy, “South Africa. Transition to Majority Rule,” 44–45. 56. Swatuk, “Remaking the State,” 219. 57. Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 574. 58. Ibid., 553. 59. Simon Bekker, “Territoriality and Institutional Change in the New South Africa,” in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 110. 60. Piper, “Nationalism Without a Nation,” 88; Klug, “How the Centre Holds,” 118; Friedman, “Divided in a Special Way,” 562, 569.

10 Back Toward the Future

I

n certain parts of the African continent, particularly in rural areas, what may be termed a retraditionalization of power is occurring that may bear significantly on the further development of subnationalism. Traditional authorities—chiefs, elders, kings, and similar leaders whose source of authority lies in leadership structures that are locally believed to be grounded in historically legitimated processes— rarely play a leading role in subnationalist movements. Those movements that endure tend to reflect an especially wide range of supporting social units, including urban and rural groupings, young and elderly strata, elite mobilizers, students and workers, peasants and artisans, professional politicians, and poets and writers. But traditional leaders often form an additional segment, and they are sometimes a significant part of subnationalist movements’ base of support, especially once those movements grow in size and mobilizational capacity. This was the case most notably among the Oromo, the Tigrayans, the Zulu, the Ovimbundu, the northern Somali, and to some extent the Eritreans. The contemporary retraditionalization of power is based in part on the restoration of kingships that local actors consider to have precolonial legitimacy, or that were established later but have accumulated political legitimacy over time. Kingships are being formally restored in Uganda, Mozambique, Niger, Ghana, Namibia, GuineaBissau, and elsewhere, and a broad variety of traditional leaders are being granted greater recognition in these and other countries. In various parts of the continent, the decline of the central state; questioning of the relevance of Western political role models; and the 213

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perception that communities, especially in rural areas, are increasingly in a position to take charge of their own political affairs have produced a turning back toward older models of local rulership. As the twenty-first century unfolds, this provides a favorable backdrop for the continued expansion of political movements that assert greater regional autonomy. Some already existing movements have promoted the retraditionalization of political power at the local level precisely in order to distance themselves from the central state and to provide their own movements with an additional indigenous source of political legitimacy. A growing number of governments have begun to allow traditional leaders a restorative role while seeking to minimize the extent of their formal empowerment. States such as Uganda, Nigeria, Namibia, Mozambique, Niger, and Guinea-Bissau have sought to confront retraditionalization by formally acknowledging the legitimacy of revivalist movements and by allowing chiefs, headmen, and restored “kings” to hold a new level of authority within the broader state framework. Mozambique’s government, for example, abandoned its prior hostility toward traditional leaders, according them official recognition in 1990 and enabling them to obtain seats on local councils beginning in 1993.1 Village chiefs were also given decisionmaking responsibility over the most locally important policy domains, including land disputes and economic production activities. Niger decided in 1994 to provide Tuareg traditional leaders with greater administrative responsibility specifically in order to dissuade the Tuareg community from rebelling.2 In both Mozambique and Niger, the government’s purpose in recognizing traditional leaders was principally utilitarian, and state leaders persisted in their suspicion and distrust of traditional authorities.3 The fact that the opposition party, Renamo, had treated many local Ndau chiefs with respect and had declared their support for “local traditional rules, social structures and hierarchies” enabled Renamo to obtain popular support in significant portions of rural Mozambique.4 It was precisely with the goal of weakening this base of support that the government began to empower traditional authorities locally. However, the grassroots reality is that village chiefs continue to retain greater political legitimacy than national governments in substantial portions of rural areas, in Mozambique as elsewhere, even with such cooptation-oriented reforms. The result is that government authorities are increasingly convinced that they have no choice but to defer to alternative authority structures over which they have little influence, despite the fact that they cannot ensure or

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predict the direction of the political affiliations and loyalties of those traditional leaders. This was made especially clear in Guinea-Bissau, where the post-1974 national government tended to marginalize chiefly authorities because of their suspected linkage to, or collaboration with, the prior colonial government. State-run committees were established to replace traditional leaders.5 However, in significant parts of the countryside, such as the Cacheu region, local chiefs’ popular support was so great that they were able to usurp the authority of the committees and render most politically and economically significant decisions. By the late 1980s chiefs had moved to restore several Cacheu-region kingships that had been active and well-respected during the precolonial period, and by the early 1990s the national government had decided to allow the legal restoration of these kingships, which now enjoy considerable autonomy.6 In northern Namibia, seven powerful Ovambo-speaking kingships (Ongandjera, Uukwambi, Uukwanyama, Ondonga, Uukolonkadhi, Uukwaluudhi, and Ombalantu) ruled until 1917, when their powers were usurped by South African authorities.7 Popular, if wistful, support for these older leadership structures endured through the seventy-five-year period of South African rule in Namibia. People in the areas of these seven kingships often contrasted the unpopular headmen appointed by the South African authorities with the more popular former kings. After Namibia’s independence in 1990, a political groundswell for the restoration of the former kingships developed, and monarchist pressure groups, especially the Committee for the Restoration of the Kwanyama Kingship, lobbied intensively for government approval of these restorations, while the Uukwaluudhi, Ondonga, and Ongandjera kings simply declared their reinvestitures. Although the national government initially asserted that kingships are inappropriate in a modern nation, by 1996 it had softened its position to avoid state-ethnic disquiet, and it officially recognized the kingship restorations. By 2002, these kings’ popularity was such that Namibian president Sam Nujoma was increasingly relying on their political support. This was especially the case regarding King Weyulu of the Kwanyama and King Kauluma of the Ndonga, each of whom heads an influential population sector in the populous north.8 In the Congo, localized struggles to empower chiefly ruling structures were reinvigorated in the late 1980s and early 1990s as central state power withered in much of the countryside. This coincided with ethnic revival in Upper Kwango and other places, with participants extolling the virtues of Lunda heritage. In 1988, the

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Lunda paramount chief in Katanga anointed the Kahemba village chief with a beaded crown and other items that are strongly symbolic of Lunda political and cultural inheritance. This reinforced ties between the two Lunda leaders in a way that encouraged Lunda remobilization.9 Lunda political activism had played an important role in the emergence of Katangan subnationalism in the 1960s, and Lunda remobilization in the late 1980s and the 1990s would contribute to the Katangan regional disquiet that preceded and followed Mobutu’s downfall. The case of the Casamance region of Senegal is of particular interest in the wake of the revival of Diola traditional political institutions in the 1980s and 1990s and the reinstallment of the Diola monarchy in January 2000.10 Here a certain dialectic pertains between the subnationalist rebellion discussed in Chapter 4 and the intensified reaffirmation of Diola identity. Although they are different movements, their strengthening has proved mutually beneficial. The MFDC-led secession movement has helped to intensify a regionwide delegitimation of Senegalese state authority in the Casamance, and the Diola retraditionalization movement has benefited enormously. At the same time, the new Diola kingship has provided social coherence and a sense of well-being to people whose security was undermined by the rise in local violence. Thus, although the Diola kingship and the MFDC-led secession movement are led by different mobilizing forces, they have strengthened one another in a way that has increasingly marginalized the Senegalese state from Casamancian political affairs. These examples suggest how the retraditionalization of political power in Africa can activate alternative sources of authority that directly or indirectly facilitate the efforts of subnationalists. A synergetic interplay between subnationalism, on the one hand, and the local retraditionalization of power, on the other, makes it increasingly likely that the institutional strengthening of popularly legitimate traditional leadership structures will produce a supportive political environment for the further proliferation of subnationalist movements in coming years. Three countries that represent especially important examples of the retraditionalization of political authority, with strong implications regarding the potential expansion of regionally assertive movements, are Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria. The gap may be relatively narrow between governmental acknowledgment of local-level autonomy for traditional leaders and rural political remobilization with separatist implications. State approval of revivified local chiefships or kingships sets many African governments

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on a new, fragile political path with narrow maneuvering room. The walking of such a political tightrope could lead to the incorporation of harmless symbols and have only a superficial political impact, or it could help lay the groundwork for a serious reassertion of regional autonomy.

Ghana In Ghana, chiefly leadership structures with both precolonial and colonial roots remained politically powerful at the local level throughout the independence period despite multiple authority shifts.11 Ashanti and Anlo institutions had been interconnected during the precolonial period, while each polity retained autonomous control over its respective land area. During the colonial period, Ashanti and Anlo institutions were delinked and became entrenched within specific ethnically defined administrative localities.12 After independence, regionally and district-defined power structures retained a “substantial degree of structural autonomy” vis-à-vis the central state, despite the narrowing of their power domains.13 In Akan and Ewe areas, some chiefs pressed for greater autonomy and periodically flirted with the idea of secession. This especially affected the regions of Ashanti and Brong Ahafo and the Central and Western regions, encompassing a large number of Akan identity groups (Ashanti, Fante, Akwapim, Brong, Akim, Nzema, and others) that comprise some 44 percent of the Ghanaian populace. Ashanti-region chiefs have articulated demands for autonomy on the basis of the purported uniqueness of their culture, in respect of the accomplishments of their precolonial kingdom, and in deference to the fact that they produce a large proportion of Ghana’s cocoa crop.14 The Ewe people centered in the southeast, especially in the Volta region, similarly voice support for separatist movements from time to time. These Ghanaian Ewe had strongly resisted incorporation into the British colonial administration as late as the 1940s; in the 1970s and 1980s the issue not only of secession but also of irredentism was raised by the Togoland Liberation Movement, which lobbied for union with the Ewe of Togo.15 However, these Ashanti and Ewe movements did not represent serious breakaway struggles in part because chiefs in these regions, especially Ashanti, did not consistently back the secessionist efforts, but instead became incorporated into state-society mechanisms of bargaining and exchange. Local political elites and chiefs would

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Upper West

Upper East

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achieve many of their special demands, including participation in high-level government institutions.16 As part of this process, Ashanti diplomatic staff—representatives of Ashanti chiefs who had played important roles in the precolonial Ashanti kingdom—today officially represent those chiefs in relations with the central government and even in diplomatic relations abroad. Seventy percent of Ashanti emissaries interviewed in 1980 indicated that they had led ambassadorial missions either to other regions within Ghana or to other countries on behalf of the Ghanaian national government.17 They felt that they had

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important bargaining power reflecting the high degree of respect accorded them by the Ghanaian central government. This suggests not only partial incorporation into state affairs, but also that substantial political space was being accorded to Ashanti leaders and their envoys. In addition, the Ghanaian state used its accumulation of cash reserves from the international sale of cocoa, timber, minerals, coffee, and other commercial crops to distribute resources utilizing an ethnoregional patron-client logic. Those rural regions where leaders were clamoring for better treatment, such as the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, and Western regions, were provided with development projects and with educational and social investments, including schools, roads, and health clinics, throughout Ghana’s robust income-earning years (the 1960s through the early 1980s).18 This “polyarchical” exchange strategy between state and ethnic leaders kept ethnoregional demands from evolving into major secessionist efforts. However, in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the Ashanti-based National Liberation Movement (NLM) began to assert itself, demanding both more self-rule for Ashanti areas and a greater distributional allocation from the central government. In 1994, the government was sufficiently concerned about chiefs’ rising support for the NLM that it accorded the Ashanti region more administrative autonomy. In the wake of this deal, Northern region chiefs representing seven different ethnic groups began to ask for, and eventually received, substantial fiscal and development allocations.19 These agreements demonstrate the growing political impact not only of traditional authorities but also of the regional movements to which they are linked. The Ghanaian political framework has been rendered more fragile as a consequence of the substantially weakened redistributional mechanism that reflects steadily declining purchase prices for cocoa and other cash crops.20 There is as yet little serious talk of secession, but the independent character of the Ghanaian chieftainship structure in each region has become ever more consolidated, which both reflects and contributes to a substantial rise in popular support for locally specific authority systems. The quest to develop a meaningfully coherent, unified Ghanaian nation-state has been set back to a large extent; it may prove only a matter of time before this process generates more insistent regional movements.

Uganda Uganda presents a compelling contrast to the Ghanaian case in that President Yoweri Museveni approved the reenthronement of traditional

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kings, in large part out of his desire to ensure national political stability. It is crucial to appreciate the historical processes that led to this decision. In Uganda, decades of subnationalist ferment, religious and political strife, and militarized autocracy created a context of intense instability that long preceded Museveni’s installment as president.21 During the colonial period, powerful ethnoregional leadership structures with direct precolonial roots were strengthened, while the British artificially created several smaller kingships. The Buganda kingship, with solid links to its precolonial antecedent, was accorded unusual privileges and considerable autonomy.22 Immediately prior to Uganda’s 1962 independence elections, the traditional Ganda leadership, fearful of losing their privileged position, declared that Buganda would secede from Uganda. However, constitutional negotiators enticed the Ganda to acquiesce by promising autonomy and special status for Buganda within a quasi-federal framework. The western kingdoms of Bunyoro, Toro, and Ankole, along with the very small kingdom of Busoga, were granted nearly as wide a berth of autonomy, despite the fact that the Ankole and Toro kingdoms had been virtually invented by British administrators.23 The resultant political stability proved relatively short-lived. In the early 1960s, parliamentary maneuverings by a variety of opponents of Prime Minister Milton Obote considerably weakened his political power. By 1966, the Ganda king Kabaka Mutesa II, who had been granted the largely titular but symbolically significant post of Ugandan president (Prime Minister Obote ran the country), formed a political alliance with parliamentarian backbenchers who opposed Obote’s rule. This proved a strategic error: Obote then preempted Mutesa, removing the king and his political allies from their government positions and subsequently deciding to rescind the formal autonomy that had been granted to the Buganda kingdom as well as to the aforementioned western kingdoms.24 Buganda reacted by rejecting the authority of the Ugandan national government. The ending of autonomous status for the kingships exacerbated the level of state-ethnic tension. Subnationalism in Buganda now became strengthened, as Ganda elites, bureaucrats, and ordinary people coalesced both politically and culturally. Territorial and ethnic assertion here converged with popular enmity toward Obote, so much so that Obote felt it unsafe to set foot inside Buganda.25 The Bugandan autonomy movement persisted through the Idi Amin and second Obote regimes, serving as potent reminder of the fragility of the political basis on which the integrity of the Ugandan nation-state rested.26

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Meanwhile, long-term economic neglect helped to fuel the generation of separatist movements in the northern and western regions. During the colonial as well as the postcolonial era, the largely rural northern and western regions remained mostly outside the statecentric developmental rubric.27 Frank van Acker uses a district-bydistrict analysis of road-building and electrification projects to convincingly depict the long-term structural economic neglect of the north and west.28 Northern discontent stemming from economic inequity generated uprisings, protests, and demands for autonomy by northern and western region traditional leaders. In combination with Gandan subnationalism, this helped to ensure that Uganda would continue to spiral steadily toward internal fragmentation. The inability of the Ugandan central government to grapple effectively with rural challenges was made especially clear by the rise of the Rwenzururu separatist movement, which sought autonomous rule

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based on traditional leadership structures for the Konjo and Amba peoples. The Konjo and Amba were under the jurisdiction of the Toro kingdom, which was cooperating fully with the Ugandan state. The subnationalists aimed to free themselves of both the kingdom and the nation-state. Tensions led to battles in 1963–1964 between the Konjo and the Amba on the one hand, and Toro and Ugandan army units on the other; the latter effectively suppressed the rebels. However, the Rwenzururu movement reconsolidated over time, and in the wake of the power vacuum left by the collapse of Idi Amin’s regime in 1979, it was again able to pose a serious subnationalist threat.29 The second Obote administration pursued negotiations with Rwenzururu leaders and reached a settlement in 1982 according to which Konjo and Amba elites agreed to abandon outright secession in return for “a degree of local autonomy”; the appointment of Konjo and Amba to administrative posts; and the provision of economic benefits, such as motorized vehicles, shops, and student scholarships, that would be assigned for distribution by the traditional leaders of these two groups.30 The Rwenzururu movement had forced the state to grant power and goods to traditional leaders for the sake of political stability. In reaction to the monarchical restorations of the 1990s, the Rwenzururu movement was revived yet again, this time with its leaders insisting on separatism. De facto Konjo and Amba control over their claimed districts has already been achieved.31 The current Ugandan government originated in the early 1970s when a rebel group called the National Resistance Movement (NRM), composed mostly of Ganda fighters and Banyankole-Bakiga officers, initiated a new interethnic rebellion in southwestern Uganda. Initial intramovement tensions between Ganda and Banyankole were soon mollified as Ganda came to be appointed to commander-level positions and youth from other groups, including Rwandan Tutsi refugees, were incorporated into NRM fighting units. Benefiting from the leadership skills of Yoweri Museveni and from an inclusivistic organizing strategy based on the construction of peasant-staffed local “Resistance Councils” in ever-widening zones, the NRM expanded nationwide and asserted military and de facto political control over much of the Ugandan countryside by the 1980s.32 The NRM’s increasing capacity to outfight central state troops and to include members of different ethnic groups contributed to its rising success, and it captured national power in January 1986. Since then, the NRM government, led by Museveni, has mollified many potential regime opponents by appointing them to government posts as part of a policy of inclusion, while also empowering local-level authorities called local councils—the original resistance councils.33

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However, through the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became clear that popularly supported traditional authorities and other separatist groups, including spiritualists and Christian fundamentalists, could not be easily enticed into participation in the local councils or other state institutions. In many respects, the legacy of ethnoregional autonomy and of special powers being granted to the Ganda king and other traditional leaders during the colonial and early postcolonial periods was particularly evident.34 Moreover, some of the local councils themselves became politically disconnected from state power, having been captured, in effect, by local leaders devoted to their own “ethno-local group.”35 Some of these councils have asserted their autonomy and have enriched themselves by using private militia to carry out illegal tax collections. Museveni reacted to such challenges by pursuing a kingshiprestoration policy, thus politically incorporating traditional leaders into a state-managed but relatively loose quasiconsociational system. This process began in 1993 when President Museveni allowed King Mutebi II to return to Uganda as the newly reinvested Ganda king (“Kabaka”) and assured him of a measure of autonomy.36 Thenceforth, King Mutebi II articulated a vision of dual secular/traditional authority in which respected chiefs would be able to exert a degree of control over their respective areas’ economic resources. This vision surpasses Museveni’s 1995 formalization of a new administrative system in which traditional leaders in Buganda and in Bunyoro, Toro, and Ankole were restored to kingship status and accorded a degree of independent authority.37 The kingships were constitutionally accorded “cultural autonomy,” although no clear boundary demarcated the separation between political and cultural autonomy. The reinstallment of a “traditional parliament” to advise the Kabaka in Buganda opened the door to Ganda monarchical institutions surpassing the local councils in decisionmaking significance. Further contributing to the potency of the Kabaka—and of other kings—is the fact that they are able to derive economic rents first from public lands accorded them by Museveni (who granted 350 square miles to the Kabaka) and second from “voluntary contributions” that villagers are pressured by their peers to provide as gifts to the monarchy.38 The kingship restorations were intended to strengthen Museveni’s ability to manage the Ugandan polity by constructing a wide network of interconnected regional power brokers. However, as in the Ghanaian case discussed above, the historically embedded nature of local and regional authority structures means that traditional authorities cannot be relied on as solid support beams on which to

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construct the government’s rule. In fact, recent tensions reflect the radicalization of monarchists who now insist on complete autonomy and fully independent powers for the Kabaka. At the same time, a proliferation of new claimants to unrecognized kingships in the restive north and west, especially on the part of the Alur and the Teso, signal further instability, and Lango activists are calling for their own autonomous state. Adding to this instability is the fact that two of the four officially restored kingships—Ankole and Toro—have now been effectively rendered moribund by the intensity of popular opposition to those kingships within their respective regions.39 In these ways, the monarchial reinstallments and the president’s attempt to create a stable quasiconsociational political system both reflect and expose the very real limitations to state power and to the integrity of the nation-state. Uganda’s rural regions have repeatedly defied incorporation; they represent elusive redoubts within which the state vainly seeks to fasten its political girders, even when it does so by utilizing relatively loose mechanisms of government control.

Nigeria As in Ghana and Uganda, so too in Nigeria, traditional leaders have wielded growing political power at the local and regional levels despite the frequent regime changes that have occurred at the nation’s political center. This is particularly the case among the northern Hausa-Fulani and the western Yoruba, whose precolonial hierarchical leadership structures were to some extent contained by the British system of indirect rule. Chiefs’ influence was especially apparent during the late colonial and early postcolonial periods, when northern Hausa-Fulani and western Yoruba activists threatened secession. Despite the numerous reconfigurations of the Nigerian polity since that time, the importance of traditional chiefs has increased rather than declined. Today approximately fifty newly installed chiefs are appointed each year by obas (Yoruba leaders) and emirs (Muslim leaders) on a countrywide basis.40 The influence of these authorities is such that a weaving together of traditional and secular authority has occurred: “The remarkable adaptability and resilience of chieftaincy institutions does not merely reflect the essential elements of the politics of institutional transformation, but also is rooted in an interlocking network of political alliances that have consolidated power at the

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regional level.”41 Still, traditional authorities remain constrained by national politicians at the higher end of the political system as well as by ordinary citizens at the lower end. In the latter instance, for example, chiefs and obas in Yoruba areas must be careful not to contravene prevailing community expectations regarding traditional rulers’ roles, or ultimately those rulers will lose popular respect and their authority will wane. Nonetheless, many chiefs, obas, and emirs have proved capable of taking advantage of the existing political framework by creating alliances with secular local political leaders.42 This political interweaving has occurred to such an extent that many regional politicians feel that to govern effectively they need to embrace and even participate in local chieftaincy institutions.43 At the same time, traditional authorities often assume secular roles themselves—for example, establishing businesses, many of which prosper due to chiefs’ political connections.44 One factor that has contributed to this process is the delegitimization of Nigeria’s national-level bureaucracy due to the extent of corrupt fiscal and administrative practices.45 In contrast, the imbrication of traditional authority networks into local political structures has helped to augment the popular legitimacy of local governments,

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as chiefs who are part of local governments tend to be viewed as relatively trustworthy. Meanwhile, the increase in traditional leaders’ influence helped to ensure that the country’s three major ethnoregional fault lines would reemerge with particular visibility, a process that was strongly promoted by the political activism of ethnic entrepreneurs, including a number of traditional authorities. Between 1986 and 1993, these authorities became key players in newly assertive ethnoregional political movements, such as the Eastern Solidarity Group, formed in 1987 by Igbo leaders to advance eastern interests. The same year witnessed the establishment of the northern-based Committee of Elders, uniting Hausa-Fulani emirs and political party figures from ten northern states “to impress on the military authorities that they [the emirs] retain political influence in the emirate states.” In 1988, prominent Yoruba obas and politicians responded by creating the Yoruba Progressive Organization “to forge a sense of unity among major political blocs in the southern region” and to develop “an effective strategy that would advance Yoruba interests.”46 Thus, traditional authorities have utilized their partial integration into the country’s behind-the-scenes political nexus at the local and state levels as a base for consolidating panregional uni-ethnic movements in the three major ethnoregions. To be sure, these traditional leadership structures have not preempted national-level institutions; national political leaders have worked hard to try to co-opt traditional authorities into government-dominated political relationships. Still, politicians increasingly perceive it essential to legitimize their authority by relying in part on—and occasionally deferring to—obas, emirs, and chiefs.47 In this process, traditional authorities have wielded a strong influence at the national level, in particular during the Buhari and Babangida military regimes and during the constitutional debates of 1994–1995, while “retaining deep relevance in local communities” and functioning as “parallel” political authorities.48 Muhammed Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida both felt that they ought to allow traditional rulers a more visible and influential role in view of the massive popular perception that national politicians are incompetent and corrupt.49 To some extent, the multiplicity of Nigerian military governments and the proliferation of states (thirty-six by 1996) had encouraged peaceful interethnic relations.50 It was also the case that Nigeria’s 1979 constitution and all subsequent constitutions favored inclusivistic, proportional policies that emphasized balanced appointments and equitable redistributive mechanisms.51 However, the Biafran war left

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a sense of unease that would prove enduring, despite the extensive integration of all Nigerians into diffuse marketing networks.52 In a revealing study of the impact of state redistricting in Nigeria, R. T. Akinyele shows that each successive wave of state proliferation generated greater demand for ethnic minority self-rulership, rather than leading to ethnopolitical dissipation. The 1963 creation of the Midwest Region galvanized separatist demands there; subsequently, the 1967 establishment of a twelve-state national framework by President Yakubu Gowon—though it appeased Yoruba politicians—generated political and economic demands from small ethnic minorities. Some of the new states were dominated by particular ethnic groups— for example, the Ijaw in Rivers state, the Kanuri in North Eastern state, and the Yoruba in Kwara state; this apparent correspondence between ethnic identity and statehood strongly encouraged dozens of other ethnic minorities to demand additional new states.53 By 1976, twenty-eight major proposals for new states had been presented to the federal government, fourteen of which were ethnically specific appeals. Additional state redivisions in 1990 and 1996 injected rising instability and insecurity into the ethnoregional dynamic, with minority groups as well as the three dominant groups becoming increasingly “sensitized” to the link between statehood and “group rights.”54 It should be noted, however, that in both the 1993 and the 1999 elections, a Yoruba presidential candidate obtained sufficient numbers of votes from Hausa-Fulani and Igbo to claim popular victory.55 This is consistent with the findings of survey research conducted in Nigeria’s northern border areas, which indicates that Hausa demonstrate greater affinity to Nigerians from other groups than to their ethnic group comembers located in the neighboring nation of Niger.56 Nonetheless, other indicators suggest that loyalty to the Nigerian nation-state is not so firmly implanted and that the 1987–1988 formation of ethnoregional political associations by traditional leaders in the north, west, and east is indicative of serious subnationalist activism.57 Researchers suggest that many Nigerians remain potentially mobilizable as ethnocorporate groupings, a finding that helps to explain the enduring potency of traditional authorities.58 John Paden suggests that Nigeria’s political evolution represents the consolidation of six separate “geo-cultural zones.” These include the southeast (Igbo), midwest (minorities), southwest (Yoruba), the northern Hausa-Fulani emirate states; the northern states (especially Borno) linked to the Bornu caliphate and former Bornu kingdom; and the southern minority areas. The northern emirates are defined by the

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inheritance of a Muslim-based hierarchy centered in the Hausaspeaking Sokoto caliphate. The Bornu caliphate, which is primarily Kanuri-speaking, similarly reflects an Islamic hierarchical tradition but has a long history of rivalry with Sokoto. The Yoruba of the southwest carved out their own political culture based on a shared cosmological framework, with political rulership in lineage-based councils symbolically headed by obas. The middle-belt minorities reflect a mix of political traditions, including both relatively hierarchical and relatively segmentary societies, but they all share a history of resistance against Islamic and northern overrule. Ethnic minorities within the southern states reflect a wide range of traditional values but tend to ally with northerners to avoid domination by the Igbo or Yoruba,59 as we saw in the Biafran conflict. The mounting popular influence of traditional authorities and the increasing significance of the geocultural zones—or, as we have been calling them, ethnoregional areas—was dramatized in 1995 when President Sani Abacha proposed a fourth layer of Nigerian government, in addition to the federal, state, and local, that would be based explicitly on a confederal ethnogeographic logic. This represented an overt recognition of federal politicians’ decreasing popularity vis-àvis traditional authorities and reflected a new mandate that national politicians proactively address the ethnoregional realpolitik.60 Meanwhile, subnationalist mobilization has been manifested by growing assertiveness on the part of activist groups among the Yoruba, the southern minorities, and the middle-belt minorities, as well as by a hardening of independent political positions on the part of the Bornu and Sokoto caliphates. The annulment of the 1993 elections and subsequent installation of a northern military clique “reinforced the historic sense in the Yoruba areas of being excluded from political power,” which in turn fueled “pan-Yoruba conferences” and secessionist speculation.61 In the following year, 1994, Yoruba militants established the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), a radical separatist group. 62 OPCinstigated violence surged in the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium and included attacks on Hausa-Fulani and Igbo in Lagos that led to several hundred deaths.63 The OPC is especially popular with impoverished Yoruba urban residents, who often suspect that their plight reflects the fact that the government’s economic policies favor northerners. By 2000, this Yoruba movement had opened 2,786 offices and was attracting a rapidly increasing number of activists, especially youth, and had produced its own folk hero, Gani Adams, who successfully eluded capture by police. 64 Prominent

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Yoruba elders are serving to reconcile internal OPC factions, and traditional Yoruba obas are defending OPC activists against federal government criticism, as are Yoruba state governors. OPC leaders insist on full autonomy for Yoruba states and have indicated that if this is not granted, “the organisation will declare independence.”65 Meanwhile, although many Igbo voted for Yoruba presidential candidates Mashood Abiola in 1993 and Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, other Igbo decided to pursue a quest for political autonomy in parts of the east.66 By the early 2000s, the new Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra was campaigning for the creation of a separate Igbo state. Despite the arrest of several dozen Igbo separatists in February 2001, the movement appears to be gaining momentum among a new generation of Igbo youth.67 The 1995 presidential proposal to move toward a quasiconsociational framework represented an effort to reduce the likelihood that these types of subnationalist groups would mobilize support. However, Abacha’s proposal itself generated serious concerns. Most notably, a leading group of northern traditional authorities, the Northern Elders Forum, expressed concern about which region would be allocated the top national political posts in such an arrangement.68 The Arewa People’s Congress was subsequently created to provide further political coherence to Hausa-Fulani activism and to “safeguard northern interests.”69 Moreover, beginning in 1999, HausaFulani authorities implemented regional policies in five northern states aimed at enforcing strict Shari’a Muslim codes of behavior. 70 These authorities have thus stridently asserted their own power in a way that politically and socially isolates Hausa-Fulani northerners from the rest of Nigeria. Such policies have generated a wave of proShari’a violence in northern cities such as Kaduna that has resulted in the killing of more than four hundred people, mostly Igbo and Yoruba. The widely reported rioting in the north in November 2002 by Muslim hard-liners protesting Nigeria’s plan to host the Miss World beauty contest—which left dozens of people killed and hundreds wounded—was one manifestation of the Islamic movement’s intensity.71 The growing seriousness of this regionally specific movement gives added impetus to Igbo and Yoruba separatist movements in the south. It is evident that in view of this revival of subnationalism in Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo areas, Nigerian state leaders now recognize that “the spectre of partition hangs overhead” and that the “central question in Nigerian political life continues to be national unity.”72 As Minabere Ibelema suggests, members of each of Nigeria’s

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three principal groups are now convinced that they are unfairly and profoundly marginalized from the reins of national power.73 On the basis of his review of the writings and statements of leading Nigerian journalists, analysts, and scholars, Rotimi T. Suberu concludes that even a new confederal system may not forestall Nigeria’s eventual dissolution.74 Such an eventuality is now being widely discussed in the Nigerian press, with the Lagos Post Express, for example, editorializing that it is time to “split the damn country called Nigeria into three. Let the Hausa go and worship their God the way they deem fit. Allow the Yoruba to actualise their ambition of self-determination, while the Igbo from all indications would be only too glad to opt out of a union which has neglected and marginalised them.”75 Although the 1999 election of popular and respected Yoruba president Olusegun Obasanjo initially appeared to serve as at least a temporary political palliative to the groundswell of subnationalist mobilization in Nigeria, growing separatist movements suggest that major structural changes may well be in the offing. It is certainly the case that ethnoregional opposition to domination by the political center recrystallized during the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium and that traditional leaders played a major role in this process. In this regard, chiefs, obas, and emirs may well hold the keys to Nigeria’s future as a nation-state.

Conclusion In Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, traditional leaders with popular appeal played key mobilizational roles in the expansion of locally and regionally embedded power structures. In a context of widespread state dysfunction, chiefs, elders, and kings helped to create an enabling political environment for the intensification of regionally based defiance, the expansion of subnationalism, and the potential reshaping of national polities. A number of governments, including those of Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger, reacted to the challenge of retraditionalization by seeking to incorporate respected authorities within state-approved legal or administrative frameworks. But this is a fragile, insecure incorporation, with substantial room for maneuver and for autonomy strengthening on the part of local leaders. The restoration of traditional kingships could well provide a basis for the emergence of alternative, independent power networks. Ultimately, the deepening of traditional authority

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creates a context that is increasingly favorable to the mobilization of autonomy-seeking movements. As this occurs, the physiognomy of the existing nation-state system in Africa may be severely challenged.

Notes 1. Fernando Florençio, “Ndau Traditional Authorities and the Local State in Central Mozambique,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Laval University, Quebec, 27–30 May 2001; M. Anne Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence to the Millennium,” in The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa, ed. York Bradshaw and Stephen N. Ndegwa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 205–206. 2. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), 55. 3. Ibid.; M. Anne Pitcher, “Mozambique from Independence,” 205–206. 4. Jessica Schafer, “Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?” African Affairs 100 (2001), 232. 5. Joshua B. Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility: Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003). 6. Clara Carvalho, “Ritos de poder e a recriação da tradição: Os régulos manjaco da Guiné-Bissau,” Ph.D. diss., Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon, 1998. 7. These seven Ovambo-speaking groups collectively make up nearly half the Namibian populace. Joshua Bernard Forrest, “Ethnic-State Political Relations in Post-Apartheid Namibia,” The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 32, no. 3 (1994), 316–318. 8. “Namibia: President’s Change of Heart,” Africa Research Bulletin 39, no. 12 (2002), 15119. 9. Filip de Boeck, “Postcolonialism, Power, and Identity: Local and Global Perspectives from Zaire,” Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 85–86. 10. Jordi Tomàs i Guilera, “Le roi d’Oussouye et la reprise de la tradition joola: Une troisième voie?” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, 31 May 2002. 11. Naomi Chazan, Managing Political Recession: An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics, 1969–1982 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 87–91, 60–65. 12. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent, “Ethnicity in Ghana: A Comparative Perspective,” in Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention, ed. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (London: Macmillan, 2000), 14, 18. 13. Chazan, Managing Political Recession, 87–91, 60–65. 14. E. Gyimah-Boadi and Cyril Daddieh, “Economic Reform and Political Liberalization in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire: A Preliminary Assessment of

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Implications for Nation Building,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 126–128. 15. Paul Nugent, “‘A Few Lesser Peoples’: The Central Togo Minorities and Their Ewe Neighbors,” in Ethnicity in Ghana. The Limits of Invention, ed. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (London: Macmillan, 2000), 166, 169; Gyimah-Boadi and Daddieh, “Economic Reform,” 126–128. Ewe irredentism finds its origins in the British-conducted plebiscite of 1956, in which 77 percent of Ewe-dominated southern British Togoland voted against union with Ghana, but the British decided nonetheless to proceed with this union because 58 percent of British Togoland as a whole (taking into account the 81 percent pro-union vote in the north) had voted in favor. See Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner), 21. 16. Gyimah-Boadi and Daddieh, “Economic Reform,” 128. 17. Joseph K. Adjaye, Diplomacy and Diplomats in Nineteenth-Century Asante (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996), 69, 70. 18. Gyimah-Boadi and Daddieh, “Economic Reform,” 128–129; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 81. 19. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 30, 90, 95. 20. Gyimah-Boadi and Daddieh, “Economic Reform,” 128, 141, 146. 21. Gilbert M. Khadiagala, “State Collapse and Reconstruction in Uganda,” in Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 38; Raymond W. Copson, Africa’s Wars and Prospects for Peace (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 47–48. 22. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 227. 23. Frank van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform: A Case of Ugandan Exceptionalism?” in Politics of Identity and Economics of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region, ed. Ruddy Doom and Jan Gorus (Brussels: VUB University Press, 2000), 165; Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 68. 24. Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 150, 265. 25. Ibid., 264–266. 26. van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 152. 27. Khadiagala, “State Collapse,” 36. 28. van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 151. 29. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 90. 30. Ibid. 31. van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 165. 32. Pascal Ngoga, “Uganda: The National Resistance Army,” in African Guerrillas, ed. Christopher Clapham (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 100, 102, 104–105. 33. Khadiagala, “State Collapse,” 39; van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 162. 34. Heike Behrend, “War in Northern Uganda,” in African Guerrillas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 35. van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 162.

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36. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 177–178. 37. van Acker, “Ethnicity and Institutional Reform,” 163. 38. Ibid., 166–167. 39. Ibid., 165–167. 40. Oladimeji Aborisade and Robert Mundt, Politics in Nigeria (New York: Longman, n.d. [1999]), 136. 41. Olufemi Vaughan, “Traditional Rulers and the Dilemma of Democratic Transitions in Nigeria,” in Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, ed. Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 430, 416; Olufemi Vaughan, Nigerian Chiefs: Traditional Power in Modern Politics (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2000), 131–135, 212. 42. Vaughan, “Traditional Rulers,” 417. 43. Vaughan, Nigerian Chiefs, 176. 44. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 134–135. 45. Vaughan, “Traditional Rulers,” 416, 427. 46. Ibid., 421, 422. 47. Vaughan, Nigerian Chiefs, 200, 208–209, 136–137, 154, 215–216. 48. Vaughan, “Traditional Rulers,” 427. 49. Vaughan, Nigerian Chiefs, 202–203. 50. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 613. 51. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 73. 52. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 61, 64. 53. R. T. Akinyele, “States Creation in Nigeria: The Willink Report in Retrospect,” African Studies Review 39, no. 2 (1996), 83, 85. 54. Ibid., 83. 55. In 1993, Abiola won the majority of votes in nine of sixteen northern states, including Kano and Kaduna, traditional Hausa-Fulani heartlands. Larry Diamond, “Nigeria: The Uncivic Society and the Descent into Praetorianism,” in Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, 2nd edition, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 458; John N. Paden, “Nigerian Unity and the Tensions of Democracy: Geo-Cultural Zones and North-South Legacies,” in Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, ed. Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 257. 56. William F. S. Miles, Hausaland Divided: Colonialism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994); William F. S. Miles and David A. Rochefort, “Nationalism Versus Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 2 (1991): 393–403. 57. Aborisade and Mundt, Politics in Nigeria, 74. 58. Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict, 75; Diamond, “Nigeria: The Uncivic Society,” 467–468, 474; Julius O. Ihonvbere, “Militarization and Democratization: Nigeria’s Stalled March to Democracy,” in State Building

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and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 103; Marina Ottaway, “Nation Building and State Disintegration,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 92. 59. Paden, “Nigerian Unity,” 244, 246–247, 248. 60. Ibid., 246; Vaughan, “Traditional Rulers,” 416–426. 61. Paden, “Nigerian Unity,” 248–250, 260. 62. R. T. Akinyele, “Ethnic Militancy and National Stability in Nigeria: A Case Study of The Oodua People’s Congress,” African Affairs 100, no. 401 (2001), 625. 63. Akinyele, “Ethnic Militancy,” 626–629; “Nigerian Government Outlaws Radical Group,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, 20 October 2000, available at www.sn.apc.org/wmail; “Ethnic Tensions Rise in Nigeria,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, 11 February 2000, available at www.sn.apc.org/wmail. 64. Akinyele, “Ethnic Militancy,” 626, 629, 638. 65. “Ethnic Tensions Rise in Nigeria.” 66. Paden, “Nigerian Unity,” 257–258. 67. Barnaby Phillips, “Nigerian Police Arrest Igbo Separatist,” BBC World Service, 8 February 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ africa/1160765.stm. 68. Paden, “Nigerian Unity,” 258. 69. “Ethnic Tensions Rise in Nigeria.” 70. Minabere Ibelema, “Nigeria: The Politics of Marginalization,” Current History, May 2000. 71. “Miss World Leaves Nigeria,” available at http://www.cnn.com/ WORLD/Africa/11/22/Nigeria.missworld/index.html.72. Ibelema, “Nigeria: The Politics of Marginalization.” 72. Paden, “Nigerian Unity,” 262, 260. 73. Ibelema, “Nigeria.” 74. Rotimi T. Suberu, “Federalism, Ethnicity and Regionalism in Nigeria,” in Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria, ed. Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 358; Rotimi Suberu, “Integration and Disintegration in the Nigerian Federation,” in Regionalisation in Africa. Integration & Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 97. 75. “One Nigeria?” Lagos Post Express (Nigerian daily), 10 March 2001.

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egional political behavior in Africa has been strongly motivated by ascriptive adhesion, instrumentalist leadership, state intervention, and materialistic motives. The impact of state-constructed ethnic divisiveness has ensured that internecine conflict remains a central part of the ebb and flow of subnationalism. Consistent with a constructivist analytical perspective, postcolonial central state interventions of various kinds have proved crucial to the provocation of the movements discussed in this study, although in some cases state action has served as a significant deterrent to panregional movement formation. Despite considerable intergroup and interlineage cooperation, it is evident that many subnationalist movements continue to suffer from some degree of instrumentalist leadership manipulation and zero-sum infighting. While movements are often harmed by such behavior, some movements were able to mobilize large numbers of regional inhabitants despite the fact that leaders were acting more in their own personal and political interests than in those of the region. Even in cases, such as those of UNITA in Angola and the Caprivi secession in Namibia, where instrumentalist leadership was the single most important element in a movement’s emergence, other elements, including state intervention, ascriptive adherence, and economic context, also proved important. In most subnationalist movements, an ascriptive attachment to core community-oriented social frameworks is eventually combined with cooperative, coalition-oriented political behavior. The persistent effort by some subnationalist leaders and by ordinary villagers to 235

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create an inclusivistic, intercommunity or interethnic foundation for political activism while continually emphasizing local autonomy and corporate ascription is an important aspect of movement mobilization. Security interests also often significantly inform the ascriptive motivations of participant identity groups. Virtually all of the movements discussed here reflect a perceived link with precolonial polities and thus suggest a broad effort to reprioritize an indigenous African sense of legitimacy in regard to local and regional political authority. The link between precolonial and postcolonial political communities is often indirect at best; some autonomy-seeking movements emerged that bear no historical link to a precolonial polity. However, in a number of regions, there are clear cultural markers and social and political practices that tie a community to precolonial polities. In these cases, ascriptive conviction coincides with lived social history, specific political experiences that generated enduring community-based social roots. Most territory-wide rebellions reflected a shared experience of long-term macroeconomic deprivation or inequity vis-à-vis other regions. In some cases central states’ economic inattention was at least in part a consequence of logistical and transportation difficulties that prevented the implementation of development programs in peripheral territories. In most cases, however, the relative lack of development could be visibly counterposed by regional residents to high levels of state-generated investment in regions that were also not in close proximity to the capital but were favored politically. Moreover, economic deprivation often coincided with political repression (for example, in Oromia, Eritrea, Casamance, and western Cameroon), a fact that added to a regional population’s sense of exploitation. Where the extraction of precious natural resources (minerals from Katanga and Kasai and oil from southern Sudan, eastern Nigeria, northwestern Cameroon, and Angola’s Cabinda) coincided with a state’s inattention to regional economic decay, the resultant panterritorial popular outrage served as especially potent mobilizing fuel. The confluence of state intervention, instrumentalist leadership, ascriptive adherence, and materialistic interests that serve to stimulate subnationalist risings makes clear the complex and multifaceted character of ethnopolitical analysis. Jean-Loup Amselle’s diatribe against the very idea of ethnicity, however, offers an overly intellectualized version of deconstructivist inquiry, and it provides a poor guide for appreciating the recent rise of subnationalism.1 Africanists have spent nearly half a century negating the racist theories that had been set

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forth by colonialists to justify ethnically charged divide-and-rule tactics, such as the notion that ethnic communities are relatively smallscale and unchanging, or “tribalistic.” This mythology has been convincingly dispelled.2 Ethnoregional studies would be better served by a balanced approach, one that is less concerned with anachronistic exchanges with colonialist administrators than with the continuing influence of ethnic politics within a multifactoral context, and one that takes cognizance of the alliance-building characteristics of successful subnationalist movements. It is also important to appreciate the particularistic reasons why regionally assertive movements in Africa began to proliferate and to enjoy greater success in recent years. One reason is that fluctuations in the international state system have provided a wider berth within which subnationalist movements can maneuver. To an even greater degree, the growing fragility of state infrastructures has rendered central state control over peripheral rural regions increasingly problematic. Improvements in the organizational capacity of regional movements and their greater attention to the level of social and cultural integration into and “fit” within local societies have also been crucial to movement expansion. In some cases, the recent retraditionalization of political power has contributed to this synchronization between movements and their social context. Finally, to a gradually increasing extent, the subtextual influence of a history of alliance making is providing a central motif in the expansion of some panterritorial movements. Alliance building has additional implications regarding historical transmission, political culture, and the potential reconstruction of African polities. But first it is important to ask: When is it possible to consider a subnationalist movement to have proven successful?

Evaluating Subnationalist Success It would be overly simplistic to suggest that subnationalist movements ought to be considered successful only in cases of outright secession. A regionally assertive movement can be considered partially successful if it produces two or more of the following results: (a) it endures and expands for a considerable length of time or wields a significant political impact on state-regional relations; (b) it repeatedly demonstrates substantial organizational quality, indicated by internal coordination, technical skill, and leadership ability; (c) it galvanizes widespread backing from localities and groups throughout

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the region; or (d) it carves out a significant sphere of de facto regional autonomy. Alternatively, we can measure subnationalist success according to whether a movement achieves its stated goals. The problem here, however, is that over time these goals may change; this occurred most dramatically in the case of the Tigrayan movement, which shifted its goal from territorial secession to conquest of all of Ethiopia. To a lesser degree, changes in movement aims have occurred several times in southern Sudan and Casamance, where leaders sometimes insist on full secession but at other times imply that greater autonomy would be sufficient. Movement aims may shift with leadership changes or with altered national or international circumstances, and in a number of cases, including those of Katanga, Casamance, and UNITA in Angola, leaders have articulated a clear statement regarding full autonomy to a local audience and an equally clear statement regarding negotiated autonomy to an international audience. Thus, it seems more helpful to judge movements’ relative success in terms of their durability and impact, organizational strength, regional popularity, and achievement of a degree of autonomous control. The degree of success may shift significantly from one time period to the next. This is because subnationalism becomes mobilized not through fixed events, but through movements that are involved in fluid power relationships. Employment of the four criteria of success, then, does not allow for tightly categorized appraisals. Given this relative fluidity, we should be able to consider a movement partially successful if it fulfills two of the four requirements; if a movement satisfies at least three out of the four criteria, we can consider it successful overall. The cultural-mosaic movements in Casamance and southern Sudan achieved overall success. These movements proved durable and wielded an enormous political impact while carving out parcels of movement-controlled territory. Their performance in the organization-quality category was not as clear-cut. The MFDC in Casamance subdivided into two factions, and the SPLM was challenged by breakaway rebel fronts. Both movements, however, demonstrated enough organizational competency to be considered successful in this regard. Finally, although the SPLM’s level of regional support was questionable; the MFDC’s level of popular support was relatively high. Overall, both movements may be considered successful, the SPLF in three categories and the MFDC in four. The movements that reflect the entrenchment of a historical tradition and culture of regional resistance have demonstrated persistence but also radically changing levels of success over time. CONAKAT

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in Katanga in the late 1950s and early 1960s was successful in three of four categories: organization, support, and autonomy. It was less impressive in terms of endurance, but it wielded an important impact and was successful overall. Secession in Kasai in the early 1960s appeared initially successful regarding organization, support, and autonomy, but it later faltered in those same three areas as well as in endurance. The contemporary rebel movements in Katanga, Kasai, and elsewhere in eastern Congo are dispersed and fluctuating, but they are clearly wielding an important political impact. The movements that achieved the secession of Eritrea and Somaliland were highly successful on all four measurements. The movements that rebelled alone, on the other hand, showed substantial variation. The Biafran struggle nearly succeeded in breaking apart the Nigerian nation-state and provoked repeated waves of federal restructuring. Its 1967 defeat should not lead us to assume that it had no long-lasting political impact. The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has not yet been able to wield as great a political impact as the Biafran movement did, but it has proved enduring. Both movements achieved high levels of popular support and demonstrated impressive organizational quality. Biafra held considerable territory; the OLF has been less impressive in this respect. The Ogoni enjoyed success in regard to movement longevity and organizational ability, but were not impressive regarding internal support and political impact. In sum, two of the three “rebelling alone” movements may be considered successful overall. UNITA and the Caprivian insurgency, which overwhelmingly reflected instrumentalist manipulation, had contrasting levels of success. Despite its failure to ally with other groups, UNITA did succeed in mobilizing Ovimbundu throughout the highlands, and it won the support of a wide array of regional participants. It also controlled enormous territorial areas and demonstrated impressive organizational qualities, and it endured for four decades. The Caprivian Mafwe insurgency, on the other hand, was a relatively brief regional struggle that did not achieve success in terms of any of our four measurements. The success of movements that reflect a high degree of instrumentalist manipulation is highly contingent on the instrumentalist skill of the movement leader, in addition to other contextual factors. Finally, movements seeking to win back some measure of previously held political power displayed mixed results. The Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front must be accorded high marks in all four analytic categories. In the case of the Zulu Inkatha movement, Buthelezi did succeed in constructing a potent organizational and

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military force, and Inkatha did achieve an impressive degree of control over part of KwaZulu-Natal, but political disunity in that region, with many Zulu supporting the ANC, proved detrimental to Zulu subnationalism. Thus, this movement was only partially successful. Afrikaner separatists became increasingly marginalized within their own community as ethnic cohorts turned toward a pragmatic embrace of the South African nation-state, and in regard to the other three measurements as well, success eluded the Afrikaner separatists. The success of movements is relative, and it varies considerably over time. Sometimes the appearance that a movement has collapsed or failed in regard to one or more measures persuades observers to falsely assume that it has failed permanently and in every respect. The question of movement causation is pertinent here. If the four overall causative variables—state intervention, ascriptive adherence, instrumentalist leadership, and economic inequities—remain applicable to a given regional context, then subnationalist rebellions may recur. This recurrence may come in the form of a new movement, as it did in Katanga in the 1990s, or in the form of a significantly transformed movement, as in the case of the southern Sudan movement, which has changed repeatedly in many respects. Many observers assumed that the 1970 defeat of Biafra and subsequent federal and electoral reforms would lead to the demise of Eastern Region subnationalism in Nigeria, but new separate regionalist movements have recently garnered strong support in the east, as well as in the west and the north. In other instances as well, military defeat, the cessation of conflict, the forging of a political agreement, or the holding of nationwide elections had led observers to assume that a regionally assertive movement had been stifled, but the rekindling of subnationalist fervor in later decades demonstrated that only a temporary halt in the march of territorial mobilization had been achieved. Thus, evaluating movement success reveals a great deal about the comparability of subnationalist movements at a given time, but success should not be judged too rigidly; nor should we focus on evaluation without also considering long-term underlying issues regarding alliance building, political culture, and political change.

Alliance Building The movements that achieved at least partial success were, in most cases, characterized by the forging of alliances among disparate factional, intraethnic, or interethnic groupings. In Katanga, CONAKAT

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and subsequent movements were based, to a considerable degree, on Lunda alliances with a multiethnic contingent of regional minority ethnic groups, especially Bayeke. Repeatedly through the postcolonial period, a diverse range of supporters was mobilized in Katanga region, creating potent rebel organizations that seriously challenged the framework of central state predominance over time. In the 1990s, despite extensive fighting among new uni-ethnic political forces, regional autonomy was augmented in much of eastern Congo. This reflected post-Mobutu nation-state infrastructural breakdown and was also the result of the mobilizational efforts of a number of interethnic coalitions. In southern Sudan ordinary Dinka and Nuer peasants and traditional leaders have made concerted efforts toward multiethnic southern rebel collaboration, and they helped push the central rebel groups to finalize a compact in 2002. Uni-ethnic movements in Biafra, Oromia, Tigray, and the Ovimbundu highlands were able to overcome intragroup divisions. Igbo success at internal unification was impressive despite the fact that inadequate alliance building with minority ethnic groups proved ultimately deleterious; Oromia’s intraethnic cooperation among moieties and age-sets has been extraordinary, even though this has not been matched by its ability to confront the Ethiopian military. Tigrayan subnationalism was initially built through a tedious forging of internal linkages among Tigrayan regional elites, factions, communities, and lineages. UNITA’s gradual construction of alliances among disparate Ovimbundu localities in the Angolan highlands was critical to the movement’s endurance. In other instances of uni-ethnic regional mobilization, neither intraethnic nor interethnic alliance building was pursued. In Caprivi, the inability of Mafwe activists to attract Basubia allies within their own region obviated their subnationalist potential. The Ogoni movement’s failure to incorporate traditional leaders or to reach out sufficiently to neighboring ethnic minorities has lessened its impact. Parallels may be drawn here with subnationalism in northern Congo, which similarly suffered from inadequate alliance creation with ethnic minorities, and with the Anyi of Côte d’Ivoire, a subgroup of the Akan people who at one time managed to elude Ivoirian state incorporation and who embarked on brief but unsuccessful secessionist movements in 1959 and 1969. 3 These cases underline the fact that where uni-ethnic movements share territorial space with other groups, both intragroup unity and interethnic alliance building are essential to long-term movement expansion.4 Subnationalist movements that began as fragmented uni-ethnic risings but demonstrated the ability to improve their intragroup

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coordination while expanding their long-term alliance building efforts include those in Casamance, Eritrea, and Somaliland. In these instances, subnationalist movements were initiated by an ethnic core inspired by grievances that reflected particular state-regional tensions. As each secession movement grew, this ethnic core, at both the leadership and popular levels, broadened to include other identity groups sharing regionally specific grievances. To a large extent, this broadening process reflected diplomatic adroitness on the part of autonomyseeking leaders and balanced an emphasis on ethnic-identity mobilization with a simultaneous articulation of panregional solidarity. To be sure, this strategic alliance making with external actors is not determinative. Not all uni-ethnic groups that fail to branch out into wider panregional interethnic coalitions end up disintegrating. The Oromo, Tigrayan, Ovimbundu-based UNITA, and Inkatha Zulu movements proved to be potent and durable, and they widened their respective degrees of regional autonomy and wielded a significant impact on national politics. They did so, at least in part, by focusing on internal unity—reaching across a wide range of different lineages, spatially separated localities, traditional leaderships, political competitors, and economic strata—and by organizing coherent, coordinated panregional movements.5 Still, most uni-ethnic movements achieve a greater degree of political success when they create alliances with groups or organizations outside their own ethnic rubric. As peasant revolutions have historically proved most likely to succeed when peasant rebels ally with political actors operating out of other social-class frameworks,6 so too with regard to subnationalism: interethnic alliance building represents a central strand of subnationalist success. This provides support for Richard Werbner’s argument that in the contemporary period the African tradition of “political hybridity” assumed the form of cooperation among “unlike political actors” in the service of common purposes.7 The extent of interethnic alliance formation varies enormously according to specific circumstances in contemporary Africa; where it does occur, the chances of autonomy-broadening success increase significantly. The trajectory toward intergroup cooperation is by no means assured; because of the realities of zero-sum competition and ethnically politicized violence, the tradition of interethnic alliance making that generally characterized precolonial polities has not made a smooth transition into the postcolonial period. Westernization, capitalist market relations, and colonialism have imparted new priorities—including some ethnic leaders’ individualized wealth accretion, embrace of zero-sum violence, abandonment of social responsibilities,

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and delinkage from locally grounded support bases. Some of the autonomy-seeking movements discussed in this study were often characterized by internal factionalism, intramovement strife, personal power seeking, and leadership self-interest. Once unleashed, violence emanating out of such strife has the potential to degenerate into an anarchic spiral in which youth become enmeshed in dehumanized ethnic passion driven by political instrumentalists. Children who have seen their own parents killed often develop a heightened awareness of their own ethnic identity, but an awareness that is geared toward violent reprisal.8 The case of ethnicized violence between Nuer and Dinka young men in southern Sudan and among uni-ethnic forces in North and South Kivu epitomizes this cycle and clearly threatens the potential viability of subnationalist efforts. However, alliance building, inclusivity, and intergroup negotiation represent a gradually growing aspect of regional political struggle, even if this is not universally the case. Contemporary examples of interethnic pact making and cooperation among leaders from the same or different groups at the regional level is taking shape in various parts of eastern, central, southern, and western Africa. They provide a possible basis for a new, Africanized form of political change with historicized, dynamic cultural roots.

Culture and Values The dual character of successful subnationalist movements as encompassing actors committed to localistic or ethnic autonomy within a framework of a panterritorial coalition has broad implications for political culture, historical linkage, and the future of Africa. In Africa as elsewhere, political culture is reactive and mutable, reflecting shifting external and internal pressures that have produced a hybrid syncretism manifested by a diversity of political behavioral patterns among subnationalist actors.9 Socially alienated forms of authority initially introduced by Western colonial capitalism exist alongside fundamental, core social values in Africa, including cooperativeness, localism, and mutual respect—values that predate the colonial deluge. The resulting cultural hybridity may tilt in a way that favors one or the other set of values depending on particular circumstances, political contexts, power balances, and state-society relationships. Although zero-sum political reasoning and alienated violence continue to vex some subnationalist movements, in recent years signs of a gradual shift toward more alliance-oriented, socially grounded patterns

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of behavior are visible. The ways in which regionally based movements emerged and expanded also reflect respect for local autonomy, which is embedded in a distinctive African cultural complex. Cultural anthropologist Richard A. Shweder writes that globalization and westernization are deepening throughout the third world but are not fully displacing indigenous cultures.10 Indeed, precolonially developed value systems within the African cultural complex reflect social and political priorities and emphases that have been increasingly reflected in the choices made by subnationalists. Core value priorities of intergroup cooperation, authority building on the basis of negotiation and alliances, and relative autonomy from unaccountable power structures all contributed importantly to subnationalist movement building in Eritrea, Oromia, Tigray, Casamance, and Katanga. These core priorities clearly do not determine in any rigid sense the direction of regional-movement strategizing, and such alliances do not always prove enduring, but the behavior of movement supporters and leaders does reflect a long history of intergroup cooperation and coordination. In contrast to Africa’s experience with interethnic alliance formation, in the Caucasus efforts to create an interethnic alliance failed in the wake of partisan tensions and a history of state-encouraged conflicts. In sub-Saharan Africa at least part of the precolonial culture of alliance formation persisted into the contemporary period, but in the Caucasus there was insufficient linkage between contemporary social and political behavior and the pre-Soviet history of ethnic alliance creation, intermarriage, and social trust.11 As a result, an effort to spur the formation of an alliance among the Chechens, Abkhazians, Dagastani, Ingush, Ossetians, and other North Caucasians in the wake of Russia’s mid-1990s war against Chechnya quickly collapsed, even though these groups were faced with a common Russian central state enemy.12 In sub-Saharan Africa interethnic mobilization against central state powers has occurred not only with regard to subnationalist movements’ insistence on regional autonomy, but also in regard to interethnic alliances’ coordinated efforts to resist repression and domination by autocratic leaders within capital cities. In Zimbabwe, for example, an emerging interethnic struggle to counter President Mugabe’s autocracy is based in part on a broader, cooperative vision of politics linked to the Ndebeles’ older tradition of ethnopolitical inclusivity. It was precisely such a vision that previously led to the formation of interethnic rebel armies to overturn Rhodesian apartheid; that vision is now being resurrected in the struggle against

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Mugabe’s dictatorship.13 Persistent and successful efforts to construct multiethnic coalitions were also evident in Kenya in the opposition to former President Moi’s dictatorial, divisive interventions.14 Thus, the grassroots struggle for a pluralistic vision of politics continues, and the older value of intergroup cooperation persists despite many movement elites’ internalization of self-centered, uncooperative zero-sum values and despite continuing intolerance on the part of some regional competitors and state leaders. The high levels of internal conflict, elite power abuse, patrimonialism, and corruption that remain an important part of the African political landscape may represent only the more visible, immediate remnants of the colonial and early postcolonial eras. Emerging gradually through this familiar political tundra are widening circles of a cooperative nature that are linked to a trust-oriented cultural undergrowth. These values are by no means predominant; they are still only subtly imparted, and they compete with more self-oriented values manifested in the socially alienated behavior of political leaders who battle for personal position and pecuniary advantage. But struggle by struggle, the political door is gradually, creakily being pulled open, making possible entry into a changed political order—one that is characterized by the resurfacing of what Lonsdale would refer to as a “watchful political culture” predicated on widening circles of interethnic trust.15 Should such a trust-based political culture eventually more fully influence the flow of politics in Africa, a broader display of common historical practices such as an honest say-and-do behavioral code,16 panethnic political exchanges, and respect for the localism-in-polity tradition is likely to become increasingly visible. Deborah Bryceson suggests that Westernization and the “envelopment” of African culture by intrusive capitalism has produced a movement toward individualism and sheer economic calculus, and away from traditionally supportive social practices, but she also underlines that it is important not to essentialize this process and assume it to be universal. Bryceson makes the insightful point that Africans continue to resist this “cultural conversion” more than do people in any other world area.17 They are able to do so because important elements of a distinctively African value system continue to shape their political behavior. The result of this combination of influences is that Africa today is populated by what Elinor Ostrom, et al., would regard as “individuals with heuristics that involve cooperation and extending trust” who are able to enter lasting social agreements, as well as by “individuals without such heuristics” who are unable to engage in trust-based social pacts.18

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As a consequence of this dualism, Africa’s syncretistic political culture reflects an epic internal struggle over social values and interpersonal behavior. The struggle remains undecided, but within the context of this cultural push and pull, autonomy-seeking movements are offering signals of the potential for change in a more constructive, alliance-building direction. The grassroots reality of interlineage and interethnic marital traditions and other types of social exchange has helped to create a sense of cultural relatedness that bears positively on the evolution of regionwide movements aiming to link multiple groups together in common cause. In this sense, the formation of alliances in the political sphere reflects the broader historical impact of more micro-level social interactions.19 Those interactions take place in a social context characterized by high levels of ethnic pluralism in which peasant intellectuals help to shape the flow of subnationalist discourse. When this is done in a way that also engages and incorporates locally legitimate traditional leaders from various lineage, locational, and ethnic backgrounds, and in a way that fits into or reflects the overall priorities and culture in a region, the likelihood that coalitional, allianceoriented subnationalist movements will emerge increases considerably. Jeffery Herbst’s assertion that local chiefs do not generally seek to collaborate in the creation of macro-scale political arrangements20 simply does not hold up to scrutiny in the face of the current retraditionalization of political power in Africa and the important role such leaders are playing in supporting a growing number of regional movements. The global trend toward tolerance of secessionist impulses and the trend in Africa toward severe state decay and the weakening of state-society linkages, as well as the increasing turn toward traditional political leaders in rural areas have all contributed to a context that is increasingly favorable to an expansion and deepening of various forms of regional assertion in Africa. This expansion in turn represents an initial step toward a broader re-Africanization of political authority based in part on historically consistent cultural patterns. Such a large-scale political change is likely to take place through the course of the coming decades and centuries. This political reAfricanization may be reflected in the carving out of multiple forms of territorially based subnationalism in a way that is more consistent with key indigenous values and cultural priorities than is the current state system. Such changes could produce a gradual reconfiguration of the political map of Africa that is more reflective of indigenously rooted political culture and is based in large part on intergroup compacts. The

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fact that aspects of precolonial political culture have survived and have, however indirectly, contributed to the rise of postcolonial subnationalism lends support to the possibility that new polities will be constructed on the basis of cooperation-oriented heuristics.

Toward New Borders and New Polities In 1967 Walker Connor predicted that ethnic politics in Africa would eventually “produce a host of new demands for the redrawing of political borders.”21 Our findings affirm his prediction in part with regard to uni-ethnic subnationalist movements, but it is especially interethnic movements that raise the possibility of new alliances that will provide a basis for major border restructurings.22 Such an eventuality emerges from the proliferation of increasingly autonomous regions and separatist areas and because the spread of regionally assertive movements to some extent reflects a territorially based popular rejection of central state authority. In many respects, the value system on which modern state power is constructed is at variance with fundamental cultural priorities in Africa, including and especially the long-standing emphasis on bargaining. It is not only in Africa that large-scale morphological transformations of political authority loom as a consequence of a widespread rejection of rulership models that do not fit with local value systems. In a variety of geographic and historical contexts, the subjective nature of the link between exploitation and revolt has become particularly evident when there has been a break in the social status quo.23 Peasant rebellion in southeast Asia, for example, reflected the cumulative impact of long-standing moral codes being ignored repeatedly by power holders.24 In Africa, a cultural belief system grounded in a long history of intergroup cooperation and bargaining became ever more intensively challenged over the course of the colonial and postcolonial periods, generating a gradually more widely shared moral rejection of the existing centralized nation-state system. To be sure, certain situational factors, including changing international norms, nation-state infrastructural degeneration, and state bureaucratic dysfunction, began to coincide with improved rebel organizational and leadership capacities in a way that made it possible for regional actors to begin to reclaim local political control. But it is important to emphasize that as this occurred, the moral order at the grassroots level increasingly proved favorable to a questioning of the preexisting state-dominant system. For this reason, Africa’s political

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culture may now help to provide the social and intellectual basis for a revision of the way in which political authority is established and consolidated. One factor that favors the potential emergence of a new looser and broader conceptualization of polity is the still-porous character of African borders. Millions of Africans move across borders legally and, more commonly, illegally every year, most in search of employment, in pursuit of informal trade, or in flight as refugees.25 Although African states have generally succeeded in staffing border posts on major roads and creating registration lists intended to aid in the tracking of citizens’ movements,26 few states are able to consistently patrol the tens of thousands of forest pathways and other natural rural linkages that connect bordering nations.27 The constant tide of border-crossers cannot be tightly monitored by Africa’s weak states, and it has been exacerbated by the augmentation of warfare, political strife, and environmental destruction and by the deepening of poverty that have traumatized African society in recent years.28 As a consequence, African borders do not represent lines of separation between distinct nations that enable each state to reserve for itself an area of exclusive authority; rather, they act as channels of “escape from state control.” Some border areas have become “totally wild and deregulated” channels of informal trade and are marked by “the permanence of international migratory flows” and the lack of state capacity for intervention.29 The high level of interstate population movement makes clear “the state’s inability to exercise sovereignty over its territory” and presents a compelling reason to rethink the African state system.30 This is especially the case in view of the spread of subnationalist movements, including those in Casamance, Somaliland, southern Sudan, and Katanga, that have benefited enormously from migration in these cross-border areas. One mechanism for grappling with the reality of border porosity and the proliferation of autonomous regions would be to demarcate political zones reflecting established patterns of interethnic cooperation, or reflecting uni-ethnic arrangements in areas where members of a single identity group reside in villages scattered through two or more nations. Such new polities, though not borderless, would provide a less rigid conceptualization of where a polity begins and ends than does a physical boundary.31 Christopher Clapham’s work on shifting borderlands that official governments are unable to control underlines the extent to which the challenges to state sovereignty are mounting. 32 Large, uncontrolled borderland areas in central Africa, throughout the Horn of Africa,

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between Libya and Chad, and on the outer edges of Angola and Mozambique, where the distinct geographic separation between one nation and another shifts into an amorphous area dominated by various insurgents, suggest that political change favoring a less rigid adherence to tightly defined border demarcations is already occurring. My findings in the present study regarding the strengthening of regional movements lead me to concur with Clapham and Dominique Darbon regarding the emergence of a new, different political logic on which authority is now being reconstructed in Africa.33 Clapham’s shared-political-authority model parallels, in its fundamental logic, what I have referred to in the present study to as a localism-in-polity political order. Clapham argues that precolonial political systems represent a positive and workable model for Africans today in that they were marked by “shared authority” between different localities in which “local rulers are accorded a high level of autonomy in exchange for recognition of the ultimate authority of a national ruler.”34 This is similar to Isidore Okpewho’s idea of restructuring Nigeria and other African states into a significantly devolved form of federalism marked by “roughly equal local government units (or counties) determined more along communitarian,” rather than uni-ethnic, lines.35 By contrast, Herbst’s vision for state remodeling does not seriously consider the potential implications of Africa’s distinctive political culture; his preoccupation with geographic size leads him to assume that only small-scale independent states present a realistic alternative.36 This differs sharply from the localism-in-polity tradition of loosely connected authority structures generating large polities that defined most precolonial authority systems. In the future, interlocality, interterritorial political arrangements are likely to emerge that gradually produce new macro-scale polities. Eventually these large polities might evolve into what John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary refer to as multiethnic states in which political power is “micro-partition[ed],” in that decisionmaking authority “is managed at the lowest appropriate level,” and in which localities assume virtual self-governance. What they refer to as “cantonization” makes possible “a negotiable form of ‘internal secession,’”37 but it does not lead to a proliferation of tiny separate states. Rather, it produces a coordinated macro-level governing structure for overarching issues. Cantonization would be consistent with Africa’s ancient political practice of interethnic bargaining and accommodation to create large polities, as well as with its deep-seated localismin-polity political culture. The international political order might

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prove tolerant of such arrangements as “autonomy as a species of group rights is increasingly recognized both internationally and domestically.”38 Such a cantonization or shared-authority model of politics is not applicable only to the African continent. The spread of subnationalist movements in much of the developing world could eventually represent a return toward a “loose system” of empirelike arrangements of autonomous groups such as that which existed in prior centuries under Afghani, Chinese, and Persian rulerships.39 Brendan O’Leary has recently put forth the notion of consociational macrofederal systems, or “polycultural federations,” that, he argues, are increasingly applicable to various parts of the world.40 And at the 2001 meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Kenneth Roberts argued that reforming Canada’s current political system in the direction of a consociational model might result in a better match between the country’s fundamentally tolerant political values and its multinational social structure.41 He underlined that Canadian values and political culture emphasize minority rights, such as those accorded to Quebecers and Canadian Indians, and that it is time for Canada to move toward the creation of new consociational mechanisms through which a broad range of distinct minorities are accorded particular political powers. The form that African polities eventually assume is unlikely to reflect a consociational arrangement in which formalistic rights are constituted, and it is not helpful to put forth exact models based on ideal types of governing arrangements. It is probable that some form of a localism-in-polity, alliance-based set of polities will eventually emerge. I believe this not because I think it best suits twenty-first century Africa, but because I think it would be a logical extension of mobilizational patterns already occurring on the ground, with particular regard to the broader impact of a growing segment of regionally assertive movements. In contrast to the “Afro-pessimism” that pervades recent scholarship on Africa,42 the present study suggests that subnationalism is able to generate varieties of alliance construction on which, in the long run, Africans may reclaim an indigenously legitimate form of power that serves as the foundation for the creation of successful new polities. Subnationalism may prove to be only one of a number of political forms to emerge in Africa over the coming decades, but it is one that is likely to serve as an important building block in Africa’s political reconstruction. As such, it will reflect a process of political change that is generated from within the continent and is consistent with social values that have proven historically enduring.

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Notes 1. Jean-Loup Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). In this influential study, Amselle devoted far more time and space to deconstructing ideas set forth by specific colonial-era administrators than to responding to more nuanced scholarly treatments of ethnic identity in Africa (such as those of Terence Ranger, Crawford Young, Thomas Spears, Steven Feierman, and John Lonsdale). 2. See for example, Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 3. E. Gyimah-Boadi and Cyril Daddieh, “Economic Reform and Political Liberalization in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire: A Preliminary Assessment of Implications for Nation Building,” in State Building and Democratization in Africa, ed. Kidane Mengisteabl and Cyril Daddieh (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 132. 4. For a similar point, especially regarding Biafra and Katanga, see Crawford Young, “Comparative Claims to Political Sovereignty: Biafra, Katanga, Eritrea,” in State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas, ed. Donald Rothchild and Victor Olorunsola (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 219. 5. To be sure, UNITA and Inkatha also relied heavily on violent abuse by armed militia, but these movements also utilized more inclusivistic practices to incorporate broad segments of the Angolan highland populace and the KwaZulu region, respectively, into each of these movements. 6. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966). 7. Richard Werbner, “Multiple Identities, Plural Arenas,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 14. 8. Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, “A Lost Generation? Youth Identity and State Decay in West Africa,” in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (London: Zed, 1996), 63. 9. On the mutability and porosity of political culture see Lisa Weeden, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002), 721–722; with particular regard to Africa, see Thomas S. Weisner, “Culture, Childhood, and Progress in SubSaharan Africa,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 151–152. 10. Richard A. Shweder, “Moral Maps, ‘First World’ Conceits, and the New Evangelists,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel Huntington (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 169–171.

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11. Paula Garb, “Ethnicity, Alliance Building, and the Limited Spread of Ethnic Conflict in the Caucasus,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 190. Garb also makes clear that the tyrannical use of Russian military power was an additional alliance-inhibiting factor. 12. Ibid., 195–198. Garb’s study demonstrates the importance of political context in analyzing interethnic politics: while Fearon and Laitin found a lack of conflict between ethnic groups in the former union republics (James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 [1996], 716), their study does not explain why Caucasus groups failed to unite into a common political front. 13. See chapter three of this book, and Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa,” in Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, ed. Preban Kaarsholm and Jan Hultin (Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University, 1994), 43. 14. Jacqueline M. Klopp, “Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism? The Struggle for Land and Nation in Kenya,” African Studies 61, no. 2 (2002): 284, 287. 15. John Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought,” in Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, ed. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (London: James Currey, 1992), 339, 348, 417, 467. 16. Ibid., 326, 334, 337, 339. 17. Deborah Fahy Bryceson, “Of Criminals and Clients: African Culture and Afro-Pessimism in a Globalized World,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 2 (2000). 18. Elinor Ostrom, Roy Gardner, and James Walker, Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 324. The discussion in Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker refers to general social behavior regarding community resource use. 19. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin stress the link between individual interaction and interethnic cooperation (“Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” 718), but they overly emphasize “rational” interest in contrast to the historical and culturally informed interactions over time underlined in the present study. 20. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 195. Herbst suggests that the state would intervene to “decapitate” activist chiefships—a point that seems at variance with his emphasis on state impotence regarding African “hinterlands.” 21. Walker Connor, “Self-Determination: The New Phase,” World Politics 20 (October 1967), reproduced in Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 18.

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22. For an initial articulation of the argument that political change in Africa will produce new types of polities, see Joshua B. Forrest, “State Inversion and Non-State Politics in Africa,” in Critical Juncture: The African State Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration, ed. Leo Villalon and Phil Huxtable (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 23. Moore, Social Origins, 474; Lester M. Salamon, “Comparative History and the Theory of Modernization,” World Politics 23 (1970), 100. 24. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). 25. Dominique Darbon, “Crisis of the State and Communalism: New Ideological Stakes in African Integration,” in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 47; Chaloka Beyani, “Some Legal Aspects of Migration,” in Africa Now: People, Policies, Institutions, ed. Stephen Ellis (London: James Currey, 1996), 253; Stephen Ellis, “Africa’s Future and the World,” in Africa Now: People, Policies, Institutions, ed. Stephen Ellis (London: James Currey, 1996), 283. 26. Beyani, “Some Legal Aspects of Migration,” 252. 27. In this respect, Jeffrey Herbst’s insistence on the increased significance of African boundaries—in a work whose overarching theme is state decline—remains puzzling. See Herbst, States and Power, 230–231. His citation of several examples of states’ intervention in regard to migrants and refugees does not mitigate the proliferation of unpatrolled borderland areas and the on-the-ground reality that most countries’ borders in Africa remain essentially porous in most areas most of the time. 28. Dominique Darbon, “Crisis of the State,” 41; Beyani, “Some Legal Aspects of Migration,” 253. 29. Darbon, “Crisis of the State,” 47-48. 30. Ibid., 50. 31. Ibid., 51. 32. Christopher Clapham, “Boundaries and States in the New African Order,” in Regionalisation in Africa: Integration and Disintegration, ed. Daniel C. Bach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 59. 33. Ibid.; Darbon, “Crisis of the State,” 50-51. 34. Clapham, “Boundaries and States,” 63. 35. Isidore Okpewho, Once Upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 189. 36. Herbst, States and Power, 135–172, 252–254. 37. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “The Macro-Political Regulation of Ethnic Conflict,” in The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, ed. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary (London: Routledge, 1993), 31. 38. Yash Ghai, “Ethnicity and Autonomy: A Framework for Analysis,” in Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in MultiEthnic States, ed. Yash Ghai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2. 39. Connor, Ethnonationalism, 83.

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Index

Acholi, 28 Afar Liberation Movement, 18–19 Afrikaner, 195, 196, 201–204, 207, 208 Akan, 38, 62 Alliance building, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 14–16, 31, 35, 36, 41, 47, 55, 59, 63, 70–71, 91–94, 98, 108–113, 116–119, 121, 122, 124–126, 133, 138, 154, 163–166, 170, 191, 200, 207–208, 225, 237, 240–250; precolonial, 1, 15, 25–28, 32–33, 45, 109, 122, 163, 164, 217 Amhara, 156, 157, 195–198 Angola, 29, 35, 68, 116, 118, 119, 175–182, 189–191, 236. See also National Union for the Total Independence of Angola Ascriptive(ist), 2, 9, 18, 20, 25, 29, 31, 46, 53, 79, 88, 98, 149, 157–158, 176, 201, 205, 207, 235, 236, 240 Ashanti, 217–219 Autonomy: political, 1, 6, 8, 9, 31, 33, 37, 41, 46, 78–79, 108, 162, 163, 175, 179, 217, 220, 222, 223, 229–231, 242, 249–250; territorial, 1, 6, 13, 15, 58–60, 63, 66. 68, 70–71, 77–88, 91–98, 105, 106, 108–110, 112, 113, 118–119, 122, 135, 158, 175, 176, 179, 201, 205, 217, 220. See also Territorialism

Autonomy-seeking, 14, 53, 57–71, 80–98, 106, 157 Bakongo, 29, 44–45, 112–113, 177 Balanta, 40 Basubia, 176, 185–188, 241 Benin, 19 Biafra, 61, 154, 158–166, 169, 170, 200, 226–229, 239, 240 Boer, 196, 201 Borders, 120, 125, 187, 248–250 Bornu kingdom. See Empire(s)/Kingships Botswana, 19, 56, 185, 187 Buganda. See Empires Buthelezi, Mangosuthu Gatsha, 204–206, 239 Cabinda, 68, 236 Cameroon, 32, 38, 61–62, 236; provinces, 13, 61–62 Caprivi. See Namibia Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA), 176, 188–191 Casamance, 61, 77, 88–98, 122–124, 216, 236, 242, 244, 248 Caucasus, 244 Chad, 55 Chewa, 39, 57 Chiefs, 27, 33, 36, 43, 44, 45, 56, 67, 80, 86–88, 108, 111–112, 115, 159,

273

274

Index

168, 179–181, 184–186, 205, 213–219, 224–230, 246 CLA. See Caprivi Liberation Army Colonial(ism), 10–11, 19, 133, 153, 217, 224; intervention, 10, 27, 31, 77–79, 88, 90, 94, 109–110, 124, 134, 140, 155–156, 158–159, 176–177, 180, 183–185, 189, 195, 220, 221; state-building, 2, 3, 26 Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT), 106, 108, 109, 110, 124–125, 238–241 Congo, Democratic Republic of the, 19, 29–30, 36, 40, 44, 45, 105–122, 124–126, 216; Kasai, 29, 61, 105, 108, 110, 111–112, 115, 117–119, 121, 124–126, 236, 239; Katanga, 29, 59, 36, 105, 108–109, 111, 114–117, 119, 121, 124–216, 236, 238–241, 244, 248; Kongo, 112– 113; Maniema, 116, 119; North Kivu, 106, 116, 117, 119, 121; South Kivu, 106, 116–119, 121 Constructivism(ist), 2, 10, 11, 12, 31, 46, 207, 235 Côte d’Ivoire, 36, 56, 61, 62–63, 230, 241 Culture, 4, 12, 16, 97, 105, 112, 157, 159, 162, 197, 243–247; African, 4, 69, 246–248; deep, 3, 17; precolonial, 4, 20, 32, 39, 41, 78–79, 134, 162–163, 166, 244; political, 4, 8, 16, 25, 32, 33, 36, 41, 43–47, 54, 55, 59, 67–70, 77, 138, 162–163, 228, 243–250 Decentralized/decentralization, 32–35, 83, 86, 89, 90, 95, 112, 199, 206–207 Dinka, 78, 80, 82, 84–88, 241, 243 Diola, 88, 90–97, 216 Djibouti, 19, 146 Efe, 39 ELF. See Eritrean Liberation Front Empire(s)/Kingships, 27, 32, 34, 36, 46, 109, 213–216, 220–224, 230; Asante, 37; Ashanti, 217, 218; Bagirmi, 37; Benin, 30, 42; Bornu, 42, 227, 228; Buganda, 29, 220–224; Bundu, 37;

EPLF. See Eritrean People’s Liberation Front EPRDF. See Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Eritrea, 59, 61, 133–140, 148–149, 213, 236, 242, 244 Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), 136–137 Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), 66, 136–140, 198, 200 Ethiopia, 18, 134–135, 138–139, 148, 155–157, 196, 198–200 Ethiopian, 134, 138–140, 195, 196, 200; Gabu, 37, 77, 88, 105, 122–126; Ijwi, 35–36, 39; Kanem, 42; Kanuri, 38, 42–43; Kong, 36; Kongo, 29, 35, 42, 112; Luba, 29, 109, 111, 124; Lunda, 34, 36, 42, 109, 124; Mali, 37, 42, 122; Maravi, 34; Ndebele, 36–37; Niger, 40; Ottoman, 134, 138, 140; Oyo, 30; Sokoto, 228; Teso, 220, 222–224; Zulu, 30–31, 204, 205 Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), 157, 158, 199, 200 Ethnic, 6, 15, 38–41, 114; conflict, 11, 81–88, 117, 119, 147, 159–161, 164–166, 168, 178, 186–187, 207, 235, 241, 242–243; corporatism, 9, 30, 153, 196; group, 2, 4, 9, 10, 19, 26–29, 54, 77–88, 91–94, 108, 133, 179, 185–186, 201, 236–237; inclusion, 37, 137, 138, 144–145, 148–149, 206, 226, 229; pluralism, 55, 67, 70, 108, 112–113, 135, 138, 139, 148, 181, 199, 206–208; security, 9, 58–59, 83, 98, 157– 158, 161, 169; uni-ethnic, 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 19, 20, 25, 26, 30, 81–86, 91–94, 97, 105, 106, 110–113, 116–117, 122, 124, 153–170, 175–191, 195–208, 227, 248 Europe, 16–17, 28, 42, 43, 60 Ewe, 18, 38, 217 Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), 68 Fulani, 37 Gabon, 29 Gabu. See Empire(s)/Kingships

Index

Gambia, 97, 122–124 Ganda, 220–223 Garang, John Garang de Mabior, 81–88 Ghana, 18, 38, 56, 213, 230; Ashanti, 217–219; BrongAhafo, 219; Central, 217; Northern, 219; Western, 217, 219 Gisu, 28 Guinea-Bissau, 40, 57, 93, 122–124, 213–215, 230 Hausa, 19, 34, 37 Hausa-Fulani, 158–161, 165, 224, 226–229 Hereroland. See Namibia Historical linkages, 4, 17, 18, 25–28, 41–47, 88, 91, 98, 105, 109, 112, 113, 124, 137–140, 148, 154, 156, 158, 162–163, 169, 178–180, 186, 190, 196–198, 200, 203–205, 215, 236, 245–247 Hutu, 117, 125 Hybridity, 38–41, 45, 242, 243 IFP. See Inkatha Freedom Party Igbo, 40, 153–166, 170, 226, 227, 229 Ijwi island, 39 Ijwi kingdom. See Empire(s)/ Kingships Inequality: economic, 2, 13, 18, 29, 46, 61, 62, 77, 78, 80, 83, 85, 91, 97, 98, 110, 140, 141, 155, 167, 169, 197, 221, 236, 240 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), 204–206, 239–240 Instrumentalism(ist), 2, 9, 10, 14, 16, 18, 20, 29, 31, 46, 47, 53, 70, 80, 83–85, 88, 98, 105, 122, 125, 147, 158, 175, 178, 180, 189, 191, 205, 207, 235, 239, 240 Interclan, 133–134, 144, 146, 147 Interethnic, 1, 2, 4, 6–8, 12, 15, 19, 20, 32, 35, 37, 40–41, 45–47, 53, 55, 70–71, 77, 79–81, 84–88, 91–98, 105, 108, 109, 113, 116, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126, 133, 135, 163, 181, 200 Intergroup, 15, 25, 38, 46, 54, 70, 134, 140, 163, 235, 242, 244, 246, 247

275

Interlocal, 31, 36, 47, 169, 249 Intermarriage, 31, 35–36, 39, 65, 69, 90, 116, 135, 142, 163, 244 International, 2, 20, 53, 60, 70, 71, 170, 178, 184, 237 Interpersonal, 15, 38, 39, 69 Intervillage, 32, 33, 35 Intraethnic, 6, 55, 166, 170, 198, 200 Irredentist(ism), 18, 19, 93, 108, 117, 126, 217 Isaq, 140–146 Islamic (Muslim), 36, 37, 62, 63, 78, 80–82, 91, 135, 136, 138, 155, 224, 228, 229 Kabila, Laurent, 106, 116–119, 125 Kagame, Paul, 117, 118, 120, 125 Kanem kingdom. See Empire(s)/Kingships Kanuri empire. See Empire(s)/Kingships Kasai. See Congo Katanga. See Congo Katanga Tigers, 114, 118 Kenya, 13, 18, 37, 67–69, 245 Kikuyu, 39, 44, 55–56, 67–68 Kingdoms. See Empire(s)/Kingships Kivu, 61 Kongo, 29 Kongo kingdom. See Empire(s)/ Kingships Kwazulu-Natal. See South Africa Kwilu, 113 Lese, 39 Liberia, 59 Local(ism)(istic), 3, 4, 6, 15, 31, 36, 38, 41 Localism-in-polity, 32, 36, 41, 46, 47, 126, 245, 249, 250 Lozi, 35 Luba, 29, 106, 109–111, 115 Luba-Kasai, 30, 110–112, 115, 124–125 Lulua, 29–30 Lunda, 40, 42, 45, 106, 108, 109, 114–115, 215–216, 241 Maasai, 37, 39, 55 Machar, Riak (or Riek), 81–88 Mafwe, 176, 183, 185–189, 239, 241 Mai-Mai, 118, 119

276

Index

Malawi, 39, 57 Mali, 66 Mali Empire. See Empire(s)/ Kingships Malinké, 36, 42 Mandinka, 90, 92 Materialism(ist), 2, 13, 14, 20, 29, 53, 56, 98, 147, 235 Mau Mau, 55–56 Mbundu, 35, 177 Meta, 32–33, 43 MFDC. See Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance Mobutu, Sese Seko, 106, 113, 114, 115, 121 Morocco, 69 MOSOP. See Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC),89, 91–98, 122–124, 148, 216, 238 Movement(s): autonomy-seeking, 2, 3, 14–16, 46, 57–59, 66, 71, 77, 79–88, 105, 106, 108, 113–115, 121, 136–139, 156–158, 168, 169, 175, 182, 189–191, 217–219, 228–231, 236, 238–240, 243; evaluation, 237–240; goals, 5, 7, 84–88, 92–95, 98, 143, 148, 157, 169, 181, 190, 200, 202–203, 238, 240; interethnic, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 25, 45, 47, 53, 67–69, 71, 80, 81, 84–89, 91–98, 105–109, 111–113, 116–118, 120, 121, 133–134, 136–139, 148–149, 197–198, 200, 222, 236, 241–250; uni-ethnic, 2, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 25, 45, 47, 53, 67, 71, 82–88, 91–94, 97, 106, 109–113, 117, 153–170, 175–191, 195–208, 241–243, 247 Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), 167–170 Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), 64–66, 214 Mozambique, 61, 63–66, 213, 214, 230; Capo Delgado, 64; Manica, 65; Nampula, 64; Sofala, 65; Tete, 65; Zambezia, 65 Multiethnic, 10, 13, 36, 42, 58, 62, 68, 69, 80, 81, 84, 90–94, 98, 111, 134, 138, 184, 204

Museveni, Yoweri, 119–120, 125, 219–220, 223 Muslim. See Islamic Namibia, 119, 182–191, 213–215; Caprivi, 175–176, 182–191, 238, 239, 241; Hereroland/Omaheke, 183–185 Nandi, 13, 68 Nationalism, 5, 6 National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), 175–192, 235, 241, 242 Ndau, 65, 214 Networks, 15, 18, 32, 36, 42, 45, 59, 67, 70, 112, 116, 117, 120, 122, 126, 137, 147, 166, 179, 224, 225, 227, 230 Ngoni, 39 Niger, 19, 213, 214 Nigeria, 19, 30, 59, 61, 158–170, 176–177, 214, 224–230, 236 North Kivu. See Congo Nuer, 78, 80, 82–87, 243 Ogoni, 153, 154, 164, 166–170, 239, 241 Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), 228–229 Organizational capacity, 2, 3, 7, 10, 16, 20, 37, 54, 66, 133, 137, 138, 140, 142, 148, 149, 153–156, 158, 166, 170, 176, 178, 181, 189–191, 200, 237–240, 247 Oromia, 135, 154–158, 199, 200, 241, 244 Oromo, 40, 61, 153–158, 162, 213, 242 Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), 156–158, 169, 170, 176, 200 Ottoman Empire. See Empire(s)/Kingships Ovambo, 215 Ovimbundu, 175–182, 189–191, 239, 241, 242 Peasant intellectuals, 43–44, 46 POLISARIO. See Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet et Hamra and Rio de Oro Political change, 3, 7, 243, 247–250 Political culture. See Culture

Index

Politics: macro-level, 1, 15, 153, 246, 249; micro-level, 3, 69, 246, 249 Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet et Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO), 69 Portugal, 68 Primordial, 9, 46 Regionalism, 1, 4, 5, 11, 13, 15, 30, 47, 57, 105, 106, 108, 109, 114–115, 121, 136, 143, 148, 156, 157, 163–164, 169, 175, 187, 191, 219, 240, 246 RENAMO. See Mozambican National Resistance Retraditionalization, 54, 66–67, 213–214, 216, 223, 224, 230, 237 Rwanda, 35–36, 39, 116–120, 125 Rwenzururu, 221–222 Sara, 37 Savimbi, Jonas, 178, 180–182 Secession, 5, 7, 8, 62, 64, 68, 69, 81–88, 93–95, 96, 98, 108–112, 119, 133–134, 139–148, 157–159, 161–166, 169, 176, 183–185, 187–191, 200, 202–204, 207, 216, 219, 228–230, 238, 239, 246 Senegal, 38, 57, 77, 122–123, 216 Shambaa, 41, 44, 65 Shambaai, 44 Shona, 57–58, 65 Sierra Leone, 59 Situational(ism), 10, 11 Somali, 140–146 Somalia, 18, 146–147 Somaliland, 61, 133–134, 140–149, 242, 248 Somali National Movement, 141–144, 146 South Africa, 19, 109, 195, 196, 240; Kwazulu-Natal, 196, 204–207, 240; Orange Free, 202; Northern Cape, 202; Western Cape, 206 South Kivu. See Congo South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), 183–187 Spain, 69 SPLM/SPLA. See Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army State-building, 35, 42–43, 46, 137,

277

138, 145–146, 148, 149, 219 State decline, 53, 56, 59–61, 63, 70, 71, 106, 113, 115, 116, 120–122, 125, 133, 140, 147, 213, 221, 224, 236, 241, 246, 248; intervention, 10–12, 56, 70, 71, 89, 90–92, 95–96, 98, 106, 112–114, 125, 167, 170, 187, 196, 199, 235, 240 Subtext(ual), 1, 2, 14, 20, 29, 31, 32, 41, 45, 46, 53, 54, 59, 69, 70, 140, 237 Sudan, 42, 50, 61, 67, 77–88, 116, 236, 241, 243, 248; Bahr el Ghazal, 78, 80, 81, 86; Equatoria, 78, 80, 81, 86; UpperNile, 78, 80, 81, 86 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLM/SPLA), 66, 81–88, 238 SWAPO. See South West Africa People’s Organization Swaziland, 19 Tanzania, 41, 44, 56, 116 Territorialism, 1, 2, 14, 53, 54, 68, 70–71, 77–94, 98, 105–106, 108–110, 112, 113, 136–140, 148, 163, 170, 180, 195, 201, 205, 227–228, 236, 246 Territory(ial), 4–7, 9, 19, 31, 32, 47, 69–71, 77, 78 Tigray(ans), 157, 195–200, 207, 208, 213, 238, 241, 242, 244 Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), 66, 197–200, 207, 239 Tigre, 135, 138 Tigrinya(ns), 135, 138 Tiv, 32 Togo, 38 Togoland Liberation Movement, 18, 217 TPLF. See Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front Tradition(s), 12, 26, 43–45, 55, 68, 69, 86, 110, 111, 133, 170, 228; precolonial, 1, 16, 34–36, 79, 83 Tuareg, 66, 214 Tutsi, 117–119, 125 Uganda, 15, 28, 57, 116–120, 125, 213, 214, 219–224 Uni-ethnic. See Ethnic

278

Index

UNITA. See National Union for the Total Independence of Angola Values, 16, 31, 32, 41, 43–47, 70, 71, 243–247, 250; anti-authoritarian, 33; authoritarian, 16; autonomy, 18, 179; bargaining, 11, 18, 47, 162–163, 243, 247; capitalist, 18, 47, 243; colonial, 18, 46; compromise, 4, 18; cooperative, 18, 25, 67, 69, 70, 86–88, 90, 135, 139, 162–163, 242, 243, 245, 247; egalitarian, 92–93; greed, 4, 46, 242, 245; hierarchical, 16, 90; indigenous, 3, 245–246; inwardoriented, 42; mutual dependence,

69, 70; mutual respect, 41, 243; passivity, 16; precolonial, 4, 16, 18, 245; socially alienating, 4, 16, 67, 242, 243; trustworthiness, 15, 18, 33, 139, 245; Westernized, 47, 242; zero-sum, 25, 242, 245 Western Sahara, 68–69 Yoruba, 19, 30, 38, 158–160, 164, 165, 224–230 Zambia, 56, 185, 187 Zanzibar, 56–57 Zimbabwe, 57–58, 119, 244–245 Zulu, 27, 195, 196, 201–208, 213

About the Book

The trend toward subnationalist autonomy—and away from the development of singular, state-centric political systems based on the Western model—is one of the most striking phenomena in Africa today. Joshua Forrest analyzes the expansion of ethnic subnationalist movements in the postcolonial period, the reasons behind their growth, and their implications for African politics. Forrest ranges across the continent to explore a variety of subnational movements. Without minimizing the crucial role played by manipulative ethnic elites in fomenting subnationalist movements, he points to the intercommunity and interethnic alliances that underpin the most successful movements. This trend, he suggests, may presage a gradual reconfiguration of the political map of Africa in a way that is more reflective of indigenously rooted political culture, a culture that embodies a distinctive respect for local and territorial autonomy. Joshua B. Forrest is associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont and is research affiliate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School for Public and International Affairs. His recent publications include Lineages of State Fragility: Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau and Namibia’s Post-Apartheid Regional Institutions: The Founding Year.

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