The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration 9781685853815

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THE AFRICAN STATE AT A C RITICAL J UNCTURE s

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T H E A F R I C A N S TAT E AT A

C RITICAL J UNCTURE s

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B ETWEEN DISINTEGRATION AND R ECONFIGURATION

EDITED BY

LEONARDO A. VILLALÓN PHILLIP A. H UXTABLE

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 1997 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 1997 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: 1-55587-617-3 (hardcover) ISBN: 1-55587-628-5 (paperback) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.Poverty, economic reform, and income distribution

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 Z39.48-1984. 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

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Preface Map Part 1 The Contemporary Context of African Politics 1

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The African State at the End of the Twentieth Century: Parameters of the Critical Juncture Leonardo A. Villalón The African State in the Global Economic Context Julius E. Nyang’oro and Timothy M. Shaw

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Part 2 Perspectives on State Disintegration 3 4 5 6 7

State Inversion and Nonstate Politics Joshua Bernard Forrest Somalia: The Structure of Dissolution Anna Simons Rwanda: Chaos from Above Timothy Longman Sierra Leone: Weak States and the New Sovereignty Game William Reno Zaire: The Bankruptcy of the Extractive State John F. Clark

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Part 3 Patterns of State Reconfiguration 8 9

“Empirical Statehood” and Reconfigurations of Political Order Catherine Boone Senegal: The Crisis of Democracy and the Emergence of an Islamic Opposition Leonardo A. Villalón and Ousmane Kane v

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Kenya: The Women’s Movement and Democratic Change Maria Nzomo Ghana: Structural Adjustment and State (Re)Formation Daniel Green Côte d’Ivoire: The Crisis of Distributive Politics Dwayne Woods Uganda: The Catholic Church and State Reconstruction Ronald Kassimir Zimbabwe: Women, Cultural Crisis, and the Reconfiguration of the One-Party State Sita Ranchod-Nilsson

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Part 4 Conclusion 15

The African State Toward the Twenty-First Century: Legacies of the Critical Juncture Phillip A. Huxtable

List of Acronyms References The Contributors Index About the Book

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Preface

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As the final manuscript of this book was being prepared in late 1996 and early 1997, world attention turned once again to the unfolding human tragedy as another African state appeared to disintegrate, this time Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Cast most frequently in ethnic terms by the world press, the violence sweeping central Africa must in fact be linked most clearly to a failure of the state. This fact was not lost on the participants; early in the crisis the New York Times quoted Laurent Kabila, leader of the “rebel” faction that would soon replace the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, as saying as much: “We are fighting for a vast movement to put an end to this useless state that no longer exists” (3 November 1996). Following on events in Rwanda and Somalia earlier in the decade, the situation in Zaire captured world attention and seemed to many to epitomize the fate of post–Cold War Africa. This view was confirmed when, shortly after the collapse of the Mobutu regime, violent coups rocked Sierra Leone and Congo (Brazzaville). And yet such tragedies are only one part of the story. In the same period of the 1990s we have also seen a variety of no less dramatic but far more positive transformations on the continent. Indeed, an increasing divergence in African political systems is the most striking phenomenon on the continent taken as a whole. What pressures have resulted in such widespread change in this period? What has been the range of transformations in African politics in the post–Cold War years? What are the forces shaping the variations we have seen? And what factors are likely to shape the future contours of African states into the next millennium? Such are the ambitious questions that this book aims to address, and to which we hope to contribute some insights. The book had its genesis in a set of two panels and a roundtable organized by the editors for the February 1995 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) under the title of “The Fate of the African State.” Sorting through the complex array of reactions to pressures for political change in Africa, and noting the wide variety of outcomes, the vii

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participants at those panels moved toward the conclusion that while the variety of responses represented a complex set of phenomena, it was possible to begin to trace patterns in their causes and outcomes. And while, given the large number of variables and the complexity of their interaction, accurate representation of the phenomena could only be built on case-by-case analysis, each case also had to be considered in comparative perspective if the broader patterns were to be understood. From these initial explorations, the idea grew among various participants of continuing our discussions and our comparative explorations. This was especially appealing since most of the participants had done significant field research in various African countries in the crucial years of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Building on these exchanges, then, and encouraged by Lynne Rienner’s early interest in publishing an eventual volume on this topic, the contributors to this volume met in September 1995 at the University of Kansas in Lawrence for three days of intense discussion on these cases and the broader themes they raised. The chapters in this volume grew out of the (much-revised) papers presented in Lawrence. Along this long path, of course, many debts were incurred. We would like to thank most particularly Lynne Rienner for her encouragement and support of the project from its inception. At the University of Kansas numerous individuals helped to make our meeting both possible and fruitful. Financial support was provided by the Office of International Studies and Programs, with the help of Dean George Woodyard and especially of Associate Director Terry Weidner; by the Office of Academic Affairs, thanks to the support of Assistant Vice Chancellor Janet Riley; and by the Africana Studies Center thanks to its director, Arthur Drayton. We would also like to thank several participants in the original ISA panels whose contributions to this volume are less direct, but no less real: Michael Schatzberg, Robert Fatton, George Kieh, and Aili Mari Tripp. Many of our colleagues in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas also helped in various ways, and special recognition must be given to Deborah Gerner and Philip Schrodt, who (as 1995 ISA program chairs) lent their support to the original ISA panels out of which this volume grew and graciously helped make our Kansas workshop not only intellectually challenging but also fun. Leonardo Villalón would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the participants in the Political Science Department’s “Kansas Beer and Politics Seminar” for their suggestions, which enriched Chapter 1. Robert Parks’s good cheer and multifaceted talents as a triple Political Science/French/ African Studies major proved invaluable as he assisted us in organizing our meeting in Kansas. Finally, an anonymous reviewer for Lynne Rienner Publishers suggested numerous points of revision, which we trust have helped make the volume better. Leonardo A. Villalón Phillip A. Huxtable

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Part 1

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The Contemporary Context of African Politics

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The African State at the End of the Twentieth Century: Parameters of the Critical Juncture LEONARDO A. VILLALÓN The Dimensions of Change Writing in 1990, one of the foremost scholars of African politics began a survey of the year’s political events on the continent in words that captured the prevailing mood of amazement: “The merely incredible gives way daily—in the flow of world events—to the astonishing and the unbelievable” (Young 1990, 84). The dizzying pace of change that provoked this awed assessment was to continue—indeed even accelerate—during the early years of the decade. No less than other world regions, Africa in the first half of the 1990s was swept up in the transformations that provoked metaphors of sweeping and dramatic change, of “watersheds,” “sea changes,” “waves,” and other such irreversible natural phenomena (Bratton and van de Walle 1992; Rizopoulos 1990; Huntington 1991). Almost universally, the events that provoked such assessments were met by an explicit, and at times gushing, optimism. On a continent where stagnation had long been the norm, where observers had converged in an evaluation of political, social, and economic systems in “crisis,” the appearance of profound changes brought the promise of a new beginning. For some, the moment held the potential for becoming Africa’s “second” or “real” independence, the inauguration of a phase of true political liberation. Thus, at first, much attention in the study of African politics in the 1990s was devoted to chronicling and analyzing the efforts to expand political freedoms and the difficulties encountered (Young 1994c). The central concern in these studies was the concept of “democratization,” although some preferred to speak of “governance” (Hyden and Bratton 1992). In either case, the point was that the political changes underway on the continent were primarily the product of intentional reform, in particular the reform of state structures and institutions that—a consensus had emerged—had somehow “gone wrong” since independence. Detecting a 3

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potential for the “conscious management of regime structures with a view to enhancing the legitimacy of the public realm” (Hyden 1992, 7), scholars exhibited much optimism about the possibilities for “fixing” Africa’s political problems, and much scholarly debate was devoted to a discussion of the sources of democratization efforts and the factors most likely to facilitate success. The policy implications of these debates were consequently direct and apparent, and a wide variety of international agencies joined forces with the scholarly community to participate in the processes of reform. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, moved from its traditional concentration on economic development to set up “governance and democratization” programs across Africa, and many Africanist scholars dedicated their energies to working with these and similar endeavors. Paralleling this policy orientation, in the scholarly debate within the African subfield of comparative politics the most frequent dimension for comparison of African states in the post–Cold War world has been in terms of their relative degree of (progress toward) democracy. The typology used by Africa Demos, a periodic publication of the African Governance program of the Carter Center at Emory University, to chronicle the evolution of political change on the continent reflected both the interests of policymakers and the consensus of scholars about the most significant differences among African political systems. Distinguishing among countries in terms of three types (“democratic,” “authoritarian,” or “guided democracy”) and chronicling the stages of “regimes in transition” in terms of their relative degree of commitment (“strong,” “moderate,” or “ambiguous”) and progress toward democracy, Africa Demos provided what seemed to many to be the most significant dimension for contrasting African political systems.1 There are, of course, both good normative and empirical reasons for this emphasis. Democracy not only represents a widely held value for political analysts, but in fact many of the newly politicized actors in 1990s Africa have made democracy the cornerstone of their demands, elites have publicly (if often reluctantly) pledged themselves to its values, and various countries have moved in the direction of establishing at least some of the component parts of a democratic political system. In country after country the rhetoric of democracy has been at the center of political discourse and debate in the past several years. Yet despite this, by mid-decade it was already necessary to question the extent to which the effort to compare countries primarily in terms of their degree of democracy in fact expanded our understanding of the variations in the political situations of contemporary Africa. While the democratic question is clearly an important one, it is only one dimension along which African political systems vary, and in fact may not represent the dimension along which there is the greatest variation.

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The growing recognition of this fact has meant that, rather quickly, the optimism of African observers has had to be tempered by some “realism” about the likely shape of Africa’s political future. In many ways the situation for the observer of Africa in the 1990s has been analogous to that of the early years of independence; the sentiments Aristide Zolberg (1969, viii) characterized as “the temptations of romanticism which lay in wait for all of us who had participated vicariously in the African emancipation movement” were to be replicated some three decades later. Similarly, in the 1990s, the enthusiasm of scholars long frustrated by the situation of the continent led to an overly romantic evaluation of the prognosis for African politics at the end of the twentieth century. And again as in the 1960s, students of African politics now find ourselves faced with the need to adjust our analytic focus—if not our normative goals or hopes—to attempt to understand the evolution of political events on the continent. While it is true (as we shall discuss below) that much of the recent change in Africa has been pushed by prodemocracy forces, and that significant change in select countries has been in the direction of building more democratic political systems, there are also many other forces at work, and we are clearly witnessing a wide variety of possible outcomes to the political transformations underway. Indeed, looking around the continent toward the late 1990s, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the most significant differences among countries are not in terms of how democratic states are, but in terms of how effective state structures and institutions are in terms of maintaining a stable political and social order. In another flashback to the late 1960s, one is tempted to echo Huntington’s (1968) claim in his landmark work of comparative politics that the most significant distinction among countries lies not in what kind but in how much government they have, a sentiment that had been similarly expressed in the African context by Zolberg (1966). This, it should be noted, is a question of empirical reality and not of normative values, although it is also important to note that normatively there may be good reason to prefer, if not order to democracy, at least order to disorder. And, as Peter Evans (1995, 3) has recently argued, “until less hierarchical ways of avoiding a Hobbesian world are discovered, the state lies at the center of solutions to the problem of order.” Order, moreover, may be a prerequisite for democracy. As Zolberg (1969, x) also noted toward the end of the first decade of independence: “Evaluative terms such as ‘democracy’ . . . in political science . . . refer implicitly to the evaluation of political structures and processes which have achieved a much higher level of institutionalization than is the case in Africa.” This assessment is no less valid today. To compare, say, Côte d’Ivoire, Somalia, Uganda, Zaire, and Zimbabwe—to skip randomly around the African map—in terms of these countries’ relative degree of democracy tells us strikingly little about their political dynamics and masks much in

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terms of their variations. Rather, the relative strength and nature of these states, their capacities for adaptation to the pressures for change in such a way as to ensure their maintenance of social order or even of their survival in the post–Cold War international order, is clearly a far more significant dimension along which these states vary. State capacity, therefore, emerges as an alternative to, and potentially more significant dimension than, democracy for the comparative study of African political systems, both in terms of enhancing our analytic understanding of the continent’s politics and even, one might argue, normatively. In the 1990s African politics have displayed a remarkable range of variations both in terms of states’ capacities for organizing the public sphere and in terms of how that sphere is organized, “democratically” or otherwise. And from the perspective of the latter part of the decade, the trajectories of African politics would seem to indicate a continuing divergence in political systems. Considering these diverging fates, the early years of the 1990s seem destined to have been a turning point, a critical juncture in the political evolution of the African state. Adapting the concept of “critical juncture” (borrowed from the literature on U.S. party politics) to comparative historical research, Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier have defined the term as “a period of significant change, which typically occurs in distinct ways in different countries, and which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies” (Collier and Collier 1991, 29). In this sense, the early years of the 1990s have clearly marked the end of one phase in postcolonial African history, and the beginning of another. Steven Krasner has suggested, in a review of approaches to the question of the state, that there is a need to make a “basic analytic distinction . . . between periods of institutional creation and periods of institutional stasis.” Borrowing the metaphor of “punctuated equilibrium” from evolutionary biology, Krasner describes a pattern of state building “characterized by rapid change during periods of crisis followed by consolidation and stasis.” Because periods of crisis require making critical choices, they tend to give rise to new structures, which then persist over time: “Furthermore, once a critical choice has been made it cannot be taken back. There may be a wide range of possible resolutions of a particular state-building crisis. But once a path is taken it canalizes future developments” (1984, 240). Following Krasner, Merilee Grindle (1996, 3–4) has more recently argued that a confluence of factors at the international level, starting in the 1980s and then accelerating in the 1990s, have created a “critical historical moment” in both Africa and Latin America, and that “responses to this new era of crisis are the basis on which state-economy and state-society relations in many countries will be constructed for the next several decades.” As a result of the crisis, Grindle notes, “the capacity of states to encourage economic development and maintain social stability was severely

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undermined.” Yet, at the same time, this situation “opened up increased space for deliberate efforts to craft new relationships between state and economy and to redefine relationships of power and accountability with society.” In the 1990s, that is, existing patterns of state control have eroded or even broken down, and the new patterns that are emerging are being shaped by the particular choices made in individual countries. There is thus no necessary uniformity across countries in terms of the impact of the forces shaping this historical period. On the contrary, implicit in the notion of a “critical juncture” is the assumption that this is a period in which politics in different countries will diverge, depending on their responses to a similar set of historical challenges. Borrowing the term, then, and building on the conceptual frameworks suggested by the Colliers, Krasner, and Grindle, there are three basic components to the concept of “critical juncture” as used in this volume. The term, first of all, refers to a period in which elites find themselves obliged to make significant choices and take actions in response to the crisis resulting from pressures for change on their regimes. The extent of the crisis in individual countries is a function of the relative weakness of the regime and the strengths of pressures brought to bear on it. And, as Grindle suggests, while such crises undermine existing political arrangments, they also open up possibilities for new ones. Second, the choices or strategies embarked upon in the critical period, which will shape the new arrangments, must be understood as themselves constrained by past choices; in the Colliers’ terminology, they arise from and are “embedded in antecedent conditions.” As we shall see, in the African context the particular nature of the postcolonial state as it had been elaborated in individual cases defines the parameters of the choices that can be made in the 1990s. Yet within these parameters there is also frequently significant room for intentional actions by elites or social groups. Third, the concept of critical juncture suggests that choices made and actions taken in this period will shape the nature of the state and of statesociety relations for some relatively significant time to come. Again to borrow the Colliers’ term, the critical juncture will produce a longer-term “legacy,” which will be possible to trace back to this period. There will of course be a high degree of variation in that legacy from country to country not only in terms of the nature of change, but in the degree of change. While across Africa regimes were forced to respond to pressures for change in the early 1990s, in some cases the extent of change might appear rather slight from the perspective of the latter part of the decade. Yet upon closer examination even in those cases we see that initial choices made in response to crisis have almost universally sown the seeds of more fundamental transformations. Across Africa, then, the years of the early 1990s presented special challenges to which regimes were forced to react; individual states

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did so in ways shaped by their previous history and the nature of the social groups that challenged them; and the choices made in those years will continue to have an impact for some time to come. As Collier and Collier emphasize in their own work on Latin American regimes, of course, such historical turning points do not signal a total break with the past; even at times of great change there is still a significant degree of continuity with the historical legacy in any country’s politics. Moreover, history continues. While it may be relatively easier in historical research to identify crucial turning points in the evolutionary path that has produced the contemporary “political arena,” predicting the likely evolution of a quickly changing situation is a far more precarious undertaking. The ultimate outcome of the current critical period in African history is no doubt more complicated than it would appear on the surface, and many forces that have been put into motion in this period will continue to interact, play a role, and shape the future. Yet I would suggest that despite these caveats, the concept of a critical juncture, understood as a pivotal historical moment signaling both a significant departure from past conditions and a moment that defines diverging evolutionary paths from roughly similar sets of conditions, seems an appropriate label for African politics in the last decade of the twentieth century. African states in the 1990s stand poised between the threat of disintegration and the unknown terrain of reconfiguration.

Sources of the Critical Juncture: The Vulnerability of the African State The universality of the fact of change across the continent contrasted with the wide variations in the nature of that change present a range of questions for the analysis of African politics in the 1990s. Why these dramatic transformations in African states at this point? That is, what factors have brought African regimes to this critical juncture in their history? And how are we to understand and get an analytic handle on the forces producing and shaping these seemingly disparate transformations? More tentatively, how do we begin to understand the possible trajectories that are likely in the future? The state must be the central focus in any effort to understand comparatively the variety of political transformations on the continent. In part this focus is a function of the obvious: states are at the center of political systems everywhere, perhaps particularly so in the case of Africa, and much of the literature on African politics has consequently focused on the state. 2 Moreover, as William Munro (1996, 113) has phrased it recently, “the state is pivotal to the political future of African countries. Even in the most abject cases of political chaos in Africa, some institutional form of

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political and administrative organization exists which calls itself, and is recognized as, the state.” It does not necessarily follow, however, that it is the state as an institution that has been the target of the efforts at transformation of the 1990s. Much of the recent political change in Africa might be understood as the product of an attack on regimes, or even on individual governments, rather than on states. There is a great deal of validity in the common analytic distinctions made by political scientists among those concepts; either as a moral order or as a set of institutions and structures, states are more enduring institutions than regimes, regimes more lasting than governments. Yet despite the potential analytic utility of such distinctions, one of the more salient facts of the African context remains the difficulty—if not the impossibility—of deciphering or drawing lines between regime and state. The state, the regime, the party, and even individual personalities have been closely intertwined in the vast majority of African countries, and are not easily disentangled. The high degree of personalization of both state and regime in much of Africa may be the key factor here. In the African “personally appropriated state,” to borrow Jackson and Rosberg’s phrase (1994, 300–304), attacks on regimes or incumbent governments become de facto attacks on the state itself. This should not obscure, of course, a degree of variation in the extent to which this is true even within Africa; in Somalia or Liberia the fall of the regime triggered the virtually simultaneous collapse of the state, while in Côte d’Ivoire, the government can change, the regime be modified to some degree, but the state in many ways persists. Yet even in such “strong state” cases, governmental changes clearly have a direct and immediate impact on the state itself; the death of Houphouët-Boigny signals the end of the “Houphouët state.” Its successor inherits much of the legacy, but it will not be the same beast. Moreover, perhaps the single most important aspect of the political transformations around the globe starting in the early 1980s has been an assault on the state as an institution. Around the world, not the least in the industrialized West, the state has been challenged both from “above” and from “below,” by ethnic, religious, and regional groups, by international actors, supranational bodies and institutions, and indeed by the state elite itself. Politicized culturally based groups have demanded the devolution of state powers to local units, or threatened secession and the very dismantling of the state, in countries as varied as Canada, Spain, Turkey, and Niger. And the pressure for economic reforms around the world, in particular for privatization of state enterprises along the lines of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions, can in themselves be understood as a dismantling of state capacity (see Chapter 2). As states surrender control over productive capabilities to private interests, and frequently to extranational interests, their power erodes.

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African states have been especially vulnerable to this challenge. We can see this in tracing even the broad outlines of the historical trajectory shared by most states on the continent. As Crawford Young (1994a) has argued most persuasively, the unique variant of the colonial state that Africa endured, a form of control centered on a concern with extraction of resources and the domination of society, bequeathed an enduring legacy to the postindependence state. Given the weak position of the heirs to the colonial state, the nationalist leaders who led countries to independence, the very viability of the independent state was uncertain from its birth. Indeed, some were effectively stillborn; in such cases as Chad the postcolonial period may not have constituted much of a state in terms of any internal domestic reality. In most others, however, the immediate need to consolidate power led to the rapid preeminence of one individual (or at times one party apparatus), who in turn sought to expand and elaborate that power by sponsoring the growth of a large bureaucratic structure, directly dependent on the summit. African states were also born into the Cold War context, and the international face of the state in Africa from the beginning outstripped its domestic reality in importance. Again to cite the most frequently used example: Chad has had little of what constitutes a state at the domestic level throughout its independent history, but at the international level (and despite Libyan claims to part of territory), its existence has never seriously been called into question. Phrased somewhat differently, the relevant question is the extent to which the juridically sovereign states of Africa as recognized by the international system in fact can lay claim to an empirical basis of power. In the widely discussed and much cited thesis of Jackson and Rosberg (1982b), the “juridical” (international) bases of statehood maintained African states for much of the postcolonial period, despite severe limitations in terms of their “empirical” (domestic) statehood. Hence scholars from a variety of perspectives and approaches have converged in describing African states in such terms as “fictive states” (Sandbrook 1985), “quasi-states” (Jackson 1990), or “shadow states” (Cruise O’Brien 1991). Cruise O’Brien describes the phenomenon as follows: “Between the ambitions of the elite and the survival stratagems of the masses, the state often appears to survive essentially as a show, a political drama with an audience more or less willing to suspend its disbelief.” And, he notes, “the audience in question lies both within the boundaries of the state and in the international arena” (1991, 146). A central aspect of the context of the 1990s is the fact that those international forces that maintained juridical statehood for three decades have quickly become less obvious, less strong, or have even evaporated altogether. Clearly these transformations in the nature of the international system are one of the key sources of pressures for change. They are also a central part of the reason that the variations in empirical statehood among

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African countries have become more readily apparent in the 1990s. It is now clear that wide variations developed over the course of the first three decades of independence in Africa in terms of the relative capacities and the autonomy of states. Yet the common juridical bases of statehood applied equally to states that varied widely in terms of their empirical reality. That is, while there gradually developed much variation in the extent to which African states were in fact capable of organizing the public realm, the juridical face of statehood guaranteed by Cold War notions of international sovereignty masked these variations. The rapid erosion in the early 1990s of the sustaining resources available to African (and other) states on the basis of their juridical statehood has revealed the underlying wide variety of forms and degrees of empirical statehood. While some countries have been able to maintain and even expand the state’s capacity for social control, others have found this capacity eroded or even completely evaporated. As Catherine Boone argues in Chapter 8, these variations might be traced to the diverging paths taken by African regimes in the postcolonial period. Those regimes whose survival had been premised primarily on control over the means of private accumulation found themselves quickly under fire in the new circumstances, while to the extent that networks of patronage and the means of incorporating rural populations had been achieved, regimes found it easier to elaborate means of reconfiguring their power bases. Despite the variations, however, there are also important similarities, and several shared patterns can be discerned across the continent. Throughout most of the postcolonial period Africa’s weak states have relied to differing degrees on a set of similar strategies for sustaining themselves. Each of these strategies has highlighted one aspect of the reality of the African state. Particularly striking about the current period is the fact that, due to a confluence of factors, each of these aspects of the state has been severely undermined. What are some of these aspects of the postcolonial state, and how have these been undermined in the 1990s? The literature on African politics displays a colorful multiplicity of (invariably unflattering) adjectives attached to the postcolonial African state (including the “Vampire State” of Frimpong-Ansah 1992), but in many ways these have pointed to a similar set of phenomena that we can group roughly into five aspects: a client status, a personalized identity, a centralized or overdeveloped morphology, a prebendal or rentier nature, and an extractive impulse. It bears emphasizing that these descriptions are not meant to denote different kinds of states, but rather different faces that have characterized African states as a group. Individual states have varied in the degree to which they have demonstrated each of these faces, and these variations explain in part their relative fates. As suggested in the discussion of juridical statehood, perhaps most obviously the African state has been a client state. An international role as

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the client of one or the other of the rival Cold War superpowers provided a major sustaining force for many African states throughout the postcolonial period, and the disappearance of this basis of support is clearly linked to many of the transformations of the 1990s. Importantly, those states for which this face was a primary resource were left in the post–Cold War period with a legacy of massive militarization; there was no shortage of weaponry available to claimants to political power, nor of people trained and willing to use them. It is thus no accident that those best described as client states (Somalia, Angola, Ethiopia, or Liberia, for example) were among those to experience the most rapid—and violent—change in the 1990s. The African state as a category might also be described as a personalized state, in the sense that it has been characterized by paternalistic forms of government shaped by the personality of one key individual (Jackson and Rosberg 1982a). While this phenomenon is not unique to Africa, this form of state has been most widely developed there. This is reflected in the pronounced tendency to identify countries by individuals; students of African politics speak easily of “Banda’s Malawi,” “Mobutu’s Zaire,” “Sékou Touré’s Guinea,” or in the case of Kenya note with irony that “l’état, c’est Moi.” The personalized nature of the African state has made it particularly vulnerable to generational issues, and thus another component of the timing of the pressures for change in Africa, three decades after independence, is the simple fact of human life expectancy. In cases like Côte d’Ivoire or Malawi the transformations of the 1990s are inseparable from the life span of Félix Houphouët-Boigny or Hastings Banda. And in such cases where the state is so closely tied to one individual, whose personal “charisma” has been the defining basis of the regime and the state, the passing of that individual automatically poses enormous problems and opens the door to reconfigurations. It is in this sense that Lanciné Sylla (1986) has described succession to the charismatic leader as the “Gordian knot of African politics.” Moreover, the credibility of “founding father” myths as sustaining attributes necessarily erodes with the maturation of a younger generation come of age (indeed even born) after independence. Thus the personalization of the African state has exacerbated generational tensions, which threaten to undermine regimes, and hence the state itself. Jeanne Maddox Toungara, for example, has noted how in Côte d’Ivoire the emergence of generational tensions within the ruling Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) fed demands for the reconstitution of both the party and the state (1995). The phenomenon of the personalization of the state must also be closely linked to various other characteristics of African states. The growth of the state sector at independence was a particularly remarkable feature of the African state, as more and more people were absorbed into the state

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apparatus as a strategy for maintaining political support (Ayoade 1988). It thus quickly became possible to describe many African states as both overdeveloped and centralized states (Leys 1976). In country after country, the number of people employed in the public sector increased by factors of six, eight, or even ten within the first decade or so of independence (Cottingham 1974), suggesting another adjective to be added to the lexicon of qualifiers of the African state: “swollen” (Diamond 1987). And this state has not only been “overdeveloped,” but also overly centralized. That is, virtually all political authority and the power to allocate resources were vested in a central set of governmental institutions, with virtually no local government responsibility, power, or resources (Wunsch and Olowu 1990). Although the strategy served many states well in the early postcolonial period, this face of the state is also clearly untenable over an indefinite period of time. The limits of this strategy are defined by what Dwayne Woods (Chapter 12) refers to as the “burden of cooptation,” that is, the costs of using the expansion of public employment as a means of buying the support of crucial social sectors. As Wunsch and Olowu have documented, the result of overcentralization is that the state itself becomes a massive consumer of resources, is highly inefficient, and fails to promote any significant degree of economic development, thus leading eventually to its own political weakness and failure. It is this aspect of the state that has come most directly under fire in the 1990s from both domestic and international sources, most notably from the World Bank and the IMF. Postcolonial African states have also, almost universally though again to varying degrees, exhibited the characteristics that have earned them the label of prebendal or rentier states, referring to a means of allocating resources selectively to a group (at times identified as a “ruling class” or “ruling alliance”) with preferential access to the state. The particular forms of prebendalism that have characterized African states have left them permeated by clientelistic networks, in which patrons reward clients with positions that can be converted into sources of private accumulation (Joseph 1987). This strategy can also serve the interests of facilitating the consolidation of power of a regime, and hence of maintaining political stability, for a period of time. As a result of this process, however, the very exercise of state power inhibits economic growth, and thus the state eventually undercuts the very basis of its own survival. “As rentiers cluster around and within the weakening state,” writes Catherine Boone in her analysis of the rentier state in Senegal, “the unproductive extraction of wealth continues” (1993, 272). As her study makes clear, the result of this process is to weaken the state from within as, in a sense, the state “turns in on itself.” Finally, to varying degrees, African states have been extractive states. Most vividly in cases like Zaire, Sierra Leone, or Liberia, the state has been elaborated and has served primarily as an instrument for extracting mineral or other natural resources to the benefit of those who control it.

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Not coincidentally, of course, this was precisely the nature of the colonial state in what has perhaps been the most extractive of African states: Zaire. The strategy has allowed those countries with important mineral or other such resources to concentrate on purely extractive activities rather than on the building of the capacity or infrastructure to link these states to their societies. In a sense, control over populations becomes irrelevant, except to the extent to which they interfere with the extractive activities. To varying degrees this facet has also played a role in a variety of states; the uranium basis of state revenue in Niger in the 1980s, or petroleum in Nigeria, are intricately linked to the political fates of these countries in the 1990s. As these cases suggest, this strategy also has its limits. Fluctuations in international supply and demand and the declining profitability of extractive looting as infrastructure disintegrates undermine the strategy in the longer run. While clearly some African states might be most accurately described in terms of one of these characteristics, the point here is that to varying degrees virtually all African states have exhibited a combination of these faces. The particular fate of individual states in the 1990s, however, has in large part been conditioned by the extent to which one or more of these “faces” has dominated in the postcolonial period. And most importantly, we have seen that for a variety of reasons, by the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, all of these survival strategies of the postcolonial African state were bankrupt, having reached their internal limits or succumbed to their inherent contradictions. It is the confluence of these factors that has produced the “sea changes” we have witnessed and brought Africa to a critical historical juncture. Noting the universality of pressures for democratic change on the continent early in the decade, Crawford Young wrote of the common challenges faced by African states: “At the beginning of the 1990s, Africa, from Algiers to Capetown, faced a common conjuncture, an imperative of democratization, broadly defined. Battered by economic decline and weakened by political decay, the African state faced narrow choices; political opening was no longer an option but an obligation” (1994c, 230). In country after country, therefore, the political struggles of the early years of the decade were defined by debates about the nature, extent, and processes of democratization. Yet from the perspective of just a few years later, what is most striking is that given the exhaustion of the various means of survival on which states had depended, the responses of individual states to the common conjuncture have produced very broad variations not only (or perhaps even most significantly) in terms of the degree of democracy achieved, but in the very survival of these states. These variations must be understood in part as a function of the differences in the sustaining attributes of states in the postcolonial period. But they also clearly depend on the nature of the response of individual regimes to the

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“imperative of democratization.” It is thus to a survey of these responses that we now turn.

Responding to the Critical Juncture: Political Change in Africa, 1990–1995 The coincidental juxtaposition of two events in April 1994—both events linked to the confluence of a wide variety of pressures for change on African political systems—strikingly demonstrated what are perhaps the two endpoints of the continuum of transformations in African states in the 1990s. At one extreme was the tragedy of unspeakable proportions in Rwanda, when the rapid and total collapse of the state was accompanied by a carefully orchestrated genocidal violence, which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Rwandans, and the displacement of several million others. Even as that paroxysm of violence was running its course, the world’s attention was diverted to South Africa, where the electoral victory of Nelson Mandela signaled the definitive end of the apartheid system and the seemingly miraculously peaceful transition to democratic majority rule. The spectrum of politics in post–Cold War Africa is clearly a wide one. And if we survey even quickly the events of the first half of the 1990s, it becomes apparent that everything in the middle has occurred; African regimes have exhibited responses to the pressures for political change that span the spectrum from adamant resistance to reform to dramatic democratic transformations, with consequences for states ranging from disintegration to profound reconfiguration. The centrality of debates on democratization and the concomitant proliferation of elections are thus the first and most apparent indication of the extension of political change on the continent. Indeed, the events in these two definitive cases were tied to struggles surrounding democratization; the election of Mandela in South Africa represented the culmination of societal efforts to reconfigure the state in a democratic direction, while the disintegration of the state in Rwanda was directly linked to the efforts by incumbent elites to forestall the kind of political reconfiguration that elections would have entailed. The sheer number of elections in Africa in the period from 1990 to 1995 is striking; some form of elections were held in almost every country, in the vast majority of cases in direct response to the pressures for change in political systems.3 By my count at least 39 sub-Saharan African countries held national elections in this period (6 in 1991, 8 in 1992, 14 in 1993, 6 in 1994, and 5 in 1995). This proliferation of elections, however, while it serves as an indicator of the widespread pressures for change, tells us little about the extent of substantive change or the degree of democratization in fact occurring on the continent. While it may have been possible to conclude that democracy

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was the only viable alternative for African states in the 1990s, that “default speaks powerfully for democratization; no credible substitutes now stand,” as Young and Kanté (1992, 59) phrased it, such an assessment is only true if we take it to mean that democratization would appear to be the only viable alternative for legitimating rule. There are, by contrast, clearly many possible alternatives open to rulers attempting to hold on to power, secure their positions, or impose a political order in the face of pressures to change. Indeed, elections themselves may be a strategy for maintaining power, and many African (and indeed other) elections in the 1990s have been clearly intended to forestall change, or even to strengthen the status quo. As I will argue below, however, this strategy is a double-edged sword; having announced the “democratization” of the political system, even under conditions intended to secure continued rule, elites may find that a door has been cracked open to pressures for further change, and thus to a longer-term reconfiguration of the political order. Even in cases where little change was immediately apparent, the period of the early 1990s seems destined in retrospect to have opened the door to substantive political change. The democratic debates and elite reactions to them thus provoked a wide variety of initial responses and produced a wide variety of political events in the 1990–1995 period. This is true not only in terms of the extent of democratization that has resulted, but also—and, as I have suggested, more significantly—in terms of the dimension of state capacity. The conduct, conditions, and outcomes of the debates on democratizing political systems, and at times the very conduct of elections, have not only determined the degree of “democracy” of African regimes, but have been intricately linked to the question of the continued capacity of states to maintain the authority to define a social and political order. In a few countries the first pressures for change brought a complete, and frequently sudden, collapse of the state, and thus some of the earliest political transformations of the decade are in fact examples of the disintegration of states. This was particularly the case in countries that had been characterized by the phenomenon Joshua Forrest (Chapter 3) terms “state inversion.” Such was the case in Liberia in 1990, followed by Somalia in 1991. A bit later, Rwanda also presents a variant on the phenomenon of state collapse. In a somewhat different pattern, other cases in the early 1990s might best be described as representing a crumbling of state capacity—albeit without the sudden power vacuum and subsequent violence produced by rapid collapse—in the face of efforts to forestall and control pressures for democratization. Zaire—where the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko managed to cling to power well into the decade even as the capacity of the Zairian state to exert its authority over most of the territory shriveled—represents both the most important and the paradigmatic example of this phenomenon. To varying degrees, however, such countries as Togo or Sierra Leone might likewise be described in these terms.

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While in many countries the debate on democracy has in fact produced elections allegedly intended to inaugurate the transition to a reconfigured basis of state power, there has been a wide degree of variation in the actual outcomes of these experiments. In Angola the 1992 effort to end the stalemated struggle for control of the state via elections collapsed when the loser in those elections, the U.S.-backed União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) led by Jonas Savimbi, refused to recognize the electoral results. Perhaps even more significant than Angola’s failed transition is what we might term the aborted transition in Nigeria. Having carefully orchestrated a reconfiguration of the Nigerian political system to culminate in presidential elections in June 1993, the Nigerian military then abruptly terminated the process it had set in motion by invalidating the election even before the official results could be announced. These events clearly hold significant implications for the Nigerian state, even if the ultimate outcome still remains unclear. Nigeria since 1993 has been embroiled in a struggle concerning the nature of the state that poses a real threat of large-scale disintegration of state capacity, an outcome that hinges on the relative success of the efforts by the regime of General Sani Abacha to reestablish a basis for state power, which may or may not be “democratic” in any sense. No doubt the most common pattern in terms of responses to the pressures for reform has been what we might call the option of “pseudotransition.” In Kenya, Gabon, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso—to name but a few examples of this pattern—incumbent elites responded to the pressures for democratization via the promulgation of a variety of reforms and even of new constitutions, the nominal legalization of opposition parties, and the organization of elections. Yet in all of these cases the systems set in place and the timing, rules, and procedures for elections were carefully calculated to produce the “victory” of the incumbent, who could subsequently attempt to resist pressures for further change on the claim of a popular and “democratic” mandate. As several of the cases discussed in this volume would suggest, however, there is good reason to think that these decisions, forced on leaders due to the pressures of the critical juncture, will have longer-term consequences likely to escape their control, ultimately leading to a reconfiguration of power relations between the state and social groups. Despite the apparent failure of most such democratization efforts, in a few but important countries the responses to the pressures for change of the 1990s produced widely hailed and apparently very successful reforms, restructuring states in a democratic direction. At times, these came directly via the ballot box: in Zambia in 1991, and in Malawi in 1994, long-reigning “founding father” presidents who had led their respective countries to independence were voted out of office and power transferred to a new generation of leaders. Among the francophone countries, the most successful of these cases came via the “national conference” model of transition. Following the example of Benin in 1991, the model entailed the convening of

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a wide spectrum of national elites to discuss the rewriting of the political system, the setting in place of a transitional government with a mandate to organize and oversee impartial elections, and the subsequent transfer of power to an elected government (Heilbrunn 1993). In many ways the national conference represented the most profound possibilities for reform in that it opened up for discussion the entire basis of the political system as well as the nature and shape of the state, and there was much enthusiasm among both would-be democratizers and among scholars for the model. In practice, however, the “national conference phenomenon” (Robinson 1994) has turned out to be rather rare; although convoked in a number of countries, only in Benin and Mali (following the violent overthrow of the old regime) could national conference transitions be judged a clear success, whether in terms of democratization or of state restructuring. Resisting the pressure to legalize competitive multiparty elections but faced with the need to respond to their own pressures for reform, regimes in Uganda and in Ethiopia have experimented with new formulations in the 1990s. Fearing that unlimited electoral competition would threaten the still-fragile Ugandan state that had been gradually reconstructed over the course of the 1980s, President Yoweri Museveni opted for the experiment of elections and “democratization,” but without allowing the formation of opposition parties and maintaining the centralization of state power. In a strikingly different attempt to deal with the dangers of politicized ethnicity, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi has broken with the long history of suppressing expressions of ethnically based claims in Africa to attempt an explicitly ethnoregional federalist arrangement. Again, both of these innovative but risky experiments must be understood as responses to the centrality of the democratic question on the continent in the 1990s. These various transformations are of significant interest in themselves, particularly insofar as we are concerned with the extent to which political systems have been reformed in a democratic direction. But, as I have suggested above, in many ways the events that have grown out of debates about “democratization” (and the effort to pursue or forestall the process via the manipulation of elections) are only the beginning of the deeper processes of change that African states appear to be undergoing. Elections are frequently important and particularly significant in countries with little experience in electoral politics, but they do not in themselves signal transformations or restructuring. Rather, in many cases they have simply marked the initial response to the pressures for change, and have set in motion forces and processes that will determine the longer-term shape of African states. This is true of countries along the full spectrum of democratic responses in the 1990s. In Angola, for example, following the failure of a purely democratic electoral solution to political impasse, a variety of arrangements on which to restructure state power have been explored. The failed elections of 1992

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did not produce the desired results, either in terms of democracy or in terms of reconstituting a viable state capable of exerting its authority throughout the country’s territory, but they nevertheless set in motion processes involving both international and domestic actors that are certain to play crucial roles in determining the longer-term future of the Angolan state. This fact is equally apparent in elections that produced political transitions. In Niger, for example, the old regime came to an end with the national conference of 1991, which in turn produced a transitional government, a new constitution, elections, and the subsequent transfer of power to a democratically elected president. But from its inception it was clear that the stability of this system was far from assured; in many ways these events signaled only the beginning and not the culmination of the process of restructuring the Nigerien state. Indeed the tenure of the new government of the Third Republic was marked principally by the continuation of central and acrimonious debates among a variety of social actors concerning the nature and shape of the state (Villalón 1996a). The coup d’état against that government in February 1996 demonstrated vividly that the events of the early 1990s merely set in motion forces that are still being worked out, and whose ultimate contribution to the newly emerging state structures remains undefined. This fact is strikingly illustrated by the cast of characters engaged in the continued struggle to define the state in Niger; in the new elections held in July 1996 the coup leader, Major (now General) Ibrahim Mainassara Barre, ran against (and allegedly defeated) a variety of political figures from the ancien régime, the transitional government, and the Third Republic, including the ousted president, Mahamane Ousmane, who presented himself as a candidate for “reelection.” Even in the various “pseudotransitions,” despite the capacity for incumbent governments to hijack the reform process and manipulate the electoral system to maintain their preeminence, the processes set in motion by the declarations of reforms have not been fully controllable by those governments. To varying degrees in such countries as Kenya, Burkina Faso, or Cameroon, governments have found themselves constrained by their own rhetoric and by the strength of new social actors who have profited from the changed circumstances to establish societal bases providing them with new powers. As various social groups take advantage of the opportunities provided by the changed environment—including the cultivation of connections with international actors—to organize and escalate demands, the state is forced to react. Whether intended by incumbents or not, some degree of state reconfiguration has thus been initiated even in regimes marked by their apparent continuity. And even among the “successes,” the legacy of the period of democratic reforms is still far from clear. In each, a wide variety of social and political actors have attempted to influence and play a role in the ongoing

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reconfiguration of the political order in the name of giving substance to the claims of a new democracy. Others, meanwhile, attempt to shape how this will be done to their benefit or interests, or even to derail or reverse the process. In Zambia, for example, former president Kenneth Kaunda has apparently attempted to orchestrate his own return to power, and in Benin the elections of 1996 in fact produced just such an outcome with the victory of former president Matthiew Kerekou, ousted in 1991 by the national conference in Benin’s “model” transition. In Mali, a very successful transition by most accounts, major issues concerning core institutions and state structures remained unresolved several years later. Since choices on these matters will have important consequences for the exercise of state power, the debates on such fundamental issues as the extent and form of state decentralization and the modifications in the code governing the electoral process remain highly contentious. In Mali, as across the continent, the early years of the 1990s mark an important turning point in the country’s politics; the choices that have been made have placed it on a trajectory of change, but the ultimate destination of that adventure remains unclear. Surveying the events of the first half of the 1990s, we see that the shape of the state and its relations with social groups have been called into question to varying degrees in every country on the continent, and all are still engaged in attempting to redefine these issues. All states in Africa have had to make some initial response to the pressures for reform of the post–Cold War years, but these responses have in turn set in motion forces that will continue to shape the future of individual states. It is already quite clear that there will be a wide variety of outcomes; in this respect the metaphor of states poised between “disintegration” and “reconfiguration” might best be seen not as a dichotomous choice, but as a continuum of degrees of change. Moreover, states are not unitary actors but rather complex interrelated sets of institutions and practices, “characterized by uneven ascension and uneven decline” (Schatzberg 1988, 5); disintegration or reconfiguration may thus selectively affect some parts of a given state more than others. There will thus be many variations between the extremes, but it seems clear that all African states are threatened with some degree of “disintegration” in the sense of an erosion in their capacities, and all will have to respond to this challenge by some extent of “reconfiguration” of the political order. In any given case, as the chapters that follow make clear, the specific outcomes, and particularly the extent to which a country approaches one of the polar ends of the continuum of change, will be determined by the dynamic processes of change and the relative power of politicized actors, as influenced by the specifics of the “antecedent conditions” of that country’s political history. Part 2 of this volume, “Perspectives on State Disintegration,” examines the cases that have been marked primarily by the collapse

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or erosion of state capacity, a pattern which, as Joshua Forrest suggests in his introductory chapter to Part 2, is rooted in the phenomenon he has labeled “state inversion.” By contrast, in Part 3, we turn to an examination of the variations in the ways and the extent to which state power has been reconfigured in response to the critical juncture. In introducing these cases, Catherine Boone argues that patterns of reconfiguration are ultimately rooted in the nature of previous efforts by states to build ties to various (and especially rural) social structures. Within these broad parameters lie the numerous variations this volume seeks to explore.

Shaping the Legacy: Societies and Political Restructuring The concept of a critical juncture implies the emergence of a new crisis, of new challenges to which a society must respond. It does not, however, mark a total break with the past. At any such historical juncture, therefore, it is important to consider the extent to which the choices and responses of the moment will autonomously affect outcomes, and to what extent these choices are in fact “embedded in antecedent conditions.” As the discussion of the cases in this volume make clear, the social origins of transformations in African states lie much earlier than the 1989–1990 period. In addition to considering the transformations at the international level, the exhaustion of the various means by which states had sustained themselves, and the nature of the initial response to the “imperative of democratization,” an understanding of the changes in African politics must thus also be rooted in an examination of the transformations in social structures. We need to consider the ways in which the variety of societal transformations will affect political systems, and the degree to which societal forms of organization might replace or displace state structures, whether in the long or short term. This may be particularly relevant in considering the situation of collapsed or disintegrated states. Only a close look at societallevel factors in such cases will allow us to understand what Anna Simons, in her discussion of Somalia (Chapter 4), calls the “structure of dissolution.” Similarly in Rwanda, Liberia, or Zaire, the processes, forms, and outcomes of the disappearance of the state are ultimately rooted squarely in societal-level factors. As the most fragile and hollow of Africa’s weak states have collapsed in the 1990s, variations in how this has happened and in the results are embedded in the logic of their individual social and economic configurations. The influences of societal actors on political restructuring have also frequently extended across Africa’s borders. The simultaneity of transformations across Africa are not just the product of states being subject to the same outside forces, but rather also of the fact that changes in one state on the continent are quickly transformed into pressures for change in others.

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Most obviously, perhaps, the dismantling of the apartheid state in South Africa has in itself accelerated the process of change elsewhere on the continent, whether by changing the relative configurations of military forces in long-running disputes such as in Angola or Mozambique, or by providing new opportunities for outside patronage and support to extractive regimes as in Liberia or Sierra Leone (see Chapter 6). The demise of apartheid and the inauguration of a democratic South Africa has also transformed the nature of the debate and the discourse on democracy in many other countries across the continent. While South Africa may be the most significant, there are a multitude of examples of ways in which change in one country immediately affects the nature and outcome of political debates in another. Most striking was the proliferation of demands for a “national conference” in the early 1990s. The success of the experience in Benin immediately affected both the nature of the opposition demands and the relative powers of political actors in other countries with links to Benin, most importantly other francophone West African countries. Through a variety of connections based on shared ties to France and the use of the French language, the lessons of the Beninese experience were quickly diffused to other countries, often having a significant impact on the relative power of political actors. Moreover, at the international level in Africa, recent years have been marked by the emergence of a variety of nonstate links and institutions, including the networks of associations that Dwayne Woods (1995) has called “transnational civil society.” These supplement other more established transnational societal institutions, often of a religious nature, which have also served as vehicles for the spread of political debates and factors in influencing outcomes, a phenomenon explored in a recent volume on Transnational Religion and Fading States (Rudolph and Piscatori 1997). Both the more recently established networks of human rights groups, journalists’ associations, women’s groups, and the like, and the older religious networks have been fed by—and at times depend heavily on—the availability of international financial resources, and the locus of the factors weighing in on political debates thus becomes more diffuse, and more difficult to trace. Domestic social transformations have also been central to the transformations of the 1990s. The centralizing postcolonial African states, in their “quest for hardness” (Forrest 1988), had sought—and at times achieved—a virtual monopoly of associational life. As these states have lost capacity, however, we have seen a veritable explosion of the varieties of associational life in country after country. It is clear that these new groups will play an important role in shaping the direction of politics, but the exact nature of the role they will play has been the subject of much debate among Africanist scholars. While some have explored the demo cratic potential of the new groups of “civil society” (Harbeson, Rothchild,

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and Chazan 1994), others have tended to dismiss them as opportunistic and ineffectual (Fatton 1992). In any case it is clear that not only political systems but societies themselves are in flux across Africa. There is an extraordinary diversity of societal groups that have been politicized in the transformed state contexts, some newly formed, others having discovered a new potential for political action. Among these are of course religious and ethnic groups, and virtually every country in Africa has witnessed the politicization of such groups in the 1990s. Women’s groups, in addition, have proliferated and found new opportunities for attempting to direct change. A debate on the position of women and on the “gendered nature” of the state has been central to many of the efforts at reconfiguration in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. Participants in this debate have included not only academics, but international agencies of many sorts, and of course newly created and politicized national women’s associations. Even countries like Malawi, with little history of women’s political activism, saw the surprising emergence of a “very militant feminist movement” (Mutharika 1996) following that country’s 1994 transition. While those social movements that have emerged in reaction to the changes of this critical moment will be one factor shaping the longer-term prospects of political systems, in fact the roots of many deeper processes of social transformation that can be traced to earlier periods may prove to have a more lasting and significant impact. In Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, or Côte d’Ivoire, for example, important social transformations began for various reasons early in the 1980s. But as the discussion of these cases in Part 3 shows, the form that these social transformations have taken, as well as their expression in terms of the creation of movements and organizations, are closely linked to state reforms of the 1990s. The process of accommodating these dual transformations in state and society will no doubt entail changes, although we should not dismiss the possibility that old patterns may also be repeated. The efforts to incorporate some of the new social movements by having them “officialized” into regimes and states may in fact lead to new quasicorporatist arrangements reminiscent of the past, and may deprive such groups of any autonomous power (an outcome suggested by Nyang’oro and Shaw in Chapter 2). Concerns about just such a likelihood, for example, have been expressed about the efforts by the state to “capture” women’s movements in Kenya or Zimbabwe (see Chapters 10 and 14). Considering the centrality of societal-level factors to the future of African politics leads us ultimately to the crucial, hypothetical question: Are states likely to disappear? Are nonstate forms of organization emerging in response to the disintegration of state structures? And if so, what are they? The question is highly central to countries like Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zaire, and Rwanda, and the chapters in this volume dealing

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with these cases suggest a variety of answers. Anna Simons discusses the possibilities that the “space-that-was-Somalia” may revert to kinship-based forms of political organization (Chapter 4). William Reno, by contrast, sees the potential for new and alternative ways of political organization emerging in parts of West Africa, particularly in the vacuum of what was once Liberia and Sierra Leone (Chapter 6). Such arguments clearly cannot be dismissed, but it is also clear that there remains a high degree of resilience in the persistence of states as the basic unit of political organization. And—strikingly—the continued existence of African states is still primarily justified on the basis of colonialera political units. In contrast to Ali Mazrui (1993), who suggested that the case of Eritrea might indicate the beginning of a redrawing of the African map, in fact the only new states that have come into existence (de jure or even de facto) are those that can claim a colonial justification (Eritrea, Somaliland), a point that has been underlined recently by Daniel Bach (1995). In addition, any serious debates about state boundaries today are still argued exclusively in terms of colonial history and precedents; such is the case between Cameroon and Nigeria, or between Senegal and Mauritania on one border and Guinea Bissau on the other. This persistence of colonial divisions is not just a function of the fact that there is no obvious alternative. Rather, over the course of several decades colonial boundaries have developed a reality of their own; weak or incapacitated though they may be, African states have left their mark on their populations, giving a measure of reality to their artificial existence. Thus, William F. S. Miles (1994) has shown how the line in the Sahelian sands dividing the Hausa people between the states of Niger and Nigeria has had a deep impact on the societies on each side of that border. In whatever form, the state seems here to stay. But, as I have suggested throughout this chapter, what shape the African state will ultimately take as it emerges from this period of transformation still remains difficult to predict. In an article headlined “Unmaking and Remaking the State,” Africa Confidential (1995, 1) surveyed recent events in Africa, concluding that “if it is clear that the present state system is in serious disarray, it is equally clear that there is no obvious replacement.” In a similar vein, Crawford Young’s (1994b, 263) rather more eloquent comment concerning the Zairian state is applicable to the continent as a whole: “The illusion of the integral state lies shattered, but we still await the requiem. The nature of its successor has yet to be revealed.” Daniel Levine (1993, 354) has rightly suggested, in a review of the Colliers’ work, that there is a need to enrich our analyses by “attention to human agency,” noting that “the institutions, social formations, and expectations established at critical junctures have lasting impact, but they do not run on auto-pilot.” The point is well taken; yet it is also clear that the successor to the postcolonial state of the first three decades of independence

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will ultimately be shaped by the forces unleashed in the early 1990s. As I have argued throughout this chapter, African states in the early 1990s were forced to make difficult choices under intense pressures both from outside and from within. The combination of the variations in their strategies of rule in the first decades of independence and the choices made by elites have led some to disintegrate, others to reconfigure their political systems. Many have tried to resist change, but as the cases make clear, even these countries have found it necessary to adapt in various ways. The principal aim of this volume is to look closely at a number of cases so as to begin to sort out these transformations in the African state, sketch out the contours of emerging structures, and assess the forces shaping the future. To the extent that African states are indeed at a critical historical juncture, we anticipate that while there will be some degree of continuity with earlier periods of African politics, there most importantly will be significant amounts of change as Africa enters the twenty-first century. The path-dependent nature of the direction political change takes at important historical junctures and the variations in the extent and degree of continuity and change in individual cases suggest the need for careful comparative and configurative study of a variety of cases if we are to understand broader patterns (Collier and Collier 1991, 27–39). By considering the current transformations of the state in a number of different cases, the chapters that follow attempt to document and analyze the constellation of forces that seem destined to produce divergent but enduring historical legacies for African political systems.

Notes 1. These categories varied slightly over the years. Most tellingly, over the 1990–1995 period, a fourth type, that of “contested sovereignty,” made its appearance on the table that appeared in each issue of Africa Demos. And at various times the category of “strong” commitment to democracy for regimes in transition disappeared completely. 2. Though it is beyond the scope and intent of this chapter to develop this argument fully, it may merit noting that the centrality of the state to the study of African politics has recently been called into question by Goran Hyden (1995). While this interesting argument offers much in terms of suggestions about the future direction of African political studies, I find neither Hyden’s empirical claim that the state has been neglected in the Africanist literature of the 1990s nor his theoretical suggestion that this may be a fruitful development convincing for many reasons. 3. In a rare few, such as Senegal in 1993, the elections of the early 1990s took place at the regularly scheduled time and were thus not in themselves a response to the events of those years. Even in these cases, however, the debate and conduct of the elections were shaped significantly by the transformed contexts. On the Senegalese case, see Villalón 1994a.

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The African State in the Global Economic Context J ULIUS E. NYANG’ORO

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TIMOTHY M. S HAW

From the poorest countries of the Third World to the most advanced exemplars of welfare capitalism, one of the few universals in the history of the twentieth century is the increasingly pervasive influence of the state as an institution and social actor (Evans 1995, 4). Africa is in crisis and its future depends on the answers to life and death questions—on famine, food aid, the price of oil, irreversible environmental damage, the impact of the AIDS virus, arms sales, democracy. But one further question in particular stands out. Sub-Saharan Africa’s total debt is U.S.$175 billion and therefore its dependency on the international financial institutions is unusually strong. The terms on which finance for long-term economic development is provided is the most explosive issue of all. Hope for Africa and Africans depends on this (Brown and Tiffen 1994, 1). West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and social stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real “strategic” danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism (Kaplan 1994, 46).

In current discourses on the elusiveness of sustainable development in Africa and the apparent predominance of international financial institutions (IFIs) in national economic policymaking, one might assume that the state in African countries is of extremely diminished importance. Such an assumption would be based on the fact that since the controversial study of the World Bank (1981)—popularly known as the Berg Report—noted that a big part of Africa’s development crisis was the state itself, the dominant strategy to alleviate the crisis by many influential academics and policymakers has been to reduce the centrality of the state in the development process (Bates 1981; Rothchild and Chazan 1988; Harbeson, Rothchild, and Chazan 1994; Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993).

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The economic crisis in Africa, now well into its second decade, has also resulted in some significant changes in the political realm. While the 1980s debate was dominated by the need to “get the prices right” and allow the market to dictate economic decisions, the discourse by the 1990s had assumed a different tone. The predominant idea now is to “get the politics right”: political as well as economic liberalization leading to democratic governance. Getting the politics right in the current African context has come to mean that the previous emphasis on state withdrawal from economic activity must be accompanied and balanced by the liberalization of politics. By the end of 1995 virtually every country on the continent had acknowledged the need to create a more conducive environment for the practice of pluralist politics, at least at the formal level. The best measures of this renewed “liberalism” are the emergence of opposition parties and the proliferation of contested elections. In virtually all cases, the elections have been conducted under international supervision. In some significant cases, the regimes in power were actually defeated. Such was the case in Benin, Cape Verde, Zambia, and Malawi (Nyang’oro 1996a). Africa toward the end of the twentieth century is assumed to be marginal in both popular perceptions and academic analyses. Yet it has been quite central in discourses about the costs and benefits of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) over the last one and a half decades. Africa also features increasingly in debates over new foreign and security issues, particularly on the central issue of peacekeeping in the post–Cold War world. Moreover, African cases are crucial in terms of the debate on the origins and roles of civil society. Finally, as the new international division of labor (NIDL), especially its newly industrialized countries (NICs) component, is shifting attention from industrialization in Asia to resources elsewhere, Africa may yet have another day in the sun as the last frontier for both resource extraction and green tourism. Africa’s niche in the postbipolar world is still problematic but traditional conceptual and policy assumptions have already had to be discarded. As the continent’s political economy takes on a distinctive post–Cold War and -SAP shape, so its possibilities and choices become more apparent. In short, in terms of history, policy, and praxis, Africa is clearly at a critical juncture. But we remain more optimistic than some scholars that Africa can transcend the present and define a sustainable niche for itself in the world of the next millennium. This chapter reviews the current existential and intellectual condition of the continent before highlighting some contemporary issues, crucial aspects of the critical juncture. It thus proceeds from an overview of Africa’s lackluster political and economic performance since independence, with a concentration on the transformation in state-economy relations under pressures of developmental disappointments, ecological crises, escalating debts, and preoccupation with SAPs. The rise of “market forces” and concomitant demise of state “interventions” have together opened up space and demand for civil society to play an augmented role in terms of basic

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needs, especially in the areas of health and education. As already noted, the initial preoccupation with economic reforms has been supplemented with a concern for political liberalization as well. But whether these and related forms of conditionalities (e.g., ecological, demilitarization, or gender issues) are compatible is problematic. As a consequence of growing inequalities, new security issues have arisen, ranging from prevention, early-warning, and confidence-building measures to postconflict reconstruction, redevelopment, and reconciliation activities. We also discuss new responsive, flexible, and open forms of regionalisms and functionalisms and highlight corporatist responses to the difficulties that arise out of multiple SAP conditionalities. Finally, we indicate the imperative of a “new” African studies, more appropriate to the continent’s novel challenges as the new millennium dawns. In short, the critical juncture has analytic and prescriptive as well as historical and developmental features. The continent survived parallel junctures in the 1960s (formal independence) and 1980s (the “lost decade” of crises and SAPs). The current conjuncture is more profound and more extensive; it is global and regional as well as national and local. Established regimes, markets, civil societies, and ideologies have limited leverage over the relentless pressures of the NIDL and the new international division of power (NIDP), and thus their range of choice is very limited. At the same time, it is undeniable that inappropriate leaders have exacerbated rather than moderated tensions both immediately and for the foreseeable future. This is especially so for the majority of the very poorest, collapsed, or failed least-developed states; a minority of Third World states retain a modicum of “sovereignty” or choice. But leaders of both state and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa are situated in a global political economy characterized by the hegemony of neoliberalism. Their room for negotiation over the terms of their incorporation into the “new world order” is highly circumscribed: market reforms, democratic processes, and/or peacekeeping interventions. But getting prices and politics right has not necessarily brought relief to African countries. It is doubtful that many of the economic reforms currently underway can be sustained over the long haul, given either their inappropriateness or the inability of many regimes to carry them through. Some regimes lack both the political and technical capacity to implement economic reforms, which at least in an initial period predictably lead to economic hardship for large segments of the population, particularly those who live in urban areas and are capable of politically challenging the regimes in question. Former president Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia paid a high political price for having initially agreed to sweeping economic reform only to be challenged by the urban working population; he was defeated by Frederik Chiluba in the national election of 31 October 1991. Political difficulties aside, there is ample evidence to support the view that economic reforms as currently undertaken in many African countries may not be the answer to the continuing crisis (Cornia et al. 1992; Mosley

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et al., 1991). In many instances, the economic condition of the majority of the people has deteriorated further under the aegis of reform programs. The recent experiences of Ghana and Zimbabwe demonstrate the point. Over the course of nine years of economic recovery programs (ERPs) and huge inputs of foreign aid, Ghana’s total external debt rose from U.S.$1.4 billion to almost $4.2 billion. According to Hammond and McGowan, current investment and savings are too low to sustain the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in the absence of foreign funding, and capital flight has become a serious problem. Since 1987, Ghana has paid more to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than it has received. Environmental degradation is fast-paced and is exacerbated by the policies of the ERP. All of these indicators suggest that the long-term prospects for Ghana’s recovery are bleak and that Ghana’s budget-cutting, free-trade program, so enthusiastically applauded by Western creditors and commentators, is hardly a model for the rest of Africa (Hammond and McGowan 1994, 82). In the case of Zimbabwe, two years after the implementation of a structural adjustment program, it was becoming clearer day by day that the impressive gains made under the government’s “growth with equity” program of the 1980s were being reversed. The SAP implemented by the government has thus acquired another name among the majority of Zimbabweans: “Suffering for African People.” As one unemployed Zimbabwean claimed, “For most of us, SAP has brought all the hardships and none of the benefits expected when it was introduced” (O’Heaney 1994, 82). The collection of articles edited by Callaghy and Ravenhill (1993) documents the difficulties involved in implementing economic and political reforms in the political economy of African countries, and further casts strong doubt on the efficacy of SAPs. But perhaps the worst indictment of economic reform programs is provided by the evidence that in global economic terms, Africa has continued to lose ground. This has brought the controversial concept of “marginalization” to the center of current discourse on Africa. Thus the New York Times recently reported that Africa’s share of the world trade . . . is now closer to 2 percent. That is so marginal it is almost as if the continent has curled up and disappeared from the map of international shipping lanes and airline routes that rope together Europe, North America and the booming Far East. Direct foreign investment in Africa is so paltry it is not even measured in the latest World Bank study (20 June 1994).

This is the reality that the state in African countries faces: continued crisis in the economic sphere, pressure from IFIs to liberalize both their economies and polities, economic global marginalization, and (as discussed by Villalón in Chapter 1) concerted pressure from civil society for more accountability and “democratization” in the 1990s. In some instances

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(e.g., Burundi, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone) the combination of these forces and others vis-à-vis the state have actually led to civil strife, thus creating a need for both continental and outside peacekeeping, further putting stress on the state in African countries. Any analysis of contemporary Africa must be cognizant of all these issues.

Neoliberalism and the State in Africa There is a cruel irony in the way the state in African countries is being forced to liberalize in response to both external (IFIs) and internal (civil society) pressure. The quotes from Peter Evans (1995) and Michael Barratt Brown and Pauline Tiffen (1994) at the beginning of this chapter essentially summarize its predicament. The postcolonial state, it must be recalled, is a direct descendant of the colonial state. The latter in the postwar period had assumed in many ways the central role in the management of the economy and directed production activity to suit the capital accumulation needs of the metropole (Rodney 1972). This historical fact is virtually undisputed, in spite of a few detractors. The unequal vertical relationships created between the economies of Africa and the metropoles have continued with only minor interruptions. The facts that in 1990 regional trade accounted for only 6 percent of Africa’s export volume, that in 1992 more than 50 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s exports went to the Western industrialized countries, and that in the same year Africa bought 80 percent of its imports from those same countries, suggest that the dependency relationships have endured (East African Standard, 21 April 1995, 1–2). The only saving grace for African countries in this regard may be that informal trade within and between countries flourished as a response to the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Informal trade may account for as much as 30 percent of economic activity in many African countries (Shaw 1993). Contemporary thinking on economic development in the Third World (or, more broadly, in the “South”) has production and export diversification as one of its principal tenets (Evans 1995). Yet in spite of the drive under SAP terms toward export diversification, Africa continues to be a producer of primary commodities. And even in this regard it is being overtaken by much more efficient producers in other regions; examples include coffee from Brazil and Colombia, or palm oil from Malaysia (Stein 1995). Thus in spite of the comparative advantage in primary commodities, noted by the Berg Report to encourage Africa to deemphasize postcolonial import substitution industrialization (ISI) and concentrate on agricultural production, Africa’s productivity in this sector remains low compared to other regions. This does not bode well for the near or medium-term future for Africa.

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Economic liberalism as advocated by international financial institutions is proving to be a double-edged sword for African economies. Ironically, the advocacy for market openness by IFIs has been quite successful in Africa. By all indications, African economies are already quite competitive in terms of openness (Hardy 1992, 426). Yet openness should not be confused with global integration. In order for the openness strategy of development to work, several things would have to take place simultaneously. Among them would be the ability to maintain favorable export prices and terms of trade, to involve significant portions of the general population in the production of tradeables either directly or through linkages, and to exercise a reasonable degree of control over the national process of capital accumulation. African countries are among the least competitive in all these factors. The continent’s access to foreign capital is negligible (World Bank 1994e). The concentration of African exports on a few primary products and markets does not allow countries to maintain favorable terms of trade. With a 15 percent decline between 1987 and 1994, sub-Saharan Africa has faced the worst terms of trade of any world region in the early 1990s (UNDP 1994). The involvement of the African peasantry in the production of tradeables such as cash crops and mineral exports has been limited. From the time of its incorporation into the global system, Africa’s exports have largely been produced in extroverted enclaves that have limited linkages with the large subsistence sector. The peasantry’s ability to benefit from openness is thus marginal. All these weaknesses severely limit Africa’s ability to improve the process of accumulation. Growing dependency on food imports, which is largely related to the marginalization of the peasantry from access to resources, has exacerbated this problem. The empirical data on Africa’s economic realities in the last decade of the twentieth century in many ways reflect and confirm the classic dependency syndrome. And this is a syndrome that may become even more vicious in its effects on the general mass of the continent’s population into the twenty-first century. While the arguments for a new international division of labor—including globally based but decentralized production, regional, and product specialization, international/regional hierarchization, and rapid economic growth—fit East Asian and Latin American regimes, they remain of dubious validity for Africa. This is true even for South Africa, the most diversified of the region’s economies (Stein 1995; Bernard and Ravenhill 1995). Under neoliberalism, Africa is being urged to be more open, with less and limited participation by the state in the economy. Yet historical evidence shows that one of the principal mechanisms for the successes of the newly industrialized countries—South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong—and more recently the nearNICs—Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and others—was the active role played by the state in determining and influencing investment strategies.

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Admittedly, state centrality must be accompanied by rational strategic planning, less corruption, and more political accountability for this strategy to work. Africa still has a long way to go in this regard (Evans 1995; Stein 1995). But the inability of the state in Africa to act in ways that would promote strategic investment does not nullify an equally valid argument for continued state involvement in the economy, with the caveat that state agencies established to undertake economic activities do not fall prey to corruption and rent-seeking activities. We should recall that part of the problem (and justification) for state intervention in the Third World was provided by Hamza Alavi in his now-classic study of Pakistan and Bangladesh: The essential problem about the state in post-colonial societies stems from the fact that it is not established by an ascendant native bourgeoisie but instead by a foreign imperialist bourgeoisie. At independence, however, the direct command of the latter over the colonial state is ended. But by the same token, its influence over it is by no means brought to an end. The metropolitan bourgeoisie is present in post-colonial society (1972, 59).

The fact remains that almost without exception—including in South Africa—substantial state withdrawal would mean economic disaster, in spite of most regimes’ current hopelessness and inefficiencies. There simply is no national bourgeoisie to compensate for state withdrawal. The only viable scenario if the state were to withdraw is a complete takeover by transnational corporations, a truly troublesome prospect for purposes of national and regional development. If the state in Africa were to abandon its commitment to minimal welfarism, even the desired goal of IFIs for a more conducive and efficient production environment (in response to global demands) could not be achieved. This argument, however, does not negate the fact that some measure of openness would be in the best interest of African political economies. But the claim that unbridled openness is superior to an engagement with the global system on terms and conditions carefully selected and coordinated by a state committed to social interests and accountable to its citizens runs counter to common sense. Unregulated openness can, for example, undermine the diversification efforts by destroying infant industries that are not ready to compete globally, and may undermine informal sectors whose vibrancy depends on internally coordinated exchanges. Disengagement by the state can also easily lead to the continued marginalization of the peasantry and the neglect of domestic sources of growth, instead of the cultivation of these forces to thereby expand domestic markets. Furthermore, excessive reliance on external dynamics for growth generates fierce competition among the countries of the South for access to the

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investments and markets of the North, thus lowering the gains to Southern economies from openness. In tandem with the debt crisis, this may weaken the ability of many less-developed countries (LDCs) to control the national process of capital accumulation. This reality also points to what may provide the basis for solutions at a regional and continental level. In the remainder of this chapter we thus discuss scenarios that are likely to evolve, given the present realities of the new international division of labor (NIDL) and the new international division of power, whose impetus flows from the end of the Cold War.

Continental Crises and Regional Conflicts: Is the Present the Future? Africa’s developmental difficulties since independence are inseparable from—and have been exacerbated by—the intensification of social and strategic conflicts in many parts of the continent. It has already begun to be argued in revisionist scholarship, and admitted by many concerned, that most of the apparently “ecological” challenges have in fact been caused or worsened by such conflicts. Likewise, the imperative of structural adjustment, which has only just begun to be directed at the military, was intensified by ongoing internal and regional conflicts from the Horn to Southern Africa. Similarly, the need to compromise with extra-African powers and with inter-African threats (e.g., from Libya, Nigeria, and apartheid South Africa) was in large measure a function of regime, food, and ecological imperatives. The balance of causality in this range of factors changes over time, notably in recent years in the direction of the reduced salience of extracontinental factors, but increased salience of extrastate factors, especially in terms of intra-African relations. This is particularly true in regional conflict, if somewhat less so in regional cooperation. The intensification of inequalities on the continent both within and between states, in part due to the uneven impacts of adjustment, has contributed to “new” conflicts. Outside forces have both reinforced and undermined—not to say diverted—many African governments, either directly or through such indirect means as cross-conditionalities. Furthermore, the role of militaries in the accumulation of African debt has hardly been investigated, although their competitive, acquisitive, and spendthrift tendencies cannot be denied, with particular implications for scarce foreign exchange. And notwithstanding downsizing in most budget lines, expenditure on coercive equipment and proliferating security forces—from secret police to paramilitaries—seems to increase almost exponentially, in part to ensure compliance with socially unwelcome SAP measures (UNDP 1994). In the postbipolar world and postapartheid period, it is possible that African armies will be less necessary, assuming that their major raison

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d’être was extracontinental involvements—ideological, financial, and material. Conversely, given widespread opposition to adjustment conditionalities, they may become more necessary in internal affairs, maintaining order for isolated and unpopular regimes that have few resources other than coercion through which to maintain control. Thus the caution of the UNDP’s Human Development Report is justified: “A peace dividend (in the South) is some way off because peace there is more elusive. The Third World has not been involved in the recent East-West negotiations, or in disarmament talks or in the design for a new framework for world peace. Nor does the Third World have any of its own institutionalized forums for a discussion of military expenditure” (1991, 82). As a result, and notwithstanding current superficial yet problematic moves toward formal multiparty democracy, there is likely to be a proliferation of unorthodox groups. The continent is likely to experience a tension between democratic pressures and conditionalities reinforced by novel guerrilla formations on the one hand and discredited and diminished—but not yet defeated or deflated—regimes on the other, hence the ambiguities of the debates over “African democracy” (Healy and Robinson 1992; Hyden and Bratton 1992; Moore and Schmitz 1995; Nyang’oro 1996b). As discussed further below, regionalism in Africa is also likely to be characterized by two contradictory tendencies in the 1990s: the imperative of regional economic cooperation and the increased influence of regional hegemons. The former is ever more essential for development, given the fragmentation of the continent, and may be rendered compatible with adjustment programs if liberalization is directed toward regional rather than global exchange. It is also likely to become more informal and possibly more democratic in character as communities respond to adjustment conditions. On the other hand, declining great power interest in Africa facilitates the rise of regional hegemons, whether subimperial or not. The roles of, say, Nigeria in Liberia, Senegal in the Gambia, or Zimbabwe in Mozambique may then become more commonplace in the postbipolar era. This seems to be the case even when the aspiring regional powers are themselves in some state of disarray, in part because their regional targets or dependents are often in even greater disarray. And in any scenario of dominance through a continental “concert” of the stronger African powers, the outcome is likely to be not a formal pan-African “high command,” but rather a coalition of would-be hegemons (Anglin 1994; Blight and Weiss 1992). To be sure, regional cooperation and regional domination are not always compatible, although both are present in typical regional arrangements. Given the global trend toward economic, and to a lesser extent political, regionalization, Africa must become more integrated by the end of the 1990s; otherwise it will be ever more marginalized. Effective regional units, both economic and strategic, are the sine qua non for striking interregional bargains

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in both the NIDL and the NIDP. Without them Africa will be further marginalized in any “new” world “order” (Shaw 1994; Swatuk and Shaw 1994).

New Regionalism/Functionalisms The current, unanticipated economic and strategic conjuncture—the NIDL now joined by the NIDP—provides an alternative, indeed compelling, occasion for redirecting not only development but also foreign policy away from global chimeras and toward “new” regional communities. Such reorientations would not only reinforce the inclinations and precedents of the Organization of African Unity (1980, 1991) and the Economic Commission for Africa (1989)—as spelled out in their various reports: Lagos Plan of Action, African Alternative Framework, and African Economic Community—but would also serve to recognize informal economies and encourage informal polities: civil societies at regional and/or continental levels. The dynamic of regional exchange given economic crises and conditionalities is already a reality that sustains many local political economies through the transnational movement of capital, commodities, currencies, drugs, and/or labor (Shaw 1993; World Bank 1990). Whether diminished African regimes can come to accept a more modest international posture in which nonstate relations are facilitated, or even encouraged, remains to be seen. But the decade of the 1990s, in theory the run-up to a continental economic community, at least offers an occasion for reconsideration and reevaluation of “second wave” regionalist initiatives, especially as reflected in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), and the moves to revive the East African Community (EAC). As such, African, like extra-African, foreign and economic policies may come to be both revisionist and realist before the end of the century, with promising possibilities in terms of revived and sustainable development. The important question is whether we will see new forms of integration and industrialization for the next century, more appropriate for diminished states and expanded markets and civil societies (Shaw and Okolo 1994; Swatuk and Shaw 1994). Similarly, the continent’s post-1980s agenda opens up prospects for new functionalist arrangements, such as over tropical forests, ivory and diamond trades, refugee repatriation, water distribution, oil and natural gas pipelines, container transportation, computer hook-ups, satellite broadcasting, and regional capital and stock markets. That is, there are prospects for cross-border cooperation over technical matters among nonstate organizations, potentially deepening regional arrangements including civil

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society. Such tendencies tend to come together in regional peacekeeping, peacemaking, and confidence-building measures, which have to take account of and incorporate real political economy factors, including latent if not overt authoritarian or anarchic tendencies. Given such a complex set of contexts, which are reflected in diverse analytic as well as policy, diplomatic, and strategic perspectives, it is rather too simplistic to accept that the continent’s position is unrelievedly marginal. While in broad economic, strategic, and diplomatic terms such an assertion may be supportable, as indicated in the opening citations, in a few sectors and for a few interests Africa is quite central. This is notably the case in issues concerning the environment (e.g., biodiversity, desertification, ivory, oceans, tropical forests) and the “development set” (including the activities of two of the most diverse transnationals operating in the region: Anglo-American with its continent-wide gold and diamond concessions, and Lonrho’s maverick capitalism), respectively. To be sure, it is undeniable that Africa’s place in the global political economy is less central than that of any other region. Nevertheless, the continent is increasingly recognized to be crucial to world biodiversity and “green tourism,” both intensifying in postindustrial “leisure” society. Moreover, as other parts of the South grow, sometimes exponentially, international aid is concentrated on the African continent, especially in terms of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and NGO activities. Thus any overgeneralization about Africa’s “marginalization” is misplaced and misleading (Adedeji 1993). Indeed, the late 1990s may constitute an unexpectedly promising period for Africa’s redirection and renaissance as the hegemonic position of neoconservative policies is increasingly under challenge everywhere. The continent’s “lost” or “adjustment” decade coincided with and reflected that of neoclassical ascendency in most of the North. Yet both adjustment and monetarist projects of the 1980s, with their mutual preoccupation with debt, have been confronted by seemingly insuperable problems in the 1990s. The triumphalism attendant on the ending of both Cold and Gulf wars has rapidly yielded to pessimism, even defeatism, as liberalization in the East has gone awry and is largely stagnant in the South—with the possible exceptions of parts of China, India, and Southeast Asia. The combination of prolonged recession in the West with protracted depression in the East, especially given the still unhelpful global context, should give pause to the IFIs about the appropriateness of structural adjustment for countries other than perhaps the “model” cases of the “flying geese” of Southeast Asia (Bernard and Ravenhill 1994; Stein 1995; World Bank 1994). In short, the late 1990s may constitute an unanticipated conjuncture for Africa in which to escape from the dictates of the adjustment “paradigm.” Notwithstanding contemporary claims about the successes of capitalism and democracy, the realities at the end of the millennium are more

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mixed: from structural rather than cyclical change in the North to incremental disintegration in much of the East. The ideological self-confidence associated with neoconservatism in the 1980s has evaporated, leaving behind beleaguered regimes and endangered infrastructures. The escalation of complex problems and the absence of effective responses are apparent in the diversity of actors and reactions: from fragmentation of states to the proliferation of groups in “civil society,” both of which increasingly include a rich variety of types. The present window of opportunity may, then, allow Africa to escape from the problematic dictates of adjustment. In part because of complications in the East as well as a spreading revisionist, skeptical mood, the West is divided and preoccupied, lacking the markets, finances, and stamina for sustained adjustment conditionalities to be met. And if Northern resources do not match African reforms—to say nothing of expectations— then leverage is reduced and further slippage is inevitable, even rational. Given the West’s resilient recession, reflective of the continued rejection of Keynesian measures, which is exacerbated by the elusiveness of the “peace dividend” and demands from the East, it cannot meet the terms of any adjustment compact. So despite its manifold dilemmas, the South, and particularly various levels and types of civil society groups, might seize the current conjuncture—not a brave “new world order” but rather more of a grave disorder— for its own purposes: to recapture the global agenda for sustainable human development and security. It may begin to escape from externally imposed conditionalities and redefine its own development directions, with profound global implications. Happily, its continuing, interrelated moves toward an African Economic Community and a continental peacemaking structure—the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution, including a Peace Fund and Conflict Management Center— both of which transcend postindependence preoccupation with sovereignty, suggest the possibilities for African reassertion and renaissance with the end of the Bretton Woods and Cold War eras (Swatuk and Shaw 1994). This conjuncture might enable Africa to return to some of its earlier, stillborn proposals for regional restructuring and revitalization, now reflected in plans for economic communities to succeed the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), SADCC, the Preferential Trade Area (PTA), and COMESA. In particular, these need to be revised and reinforced to include positive elements from regional civil society: business associations, cooperatives, interest groups, media, NGO coalitions, political parties, religious organizations, trade unions, and more. Such a challenge will clearly not be easy given such myriad diversions as civil wars, droughts, and debt negotiations. Yet such a conjuncture is also unlikely to be repeated soon if it is not seized now. Indeed, as suggested below, far

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less attractive and attainable “Kaplanesque” scenarios may occur otherwise (Kaplan 1994; Shaw and Adibe 1995/96). Somewhat unexpectedly, then, despite the objective difficulties in South-North relations—proliferating unilateral conditionalities and nontariff barriers, the rather inconclusive and unhelpful General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO) Uruguay Round, stagnant official development aid and direct foreign investment flows (except to the East), diminished salience of the Lomé Conventions, and the emergence of “new security” issues like drugs and migration—the late 1990s may yet facilitate a novel development contract. It is increasingly irrefutable that growing interdependence requires communication and redistribution. Africa has something to contribute to such a mutual dialogue, and even some leverage if it does not occur: disregard of “ecological conditionalities,” for example. In brief, with the impending failure of the purist neoconservative “counter-revolution,” a return to more humane, long-term, sustainable development policies and practices may not only be desirable but now also possible (Thomas 1994; Toye 1987; UNDP 1994). The more ambiguous place of Africa is confirmed in the NIDP when security is redefined—from “collective” toward “common” and now “human” (UNDP 1994)—to include such issues as crime, disease, drugs, informal sectors, and migration. If the continent’s economic and ecological condition continues to deteriorate, then it will come to pose more of a threat to the North and to some more developed parts of the South. Most of these “transitional” phenomena do not stop at boundaries; all of them flow across official borders in both South and North, including the presence and roles of “diasporas” concentrated in Europe and North America. If neither Africa’s historical state-centric policies nor its current market “reforms” are efficacious, then it is likely to generate not just lower real incomes and living standards, but also more external threats—to both state and continent. Unemployment and underemployment encourage semilegal or illegal activities that have an impact at global as well as at continental, regional, and local levels; the net effect is far from the “marginalization” of the continent.

Democratic Development Versus Corporatist Coalitions We conclude this chapter with a particular dichotomy—that between the now-fashionable “democratic development” and the new threat of “corporatism” or other forms of authoritarianism—that is all too easily overlooked in the prevailing adjustment paradigm, especially by its idealistic “governance” associates. As we noted at the beginning of this chapter,

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Africa at the start of the 1990s confronts a contradictory set of options or conditions: liberalization and/or contraction in both economics and politics. Given its wide range of political economies and political cultures, the continent may move in several directions at once. The primary tension that is emerging is between economic contraction and political liberalization, a rather ominous combination for incumbent regimes, which might prefer the alternative mix of economic expansion and political contraction; indeed, that was the underlying basis of the postcolonial “African socialist” model. The contrary condition of economic contraction is quite familiar by now, induced by a mix of external, ecological, and internal realities and policies. But the political correlates are more elusive and problematic: regime inclinations to dominate and external pressures to democratize. The emergence of democracy along with debt as a leading international policy concept has encouraged not only formal constitutional changes, national conventions, and multiparty elections. It has also facilitated the expansion of global networks of nongovernmental organizations and the popularization of the notion of civil society. Such interest coalitions tend to cluster around a set of contemporary issues, from environmentalism and feminism to fundamentalism, both Christian and Muslim (All African Conference of Churches 1993). Such energetic nonstate actors now confound regime authority, demanding accountability and transparency. They are encouraged, even emboldened, to do so not only by external conditions but also by internal conditionalities. But orthodox governance conditionalities may not be enough to sustain democracy; the continuous involvement of local and global civil society is imperative. So international concern with “human rights” as well as human needs, women and development, and sustainable development, has grown since the U.S. presidency of Jimmy Carter; it has also developed away from notions of formal democracy toward those of democratic development or popular participation (cf. Bratton 1989, 1990; Clark 1991; Healey and Robinson 1992). By contrast, given the state-society dialectic, many regimes’ natural inclination is to look for arrangements that ensure their longevity. The adjustment project is in theory permissive, even supportive, of the rise of a national bourgeoisie—a crucial yet tenuous element in any process of sustainable democracy—alongside more bureaucratic, comprador, military, political, and technocratic factions. Therefore, incumbent leaders have sought, in a period of declining if not shrinking resources, to replace the corruptive tendencies of co-option with those of corporatism. They can no longer afford the expansive (and expensive) gestures of patronage; instead, they have begun to rely on the less predictable but also less costly arrangements of corporatism. Corporatism consists merely of a set of structured social relations that both include and exclude major groups in the political economy. Normally

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it revolves around some understanding between state and economy, particularly labor, and both national and international capital. But it may also include connections with other major social institutions in civil society, such as religious associations and universities, media and interest groups, professional associations and NGOs, and women’s and youth groups (Bratton 1989; Nyang’oro and Shaw 1989). Corporatism as analysis and praxis has its roots in the fascist and Catholic countries of Europe and Latin America of the 1930s. It has since spread to embrace other regions and regimes. Particular arrangements at different times among state, capital, and labor in, for example, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, and Sweden in the postwar period have been so characterized; that is, corporatist elements have at times been included within Keynesian welfare states. Most postwar scholarly attention within this genre has focused on Latin America, particularly Peronist Argentina, where a useful variety of subcategories has been isolated, such as authoritarian or bureaucratic corporatisms, often including the military and regular and secret police units as salient components. The approach and formula would seem to have resonance in the contemporary political economy of NICs and near-NICs in Southeast Asia. Surprisingly, corporatism as perspective or practice has received minimal attention in Africa to date. There has been some recognition that it helps to explain settler and postsettler states in, say, South Africa or Zimbabwe. But, in general, a concern for trilateral or triangular relations among state, capital, and labor has not been apparent, despite parallel, even compatible, notions of authoritarianism or exclusion, Bonapartism and commandism. Elsewhere, we have attempted to rectify this oversight by encouraging comparative analysis of a variety of corporatisms in contemporary Africa (Nyang’oro and Shaw 1989). And the continuing unfolding of the myriad social implications of adjustment encourages such an analytic direction. Moreover, corporatism at the level of the state may not be incompatible with limited pluralism at the level of society or market forces at the level of the economy—formal and informal forms of political economy— particularly in a period of adjustment. More formal national-level arrangements among state, capital, and labor may be compatible with more informal subnational activities of cooperatives, ethnic communities, interest groups, religions, and NGOs. That is, they may be compatible with forms of postadjustment “self-reliance.” But such an understanding would require maturity on both sides—the state does not need to monopolize all social relations and, conversely, social groups do not automatically threaten the state; there is a need, that is, for a new internal division of labor and powers, compatible with international changes and contexts. All too few African leaders have been prepared to countenance such real devolution and decentralization, at least until the second decade of adjustments. So

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state-society relations are likely, in general, to be undermined by regime insecurity or social irrepressibility. Hence there is an ongoing and unstable state-society standoff, which is problematic rather than precarious, (Rothchild and Chazan 1988), and which is likely to extend into the next century, when social restructuring will be even more apparent than today. The expanded space for popular participation is not uncontroversial in either its size or content. The state will continue to try to make occasional inroads before retreating, given its self-defined prerogatives and its jealousy about alternative structures. And a variety of both old and new interest groups will expand to fill the vacuum, ranging from established ethnic, professional, regional, and religious institutions to innovative groups organized around ecological, gender, or survival issues. The latter set will itself be divided between more national and more transnational NGOs or private voluntary organizations whose roles continue to expand in response to adjustment deprivations. Over time, as in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, it will become harder for centralized regimes to exert control or coordination over such myriad groups in civil society. But there will be no simple, unilineal advance throughout the continent to either democracy or development given Africa’s heterogeneity and inequalities.

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State Inversion and Nonstate Politics JOSHUA B ERNARD FORREST

Nearly four decades following the end of colonial rule, sub-Saharan Africa is changing in ways previously unimagined by Western observers. As the international state system has spiraled into a period of transition and uncertainty, so, too, governments in many parts of the continent are confronted by profound existential challenges. The withering of the state and the proliferation of warfare and regional rebellion are no longer mere exceptions to a more dominant pattern of state consolidation, but rather represent a distinctive component of the current “critical juncture” of the African state. In the 1980–1995 period, African states throughout the continent increasingly suffered from fiscal bases in disarray and ineffective administrative structures. Many African states have receded far from the preeminent heights of administrative and political control that, during the late colonial period and through the first decade of independence (1960s), had enabled them to exercise centralized rule and to implement public policies throughout most of their national territories. At various points between 1980 and 1995, and in some cases on a sustained basis throughout that time period, approximately one-third of African states have experienced major difficulties in exerting their authority over rural regions (where most Africans live) and in being able to carry out public policies throughout their national territories.1 The result is that a greater proportion of Africans are now experiencing political life with no minimally viable state presence than at any time since the precolonial period. Scholars have recently depicted African states in decline as “soft,” “weak,” “collapsed,” “failed,” “shadow,” or “quasi” states (Rothchild 1987; Forrest 1994; Zartman 1995a; Helman and Ratner 1992–93; Reno 1995b; Jackson 1990). These concepts do capture particular aspects of the institutional deterioration of African governments, but I would suggest that the phenomenon under discussion may best be understood as reflecting a multicausal process of “state inversion” in which states decay in varying 45

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stages over time. Through the process of state inversion, government institutions become increasingly dysfunctional and end up turning inward toward themselves rather than outward toward society.2 The state grows increasingly irrelevant for society, with the process of state inversion culminating at its most severe levels in the disintegration of the central government. The basic characteristic of an inverted state is that the bureaucratic infrastructure of the state is unable to perform even the most fundamental policymaking and policy-implementing functions outside a severely restricted national urban core—often the capital city and its environs, plus one or two rural zones. State leaders cannot coerce or cajole society to conform to their policy instructions, and in this sense the state lacks institutional “capacity” (Bratton 1994). As a result, it retreats or “inverts” because it cannot extend itself outward—state authority in Somalia and Liberia, for instance, begins and ends with the actual buildings in which the government offices are housed. In inverted states, the institutional sources that provide the state with its authoritative character—such as regional government offices with taxcollecting powers—virtually disappear. The policy-implementing agencies of inverted states are infrequently activated as a consequence of institutional paralysis, so that the symbols of statehood no longer carry with them any meaningful authoritative value. The state “inverts,’’ that is, falls back upon a shrinking nexus of decisionmaking units unable to impose their will on (especially rural) social forces. At its most extreme levels, state authority erodes to the point where only the symbols of government power, such as an occasional official announcement made on national radio, offer any evidence of a continuing state presence. The major institutional energy of an inverted state is in effect turned inward upon itself, creating a kind of “black hole” of centralized institutions where state leaders’ energies are concentrated. Inverted states still do retain intimate links with society, but these links are severely narrowed or “thinned,” being largely restricted to illicit trade networks that generally have little impact on national trading patterns (much less on economic development efforts). State decay and societal withdrawal from state institutions (Azarya and Chazan 1987) proceed even as some state leaders continue to pursue lingering informal, personal ties with a handful of businesspeople or other powerful social actors. Thus, in inverted states, we can analyze intimate business connections between some state leaders and traders (see Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume), while we bear witness to the demise of the institutional and policy capacity of the state, rendering it increasingly unable to affect the political and economic life of its citizens. Inverted states provide international actors with a relatively familiar pretend-administrative structure and a pretend-set of bureaucratic rules and offices. This familiarity encourages foreign powers and external actors to

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treat these political entities as states, but they fail to fulfill the “positive sovereignty” function of states’ ability “to declare, implement and enforce public policy” (Jackson 1990, 29). In such cases, the bare remnants of a public sector remain, as communication and coordination of activities between state institutions largely ceases. The signpost “Ministry of X,” the edifice of a government office building, and a weighty stack of (often dusty) official policy papers represent mere physical mirages of stateness. In inverted states, the state—as a collective set of national authoritative institutions monopolizing authority and military power and exercising policy on a national basis (Weber 1947; Dyson 1980)—is no longer recognizable as such. Furthermore, in the inverted states of Angola, Somalia, Chad, Zaire, Uganda, Togo, Rwanda, and Burundi, state authority weakened so completely that state survival hinged entirely on the strength and presence of the armed forces. Where soldiers or police officers were absent, so too was state authority. Inverted states in Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, and Zaire fell back upon military power in particularly brutal fashion as the institutional framework of those states disintegrated or became largely dysfunctional. Eventually, the armed forces themselves often broke apart into competing units, completing the process of full or partial state disintegration. In the most severe cases, as the state’s institutional paralysis worsens, regional rebellions flare against the political center. When this occurs, the firmness of national borders can no longer be assured, and there is real potential for a major shift in the nation’s territorial identity. During the 1980–1995 period, these cases, which involve violent fracturing of the social, political, and economic integrity of the nation, have included Ethiopia, Uganda, Angola, Mozambique, Chad, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Zaire, and Sierra Leone.

Explaining State Inversion in Africa Four principal factors may be identified that in large measure account for the inversion of a number of African states in the past ten to fifteen years, and have produced the current critical juncture in which the integrity of Africa’s fragile states is particularly threatened. These are the transformation of the international state system, the ultraprivatization of African states, the declining integrity of African armed forces, and the rising tide of subnational antistate challenges. First, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a fundamental alteration of the international balance of power. Large powers that had helped to shape Africa’s state system and had intervened militarily and economically in Africa in order to shore up weakening states (because they were perceived as potential clients) no longer perform that

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role. As a result, the international safety net that had previously functioned to prevent the more extreme forms of state inversion has largely dissolved, making possible the continuing decline of Africa’s most fully inverted states. Thus, when state frameworks in Liberia and Somalia fell apart, the world’s great superpowers failed to act until disintegration was complete. In Rwanda, blue-helmeted UN soldiers stood by while massacres unfolded, reflecting the general peripheralization of African states in the new world order. While international economic actors such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have sought to prop up teetering states, their loans have often served only to further weaken the fiscal base of African governments (see Chapter 2 in this volume). The second factor leading to state inversion has been the ultraprivatization of the state, referring to administrative units’ failure to carry out their public functions and their concentration instead on spheres of private, non–formal sector activity. As part of this process, state units become transformed into factionalized pockets of power, each of which enjoys access to one or more illegal markets, which in turn further accentuates the institutional and political fragmentation of state power. In some cases, only a handful of state organs enjoy access to clandestine markets, a situation that contributes significantly to the weakening and splitting apart of states because intense rivalries ensue among state leaders over access to sources of privately pocketed wealth. In the worst instances, such as Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zaire (all discussed below), and, to a lesser extent, Chad, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, and Congo, as a consequence of the factionalized ultraprivatization of the African state, the government becomes less able to respond to the challenges of economic decline, with its component parts increasingly captured by informal social and economic networks. State units’ preoccupation with access to lucrative markets renders the government incapable of establishing or implementing a coherent economic policy. The notion of a “public sector” loses meaning as each administrative section of the state essentially grows into an appendage of informal socioeconomic networks. In Chapter 6 of this volume, William Reno makes clear how the state in Sierra Leone, like the state-in-formation in Liberia, is being constructed largely on the basis of clandestine trade networks controlled locally by armed gangs and linked to sophisticated Mafia-style international trading circuits. Elsewhere, Reno has depicted how state actors in Sierra Leone became immersed in power struggles over access to lucrative informal markets (Reno 1995b). John Clark’s study of Zaire in this volume (Chapter 7) demonstrates how devotion to privatized economic extraction in a context of nearly total administrative irresponsibility eventually precipitated the fiscal crisis of the Zairian state and institutional dysfunctionality.

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In these cases, the state’s economic decline can no longer be halted by direct infusions of aid from abroad. Despite donors’ corrective efforts to control government spending, especially in the 1985–1995 period, massive levels of internationally provided aid simply added to the “unaccumulated wealth” that disappeared into the bottomless pit of personalized, privately controlled informal social networks (Berry 1985). The result, in the case of many inverted states, has been the inability of international actors to brace the economic fall of state organizations, much less to halt the descent of the formal economy more generally. In these cases, the national economy disaggregated into a multitude of informal sector marketing webs that reinforced widening class, ethnic, and regional cracks in the national filament (MacGaffey 1992). The third factor underpinning state inversion is the declining integrity and coherence of the military. This is a central factor because in the case of increasingly inverted states, the military is often the only state institution able to prevent the actual break-up of the nation and the total disintegration of the state. When the military proves unable to perform as national band-aid, to play this stop-gap role, it is often because the armed forces themselves have become divided into component sections that parallel the fractioned structure of the state itself. Today, it is the very incoherence of and the proliferation of competing subunits within the armed forces of Somalia, Zaire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Togo that threaten the viability of the state itself and the nation-state more generally. In such instances, to the extent that states survive, they do so only because some of the principal units of the armed forces retain a degree of loyalty to the current state leaders. The fourth factor exacerbating and deepening the process of state inversion in Africa has been the increasing assertion of subnationalist movements and rebellions. This process reflects, at bottom, the oft-noted artificiality of the modern African nation-state. Between 1890 and 1910, borders were thrust up around societies that had no historical ties, while ethnic communities were often divided by national borders. Moreover, colonial policy in some cases expressly aimed to create or consolidate ethnic regionalism and interethnic enmity (Vail 1989). Postcolonial states have proven unable to overcome these legacies, despite having adopted state-ethnic bargaining strategies in the early independence period. As a result, state-ethnic reciprocity has often been abandoned, and the drive to achieve national integration has collapsed in many cases, with ethnic nationalist and regional secession movements helping to spur nation-state destabilization in growing portions of the continent (Rothchild 1995b). Indeed, several regional groups in Zaire have organized themselves on distinctly ethnonationalist grounds repeatedly through the postindependence

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era (Clark 1995). Shaban nationalists, driven underground during the 1970s and 1980s, have resurfaced in the 1990s. In a last-ditch survival strategy in 1992–1993, the Mobutu regime manipulated ethnic divisions within Shaba, inciting Shaban “ethnic cleansing” against Kasaians, which resulted in the emigration of 200,000 Kasaians from Shaba in the 1991–1993 period (Afoaku 1994, 15). Most significantly, ethnonationalist warfare erupted in eastern Zaire, with Banyamulenge rebels seizing control of the greater portion of that region in 1996, and ultimately leading the rebel alliance that toppled the Mobutu regime in May 1997. It is in the Horn of Africa that massive eruptions of ethnic nationalism have most dramatically threatened state power and nation-state integrity. In Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)–led rebellion of the southern Sudanese began as amorphous primary resistance by a multitude of local and ethnic factions, evolved into a widespread rebellion for regional separation in the 1970s, and enjoyed growing military successes in the 1980s (Woodward 1995). Despite reports in the early 1990s of military gains by the Khartoum government, the rebel forces remain militarily active in parts of southern Sudan, which has already become a virtually separate territory from the north. Djibouti, long considered a peaceful, ideally located trading haven, descended into the chaos of civil war in 1992, as warring parties divided between ethnic Afars and the Issa Somalis in the face of state dysfunctionality (Clapham 1995, 89). In Somalia, separatist Isaak leaders exacerbated the Somali nation-state’s disintegration by successfully founding a de facto independent Republic of Somaliland in May 1991 (Rothchild 1995b, 68). Eritrean nationalists successfully navigated Africa’s first secessionist breakaway in the postcolonial period when its forces attained sole control of that region by 1990 and established an independent state. Meanwhile, the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front severely weakened the Ethiopian state by struggling for ethnoregional control from 1975 until 1989, when its military success actually made it possible to create an alliance of antiMengistu opposition groups (Copson 1994, 37, 79). In 1991, the inverted Ethiopian state was defeated and captured by the invading, Tigrayan-led forces of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In Ethiopia’s Oromo region, several ethnonationalist groups, particularly the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), are struggling for the creation of a separate state based explicitly on Oromo identity, and have carried out attacks against ethnic Amharas (Sorenson 1994; Copson 1994, 37). After Eritrea’s separation, the Oromo people constituted the largest single ethnic group within Ethiopia (Sorenson 1994; Copson 1994, 81), and so their secession would represent the end of the Ethiopian nation. Battles between the EPRDF-run Ethiopian government and the OLF intensified after 1992, and are likely to grow fiercer considering the OLF’s claim that almost all

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of southern Ethiopia rightly belongs to a separate Oromia (Sorenson 1994). Also in Ethiopia, the Afars and the Gambela have each created ethnically grounded opposition movements that could lead to separate ministates (Sorenson 1994). In reaction, a group of Amharas established the All Peoples’ Association in 1992. In the 1992–1994 period, the EPRDF government restructured Ethiopia’s administrative districts so as to provide greater consistency between the regions and ethnic groups, but analysts fear that this may serve to spur on protoethnic nationalism rather than to mollify it (Clapham 1995; Keller 1995, 134–145). It is important to note that a number of subnational, antistate resistance movements reflect a more regional or territorial unifying motif than an ethnic form of nationalism. A prominent example is the Eritrean resistance movement, which waged war against Ethiopia for three decades and now controls the new Eritrean government. Eritreans in fact consist of at least six ethnically and linguistically distinctive socioethnic groups and were indeed united on the basis of regional rather than ethnic nationalism. Angola and Mozambique represent complex cases where subnationalist fervor was fueled largely by external forces but nonetheless resulted in a circumscribing of state power into very limited spheres (mostly the urban sectors). Angola and Mozambique were both racked by brutal civil wars from their 1975 independence from Portugal through to peace agreements signed in 1992 (Mozambique) and 1994 (Angola). In Mozambique, the South Africa– and U.S.-backed Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) effectively held de facto control over most rural areas in all ten of Mozambique’s provinces during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Copson 1994, 40). Those same two external powers—South Africa and the United States—had also made it possible for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the Angolan rebel force, to establish control over much of the countryside and to erect a de facto separate state with its own governmental services. During the nearly twenty-year period since independence, in both countries the increasingly inverted state existed essentially only as a military force, and, even then, its influence remained limited to specific sections of the country, often on a temporary basis. Like the cases of Sudan and Ethiopia, in Angola and Mozambique the central state was severely weakened by rebellions based in the rural regions. Thus, in their path toward state inversion, the Sudanese, Ethiopian, Angolan, and Mozambican cases differ from such states as Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Burundi, where state fragmentation had initially occurred along intrastate factional fault lines. In all these cases, however, internal state fragility would eventually combine with regional rebellion to produce severe state inversion. To what extent is ethnic or regional antistate rebellion a reflection of state disintegration or a fundamental cause of that disintegration? I. William

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Zartman asserts that it is state collapse that produces, or makes possible, the rise of ethnic nationalism (1995a, 1). In fact, the cases reviewed here suggest a more complex variety, with subnationalism serving as an independent factor in its own right in some cases (the Eritrean, Tigrayan, and Oromo cases, for example) or being stimulated externally (Angola, Mozambique) in others. In still other cases (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia), regional rebellion did clearly occur after the process of state inversion had already assumed a more advanced form.

Initial Outcome of Extreme State Inversion: Organized Violence When the process of state inversion advances to a level of virtual or actual state disintegration, one initial (immediate) outcome or impact is the generalization of organized violence. Surviving elements of the state become immersed in or devoted to warfare while sectors of society ally with rebels or become inundated with social banditry. In Sudan, continuing warfare has resulted in the proliferation of intraregional rivalries within the south, of which the most important was the 1991 split within the SPLA, reflecting strategic (to aim for separatism vs. the conquering of Khartoum) and ethnic (Nuer-Shilluk vs. Dinka) differences (Woodward 1995). One analyst predicts the division of the country into “at least two Sudans,” and more probably a multitude of competing armed forces in the central and southern portions of the country (YongoBure 1994). In Uganda, from 1966 to 1985, civil war among a number of contending groups and leaders made clear not only the functional helplessness of the Uganda state, but also the fictitious character of the Ugandan nation (Omara-Otunnu 1995). Multiple violent conflicts involving armed brigands and private militias frequently erupted in various sections of the Ugandan countryside throughout the 1966–1985 period (Khadiagala 1995; Copson 1994, 47–49). In cases of full-fledged civil war, the state often breaks down along patterns that reflect its ultraprivatized character, so that military and political factions are linked to informal economic networks. In this process, politicomilitary units each seek control over informal markets, such as food stockpiles and the arms trade in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan, and diamond mining and precious gems trading in Liberia, rural Sierra Leone, Zaire, and Angola (Daley 1995). Chad has suffered an almost constant state of civil war from the 1960s through 1990, when Idris Deby finally conquered his long-time nemesis, Hussein Habré. In that country, a north-south division engineered by the French combined with virulent intrastate personal rivalries to spur the fragmentation of state power and the militarization of opposition groups

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and leaders during the 1960–1990 period (Foltz 1995; Throup 1995, 256– 258). Warfare had so completely obliterated the national infrastructure as well as state resources that by the early 1980s, both the nation and the state in Chad “had virtually ceased to exist” (Throup 1995, 258). Between 1982 and 1986, President Habré managed to piece together an administrative skeleton of Chadian statehood by relying extensively on his armed forces, but the defeat of Habré’s army and the capture of the state by Deby in 1990 suggests the profound fragility of this skeleton state (Foltz 1995). Indeed, antistate violence had already recommenced in some parts of the country in 1992–1993 (Copson 1994, 64). In the northern provinces of Angola, despite the 1994 agreement to demilitarize the UNITA rebel soldiers and to form a united army, heavily armed units from both government and rebel forces have split into factions and covetously guard—and occasionally engage in firefights to protect—their control over specific diamond mines and illegal trading circuits (Daley 1995). In Mozambique, despite the successful holding of national elections in 1994, the inverted state has yet to reconstitute itself, and the prospects for improvement appear dim considering the high and growing levels of entrenched administrative corruption. Local banditry remains a serious threat in the countryside, and the prospect of integrating RENAMO and Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) military units is uncertain (Schutz 1995). Indeed, in the 1990s social banditry emerged as a widespread social phenomenon following in the wake of extreme state inversion. The widespread availability of modern firearms made possible the proliferation of bandit gangs in Sudan and Somalia (Sorenson 1994). In Zaire, the army broke up into bandit groups as central government control over the regions withered (Afoaku 1994, 15). The Liberian countryside and 80 percent of rural Sierra Leone suffer from a mobilized form of social banditry directed by former state leaders fighting principally over access to diamond mines, mineral trading circuits, and the timber industry, but also involving the frequent pillaging of village communities (see Chapter 6 in this volume; Richards 1995; French 1995a). One aspect of the breakdown of state capacity and the spread of political disorder is the rising number of “child soldiers” employed by rebel movements and bandit groups (Furley 1995). Refugee flows out of Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and, until recently, Angola and Mozambique have facilitated massive-scale recruitment or kidnapping of displaced youths into these groups (Furley 1995; Richards 1995). The overall human toll of generalized violence in African countries whose highly inverted states have descended toward disintegration in the course of the 1980–1995 period are reminiscent of history’s worst catastrophes: between 2 and 4 million dead; at least 18 million refugees and displaced people; and periodic famine in war-stricken parts of the Sahel, the Horn, and East Africa (Copson 1994, 4, 5, 9).

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Nonstate Politics in Rural Africa What is the future of Africa’s inverted states, especially those that have reached the point of near-total disintegration? Based on the existing evidence, two directions may be envisioned: one is continual fragmentation, in which state disintegration is perpetuated and areas lacking state authority widen. This may be understood to represent the “nonstate politics” path. The other direction is toward state reconstruction. The “nonstate politics” path appears increasingly likely in some parts of rural Africa. As noted above, state inversion has meant that central government superstructures have withdrawn from ever-larger rural zones. As states weaken and the grasp of political overrule eludes inverted state structures, a radical decentralization of authority occurs. This is not a decentralization that reflects official state policy, but rather a decentralization forced upon the state because it is unable to perpetuate its centralizing drive in the wake of its own administrative and fiscal decay. What forms of authority exist where the state has virtually no presence? In rural Africa, the loosening of state tentacles has not meant an end of politics but rather the removal of arcane administrative superstructures that were often ill suited to the civil societies over which they ruled (or pretended to rule). This has rendered more visible the social bases of power that exert real-world influence over the lives of most Africans. From the point of view of social science, this represents both a mandate and an opportunity to investigate what the political world looks like beneath the pretentious architecture of the colonially constructed state. The chapters that follow help to initiate this investigation. In particular, Chapter 4 by Anna Simons on Somalia and Chapter 5 by Timothy Longman on Rwanda make clear that Thomas Hobbes was wrong in suggesting that human societies are limited to a stark choice between state-run nations and anarchy. They show that in Rwanda and Somalia, local-level authoritative structures exist in society whether or not states have encapsulated those structures. Longman and Simons make clear that community political structures reflect historically “deep” and indigenously grounded social networks of authority. They suggest that, in a context of state disintegration or paralysis, rural society has the capacity to craft its own microlevel political frameworks. Simons’s innovative study of patterns of communication in clan-based Somalia suggests the inappropriateness of seeking to construct a modern, centralized state atop a fundamentally acephalous, decentralized social framework, and points the way to understanding how and why nonstate structures may prove more durable than foreign-imposed “modern” structures. In sum, what appears to the outside world as political anarchy can nonetheless reflect strongly entrenched social leaderships that enjoy popular legitimacy and effectively organize and maintain authority over village

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communities. Thus, there is order within chaos, and Africa may be well served by its many acephalous societies lacking state oversight. State and societal fragmentation are likely to result in various levels of social banditry and militia-type violence in the short term, but communities in this nonstate realm may achieve more stable and enduring patterns of self-governance in the long run.

State Reconstruction The second direction that may define the politics of those areas in rural Africa lacking centralized authority is state reconstruction. In areas where there is no viable state presence, state reconstruction may not be imitative of the colonially imposed “modern” state structure, but may represent a hybrid authority system combining aspects of precolonial, colonial, and contemporary leadership structures in ways that more accurately reflect the existing social and political bases of rural societies. In this regard, state reconstruction may produce configurations of power that are interlinked but not centralized, perhaps leading to the formation of larger political entities based on far-reaching alliances among myriad local authorities. These larger political entities may not be strong states, but rather may imitate weak empires, with ever-shifting collaborating leaderships. Thus, in parts of rural Africa, state reconstruction in the twenty-first century is likely to be characterized by profound decentralization in comparison to the colonial state hegemons erected in the early to mid-twentieth century. To a large extent, such decentralized structures may parallel the decentralized states and empires of precolonial Africa and may not function like Western-style bureaucratic states. Thus, state reconstruction is likely to open the way to yet another reinvention of political tradition. In parts of twenty-first-century rural Africa, alliance-building may give rise to reinvented African polities, not in the sense of a return to past practices but rather insofar as they represent a concordance with locally based power structures, even if those structures are in process of rapid change. Such structures are likely to vary enormously from one area to the next, ranging from stable chiefly authority systems to recently created warlord or bandit gangs. At the same time, it is noteworthy that the very factors that reflect and helped to provoke the inversion of the state and the disintegration of nation-states are the same factors that formed the basis of the rise of powerful new states and empires in previous centuries. I am here referring especially to the predominance of informal market exchanges and the proliferation of power-seeking groups of ambitious men of violence. War and illicit long-distance trade often formed the building blocks upon which states were constructed in late medieval and early modern Europe, as they

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have in different time periods elsewhere in the world. This observation ought to give pause to those who view the degeneration and inversion of existing African states as an unmitigated disaster and tragedy. In truth, a longer view suggests that new political configurations, even if they do not imitate the basic structures of modern Western states, will be constructed atop the complex social terrain of the nonstate political world and that some of those configurations will rise up from hybrid local authority structures or from warlord bands immersed in clandestine markets.

Conclusion On the basis of the evidence presented in this chapter, it may be concluded that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, political history does not “end” or continue on an upward development path so much as to give rise to a continuing cycle of state formation, consolidation, inversion, and reconstruction. These transitions take place in distinctive ways and the degree of state inversion varies widely, but this cycle of political change appears to characterize ever-widening portions of the African continent. Similar forms of political change are observable in other world areas. Crises in the former Yugoslavia and in the former Soviet Union suggest that state inversion in Africa reflects a natural process of “imperial overstretch” that afflicts great—as well as small—powers over time (Kennedy 1987). Pressures toward state inversion are currently being reinforced by the failure of the international state system to produce mechanisms to bolster state power in some world areas. In this regard, in thinking about the current crisis of state authority in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it may prove more intellectually profitable to focus our analytic attention on historical cycles than on a teleologically oriented effort to rebuild and reform modern states. In particular, our analytic field of vision should be widened to include the potential for (a) nonstate forms of political authority to emerge, and (b) indigenously authentic “states” to evolve that reflect empire-like systems of decentralized rule.

Notes 1. These include Angola, Benin, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, and Zaire. 2. The concept of state “collapse” (Zartman 1995b) is similar to that of “inversion,” but “state inversion” is preferred here because it emphasizes the fact that states become inwardly focused rather than directing their actions toward society.

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Somalia: The Structure of Dissolution ANNA S IMONS

In 1991 Somalia essentially dissolved as a viable, functioning state. In part Somalia’s collapse is attributable to the success of a social structure that proved to be at odds with the requisite structures of the juridical state. This chapter examines one critical aspect of this rupture: how circles of trust circumscribed information flows. In turn this provokes us to address widespread assumptions about the situation in Somalia. If Somalis retain a social structure, perhaps there is structure to dissolution; this is significant because, despite the extent to which Somalia exemplifies anarchy in the minds of many, it suggests that Somalis do have a future, even if Somalia does not. The acephalous nature of information flows in the setting-thatwas-Somalia begs us to reconsider the components of dissolution. More broadly, the Somali case also raises questions about the suitability of a state form for all peoples.

A Structural Political History Hindsight now suggests that not only was Somalia’s dissolution thirty years in the making, but indeed that dissolution began with the state’s birth. 1 Arguably, the fracture lines were there even before Somalia formally became an independent entity in 1960, with its own flag, formal borders, a representative at the United Nations, and all the other trappings of juridical statehood. Analytically Somalia is easily divisible in several different ways. First, as a geographical entity this country in the Horn of Africa can be divided into at least four parts: a coastal zone, an interriverine area, a mountainous north, and a semiarid interior. Second, as an ethnic entity it splits into six clan-families, most commonly identified as the Raxanweyn, Darood, Hawiye, Isaq, Digil, and Dir. Third, there is a significant division of labor in Somalia or—to put this in a more indigenous context—the division 57

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of labor among Somalis has traditionally held tremendous significance. Historically, Somalis have long categorized one another according to their occupations, so that distinctive cultural differences are recognized among pastoralists, agriculturalists, craft specialists (e.g., blacksmiths, leatherworkers, etc.), and traders. Finally, with independence two different colonies were joined to make the country of Somalia: British Somaliland in the north and Italian Somalia in the south. Not surprisingly, there has been substantive overlap between all of these various cleavages. For instance, agriculture predominated among Raxanweyn Somalis in the interriverine area, while pastoralism was practiced by Isaq and Darood Somalis (among others) in the country’s semiarid reaches. The interriverine area, located in the south, fell under Italian (and not British) colonial control. Hence, even something as simple as the choice of a national capital at independence bore all sorts of implications. Mogadishu’s location would prove significant not only for those Italianoriented Somalis in Mogadishu’s immediate vicinity (the Hawiye among others), but for English-speaking (and particularly Isaq) Somalis in the more distant and Aden Gulf–facing north. At the same time, despite their proximity to Mogadishu, Raxanweyn Somalis gained little political advantage, largely because of their lower social status as agriculturalists. In other words, the privileging of place, as well as of certain social categories—whether real or imagined—created all sorts of room for new meanings to be attached to old differences just prior to independence. Who did the new government employ, assist, benefit, look out for? Most importantly, who peopled it? As individual Somalis jostled to take charge of their country’s destiny, numerous other inequities (again, both real and imagined) emerged, thanks to an insolvent economic legacy (the result of colonial subsidies and underdevelopment) and to widespread local inexperience in running a national government. As in many other places in Africa, at independence the state itself represented Somalia’s most concentrated source of resources; alternative sources of substantive wealth tended to be locked away in widely dispersed herds of livestock or foreign-controlled banana plantations. With the levers of political and economic power collapsed into one another, government positions offered untold (but quite visible) rewards to those who managed to secure them. Through time Somalis increasingly competed to control these state offices, although individuals did not seek such positions on their own. Rather, interest groups developed and individuals with joint interests coalesced. Prior to the colonial and postcolonial consolidation of Somalia as an entity, most Somalis were embedded in locally grounded social networks. Only in moments of conflict and/or with the introduction of larger arenas of competition (e.g., towns, government, a country) did people find it necessary to identify themselves with larger groupings. As it happens, a basis

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for such groupings already existed for pastoralist Somalis, who are still renowned for being able to trace descent twenty generations and more back through their father’s line. Moving out from family through lineage—which is where most daily interactions stopped—most individuals could go much further yet in determining who might be an ally and who a competitor, all based on the extent to which there were shared genealogical links. Meanwhile, the more that different people interacted and the more competitive the world became—whether we think of this as the world of Mogadishu, of government, or of high finance—the more compelling and useful genealogical affinities proved to be. In fact, one reading of Somalia’s brief (1960–1969) history as a democratic country is to view genealogy as political compulsion. Certainly this seems evident in the country’s last free election, held in 1969, when 62 parties put up 1,002 candidates for 123 seats at the national level. Ironically, this compulsion about genealogical affinity was made all the more compelling once it was officially driven underground by General Mohamed Siad Barre, who took power in a coup shortly after the 1969 national elections. The officially articulated rationale for the military takeover was to stem clan-based corruption. Consequently, Siad Barre promised to root out “clannism,” which he attempted to do by banning any discussion of clans. But simply restricting speech proved to be too little, too late. Regardless of Siad Barre’s intent, the structured way in which clan-family allegiances were both presumed and expected to operate had already become too useful and too well-entrenched. For instance, no matter how carefully Siad Barre balanced government ministries among members of different clan-families and clans in order to dispel any hint of favoritism, that he did so only drew attention to the extent to which even he was still having to pay attention to genealogy.

A Series of Events Chronologically, of course, there is a different way to explain Somalia’s dissolution, which has to do with the interplay of events both within and without the country. Most often the Ogaden War has been singled out as the turning point both for Siad Barre’s regime and the fortunes of the Somali state (see Lewis 1994; Samatar 1994; Lyons and Samatar 1995). The war, fought in earnest between Ethiopia and Somalia between 1977 and 1978, actually marked four turning points. First, it precipitated the switchover in Cold War superpower allegiances. Prior to Somalia’s invasion of Ethiopian-controlled, Somali-occupied grazing lands, the Soviets backed Somalia while the United States backed Ethiopia. However, as fighting grew more serious, Ethiopia’s new Marxist government successfully wooed the Soviets away from Somalia. Significantly, only once

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Somalia had been defeated on the battlefield did the West (and oil-rich Muslim states) begin to support the Siad Barre regime in the Soviets’ stead. This support in and of itself then marked a second turning point. Whereas the Soviets had supplied industry and military materiel to Somalia, Western assistance amounted to unprecedented quantities of money and goods. The refugee flow that justified this aid represented a third turning point. Having lost the war, Siad Barre’s government nevertheless gained a whole new lease on life in the form of these refugees, and the lucrative resources that flowed their way. Tellingly, too, these refugees happened to belong predominantly to one particular clan-family (Ogaden/ Darood), numbers of whom were then relocated to areas of the country traditionally dominated by others. The defeat, the influx and relocation of refugees, and the concomitant avalanche of aid all combined to produce the fourth turning point, which was Siad Barre’s increasing reliance on members of his own clan and clanfamily. There was already discontent over his handling of the war. But then, not only did refugee assistance pour into Mogadishu and through the hands of high government officials (who too often were Siad Barre’s relatives), but his subsequent attempts to pin blame for the loss on others, while blatantly benefiting his own kin, made all Somalis pay even more attention to genealogical links as they noted whom Siad Barre protected and promoted, and whom he persecuted. Significantly, by the mid-1980s the opposition movements also reflected this same clannist cast. In large measure the clan- and clan-family-based proliferation of opposition groups explains why it was not until 1988 that Siad Barre’s opponents finally began to make real headway in their efforts to oust the regime. This occurred in the wake of a historic agreement between Siad Barre and Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, whereby both leaders agreed to stop supporting one another’s opposition. In one fell swoop the northern (and predominantly Isaq) opposition movement, the Somali National Movement (SNM), not only lost its Ethiopian base but was forced to (re)enter Somalia the hard way. The SNM did so with a major military offensive in May of that year. It was essentially this 1988 civil war, precipitated by the SNM, that marked the beginning of Somalia’s formal dissolution. Although the ensuing fighting was largely confined to the north, it nonetheless involved Somalis from all over the country as young men in Mogadishu were conscripted by the government, refugees from the Ogaden War (still living in refugee camps in the north) were armed and encouraged to fight against the Isaq, and civilians from the northern capital, Hargeisa, and other towns, fled as refugees themselves. As the war progressed, opposition groups throughout the country opportunistically seized ground elsewhere for themselves (e.g., the predominantly Majertein Somali Salvation Democratic Front in the northeast), while more recently created movements

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rose to protect other clan and/or clan-family interests (e.g., the Somali Patriotic Movement to promote/protect Ogaden in the south and the west, and the United Somali Congress [USC] to promote/protect Hawiye claims in the center). With the countryside being carved up, it was late 1990 before the fighting finally reached Mogadishu. In January 1991, numerically overwhelmed, Siad Barre and the remnants of what had become increasingly his own clan-based (Marehan/Darood) army were driven from the capital. While this certainly represented a victory for the opposition, the opposition itself was hardly unified. Rather, the opposition groups simply shared the same immediate goal: to remove Siad Barre from power. Within short order the city fell under Hawiye/USC control. Three things are generally said about Somalia’s divided opposition: first, that this was a direct result of Siad Barre’s own skill in keeping his opponents divided along genealogical lines; second, that this inability of Somalis to cohere is exactly what allowed Siad Barre to remain in power for twenty-one years. Throughout the 1980s Siad Barre proved remarkably adept at stirring up sufficient suspicions between movements, clans, and clan-families to keep them divided. But, as the rest of this chapter suggests, this was not just the result of Siad Barre’s skillful manipulations; there also had to be something to manipulate. A consideration of this fact requires us to view the third element often invoked in discussions of opposition disunity—namely, the strength of clan ties—in order to better understand how anarchy in Somalia is structured.

Analyzing Invisible Social Structure Dissolution and anarchy are often talked about in tandem, and Somalia is now widely cited as an exemplar of what happens when states dissolve into anarchy. However, dissolution and anarchy may well be two very different things. If we define anarchy as an absence of government, then Somalia in the 1990s does indeed qualify as anarchic. However, if (as is more commonly the case) anarchy is used to mean an utter lack of organization, then conditions in Somalia hardly fit the definition. Despite the absence of any internationally recognized, functional state-level or even municipal government, there has still been organization in Somalia. To an anthropologist—and, one hopes, to other social scientists—this is a pat and hardly revelatory statement. Nor is there anything necessarily novel about the next: that the international community, comprised of states, accepts others as relative equals regardless of the coherence of the social structures encapsulated within the state container. Various Africanist scholars have pointed to the disjuncture between the international (juridical) face of the state and its domestic (empirical)

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reality. Thus, Robert Jackson (1990) describes states that could not survive economically if they were not granted sovereignty and then financially shored up from without, while Patrick Chabal (1994) explains why, despite African states’ outward similarity to European states, historical developments render them so different. Nevertheless, states like Somalia have still been treated as states by others. Like money, states amount to an acultural, generalizable unit of account, convenient in the realm of international relations and global economics. At the same time there is the historical legacy. Colonial powers were disinterested in coming up with a new, nonstate shape of political organization for stateless societies, despite Somalis (among others) having proven time and again that state borders hardly suit them. Turn this around and we may find that the only real coherence to Somalia was imposed by borders and institutions recognized only by outsiders. If we consider recent fighting in Somalia, we can also see that it does not reveal a lack of structure, no matter how unorganized fighters might appear. Even if an assailant does not know who his victims are, he knows who they are not (e.g., they are not members of his group). Structure, in this sense, is concentric, from ego out. It can expand or contract, all according to a logic carried around by each individual in his or her head. If Somalia is unique, it is largely because this dominant Somali-wide ideology is predicated on something that to the outsider is at worst invisible and at best appears to be of a confused if not confusing acephalous type.2 Genealogy (or, more accurately, descent) is critical to Somalis’ moral order, and so far has taken precedence over Islam as the governing factor in Somalis’ lives. While this invisible morality does not look like government to outsiders, it does govern.3 Kinship not only determines how people should regard one another situationally (as compatriots or competitors) but also dictates specific roles, duties, rights, and responsibilities. What genealogy does, beyond charting trustworthiness, is provide individuals with a moral compass that indicates how individuals should interact with one another, depending on who (in genealogical terms) those others are.4 The catch to genealogy, though, is that it does not enfold all Somalis under a single umbrella. Not all Somalis are related to one another, yet all are related to some other Somalis. At the broadest level, Somalis are separable into something like six mutually exclusive groups (the clan-families listed above).5 This means that there are essentially six different societies in what we still refer to as Somalia, although none substantively coalesced or even existed as a politically solvent unit on the ground prior to 1991. For instance, during the late 1980s an individual might have been identified, and might even have self-identified, as a member of the Darood clan-family. But the Darood could not be located as a political, let alone territorially fixed, entity. At the same time, “the Darood” still served as a rallying cry and catalyst for a sense of (but not a systemic) unity among non-Darood.6 For the Isaq such a “calling” did lead

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eventually to the formation of their own state in 1991—the Republic of Somaliland, located in the former British Somaliland, where the Isaq predominate—but this is a self-proclaimed state that the international community still refuses to recognize, a fact that further illustrates nonSomalis’ general discomfort with a political order that situationally crystallizes out of genealogical identity. Actually, regard for Somali realities has been misguided on almost all counts. In large part this is because culture has been granted primacy over social relations. No Somali government successfully restructured social relations. Instead, Somalis’ apparent homogeneity in language, dress, diet, and attitudes was extolled. By focusing on a livestock-based culture, for instance (glossing over the fact that some Somalis were agriculturalists, craftworkers, etc.), nationalists could make Somalis appear as though they already comprised a coherent nation (see Ahmed 1995); only state governance was really new. This served irredentist as well as nationalist purposes. The state itself, meanwhile, encouraged other requisites of modern nationalism, like language consolidation and literacy programs. But, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, none of these government-sponsored efforts overcame the pull of familial obligations. Indeed, one reason culture could appear so uniform in Somalia was that all Somalis did have these same obligations. Having was hardly sharing, however. Without placing or being able to place themselves above or beyond the reach of their own obligations to kin, government officials themselves demonstrated the relational hollowness of an overarching culture. From independence onward, their partiality and parochialism put the lie to a panSomali morality. And their behavior, which actually may have been nothing but moral according to lineage (or even subtly different clan) standards, rendered a national government impossible, and thus sub national allegiances critical to individual survival. The persistence of an “economy of affection” and the conflation of public and private spheres has now become a rather standard explanation for the failures of many states in Africa.7 But kin-based loyalties should not be viewed as confined to social welfare or national resources alone. Assuming, as many moral economy theorists do, that everything is predicated on obligatory social relations, then nothing is exempt from being thought about in these terms—least of all information, as it applies to (and explains) the distribution of services, resources, wealth, and power. Indeed, it may well be information that lies at the heart of how competing moral economies come to be so exclusionary. The whirlpool-like effects of tautology are clear: the state does not work for everyone because certain people work the state for themselves, which means the state cannot work. This in turn colors how state actions and pronouncements are read. In this regard Somalia may not be at all unique on the African continent (or indeed elsewhere). Consider, for example, the description of Sierre

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Leone in the Los Angeles Times where, according to one headline, “In a Paranoid Land, Contagion of Fear Spreads: Sierra Leone’s military government downplays a rebel threat, but the people aren’t listening. Rumors abound.”8

Competing Logics and the Role of Rumor In the Somali case all information was similarly suspect for two reasons: there was no credible news media and far too often (mis)information was purposely manipulated by those in power. The lack of credible news media may reflect dictatorial preference or colonial legacy. Misinformation, on the other hand, may simply be a governmental tool, employed everywhere but at least challengeable where there is a free and largely credible press. In Siad Barre’s Somalia it was commonly asserted that misinformation was broadcast by government officials or the government-controlled media, or that fake papers were left lying around in order that rumors circulate, itself an unprovable assertion. Still, the logic ran, the powers-thatbe did this to gauge public reaction either to something they were tentatively thinking of doing or to whatever they hoped to spoil for opponents or critics. Because of such suppositions, government-generated information meant to answer questions only served to provoke new ones, while what was said was carefully combed for what was left out. For instance, when the government announced ministerial changes—invariably explained as performance-based personnel shifts—people automatically assumed this could not be the real reason behind a demotion/promotion. Instead, they concentrated on what had not been publicized: genealogy, the one thing never explicitly discussed, yet the idiom most central to popular explanations of such events. As soon as Siad Barre said that genealogy no longer mattered (in the early 1970s), he essentially threw down the gauntlet and dared Somalis to pay attention and prove him wrong. Meanwhile, given genealogy’s subversive prominence, it could never be disproven as the causal factor many Somalis believed it to be. The fact that circuits of information themselves were so genealogically based contributed to the perception that genealogy was key. Given the lack of a credibly authoritative news source, the only explanations of events not suspect from individuals’ points of view were explanations that came from people they already knew they could trust. Kin shared a common morality; kin could automatically be trusted. In contrast to analyses suggesting that it was a lack of information or “facts” that would have caused Somalis to leap to conclusions, and at each other’s throats, there was more often than not a surfeit of facts. When explanations for events were neither verifiable nor disprovable, there was no

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shortage of evidence to support numerous hypotheses: addressing, rationalizing, and analyzing why X had been transferred where, or why Y had been granted a letter of credit, building permit, university entrance. Inevitably everything could be boiled down to clan or clan-family membership. Essentially the story line was rote: “they” were in business for themselves, guilty of excluding others. History confirmed this—in genealogies and in the gaps charted between lineages, clans, and ultimately clan-families on family trees. Even if whatever “they” were guilty of was not wholly discoverable in the present, guilt still had to be presumed. After all, “they” would not be “they” if they could be trusted. The tautologies are neat, and they build on one another. It was not just that Somalia’s constitutent societies were acephalous in and of themselves, but that Somalia’s history and environment rendered decentralization so likely. Who or what could be trusted? In the space of less than three generations, the British, French, Italians, Americans, Soviets, Saudis, Iraqis, Libyans, and the Chinese (to name some) had interfered. Government had been colonial, then mandate, then representative, then dictatorial. Or what of economic regimens: colonial, capitalist, socialist, and capitalist again, with all the attendant experimentation from import substitution through privatization and structural adjustment? Obviously, given such kaleidoscopic changes at the state center, nothing centralized could be counted on. Rumor became not just a substitute for, but also the only source of information. “Rumors” in this sense should not be understood simply as misinformation or untruths. Rather, each rumor confirmed a truth for a specific audience. This is somewhat different from what has been suggested about rumors in other studies of African political culture. One description of rumors depicts them as a potent brew of what is not known in the here and now linked to what may or may not be known by those able to manipulate the supernatural (Kastfelt 1989). Another consideration of rumors traces their legitimacy to African oral traditions (Ellis 1989). In analyzing the significance of radio trottoir in Togo, Stephen Ellis writes, “it is evident that in oral societies the spoken word has a quite different value from that which it has in literate ones. . . . In pre-colonial Africa oratory, politics and religion all intertwined, not least because politics in an oral culture require a far more intensive use of symbols to preserve an orderly system of laws and a constitution” (1993, 474). But, by privileging the construction of myths out of traditional symbols, such an explanation pays too little attention to the importance of the skein of logic that does the actual constructing. It seems to me that logic is not only critical to the story line, but that in many ways it defines that line, tying miscellaneous gleanings together into a coherent, compelling narrative. Essentially logic is suspicion confirmable by evidence (just as most suspicions are invariably logical).

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Interestingly, Ellis cites Jan Vansina to bolster his argument. But as Vansina himself suggests in a very different context, there may be more to what people find compeling about an explanation than mere “tradition”: The quality of a hypothesis varies with the density of interconnections between the parts and with the number of the elements it attempts to explain. The more features it addresses, the higher the quality of the hypothesis, because the number of potential alternative hypotheses decreases with the number of features which have to be accounted for (1990, 250).

Rumors are hypotheses. Rumors link facts together; the more facts that can be linked, the more convincing the rumor. As Ellis points out, in places with no authoritative news or information source rumors do not just titillate; they are currency. There is a continual “trading up” as more facts are gathered. More significantly, which rumors are bought depends on who is doing the selling (Ellis 1993, 470). As Allport and Postman (1947/1965) describe in their classic study of rumors during World War II, the issue of trust and trusting the source is critical to believing the rumor. But there may also be another way to think about rumor: as the product of science rather than myth. For instance, there was a definite method to how rumors were constructed in Somalia. As with any scientific thinking, rumor mongering was self-correcting: the underlying logic that hooked the facts together did not just align the facts, but also sought for the most plausible explanations, sorting through, and accepting or discarding what was and was not relevant as fact. The facts could change but the logic did not. Its consistency, in turn, assured that those who believed belonged and vice versa. Multiple logics thus coexisted and competed in Somalia for three reasons. First, no one had any more proof of what was fact than anyone else. Second, every logic could make any set of facts seem self-evident. And third, anything was fair game to be used as fact. Finding and interpreting facts were not separable activities.

The Center: Misunderstood Conditions were decentralized in Somalia in two senses: in terms of the extent to which Somalis felt morally bound to each other and in terms of information flows. Clearly the two hook together and help constitute a vicious cycle. Because the center was disbelieved, rumors became the coin of the realm. Information was a matter of faith and rumors informed. People responded to, and with, whatever could help them make sense of a perhaps coercive but nonetheless authority-less situation. But again, a critical distinction must be made. The situation was not senseless. Sense was

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merely decentralized, so that all participants had their own version, and these versions were often at loggerheads. At the broadest level this was more than evident in relations between Somalis and non-Somalis, which in and of themselves helped promote a particular view by outsiders of Somalis as Somalis (and not members of constituent Marehan, Majertein, Isaq, or Darood clans and clan-families, etc.). Paradoxically, Somalis’ own presentation of themselves helped ensure the illusion of cohesion. This came in two forms. First, so long as assistance kept flowing into the country, Somalia held value as a coherent entity worthy of garnering assistance. Second, these assistance flows, which proved Somalia to be a juridical entity at the international level, both promoted and required a center. One way to read dissolution is to study events at this center, since the center was so pivotal to the whole—and tended to represent Somalia, even for outsiders. In fact, it is possible to argue that it was Mogadishu as the center, and Marehan (Siad Barre’s clan) at the center of Mogadishu, that caused Somalia’s peripheries (and non-Marehan) to seek their own autonomies. On the one hand, inequity emanating from Mogadishu inspired rebellion. On the other hand, rebellion in the peripheries only highlighted the significance of Mogadishu as the linchpin of Somalia. After all, Mogadishu served as the centerpiece of the juridical state and the source of virtually all of its services. Arguably, despite a civil war in the north and increasing instances of social banditry and rebellion elsewhere, it was not until violence burst through and into the capital city that Somalis in Mogadishu were finally forced to confront the question of the meaningfulness of Somalia itself. Otherwise, as long as the center had retained its cohesion, the illusion of the juridical state could be maintained. The event that was the harbinger of fighting yet to come in Mogadishu occured on 14 July 1989, when government troops opened fire on Muslim worshipers as they were leaving Friday noon (juma) prayer. According to some reports, the death toll from these shootings numbered in the hundreds, although Somali opposition movements claimed fatalities in the thousands. Regardless, the violence sparked fear in the capital and further fighting in its hinterlands. This in turn had a number of effects, perhaps one of the most significant of which was the onset of the Western withdrawal from Somalia. While some Mogadishu residents feared a complete Western withdrawal in the aftermath of Black Friday (14 July), to many it was unclear why Westerners would leave at such a critical moment.9 Because no policy statement was made by the United States (or any other) embassy addressing the Somali people, the latter were free to put whatever gloss they chose on widespread rumors of a pullout. To some, any departure looked like abandonment. After all, with their own government acting beyond the bounds of reason, many Somalis (particularly the small but significant

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urban population employed by Westerners and/or by Western-sponsored aid projects) were puzzled as to why they, “the people,” were about to be forsaken in their moment of greatest need by those who purported to be their friends. Certainly many Somalis wondered why more outside pressure was not being brought to bear on Siad Barre. Once a Western withdrawal of project staff did begin, speculation shifted gears. Rumors now worried over who was likely to replace the expatriates, with many young Somali civil servants assuming that the Soviets would return. In part it was assumed that the Soviets would be back because it was known that at least one highly placed government official had traveled to the Soviet Union. Also, because people remembered the previous flip-flop of the 1970s, when the Soviets were ousted and the Americans invited back into Somalia, there was the widespread expectation that Somalia would have to be supported by one or the other of the superpowers. What is interesting about this essentially automatic reaction on the part of many people—a minority of whom actually looked forward to the Soviets returning, since they remembered a time of little corruption—is that this also revealed a strand of Somali thinking concerning Somalia’s importance in the world. Many Somalis clearly realized that much of what accrued to Somalia came by way of tensions between the USSR and the United States, the proximity of the Gulf, and Somalia’s geopolitical location on the coast of Africa, as well as its long-term enmity with Ethiopia. For instance, the military base at Berbera was often cited as the reason why the United States was interested in Somalia, while its importance to U.S. security was dramatically overblown by those Somalis who also commonly asserted that the base had to be of top importance; why else would the U.S. government have so many of their citizens dispensing aid in Somalia? Because of U.S.-USSR rivalry in the Horn, and the history of switchovers in allegiance, these Somalis felt there was little reason to worry about the possibility of Somalia losing assistance altogether. Because there was so much apparent competition in the wider world, Somalis from all clans believed that Somalia was still well positioned to reap geostrategic benefits. Indeed, since long before independence there had always been aid to count on. Without stretching the analogy too far, Somali social structure itself was predicated on there being wet seasons and dry seasons, bountiful years and drought; even in the midst of drought, eventual rain could be assumed. However, by October and into November 1989, as it became increasingly evident that the Soviets were not rushing to replace U.S. citizens— who could be seen packing in various compounds—expectation began to give way to despair and people openly wondered who, if anyone, would intercede in the threatening dissolution. As no one stepped in, tension palpably heightened. I would suggest that, in no small measure, this “sudden”

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lack of an interested outside party was the first real sign Somalis received that Somalia was perhaps less important than they had led themselves to believe. It also signaled the onset of true collapse. Or so it seemed in December 1991 when I first committed such an analysis to paper. Within a year events would prove this view both right and wrong. For a variety of reasons, the Somali state was indeed allowed to dissolve without international intercession.10 However, once there was no functioning center at all, the international community rushed back into the space that it still thought of as Somalia to “restore hope,” and attempt to revive a Somalia it still wanted to regard as having a center, and even a capital. This new aid onslaught, in turn, had two ironic (but arguably predictable) effects. First, it once again lent Somalia prominence on the world stage. Second, it gave particular significance to Mogadishu. Mogadishu had the port, the airport, and its own civil war. By making Mogadishu the fulcrum of U.S./UN operations, Operation Restore Hope of course made control of Mogadishu something for Somalis to fight over—all over again. Meanwhile, for what purpose was hope being restored? With the best of intentions, Operation Restore Hope was an ill-chosen name. Was the operation all about granting Somalis a respite from famine or installing a new government? If this was not made clear to the U.S. public (or to U.S. congressmen), then it was certainly never made clear to Somalis. The debate on what was meant to happen is still intense.11 Almost unnoticed, though, was the unspoken restoration of Somalis’ own assumptions concerning Somalia’s significance. Operation Restore Hope sparked endless conjecture among many Somalis, as rumors ricocheted back and forth between Somalis in the United States and Somalis elsewhere: Why had Somalia and not Angola, Liberia, or the Sudan become the focus of such intense Western attention? Intervention could not have just been about starving Somali farmers, since there were starving Africans in many other places as well (and even plenty of hungry people in the United States). Consequently, Somalis and those reporting on them developed all sorts of logical rationales as explanations: intervention was about oil, Islamic fundamentalism, practicing techniques for establishing new world order, or passage of a tar baby from outgoing President Bush to incoming President Clinton. That there could be so many different explanations for a single set of incompletely known facts is in and of itself revelatory. It simply seems to reaffirm that when there is no centralized, credible source of information or authority, people not only assume there are hidden agendas, but invariably find them. For Somalis the United States had long since proved that while it was perhaps credible in terms of the strength it could bring to bear, it was not credible in terms of the level of honesty with which it addressed Somalis. Significantly, too, not only was there no credible authority that

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overarched both the United States and Somalia, but there had also never been an overarching source of information to which all parties could turn. To some extent, then, the dissolution of Somalia must be attributed not just to hollowness at the core and lack of a credible, overarching structure at the subnational level, but also to the persistence of very particular and even particularizing structures. The institutions with which Somali elites had constructed the juridical state since independence—clientelism, genealogy, and rumor—proved unsustainable in the face of the new challenges of the 1990s. Again, the kinds of social relations that could destabilize a juridical state had never been sufficiently altered.

Conclusion. And Lessons? Put most succinctly, genealogical social structure easily decentralized the kind of power necessary to maintain political order (and orderliness) within the putatively republican Somali state. Meanwhile, the survival value of genealogy means that Somalis face two conundrums today. To fit into the international fold, they are expected to (re)construct some sort of state, although the very requirements of state form—having a national capital, head of state, national treasury, etc.—invite contraction. Contraction around a single center is precisely the reason the Somali National Movement was founded in the first place in the early 1980s (northerners felt they were being shortchanged by the central goverment, located as it was in the south), precipitating the country’s civil war and ultimately its dissolution. At the same time, as wearying and wasteful as all the bloodshed has been, it has proved unerringly self-fulfilling, in one indisputable sense. Now more than ever, knowing genealogy does chart who can and cannot be trusted. Nor is time likely to erode the usefulness of “genealogic” for Somalis in the near future. For one thing, time is genealogy’s tool, stretching memories forward as well as backward. Even more importantly, there is the weightiness of genealogy, as the only logic on which all Somalis can now agree. That lineage-, clan-, and clan-family-based fighting has helped render Somalia a dysfunctional state is already well documented. To go a step beyond what is known though, and attempt to predict the future of the Somali state by suggesting that perhaps no centralized structure will work for Somalis, takes me onto much less stable ground. Realistically, the international community will continue to regard the space-that-is-Somalia as a state no matter how few state structures ever did, or likely can, effectively exist for Somalis—if for no other reason than because Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya hem it in and, by default, give the space-that-is-Somalia stately form.

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But what if one or two of these other states were to wither, implode, or collapse? Not surprisingly, given all the fighting in the Horn of Africa over the past several decades, there has been considerable talk of regional or other political configurations emerging, even of redrawing boundaries (Ravenhill 1988). Most “unconventional” thinking seems to favor some sort of federation in Somalia, if not throughout the Horn. For instance, Terrence Lyons reviews the ways in which Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti comprise a de facto regional system. Nevertheless, as he notes, “many observers have enumerated the mutual gains of cooperation, but fewer have analyzed the structural hurdles to obtaining these benefits” (1994, 199– 200).12 Indeed, myriad sticky questions loom. For instance, even were a federation to be worked out among Somalis, who would coordinate it, where would its coordinating body be located, who would be brought in to determine this, and more significantly, who would be left out? These questions are paramount because no matter how the boundaries may be redrawn to accomodate Somalis’ territorial decentralization, the social problem remains: how to accomodate central authority? Even were the distinctions between force and central authority to be made clear, Somali social relations are still not (re)structured such that all Somalis can morally accede to the same center. Thus, centralized control itself, given the structure of Somalis’ social relations, remains the real problem—and is bound to persist as the obstacle to any new configuration. At the same time, without regard for an overarching centralized authority, it also seems unlikely that gaps in information flows can be bridged. This bears all sorts of implications for the production and reproduction of (mis)trust, since in a segmentary situation it also becomes a truism to say that credibility gaps between groups wind up circumscribing logics within them, with circumscribed logics then reinforcing people’s presuppositions about whom to trust. This is one way to link logic to genealogy and the logic of genealogy to mutual suspicions between genealogically composed groups. However, such a portrait of Somalia may also be too closed. It alludes to no interference from, or interactions with, the outside. It also renders Somalia more—rather than less—unique. Certainly Somalia is at one end of a historical but also specifically pastoralist continuum; the effectiveness of circumscribed morality coupled with circumscribed logic in an environment demanding fluidity provides a persuasive explanation for why Somali social relations have persisted as they have—and why they have corroded the juridical state. Nevertheless, even in places where such conditions are not the norm, the Somali example may offer two broader insights. First, the Somali case suggests just how short-sighted it is to assume that parties to a dispute share a universal logic, or that parties to disagreement are simply misinformed. Facts are not necessarily the source of

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misunderstandings. Logic is, and mistrust and suspicions are always logical. Rarely are people suspicious out of ignorance about “the facts.” Rather, they are suspicious because they know what to fear and already feel they have plenty of facts. Second is the question of what does count as fact. When forced to forage for information, people display true genius. To extend this analogy one step further, when people are hungry they will make a meal out of anything they think might be edible. So it goes with the construction of rumors, which, without question, do inform. Is feeding more information to people the most logical solution then? It has been suggested that increasing the world flow of information might be one antidote to internecine conflict, and that we could squelch rumors and propaganda if only we jammed evil voices and broadcast more truth.13 But whose truth? Is information alone really enough to alter logic? In cases such as those of Eastern European countries during the Cold War, where centralized authority was discredited, alternative sources of information supplied from other centralized authorities (e.g., the U.S. government via Radio Free Europe and the British government via the BBC) did prove decidedly helpful. But where there is no tradition of being able to place faith in any single overarching authority, the task may not be nearly so neat. Offering alternative explanations might only add to the rumor mill while attempts to speak with any sort of authority can themselves feed irrepressibly circular logics. Certainly our own misunderstandings about anarchy in Somalia might serve as one proof of this.

Notes 1. This is an argument I make in far greater detail in Simons 1995. 2. See note 6 below on the significance of a dominant cultural ideology. 3. Numerous Somaliists (e.g., I. M. Lewis, David Marlowe, and Ahmed Samatar) have commented on the role of heer (or contract) in securing moral order among Somalis. But as Ahmed Samatar points out, some time in the past several decades heer, as an institution that overrode the exclusivity of descent, became decoupled from descent, and descent began to take organizational precedence (Samatar 1994). 4. Trust is delineated by breaks between lineages, clans, and clan-families. Put most succinctly, what genealogies chart is a history of links that document who has trusted whom among kin, and whom one can expect to trust. Links are essentially only kept if people prove reliable and helpful and do not cause strife within the group. Otherwise, irreconcilable disputes and differences (even among brothers) are marked by breaks, as families split into different lines and begin to go their separate ways. This is a point I argue in Simons 1995. 5. Significantly, affinal ties (or ties through marriage) are not confused with agnatic ties (or ties through descent) in patrilineal societies. Intermarriage does not change the rule of descent, which is the predominant rule of genealogical organization in Somalia.

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6. The gist of my argument, which cannot be fully fleshed out here, is that there has been much confusion about Somalia’s allegedly homogeneous culture. Notions of a homogeneous culture are erroneous. For instance, Somali agriculturalists and Somali pastoralists engage in different modes of production, speak different languages, and have noticeably different sets of customs. I believe “society” is a far more relevant diacritic. Given the content of social relations, it should be clear that Somalis do not all participate in the same society, or treat one another as if all Somalis are one and the same. 7. See Hyden 1983; Berry 1985; Sandbrook 1985; Bayart 1993. 8. Los Angeles Times, 4 February 1995, p. A2. For more on this, see Chapter 6 in this volume. 9. Significantly, after being broadly hinted at, it took months before this withdrawal was finally enacted. Assumptions among many expatriates were that it would take place much more quickly than it did. Thus, delay itself inspired numerous rumors in expatriate and Somali communities. 10. These reactions are explored more fully in Simons 1996. 11. There has been a flurry of books and articles written by key participants in the humanitarian intervention (e.g., Robert Oakley and Mohamed Sahnoun, among others) as well as by journalists and senior research analysts, both civilian and military. See, for example, Lyons and Samatar 1995 and Stevenson 1995. 12. For a consideration of reconfiguration, see Lyons 1994 and also Gurdon 1994. 13. Keith Spicer, “Propaganda for Peace,” New York Times, 10 December 1994.

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Rwanda: Chaos from Above TIMOTHY LONGMAN

The Africanist scholarly community has reacted with considerable ambivalence to the process of state reconfiguration that has swept the African continent in the 1990s. While scholars have generally approved of the decline in the authoritarian nature of rule, many have also expressed considerable reservation about the forces propelling the process of sociopolitical change. They credit the drive for state reform with supporting peaceful transitions to democratic rule in Malawi, South Africa, and Benin, but also with undermining the centrality and power of the state, leading to a disintegration of order in Somalia and Liberia. According to the warnings of some scholars, the social forces undermining authoritarian rule, if taken too far, may lead to a dissolution of the state and, ultimately, to chaos and violence. Thus, while democratic reforms to state institutions may be necessary for Africa to emerge from crisis, the forces of democratization must somehow be contained if the continent is to avoid what Zolberg has termed the “Specter of Anarchy” (1992). In this chapter, I wish to challenge the assumption that the preservation of a strong, centralized—albeit more democratic—state represents the only alternative to chaos on the African continent. Based upon the experience of Rwanda, I argue first that social chaos may arise from excessive state power rather than from state “recession” or “decline.” The extreme chaos that has engulfed some African countries results at least in part from efforts by the international community to preserve unpopular and ineffective state structures. Second, I contend that the vision of political change supported by many Africans involves a radical decentralization of power and contraction of the state. Rather than deserving condemnation as a threat to order, this political vision offers a potential basis for reconstructing African societies along more equitable, and ultimately more stable, lines. The violence that swept through Rwanda in 1994 is commonly cited as evidence of the chaos that can result from the decline of the state. In 75

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reality, the ethnic and political massacres that killed as many as 1 million members of the minority Tutsi group and moderate members of the Hutu majority did not arise spontaneously from inherent ethnic tensions in Rwandan society but rather was meticulously prepared and orchestrated by government and military officials who sought to reassert their control over the population by eliminating all potential opponents. While the growth of independent social and economic organizations in the 1980s and early 1990s empowered the Rwandan people and provided them bases for challenging the authority of the state, a massive expansion in the size and capacity of the Rwandan Armed Forces beginning in 1990, supported by arms shipments from France and elsewhere, simultaneously increased the coercive capabilities of the state. The Rwandan state remained strong, even as the population increasingly sought alternatives. The violence that shook Rwanda in 1994 demonstrated not the decreasing ability of the state to maintain order but rather the continuing power of the state to organize support and exercise coercive force.

State Theory and Sociopolitical Change In the discussions of the state that have dominated Africanist literature in the past decade, the need for a strong, effective, and centralized state has been a nearly universal assumption. The wave of publications in the mid1980s that attributed Africa’s expanding ethnic and regional conflicts, deteriorating economic conditions, and increasing insecurity to state decline assumed that a reformed and reinvigorated state at the center of social, political, and economic life was necessary to direct Africa’s emergence from crisis. These works viewed the tendency for African populations to “disengage” from the state—to limit as much as possible their contact with public officers, the military, and the police in order to protect themselves from excessive official and unofficial taxation and other hazards—as a threat to state integrity and thus a factor contributing to the continental crisis (cf. Azarya and Chazan 1987; Callaghy 1984; Sandbrook 1985; Young and Turner 1984). Implicit in this analysis is a Hobbesian pessimism regarding African societies. Looking at countries that have experienced civil war and disorder, analysts have concluded that without a powerful state to act as a Leviathan, the war of all against all ensues, making life “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Places like Zaire or Liberia or Sierra Leone become violent and disorganized, because the Leviathan has become “lame,” to use Callaghy’s expression (1984). In the early 1990s, the advent of national conferences and orderly democratic transitions in several African countries demonstrated that movements based within African societies can potentially play a positive

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political role by helping to reform and reinvigorate the state. Scholars have been quick to caution, however, that social movements can be dangerous if not properly circumscribed. By challenging the authority of rulers and encouraging disobedience, they may draw the population further from the state and thus contribute to state decline. Driving dictators from office is much simpler than establishing sustainable democratic regimes, as continuing problems in Congo, Zambia, and Burundi suggest. The challenge that scholars have identified for African societies is to find a means of increasing state accountability without encouraging social deterioration. To this end, some scholars have developed a concept of “civil society” that attempts to distinguish between those social activities and associations that contribute to state capacities and make sustainable democracy possible (the “good” parts of society that should receive international support) and those activities and associations that draw people away from the state and push societies toward chaos (the “bad” that should be discouraged) (cf. Ake 1991; Chazan 1992a; Harbeson 1994). Naomi Chazan, for example, defines civil society as “that segment of society that interacts with the state, influences the state, and yet is distinct from the state” (1992a, 281). To implement sustainable democracy requires nurturing this narrowly defined civil society, because these organizations “simultaneously contain state power and legitimate state authority” (283). Other social groups and trends may help to undermine authoritarian rule, but they do so by eroding state legitimacy, thus making sustainable democratic government difficult to accomplish. Democratization is a dangerous process, because if not carefully managed it can challenge not simply a particular regime but the very nature of the centralized state. Many scholars therefore concur with John F. Clark’s conclusion that African states need to move incrementally toward democracy: “African states and societies cannot, at this juncture, make the sudden leap from the coercive forms of control now commonly practiced to the complex and costly democratic forms of the Western world. . . . [F]or democracy to work in the new African regimes, it will unfortunately have to be limited in a number of ways” (1994a, 107). Democracy must be limited and controlled so that democratizing forces do not challenge the centrality of the state and lead to a dissolution into anarchy.1

State-inspired Anarchy in Rwanda Based upon the experience of Rwanda, I wish to challenge the assumption that African societies must choose between a strong, centralized state and chaos. I contend that, at least in Rwanda, chaos has been a product of the strength of the state, not its weakness. The political transformations envisioned by the bulk of the Rwandan population in the early 1990s involved

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not simply a reorganization of power within the state or a reestablishment of links between the state and the society, but a radical decentralization of state power and a diminution of the privilege that this power provided to a limited elite. Violence and chaos emerged because the coalition that dominated Rwandan politics and society used the coercive capacities of the state to protect state hegemony (and thus the privileges of the ruling class) against the increasingly empowered and autonomous society.2 Contrary to news reports that suggested Rwanda’s ethnic conflicts date back hundreds of years,3 the flexibility and complexity of precolonial social arrangements and the decentralization of power in the precolonial state allowed Rwanda’s three social groups to live in relative peace prior to colonial occupation. Under German and Belgian administration, the classifications Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa became fixed as ethnic identities and the divisions between the groups became rigid. Colonial policies allowed the pastoralist Tutsi, who comprised about 14 percent of the population, to consolidate political and economic power and to become increasingly enriched at the expense of the Hutu peasant majority. As decolonization appeared increasingly imminent in the late 1950s, offering the prospect of an independent country firmly controlled by Tutsi, an emerging Hutu counter-elite demanded rights for the majority. Hutu peasants became increasingly conscious and resentful of their exploitation and staged a jacquerie in 1959 that drove Tutsi officials from government and administration and launched a process that, by the time of independence in 1962, transferred nearly all political offices from Tutsi to Hutu hands (Lemarchand 1970; Linden 1977; Newbury 1988). Ethnic conflicts persisted throughout the first decade of independence, as groups of Tutsi who had fled Rwanda after the revolution launched periodic attacks into the country and Hutu responded with attacks against those Tutsi remaining in Rwanda. Ethnic violence declined after 1967, when the attacks from abroad ceased, but an outbreak of conflict between Hutu and Tutsi in neighboring Burundi in 1972 inspired a renewal of ethnic conflict in Rwanda. Due to the insecurity created by ethnic discord and to the stagnation of the economy, public support for President Grégoire Kayibanda’s government declined precipitously. Kayibanda’s efforts to consolidate power in the hands of trusted associates from his home region in central Rwanda ignited regional tensions and led in July 1973 to a coup d’état by Hutu military officers from the north (Lemarchand 1970; Linden 1977; Reyntjens 1985). Major-General Juvénal Habyarimana, who became president after the coup, initiated an aggressive agenda to address Rwanda’s social and economic problems. Under the banner of “peace, unity, and development,” Habyarimana launched a “moral revolution” to complete the work of the 1959 revolution. To quiet ethnic tensions, he implemented an ethnic quota system in education and employment and banned political activity for two

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years. He started a program of cooperative communal labor, umuganda, that required citizens at all levels of society to join together once each week to accomplish public projects such as building roads and bridges, planting forests, and constructing terraces to fight erosion. In 1975, Habyarimana established a single political party, the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement (MRND), to increase links between the government and the people. Party membership became compulsory, and the party organized regular displays of loyalty and support called animation in each community. With increased internal security, the regime was able to attract considerable international donor support, and Rwanda became a test site for development programs, allowing rapid improvement of the infrastructure and helping Rwanda’s economy grow at an impressive rate for a country with few natural resources and little industry (Mfizi 1983; Rumiya 1985). Initially, the Habyarimana regime enjoyed considerable public support. In the first decade of rule, the government seemed to have brought peace and prosperity to the country, and ethnic conflict appeared to have been eliminated. In the 1980s, however, a variety of problems emerged to undermine support for the regime. After a decade in office, government officials at all levels had become detached from the masses. They increasingly used their positions to benefit themselves and their friends and family, often through exploiting the peasants they ruled—demanding bribes, embezzling from development budgets, and diverting umuganda to their own enrichment. The benefits of the economic development of the 1970s accrued primarily to a limited elite—government officials and their allies in the commercial sector. Those at the highest levels of the government and military, mostly people from Habyarimana’s home region, dominated the national economy and were able to invest in large homes, cattle, land, and other symbols of wealth. At the same time, the majority of Rwandans were becoming increasingly impoverished. In the second most densely populated country in the world and one of the least urbanized, overutilization of land caused serious soil degradation and diminishing harvests, and there were few opportunities for off-farm income (Bézy 1990; Newbury 1992). As in many African countries in the late 1980s, public discontent developed into open opposition to the regime and demands for political reform. A sharp downturn in the economy, due largely to the collapse of coffee prices, deeply affected the middle class and compromised the ability of government leaders to organize support through patrimonial networks. Growing economic hardship among the masses made the lifestyles of public officials appear particularly extravagant and fed public resentment. Moves by the president to consolidate power in the hands of trusted associates from the north exacerbated regional resentments. An expansion of press freedom that began in 1988 helped give concrete expression to

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previously inchoate public dissatisfaction by bringing to light examples of official corruption and by openly discussing Rwanda’s economic problems, such as a famine in the south of the country in 1989. The Catholic newspaper Kinyamateka first broke the rules of censorship, inspiring (despite legal actions taken against the editor and several reporters) a proliferation of independent journals and newspapers in the country (Higiro 1991; Newbury 1992). As the winds of political liberalization swept from Eastern Europe into Africa in 1990, various sectors of Rwandan society began to voice demands for political reform. The Episcopal Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a letter in February that criticized corruption, nepotism, and regionalism in the government. Various other elite groups began to demand a national conference like those held in Benin and Congo. A fight that broke out between students and gendarmes at a concert in the university center of Butare in late May 1990 resulted in a number of injuries and one death and inspired a nationwide student strike that reflected the growing tension between the government and the public (Dialogue, issues 141 and 142, 1990). In an attempt to seize the political initiative, President Habyarimana announced in July 1990 that he would implement reforms to the political system and possibly allow the country to move toward multiparty government. In September he appointed a commission to draft a national charter for the country’s political future. Although these promises gained Habyarimana some political capital, they fell far short of demands for a sovereign national conference. While Habyarimana allowed some political changes, he maintained an ability to control and direct the process of reform (Des Forges 1992; Newbury 1992; Reyntjens 1993). On 1 October 1990, a band of Rwandan refugees, mostly Tutsi who had served in Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army, invaded northeastern Rwanda. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched their attack apparently under the impression that the democracy movement had made Habyarimana vulnerable, and they claimed to be fighting both for the right of return for refugees and for the establishment of democratic government. With assistance from Zairian troops (and moral support from the arrival of French and Belgian troops), the Rwandan army was able to repel this initial attack fairly quickly (Watson 1991). Despite success on the battlefield, the Habyarimana regime used the war as an excuse to arrest many of its political opponents, both Tutsi and southern Hutu who had advocated reform. At the same time, to retain the political initiative and probably to discourage popular support for the RPF, Habyarimana announced that he would accelerate the process of political reform. He initiated a mode of operation that persisted throughout the remainder of his regime in which, under internal and external pressure, he publicly supported reform and implemented limited changes, but undermined the

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effect of reforms in practice to ensure his retention of power. Habyarimana and his supporters sought to increase their public support at home and abroad, while undermining the position of their opponents. Thus, for example, while the regime advocated freedom of the press and accepted legal changes that guaranteed that freedom, gendarmes and soldiers continued to harass and arrest reporters who were critical of the regime. As another example, shortly after the invasion, Habyarimana announced that he would concede to one of the demands of Tutsi that ethnic identity no longer be listed on the identification cards that all Rwandans were required to carry. He made a public display of issuing new cards to a group of released prisoners, but nothing more was ever done; the policy was never carried through for the remainder of the population, whose ethnic identities continued to appear on their identity cards (Onyango-Obbo 1993; Africa Confidential 1992c). Following this strategy, during the next three years the Habyarimana regime did adopt various political reforms, but the members of the coalition that dominated the government managed to protect their dominant position. Both internal opposition and the continuing pressure of the War of October pushed the Habyarimana regime to accept reforms. In January 1991, the RPF launched a new offensive in the northwest of the country, briefly capturing the third-largest city. The rebel army was driven back across the Uganda border, but the war subsequently grew in intensity, displacing many people in the country and undermining the prestige of the military and the government. Dissidents within the country also continued to place pressure on the regime, as calls for greater political freedom continued to mount. In response to these pressures, in June 1991 the national legislature adopted a new constitution that established an office of prime minister and legalized opposition parties. Over the next several months, a number of new political parties formed and began to press for a national conference, elections, and, in the meantime, a transitional “government of national union” with an opposition figure as prime minister. Disregarding these demands, Habyarimana in October named as prime minister a man from his party, the MRND, and the opposition parties therefore refused to participate in the government. The three major opposition parties formed a coalition to provide a united response to the government and organized a public demonstration in November to demand a national conference that drew 13,000. When the new prime minister in late December named a cabinet with all ministries but one held by the MRND, the opposition coalition organized a massive public response, including one rally in Kigali that drew 50,000 people. With the prospect of protests spreading, Habyarimana agreed to negotiate with the opposition under the mediation of a committee of Catholic and Protestant clergy, and in March 1992 Habyarimana named a new prime minister, Dismas Nsengiyaremye, from the Mouvement

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Démocratique Républicain (MDR), the successor party to Kayibanda’s PARMEHUTU, with a base of support among Hutu in the central region of the country (Helbig 1991; IMBAGA 12, 1992; Dialogue, various issues). While forced to accept reforms publicly, behind the scenes Habyarimana and his supporters worked to protect their power and to make it impossible for the opposition to gain real control. After the beginning of the war, the military expanded rapidly and massively in size, growing in a few months from 6,000 to more than 30,000, allowing the government to extend its coercive presence throughout the country. France, Egypt, and South Africa supplied the Rwandan military with large shipments of guns, ammunition, and other armaments. With an expanded presence, gendarmes and soldiers regularly harassed journalists, opposition politicians, and other critics of the government. Many people were arrested on minor charges, such as improper identity papers, several had their homes burned, and some faced assassination attempts (Smyth 1994). Another program launched by Habyarimana’s supporters was to reignite ethnic conflict in an attempt to divide and discredit the opposition. In public addresses and in the state-run newspaper and radio station, members of the administration and leaders of the MRND accused opposition politicians, human rights activists, journalists, and peasant organizers of colluding with the RPF and urged the public to retaliate. According to local and international human rights investigators, members of the administration authorized massacres of Tutsi in several communities in an attempt to raise ethnic tensions in the country and antagonize the RPF. The attacks were organized by local MRND functionaries at strategic times, such as during the negotiations for the multiparty government in March 1992, and in December 1992 and January 1993, when the coalition government was negotiating a peace agreement with the RPF (FIDH et al. 1993; ADL 1992, 1993; Africa Watch 1993). After the coalition government took office in April 1992, supporters of the Habyarimana regime sought to discredit the opposition politicians and to frustrate their attempts to take real power by raising the level of internal insecurity in the country. Beginning in early 1992, assassination attempts and other forms of harassment increased against prominent Tutsi, human rights leaders, journalists, and opposition politicians. In addition, a rise in more generalized violence and crime, particularly armed robbery and rape, was attributed at least in part to military personnel and the youth wing of the MRND, Interahamwe. Beginning in 1992, Interahamwe organized numerous rallies that disrupted life in the capital and other cities and that often ended in violent confrontations with opposition supporters. A new political party organized in 1992, the Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR), espoused vitriolic anti-Tutsi rhetoric. In their publications and their rallies, the CDR called for all Tutsi to be driven from the country and urged Hutu to defend themselves against the implementation

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of a new Tutsi monarchy by retaliating against the Tutsi and their Hutu allies (i.e., democracy activists and opposition politicians). As significant RPF successes on the battlefield in attacks in June 1992 and February 1993 pressured the government to accept a negotiated peace, the anti-Tutsi and antiopposition rhetoric of the CDR and elements of the MRND intensified (Africa Confidential 1992b; Tolotti 1993; Jefferson 1992). In July 1992, one of Habyarimana’s close associates, Christophe Mfizi, a former minister of information from the president’s home region, resigned from the MRND in a public letter accusing the government of having fallen under the control of a narrow group of extremists who dominated all aspects of Rwanda’s public life for their personal gain and were fighting to protect their hold on power (Mfizi 1992). A variety of international investigators corroborated Mfizi’s claims that a nucleus of military, government, and business elites were orchestrating human rights abuses against Tutsi and anyone else they viewed as a threat to their power. An international team of human rights observers that visited Rwanda in January 1993 accused the government of organizing death squads and having a direct hand in the various massacres of Tutsi that were presented as spontaneous local actions (Africa Confidential 1992c; FIDH et al. 1993, 78–84). The strategy of intimidating, discrediting, and dividing those who could threaten their power, combined with the continuing loyalty of the military to the Habyarimana regime, successfully prevented the political opposition from gaining full control of the government but also made rule more difficult for those in office. In research I conducted in Rwanda in 1992–1993, I found very limited support for multiparty government. For some people the rise in internal insecurity created a nostalgia for authoritarian rule, a desire for an all-powerful Leviathan who could maintain order, undoubtedly the intended result of the regime’s policy of allowing conditions to decline. Most people I interviewed, however, supported many of the political reforms but felt that the opposition politicians were no different from those in the MRND, interested in their personal gain rather than the public interest. Although the opposition parties were given little real power, since the important ministries remained in MRND hands, they received equal blame for many of the problems facing the country.4 The specter of violence discouraged most Tutsi and many Hutu from involving themselves in politics, even if they supported one of the parties. While the Rwandan masses did not particularly support the opposition parties, this did not mean that they supported Habyarimana’s ruling coalition, as those promoting the policies fostering insecurity might have hoped. Instead, people became further alienated from the state and lost any illusion that a change of personnel could in and of itself solve Rwanda’s political problems. After peace negotiations between the RPF and the government began in Arusha, Tanzania, in mid-1992, Habyarimana’s supporters used ethnic

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arguments to divide the opposition. Habyarimana regularly rejected proposals worked out by the representatives at the peace negotiations, claiming he was defending the interests of the Hutu. Prime Minister Nsengiyarmye strongly criticized Habyarimana for his resistance to a negotiated settlement, and Habyarimana therefore dismissed him in July 1993, replacing him with another member of the opposition MDR who was less sympathetic to the interests of the Tutsi. The opposition parties refused to support Agathe Uwilingiyimana’s appointment as prime minister, and, in subsequent months, each of the major opposition parties split into a faction that supported a negotiated settlement with the RPF and another that sought to protect Hutu interests and, thus, allied itself with the president. Although a comprehensive peace treaty was signed in August 1993, the political crisis and Uwilingiyimana’s inability to form a government made impossible the implementation of the peace accord, which would have brought RPF representatives into a transitional government (Block 1994; Braeckman 1995). In late 1993 and early 1994, tensions in the country steadily mounted. Supporters of the CDR and MRND formed an independent radio station, Radio Mille Collines, which broadcast bitter attacks on Tutsi and political opponents, calling for their assassination. Army personnel provided military training to civilian militias from the CDR and Interahamwe and distributed arms to them. In December 1993, the Catholic bishop of Nyundo (the diocese that includes Habyarimana’s home region and the location of several ethnic massacres between 1990 and 1993) issued a pastoral letter criticizing the distribution of arms to the youth militias. The level of political violence in the country escalated. In March 1994, the head of the Parti Social-Démocrate (PSD), one of the main opposition parties, was assassinated, and the next day a mob of PSD supporters lynched the head of the CDR (African Rights 1994, 42–88; Block 1994; Braeckman 1994; Chrétien et al. 1995). Exact details of the plane crash that killed President Habyarimana and President Sylvestre Ntaryamira of Burundi on 6 April 1994 will probably never be known, but the most likely scenario attributes the downing of the plane to Habyarimana’s own presidential guard. According to various reports, including a study by the Belgian government, individuals close to the president devised a plan in late 1993 or early 1994 to kill off anyone in the country who challenged their ability to maintain power. The president either rejected the plan as too extreme or felt the time for its implementation was not yet ripe. Those most closely tied to Habyarimana felt they had to remove the president in order to preserve their own power, and thus his plane was shot down and used as a pretext for launching the pogrom.5 Whether or not this explanation is accurate, preparations for a mass slaughter of Tutsi and of political opponents of the Habyarimana regime had clearly taken place in advance of the accident. At the time of the president’s

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death, lists of victims to be killed were already in existence. Within hours after the crash, groups of soldiers and members of the presidential guard went through Kigali, systematically killing all those they perceived as enemies. In addition to Tutsi, this included leading southern Hutu, and both Hutu and Tutsi opposition party activists, journalists, human rights workers, peasant organizers, outspoken clergymen and women, university professors, and others whose activities were believed to threaten the regime in some way. Under the direction of military elements and with the support of the civilian militias, the violence gradually spread from the capital into the rest of the country. The primary targets of the violence were Tutsi, because of the ethnic arguments used to inspire the militias, the nearly universal Tutsi opposition to the regime, and the ease in identifying ethnicity from the identity cards everyone had to carry (anyone not carrying a card could be assumed to be Tutsi), but in nearly every community progressive Hutu were targeted as well (Braeckman 1995; United States House of Representatives 1994; Plaut 1994). The intention of the massacres, thus, was to crush the increasingly powerful social forces that threatened the control of those who dominated the state. In sad irony, however, the plan created so much chaos that those who initiated it ultimately could not maintain their positions. The violence that washed across Rwanda from April to July 1994 left between 500,000 and 1 million dead and reignited the war with the RPF. So many bullets and grenades were used against internal “enemies” that supplies were insufficient for fighting the invading army, and with the demoralizing and destabilizing effects of the violence on the Rwandan population, the RPF was able to advance quickly across the country, eventually driving the Rwandan army and the new government across the border into Zaire. Millions of Rwandan civilians fled into exile either within Rwanda or in surrounding countries to avoid the fighting and the possibility of reprisals by the RPF, creating the largest refugee exodus in modern history. The combination of the state-sponsored violence, the war, and the flight of refugees created a nearly unprecedented international humanitarian disaster. Since taking control of the country in July 1994, the RPF has faced the mammoth task of rebuilding a country with a severely damaged physical infrastructure and a divided and demoralized population. With substantial assistance from international development agencies and nongovernmental organizations, the RPF-dominated government has fairly quickly been able to rebuild roads and water systems, construct homes, and renew economic activity, but rebuilding the society has proven a much more difficult task. The difficulties arise in part because the current regime, while wanting a productive and peaceful populace, has no real interest in establishing strong and independent social groups that could challenge the new structures of power, particularly since the population is largely Hutu, while the government and administration are dominated by

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Tutsi. Supporters of the current regime have systematically driven from positions of political, economic, or social authority those moderate Hutu who survived the violence of 1994 and did not flee into exile, often making false accusations of involvement in the genocide, leading to their harassment, arrest, or assassination. Those few Hutu who now hold important public positions find little respect among other Hutu. Cross-border attacks by Hutu extremists based in Zaire, repression by the current regime, and resistance by the population to the overly powerful and repressive state produce a situation of continuing social unrest.

A New Vision of the State Crawford Young begins his exhaustive study of the colonial state in Africa with a citation from Amilcar Cabral: “We are not interested in the preservation of any structures of the colonial state. It is our opinion that it is necessary to totally destroy, to break, to reduce to ash all aspects of the colonial state in our country to make everything possible for our people” (quoted in Young 1994a, 1). In fact, as Young suggests, many structures of the African colonial state have persisted, with dire consequences for the continent. The record of the independent African state has been abominable. It has tolerated little freedom, grossly violated human rights, applied excessive force, encouraged ethnic and regional divisions, and redistributed wealth from the African masses to a limited domestic and international elite. In the international arena, the independent African state has facilitated the export of wealth from the continent, amassed crippling debts, and imported armaments that have contributed to destabilization. Nevertheless, most Africanist scholars have rejected Cabral’s conclusions and stubbornly maintained a belief in the necessity of the centralized state “to make everything possible” for African people. In light of the chaos and violence that has engulfed Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Zaire, and, to a lesser degree, Congo, Togo, Zambia, and other African states, scholars like Chazan, Ake, Migdal, Harbeson, Clark, and others have (at least implicitly) identified social attitudes and movements challenging the legitimacy of the state as a major source of the decline of order. To avoid descent into chaos, democracy and other social movements must be circumspect, encouraging limited reforms that increase government accountability without undermining the centrality of the state as the defender of order. As I have presented it, the Rwandan case directly challenges these assumptions. In Rwanda, the deterioration of order was indeed related to the process of democratization that created pressures for political reform throughout Africa in the early 1990s, but disorder did not result from state decline and the unleashing of the lawless proclivities of the masses. Rather, disorder increased as a direct consequence of actions taken by state

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officers seeking to preserve their hold on power against the challenges presented by an increasingly autonomous and empowered civil society. The War of October and related international military support allowed the state to vastly expand its coercive capacity, which it used to create an atmosphere of terror and to intimidate and silence those who sought to change the structures of power in the country. Power should not be seen as a zero-sum game, in which society gains power only by taking it from the state. In Rwanda in the early 1990s, society did become more powerful through increasing its organizational capacity, developing new political ideas, and other means, but the state was able to remain powerful as well. The disorder that spread across the country in 1994 was a direct result of state policies intended to eliminate the independent bases of power within the society. Hence, in Rwanda chaos came from the state, not from the society.6 Based upon my research in Rwanda, I want to go a step further in arguing against the scholarly insistence upon reforms that preserve a strong, centralized state. In 1992 and 1993, I conducted research in several locations in Rwanda, including Butare, the second-largest city, and several rural communities. In the interviews I conducted with peasant farmers, pastors, market women, school teachers, unemployed urban youths, and others, I found strong support for several reforms that had taken place in Rwanda: the elimination of mandatory membership in the MRND, the decline of umuganda (forced labor) and animation (loyalty rituals), the expansion of free speech and assembly, and the declining ability of authorities to demand bribes and excessive taxes. A few representative comments from my interviews reflect a broad consensus in the Rwandan population:7 I think [these political changes] are good, because in the time of single party rule, there was forced communal labor (umuganda), forced animations to exalt the president. You couldn’t discuss the failings of the government. Now everything is in the process of changing. We are becoming more and more free. I see that multipartyism is good. In the past we were pushed by force to participate in community work (umuganda). We built roads for the vehicles of the rich rather than working for our own children. The forced animations also took away from the time when we could be working. As for us, we aren’t yet in any party, but multipartyism has delivered us from oppression: forced work called umuganda, communal assessments. And now we are free to speak.

Despite support for reforms that expanded their freedom, few Rwandans, other than intellectuals, appeared to have much faith that reforms would change the operation of the state and make the country truly democratic. Poor peasants and landless urban poor believed that the system would continue to serve the interests of the upper classes, doing nothing to change their own abject conditions:

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These changes have nothing to do with our poverty. Things are changing for the rich and intellectuals who want to occupy power. But for me, the power will be the same. I am totally against [these political changes]. What do they want, these people? They are rich. They have cars. They have everything. And look at how they engage the children of the poor to kill each other for their own interests. I am completely against people who sow war between innocents to have the means to become governors. They ought to think about our peace if they are truly struggling for us as they say in their meetings. We are waiting for someone who will bring governing back to us. Changes or no changes, for us poor peasants, it’s the same thing.

In short, the Rwandan masses supported changes that limited the activities and reach of the state, while they saw little promise in reforms that could have changed the personnel who occupied state office. The Rwandan masses concluded that the opposition parties would offer very little real change to the structures of power that were exploiting them. The public will in Rwanda, thus, was in direct opposition to the advice of Chazan and other scholars. What the Rwandan people realized—and many in the scholarly community have been reluctant to accept—is that if the state is the source of many of the problems in Africa, then simply tinkering with the structures of the state is unlikely to solve those problems. In Rwanda, as in Zaire, Kenya, and many other African countries, those who emerged to lead the new opposition parties in the early 1990s were familiar faces, well-known politicians who had previously served in the government but had a fallingout with the sitting regime. As the quotations above suggest, the Rwandan people believed that the opposition parties offered nothing really new. Were they to take office, they would continue to function much as those they replaced, perhaps favoring a different region or ethnic group or installing a different clientelist system, but doing nothing to alter fundamentally the exercise of power and the relationship of the state to the common people. The Rwandan population offered lukewarm support for the activities of the opposition parties, because they wanted a much more radical reform of the state than a mere rewriting of laws and reshuffling of offices among the elite. Robert Fatton has recognized the limited meaning of the development of multiparty movements that offer no real change: When the old guard, the “dinosaurs,” abruptly discover that they are after all good democrats, a country’s release from authoritarianism may be facilitated, but its future as a democratic society can only be endangered. It is indeed difficult to believe that the metamorphosis of the old guard is total and that the intolerant reflexes it had exhibited for so long can vanish in a sudden political change of heart (1992, 110).

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Fatton’s sentiments were echoed by many of the Rwandan people I interviewed. They did not trust that state power would be used wisely and justly by any of the established politicians, even if they were popularly elected. Thus, meaningful “democratization” involved not just linking the state more effectively to the society but actually diminishing state power. During the 1980s, there was a rapid expansion of associational life in Rwanda. Independent women’s, farmers’, and youth groups, producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives, rotating credit associations, black market trading systems, prayer groups, and basic Christian communities all proliferated, creating new opportunities for people to address the problems faced in their everyday lives. This represented a challenge to the totalizing project of the state, the attempt by the state to control all of social, economic, and political life, but it also represented an expansion of individual liberty. Having lost faith in the ability of the state to protect their interests, the Rwandan people sought a rolling-back of the state, a limitation of the state’s reach into society to allow them greater freedom to pursue individually and collectively their needs and interests. While they did not have in mind a fully developed vision of an alternative state structure, the people I interviewed in Rwanda nevertheless clearly hoped for a smaller state and a radical decentralization of power. In the words of one Rwandan quoted above, “We are waiting for someone who will bring governing back to us.” I do not wish to imply that power distributed in the society rather than concentrated in the state will necessarily benefit the poor and exploited. As Fatton, Jean-François Bayart, and others make clear, civil society is a location of class conflict and it “has no predetermined destination” (Fatton 1992, 5). Nevertheless, the peasants and urban poor whom I interviewed believed that they had a much better chance of protecting their interests and fighting their exploitation within the social sphere than within the state sphere. And, indeed, during my field research, I recorded a variety of instances in which the poor were able to draw upon their grassroots organizations to defend themselves against exploitation by the wealthy and powerful.

Implications of the Rwandan Case I would contend that my observations on Rwanda apply to Zaire, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, and probably other countries. Rather than resulting from the anarchic tendencies of the populations released by the prodemocracy movements, insecurity in these countries has increased as a result of government efforts to protect the political status quo. I see no basis for believing that large, centralized states can be reformed to serve the interests of the masses. Neither do I believe that economic and social development in Africa must be driven by a strong state. Rather, I would agree with

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Goran Hyden’s contention a decade ago in his well-known work, No Shortcuts to Progress (1983), that Africa needs to develop from the bottom up, through the development of local capacity, rather than through the initiative of a strong and centralized state. Bayart has written that, “Africa’s potential for democracy is more convincingly revealed by the creation of small collectives established and controlled by rural or urban groups (such as local associations) than by parliaments and parties, instruments of the state, of accumulation and of alienation” (1986, 125). It is time, I would argue, for scholars to lose their romantic attachment to the state and to begin to look for what James Wunsch (1990) has called “alternative institutional paradigms” that allow for self-governance. If future disasters like the tragedy of Rwanda are to be avoided, the world community should focus its attention less on controlling and discouraging the elements of African societies that are challenging state power and more on limiting the ability of states to harm their populations. Without the infusion of arms and other support from the international community, President Habyarimana might have been successfully driven from power and an opening for meaningful reforms created. Instead, because of the insistence on preserving the centralized state, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives.

Notes Much of the information for this chapter was gathered during field research conducted in Rwanda in 1992–1993. The author would like to thank the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Board of Higher Education of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) for providing financial support. Additional field work was conducted in 1995 and 1996 under the auspices of Human Rights Watch/Africa and the Fédération International de Ligues des Droits de l’Homme. 1. Far from being of purely academic interest, the conception of civil society that seeks to distinguish good (i.e., state-oriented) organizations from bad (i.e., “particularistic”) has direct policy implications. USAID, in developing guidelines for supporting civil society, begins with a definition of civil society that excludes many local and small-scale groups because they do not seek a direct “advocacy role” with the state and thus do not help to build state capacity. 2. As I have elsewhere given a detailed explanation of the social and political developments in Rwanda leading up to the explosion of violence that rocked the country in mid-1994, I here give only a brief overview of events in Rwanda to make my points. For more detailed analysis, see Longman 1994, 1995a, and 1995b, as well as Newbury and Newbury 1994. 3. For example, Peter Smerdon (Reuters, 10 April 1994), writes “[Habyarimana’s] death launched the age-old strife between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.” Jerry Gray (New York Times, 9 April 1994) writes about “the centuries-old feud between the Hutu and the Tutsi.” 4. The results of my interviews are corroborated by Helbig (1991) and Des Forges (1992), who also found that Rwandans saw little new in the political parties and thus felt little inclination to support them.

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5. Guichaoua (1995, 675–693) contains an excellent collection of documents and research on the possible scenarios for the 6 April crash. See also African Rights 1994, 79–92; Braeckman 1994, 169–180. 6. Numerous other observers concur with my assessment that the Rwandan massacres were not spontaneous actions from below but part of a well-planned program from above. Cf. testimonies of Des Forges and Mujawamaliya in U.S. House of Representatives 1994; Braeckman 1995; Block 1994; Amnesty International 1994. 7. All of the interviews cited were conducted by the author in 1992 and 1993 in Butare, Kibuye, and Ruhengeri prefectures. Names and other personal information are withheld for the protection of the informants, who were guaranteed anonymity.

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Sierra Leone: Weak States and the New Sovereignty Game WILLIAM R ENO Kenneth Waltz has argued that “when the crunch comes, states remake the rules by which others operate” (Waltz 1979, 94). Among states, as among firms in a competitive market, survival demands that all adopt characteristics of the most successful units (Waltz 1986, 339). For states, this means controlling a territory within recognized borders and a government able to command bureaucracies and define a distinct state interest. This does not describe Sierra Leone or its ruler, Valentine Strasser, who rose to power in a 1992 coup from his position as a twenty-six-year-old army captain and ostensibly ruled until ousted by another coup in January 1996.1 Rebels controlled much of the countryside since invading from Liberia in 1991. State bureaucracies had ceased to function. Taxes went uncollected. Soldiers shook down citizens. Strasser faced renegade strongmen who lurked within these collapsing military and civilian agencies and used their offices for private gain. Many of these men owed allegiance to Siaka Stevens, president from 1968 to 1985. Sierra Leone seemed poised to join an “anarchic equilibrium,” states of disorder and bureaucratic collapse like Zaire, Angola, Chad, Sudan, and now, Nigeria (Mbembe 1992, 24–25). This chapter explains how Strasser decisively reconfigured the bases of political authority in Sierra Leone to deal with the reality of collapsing state institutions. He reshaped political networks in his favor amidst dwindling state resources, rebel invasion, and unreliable strongmen. A central theme of this chapter is an analysis of how the president pursued a strategy that intentionally hastened the destruction of state agencies and seemed to lead in the direction of state collapse. While Strasser’s survival for four years is interesting in its own right, the case traces Strasser’s efforts to build his political authority upon unconventional means, many of which dispense with—or reincorporate—norms of juridically sovereign states on new terms. First, I explain how these efforts of Strasser, and other rulers like him, do not necessarily herald state collapse. Then I examine shifts in Strasser’s domestic and global environment that are responsible for 93

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disrupting the patron-client politics that were the real bases of political authority in much of Africa after independence. Next, the Sierra Leone case shows why rulers make deliberate choices to respond to changes with policies that further destroy formal state agencies. Finally, I consider what this transition means for understanding Africa’s changing position in global society. The importance of this study lies in its overall conclusion: Supposedly tottering leaders who rule over collapsing bureaucracies and unruly strongmen—like Strasser—are not simply temporary deviations from classical or modified Cold War notions of sovereignty. They represent a new and different form of sustainable political organization in 1990s Africa that diverges from past norms of international relations. One implication of this argument is that rulers who build innovative bases for political authority like Abacha in Nigeria, or Mobutu in Zaire, are likely to be quite durable, as they outlast the demise of the bureaucracies. It is this phenomenon that is shown below in the case of Sierra Leone.

Elements of the Argument A recent volume warns that Africa’s “collapsed states suffer a long-term degenerative disease” (Zartman 1995b, 8). But regimes in places like Sierra Leone prove unexpectedly durable in the absence of the political institutionalization—of state agencies, political parties, or even conventional militaries—that Huntington regarded as key ingredients of stability (1968, 192–198). Internally, these regimes abjure definition of a public good, such as a promise of economic development, that others see as critical for building a single political community that commands and extracts concessions from private interests (Harbeson, Rothchild, and Chazan 1994). As with Huntington, much writing about weak states in Africa raises concerns that deinstitutionalized political systems will collapse into unbridled competition among rapidly changing cliques and factions. Subsequent “societal disengagement,” argues one student of bureaucratic collapse, “would result, in the dissolution of the political community—as it has done in contemporary Somalia and Liberia” (Rothchild 1994, 202). Arguments focusing on Africa’s changing external situation also question the durability of refashioned patron-client politics. Jackson noted that post–World War II norms supporting self-determination for ex-colonies assured weak African regimes of global recognition of “a people’s” right to a territory and regime entitlements to aid (1990, 82–85). Others observed how patronage from Cold War rivals underwrote otherwise ineffective regimes (David 1991, 233–256). The fear now is that weak state regimes will lose the support they have received from the community of states since decolonization (Goldgeier and McFaul 1992, 467–491). Some envision

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regimes overwhelmed by internal rivals and discontented citizens who battle for the remaining levers of the state to pursue private gain (Kaplan 1994, 44–76). Others predict that strongmen with private followings will carve out ethnic ministates (Ayoob 1995, 175–176; Etzioni 1992, 21–35). Prescriptions thus center on creating efficient state agencies that support market forces (Sandbrook 1993, 59–70), or what the World Bank calls “capacity building” (1994a). But the Sierra Leone case shows how a regime manipulates reform to garner new resources, to benefit from unexpected coincidences of interest with creditors, and to discipline rivals. Regime involvement in ostensibly non- or antistate activities such as illicit trade also helps hold together otherwise hard-pressed regimes (Igué 1992). The Sierra Leone story also highlights a variety of global actors—foreign firms, struggling regional powers, and various nongovernmental organizations—that help struggling leaders hold power through unconventional means. Just as Weber’s expectation of the affinity of the Protestant Ethic to capitalism is challenged by Japan’s route to capitalist development,2 conventional notions that borders, international recognition, and state agencies are necessary to sovereignty are challenged by alternative forms of political authority. African rulers use available resources and arrangements to face new pressures and shape their political authority. Contra Huntington (1968), “warlordism” and incumbent rulers’ intentional destruction of state institutions are examples of shifts in the bases of political structure, not examples of “state decay” in the sense of deteriorating political authority.

The Environment of Political Experimentation Many African rulers abjure strategies considered appropriate for exerting strong state authority over unruly social groups. While sometimes taken as evidence of “short-term equilibrium traps” (Bates 1994), my argument holds that permanent changes in rulers’ environments force rulers to look for fundamentally new ways to organize their domestic and international politics. Denied Cold War opportunities to extract resources from superpowers competing for influence, rulers face revenue shortfalls and rising insecurity from unhappy clients (Job 1992). As Julius Nyang’oro and Timothy Shaw point out in Chapter 2, rulers of bureaucratically weak states then rely even more heavily upon Bretton Woods institutions as lenders of last resort. This allows creditors to insist upon policies promoting foreign investment and the privatization of customary state functions to root out corruption, impose efficiency, and boost revenue collection (World Bank 1994c, 22–51). Creditors press deeply indebted states such as Sierra Leone to make severe cuts in civil service employment. They argue that the removal of inefficient and corrupt state officials will favor market forces

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while weakening political constituencies that used state offices for private gain. These policies, however, dismantle the patronage networks that support the incumbent regime just as unpopular austerity programs begin affecting the population. In Sierra Leone, the layoff of 40 percent of state employees sparked a formidable challenge to the Strasser regime (EIU 1994, 16). Just as patronage opportunities shrank, former state clients recognized that they could challenge State House control without fear of foreign intervention. The major foreign powers’ limited efforts in the Liberia and Somalia crises reinforced this calculation. Disgruntled populations, unemployed civil servants, and soldiers—along with a growing post–Cold War trade in light weapons and other illicit commerce over which states exercise diminishing control—constituted the political raw materials from which enterprising strongmen can build independent power bases. But what is disastrous to old norms of weak state sovereignty also offers opportunities to innovative rulers. Economic austerity has been adaptable to internal tasks of eliminating threatening clients. Van de Walle, for example, points out that “privatization” often favors the interests of, and provides new resources for, a faction in control of distributing patronage benefits (1994, 357–397). In Sierra Leone under the Strasser regime and its successors, foreign investors and contractors who accompany creditorsponsored “reform” programs have come to the political and financial rescue of State House in return for sweetheart deals giving them access to the country’s resources. Meanwhile, growing smuggling operations and arms trading that attend the collapse of bureaucracies are instruments of control in presidential hands, and not necessarily a sign of societal revanche or of former client independence. While the post–Cold War world looks more dangerous for weak state leaders, the subsequent rise in the trade of cheap light weapons makes these arms available to enterprising rulers, not just to former clients (Klare 1994, 24–27, Bitzinger 1994, 170–198). This and other illicit trades increasingly take place outside collapsing state agencies. Control over the weapons trade and the growing range of illicit commerce gave Sierra Leone’s ruler a chance to reincorporate old clients or extend control to new social groups. Commercial control removed the need to build more effective but politically risky bureaucracies that would have been fiscally unsustainable and that creditors would have rejected as obstacles to market promotion in any case. Seen in this light, global shifts of this sort marginalize weak state regimes in ways that challenge decisions to support formal state institutions. These shifts simultaneously offer informal opportunities that are best utilized through illicit and nonbureaucratic channels. Similarly, the absence of a global consensus on a standard for intervention in the wake of Somalia and Bosnia broadens the range of opportunities and techniques

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that marginalization makes available and that are ultimately acceptable to outside observers. Marginalization is a political asset when rulers successfully seek contacts and resources with outsiders by means, and for purposes, outside globally recognized norms. Thus Sierra Leone’s president hired mercenary soldiers to replace his politically unreliable army. This strategy extended creditor prescriptions to contract out state services. The global community accepted the extreme extension of this strategy precisely because of Sierra Leone’s marginality—its extreme indebtedness, lack of global interest, and creditors’ anxieties to keep the debtor entity in existence long enough to get paid. Rulers in places like Sierra Leone do not happily give up on conventional sovereignty and bureaucracies as a strategy to maximize power. Nor is radical change sought for its own sake. Experimentation has costs. Indeed, the marvel of patron-client politics has been its survival through multitudes of incremental adjustments to forestall leaps into the void of wholesale political innovation. Gradual external change, as during the Cold War, allowed incremental adaptation to global conditions. But as old arrangements dissolve, rulers face a critical juncture: change so rapid and complete as to make old arrangements unsustainable and innovation an imperative for survival (Gould 1980, 179–185; Krasner 1984, 223–246). Such change is not likely to be voluntary or reflect rulers’ ideal choices. Crisis management is rarely efficient. The political forms outlined in contemporary Sierra Leone do not match intended functions. They do, however, represent the outcome of political bargains and difficult mediation between domestic and foreign political actors. They reflect relative strengths and weaknesses of various groups. They are also a matter of social choice. Some subjects resist and force limits on what they will tolerate. Foreigners press their interests. In these cases, rulers manage their internal security, often at the expense of less pressing (and more statist) concerns.

Reconfiguring the Weak State in Sierra Leone Sierra Leone’s President Joseph Momoh (1985–1992) faced acute security threats after a rebel force, the Revolutionary Unity Front (RUF), attacked Sierra Leone territory in mid-1991. Within a year, Army Captain Valentine Strasser had deposed this president. Meanwhile, RUF fighters occupied and began to exploit the country’s diamond mining and agricultural exporting regions in collaboration with some local strongmen who had long been hostile to repeated efforts in Freetown, the capital, to control illicit exports. This area had previously provided the Freetown government with its major source of formal revenues and informal political payoffs. The RUF offensive began as an extension of the breakdown of Liberia’s patron-client politics and tapped into discontent among Sierra

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Leonean strongmen cut off from Freetown’s patronage. Charles Taylor, a former employee of Samuel Doe’s regime in Liberia during the 1980s, backed the RUF invasion of Sierra Leone. This former Liberian civil servant found that he could build his own regional power base, using patronage resources that his old boss could no longer control. He offered his support to an assortment of renegade politicians, army commanders, and illicit traders in Sierra Leone. Taylor discovered that he could supplement payoffs to his personal following, organized as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and to his new Sierra Leonean allies through control over cross-border trade and Sierra Leone’s diamond resources. Thus Sierra Leone’s presidents—Momoh, then Strasser—faced new pressures directly related to the end of the Cold War. Liberia’s President Doe found that he could no longer count on historic ties to the United States to save him from Taylor’s invasion. The failure of the United States to intervene on behalf of its Liberian client in 1990 demonstrated to the Sierra Leonean regime that it could not count on foreign backers to save it from the rebel invasion. Momoh desperately offered Sierra Leonean troops to fight in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq-Kuwait in 1991, but this bid for support brought only the promise of $10 million in Kuwaiti aid. Rulers in Sierra Leone now had to worry that disgruntled clients would increasingly choose to cast their lot with new rebel leaders who appeared to be more successful at grabbing resources for payoffs (Reno 1995a, 109–120). The RUF threat combined the new external challenge with Momoh’s worsening domestic control as he was forced to implement austerity measures to secure loans from creditors. Disorder, in this milieu of underfinanced patron-client politics, changed the structure of threats to state security. Sierra Leone’s rulers have not faced an efficient foe. Rather, the strength of RUF invaders and their Liberian backer was that they recognized Momoh’s vulnerabilities. This prompted Taylor to proclaim RUF head Foday Sankoh “governor of Sierra Leone” to mobilize anti-Momoh factions. RUF has also pursued a “private” diplomacy. Sankoh’s brother heads an office in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) to handle RUF “international relations” with states and organizations. For example, Libya allegedly provided support in the past, and Ivoirian arms traders and officials reportedly do business with RUF. Other reports point to arms trading between Guinean army units in border towns. Momoh surely recognized the desperation of his own situation. Fully 60 percent of African leaders deposed during the last two decades have met untimely death, torture, or imprisonment (Wiseman 1995, 657–660). Momoh seemed to be a good candidate for such a fate. This situation would appear to require a strategy of building up effective bureaucracies to defend a state interest that was distinct from the private factional interests that were tearing the country apart. Clearly Momoh’s

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situation was becoming untenable as patron-client networks showed signs of fragmenting, as in neighboring Liberia. Creditor oversight and RUF occupation of resource-rich areas of the country made return to patronage politics impossible. Momoh’s coping strategy did in fact combine continued manipulation of what was left of postcolonial patronage networks, but featured a large expansion of the military—Momoh tripled army enlistment to 14,000 (Marchés Tropicaux 1992, 2818–2820). Innovations in the organization of warfare, Charles Tilly has argued, equip rulers to keep rivals at bay, while also creating economies of scale and new means of controlling populations that give rulers greater autonomy to promote state interests over societal interests (1994, 1–27). While this may have been the case in European history, Momoh soon discovered that his conventional state-building response to security threats increased his vulnerability still further on two fronts. These vulnerabilities accelerated, rather than reversed, the collapse of the Freetown political establishment. First, rebel advances choked off diamond mining and agricultural export revenues, denying Momoh the means to finance a larger military, independent of underpaid and demoralized state agents. In the 1960s and 1970s, taxes on diamond mining and exports provided over half of state revenues. Declines in formal production figures from the early 1980s signaled the creation of a “private” illicit diamond economy organized around President Siaka Stevens. This earlier ruler’s reliance on an ostensibly illicit economy to consolidate a political network showed how a regime could abjure responsibility for national development and undermine bureaucratic capabilities, provided that enough resources could be found to pay out to loyal clients. But increasing strongman independence, then RUF interference, cut off this vital political resource from Freetown control. Distribution of resources to clients within state agencies, including the military, also declined with implementation of a harsh structural adjustment program after 1991 (EIU 1994, 16), which led to the layoff of 40 percent of the country’s civil service, or about 30 percent of all salaried workers in the country. Austerity policies also cut off possibilities for formal state action elsewhere. Social service spending in 1992 slid to 15 percent of levels a decade earlier. Rent-seeking on the part of politicians caused much of the decline. Creditors, however, recognized that shrinkage of the bureaucratic state’s presence in the economy was not all bad, especially since state agencies were considered responsible for many of Sierra Leone’s economic problems. Revenue collection decreased from 30 percent of GNP in 1982 to 20.6 percent of (a lower) 1992 GNP, partly as an outcome of creditor-sponsored strategies to reduce corrupt state intervention in the economy (Bank of Sierra Leone 1995, 19). Meanwhile, factional conflicts widened as vulnerable clients came to understand that loyalty to the president no longer bought economic security. Much of the savings from austerity went to service debts and balance

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budgets, obligations that the aid-starved and loan-dependent president could hardly neglect. Strasser’s April 1992 coup came as no surprise, given the diversion and scarcity of Momoh’s political resources. Strasser and the other junior officers who overthrew Momoh cited poor battlefield conditions, waylaid supplies, and rear-guard officer privilege and corruption as justifications for their actions. The second factor undermining Momoh’s political network concerned the disruption of customary revenue sources and dwindling formal state legitimacy, which unleashed enterprising strongmen. Legions of miners and farmers exploited by old regime corruption, along with disgruntled military recruits facing RUF bullets and advancing chaos at the hands of RUF fighters, offered Momoh’s rivals a ready base of support. Conventional military strategies to battle rebels only worsened the impact of austerity for most common people, giving them little reason to support the strategy, unless it could convincingly restore community security. The cashstrapped and politically threatened president showed no sign of accomplishing this task. Even worse, citizens soon faced “sobels” (soldierrebels) along with RUF fighters engaged in local looting, kidnapping, and extortion operations. Momoh’s latest recruits, mostly impoverished urban young men in their teens and twenties, discovered that “sobel” operations offered an easier alternative to actually opposing rebels and waiting for pay that was most often late. It is from this context that Strasser arose—he was twenty-six, his aide-de-camp twenty-three—to seize power from Momoh. While creditors encouraged Momoh, and later Strasser, to pare down remaining civil state offices that had been used to reward once-loyal clients, Strasser recognized that his formal military command also functioned as a haven for increasingly independent strongmen. As with the civil service, the military was unmanageable without revenues, or at least patronage rewards, leaving it vulnerable to co-optation to rebel strategies. The organization was also filled with officers predating Momoh’s rule, and thus in more control of the military hierarchy than were either Momoh or Strasser, saddled as they were with declining resources with which to cultivate their own supporters. These officers were among those who struck out on the independent “sobel” path that widened rifts in the military and between the military and Strasser. This and RUF were the catalysts forcing Strasser to experiment with reshaping unsustainable patron-client politics amidst added pressures from creditors. Ironically, Strasser’s adaptation of creditor strategies played a key role in his reconfiguration of political authority to manage rivals and weather the near-total collapse of state institutions. Strasser used foreigners to sideline and fight internal rivals, a technique that his predecessors learned in dealing with exasperated creditors. In 1991, for example, a German firm took over Freetown port operations

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and customs collections. As part of a “capacity-building” plan and privatization scheme, creditors concluded that the firm would provide reliable revenues to service the country’s debts, and had imposed this on Momoh’s government. Momoh collaborated in this destruction of a critical revenuecollecting function of his sovereign state. Momoh knew that, like the military, the customs bureaucracy harbored elements of a political network inherited from Momoh’s predecessor who used their positions to garner personal wealth outside State House control. Similar arrangements have governed collection of the country’s ocean fishery royalties since 1991 (EIU 1992, 23). Creditors were reassured about revenue collection and regarded such arrangements as contributing to efficiency and establishment of a distinct state interest (Dia 1993). Momoh used foreign firms to deny resources to rivals. This internal strategy coincided well with general World Bank preferences for turning over state enterprises to foreign firms (World Bank 1994d). This policy emphasis followed frustrations among World Bank officials with manipulations by politicians of privatization exercises (World Bank 1994c). Creditors propose that turning over functions central to the state to foreign contractors will lay the basis for market-supporting institutions and cut corrupt state officials—the majority of the civil service— out of the reform process. In a process that was to prove critical to the options available to the Strasser regime, this strategy worked against any real increase in state bureaucratic capacity. On the contrary, both creditors and Sierra Leone’s presidents had compelling reasons to see that the reverse occurred. It is thus no surprise that, even though Strasser’s government spent up to 75 percent of its revenues on a war against rebels (Karimu 1994, 2), it implemented austerity policies dictated by creditors. Denied local bureaucratic means to tax citizens, Strasser needed creditors’ “clean bill of health” to attract foreign aid, and investors to bolster revenues and fund his war against rivals. It also showed that his political authority could weather the collapse of almost all other state institutions. A foreign firm, Sierra Rutile, played a major role in helping Strasser shed even his military bureaucracy. Until attacked by rebels in early 1995, Sierra Rutile was a major private source of foreign exchange for State House, providing 57 percent of official exports by value in 1993 (Bank of Sierra Leone 1994). This and another mining firm, SIEROMOCO, provided private security and social services in zones to which they had been given mining rights. This “governance” through concessions to foreign firms later incorporated much of the country’s natural resources. The president could use control over valuable, portable resources that supported strongmen to attract more foreign partners. The 1994 political transition in South Africa simultaneously spawned a privatization of military units there as the apartheid-era security establishment was demobilized. This provided a

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new source of affordable and dependable military power to mining firms and hard-pressed regimes. While weak state sovereignty no longer attracted automatic foreign support against internal or external armed threats for incumbent regimes, juridical sovereignty helped Strasser attract outsiders to control rival political factions and entrepreneurs, insofar as militarized concession zones could be included under the rubric of legitimate foreign investment in a state undergoing creditor-sponsored reforms. Once again, we see a dynamic wherein innovations and arrangements aimed at dealing with other problems take on unexpected functions as rulers experiment with a wide range of strategies under conditions of crisis management. External organizations ultimately supported Strasser’s strategy of contracting out customary state functions to reliable foreigners, who prefer to deal with a globally recognized sovereign rather than a rebel force. Foreigners supported Strasser as interlocutor of his increasingly shadowy state’s relations with the rest of the world. They preferred Strasser’s juridically sovereign status to dealing with illiterate young men or competing faction leaders who articulate no specific political program and who loot for a living. Creditors and aid organizations colluded in the extension of privatizing state operations to include waging war to prevent the debacle of a rebel victory. Outsiders thus support the form of juridical sovereignty at the same time that they help undermine the basis of conventional empirical notions of sovereignty. Creditor aid to Strasser translated into debt relief totaling $120 million after 1993. World Bank and bilateral donors have offered another half-billion dollars in aid over several years, about half of expected official local revenues over the same period (IMF Survey 1994, 116–122). Most of this money, however, goes to service external debt or to pay foreign contractors for their services. Meanwhile, foreign aid, added to foreign firm expenditures, released the president from the politically risky task of supporting state bureaucracies to provide social services. U.S. food aid, for example, benefited a third of the country in 1994, removing from the president the burden of sustaining an expanded political network of state agents to provide services to people (Shiner 1994). The United Nations’ experiences in Somalia and Bosnia made outsiders even more likely to accept this strategy of crisis management leading to radical debureaucratization in Sierra Leone. Most foreign organizations in Freetown acknowledge that “rebel” forces often include renegade military units. Thus they recognized that Strasser’s downfall would bring factional fighting to Freetown as rival groups fought for the prize of controlling the capital. As easy opportunities for looting disappeared from the countryside—a third of the country’s people live as refugees—control of the capital would give access to foreign exchange through control over remaining trade networks. Occasional soldier rampages in the capital after

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1993 already strained fragile political alliances around Strasser (For di People 1995). Were rebels to prevail, aid organizations would face conditions they recall from Mogadishu in which factions of the former government fought each other. Creditors would lose an entity capable of acknowledging legal responsibility for Sierra Leone’s official debt. Foreign organizations thus had incentives to be accomplices in Strasser’s strategy of farming out customary state functions, already evident among aid organizations that take over health services, schooling, and the like, as they become relief organizations. The transition is easier for creditors, since privatization and marketization “reforms” delegate tasks to contractors and do so on the basis of promoting accumulation within a neoclassical intellectual framework. This produces a weak state regime that, even more than its Cold War counterpart, relies upon external subsidies and political support to hold onto power. Now, sources of support are more diverse and the responsibilities of foreigners extend to a wider range of functions that are customarily considered the preserve of sovereign states. Contracting out military operations, Strasser’s most vital—but also most threatening—bureaucracy, remained problematic at first. Nigerian and Guinean troops protected strategic sites. But financial woes and regime fears of weak control over military officers in both countries limited their deployment on Strasser’s behalf. Private security forces, however, do not suffer from these limitations. Private foreign soldiers are most likely to remain loyal to their employer in State House and to be least capable of building local power bases. Sierra Rutile’s use of Frontline Security Services to protect its concession area eased Strasser’s contacts with this security firm. Joined by Gurkha Security Guards, Ltd., this firm tackled the problem of managing the rebel threat in late 1994. These two firms made a fateful mistake, however, in that they opted to work with Strasser’s formal military command. The depths of factional rivalries became evident when “rebel” forces killed Gurkha’s U.S. commander and Strasser’s aide-de-camp. Freetown street rumor attributed the success of this operation (which required inside knowledge of schedules) to betrayal inside the military. This incident again exposed ways that state agencies can mobilize private interests hostile to State House. It was this incident, and the firm’s failure to defeat the rebels, that prompted the firm’s decision to withdraw in February 1995. Frontline Security Services, however, continued to protect Sierra Rutile operations. The murder of a Ukrainian helicopter pilot in army headquarters in Freetown two months later confirmed that opponents of the president could undermine his security arrangements from within the highest reaches of the military. So dire were implications of the Ukrainian pilot’s murder that Strasser’s spokesman claimed it was a suicide over a failed love affair.3

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A firm known as Executive Outcomes, a military force made up of South African veterans and former Rhodesian Selous Scouts, replaced departing Gurkhas in April 1995 (McNallen 1995, 62–65). Ironically, apartheid’s soldiers, without a local power base of their own, are a rational choice to confront a hard-pressed African president’s intractable internal security problems. Unlike their Gurkha predecessors, Executive Outcomes employees and local trainees, still present in 1997, allegedly considered Sierra Leone army personnel to be enemies of their client, along with RUF fighters (Interview 18 July 1995). This situation gave the president more leeway to punish wayward officers, a condition that pleased foreign observers concerned about “official” human rights abuses. Foreign soldiers also freed the president from dependence on politically connected officers for military services. Executive Outcomes managed to deliver parts of the diamond mining areas to Strasser’s control in July 1995, after a series of battles using old Soviet helicopter gunships, purchased cheaply from second-hand arms dealers (West Africa 1995, 1201–1202). State House also discovered cheap surplus Soviet light weapons, particularly rocketpropelled grenades. Chinese versions of this weapon are local favorites of both army and rebel units. Mercenary autonomy and freer access to foreign arms helped insulate Strasser from some of the dangers of Sierra Leone’s collapsing factional politics. In August 1995, the Bahamian-registered Branch Energy mining company announced a joint venture with the Sierra Leone government to mine diamonds. This company is linked through a parent firm to Strategic Resources Corp., a South African holding company for Executive Outcomes. This firm also has a stake in an oil project in areas that Executive Outcomes protects for Angolan government clients. Given these ties, it is likely that Branch Energy picks up Executive Outcome’s million-dollar monthly charges in anticipation of diamond sales profits. As in Angola, the Executive Outcomes–Branch Mining operation required the president to mortgage resources in exchange for military support. Soldiers conquered useful territory and then the firm began exploitation for the profit and political benefit of the president, suspected of being included in these joint ventures. This strategy helped Strasser more directly control diamonds with the aid of reliable outsiders, reducing the volume of patronage payouts, removing renegade army units and rebels, and forcing remaining local politicians to depend upon State House for protection. Both the mercenary and foreign-investor strategies point to the growing role of South African firms in the wake of apartheid’s fall. This is one of the many shifts in opportunities and resources that occurred with superpower strategic disengagement from Africa. The Sierra Leone case also reveals a surprising range of formal and informal ties between African actors and outsiders exploiting opportunities while minimizing threats produced by “globalization” and the Cold War’s end.

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Strasser’s man in charge of relations with the South Africans, Julius Maada Bio, overthrew him in January 1996, but continued this advantageous partnership. With resources further out of the hands of the rebels and rogue military units, the regime could tolerate an election and new civilian president in March 1996. Executive Outcomes remained a vital guarantor of regime survival.

A New Sovereignty Game for Africa’s Weak States? The Sierra Leonean regime’s effective control over territory lacks clear de facto boundaries. Overlapping and contending organizations claim jurisdiction, and Strasser’s regime was highly dependent upon a new array of outsiders, some of whom exercised local power directly. These developments signal a significant reconfiguration of the subordinate “quasistate” status of African states that once relied upon entitlements to aid from stronger states and formal colonial powers’ guarantees of territorial rights vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Foreign partners now come from a wider array of organizations and come with a broader range of interests, often reflecting their own efforts to find new niches in the shifting global political economy. To determine whether these innovations are an alternative to building stable authority through bureaucratic institutionalization, we need to analyze the consequences of this innovation for the character and viability of these types of units in the Sierra Leone case. Sierra Leone shares with other weak African states the character of intensified internal exploitation. That is, creditors, contractors, and regime all see solutions to various problems lying in intensifying extractions from local people and redistributing resources ostensibly earmarked for social services. Creditor “reform” programs that emphasize the marketization of state functions help crisis-managing rulers to destroy unreliable state institutions. While threatening to State Houses, these state agencies often provided a significant, if irregular, commitment to provide valuable services to at least some of the population. In lieu of formal services, they provided many citizens with access to some patronage benefits. Austerity programs, which involve massive civil service layoffs, accelerate the process of regimes disengaging from their citizens. The currently fashionable catechism of “governance” advertises that policies designed to promote efficiency lead to “a conscious management of regime structures with a view to enhancing the legitimacy of the public realm” (Hyden 1992, 7). Poor policy performance may attract prescriptions for layoffs that reduce corruption and promote efficiency. But where they are applied by rulers facing serious internal security threats and engaging in radical privatization, as in Sierra Leone, outcomes more closely resemble early colonial catechisms of mise en valeur. That is, rulers force

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subjects into approved commercial channels to exercise control over them. To do this, creditors and weak state rulers seek private partners to help impose market discipline on subject populations, as in colonial times. In Zaire, for example, Mobutu shifted his center of rule from the capital to his hometown of Gbadolité, where he has presided over a commercial empire with the help of foreign firms (Askin and Collins 1993, 72–85). His rule was no longer meaningfully tied to the fate of a realm of public interest. To him, the expansive and unreliable bureaucracies needed to provide services and benefits to citizens represented a Zaire inutile. Accumulation for purposes of financing control over commerce and people overshadows concerns with development; less useful areas are left to their own devices. Bureaucratic collapse followed Mobutu’s abandonment of the country’s citizens, where others saw more active societal disengagement (MacGaffey 1991). For sustainable crisis management of this sort, it is best to have the widest possible control over economic interactions. Where targets of control are commercial networks, bounded territory and uniform hegemony are liabilities. Likewise, truly marginal areas are safely ignored. More important measures of power than control over territory include the extent of control over people’s access to economic opportunities. In Zaire, Mobutu controlled logging and mining areas, some in Zaire, others in Angola or other neighboring states (Jeune Afrique 1993, 8; Marchés Tropicaux 1993, 1018). To the extent that territorial control can be mapped, rule based upon violent accumulation creates archipelagos of control rather than hegemony over a contiguous territory, as is commonly associated with the exercise of power in sovereign states. Are these innovative responses to the crises facing weak African states sustainable over the long term? Popular exit or resistance presents a formidable obstacle to the survival of these regimes. Flight to areas under rival control and evasion pose threats to the authority of rulers. Strasser’s difficulties disciplining soldiers and regulating diamond mining reflected his struggle to control the area’s largest source of wealth without identifying his government’s fortunes with those of any dominant group in society. These difficulties make enclave mining firms an attractive alternative to fill in for productive citizens. Nigerian investment in Sierra Leone plantations and logging also points to possibilities of more sustainable accumulation with the help of foreigners. Leaders of such units as Sierra Leone, RUF, and RUF’s Liberian backers all struggle to stake out spheres of control. Even though formal boundaries retain international recognition, this contest for de facto jurisdiction brings innovating rulers in conflict with one another. For example, in Sierra Leone’s diamond-mining areas, it has not been clear at times whether populations are subject to RUF, individual military commanders, Freetown, or a combination of these. Competition among local rulers to

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extend their economic sway through informal means has made it more difficult for outsiders and neighbors to discern where the limits to rulers’ authority are located. In a community of strong states, incorporation of this new form of political authority would be difficult because these informal methods of control incorporate activities that neighbors would find disruptive and which would interfere with efforts to regulate regional commerce. But where most states in a region are weak, alternative configurations of power become more attractive to entrepreneurs (Strasser’s rivals) and the urgency of innovation among incumbent rulers rises (Strasser). The key to viability centers on resolving the problem of exit and exerting discipline in a setting where the pursuit of power undermines continuity and predictability. Herein lies the special role of private foreign partners that marks a fundamental shift in the rules of African external relations in the 1990s. Whereas the “quasistate” of the postcolonial era built on expectations of entitlements from external patrons, the post–Cold War rules for the weakest African states bring external business partners. These partners provide crucial access to foreign exchange to buy weapons and to dominate local economic opportunities to such an extent as to deny them to presidential rivals. These partners then expect to profit in exchange for services rendered and risks incurred. This expectation intensifies exploitation of subjects and further removes authority from them. The character of these partners reflects change elsewhere in peripheral areas of the global economy since the Cold War’s end. The globalization of Hong Kong triads, Afghan leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s alleged heroin trade, the proclivity of “narco-states,” such as Nigeria, to dabble in drug trafficking—all are examples of international services that more conventional foreign investors abjure (Handelman 1995; U.S. House of Representatives 1995). African weak state rulers show affinities for what Bayart calls a “continental sociability” in their use of foreign partners to help mediate between global commerce and difficult internal situations. That is, African rulers who have inherited externally imposed states of colonial vintage have a historic preference for ties to outsiders over tapping the talents of their citizens (Bayart 1989, 50–57). Executive Outcomes’ forerunner, the “32 Buffalo Battalion,” for example, found that it could use South African Inkatha units and contacts with Zaire’s President Mobutu to help protect diamond-mining operations when some members of this firm earlier worked for UNITA, an Angolan rebel force (Africa Confidential 1992a; Le Monde 1994). At the same time, societal groups prove able to influence the kinds of bargains and arrangements that elites make among themselves and outsiders. Successful leaders do not totally abjure efforts to mobilize local supporters. Strasser played up his status as “Redeemer,” the young leader striking against the privilege of exploitative “Big Men” in the fashion of Jean Claude van Damme, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan videos. Youthful

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supporters styled themselves as “Ninjas” and sported wrap-around sunglasses imitative of their cinema heros. Strasser granted urban artists the right to express their support for his “Revolution” with popular street art (Opala 1994, 195–218). While not very effective at marshaling broad support, this effort offered Strasser a very inexpensive and nonbureaucratic way to attract followers. RUF backer Charles Taylor’s official motto of “Liberty—Justice—Discipline—Work,” however, recalls Vichy French slogans, highlighting the contradiction between images of liberation and control that characterize strategies that replace more conventional Cold War patronage politics. Overall, significant structural supports for Africa’s weak states do remain. Global “good citizenship” and outside state interests still translate into resources, if not automatic entitlements for hard-pressed leaders. Stronger state reluctance to permit disorder ensures nominal support for territorial integrity. But official noninterventionism, especially with regard to Africa, along with the pressures and opportunities of the post–Cold War milieu, has fundamentally changed the rules of internal and global politics for weak states. African economies and states continue to be engaged in the global economy and politics, albeit now in increasingly unconventional, direct, and violent ways. The character of this engagement reflects a new division of labor among a steepening hierarchy of states in Africa and beyond.

Notes 1. Nor does it describe Sierra Leone under Strasser’s successors: Julius Maada Bio, Strasser’s second-in-command, who seized power in January 1996; Tejan Kabbah, who headed the civilian regime that succeeded Bio in March 1996; and Johnny Paul Koromah, a major in the Sierra Leonean army who, in alliance with rebel forces, led a coup against Kabbah in May 1997. As of July 1997 Koromah’s hold on power appears increasingly weak as other states in West Africa, led by Nigeria, discuss the best means, including economic embargo and a military operation, to force a return of the Kabbah regime. 2. For more on this, see Van Wolferen 1991 and Bayart 1994. 3. Interview with Freetown informant, 13 April 1995. The analysis in this section is informed by this and other confidential interviews.

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Zaire: The Bankruptcy of the Extractive State JOHN F. C LARK Editors’ note: On 17 May 1997 the Zaire of this chapter’s title became a historical artifact, another casualty of the critical juncture. Following the final success of Laurent Kabila’s rebel alliance in taking over the country and driving President Mobutu Sese Seko from power, the country’s name reverted to the one it had borne at independence: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. This name change signals the final disintegration of the Zairian state—a process this chapter explores—and reflects the failure of the Mobutu regime to adapt to the pressures of the early 1990s. Efforts to construct a new state will be constrained by the legacy of Zaire’s disintegration.

The main roles played by the state in Zaire are to extract social wealth from the population and to exploit the country’s mineral endowment for the benefit of a few citizens and foreigners. While all states are extractive in the sense that they tax economic activities, the Zairian state is unusual in the extent to which extraction became an end unto itself. While President Mobutu Sese Seko has been virtually unrivaled in his capacity to create such a state, Zaire is merely a prototypical case. Although the idea that the Zairian state could best be characterized as “extractive” has often been suggested in the literature—most notably through the use of the label “kleptocratic” to describe Mobutu’s regime—the implications of this term have not been fully explicated. This chapter begins by reviewing some of the other historical models that have been used to describe the Zairian state. Each of these reveals something about its functioning, particularly in past periods. The second section describes how the Zairian state evolved under President Mobutu Sese Seko, who came to power in 1965. Subsequent sections then elaborate the notion of the extractive state and examine whom this type of state has served. Beyond fleshing out the notion of the extractive state, this chapter describes the slow deterioration of the Zairian state following the options 109

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chosen by the Mobutu regime in response to the critical juncture reached in 1990. The Zairian experience certainly suggests that extractive states are not durable over the long term. Recent events also suggest that the extractive state in Zaire is no longer simply a function of Mobutu himself, but rather has become enmeshed with the country’s political culture. This explains why the political class was unable to reconfigure the state during the political opening that presented itself in 1991–1992. Ominously, it also suggests that a favorable reconfiguration of the state after Mobutu’s passing will be difficult.

The Zairian State and Functional Models of African States The former Belgian Congo1 achieved its independence in June 1960 after a very brief period of preparation. Those few months of political organizing had been preceded by some eighty years of brutal colonialism, during which time little was done to unite the diverse peoples of the colony or train an elite to take up the reins of power.2 As a result, army mutinies and secession accompanied the transfer of power, evoking intervention from Belgium, the United States, and the Soviet Union. With a dangerous superpower clash brewing, the United Nations responded to a Congolese request for assistance and dispatched a putatively neutral multilateral force to the country with the purpose of inducing a Belgian withdrawal and averting further unilateral intervention. Nonetheless, full-scale civil war ensued and Congo’s first popularly elected leader, the fiery nationalist Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated under suspicious circumstances.3 After thirty months’ hesitation, the UN mission finally used its military might to put down the Katanga secession, albeit without restoring social peace. By late 1965 Congo was undergoing yet another political crisis in the wake of the February 1965 elections, the first since 1960. When the politicians engaged in a seemingly interminable squabble over offices, Mobutu, who was then chief of the country’s armed forces, decided to seize power for himself in November 1965. As with Lumumba’s assassination, U.S. support for this coup is widely suspected (Schatzberg 1991, 63). Thereafter, Mobutu methodically consolidated his power, establishing a oneparty state in 1966. Indeed, following the pattern of “personal rule” that characterized much of the continent (Jackson and Rosberg 1982a), the name of Mobutu has become synonymous with the Zairian state since his 1965 coup. To grasp the complex evolution of the Zairian state, one should bear in mind some of the possible functional roles that African states play in relation to their societies. All states play a variety of roles, which may vary in importance over time. The most important of these include resolving sociopolitical disputes that lead to public disorder and organizing economic production

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and distribution. Of course, a fully developed theory of the state must discuss its genesis, its relationship with class forces, and its mode of legitimation before the people in a given society or historical setting, but only the barest outline of state functions can be described here. At least four different models have been used to describe the functioning of the Zairian state: (1) a neo-Marxist model, which focuses on the ruling class in Zaire and on the influence of the industrialized capitalist states, particularly the United States, Belgium, and France (Fatton 1992; Nzongola-Ntalaja 1986); (2) a corporatist model concerned with the state’s ability to co-opt social groups, especially capital and labor, with the potential to challenge its hegemony (Mianda 1995; Turner 1989); (3) an absolutist model, which directs its attention to the state’s project of increasing control over its people and territory (Callaghy 1987); (4) a patrimonial state, which is similar to the absolutist model in that it assumes the state is motivated primarily by the desire to increase its power, but which suggests that the ruler attempts to mobilize and control national resources for personal rather than national reasons—any service to the common good is either incidental or instrumental (i.e., designed to reinforce patrimonial rule by creating new resources) (Willame 1972). A variety of this model that might better describe Zaire in some periods is that of the neopatrimonial state. According to Van de Walle (1994, 131), this state is one “in which a patrimonial logic coexists with the development of bureaucratic administration and at least the pretense of legal-rational forms of state legitimacy.” These models of the state have often been contrasted with two other, generally preferred, models, the liberal and the developmental models. The liberal state is expected to limit its functions to resolving civil disputes between individuals and providing certain “community goods,” like security and infrastructure. Economic development is expected to arise from the free market. The developmental state, on the other hand, is expected to take an active role in mobilizing capital resources to promote national welfare. That is, the developmental state fulfills the roles left to the private sector in the liberal model. These models have rarely been used to describe the Zairian state, but are useful in underscoring its shortcomings. Each of these models illuminates important aspects of the functioning of African states, including Zaire during several periods in its history. Yet none of them perfectly characterizes the Zairian state, especially as it has functioned since the 1980s. Thus arises the need to elaborate an alternative model that captures the contemporary configuration and uses of state power in Zaire—that of the extractive state.

The Evolution of the State in Zaire Despite the current functioning of the Zairian state, one should note that “extractive” has not always been the best label for it, even under Mobutu.

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Stunning as it seems today, Willame could credibly write in the early 1970s that, “The Mobutu regime’s emphasis on economic rationality has produced positive results” and “Mobutu’s emphasis on economic and technical rationalization was paralleled by a deep distrust for politics” (1972, 133, 131). Similarly, the work of Young and Turner (1985) cataloged both the rise and the decline of the Zairian state; in the early years, they were able to report a number of impressive achievements of the Mobutu regime. Of course, in the wake of four years of relentless and devastating civil war, the restoration of relative social peace alone was an accomplishment. Willame referred to Mobutu’s management style as “Black Caesarism,” or one that combined civil and military authority with attention to relative bureaucratic rationality, reinforced with direct popular appeals to nationalism (1972, 141). This description coincides with the neopatrimonial model described by Van de Walle (1994) and others. With the benefit of high copper revenues, the Zairian state even took on some developmental functions in this period. During the 1970s, Callaghy’s compelling label “absolutist” and Turner’s tentative designation of “corporatist” fit the Zairian state best. As Mobutu consolidated his power in the late 1960s, he moved to create new institutions to perpetuate and formalize his rule, notably the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR) and the single-party constitution. The new constitution also abolished the prime ministership, concentrating all power in Mobutu’s presidency. It was during the 1970s that Mobutu was able to wrest the most power away from local and regional leaders. The 1970s also represented the high tide of Mobutuisme, the putatively radicalnationalist ideology designed to mobilize the population on behalf of Mobutu and national glory. Co-opting regional and religious leaders to these state goals with some success, Mobutu was able to centralize power in Zaire as never before, even under the colonial regime. Meanwhile, from the early 1970s onward, the rational-efficient gloss on the Zairian bureaucracy quickly wore off. The number of those trying to live off the state increased continually, while the resources available to the state shrank, especially after the collapse of copper prices in the mid-1970s. While the Zairian state under Mobutu has always had an extractive side, that label became most apt beginning in the 1980s. In 1981 a World Bank/IMF team confirmed that Mobutu no longer had any serious intentions of taking steps to restore Zaire’s international financial credibility (Blumenthal 1982). Since that time, Zaire has simply engaged in a series of futile, dishonest, and transparently meaningless negotiations with the IMF and World Bank; only the most naive have believed since then that the Mobutu regime had either the will or capacity to clear all of its arrears and restore sound macroeconomic policies. Meanwhile, the total external debt increased rapidly during the decade, reaching $8.5 billion in 1988 and $10.2 billion in 1990. Most development projects in Zaire, and notably the

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Inga-Shaba power distribution project, were proving to be ineffective in stimulating any indigenous industrial or commercial activity. In November 1980 Zaire’s courageous “Thirteen Parliamentarians” published their famous open letter to Mobutu, demanding that he reopen the political sphere to non-MPR political movements. Thereafter, Mobutu’s political policies became more repressive, but less effective; centrifugal forces reasserted themselves, loosening the grip of Mobutu’s central administration on the regions. The two Shaba invasions of 1976 and 1977 had highlighted the myth of an effective “absolutist” state or any increasing ethnoregional integration. Meanwhile, the levels of extraction from an increasingly impoverished society during the 1980s grew to the point that the state was consuming itself, choking off the very sources of its sustenance.4 In explaining the appearance of the extractive state in Zaire, one must refer primarily to Mobutu’s own changing style. One must also acknowledge that Mobutu became more cynical and irrational, if no less ruthless, during his years in power. While he has always savored political power, he was once more cautious in its exercise (as when he allowed the politicians to take over again after his 1960 coup), and he once gloried in the notion of ruling a healthy, prosperous, and influential country. As faith in the official ideology evaporated during the 1970s, Mobutu became increasingly satisfied to rule by way of terror. As the extractive state apparatus slowly eroded Zaire’s economy and fragile social cohesion throughout the 1980s, pressures for political reform grew apace (Turner 1997, 253–255). These pressures were brought to a head in early 1990 by the psychological impact of the collapse of East bloc communism, and by the successful “national conference” in Benin. Thus, Zaire had reached its own critical juncture, and on 24 April 1990 Mobutu was compelled to announce the end of the de jure one-party state, beginning the era of “political reform.” During the second half of 1990 Zairian political parties began to organize, and in early 1991 most of the leading parties, notably including Progrès Social and Etienne Tshisekedi’s Union pour la Démocratie, organized an opposition coalition called the Union Sacrée de l’Opposition Radicale. In April 1991 Mobutu at last acceded to a “Sovereign National Conference” to determine Zaire’s political future. Contrary to most expectations, however, Mobutu’s April 1990 announcement proved to be a critical juncture not because it signaled the beginning of the state’s reconfiguration, but rather because it dramatically accelerated its disintegration. Zaire’s national conference proved to be francophone Africa’s longest, meeting sporadically between August 1991 and December 1992, its length being mostly attributable to Mobutu’s efforts to impede real political reform. During these difficult months, Mobutu manipulated the proceedings of the conference chiefly by co-opting various members of the opposition (Lemarchand 1992b). This task, in

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turn, was achieved by either “buying” opposition figures directly or by allowing them to extract wealth from the society in other ways. Thus, many of Mobutu’s opponents demonstrated that they, too, were willing to enrich themselves at the expense of the Zairian people. These activities increased the state’s extractiveness and decreased its (already limited) abilities to perform the functions associated with effective states. Although the National Conference put in place “transitional” institutions and named Tshisekedi prime minister, Mobutu did not allow this reconfiguration of power to stand. Instead, he appointed his own prime minister, Faustin Birindwa, in March 1993, leading to a fifteen-monthlong period of dual governments in Zaire. During this period, Tshisekedi was officially recognized as prime minister by Western countries, while Birindwa directed what was left of the Zairian state at Mobutu’s behest. The chaos of this period produced further state disintegration, so that virtually no government services were being performed by 1994. Meanwhile, the centrifugal ethnoregional forces that nearly ripped Zaire apart in the early 1960s had begun to assert themselves again in 1992–1993, particularly in Shaba and Kivu (Clark 1995). As a result, the Zairian state had moved perilously close to complete disintegration by the spring of 1994.

The Nature of the Extractive State in Zaire Particularly since the 1980s, the Zairian state has not served any socially meaningful purpose in promoting the interests, however defined, of the Zairian people; it neither organizes a major development effort nor serves to mobilize the people’s energies in any significant international cause; nor does it function to render a “nation” of the great diversity of peoples living within the state’s borders. The “extractive” function of the Zairian state applies in two senses: the state both extracts wealth from its “citizens” and it extracts mineral wealth from the country’s natural endowment. The extraction of wealth from the country’s subjects is performed both directly and indirectly. Cases of outright seizure of property by the state, on the slightest pretext, are not at all uncommon in contemporary Zaire. This kind of extraction frequently takes place with the acknowledgment of the country’s highest authorities, including Mobutu himself. Schatzberg has described this sort of extraction well: In Mobutu’s system of rule the powerful use political or administrative office to create economic wealth. This usually means officials exploit their power to extract what they can from those in contextually inferior positions in the social hierarchy and, in so doing, create new sources of

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scarcity. Zairian citizens . . . are thus caught in the grip of ever increasing insecurity, never knowing when their rulers will appropriate what few resources they have accumulated (1988, 135).5

The only questionable phrase in Schatzberg’s analysis, as he might agree, is his suggestion that the powerful “create economic wealth,” since the Zairian state has no record of being responsible for the creation of wealth. Rather, it has been a parasite that exists on the nutrients of mineral revenues and the product of the state’s unfortunate inhabitants. Ironically, the bourgeoisie in Zaire, or that part of it that is outside Mobutu’s network, la classe politique, is a major victim of such extraction. Traders, for instance, pay enormous bribes merely to get their products into the country, often more than what they pay for the products they are importing.6 These days, few entrepreneurs are bold enough to try actually manufacturing anything in Zaire, but the rare ones who do face enormous official and unofficial taxes. Meanwhile, the lack of police protection and the virtual nonexistence of communications and transport infrastructure impose further business costs. The appropriation of small amounts of wealth from ordinary citizens by minor security officials is de rigueur in Zaire, as well. Notable examples include the thirteen-odd “services” that operate at Kinshasa’s airport, each of which is designed to allow some minor government agents to extort money from those Zairians who can afford international travel, as well as transiting foreigners (Ndjemoti and Shabani 1994). Similarly, the infamous roadblock technique of extorting money from travelers, common in many African countries, is ubiquitous in Zaire. Motorists are also randomly stopped in the cities, particularly during times of tension, and made to pay small bribes before proceeding. Since changing money on the street is illegal, gendarmes are known to simply take the money of citizens on their way to or from “Wall Street,” where money is changed in the Gombé district of Kinshasa. The issuance of a firearm to a soldier or civil guardsman in Zaire becomes a de facto license to extort. Even more effectively, the state extracts wealth indirectly, by manipulating the value of the currency, for instance. Knowledgeable Zairians report that Mobutu simply demands funds from the Bank of Zaire when he requires them, and that he has done so for years. Since Mobutu himself has been the largest shareholder (Young and Turner 1985, 179), this is not surprising. In fact, Mobutu’s officials have used a great many different instruments for indirectly extracting wealth, extending down to operations like the state’s coffee marketing board. Such practices have been widely acknowledged since the infamous “Blumenthal Report” was issued (Young and Turner 1985, 385; Dungia 1992). Since 1991, Mobutu’s clique has resorted to simply printing money, and thereby taxing the society with inflation in the 2,000–10,000 percent range.

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Finally, the Zairian state is “extractive” in a more literal sense—it functions to exploit Zaire’s vast mineral reserve. The two most important instruments in this effort are Gécamines, the main state mining company, which succeeded the nationalized Belgian Union Minière, and MIBA, the state diamond enterprise. Gécamines takes responsibility for exploiting the country’s important cobalt, copper, and zinc reserves and the Zairian state consequently took steps to make sure that these vital concerns could import needed capital equipment throughout the 1980s, even when such equipment was difficult to get for other purposes in Zaire. The state also heavily taxes the profits of these enterprises, both officially and through illegal transfers of funds. Although large numbers of diamonds continue to be smuggled out of the country (MacGaffey 1992), their contribution to Mobutu’s billions has been sizable. To describe the current functioning of the Zairian state further, one must also refer to its near-total failure to provide any of the “community goods” the state is normally expected to provide. The condition of the transportation and communications network in Zaire is illustrative (MacGaffey 1992). Although the road network that Zaire inherited from its former colonial rulers had mostly deteriorated by the mid-1970s, Zairians note a continuing deterioration with each passing year. By 1994, a 60-mile trip from Kinshasa to a village in Bas-Zaire had become a grueling, fourhour journey thanks to the poor condition of the remaining roads. Truck drivers along the route fear that they will soon no longer be able to make the trip at all. At Kinshasa’s international airport, Ndjili, insecurity and chaos reign; thieves wander around the tarmac while arms are freely smuggled into the country (Ndjemoti and Shabani 1994, 3). Similarly, the telephone system has virtually ceased to function in Kinshasa itself, not to mention the rest of the country. With the collapse of a public phone company, private (cellular) companies have arisen to provide communication services. The situation is similar for other public services. In Kinshasa, the supply of water is sporadic and the quality frighteningly low. In Mbuji-Mayi (Shiner 1994) and many other major cities, electricity networks have failed, leaving them without power; the condition of most public hospitals has declined to the point that residents find little use in going to them (Ngonde and Lukhanda). During the 1995 Ebola virus epidemic, foreign journalists were stunned to see that Kikwit, a city of some 400,000 residents, and only about 250 miles from Kinshasa, lacked a radio station, an electricity grid, running water, a sewage system, and a telephone system (Garrett 1995). The systems of justice and public order are similarly in a state of collapse. In Zaire’s prison system, prisoners die of malnutrition and neglect by the hundreds, often as they await trial in the moribund court system (Africa Watch 1994). Meanwhile, the ubiquitous gendarmes do little about

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the increasing banditry and random violence, even as they themselves violate the human rights of the population. Indeed, in 1993–1994, citizens were organizing to protect themselves against the regular abuses by local militaires (AZADHO 1994, 4). While political “crimes” bring down the weight of the state quickly, ordinary injustices go unpunished. Meanwhile, the property and machinery of the state itself have disintegrated or been “privatized.” As Mulambu Mvuluya (1993, 77) put it, “There is little left of State property in terms of real or movable estate. . . . What used to be State property has been declared unprofitable and sold. Often, it is the same officials who declare State property unprofitable who then turn around and buy it up.” If the Zairian state is sui generis, or at least representative of a heretofore unacknowledged type, however, it bears certain similarities to the absolutist and the patrimonial models others have described. Both of these models are accurate in describing the main source of political “legitimacy” for Zaire, namely through the patronage of the central government. By contrast to the absolutist model, however, the Zairian state demonstrates little of the coercive, unifying power that is the main goal of an absolutist ruler. The model presumes, in fact, that the state will become stronger, uniting a national people, who will eventually develop an industrial economy and self-conscious economic classes. Yet by the 1980s, it was abundantly clear that the Zairian state was becoming weaker rather than stronger. The Zairian state currently operates in a manner much more like the patrimonial model Willame had used to describe the 1960–1965 period. The myth of an “integrating” Zairian state has become increasingly transparent (Young 1994b). The same ethnoregional forces that tore the country apart in 1960–1964 are once again threatening the integrity of the state (Clark 1995). Callaghy, who has elaborated an absolutist model of the Zairian state, himself pointed to the tentative nature of the alliances that Mobutu worked out with traditional regional leaders, noting that many were veritable feudal lords vis-à-vis local populations (1984). Many of these alliances have recently broken down altogether. The patrimonial model, however, also assumes that rulers use the wealth that they extract to reproduce their own rule; otherwise, of course, they risk falling from power. Neither of these models is thus fully accurate—hence the appropriateness of the label “extractive” for Zaire in the 1990s. Mobutu has recently appeared to be concerned with extracting wealth for its own sake, regardless of the consequences for the reproduction of his rule. At the same time, extraction by the state has become more diffuse, benefiting local “warlords” and officials as much as Mobutu himself. Given these developments, one can only conclude that the extractive state is an unsustainable phenomenon by virtue of the fact that it is destroying itself and that from which it derives its sustenance.

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Who Is Served by the Extractive State? The question of who benefits from the Zairian state is far more complex than it first appears, for when one surveys the benefits that accrue to social groups in a given system, one consciously or unconsciously compares the prevailing distribution with some other, imagined system. Thus, the fierce social critic is often comparing unsatisfactory outcomes with some (perhaps utopian) ideal, while the apologist for some regime imagines some even less satisfactory alternative. For Mobutu’s foreign apologists, their justification of support has long been distilled to the phrase “Mobutu or chaos” (Schatzberg 1991). Hence, in thinking of the benefits to specific groups in Zaire, one has to constantly grapple with the problem of imagining their lives in some realistic alternative to the Zairian state. This qualification aside, it is indisputable that Mobutu and his immediate circle of advisers and cronies have become fantastically wealthy from the extractive activities of the Zairian state. As for the president himself, his immense personal wealth is beyond dispute,7 even if he has spent some portion of his legendary billions since 1990 to bribe and co-opt opposition politicians. Despite intense speculation, no one knows exactly how large Mobutu’s personal fortune is, although most estimates are in the $5–$8 billion range. Beyond Mobutu himself, the most direct and flagrant beneficiaries of the extractive state are a small group of family members, high functionaries, political advisers, security officials, and military officers. 8 A significant proportion of these associates come from Mobutu’s own small ethnic group, the Ngbandi (Braeckman 1992, 191). More widely, what Callaghy calls the “political aristocracy,”9 including the group referred to as la classe politique in Zaire, reaps large financial rewards from the sinecures provided by the extractive state. La classe politique encompasses all of the Zairian politicians who have served in the myriad Mobutu governments over three decades in high-level bureaucratic posts or in the MPR legislatures. This circle of beneficiaries also includes the managers of parastatals and those who acquired the foreign businesses that Mobutu nationalized in the early 1970s, which suggests that the phrase “politicoeconomic aristocracy” might be an even more apt label. Mobutu personally redistributes much of the wealth that he extracts, in classic patrimonial fashion, to reward members of this group, and to entice opposition politicians back into the fold. This of course strips them of legitimacy in the eyes of the population. Significantly, this class includes many politicians who have been in the opposition since 1990. Callaghy has rightly insisted, however, that the label “bourgeois” mischaracterizes this class, because this group does not accumulate capital so much for investment as for consumption or for depositing overseas. As noted above, the classic bourgeoisie, or those who attempt to accumulate and invest capital for profit, are the object of frequent harassment from the

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Zairian state, frequently having their goods and capital seized. As Markovitz observed a decade ago, “The Zairian business bourgeoisie is, for good reason, above all insecure, constantly threatened by Mobutu’s erratic and self-protective policies.” But, he continues, “the new, politically unconnected commercial class, particularly visible in regional and secondary centers, less under the thumb of the state, consistently dismissed as non-existent or insignificant by many observers, has grown significantly” (1987, 16). While it is true that a petty bourgeois class of commerçants may flourish in the regions, taking advantage of the gray and black markets, one could not say that the Zairian state, in classic Marxist fashion, organizes the economy in their interests; rather, they flourish in spite of it. As MacGaffey (1992) has demonstrated so well, the economic space they profitably occupy is provided by the very breakdown of state control or regulation that makes any other kind of activity impossible; they have chosen the “exit” option out of necessity. Zaire’s urban domestic workers, meager proletariat, and small shopkeepers are also victims of the extractive state. Domestics would in fact benefit by being transformed into true proletarians, which would entail working more regular hours for higher wages. But in the deindustrializing Zairian society, the number of proletarians has shrunk in recent years. A large number of factories in Kinshasa, such as the large General Motors assembly plant, were destroyed during the various riots of 1991 and 1993. Meanwhile, those proletarians who still do have jobs labor in pathetic conditions for capital-starved enterprises, which cannot afford new equipment or adequate materials. As for the shopkeepers, their business activity is severely impeded by the absence of a stable currency, the physical insecurity of their property, and the lack of reliable public services. Even Zaire’s peasants, who have so little, are frequently a target of the state’s extractiveness. Schatzberg (1980, Ch. 4) described long ago the sense in which peasants were a target of extraction, and this is increasingly the case. In Sankuru, for instance, local officials extort money from prisoners and steal the livestock of peasants (Djunga 1994). Needless to say, the peasants’ margin of safety is so narrow that virtually any arbitrary state action can threaten the lives of a given group or individual. While a developmental state that could bring water, literacy, and health would be a tremendous boon, even a limited state that provided transportation and stable currency would be welcome. Yet, as one Zairian scholar put it, the “working classes and rural people . . . must ‘buy’ all official actions of state bureaucrats” (Mokoli 1992, 96). Failing the provision of services, to simply be left alone would represent progress for Zaire’s peasants. Turning from class to other social groups, one may ask whether Mobutu’s home region (Equateur) or his own ethnic group (the Ngbandi) has benefited extraordinarily from the activities of the extractive state.

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Despite the common perception among many non-Equateurians that Mobutu’s home region gains tremendous advantages from the state (Schatzberg 1988, 24), those in southern Equateur have sometimes complained that they are as neglected and impoverished as any Zairians (Ndjoli 1991). It appears that only Mobutu’s native town of Gbadolite (northern Equateur), where the president has built an expansive residence, has physically benefited from Mobutu’s displacement of wealth, though it bears noting that there is intense poverty in sight of the residence itself. As for the Ngbandi, who make up a tiny percentage of the population, only a selected few benefit by Mobutu’s rule. Certainly, Venduawve Te Pemako and other key Ngbandi advisers have benefited, as have some ordinary Ngbandi, who make up the bulk of Mobutu’s elite military unit, the 12,000–strong Division Spéciale Présidentielle (DSP).10 Though the ordinary DSP troops do endure the hard life of soldiers, the special benefits they receive make their lives far better than they would be otherwise. It is less clear that soldiers in the Garde Civile or regular Zairian army benefit particularly from the activities of the extractive state. The 14,000person Garde Civile, headed by General Kpama Baramoto (another Ngbandi), carries out a good portion of the state terrorism against Mobutu’s enemies, including the infamous May 1990 massacres in Lubumbashi, and it enjoys some privileges as well. For the bulk of soldiers in the regular army, however (estimated at between 120,000 and 175,000), daily life is marked by extreme scarcity and uncertainty. The pay of regular troops and junior officers is pathetically low, less than $5 per month, and in most cases salaries have not been paid in some time. Therefore, as noted above, soldiers survive by extortion, but the lion’s share of such proceeds goes to the officers, leaving little for those in the ranks. Thus, it is uncertain whether soldiers benefit more by their theft than they would in belonging to a regularly paid professional army. Finally, one may ask to what extent the extractive state has served foreign capital interests. Extending the Marxist logic of capitalist exploitation to the global setting, several authors have argued that the Zairian state under Mobutu is merely an instrument of Western capital interests. The precursor to this school was Stephen Weissman (1974), who argued that the real motivation behind the U.S. intervention in the 1960–1964 period was the influence of mining and banking interests in the United States, not strategic concerns. Weissman was able to show that a number of important U.S. businessmen with substantial interests in Zaire supported U.S. intervention to prevent a takeover by nationalist forces in Congo. Using far more strident language, Depelchin argues that Mobutu is in fact a product of Belgian capital interests. In his view, The former colonial power installed the Mobutu regime by force. Any discussion of Zaire’s economic development as if it depended solely on

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the doings of the Zairian ruling class, . . . is in the long run a way of minimizing and covering up the mechanisms through which the Mobutu regime was parachuted into power, then kept in control (1992, 101).

Depelchin sees the Zairian state as a mere extension of the colonial state, one that serves the same end: to organize the territory for commercial exploitation. Depelchin interprets Mobutu’s nationalization programs of the 1970s as a mere slight-of-hand, offering a facade of national pride to the masses, and some modest rewards to the local “bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie,” while leaving Belgian capital in control (1992, 182–207). David Gibbs, another scholar of Belgian and U.S. foreign policy toward Zaire in the 1960–1965 period, has recently suggested a more complicated model of how Western capital “created” Mobutu (1991). He argues that conflict between Belgian and U.S. capital interests were responsible for the rise of Mobutu. The analyses of Weissman, Depelchin, and Gibbs stand in contrast to other critics of U.S. policy in Zaire who argued that misguided strategic concerns were to blame for U.S. support of Mobutu (Kalb 1982; Schatzberg 1991; Kelly 1993). These sweeping arguments go too far, however. Depelchin’s argument is ultimately unable to demonstrate how Belgian companies profited from nationalization. With regard to the nationalization of the giant Belgian mining firm, the Union Minière, which became the Zairian state company Gécamines, Depelchin can only suggest that it recouped most of its investment (1992, 175). And after his painstaking explanations, Gibbs is led to acknowledge that, “It is true that many of the investments turned out to be disastrous failures” (1991, 194). In fact, only a few foreign firms or individuals, particularly those who promoted Mobutu’s political cause, received lucrative contracts; many others found that they had to bribe Mobutu to do business in the country (Askin and Collins 1993, 76–77). More recently, the U.S. evangelical Pat Robertson has developed a diamond mining venture in Zaire based on his decade-long friendship with Mobutu. Robertson also undertook a major lobbying campaign to get Mobutu a visa to visit the United States in 1995 (Lippman 1995). Whatever profits were made must thus be put into context. After all, the stridently Marxist government in Angola that came to power in 1975 signed a very lucrative contract with Gulf Oil soon thereafter. Likewise, it seems unlikely that Lumumba would not have found it in Zaire’s interest to continue a collaboration with Western multinationals had he continued in power in 1960. More important, however, is the fact that even if having a “Western-oriented” ruler in Kinshasa served the interests of capital, the extractive state in Zaire did not. In the mid-1980s Crawford Young (1985) pointed out the abject failure of U.S. business to make meaningful investments in the economy of Zaire. Instead, companies sought quick profits by fulfilling government contracts, but, despite the urging of the U.S.

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Embassy, did virtually no investing in long-term productive enterprises. Those few companies that did open factories—Goodyear, General Motors, Continental Grain, and others—found that they depended on continued substantial investments and U.S. aid (e.g., surplus grain to the mill owned by Continental Grain), and that most operated at a fraction of intended capacity, losing money. Young’s work thus also provides evidence that the extractive state did not serve Western capital interests on the whole (1985, 214–219). Yet an effective liberal or developmental state in Zaire would have greatly improved the country’s business potential. Mobutu, it is clear, cannot be reduced to the puppet of Western capitalism. The fortunes of international financial interests in Zaire illustrate the fact that the extractive state in fact serves very few optimally. Only Mobutu’s clique, some members of la classe politique, a small number of Ngbandi, and a few select foreign firms benefit disproportionately from the Zairian state as it now functions. Yet its secret lies in the fact that those who do benefit reap such incredible rewards that they are determined to keep the extractive state in place at any cost. Moreover, the “psychology of scarcity” now has a perverse effect in Zaire: even those who benefit in some very small way from the extractive state feel protected, and therefore exude some acquiescence to the state, in the midst of unspeakable deprivation. Meanwhile, the whole society is penalized by the lack of public services and the constant price inflation caused by the state’s extractive activities.

Whither the Extractive State? The effects of the extractive state on Zairian economic life since the early 1980s are stunning: physical infrastructure has virtually disappeared, the modern sector has declined in economic importance, and standards of health, nutrition, and education have decreased sharply. The critical juncture reached in 1990 accelerated these trends: Zaire’s real GDP declined by 7.2 percent in 1991, 12.3 percent in 1992, and 10.4 percent in 1993, and copper production fell by 90 percent in the period between 1990 and 1994 (EIU 1995, 18; cf. Willame 1992). Meanwhile, inflation steadily spiraled up from 81 percent in 1990 to over 20,000 percent in 1994. Not surprisingly, this economic deterioration led to feelings of desperation and cynicism toward the state among the urban populations of the country, creating an atmosphere of crisis. Hence, by 1994 not only was the state on the verge of collapse, but there was even reason to fear a more general social breakdown. It was in this situation that Zaire’s transitional assembly appointed the redoubtable Léon Kengo wa Dondo to be prime minister in June 1994. In January, Mobutu had forced a merger of the assembly created by the

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National Conference with the former assembly of the one-party regime, dominated by his old MPR allies. This body, known as the Haut Conseil de la République–Parlement de la Transition, was divided into three main factions: Mobutu’s loyalists; Tshisekedi’s “Radical Opposition,” the opposition coalition formed in 1991; and the so-called moderate opposition, led by the Union des Démocrates Indépendants (UDI). The UDI was composed mostly of businessmen and politicians who had formerly been close to Mobutu—indeed Kengo had already been prime minister twice in the 1980s—but who had broken with him in 1990. Although he was despised and distrusted by the closest allies of both Mobutu and Tshisekedi, Kengo possessed a reputation for toughness and efficiency, particularly in implementing economic austerity packages. Indeed, Kengo did enjoy briefly modest success in halting the deterioration of the Zairian state and economy (Faes 1995b; EIU 1995). Inflation declined to the triple digits, mineral production inched back up, and a modicum of order was restored to public life. Yet those who imagined that Kengo would be able to change the fundamental trajectory of the Zairian state were very much mistaken. The provision of services continued to decline. 11 Kengo’s administration ruled without the support of the opposition coalition, which, despite numerous defections to the government, maintained its oppositional role, organizing occasional one-day strikes (villes mortes) and public demonstrations. More importantly, Mobutu did not allow Kengo to have real control over many aspects of public finance or, needless to say, the most important security organs. Zaire’s problems were compounded, of course, by the presence of some 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees in the eastern regions of North and South Kivu, who had entered the country during the summer of 1994 (see Chapter 5 in this volume). Hence, the basic disarray of the Zairian state persisted, as revealed by the state’s ineffectual response to the 1995 Ebola crisis in Kikwit and Kengo’s inability to force the Rwandan refugees out, despite his desire to do so. In the second half of 1996 events appeared to have brought the Zairian state again to the brink of collapse and, inevitably, reconfiguration. Mobutu left for Lausanne, Switzerland, in August, where it was soon revealed that he was the victim of prostate cancer. Subsequent reports suggested that Mobutu was in fact dying, though his prognosis was not publicly revealed. Then, in September, another crisis erupted in eastern Zaire when the government announced a plan to expel some 300,000 Zairian citizens of Tutsi ethnicity (resident in the region for some 200 years). These residents of Zaire, called the Banyamulenge, soon took up arms against both local Hutu refugees (and the armed remnants of the former Hutu regime) and the Zairian army sent to throttle them. This fighting led most of the Hutu refugees to take flight, first deeper into Zaire, and then, finally, back into Rwanda itself. In the course of the fighting, the fittest elements

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of the Zairian armed forces were soundly defeated by the rebels, who were reportedly supported by arms and infiltrators sent by the Rwandan government. This humiliation did nothing to improve the popularity of Kengo, whose mother is a Rwandan Tutsi; in fact, in November, mobs of students occupied the National Assembly building, demanding Kengo’s ouster (French 1996). Thus, by early 1997, the collapse of Mobutu’s extractive state was nearly complete. The story of the Zairian state’s evolution between 1965 and 1997 can only be told with abundant reference to Mobutu’s preferences, continuities of practice, and changes in style, though his practices have also temporarily defined Zairian political culture. In retrospect, Mobutu’s announcement of a political opening in response to the multiple pressures on his regime in 1990 was clearly a critical juncture for Zaire, and the subsequent period has been a sad dénouement. The first task of Mobutu’s successors will be to reconfigure relations between Kinshasa and the regions, now virtually autonomous. More difficult, however, will be any satisfactory reconfiguration of the political economy, which will likely take years even under the best of circumstances.

Notes The author wishes to extend gratefully thanks to Joshua Forrest, Roger Meece, Will Reno, and Michael Schatzberg, as well as the editors of this volume, for commenting upon this chapter. He also wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Antoine Ghonda Mangalibi during his research in Kinshasa in 1994. The author alone, however, accepts full responsibility for all errors of fact or interpretation. 1. New students of Africa are perpetually confused by the presence of two states called “Congo” in Africa until 1971. The former French Congo, situated north of the great Congo (or Zaire) River, with its capital at Brazzaville, retains the old name. The former Belgian Congo, which is the subject of this chapter, changed its name to Zaire in 1971, partly eliminating the confusion. Previously, the two states were distinguished by appending the capital to the name of each, CongoBrazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, respectively. 2. See the fine works of Crawford Young (1965) and René Lemarchand (1964), among others, on the politics of independence and of the First Republic in Zaire. Of particular interest is the nature of educational policies in this former Belgian colony. 3. Lumumba’s assassination, and particularly the nature of any U.S. involvement, remains a matter of tremendous controversy to this day. U.S. Senate Hearings undertaken by the Church Committee in 1976 conclusively revealed for the first time a detailed CIA plan to assassinate Lumumba (U.S. Senate, 1976). Other documents later uncovered by Kalb, however, seem to indicate that the CIA station chief in Lubumbashi was surprised by Lumumba’s arrest and dispatch to Katanga, casting doubt on the CIA role (1982, 128–196). Nonetheless, many, if not most, Zairian and North American intellectuals are convinced that the CIA was responsible for this infamous murder. 4. See Willame (1992) and Dungia (1992), particularly, on the escalation of corruption and extraction during the 1980s.

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5. See also Young’s comment that “the poor and the powerless suffer a state of permanent insecurity due to the arbitrary nature of revenue collection at the local level and to all kinds of extortion by soldiers and other state agents. Given the insufficient revenues available to municipal and national field services together with mismanagement and generalized corruption, the system as a whole is incapable of providing for the welfare of the population. Mobutu’s Zaire never fails to bare the primacy of its exploitative and repressive functions” (1985, 234). 6. One businessman confided in me in 1994 that he had paid more (in bribes) to get an order of computers into the country than he paid for the computers themselves. 7. Some of the many estimates of Mobutu’s personal holdings may be found in Callaghy (1984, 179), Young and Turner (1985, 177–182), and Dungia (1992). Mobutu reportedly owns at least seven residences in Belgium and France and controls a large number of Zairian businesses, organized under the CELZA holding company. 8. On Mobutu’s closest associates see Braeckman (1992, 71–80), Andriamirado (1992), and Callaghy (1987, 101–104). 9. Callaghy’s study includes a very detailed discussion of this “political aristocracy,” defining it with some precision (101–103), and properly avoiding the term “bourgeoisie.” Callaghy cites a very useful division of this class by French journalist Jean Rymenam, in “Comment le régime Mobutu a sappé ses propres fondements,” Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1977. Rymenam’s categories, in decreasing order of closeness to Mobutu, are (1) la clique présidentielle, a few dozen of Mobutu’s closest family and advisers; (2) la confrérie régnante, several hundred people occupying important administrative posts; and (3) la grand bourgeoisie potentielle, a larger group of low- and mid-level officials and military officers (cited in Callaghy 1987, 347 n. 29). 10. The benefits of those Ngbandi who do profit from Mobutu’s rule increased during the recent reform period, however. “VTP” admitted to the author in June 1994 that Mobutu was relying on his “family” (the Ngbandi) more than ever. Venduawve justified this trend by arguing that “one naturally relies more on one’s family during times of crisis,” and further argued that U.S. presidents, too, rely heavily on those from their home states for advice. 11. For instance, the provision of electricity in Kinshasa was even less reliable in mid-1995 than it had been a year before, when Kengo took office. The disastrous situation of the state electricity company at the time is well described by Poka-Mes (1995).

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“Empirical Statehood” and Reconfigurations of Political Order CATHERINE BOONE

The trajectories of African countries appear to be much more diverse than they did two decades ago. It will be hard to go back to easy generalizations about “the African state” if that means we must place Liberia, now decayed beyond the point of recognition, in the same category as neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, which seems to have found strategies for regime survival in the political and economic reforms of the 1990s. The heterogeneity of outcomes observed as of 1996 probably has less to do with factors specific to the post–Cold War period and more to do with structural differences among states that we did not see, or analyze very well, in the earlier period. Postcolonial state building has been more successful at institutionalizing political authority and integrating national political economies in some places than it has in others. As we move into the late 1990s, it is clear that Africa’s more resilient regimes, for better and for worse, are building upon and taking advantage of these earlier state-building successes. Jackson and Rosberg (1982b) argued that the survival of Africa’s weak states was attributable to international norms and laws, rather than to the internal coherence and viability of regimes and states. Superficial forms of juridical statehood, rather than the deep underpinnings of empirical statehood, defined Africa’s political map. In the conferences that produced this volume, Dwayne Woods pointed out that post-1989 changes in the international context make it possible to test this argument. The disintegration of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia does seem to confirm the hypothesis that in Africa statehood is extraordinarily fragile, and that both regime survival and the territorial integrity of states are supremely dependent upon foreign patronage. Meanwhile, however, other African regimes have responded to the current challenges by reconfiguring domestic alliances, mobilizing internal constituencies, building new institutions to channel and control participation, making end runs around their opponents, and resorting to repression. Many African regimes—including perhaps Senegal, 129

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Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—seem to be surviving the transition to the post–Cold War world. In these cases, the empirical bases of statehood appear to be deeper and broader than the Jackson-Rosberg argument suggested. Country studies presented in this volume are juxtaposed in a way that focuses attention on this contrast. The editors have contrasted studies of state disintegration (Part 2) with analyses of regimes that appear to be more resilient and adaptive, not only in confronting challenges from within and below, but also in maneuvering under new pressures from external patrons and backers (Part 3).1 The chapters in Part 3 trace these internal and external pressures, showing how they have given rise to new strategies of crisis management, and to institutional innovation on the part of regimes attempting to remain in power. These chapters make it clear that the political and economic liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s must be understood in terms of crisis management. When old strategies of control and co-optation are exhausted, regimes have fought to initiate political reform on their own terms, according to their own timetables, and within constraints they have imposed. They have juggled the logics of political and economic reform in attempts to protect key clients and constituencies while sustaining the inflow of external resources. Regimes have responded to the erosion of the old political order with liberalizing strategies, the narrowing and reconsolidation of patronage networks, new attempts at ideological mobilization, shrewd manipulations of external-resource inflows and domestic rents—and with old and new repressive tactics. In this volume, the term reconfiguration refers to new forms of social mobilization and new patterns of state-society relations that have emerged in these cases. What is striking about most of the cases described in Part 3 of this volume is the regimes’ relative success in employing these strategies to gain advantage over internal opponents and to counter centrifugal political force. Success here is understood as the maintenance (or even strengthening) of empirical statehood, when the state is defined in minimal terms as a hierarchical, quasibureaucratic organization exercising some measure of control over most of the territory within its formal boundaries.

Disintegration Versus Reconfiguration Why have some African states disintegrated in the 1990s (à la Somalia and Liberia) while others have remained intact? This question steers attention toward important differences in the nature and success of the state-formation project in twentieth-century Africa. Patterns of disintegration and reconfiguration make it easier to see differences in the extent to which postcolonial regimes have succeeded in institutionalizing their power, and in

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the degree and scope of integration of the national political space. The political consequences of this unevenness are more visible now than they were in the earlier period, when veils of juridical statehood made diversity in underlying state structures harder to recognize. At a very general level, differences in the degree of state institutionalization, and in the scope and intensity of integration of the national political space, may be traceable to basic features of modern African political economies. It seems that state formation has been more successful— that is, it has produced stronger and better institutionalized means of political and economic integration—in the Africa of peasant commodity production than it has been in the extractive and plantation enclaves. In the Africa of smallholder export-crop production, colonial and postcolonial regimes were forced to work harder, and to devote more resources, to building political and economic institutions and infrastructure to bind the countryside to the centers of political control in the cities. Developing and taxing the export circuit required the building of road networks and relatively dense administrative hierarchies linking urban core and rural periphery. It usually led to the construction of far-flung marketing boards. While these pyramidically organized bureaucracies appropriated farmers’ surpluses, they also linked local notables and “big men” to regimes through the delegation of administrative authority and the distribution of jobs, rents, trading licenses, and such. As classic state-formation scenarios would suggest, the effort to tax private producers forced African regimes to institutionalize political deals with rural power wielders, eventually to offer some material benefits (such as schools, health clinics, perhaps even electricity) in return for political and economic acquiescence and, in the postcolonial period, to grant some measure and semblance of “citizenship” to small farmers. All of these processes found institutional expression in political machines that served to gather votes at election time in the one-party states. At another level, they were manifest in regimes’ attempts to manipulate political identities and “national consciousness” through such party propaganda and mobilization schemes as Harambee (in Kenya), Ujamaa (Tanzania), and animation rurale (Senegal). From the perspective of the 1990s, the enduring contribution of these processes to African state-building is clearer. In parts of Africa organized around smallholder production of export commodities, states have not been carved up into warlords’ fiefdoms that strangle the old political center. Of course it is true that falling world prices for African commodities, internal economic liberalization, state austerity and partial societal disengagement, and the rise of parallel economies have worked to erode established political orders, shorten the reach of the state, and diminish state authority. These pressures have contributed to the reconfiguration of statesociety relations, but the political linkages and economic infrastructure built over the last fifty years to integrate the national political economy—

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diminished and compromised as these linkages may be—continue to exist in the Africa of smallholder export-crop production. Warlordism, by contrast, is certainly both a cause and a symptom of state disintegration. The conditions that permit it to arise appear to be quite different from those just described. Warlordism is sustained by tribute extracted from mining enclaves (as in Liberia and Sierra Leone) and/or from monopoly control over high-rent commercial circuits that serve as conduits for gems, weapons, drugs, food aid, or money laundering (Somalia, parts of Angola, and eastern Zaire). Warlords have little need to control the productive activities—and the hearts and minds—of local populations. The same held true for colonial and postcolonial states in extractive enclave economies: given their very limited economic interest in African subsistence farmers, governments did not invest much in projecting state power into the rural hinterlands. Postcolonial states that have disintegrated in the post-1989 period seem to fall into this category. The most obvious examples are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Zaire.2 In these countries, political and (especially) economic links between urban core and rural periphery seem to have been particularly shallow and tenuous in the first place. Beyond the peasant economies and the extractive-enclave economies are vast reaches of Africa that fit into neither category. What the colonialists called “l’Afrique inutile” (“useless Africa”) seems to have been largely abandoned by the hard-pressed states of the 1980s and 1990s. Populations here disengage by design or default; possibilities for doing so are wider, and the net costs may be lower, than they are in smallholder commodityproducing regions that are more deeply integrated into national political economies. Warlordism of the kind seen in Liberia and Sierra Leone cannot be sustained in such areas, for there are no extractive enclaves or highrent commercial circuits to generate tribute. “Anarchy” is therefore unlikely. On the contrary, what seems to be becoming more obvious is that in the most economically marginal areas, there are local forms of political authority that have long existed without much support or interference from the state.

Reconfigurations of State-Society Relations Almost two decades of economic crisis, together with the social upheavals of the 1980s and 1990s, have permanently altered the African political landscape. The neocolonial era of the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s has clearly come to an end; the years of state expansion, quasi-corporatism, far-flung distributive politics, and aggressive state developmentalism are over. The cases examined in this volume point to redefinitions of political identity and to new forms and modes of popular political action that mark

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the post-1980 period, and to the changes in the broader political economies that provoked these developments or made them possible. They also track offensive and defensive strategies on the part of regimes trying to retrench and reconsolidate their power. A full analysis of these processes would necessarily conclude that they are uneven, contradictory, inconclusive, and indeterminate. Yet it is possible to discern themes and patterns. These can be discussed under three broad headings. Relationships Between Political and Economic Reform Analysts of post–Cold War political and economic liberalization have moved beyond the happy belief that “all good things go together.” No one now assumes that the two processes need be complementary and mutually reinforcing. In sub-Saharan Africa, de facto or de jure political openings were created in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the erosion of state authority and legitimacy, decay of old patronage networks and corporatist structures, regimes’ reduced capacity to buy off or absorb potential opposition groups, political and economic pressure from abroad (France, Britain, the United States, and the World Bank), and/or outright political liberalization. In this new political space, urban social groups organized under prodemocracy banners. They mobilized against undemocratic regimes (as expected), but (unexpectedly) they also attacked the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that were supposed to rein in the government, liberate the economy, and free local producers and investors from the suffocating hand of the state. The tension between political and economic liberalization is richly documented in the literature on structural adjustment in Africa (Bratton and Van de Walle 1992). In this volume, Dwayne Woods’s study of Côte d’Ivoire is a perfect example of the dynamic. Many analysts have focused on how the SAPs have weakened African states as agents of economic development. Many argue that this is happening at precisely the time when the continent most needs “enabled states”—that is, states that are able to follow the lead of successful latedeveloping countries (including those in East and Southeast Asia) in undertaking the kind of long-term planning and investment that will generate economic growth (see, e.g., Stein 1995). Many studies have also shown how externally mandated adjustment programs have hurt the poor and middle classes while sparing the upper echelons of the ruling elite, thus further undermining the legitimacy of regimes and states and fueling political discontent. What is less obvious but starkly revealed in William Reno’s discussion of Sierra Leone (Chapter 6), is how SAP-guided economic restructuring may be helping to stabilize regimes and underwrite the rise of a “new authoritarianism” in many African countries. Tracing these processes is this volume’s most notable contribution to the rich literature on SAP-induced

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change in Africa (see, e.g., Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993; Widner 1994; Bratton and Van de Walle 1997). In the cases described in Part 3, SAPguided economic reforms seem to be helping regimes to reconsolidate power while pruning old patronage networks and the state apparatus itself, thus reconfiguring the state and state-society relations in ways that may enhance chances for state (and regime) survival in the foreseeable future. For better or for worse, economic liberalization necessarily results in the downscaling or narrowing of patronage networks, reduced spending on social services, and reductions in state employment. These changes hurt many people, especially in the urban areas, but they may shore up states and strengthen the positions of top-ranking political elites. Economic liberalization—including the dismantling of agricultural marketing boards and the privatization of parastatals—may shrink the state, but it also may help plug drains on state resources, reconcentrate control over state income and spending, and enhance state autonomy. Privatization can also allow political leaders to distribute valuable assets and lucrative contracts to key allies and clients. When privatization occurs under the alternative scenario of the foreign takeover of productive assets, it can eliminate the power bases of dissident or unruly factions within regimes. SAPs can help to shore up incumbent regimes in even more obvious ways. Enthusiasm on the part of the international financial institutions (IFIs) for political liberalization may have been tempered by the rise of anti-SAP urban movements, but programs aimed at governmental capacity-building have remained prominent parts of the reform packages. Capacity-building includes efforts to centralize control over economic analysis and policymaking in politically insulated “superministries” that operate under direct executive control (and in close collaboration with the IFIs). Most obvious of all is the fact that by undertaking IFI-sanctioned economic reforms, hard-pressed regimes sustain the inflow of external resources. This cash seems to be more easily controlled by those at the top than were the internal resources extracted from agricultural marketing circuits or customs services in the earlier period. In many cases, loans provided by the IFIs have become a financial mainstay of African regimes (e.g., Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal). One of the limits of neoliberal orthodoxy is that it assumes that markets exist everywhere. This assumption is particularly problematic in subSaharan Africa. Political power is often more important than the “invisible hand of the market” in sustaining the commercial circuits and trading networks that integrate national political economies. In the 1980s and 1990s, SAPs have done much to liberalize trade, but in general they have done much less to promote “liberal” strategies of national economic integration (e.g., road building). Thus, in the most weakly integrated national economies, SAP-driven liberalization may well remove the last obstacles to the “disintegration” of the state as a spatially defined economic unit.

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Reconfigurations of Political Society Across most of the continent, fiscal crisis of the state and the deeper problem of economic stagnation have worked to destabilize or even undermine forms and modes of political control that were established in the first decades after World War II. Dismantling of corporatist arrangements, moves toward economic liberalization, narrowing of patronage networks that linked regimes to urban and rural constituencies, and the delegitimation that has accompanied economic failure have clearly forced a reconfiguration of state-society relations. As Leonardo Villalón and Ousmane Kane note in Chapter 9, ethnic groups, religious movements, gender-based associations, occupationally defined organizations, and other groups are being created or reconfigured in response to new political contexts. The first studies of these changes were marked by optimism about the “resurgence of civil society” and its capacity to restrain the African Leviathan. Other assessments are emerging now. The tide of institutional reformism has peaked, and the external creditors have lost much of their zeal for democratization. There have been aborted, failed, and hijacked processes of political liberalization, and even curious cases like that of Senegal, where progress in making the electoral rules fair and neutral seems to have been accompanied by a steady decline in the regime’s legitimacy (Villalón and Kane, Chapter 9). In these contexts, patterns of state-society reconfiguration seem to be more complex and contradictory than the democratization scenarios implied. The chapters that follow capture some of the main dynamics. In 1997, the continuities in African politics seem as striking as the changes. In many contexts, the rebirth of multipartyism has been accompanied by the reemergence of issues and societal cleavages that marked the first rounds of multipartyism in the 1950s and 1960s. Old regional cleavages and ethnic tensions have not gone away. Some of the old political parties have reappeared under new names, and even some of the personalities from the 1960s have made their way back onto the political stage. Ghana and Kenya are two clear examples. Old battles, however, must now be fought under altered circumstances. Ruling parties no longer have, or can no longer afford, some wellworn mechanisms for building urban and rural electoral clienteles: manipulation of state-controlled marketing circuits, distribution of subsidized agricultural inputs, government hiring, infrastructural development, investment in urban housing, or social services spending. Chapters in Part 3 identify a response to this problem that is strikingly similar across contexts. In searching for new bases to legitimate their rule, governments are attempting to redefine political society. In Côte d’Ivoire, the new regime of Henri Konan Bédié has redefined citizenship in a radical narrowing of what it means to be “Ivoirien.” In a country populated in large part through

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twentieth-century in-migration, the Bédié regime is moving to disenfranchise first-generation immigrants and to demote to second-class citizenship all those with only one Ivoirien-born parent. In Senegal, the insistence of Léopold Sédar Senghor on maintaining the outward appearance of a secular state has given way under his successor to efforts to give the regime an Islamist appeal. Villalón and Kane suggest that this represents an attempt to short-circuit newly militant Islamic leaders who have mobilized the political discontent of Senegal’s urban youth. Sita RanchodNilsson focuses on recent efforts under Mugabe to specify the gender ideology that underlies the state-sanctioned social order in Zimbabwe (Chapter 14). Here, the regime redefines a revolutionary political society (in which demands for political inclusion and economic equality for women were legitimate) by reinventing “authentic African cultural values” of patriarchy, thereby narrowing the definition of who may demand justice and equity from the state. The rural populism of Jerry Rawlings in Ghana (analyzed in Chapter 11 by Daniel Green) is an example of state-society restructuring that is driven in part by a regime’s attempt to redefine political society in starkly populist terms. In the case of Uganda, as examined by Ronald Kassimir (Chapter 13), perhaps what Museveni has offered the people is simply law, order, and the promise that political society can be reconstituted in civil terms. Democratization itself is, in part, a regime-led redefinition or reconfiguration of political society. Liberalization necessarily implies a weakening of central government control over the public arena, but (ironically perhaps) it also creates new opportunities for exerting top-down political control. As the cases of Zaire and Rwanda show, liberalization can be understood in part as a high-risk gambit on the part of besieged regimes attempting to recentralize power (see Chapters 5 and 7 in this volume). It turns out that moves toward multipartyism and democratization can draw out and organize the opposition, making a regime’s most visible and effective opponents easier to co-opt and manipulate, or even to repress or eliminate. This seems to describe much of what went on in Zaire following the onset of political reform under Mobutu in 1990. In Rwanda, it now appears that the Habyarimana regime sponsored a process of political liberalization even as it planned a “final solution” to the problem of political dissent. Indeed, the two processes were intertwined, for the regime’s critics in the newly opened public sphere were among the first to be murdered in the violent convulsions of 1994. Rwanda also raises the issue of the new ethnic politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Across the continent, multipartyism has played a role in reinvigorating ethnic politics or bringing it out into the open, just as the apologists for authoritarian rule had predicted. This observation simply begs questions, however, for the analytic task now is to understand the sources, meanings, and potential of ethnicity-based political mobilization in the

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current context. The element of pure opportunism on the part of politicians remains obvious and striking. Intensified competition for control of the state apparatus is quite likely to drive political entrepreneurs to use any means at their disposal to win. Few regimes can finance the “politics of distribution” that fused together ethnic coalitions and helped to regulate conflict in the earlier period. The fact that whipping up ethnic sentiment and xenophobia does not require large cash outlays makes it even more attractive as a mobilization strategy, as Konan Bédié’s campaign tactics in Côte d’Ivoire show us. Daniel arap Moi has employed the same tactics in Kenya. Beyond this, however, it is clear that ethnic and ethnoregional politics can be fueled at the grassroots by economic decline, reductions in government spending, shrinking resource bases (including land shortages), and environmental degradation, all of which can heighten social tensions and competition for resources at the local level. This is clearly going on in western Côte d’Ivoire and in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Ethnic conflict in Rwanda was also fueled by grassroots tensions and economic strains, but the genocide was the product of ruthless top-down manipulations on the part of politicians who were threatened by democratization and war. There may be a new communal politics born of what Naomi Chazan (1988b) called “societal disengagement,” manifest in everything from secessionist movements to the quotidian attempts of some localities to cope with the fact that the authorities in the capital cities are no longer providing even the minimal services of government. In such cases it is not surprising that ethnicity or what perhaps should be called “the memory of a communal sphere” provides an ideology—and even operating procedures—for attempts to constitute an alternative political order. Basing political order on reinvented “primordial ties” does, however, imply some sort of political or physical enforcement of an insider-outsider distinction. As Anna Simons writes in Chapter 4, competing moral economies can be very exclusionary; in Somalia, distrust and rumors—and violence— abound. In modern Africa, “post-Westphalian” routes to polity-building may not promise much democracy or stability. Talk of religion, ethnicity, and lineage in African politics in the 1990s—as in the chapters here by Villalón and Kane, Kassimir, Longman, Simons, Forrest, and Reno—signals a shift in the analysis of current reconfigurations away from an easy optimism about the democratic potential of African civil society. Collectively, these chapters highlight the resurgence and political potential of identity-defined forms of associational life (as opposed to the occupationally based groups that are prominent in the classic civil society models), and also show that the political roles of groups so mobilized can be extremely malleable, contradictory, and even antidemocratic. There is, for example, no reason to assume that the democratic potential of Senegal’s “Moustarchidine” movement, based in the volatile social stratum of poor and marginally employed young urban

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males, is high. In Rwanda, Catholic identity and “associational life”—usually viewed as conservative, order-enhancing social forces—were mobilized in the service of a murderous regime. Ronald Kassimir’s analysis of politics in Uganda (Chapter 13) is another sober assessment of the democratization potential of organized religious groups in civil society. Relationships within the Catholic Church are hierarchical and deeply paternalistic, and Church officials’ overarching concern in the current context seems to be to assert the status quo in internal relations of authority. While Church officials have been largely silent about major political events, Church followers seem to approach both politics and religion strategically in efforts to diversify their commitments over a range of sources of social support. Political rationality in this context may not be very conducive to interest-group pluralism. Meanwhile, however, the analysis of Kenya presented here does reinforce the positive association between democratization and civil society. Maria Nzomo tracks the democratic, proreform women’s movement in Kenya. Nzomo provides an example of a new, gender-based process of politicization that has also been noticed in Zambia, Uganda, and elsewhere. Political liberalization itself goes far in explaining the new prominence of women’s movements that advance explicitly political demands (especially demands for political inclusion and legal reform) in subSaharan Africa. Important vehicles for these demands have been newly formed political parties and lobby groups that advance female candidates for elected office. One longer-term contributing factor has been the development of what Dwayne Woods (1995) has called “transnational civil society.” Since the late 1970s, financial and logistical support from the United Nations, foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and bilateral aid agencies has aided the formation and institutionalization of women’s interest groups in Africa. Meanwhile, transnational agencies have provided some political cover by pressuring African governments to accept the claims of women’s associations and lobby groups as legitimate. To assess the full significance of the new women’s associations and to place them in broader political context, it will be necessary to know more about their sources of financial support, their demographic and sociological bases, and their relationships to other political forces. Reconfigurations of Political Space Pessimism about the prognosis for the postcolonial African state has led some observers to envision radical alternatives. As Joshua Forrest suggests in his discussion of “state inversion” in Chapter 3, maybe Hobbes was wrong in saying that we had to choose between the state and the state of nature: perhaps there is a “post-state” politics that would involve a moreor-less complete reconfiguration of African political space. This line of

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thinking focuses on the territorial dimension of state power, suggesting that a radically decentralized political order could be forged on the basis of existing, local-level structures of political authority and economic exchange. Political power reconfigured along these lines would be constituted on the basis of a myriad of decentralized and locally autonomous forms of government that are closer to “the people.” Forrest suggests that alliance between these units could create hybrid, empire-like systems of decentralized rule. Timothy Longman makes the case for this political vision in Chapter 5. There is certainly something appealing about it. Yet state formation (disintegration, reformation, reconfiguration) is a process driven by power struggles within societies. William Reno’s work (Chapter 6) forces us to confront the fact that post-state politics in Africa in the twenty-first century is as likely to be unstable, violent, and predatory as it is to be stable and peaceful. Anna Simons’s study of fragmented and decentralized politics in Somalia (Chapter 4) reinforces the pessimism. Meanwhile, when we move beyond the cases of state disintegration and into the Africa of “empirical states,” it seems romantic to talk of post-state politics. Control over state power and the coercive apparatus of government still lies in the capital cities. The notion of post-state politics may, however, tap into a phenomenon that is more general and of great potential consequence for sub-Saharan African politics. Inadvertently, it may draw attention to one of the core contradictions in African political economies—the one that pits the countryside against the cities. It is obvious that the rural areas have been exploited or neglected in order to build the cities. It is possible to understand some of the state disintegrations in terms of this relationship—either as a sort of revenge of the periphery (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zaire), or as the periphery’s rebellion and the ongoing war of the center against it. In Africa’s relatively robust states, a strangely similar rural-urban dynamic is evident in the new electoral battles of the 1990s. In Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya, regimes have fallen back on relatively secure rural electoral bases when they have come under siege from urban opposition movements (Villalón 1994a; Fauré 1993; Bratton 1992; Jeffries and Thomas 1993). There is something ironic about this, given the decades of state exploitation of the countryside to fund consumption and investment in the cities. Internal and external economic constraints have made it extremely difficult to sustain the traditional urban constituencies in the time-tested way—that is, through state spending. Now, important elements of the so-called bureaucratic bourgeoisies that were created by the state itself, and strategic factions of middle classes born of the (relatively) prosperous 1960s and 1970s, are found at the forefront of opposition and prodemocracy movements. Yet by increasing the stakes and political salience of the electoral process, the openings to

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multipartyism have benefited some sitting regimes in an unexpected way: competitive elections have allowed ruling parties to return to the rural areas for a legitimizing electoral mandate (as many of them had originally, in the 1950s), thereby offsetting the weight of critics in the cities. Ghana may once again be the continent’s political vanguard and prototype. Jerry Rawlings has used state power to engineer an urban-to-rural shift in the geographic and social locus of the regime’s political base, as Daniel Green shows in Chapter 11. Noting the existence of urban-rural conflicts of interest is nothing new in African studies. What may be new is the increasing political visibility of this cleavage, its potential salience in the ongoing reconfigurations of state-society relations, and what it reveals about the hidden structures of politics in postcolonial Africa. There is no clear causal relationship between the economic effects of the structural adjustment programs and the continuing political strength in the rural areas of many long-standing regimes. SAPs arguably do more to hurt rural electoral machines (through the dismantling of marketing boards, elimination of input subsidies—including subsidized farm credits—and social service cutbacks) than they do to help ruling parties win rural votes (thanks to profarmer policy reforms, including better producer prices and currency devaluations). What is clear is that across most of the continent, the weakening of patronage-driven rural political machines has not unleashed widespread antiregime (prodemocracy?) agitation in the countryside, in spite of the fact that peasants were the most systematically oppressed and exploited under the old order. Even in once-prosperous Côte d’Ivoire, the slashing of artificially high coffee and cocoa producer prices after 1990 did not produce regime-threatening waves of rural protest. The pattern may provide support for the argument advanced at the beginning of this chapter. It seems to suggest that the political hegemony of many of Africa’s empirical states is more deeply entrenched, and more institutionalized, in rural (peasant) society than most analysts of postcolonial politics have realized. The realities of urban bias and state exploitation of peasantries that featured so prominently in analyses of the postcolonial state obscured the extent to which the internal political and economic powers of these regimes were rooted in rural acquiescence, and in alliances with local/regional power brokers who cultivated their own political strongholds at the grassroots. The outcomes of multiparty elections held in the 1990s suggest that alliances between incumbents and local authorities continue to be salient, in spite of the dismantling of many of the state’s most obvious institutional and material means of co-optation and incorporation. My argument is that this should be understood as evidence of relatively successful state building. In the Africa of peasant commodity production, many regimes were rather successful at extending their power into the rural areas by harnessing the authority of local-level notables to that of

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the state. The localized and personalized forms of power that existed in peasant societies—where land and labor are not full commodities, and where authority-based controls and social networks, rather than full market relations, mediate access to productive resources—articulated easily with the personalized and hierarchical power structures of the patrimonial state (see Boone 1992; 1994). Success at state building can be measured by the extent to which these linkages became structural attributes of rural society—that is, to the extent that local authorities’ power became more heavily dependent not just upon the flow of patronage resources from the state, but also upon the maintenance and extension of the state’s hegemony in the rural areas.3 The more successful the process of state building has been, the less interest established rural notables are likely to have in poststate politics. Survival strategies of incumbent regimes and established provincial/ rural notables are thus likely to dovetail and be complementary, counterintuitive as it may be to see rural voters lining up behind regimes that taxed them so heavily and ensured their political marginalization. After four decades of political and economic urban bias, this would indeed appear to be a partial reconfiguration of state-society relations, or a retrenchment of the social bases of regimes. An understanding of the reconfiguration process that hinges on urban-rural tensions would not be inconsistent with analyses that point to the rise of a new authoritarianism in African politics, to the repression of potentially more liberal urban social groups, and to the resurgence of regimes’ attempts to employ political ideologies other than developmentalism (including ethnoregional chauvinisms, religious world views, and appeals to cultural authenticity) to legitimate their rule. Many states may have deeper empirical roots than the Jackson-Rosberg thesis suggests. As the following chapters show, postmortems on the African state are still premature.

Notes 1. In Warlord Politics and African States (forthcoming), William Reno argues that Zaire and Liberia provide examples of the creation of new political authorities that are not states, yet are capable of “sovereign” diplomacy in the international state system. That the Westphalian state system now hosts these new entities—the stateless, clan-based minisystems—raises broader theoretical issues about the survival of dissimilar state units in the international system. 2. Since the oil boom, it seems that Nigeria’s entire political economy has moved steadily toward that of the older extractive enclaves. Thanks to William Reno for pointing out this comparison. 3. I would say that this is the story told in Ensminger 1992.

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Senegal: The Crisis of Democracy and the Emergence of an Islamic Opposition LEONARDO A. VILLALÓN

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OUSMANE K ANE

On 13 February 1993, in the middle of Senegal’s heated presidential campaign and two weeks before the election was to be held, Moustapha Sy, a young marabout (leader) of one of the major Muslim Sufi orders of the country, delivered a long and scathing attack on incumbent president Abdou Diouf at a public meeting in the city of Thiès of the mass youth organization the marabout headed, the Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty (loosely translated as “Movement of Those Who Seek the Straight Path”). The event provoked a minor uproar in the campaign as Sy’s attack immediately caught the attention of much of the urban population, and especially youth. Copies of cassette tapes of the long and rambling speech proliferated overnight and were sold discreetly in Dakar’s Sandaga marketplace. In urban areas groups of young people gathered around tape players to listen to the speech and discuss the scandalous allegations made about the president. The incident infuriated Abdou Diouf, and it embarrassed members of the important Sy maraboutic family. Following the attack the official government daily, Le Soleil, published a call for the family’s disciples to attend noon prayers at the family’s home seat of Tivaouane the following Friday, where “an important announcement” was to be made. The sermon, delivered by Abdoul Aziz Sy Junior, Moustapha’s uncle, attempted to distance the family from the attack and was broadcast on state radio and television.1 The incident consolidated a schism along the lines of a long-simmering tension within the maraboutic family. More importantly, the young marabout’s attack on the president began a period of hostile relations between his movement and the government, a hostility that escalated following Diouf’s reelection. In May 1993 Sy was arrested, along with several major opposition leaders, for questioning related to the assassination of the widely respected jurist Babacar Sèye, vice president of the Constitutional Council, which was charged with announcing the final results of the legislative elections of that month. 2 Following his release, Sy continued to 143

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agitate against the government; by November he was again under arrest for “threats to public order,” and in January 1994 he was condemned to a year in jail. On 16 February 1994, at a public rally of the Coordination des Forces Démocratiques (CFD), the alliance of opposition groups that had been formed to contest the official results of the 1993 elections, Moustapha Sy’s brother was among those to address the crowd. His call for action rather than words was taken up by members of the Moustarchidine movement, and as the opposition leaders of the CFD lost control, the rally disintegrated into widespread rioting. By the time order was reestablished, six policemen had been killed, and millions of dollars of damage had been done by the mostly young rioters. The next day, just over a year after Moustapha Sy’s initial attack on Diouf, Minister of the Interior Djibo Kâ announced the “prohibition of all activities throughout the country of the illicit, illegal movement of the Moustarchidine wal Moustarchidaty” (Jeune Afrique 1729, 24 February–2 March 1994). The Moustarchidine movement continued to operate despite this official prohibition, its close ties with the opposition granting it a significant measure of influence as an arbiter in the search for a resolution to the ongoing difficulties of Senegalese democracy. Over the course of the following year, most notably via a series of public conferences given by Moustapha Sy’s father, Cheikh Tidiane Sy, the position of the Moustarchidine was gradually redefined. In not contesting the March 1995 entry of its political allies, the most significant of the opposition leaders, into the government, the Moustarchidine signaled its tacit withdrawal from its twoyear effort to topple the regime, and by late 1996 it appeared to have refound an accommodation—though an uneasy one—with the government of Abdou Diouf. But via the carefully orchestrated and massive attendance at Cheikh Tidiane’s speeches and the tone he struck there, it also demonstrated its capacity and willingness to occupy the forefront of societal challenges to state power, and its insistence on playing a central role in the ongoing redefinition of the Senegalese state’s relations with its society in the 1990s. Given in particular that it followed an earlier period of very close and publicly warm relations between Moustapha Sy and President Abdou Diouf, the radicalization of the Moustarchidine movement is a puzzling development in Senegalese politics. After Diouf’s reelection in 1988, the young marabout had made frequent public appearances with the president, who was prone to address Sy publicly in such terms as “my dear Moustapha, my dear son.” 3 The politicization of the movement is even more puzzling since, in a break with a long tradition of religious involvement in Senegalese electoral campaigns, the 1993 campaign was otherwise marked by the silence of the country’s major marabouts on political issues. The emergence of this religious opposition movement appears to signal a significant development in Senegalese politics. An analysis of the movement is thus of interest for what it reveals about: (1) the state of the muchvaunted Senegalese model of democracy and the nature of the political

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struggle that brought it under fire, and (2) the evolving nature of maraboutic political involvement in Senegal in the context of the ongoing crisis of regime legitimacy. More broadly, the case has implications for understanding the multifaceted nature of the processes of political change and the reconfiguration of state-society relations in Africa in the critical years of the early 1990s. State-society relations on the continent are evolving and being redefined in part as a response to the efforts at state restructuring that virtually all countries have undertaken in the 1990s, but these are also being shaped by the array of new social actors that are emerging in response to those restructuring efforts. As African states found themselves under pressure from a variety of sources in the early 1990, they have been obliged to undertake reforms in state structures, with consequences for the established patterns of relations with their societies. These same conditions have transformed the political opportunities open to social actors, and consequently a variety of new groups have emerged and others have transformed themselves in response to these opportunities. The events of the 1990s, in Senegal as elsewhere on the continent, and the ways in which the contradictions and tensions that result are resolved, will clearly be critical in determining the longer-term prognosis for state power and relations with society. The case of the Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty provides a good example of the dynamic nature of these processes. In what follows, therefore, we will first consider the nature of the political crisis that has called into question the established patterns of state authority in Senegal. We then turn to an examination of the nature of the social (and especially religious) transformations underway in the 1990s, before considering the interaction of these two phenomena in terms of the implications for the ongoing reconfiguration of state-society relations in Senegal. As we will see, Senegal has been among the strongest states in postcolonial Africa, and one that has long laid claim to a democratic political system. Yet, as elsewhere on the continent, the Senegalese regime found itself under both domestic and international pressures for change starting in the late 1980s. And while the regime appears to have weathered the pressures of this “critical juncture” with only modest apparent change, important modifications in the pattern of relations with the most important social groups of the country—the Muslim Sufi orders—signal a shift that is certain to define the longer-term legacy of this period.

The Critical Juncture in Senegal: Democracy and the Crisis of Legitimacy As the majority of African regimes worked to consolidate single-party rule in the mid-1970s, Senegal moved precisely in the opposite direction, gradually resuscitating a multiparty system and reestablishing at least the

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institutional framework of a democracy. This process, accomplished while maintaining a high degree of political stability, did much to enhance Senegal’s image as one of the rare functioning “democracies” on the continent. Thus some two decades after independence Donal Cruise O’Brien (1978, 187) could describe the country as “a quite remarkable success story,” and almost a decade later Robert Fatton (1987) would entitle his account of Senegal’s political evolution “The Making of a Liberal Democracy.”4 These accolades are certainly not without foundation, but Senegalese democracy has also had its limitations. Indeed the shortcomings of the system have led one of the foremost students of the country to prefer the label of “semidemocracy” (Coulon 1988). In many respects the Senegalese political system might be compared to Mexico, where a dominant party has been able to pursue the gradual liberalization of the system while maintaining a hegemonic position via an extensive network of patronage ties. As in Mexico, Senegal has experienced the regular organization of at least partially free elections without a significant threat to the ruling party’s hold on power. Yet, also as in Mexico, the economic decline of the 1980s gradually eroded the stability of the system and called into question its continued viability. For almost two decades Senegalese democratization proceeded in a series of incremental stages; the ruling Parti Socialiste (PS)5 gradually liberalized aspects of the system while holding back from granting the opposition a fully level playing field. This incremental process of liberalization has had two results: (1) the emergence of a bipolar political system, in which the government has been regularly pitted against a united opposition; and (2) the systematic radicalization of that opposition as each promise of a new possibility of gaining power has been denied. With each reform, the expectations of opposition victory have been raised, and the regular periodic frustration of those expectations has consequently led to an escalation of demands and critiques of the system. The period of de facto single-party rule that begun in 1963, following the banning or co-optation of all opposition parties, was brought to an end with the carefully orchestrated constitutional reforms of 1976. Those reforms prescribed a three-party system for the country, to which a fourth was soon added, and thus set the stage for a return to contested elections. While Senghor and his party managed to win over 80 percent of the vote in the elections of 1978, the eighteen (of 100) legislative seats won by his opponents gave the country its first official opposition since 1963. Despite their limitations, the 1978 elections were thus a clear watershed in the move back to a more competitive system. For the first time since 1963, the opposition was able to contest the PS’s hold on power and begin to erode the PS monopoly, if not its dominance. These elections, however, also sketched out the main lines of subsequent Senegalese electoral battles. While numerous parties have officially contested each election, the constant

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standard-bearer of the opposition has been the economist and lawyer Abdoulaye Wade and his Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS). At five-year intervals, in 1978, 1983, 1988, and 1993, Wade has opposed the incumbent president (first Senghor and then his hand-picked successor, Abdou Diouf) in a highly charged atmosphere, loudly decrying PS manipulation of the system while nevertheless insisting on the inevitability of his victory, and then challenged the official results amidst bitter allegations of fraud following an official announcement of PS victory. The persistent slogan and rallying cry of each of Wade’s campaigns has been the call for sopi, “change” in the Senegalese lingua franca, Wolof. Change, in fact, has been the only concrete demand, and the only substantive promise, of the PDS. And each election has been successfully cast by the PDS, at least in the perception of a wide spectrum of its urban constituents, as a test of the question, “Is sopi now possible?” The question is seen, quite rightly, as a litmus test of how democratic the system is; by definition a democracy must include the possibility for change. The difficulty, however, is that the question of whether it is possible can only be answered unequivocally in the affirmative if it in fact occurs. And each nonoccurrence has been loudly proclaimed by Wade and the PDS to be incontrovertible evidence of a lack of democracy, the direct result of the refusal of the ruling party to refrain from manipulation of the process and commit itself firmly to the principles of democratic elections. As the economic decline of the 1980s fed growing dissatisfaction with the ruling party, providing the opposition with a particularly responsive audience in urban areas, popular perception of both the desirability and the potential for change grew steadily. When the official results of the 1983 elections gave Diouf the victory with 83.5 percent of the vote, significant popular sentiment sided with the opposition, which cried fraud and refused to take their seats in the National Assembly (Cruise O’Brien 1983a, 1983b). The continued deterioration in the country’s economic situation and the consequent increase in social unrest of the middle years of that decade, along with the relative failure of several popular initiatives launched by Diouf in the wake of the 1983 elections, weakened the incumbent president’s position, and by 1988 the opposition was ready to mount its most significant and vocal assault against PS dominance to date. Both Wade’s PDS and much of the urban population seemed sincerely to believe in the inevitability of a PS loss in the elections of that year. Thus when Diouf and the PS were once again declared the victors, the opposition vehemently challenged the official results and sparked a wave of social protests that plunged the country into its most severe postindependence political crisis since the attempted coup of 1962 (Young and Kanté 1992). What distinguished the 1988 elections from previous ones was the willingness and capability of the opposition in a situation of economic

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hardship and urban discontent to challenge the official results on the streets. During the campaign several incidents had already pointed to the explosiveness of the situation. The PDS demonstrated—and apparently cultivated—its ability to draw crowds of disaffected urban youth, many of them too young to vote, to massive rallies. In this context Dakar and other major urban areas were swept up in a wave of violence and destruction immediately following the announcement of partial “preliminary” results giving Diouf a clear lead on the night of election day. The government responded by declaring a state of emergency and imposing a curfew, which was to last some three months, and by arresting, trying, and convicting Abdoulaye Wade and other leaders of the opposition for their alleged role in inciting the violence. Although they were quickly granted amnesty and the government was gradually able to regain effective control, the tense situation in the country dragged on as the opposition sustained its critiques of the elections and persisted in its attacks against the PS. Importantly, this severe crisis in Senegal coincided with the critical period of regime failures and the consequent rise of popular demands for democratic restructuring that produced the wave of political transformations across the continent. In much of francophone Africa, pressures for democratization took the form of demands for a “national conference,” a forum for political restructuring that had proven extraordinarily successful in Benin’s political transition (Robinson 1994; Heilbrunn 1993). In a context of persistent social unrest due to the perceived democratic failings of the system, and with the example of reform and political transitions in several neighboring countries, the Senegalese political elite found themselves under intense pressure either to alter substantially the rules of the political game or to gamble on the unpredictable outcome of a national conference. Efforts to co-opt the opposition or to tinker with aspects of the system—two methods that had served the PS well for three decades—proved inadequate, and as the political situation of the country degenerated it gradually became apparent that only further and substantive democratization could save Senegalese democracy. Given the intensity of the crisis domestically and the increased pressures of the transformed international context, the Senegalese regime faced an imperative of reconfiguration. Whether out of conviction or necessity, early in 1991 the government undertook a series of initiatives and compromises intended to move Senegal in this direction. With the participation of Abdoulaye Wade and other opposition leaders, who were brought into the government (where they were to serve until resigning in October 1992 to prepare for the 1993 elections), a series of reforms were announced in an effort to deal with this threat to the system. As one Senegalese observer of this process noted, these reforms “were closely tied to the two electoral disputes of 1983 and 1988 and to even more immediate and no less sensitive social and economic problems with, it is worth remembering, Senegalese democracy

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fundamentally at stake” (Traoré 1991, 8). The most significant of the eventual reforms was certainly the elaboration of a new and consensual electoral code, the first to be accepted by all parties since the restoration of a multiparty system in the mid-1970s. The old code had gradually emerged as the focus of opposition critiques of the system, widely decried as the proof of its undemocratic nature, and the adoption of a new code—incorporating the opposition’s demands virtually intact6—thus immediately raised expectations of a major transformation in Senegalese politics. “Real” democracy, by which was meant breaking the PS monopoly on power, now seemed a realizable possibility for the opposition. The presidential elections of 21 February 1993, to be followed by legislative elections on 9 May, thus provided the first test of how successful this effort to “democratize a democracy” had been. While the campaign was marked by opposition protests that the PS was attempting to manipulate the process, it was characterized principally by opposition insistence that the new electoral code, if respected, would inevitably result in a PS defeat. Only fraud, the opposition insisted, could deprive them of victory this time. In the tense social atmosphere preceding the elections, many in Senegal braced themselves for an outburst of violence should Diouf be declared the winner. That declaration, however, was long in coming. Hampered by what one independent newspaper labeled “provisions so detailed as to be trifling” (Wal Fadjri, 15 March 1993), the process specified by the new code for tabulating electoral results proved a major stumbling block. As the population awaited the announcement of the results, squabbling among the parties and disarray among the judicial institutions charged with overseeing the process provoked delay after delay in the announcement of results. By the time Diouf’s victory was finally announced three weeks after the election, the most pronounced sentiment among the population was one of widespread disenchantment and an increased lack of confidence in the democratic system. The legitimation of the Senegalese political system that had been expected to follow these elections, the first held under a revised code that all parties in the country had insisted was as perfectly democratic as possible, was clearly not forthcoming. And as argued by a well-known Senegalese academic in noting the high degree of distrust and suspicion in the public mood before the election, popular skepticism centered on the results and not the process. A PS victory, he noted, would be perceived by important sectors of the population as fraudulent, in and of itself, regardless of the process by which it was achieved.7 Thus ironically the 1993 elections, rather than restoring the eroded legitimacy of the Senegalese political system, in this respect only served to deepen its crisis of legitimacy. While this sentiment was most clearly pronounced among Senegal’s urban population, and in particular among younger urban dwellers, the extent of abstention in the electoral process indicates that the disenchantment is in fact

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a widespread phenomenon. Diouf received some 58.4 percent of the vote in the elections, with just over 51 percent of registered voters participating; he was thus elected president by only somewhat more than a quarter of registered voters. Given the highly charged atmosphere of the campaign, and the extent of PS organization in getting out their voters, the vast majority of the remaining registered voters clearly did not support Diouf, having either voted against him or failed to vote at all. And among those who had not registered, certainly very few could be counted as Diouf supporters.8 While there are no statistics available on the breakdown of the vote by age group, observers of the election concur that young voters in particular failed to participate, this despite the lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen years by the new electoral code. Moreover, as one observer points out, the failure of urban youth to vote in 1993 came despite high levels of politicization, a keen interest in the results, and an extreme hostility to Diouf’s reelection (Gérard 1993). Thus while the opposition, and the PDS in particular, won a majority of the vote in many major urban areas, the extent of their victory is not fully indicative of the support they command there. While many young urban dwellers proved more than willing to join public demonstrations demanding Diouf’s ouster, they failed to use the ballot box to attempt to achieve this end, thus clearly demonstrating a lack of confidence in the ability of the democratic system to produce the changes many so fervently desire. In January 1994 the social crisis in Senegal worsened abruptly following the devaluation of the CFA franc, which cut the purchasing power of salaries in half and forced further austerity on an urban population already living at the margins. While the decision to devalue was ultimately made by the French, President Diouf—who had publicly denied rumors that a devaluation was imminent—was widely blamed for his apparent acquiescence to this decision. This development clearly added to the potential for public unrest, and certainly contributed to the February riots that provoked the ban on the Moustarchidine and the arrest of Abdoulaye Wade. In response, Diouf’s government took a series of initiatives intended to maintain its control following the devaluation, thus further tarnishing the claims of a fully democratized system. In January the PScontrolled National Assembly voted the president the right to legislate by decree on economic matters for a period of six months, and then promptly recessed itself, thus depriving the opposition the forum normally provided by televised legislative debates. In addition, public meetings and rallies were regularly forbidden as the government sought to curtail the activities of both the opposition and the Moustarchidine movement. Despite this crackdown, however, the Moustarchidine and Moustapha Sy himself continued to agitate and to organize challenges to the regime. By contrast, Abdoulaye Wade, although he also continued to criticize the

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regime publicly, gradually repositioned himself for a compromise with Abdou Diouf. In September, Wade, released from prison a few months earlier, was officially absolved by a court finding of any responsibility in either the Sèye murder or the February riots. And by the end of the year, reports circulated about negotiations underway between Diouf and Wade. After several months of speculation in the press about the conditions for the opposition’s (re)entry into the government, this finally occurred with the governmental reshuffling of 15 March 1995. As had happened with previous elections, then, the period following the 1993 elections saw continuous protests of fraud by the opposition, the imprisonment on various pretexts of Wade and other opposition leaders in a context of continued social unrest, and then the gradual search for a compromise between government and opposition. The dynamics of this process, however, seem to have been modified in the post-1993 period by several factors. The failure of the opposition to capitalize on the electoral reforms of 1991 and their repeated willingness to compromise produced a popular disenchantment that began to erode the support for Wade and the PDS. Moreover, the direct involvement of Moustapha Sy, a putative religious rather than political figure, who (at least initially) demonstrated far less willingness to compromise, shifted the dynamics of the situation. Having successfully staked a claim to the leadership of societal (and especially young and urban) resistance to the state, the Moustarchidine appropriated a significant portion of the terrain that has been traditionally occupied by secular opposition parties in Senegal. By seizing the opportunity provided by the crisis of democracy, Sy’s movement thus also signaled a shift in the pattern of religious involvement in Senegalese politics. While the immediately apparent effects of this shift were limited, its longer-term implications seem destined to be a significant legacy of the critical period of the early 1990s.

Islam and Politics in Senegal: Maraboutic Power and Its Limits Far more than anywhere else on the continent, Senegalese Islam is overwhelmingly Sufi in orientation. The results of the 1988 census in the country show some 94 percent of the population declaring themselves Muslim, with all but about 5 percent of Senegalese Muslims claiming allegiance to the three major Sufi orders in the country. Two of these—the indigenous Mouride order and the numerically larger but more divided Tijaniyya—far outstrip the third-place Qadiriyya in demographic importance.9 Sufism is usually characterized as the “mystical” trend within Islam, and its major defining characteristic is the emphasis on the importance of shaykhs or religious guides (known as marabouts in francophone Africa),

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who initiate disciples into the rituals and secrets of an order and provide guidance and advice on religious matters. In Senegal, the relation of dependence on a maraboutic guide has been extended well into the secular domain, and relations with a marabout are central components of most people’s strategies for advancement, and even survival. Despite a strong ideological model stressing submission to maraboutic authority, however, and although it is undeniable that marabouts carry great weight in many domains, it is also important to note that their clout is neither unlimited nor guaranteed. The maintenance of maraboutic status requires constant attention to legitimating and reinforcing the bases of that status among disciples. A marabout’s position is theoretically based on reputation; demonstrated piety, sanctity, and metaphysical powers allow a marabout to recruit a following, and the size of that following determines the importance of the marabout. In the reality of contemporary Senegal, however, heredity is a far more important determinant of maraboutic status. The sons and grandsons of the nineteenth-century founders of the major maraboutic lineages of the country comprise virtually all of the most important marabouts in Senegal today. Within each of these holy lineages, a son or grandson of the founder bears the title of xalifa (caliph, successor), while a host of other descendants hold positions of varying degrees of power and authority. The large number of descendants, however, has meant an everincreasing number of claimants to maraboutic authority with each generation, a fact with the potential to change the character of maraboutic relations over time. While the Mouride order has to date maintained the cohesiveness of the lineage around the figure of the xalifa in the city of Touba, leadership of the more numerous Tijaniyya is divided among several maraboutic families. Of these the most important are the Sy family of Tivaouane, from which Moustapha Sy is descended, and the Niasse family of Kaolack. The generally collaborative relations between the Senegalese state and the major maraboutic lineages throughout the postcolonial period have been the focus of a fair amount of study, with the implications of these relations for Senegalese democracy being the subject of some contention (Behrman 1970; Coulon 1981; Cruise O’Brien 1971 and 1975, Villalón 1995). The French anthropologist Jean Copans has depicted the Mouride order as an “infernal machine” for its role in the elaboration of an ideological superstructure that permits the exploitation of its peasant disciples by an extractive state. The Sufi orders, in this view, make possible a democratic facade that masks the real structures of exploitation on which the Senegalese system is based (Copans 1980). At the other extreme, noting the “qualified but effective defence of peasant interests against governmental economic hegemony” that has characterized the order at times, Donal Cruise O’Brien has gone so far as to argue that the Mourides “may

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be asserting a claim to recognition as Africa’s first autonomous peasant trade union” (Cruise O’Brien 1979, 226; see also Cruise O’Brien 1986). The orders, for Cruise O’Brien, clearly introduce an important degree of substantive democracy into the Senegalese political system. The relative validity of these competing interpretations hinges in large part on the nature of the ties that unite marabouts and their followers. Most observers of Senegalese politics, noting the oft-cited classic Sufi exhortation to disciples to place themselves in the hands of their marabouts “like corpses in the hands of the undertakers,” have assumed a more-or-less blind submission of disciples to maraboutic dictates. As we have noted above, however, while it is undeniably true that people give great weight to maraboutic pronouncements, this authority is not without its limits. There are, first of all, many marabouts, even within a given lineage, and this number continues to increase with each generation. In addition, faced with these multiple alternatives, a real potential exists for a realignment of maraboutic affiliation; whether out of disenchantment with an existing relationship or the greater appeal of another, disciples may change marabouts, even across orders, and certainly within families. While a maraboutic guide is of central importance to Senegalese Muslims; a large and committed following is a sine qua non of maraboutic status in Senegal. There is an important element, therefore, of maraboutic competition for followers, and marabouts must in turn listen carefully if they are to retain their clientele (see Villalón 1995, 115–148). Also important to understanding the political impact of the Sufi orders in Senegal is the institution of the daaira, the uniquely Senegalese contribution to Sufism that has evolved as the central institution of religious organization in the country. Daairas are comprised of disciples of a single marabout or order, who come together voluntarily for a variety of reasons. Like many other voluntary associations in Africa, daairas serve social and mutual aid purposes, frequently engaging in such activities as raising funds to help one of their members meet the expenses of life-cycle ceremonies. While they are almost always locally organized by their members and function rather autonomously, however, daairas also claim allegiance to a maraboutic guide, and are at least nominally at his service. This relationship may at times involve real and substantive service, including the transfer of resources in cash or in kind. Most importantly, in the absence of a possibility of a personalized relationship, daairas articulate the link between individual disciples and the major marabouts of the country; membership in a daaira allows an individual to participate directly in the major ceremonies and activities of the maraboutic sponsor. Largely due to the institution of the daaira, therefore, the major marabouts in Senegal find themselves at the center of well-organized social networks. The potential political impact of this system was evident from its emergence in the colonial period, and the pattern of relations

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between the secular and the religious authorities gradually elaborated by the French was inherited largely intact by the independent state. As we have noted, the relationship has historically been a collaborative one, and in the postcolonial period it has been marked by a high degree of maraboutic support for the ruling party, with varying degrees of explicitness. It is important to note, however, that this has by no means been invariable; marabouts can and have challenged the state under conditions where their interests have seemed threatened. In electoral politics, however, maraboutic support for the ruling party and the incumbent president has been the norm, with successive Mouride xalifas in particular pronouncing an ndigal, a religious order or instruction, directing the faithful on how to vote. The use of the ndigal has earned the marabouts, and especially the Mourides, a reputation as king-makers among many students of Senegal. While maraboutic orders have certainly played a role in maintaining the ruling party in power, however, this should not be overstated. As we have seen, the prospects for any real alternation in power have been rather slim for most of Senegalese independent history. An instruction to vote for a government that is unlikely to relinquish power in any case, and with which the marabouts must subsequently continue to deal, can be seen as a simple rational calculation, particularly if it allows the marabout a basis for subsequent claims against the government. From this perspective, therefore, it should not be surprising if the use of the ndigal has gradually evolved with the transformations in the context of Senegalese politics. We have seen, in fact, that as the economic and political situation of the country has degenerated, explicit political pronouncements have become both riskier and of questionable utility for marabouts. Under highly charged and politicized circumstances, individuals find themselves less prone to heed the advice of religious leaders, and having opted to ignore or go against unwanted advice once, the credibility of maraboutic authority is clearly eroded. Additionally, a marabout whose ability to deliver the vote of his disciples is called into question finds his leverage with the state necessarily reduced accordingly. Both of these outcomes became increasingly likely in Senegal over the course of the 1980s; with increased urbanization, a new generation raised in urban areas with fewer affective ties to the maraboutic system found itself more willing to ignore the voice of religious instructions. The clearest indication that the limits of maraboutic ability to influence electoral outcomes were being reached came with the 1988 elections. Although the Mouride xalifa issued an explicit ndigal in that year, informing all Mouride faithful that anything other than a vote for Abdou Diouf would be a “betrayal” of the order’s founder, it appears rather clear that the order was widely ignored, even in the xalifa’s own holy city of Touba.10 Following the election, the widespread belief in Senegal that the xalifa had been hurt by attempting to order disciples to undertake an

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unpopular act must be seen as part of the calculation guiding maraboutic responses in the next encounter pitting the government against angry urban crowds. In April 1989 long-simmering tensions with Mauritania exploded into massive ethnic violence against Senegal’s minority Moorish population, which quickly degenerated into widespread urban rioting. Throughout the rioting, and despite the fact that the violence was directed against a Muslim population and in the holy month of Ramadan, the major marabouts of the country were notable mainly by their silence.11 Only a recognition of the limits of their own authority in terms of influencing the behavior of angry urban youth, and a calculation that nothing would be gained by demonstrating those limits publicly, can explain this maraboutic silence. Throughout the social unrest and the various political maneuverings of the years between the 1988 and 1993 elections, the major marabouts in the country made few explicitly political pronouncements, although the xalifa of the Sy family at times made calls for “national reconciliation.” By 1993, the tense social situation presented marabouts with a clearly dangerous context to offer instructions on the vote, and it is therefore not surprising that no ndigals were issued as the electoral campaign heated up.12 Rather, the major marabouts of the country attempted to position themselves above the fray, issuing calls for “peace” and offering prayers for the country’s future. Yet at the same time the Senegalese social situation and the depth of political sentiment as the 1993 elections approached also provided the potential for the rapid development of a large clientele for enterprising younger members of maraboutic families, with limited authority but willing to take the risk of positioning themselves as spokesmen for controversial currents of opinion. As the independent Muslim weekly, Wal Fadjri, noted in late 1992, when the campaign had effectively (though unofficially) begun: The xalifas-general of the Mourides and the Tijans have abstained from giving voting advice for the upcoming electoral consultation, and have opted for a strict neutrality which places them above the mêlée. These positions were confirmed by the absence of a ndigal during the màggal at Touba as well as at the gàmmu at Tivaouane [the major annual ceremonies of the orders, in their respective “capital cities”]. But this reserve in no way marginalizes the religious vote. . . . The occasion is in fact too good for the “little” marabouts who have decided to cash in their support for politicians. Some of them have already positioned themselves, others are still waiting in hope (Wal Fadjri, 9–15 October 1992).

In this ambiguous situation, Moustapha Sy maintained a relatively low profile, but pointedly directed his followers to register themselves on the voting lists en masse.

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The Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty: Situating the Radicalization The Moustarchidine movement was founded in 1980, ostensibly by the well-known marabout Cheikh Tidiane Sy, a grandson of the founder of the lineage at Tivaouane, but from its inception Cheikh Tidiane’s son, Moustapha Sy, effectively headed the organization.13 Its putative purpose was to help Senegalese youth via a variety of social and educational activities, and documents from the early years of the organization show much attention to such pursuits as religious instruction. In part, the organization was also clearly intended to enhance the maraboutic status of Cheikh Tidiane, whose aspirations to become xalifa in Tivaouane at the death of his father in 1957 had been frustrated by the accession of his uncle, Abdoul Aziz Sy the elder, to that position.14 As is frequently the case, this maraboutic initiative was inspired in part by the constant need to buttress a marabout’s stature both within the lineage and more broadly among disciples. The timing of the organization’s founding and the form it ultimately took must be placed within the broader context of the post–Iranian revolution “Islamic revival” elsewhere in the Muslim world, and the effects of this phenomenon on Senegalese Islam. The apparent increased interest in Islam in Senegal that began in the late 1970s seemed to take a largely “reformist” orientation, and appeared to pose a challenge to both the Sufi maraboutic system and to the country’s politics. Thus two of the keenest observers of Senegal could write in the late 1980s: To stay just a few days in Dakar is to realize that the tranquil and moderate Islam which has long prevailed in this country is now in question. One finds in Senegal the atmosphere of Islamic agitation which marked the early years of colonial rule. . . . For the last ten years or so, and especially since the accession of Abdou Diouf as head of state, Islam appears to be a more and more autonomous force. The Islamic awakening is apparent in all social strata and manifests itself in a variety of ways (Coulon and Cruise O’Brien 1989, 156; see also Magassouba 1985).

The reformist tendency in African Islam arises from the religious belief that maraboutic Sufism incorporates “un-Islamic” practices that must be eliminated. Given the close relationship between the maraboutic system and politics, however, reformism quickly takes on political overtones (see, e.g., Kane 1991). The preponderance of the Sufi model in Senegal has meant that the reformist current has historically been rather muted. Nevertheless, beginning in the colonial period and then escalating with independence, this trend has found some spokesmen among the individuals known in Senegal as arabisants (“Arabizers”), usually young men who had been sent to pursue studies in the Arabic-speaking countries of North

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Africa, or occasionally even further, before returning to Senegal. Typically well educated in Arabic and Islamic sciences but limited in their French language skills and thus unable to insert themselves into positions in the “modern” sector upon their return, this group presented a potential challenge to the Senegalese political system. From the early years of independence, the Senegalese state dealt with the potential threat from this source largely by co-optation, creating employment in such things as Arabic teaching in primary and secondary schools. This policy of co-optation was further encouraged by the perceived utility of the arabisants to the state in two domains: they could provide a useful counterweight to maraboutic power when necessary, and their international ties and fluency in Arabic could be put to service in positioning Senegal in a leading role in African and Muslim international fora. These same ties, however, also presented a potential threat to the state, increasing the possibility that international financial resources could be directed to contestatory religiopolitical movements in Senegal. The reformist tendency seemed to flourish in Senegal in the context of the “Islamic revival” beginning in the early 1980s, and various groups proved capable of attracting at least some outside support.15 Yet over the course of the decade it also became evident that reformist groups faced a significant and perhaps insurmountable obstacle in the prevailing strength of popular support for the maraboutic system. In fact, over time, only those reformist groups that gradually aligned themselves in some form with the maraboutic mainstream have managed to thrive. Thus, even the important Union Culturelle Musulmane (Muslim Cultural Union), which had been founded even before independence as a reformist and antimaraboutic organization, found itself unable to benefit from the revival, eventually adopting the attitude that “without those whom they call marabouts it will be impossible for us in the short run, or even for a long time, to really reach the masses” (Diouf 1988, 83). For their part, the Sufi orders were able skillfully to turn the resurgent interest in Islam to their advantage, diverting it to their benefit and emerging even stronger from this period. In a comprehensive study of Senegalese politics in the 1980s, Momar Coumba Diop and Mamadou Diouf have argued that the social context of the early years of the decade presented new opportunities for the Sufi orders, opportunities the marabouts clearly understood. The potential inherent in the revivalist movement, they suggest, actually led the marabouts to flirt with the idea of presenting themselves as spokesmen for opposition to the government, “an idea which would certainly seduce urban youth in search of a framework for social and political contestation of the government, a framework which the opposition parties did not seem capable of offering them.” Pointing to the number of theses and mémoires written at the University of Dakar as evidence of the renewed interest of youth in Islam, Diouf and Diop argue that,

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“This urban youth, which the state never managed to mobilize around its political and/or economic objectives, developed a militant Islamic commitment which came at the end of the 1970s at the expense of revolutionary and secular ideologies” (Diop and Diouf 1990). Ultimately, however, the major marabouts of the most central Sufi orders in Senegal had too much at stake in the existing sociopolitical order to challenge it aggressively or attempt to overthrow it. Rather, they managed quite successfully to capture this post–Iranian revolution revival of interest in Islam for their own benefit, diverting it to their own movements and thus strengthening the orders themselves. Diop and Diouf, in fact, suggest that the state carefully promoted this process, providing the financial and logistical support to help marabouts carry out the cultural and religious activities capable of strengthening their positions, while at the same time systematically balancing the orders against each other, promoting the Tijaniyya when the Mourides seemed to have capitalized more successfully on the movement. This context of Islamic revival, therefore, provided political openings for religious entrepreneurs, with a particularly important opportunity provided by the growing dissatisfaction of urban youth in search of an ideological basis for their contestation. Although the antimaraboutic reformists exerted a certain appeal in this respect, they were ultimately incapable of harnessing this movement to their benefit. While all of the major maraboutic lineages in Senegal seem to have benefited in the process, in many ways the Sy family was especially well prepared to appropriate some of the terrain staked out by the reformist groups. The family, for example, has long insisted that it has a privileged role to play in Senegal’s international connections, frequently pointing to its members’ adeptness and ease in three languages and three cultures: Wolof, Arabic, and French. In addition, their Arabic acculturation and cosmopolitan style has allowed them to suggest, particularly when contrasted with the Mourides, that they represent a less “tainted” version of the African Sufi model, somewhat closer in line with the Muslim mainstream. Seizing the opportunity for the Moustarchidine movement, Moustapha Sy carefully appropriated a significant degree of the reformists’ terrain. Among the more significant of the themes that the association thus pursued was that of the modern reformist sense of da’wa, which has come to mean educational and political activity intended to make Islam relevant to modern life.16 Thus much of the organization’s activities at the local level concerned educational instruction on the appropriate Muslim position on such issues as birth control, television and the modern media, democracy and the secular state, and modern international politics. While the Moustarchidine movement borrowed themes and rhetoric from the reformist trend, however, it is in fact a hybrid organization. In contrast to most reformist groups, it was developed as a mass-membership organization in Senegal by building directly on the maraboutic Sufi system

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in its modern Senegalese form. It is thus better understood as a maraboutic movement influenced by reformist Islam, rather than a reformist movement that happens to be led by a marabout. To maintain the momentum of the movement, Sy has frequently emphasized the traditional maraboutic basis of the organization. Like other marabouts, he thus finds himself obliged regularly to stress his genealogical credentials, in particular the lineage of his grandfather, the late xalifa at Tivaouane, Ababacar Sy, and this theme is a central component of the ritual ceremonies that he must organize regularly. In the case of the Moustarchidine the most important of these is the event that Sy refers to as his Ziaara, held annually in Tivaouane at the feast of Tamxarit, the Muslim new year.17 In terms of the organizational structure of the movement, Sy has also built on the Senegalese maraboutic model based on the daaira, while attempting to “rationalize” it by a greater institutionalization. Adapting the largely ineffectual efforts to organize local daairas to a given marabout into “federations” along the lines of regional divisions, the Moustarchidine borrowed directly from the Franco-Senegalese administrative structure to build a hierarchical organization that parallels state administrative structures along the lines of régions and départements.18 At the base of the organization are units known as “sections,” representing what would more traditionally be called daairas, and in fact frequently referred to as such at the local level. The Moustarchidine movement, therefore, is erected directly on the daaira model, but has a significantly higher degree of centralization and hierarchy. And far more than usual in Senegal, the locallevel organizations of disciples represent a top-down rather than bottom-up creation. Alternatively drawing on the traditional maraboutic and the modern reformist source of his legitimacy at the head of the movement, Moustapha Sy’s political stance has been characterized by a series of swings as he maneuvers to build and maintain a popular following. This dynamic was most significant in guiding the movement from an early search for state patronage to a position as vocal opponent and direct challenger of the government. In the early 1980s, as the Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty emerged as a mass organization to fill the political space opened by the growing disaffection of urban youth and their resurgent interest in an Islamic ideology, the state not only tolerated but in fact attempted to encourage the movement, and provided patronage in various ways destined to strengthen it. Thus most of the 1980s were characterized by close relations between the Moustarchidine and the state, and Sy was regularly accorded the status of an important religious personage by state officials. As an example with which we are familiar, when Sy paid a visit to the local “sections” of the Moustarchidine in the small regional capital of Fatick in 1986, he was received with great fanfare by local officials, including the

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town’s deputy to the National Assembly and the governor of the region. He was publicly feted by these officials, invited to spend the night in the governor’s mansion, and generally treated like a visiting dignitary.19 The high point of these close ties came with the International Conference on Muslim Youth that Sy organized in Dakar in 1989. Some 2,000 delegates reportedly attended the conference, representing twenty countries and numerous international organizations. The reformist element in the conference was highlighted by the fact that the Libyan Islamic Call [Da’wa] Society was one of the sponsors. Yet it also quickly became clear that despite its internationalist pretensions, the main thrust and underlying logic of the conference was targeted to the Senegalese political situation. For Sy, the movement represented the opportunity to demonstrate his importance to the state; while for the state it was a chance to associate itself with a movement with broad popular appeal among an otherwise marginalized social group. Thus in reporting on the meeting, the official government daily, Le Soleil, found it “very appropriate that the head of state, President Abdou Diouf, has chosen this forum of youth who have come from the four corners of the globe to pursue a direct dialogue with his own youth.” For his part, Sy responded to Diouf’s speech to the delegates: “You have before you all of the youth of Senegal, without regard to religion or Sufi order. All of our youth is gathered around you, and this opportunity to build a new Senegal should be seized; and let no one come between you and the youth. Give us the order and we shall carry it out!”20 To a regime in need of legitimation among a sector of population that could not be reached otherwise, namely urban youth, Moustapha Sy provided that opportunity via the Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty. Following this overt display of political ambition, however, tensions within the movement escalated as it seemed incapable of meeting the promise of its rhetoric to its young followers in search of an antiregime ideology. Gradually, significant portions of its urban youth clientele began to abandon the movement. Moreover, such overt political activity and a suspicion of his growing independence apparently led to critiques of Moustapha’s activities within the Sy family itself, and he found the genealogical basis of his support eroding accordingly. Thus, by the end of 1989, Moustapha Sy was to take advantage of the occasion of his Ziaara Tamxarit ceremony to emphasize his maraboutic inheritance, thus attempting to reintegrate himself into the maraboutic mainstream and strengthen his following on a more traditional basis. During the course of the Ziaara that year, therefore, Moustapha invited his uncle Abdoul Aziz Sy, Junior, to address the disciples, stressing the unity of the family and Moustapha’s place in the genealogy. This action, of course, also has the effect of lessening his dependence on the state. While the movement thus seemed to have lost some of its luster, it nevertheless maintained its cohesion, and during the early years of the 1990s—at the height of the political crisis in

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Senegal—Moustapha Sy opted to keep a relatively low profile, concentrating on the less controversial activities of the Moustarchidine. Then, two weeks before the presidential elections of 1993, in the middle of a heated electoral campaign and amidst allegations by the opposition that the PS was once again attempting to manipulate the process, Moustapha Sy again caught the attention of Senegalese with his virulent public attack on Abdou Diouf, dramatically establishing the movement at the vanguard of antiregime activity. In explaining the reasons for this stance, Habib Sy, Moustapha’s brother, speaking after his arrest, argued simply that: “Last year, noting that our social project [notre projet de société] was in contradiction with the policies pursued by the government, we decided to engage ourselves politically, on the side of the opposition” (Jeune Afrique, 1729, 24 February–2 March 1994, 17). Clearly, however, this abrupt shift of strategies in the movement was more calculated, and had deeper sources, than Habib Sy’s comment implies. An underlying cause of the shift appears to have been tensions that had arisen between Moustapha Sy and Abdou Diouf over controversial business dealings in which Sy’s father, Cheikh Tidiane, had been engaged.21 In fact, the pretext for the attack was an article that appeared in an independent newspaper, entitled “The Dealings/Schemes [les magouilles] of Cheikh Tidiane Sy,” which critiqued the financial imbroglios of the senior marabout. In his speech, Moustapha accused Diouf of having personally planted the article, denouncing it as an unfounded attempt to discredit his father and to cover up Diouf’s own disreputable activities. Although these relations certainly contributed to Sy’s antigovernment politicization, the nature and extent of the Moustarchidine’s mobilization is clearly only explainable in the context of the intensifying crisis of the regime of the early 1990s. Far more than most of the traditional religious authorities in Senegal, Sy is sharply attuned to the international pressures for reform that weighed on the Senegalese state. Thus his 1993 speech is replete with references to the “new world order,” the United Nations, the “G-7” countries, and the European Community, as well as to specific events and the actions of individual foreign powers and statesmen in international affairs. Likewise the hostility of the West to much of the Muslim world, the vulnerable position of poor African countries in the world economy, and its domination by international financial agencies receive prominent and frequent mention in his discourse. “We are at the moment of choice,” Sy declared in the speech, “and I do not speak only of Senegal. . . . We are at the moment of choice at the level of Africa” (Kane and Villalón 1995, p. 162). And these transformed circumstances, he clearly recognized, presented new opportunities for social groups to weigh in on the critical choices to be made. Given the escalating hostility to Diouf of Sy’s principal clientele, urban youth, and the mounting calls for change by any means possible, an

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important political calculation must underlie Sy’s positioning. Faced with the perennial maraboutic need to maintain a clientele, the crisis of legitimacy of the Diouf regime provided a strong incentive for Sy to realign himself with his followers. Moreover, the new electoral code seemed to make a change via an opposition victory in the elections a real possibility. Sy thus made the calculation that Diouf could lose the election or, barring that outcome, that he would be unable to maintain control in the violence that many expected would quickly follow any pronouncement of Diouf’s victory. Given in particular the low profile that the major marabouts of the country had adopted, a decision to align himself with the opposition could ultimately bring enormous benefits to Sy’s movement if that opposition were indeed to emerge as the government. In any case, as we have seen, Sy’s movement took on a new dynamism following the attack, one that is likely to endure. While it is impossible to determine the precise effects of this radicalization on the membership of the Moustarchidine in terms of its followers, it certainly increased the commitment of at least one, politically central, group of followers—the angry urban young people who have regularly provided the major direct challenge to the regime since the 1980s. The record crowds at Cheikh Tidiane’s conferences in Dakar and St. Louis in 1995 testify to the continuing dynamism of the movement and its appeal to an ever broader audience. Moustapha Sy managed to tap into the deep current of frustration about the seeming impossibility of attaining sopi/change via the democratic process in Senegal, and he struck a resonant chord among the masses of disaffected urban dwellers. In addition, as Wade once again accepted the compromise of reentering the government, repeating the pattern he has followed in previous postelectoral periods, his appeal to this group must suffer accordingly. The result can only be to leave Moustapha Sy and the Moustarchidine movement even better placed to claim the position of spokesmen for that segment of Senegalese society frustrated with the apparent impossibility of meaningful political reform.

Implications: The Evolving Nature of State-Society Relations in Senegal In contrast to the reports carried in much of the international press on the radicalization of the Moustarchidine movement, it should be clear that we are not necessarily witnessing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Senegal. Indeed a close analysis of the particularities of the movement serves as a telling reminder of the need to be sensitive to the multiplicity of “Islamisms” found in different state contexts. The Moustarchidine movement maintains significant ties with the secular parties of the opposition, and it remains to be seen how viable it would prove to be should it strike out on

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its own. Moustapha Sy’s own personal ambitions, in addition, may outstrip his leadership capabilities and ultimately cost the movement significant popular support. In addition, as we have seen, the organized maraboutic system in Senegal and the political system that it sustains remain well entrenched and continue to claim the allegiance of the majority of the population. Authority in Senegalese Islam is fragmented, and the Moustarchidine are not likely in themselves to be able to orchestrate a broad-based grassroots social movement such as that of the Islamist movement in Algeria. Despite these limitations, however, neither should the potential impact of the movement be underestimated. Having cast its opposition to the regime in Islamic terms, and the resonance this call has found among dissatisfied urban dwellers, the Moustarchidine movement has the clear potential to play an ultimately important role in legitimating Islamic discourse as the voice of resistance to power. This process, after all, has occurred elsewhere in the Muslim world. Indeed, even in the case of Algeria all indications suggest that it was not only (or perhaps even primarily) the religious ideology of the Islamic parties that swept them to the forefront in the December 1991 elections. Rather, these parties were successful because they managed to provide a means of expressing profound popular dissatisfaction with the status quo, and they succeeded in positioning themselves as the only viable voice of protest and resistance to the state. For all of Senegalese independent history, and despite the important role played by the marabouts in politics, the major political cleavages in the country have been between the government and secular opposition parties. Never has a religious movement explicitly challenged the government for control of the state. The emergence and radicalization of the Moustarchidine bear the potential for signaling a shift in this system, resulting in a rift pitting secular forces against religious ones attempting to take control of the state, or at least claim the authority to define the nature of reforms to the state. Precisely such an outcome is suggested in an article in the independent Sud au Quotidien (26 June 1995) discussing Cheikh Tidiane’s June 1995 speech in the city of St. Louis. “Are we in Senegal,” the article wonders, “in the midst of an evolution in religious allegiance? Are we headed towards a new form of militant political engagement for which political Sufism would be the credo?” Senegalese Sufism, to be sure, has always had a highly political face, but all indications are that the radicalization of the Moustarchidine movement and its role at the forefront of critiques of the Senegalese political system signals a new stage in the evolution of religion and politics in the country. More broadly, we would suggest, this case has implications for an understanding of the nature of transformations, in terms of the reconfiguration of state structures or of state-society relations that have followed the

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pressures to democratize states across Africa. The pressures to restructure state institutions of the past several years are in turn producing a variety of societal transformations that are only gradually becoming evident. Ethnic groups, religious movements, gender-based associations, occupationally defined organizations, and other such groups are discovering new possibilities for political action in the new political contexts, or indeed being created or reconfigured in response to these new contexts. The Moustarchidine movement must be situated within this phenomenon. And as an analysis of this case demonstrates, the eventual fate of such movements must be linked to the capacity of state institutions to create, maintain, or redefine the bases of systems for managing state-society relations. Within the African context, Senegal has clearly been a relatively strong state, yet like other African states it has been obliged to respond to the pressures of the 1990s to reconfigure the political order. While these pressures have not yet resulted in any radical restructuring of the relations between state and society in the country, they have clearly shifted the basis of these relations, with as yet undetermined long-term consequences for the Senegalese state.

Notes 1. These speeches were delivered in Wolof, sprinkled liberally (as is the family’s wont) with French and Arabic. Discussion of these speeches in this chapter is based on a translation into French we have undertaken from cassette copies. See Kane and Villalón 1995. 2. The motive for this assassination, an extremely rare event in Senegalese politics, remains unclear and the subject of great controversy. While the government initially suggested the involvement of the opposition, much of popular sentiment in Senegal is convinced that the government was ultimately behind Sèye’s death. The alleged assassin, following his arrest, initially claimed he was acting under contract with members of the opposition PDS, then later changed his story to say that in fact the ruling PS had hired him as a way of discrediting the PDS. It likewise seems possible that the incident was the responsibility of just one or more individuals acting alone. For a discussion of the trial of four men accused of involvement in the case, see Jeune Afrique 1762 (13–19 October 1994), pp. 16–18. 3. This at an International Conference on Muslim Youth that Sy organized with government help in 1989, and which is discussed further below. Cited in the official government daily, Le Soleil, 6 February 1989. 4. A more detailed account of the history summarized here is available in Villalón 1994a, from which this section is adapted in part. 5. The name taken in 1978 by the party founded and led, under several different names, by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. 6. An article in Jeune Afrique after the 1988 elections, entitled “Elections 88: Les principales revendications de l’opposition” [the main demands of the opposition], listed the points of the electoral code contested by the opposition. Among the more significant of these were: a mandatory (rather than “optional”) secret ballot; lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen; the use of indelible ink to prevent double voting by an individual; political party representation at polling

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sites and in the vote tabulations commissions; and the requirement of proof of identity, in addition to a voting card, at the polls. The new code adopted in 1991 incorporated all of these in virtually identical form. See Jeune Afrique 1419, 16 March 1988, p. 68. 7. Philosophy professor Soulaymane Bachir Diagne, at a briefing with international election observers in Dakar, 18 February 1993. Diagne was subsequently named a special adviser to the president on educational issues following the formation of the new government. 8. Some 2.5 million Senegalese registered to vote, while the government’s estimate of the eligible number was on the order of some 4 million. The percentage of the adult population electing Diouf, therefore, was even smaller than the turnout indicates. 9. These figures are from Government of Senegal 1992. There are other smaller orders of which one, the Layène order concentrated among the Lebou people around Dakar on the Cap Vert peninsula, is of some significance largely for its central geographic location. 10. The xalifa’s statement is cited in “Sénégal: Le Vote des religieux,” Jeune Afrique 1416 (24 February 1988). This same article notes that many Mourides who found themselves unable to either go against the xalifa or bring themselves to vote for the beleaguered president opted to abstain from voting instead. It is also clear, however, that many Mourides simply ignored the xalifa’s order. Among Mouride intellectuals this statement provoked a debate leading to a widespread argument that while religiously grounded ndigals were indeed to be followed blindly, those related to politics were not binding on disciples. While the extent of this disobedience cannot be definitively measured, its prevalence was regularly treated as common knowledge in interviews carried out by Villalón in 1989, even in the city of Touba. 11. The most significant exception were marabouts from the Niasse family of Kaolack, who undertook significant efforts to protect the Moorish population of that city and to call an end to the violence. The Niasse family, it should be noted, enjoys extensive ties with Mauritania, including a high degree of intermarriage with Moorish families. For more information about this family’s international connections see Kane 1989. 12. It should be noted that the Mouride xalifa, who had issued the ndigal in 1988, died in 1989 and was replaced by his brother at the head of the order. While personal differences between the two may thus explain in part the evolving stance of the Mouride order, it is also clear that changed circumstances were primarily responsible for dictating these changes. 13. The term “Dahiratoul” in the movement’s full name is a variation of “daaira” (with the following Arabic article attached, a common transcription in Senegal). Daairas are usually named in Senegal, often in Wolofized Arabic. The 1980 founding of the movement was in fact based on the transformation of an existing daaira to the Sy family, known simply as the “Dahiratoul Moustarchidine.” In redefining it as a more inclusive national organization, Cheikh Tidiane modified the name to “Moustarchidine wal Moustarchidaty,” referring, in the masculine and the feminine, to “those who seek the straight path.” 14. Thus, for example, the organization produced a pamphlet entitled “Extraits de la Pensée de Cheikh Ahmet Tidiane Sy” [Excerpts from the Thought of Cheikh Ahmet Tidiane Sy], for a “cultural week” it sponsored from 14 to 21 April 1985. We base these observations on a number a photocopied documents concerning such activities, collected by Kane in Tivaouane in 1994. 15. Thus, for example, the most significant of the independent Muslim press in Senegal, the newspaper Wal Fadjri, was apparently founded largely with Iranian financial backing.

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16. “Da’wa” literally means “the call” in Arabic, and its original significance referred to missionary activity among non-Muslims. James Piscatori (1986, 127– 138) has documented the transformation in the sense of this term and its elaboration into the ideological basis for reformist movements. 17. For a discussion of the central importance of these ritual ceremonies in the maraboutic system, as well as a description of the Moustarchidine’s 1989 Ziaara Tamxarit, see Villalón 1994b. Indicative of the state’s understanding of the importance of these rituals to maintaining maraboutic movements is the fact that since 1993, even before the organization was officially banned, Moustapha Sy has been forbidden to organize this annual event. 18. The organization chart of the Moustarchidine is available in Villalón 1995, 157. 19. The local daairas (sections) of the movement kept a photo album, recording this and similar events, consulted by Villalón during fieldwork in Fatick in 1989. 20. Le Soleil, 6 February 1989. Tellingly, Sy’s speech was in Wolof, and thus not even comprehensible to non-Senegalese participants; the conference was clearly aimed largely at a Senegalese audience. 21. Another important dimension of this posture, which we do not develop here, concerns the internal tensions within the Sy family. The likely imminence of a succession crisis to the current xalifa, born in 1905 and in ill health, has encouraged posturing within the different branches of the family in preparation for this eventuality. In this regard Moustapha may have been calculating on the need to position his father, Cheikh Tidiane, for the eventual struggle. While this factor is certainly of some importance in shaping some of the specific aspects of the movement’s politicization, it is clearly not a root cause of the radicalization. For more discussion of this dimension see Villalón 1996b.

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Kenya: The Women’s Movement and Democratic Change MARIA N ZOMO The debate on the state, democracy, and civil society in Africa has tended to ignore the gender dimension and has generally adopted a “genderneutral” perspective. For example, elections, campaigns, and party politics have been viewed as gender-neutral processes that affect women and men equally. Similarly, the democratic process has also been treated as a gender-neutral process in which women and men have equal access to the resources, opportunities, and instruments that facilitate their participation and winning elections. Gender-neutral analysis also assumes a dichotomy between the public and private sphere so that all political activity takes place in the public sphere, from which the majority of women are excluded, due to the patriarchally determined division of labor. But a growing body of feminist literature has shown that the private is also political, and that political processes such as democratization take place both in private and public life. Furthermore, the concept of civil society must be broadened to include informal networks, associations, and coalitions in which women participate (Jones 1993, 236; Rowbotham 1992, 16–24; Peterson 1992, 6; Parpart 1988, 208–232; Tripp 1994b). This chapter takes as the point of departure the thesis that the institutions of the state, democracy, and the democratic process, as well as the phenomenon of civil society, are not gender-neutral. Hence, meaningful debate on and analysis of the dynamics of these phenomena and processes must account for the gender factor. As Tripp has observed: The debate on the nature of civil society in Africa . . . has yet to fully incorporate and problematize the gender implications of civil society as it has been conceptualized in liberal theory. . . . Gender differences remain unaccounted for. Participation in the public sphere is assumed to be governed by universal, impersonal and conventional criteria of achievement, interest, rights, equality and property—liberal criteria applicable only to men (Tripp 1994b).

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I take as given that women are also politically active, although the forms, strategies, and styles of their engagement in political activities may differ from those of men. This is due to the specific circumstances in which women find themselves—namely, excluded from formal politics through socially constructed barriers in the division of labor, resource allocation, and opportunities for participation. I thus concur with much of the recent literature on women and the state in Africa (Tripp 1994b; Parpart 1988). In this chapter I argue that while both the colonial and postcolonial states have maintained a linkage with the women’s movement, throughout the postcolonial period this has largely resulted from the state’s desire to exploit women’s labor, their numerical strength, and their mobilizational abilities for economic and political gain. In the changed situation of the 1990s, however, women’s groups and organizations are seeking to reverse this exploitative relationship to their advantage. Their swift move to take advantage of the political space brought about by the return to political pluralism in many African countries was the first indication of this changing relationship between the state and African women in the “critical juncture” period of the early 1990s. This chapter focuses on the Kenyan case in examining the transformations in the gendered but evolving statesociety relationship in both the colonial and postcolonial era, leading to the efforts of reform of the 1990s.

The Postcolonial Political Context Since independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya has had two presidents: Jomo Kenyatta, who ruled until his death in 1978, and Daniel arap Moi, who succeeded him. The Kenyan state has been described as undemocratic and characterized by a “backward political culture” (Muigai 1993). Over the course of three decades the postcolonial state refined and sharpened the arts of oppression and control bequeathed from the colonial state. Toward this end, the national constitution was amended over thirty times between independence and 1995, with the singular purpose of consolidating the powers of the president, and by extension, those of the state (Daily Nation, 25 August 1995, 3). Kenya was until 1982 a de jure multiparty state, but, except for a short stint between 1966 and 1969, operated as a de facto one-party state under the Kenya African National Union (KANU). The constitution was amended in 1982 to declare Kenya formally a one-party state in response to a failed coup and an attempt by prodemocracy forces to register an opposition political party. Nonetheless, during the twenty-nine years between independence and the return to multipartyism in 1992, the leadership insisted adamantly that Kenya was democratic. Cited as evidence were national elections held regularly about five years apart. Most of these elections, however, were manipulated by the state, and hence, the leaders thereby elected often lacked political legitimacy and the mandate to rule. Over the years, internal

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struggles for democratization were ruthlessly repressed by the authoritarian regimes of Kenyatta and Moi. As elsewhere in Africa, however, between 1989 and 1991 the campaign for multiparty democracy intensified as a confluence of factors called into question the sustainability of postcolonial state structures. A combination of both internal and external pressures finally brought Moi’s regime to its knees, and the reintroduction of multipartyism was grudgingly conceded in December 1991. In making this concession, the KANU government reluctantly agreed to the formal aspects of pluralistic democracy, but with the clear intention of capitalizing on this concession and the power of incumbency to obtain, through the electoral process, the legitimacy of its rule. In other words, the government was merely making a tactical move in a country that had become ungovernable and where repressive measures were no longer an effective deterrent against the demand for pluralism and democratic change. During the first multiparty elections in 1992, the Moi regime succeeded in orchestrating an electoral “victory” for the ruling party by misusing the power of incumbency and its control of state resources to manipulate the electoral process. However, the lack of political legitimacy of the post-1992 Moi regime and the regime’s demonstrated lack of commitment to further democratic transformation led, by mid-decade, to a return to the repression and autocracy of the single-party era. In this connection, opposition members of Parliament, human rights activists, and journalists have frequently been arrested for peaceful demonstrations, speeches, publications, or investigations into human rights abuses. Editions of newspapers and publications critical of government policies have been impounded and printing presses put out of action. Licenses to hold public political meetings by opposition MPs are often denied or withdrawn at the last minute. In some instances, even educational seminars and workshops that normally do not require permits have been stopped, sometimes violently. By the end of 1995 the criminalization of political dissent was on the increase. Despite this, prodemocracy groups, including women’s groups, continue to pressure the government to facilitate democratic change. While the state has resisted further change, the transformations begun in the early 1990s and the state’s responses to them unleashed social forces that continue to play a role in the reconfiguration of state power in Kenya. Among the more important of these forces are women’s groups. The rest of this chapter examines and analyzes the evolving relationship between the women’s movement and the state in Kenya.

The Women’s Movement and the Kenyan State in Historical Context Kenyan women have a long history—dating back to the precolonial era— of mobilization and organization into informal and formal groups, networks,

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and coalitions, for mutual social economic support, solidarity, and empowerment (Mönsted 1978; Musyoki and Gatara 1985; Pala 1975, 1976; Nzomo 1993c). While women’s organizations have varied in size, structure, ideology, and vision, their relationship with the state has always been an uneasy one. The colonial state first began to show an active interest in the women’s movement in 1952, at the outbreak of the Mau Mau struggle for political independence. British officials recognized that women were a strategic asset and could play a significant role in determining the outcome of the war for independence. The state then moved swiftly through its Department of Community Development Affairs to encourage and support the formation in 1952 of the first nationwide women’s organization in Kenya—the Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Progress for Women) Organization, or MYWO. Although this organization was created as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) with a social welfare objective, its major purpose from the standpoint of the colonial state was a political one—to contribute to the struggle against Mau Mau (Mönsted 1978). In return for MYWO’s support of the colonial government, it was awarded an annual grant of £12,000 for capital development and equipment. In addition, the members of this body were exempted from forced labor, and the few appointed as leaders were paid a salary by the colonial government (Mönsted 1978; Wipper 1976). MYWO thus became the instrument through which the colonial state, and later the postcolonial state, would seek to influence the women’s movement. As I noted in 1993, “The structure, character and purpose of MYWO back in 1952 bears striking similarity to the 1992 MYWO, especially its close alliance with the government and its support of the status quo” (Nzomo 1993b, 132). The formation of MYWO also marked the beginning of an enduring ideological divide within the women’s movement. One group of women organized around MYWO and allied themselves closely to the state, adopting an acquiescent and social welfarist posture. The second, comparatively radical, strand of the women’s movement coalesced around the women’s groups and individuals that defied colonial rule and fought alongside men in the independence struggle. The gallant but unsung heroines of the independence struggle include Field Marshal Muthoni of Nyeri, Mary Wanjiku Nyanjiru of the famous 1922 Harry Thuku uprising, the Mau Mau political activist Wamuyu Gakuru, and Ciokaraine, the only woman who rose to be chief in colonial Kenya for defying a colonial order. A 1993 attempt at documenting the heroic contributions of some of these unsung heroines of the independence struggle quite rightly notes: “You hear many stories of women who were raped, beaten, murdered, jailed, detained and generally harassed [by the colonial state] during the struggle for independence. Their stories, however, remain untold” (Kabira and Nzioki 1993, 37). In the colonial period this second strand of the women’s movement was less formalized and sporadic but significant in its impact in challenging

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the colonial state, especially on issues of production and governance. In Central Province, for example, women resisted the colonial forced labor system, land use policies, and privatized modes of production (Kanogo 1987). The privatization of land and the move from subsistence farming to cash crop production had the dual effect of increasing women’s workload while diminishing their traditional usufructuary rights over land and the crops they produced. Thus, while women continued to provide the bulk of the labor for cash and subsistence crops, men dominated the ownership and control of land, markets for the crops, and hence, the income accruing therefrom. About 90 percent of the Kenyan population lives in rural areas and women form about 70 percent of the rural population. Thus, the women’s movement draws most of it members from rural areas. Recognizing the important role of women’s groups as agents of rural development, the Kenyan state has consistently encouraged their formation for this purpose. Independence in 1963 facilitated the formation of more formalized women’s organizations and the expansion of women’s groups affiliated to the MYWO. Other national organizations were also formed at independence as affiliates of international women’s organizations. These included the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK), affiliated with the International Council of Women; the Kenya Business and Professional Women’s Club, an affiliate of the International Business and Professional Women’s Organization; and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). The government established a Women’s Bureau in 1976. By 1990, about 23,000 women’s groups were formally registered with the state (Republic of Kenya 1993, 195). At election time, women’s groups are typically expected to utilize their numerical strength and mobilization abilities to ensure the electoral victory of one of the local (male) politicians. Women’s groups also provide food and entertainment at state functions: they dance, cook, and praise the male leaders. But they are also the ones to whom family planning officers, nutrition and health workers, chiefs, politicians, agricultural workers, and social workers go whenever they need to pass on development and political information to the community. The point to underscore is that the Kenyan state has largely pursued patronizing policies toward women and women’s associations, encouraging them to function as easy targets for manipulation and exploitation while attempting to ensure that they pose a minimal threat to the political status quo. The state recognizes that women can be easily mobilized and relied upon to make a major contribution in the production of national wealth while at the same time providing electoral support for male politicians. To that extent they are a strategic political force. Because of this, the strategy of the postcolonial state has been to keep the female constituency in its corner through a tricky balancing act between “state tokenism” on the one hand and co-optation and control on the other.

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Women and State Tokenism At the level of rhetoric, the Kenyan state has made great strides in addressing the question of women’s status, at least since the mid-1970s. From the 1960s to the mid-1970s, the state acted as if the gender question as a policy issue were of no relevance to Kenya. But this position altered from 1975, when the United Nations declared a Women’s Decade (1975– 1985) and demanded that member states introduce policies and programs geared toward accelerated advancement of women, especially by creating national institutions to serve women and to strengthen their existing organizations. To protect its international image and curb internal criticism, the Kenyan state superficially complied with the UN requirements. The Kenyatta regime sponsored the formation of state-controlled social groups; the seeds were thus sown for increased demands in the early 1990s. An underfunded but state-controlled national machinery for women, the Women’s Bureau, was created as a department in the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. The already co-opted women’s body, MYWO, was further strengthened to work closely with the Women’s Bureau in registering and mobilizing women’s groups and organizations. Other women’s associations were either ignored, harassed, or denied support. Although women’s groups and organizations multiplied dramatically during the Women’s Decade—from a mere 4,300 groups in 1976 to 23,000 groups by 1990—most of them registered low performance and did not succeed in empowering women (Nzomo 1989; Wamalwa 1987). Furthermore, presidential appointments of a few women to some key decisionmaking positions, starting in the mid-1980s, were viewed by critical analysts as acts of tokenism, meant to appease those lobbying for systematic implementation of the “1985 Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women.” The appointments were also viewed as politically expedient measures aimed at rewarding the women leaders who had defended and boosted the government’s international image during the 1985 UN Women’s Conference in Nairobi. Some analysts further argue that the presidential appointments in the mid-1980s had a gender-based exploitative agenda. Most of the women “rewarded” with appointments were charged with applying their domestic skills and assumed moral uprightness to “mopping out” government parastatal bodies crippled by the corruption and mismanagement of their previous male managers, only to be promptly replaced by men after completing the assigned task (Nzomo 1993c, 7). Finally, even as presidential appointments were being made in 1986, the head of state himself published a book that devoted an entire chapter to the women of Kenya, where he categorically stated, “The government and people of Kenya will give the progress of women the highest possible priority” (Moi 1986, 18). A decade later, however, it would be difficult to conclude that women have

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indeed been accorded the “highest possible priority” in government policy and praxis. Thus, for instance, in a Parliament that has since independence consisted of an average of two women out of 200 elected members, the state has never found it important to take an affirmative action measure or establish a political quota system to increase the number of women. The first woman minister was only appointed in May 1995, nearly thirty-two years after Kenya’s independence (The People, 19 May 1995). Even then, her appointment seems to have been timed to coincide with the September 1995 Beijing Conference for Women, for which she was to head the official Kenyan delegation. Furthermore, her ministerial portfolio is the gender-stereotyped one of Culture and Social Services. Similarly, the creation in October 1993 by the state of a Task Force to Review All Laws Relating to Women was expected to assuage women activists who had been lobbying the state to remove and/or reform all laws that discriminate against women. This task force, which has since become defunct, turned out to be another act of tokenism and a delaying tactic in lieu of the comprehensive legal reform being demanded by women and human rights groups. In this domain, as in others, the Kenyan state has consistently resisted pressures to reconfigure. Long after the end of the Women’s Decade, government action on the women’s question has remained at the level of high-sounding rhetoric, consisting of sweeping and vaguely worded statements of commitment and intention to promote women in development. No systematic attempt has been made by the government to mainstream gender concerns in the development process. Gender-based discrimination against Kenyan women in almost every aspect of life remained rampant in both law and social practice and with no positive action by the state. The Kenyan state’s tokenist response to the gender question is hardly unique in Africa. As one observer has succinctly stated: African governments have continued to pay lip service to the advancement of women in development. Efforts so far can at best be described as tokenism. The usual response of government officials has been to allow one woman into the cabinet or to establish ministries of women and national bureaux. These entities amount to having “women only” programs. Such programs fail to address all aspects of development since they target small women’s groups and encourage income-generating and selfhelp schemes. . . . The income generating schemes, national women’s bureaux and ministries of women to an extent prevent the examination of the real causes and obstacles of preventing women from participating in development. They fail to address the discriminatory practices in education, marriage, legal status, domestic and other work areas (Etim 1992, 21–22).

One factor that has remained consistent throughout the history of women’s struggles in Kenya is their systematic exclusion from strategic

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political decisionmaking capacities in both private and public life. It is significant to note that during the struggle for independence women’s major form of participation focused on social welfare rather than decisionmaking and leadership roles. It is hardly surprising then that after political independence was won, the predominantly male leadership disposed of women with relative ease and with no audible protest from the latter (Nzomo 1993b). As shown in the rest of this chapter, women’s struggles for rights and inclusion in the male-dominated political arena during the 1990s, though still problematic, appear more innovative, activist, and comprehensive than at any other period in the country’s history.

Co-optation and Control: The Women’s Movement and the Postcolonial State Tokenism notwithstanding, the postcolonial women’s movement in Kenya would appear to have been largely shaped by a combination of a highly patriarchal social order and an authoritarian state. As I have noted elsewhere, “Those women’s organizations or individuals within them that have resisted state control and/or have challenged the oppressive status quo have often come under heavy censure and harassment” (Nzomo 1993b, 134–135). In particular, the state established various mechanisms to control the women’s movement, including the legal requirement that all groups and organizations must be officially registered by the government and regulated by an NGO coordinating body located in the president’s office. In this regard, the state reserves the right to register, deny registration to, or deregister existing NGOs as it deems fit. Women’s, human rights, and prodemocracy NGOs are often held for ransom, as the state requires them not to engage in political activities unless they wish to risk deregistration. Indeed, to qualify for registration, NGO constitutions must clearly indicate that they will engage only in nonpolitical and nonpartisan activities. For most of the postcolonial period prior to 1991, many women’s associations either complied with the state’s requirements or withdrew from both participation in formal politics and involvement with the state. The majority within the women’s movement, especially those based in the rural areas, chose the latter path and carried out their activities as if the state did not exist. A few gained significant levels of economic empowerment through group activities (Musyoki and Gatara 1985; Kabira and Nzioki 1993, 75–103), while the majority registered losses or decline in both social welfare and empowerment (Nzomo 1989). Another category, best exemplified by MYWO and the Women’s Bureau, chose the path of compliance with state demands and thereby accrued rewards. Through government material support and promotion, MYWO had by the early 1980s succeeded in overshadowing about sixty or

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so other national women’s NGOs operating in the country. MYWO was accorded a preponderant leadership position, which was clearly manifested by its prominence at the 1985 United Nations–sponsored Nairobi World Women’s Conference. The close alliance between MYWO and the state culminated in May 1987 when MYWO merged with the ruling party, KANU. From then until 1992, when this women’s body formally disengaged itself from the state, KANU-MYWO functioned literally as a political wing of the ruling party, with its activities controlled by the KANU government. The most celebrated example of this control was the statemanaged October 1989 KANU-MYWO national elections (Weekly Review, 5 November 1989; Nzomo 1994). The blatant interference and manipulation of these elections by key male political players led many observers to conclude that: “Women in Kenya are in danger of becoming appendages of men, with their fate determined by men, with little or no reference to women” (Weekly Review, 5 November 1989, 1). The Kenyan state continues to control MYWO indirectly, despite the latter’s disengagement from KANU in 1992. The government, for example, instructed MYWO to postpone its national elections at least four times between 1993 and 1995, primarily for reasons related to the calculated political interests of the ruling KANU government. The battle for control of this women’s body seems to have taken a multiparty format since 1992. A few Kenyan women have defied male control, however, and some even challenged the male-dominated political system with various degrees of success since the 1960s. The most notable case is that of the renowned environmentalist, Wangari Maathai, who has had running confrontations with a hostile Kenyan state for nearly two decades over environmental and human rights issues. In 1989–1990 she succeeded in stopping the government from erecting a skyscraper in the middle of one of the largest recreational parks in the center of Nairobi. However, the weakness of the Kenyan women’s movement was demonstrated by the fact that no women came out publicly to support Maathai’s crusade, even as the male-dominated Parliament descended upon her, hurling personalized attacks and derogatory remarks. Furthermore, some women’s groups affiliated to the then KANU-MYWO held a demonstration to condemn her actions and to disassociate themselves (Daily Nation, 15 December 1989). The total silence of the majority of women and the disassociation campaign by the KANU-MYWO women gave some legitimacy to the punitive measures that were henceforth meted out by the state against Maathai and the Green Belt Movement (Daily Nation, 15 December 1989 and January 1990). The only solid show of support for her came from international environmentalists and the external donors of the construction project, who vindicated her by declining to fund it (African Business 1990). Similarly, in 1994, Maathai filed a high court injunction against the state for sanctioning private developers to convert a public parking lot in

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the heart of Nairobi’s city center into a commercial building site. Maathai did not succeed in her injunction but did raise public awareness of the environmental danger posed by the planned project. Significantly, the women’s movement that had in 1992 pledged to support her for the presidency was not there to support her in 1994. What happened to bring about this change?

State-Society Relations in Multiparty Kenya of the 1990s: The Gender Dimension The repeal of Section 2A of the Kenyan constitution in December 1991 marked the return to multiparty politics in the country and an opening for popular participation in the democratization process. Women’s determination to participate fully in this process and to have gender issues mainstreamed onto the new democratic agenda was clearly evident throughout 1992. After the 1992 elections, the women’s movement has struggled to sustain the momentum gained during that year but has faced a number of difficulties due to the continued repressive character of the Kenyan state. The year 1992 was a critical political moment for both men and women, but also fragile, temporary, and unsustainable, unless followed up by structural democratic reforms. It did provide some space for the women’s movement to become a leading sociopolitical force in shaping democratic change in Kenya. While the Kenyan state has attempted to control the extent of reconfiguration following the opening of 1992, the forces unleashed at this time promise to have longer-term consequences for statesociety relations in the country. The muzzling of civil society groups that had characterized the thirty years of postcolonial rule in Kenya eased off considerably during the 1992 election year. One could safely argue that for that brief period, the state tolerated political activities of such diverse groups as the media, church groups, women’s organizations, professional groups, and a whole array of human rights groups. Although there was still state control, there was relatively more freedom of expression, assembly, and association than in the pre-1992 era. The political landscape changed very rapidly after the elections, however; some of the political gains made to empower civil society were lost as government reverted to its repressive style of governance (Standard, 24 March 1994, 2; Daily Nation, 18 August 1995, 3; Daily Nation, 25 August 1995, 16). “This whole situation has led some to conclude that democracy has failed in Kenya; it is nothing but a mirage. The opposition is weak and divided while the government becomes ever more autocratic and repressive” (New African, September 1994, 31). It is against this background that the women’s movement in the 1990s needs to be understood.

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From Welfare to Empowerment: Participation of Women in Multiparty Politics and Democratic Change in the 1990s In the changed circumstances and new opportunities of the 1990s, the key goals of the women’s movement have largely shifted from social welfare to empowerment and effective participation in the democratization process. Women have moved from making demands on the state to active participation in the effort to reconfigure state-society relations. As women’s fortunes wax and wane in the turbulent political environment of Kenya, women may have stumbled but have not lost sight of these powerfocused goals. Beginning with the 1992 preparatory period for multiparty elections, Kenyan women placed a high premium on political empowerment as a means of achieving other goals. This was in the hope that if enough women attained key political decisionmaking capacities, they would be able to repeal the laws that discriminate against women at the social and economic levels, and they could design alternate development policies to mainstream, rather than marginalize, women’s issues. Time was then a very scarce commodity; women had less than a year to chart out their agenda for the multiparty democratization process, strategize, hold gender-sensitization and capacity-building seminars, squeeze in a national women’s convention, and even participate in the monitoring of the general elections. Despite the short preparatory time, the women’s movement in Kenya made significant progress toward women’s political empowerment. As early as January 1992, women’s groups embarked on a campaign to ensure that women candidates won the maximum possible number of parliamentary and civic seats in the December general elections. The target was set at 30–35 percent of the total seats. This was an ambitious target, considering that at the time women constituted only 1 percent of all MPs. Furthermore, this was the first time that the women’s movement had mobilized for participation in electoral politics. To achieve this tall order, women formulated multiple strategies to be implemented concurrently. First, they created a coalition of the diverse women’s groups and organizations as the basis of charting out a common women’s democratic agenda. This strategy of “Unity in Diversity” facilitated the implementation of other strategies for women’s empowerment. The first test of this unity in diversity was the February 1992 National Convention that sought to bring together women from diverse backgrounds to work out a common women’s democratic agenda. The meeting attracted over 2,000 delegates representing women’s organizations from the grassroots to the national level and blurring the divisions between rural and urban, young and old, and various ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Apart from charting a common women’s agenda for effective participation

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in the democratic process, the convention delegates established nationwide gender solidarity as a strategy for empowerment. Another important strategy was to set up programs for sensitizing women—the majority of voters—on the power of the vote and the merits of casting their votes for women. Some women’s lobbying groups, notably the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), the League of Women Voters, the YWCA, and the Association of African Women for Research and Development, conducted grassroots civic education programs as well as gender and legal rights awareness campaigns, using training workshops, seminars, the media, posters, and relevant printed materials. A conscious effort was also made to identify and recruit women candidates, by encouraging and building confidence in women wishing to contest political office in the elections. Toward this end, the NCSW organized national capacity-building training workshops for women candidates beginning in July 1992, bringing together about sixty women candidates from all the registered political parties. That women from across political parties could share a common training platform, and even agree on one presidential nominee, clearly indicates gender solidarity that overrides other differences (Nzomo 1993c). Another factor that helped to provide direction to the women’s movement during 1992 was the emergence of a number of new feminist lobbying groups that were much more political in their orientation and more assertive, innovative, and willing to take political risks. These included the NCSW, the League of Women Voters, and the short-lived Mothers in Action. The leadership provided by these new lobbying groups and individuals, as well as a relatively conducive political environment, greatly facilitated gender activism during 1992. Even women’s groups and organizations that had never previously articulated any political agenda became extremely vocal and critical of government. They vigorously lobbied all political parties to integrate gender issues within the context of their democratic agendas and programs (Nzomo 1993a; Nzomo and Kibwana 1993). In this regard, women also exploited the fact that in a bid to get women’s votes, male politicians in Kenya were willing to concede some gender-specific demands. But in reality, the concessions made to women were largely rhetorical and/or superficial, as opposed to any fundamental commitment to change. Most political parties, including KANU, made some gender-based concessions in their party manifestos. KANU even promised to allocate most of the nominated seats to women (KANU Manifesto 1992) and agreed to the longcontested house allowance for married women in public service (Sunday Nation, 13 December 1992, 1–2). Neither promise was fulfilled after KANU won the elections. The most celebrated strategy for influencing democratic change came shortly after the first national women’s convention in February–March

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1992. A section of the women’s movement, primarily grassroots women, employed an innovative strategy to pressure the Kenyan state to release fifty-two political prisoners detained indefinitely without bail. The mothers, relatives, and friends of the political prisoners went on a hunger strike on 28 February 1992, after failing to influence the government through normal legal channels. The state’s violent intervention on 4 March 1992, in an attempt to break the strike, led the women to strip naked as they cursed and challenged the attacking policemen to a duel. The stripping act traditionally signifies an extreme form of curse and defiance of the aggressor. In this case, the women were cursing and defying the authority of the oppressive Kenyan state (Standard and Daily Nation, March 1992; Weekly Review, 6 March 1992, 3–7; Society, 23 March 1992, 9). In addition to the hunger strike itself that continued for almost a year, this one act yielded significant results in pushing Kenya’s human rights and democratic agenda forward. Not only did the government eventually release the fifty-two political prisoners but the women’s movement received a major boost in their bid to influence democratic change. In sharp contrast to the single-party era, women activists in the 1990s have courted rather than shunned the news media in their search for empowerment. The media was aggressively sought to publicize numerous workshops and seminars starting in 1992. Many press conferences were held, especially on issues on which women were lobbying for state action. The government-controlled radio station was the most difficult to penetrate, but a few urban-based women activists managed to circumvent these controls and utilize radio both for communicating with women at the grassroots and transmitting gender education to the public. The media is now viewed as an important tool for popularizing the women’s agenda and educating women and men on the gender dimension of human rights and democracy. On balance, although women have not received as much quality coverage in both electronic and print media as they would have wished, they have at least managed to reduce the level of negative portrayal and the belittling of women’s political actions. A major achievement in this regard was having the personal political profiles of most of the women candidates printed in the largest local daily newspapers, the Nation and the Standard, during the critical campaign period. In this regard, it was felt that it was important for women candidates to highlight their leadership abilities publicly and to introduce them to the target voters through the media. Furthermore, in an attempt to influence public attitudes, the women’s movement engaged in a poster campaign to show that the private arena, where most women are located, is also political and that democracy begins in the home and works its way up to the national level. Thus, for example, it was pointed out that men who are violent and domineering toward their families are likely to be autocratic national leaders as well. More importantly,

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women’s enormous experience in running the family “ministry,” often as de facto heads, as well as being custodians of culture, welfare provisions, planning and budgeting, farming, and so on, gives them the necessary credentials for national leadership not only in the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, but also in other key ministries such as Finance, Planning, and Agriculture. Accordingly, posters were printed and conspicuously posted in public places, in public transport vehicles, and on private cars with such slogans as “A Woman’s Place Is in the House: The State House,” “A Parliament Without Women Is Like a Fireplace with Two Stones,” and “The Homemaker Should Also Be the Statemaker: Vote for a Woman” (Nzomo and Kibwana 1993, 164–166). Apart from the question of political empowerment, the women’s democratic agenda also underscored women’s social and economic rights as both human rights and democratic rights. Violence against women was singled out as a major area of the violation of women’s human rights in Kenya. Activists lobbied for comprehensive legal reform to provide women with protection against all forms of violence and especially for the maximum possible punishment for rapists. Some recommended the death sentence for rape, while others opted for life sentence and castration. The issue of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and their negative impact on women’s socioeconomic and political rights was also addressed within the democratic agenda for gender. The strategy of capacity building for women candidates went beyond civic education, skills training, and moral support. As the December 1992 general elections approached, the women’s movement engaged in direct campaigning for women candidates. And finally, the NCSW and the NCWK monitored the 1992 elections as accredited observers, charged with the responsibility of monitoring gender-specific electoral irregularities and the differential impact of the electoral process on women candidates. This was the first time in Kenya’s political history that the women’s movement successfully pursued their gender-specific interests throughout the entire electoral process. An entire year of advocacy, mobilizing, and enhancing gender awareness produced some impressive results. Over 250 women stood for civic and parliamentary seats in the December 1992 general elections, more than a 100 percent increase from previous elections. Despite the numerous obstacles women candidates faced during the electoral process (ranging from harassment, intimidation, and discrimination within parties to financial shortfalls, mass rigging, and other electoral irregularities), six women were elected to Parliament and about forty-five were elected councilors; one of them has since been elected mayor. In a nutshell then, the women’s movement in Kenya put up remarkable pressure for women’s political empowerment and the respect of women’s human rights in 1992. The six women in Parliament and fifty in civic positions—the largest number of

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women ever in Kenya’s civic and parliamentary bodies—owe their electoral victory as much to their own efforts and competence as to the tremendous lobbying and support they received from women’s groups during the electoral process. In this respect, women had demonstrated their political tenacity and determination. The rise of Charity Ngilu as a credible opposition candidate for president in 1997 shows women’s continued resolve to penetrate the male-dominated political arena.

The Unfinished Women’s Agenda The modest number of women elected to political office in December 1992 elections was an important political achievement, but it fell far short of the target. Furthermore, outside the political arena many of the concerns women had identified remained unchanged. That is why women activists returned to the drawing board soon after the elections and worked out a postelection agenda to guide the women’s movement to the next general elections in 1997 and beyond (Nzomo 1993c). The postelection strategies focused less on advocacy and more on building women’s capacity to influence the undemocratic, male-dominated public institutions with a view to attaining rights, justice, and equity for both women and men. Emphasis was put on strategies for enhancing the autonomy of women’s organizations, strengthening the ideology of “Unity in Diversity,” facilitating women’s participation in politics, and being able to resist state co-optation and manipulation. Furthermore, the postelection agenda stressed the need to create political mechanisms under the control of women as an alternative to, and a negotiating instrument with, the male-dominated political institutions. Thus at a national conference in March 1993, the strategies adopted for women’s empowerment included: (1) building the capacity of women’s organizations and lobby groups; (2) broadening and institutionalizing gender, legal, and educational programs; (3) developing comprehensive support services for women’s multiple roles; (4) highlighting women’s leadership abilities and thus building a positive image of women as political and public decisionmakers; (5) utilizing civic positions for training and recruiting women for national politics; (6) initiating a women-led political party with a broad-based but gender-sensitive agenda; and (7) networking and building alliances, not only among women’s groups but also with mixed-gender human rights groups and gender-sensitive men. Public policy and legal issues that required lobbying the state were seen to depend in part on the extent to which the women’s movement could empower itself so as to become a powerful political force that could influence government policy. To date, however, there is no indication that President Moi intends to facilitate any of the postelection gender demands. There seems to be an

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officially sanctioned regression toward the gender insensitivity that had characterized government policy and practice during the single-party era. As noted earlier, the appointment of the now-defunct task force to review laws relating to women and the May 1995 appointment of the only KANU woman MP as minister of culture and social services have been widely viewed as tokenist gestures intended to appease government critics and to delay the more comprehensive reforms demanded by women activists and other human rights groups. Indeed, activist women’s groups who are conducting civic, legal, and gender education have to date encountered more state harassment, intimidation, and obstruction than cooperation. More importantly, existing laws and state practices still discriminate against women and violence against women is still a significant problem. The socioeconomic situation of women has tended to deteriorate rather than advance since the 1992 elections. The economic crisis has not only resulted in further economic marginalization of women and the feminization of poverty, it has also made networking among women more difficult, as it has diminished the time available to women to organize, attend meetings, and implement empowerment strategies (Nzomo 1992; NCSW 1994). The impact of SAPs, coupled with bad governance, threatens women’s newfound capacity to struggle for their rights and to mobilize for democratic change. Even if the political environment were conducive, the six women MPs are still too few to influence policy change in a 200-member Parliament. Consequently, while women’s voices in civil society continue to be audible in the postelection era, they are not as loud or forceful as they were during the election year. Despite these difficulties, a number of women’s lobbying groups including the NCSW and the International Federation of Women Lawyers– Kenya Chapter, the League of Women Voters, and antirape organizations have sustained the political momentum gathered in 1992 by conducting civic, legal, and gender awareness education, as well as raising public awareness on women’s rights as human rights and providing legal counseling services to victims of gender violence. While the changes so far have been modest, the legacy of the political opening provided by the regime’s acceptance of multipartyism is still unfolding.

Concluding Remarks: Democratic Space and Limited Reconfiguration This chapter has attempted to survey state-society relations in Kenya, focusing specifically on the women’s movement during the critical year of 1992. The analysis has highlighted the uneasy and mixed nature of the relations between the fragmented women’s movement and the Kenyan state, oscillating between co-optation and resistance, compliance and defiance. It

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has shown how at any one time, a section of the women’s movement has acquiesced to state interests and in the process compromised the struggle for gender rights. But other sections of the women’s movement have resisted state co-optation and have either withdrawn from involvement with the state and formal politics or sought alternative and autonomous channels of empowering themselves and influencing democratic change in a manner that advances the status of women. With the return to multipartyism in 1992, the Kenyan state for a while relaxed its repressive response to civil society groups, including women’s groups. This political liberalization afforded the women’s movement and other civil society groups political space for dynamization and active participation in shaping the multiparty democratic struggles of the 1990s. In this process, the women’s movement demonstrated its potential for being a formidable political force, capable of seeking and influencing change in a status quo characterized by patriarchy and state autocracy. Women also demonstrated a unique ability to close ranks across class, race, ethnic, religious, and other identities, and to create unity in diversity as well as a women’s agenda to guide the movement in shaping democratic change. Women’s ability to establish gender solidarity and put aside their differences makes them a critical social force in a country like Kenya, whose democratic progress is to a large extent being hampered by politics of ethnicity, clannism, and idiosyncratic differences. Some individual women have also provided leadership in efforts to unite the fragile and fragmented opposition political parties. The women’s movement has also spearheaded the campaign for peace and reconciliation in response to the politically charged atmosphere of ethnic conflict. The six women in Kenya’s seventh Parliament have demonstrated stable leadership and principles. In a parliament characterized by insult trading and personality clashes, they have tried to address issues rather than personalities. They have also resisted the practice, endemic in the post1992 multiparty Parliament, of opposition politicians shifting their loyalties to KANU in exchange for financial favors. The women MPs have thus shown that women leaders’ style of politics can be significantly different from that of men. Their mature and principled political conduct has been notable. The women’s movement has indeed advanced and broadened, especially during the multiparty era. Women are learning to use the political space afforded by the new wave of the democratization struggles of the 1990s to lobby and demand the upholding of their human rights, the removal of gender-based oppression, and the restoration of their autonomy. There are now many more female voices of defiance and resistance than there were before 1991. Rights programs are now on the agendas of some women’s organizations. This is a significant step forward from the singleparty era, when programs of most women’s organizations focused on

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social welfare needs for improving family nutrition, shelter, clothing, and child welfare, and completely neglected strategic empowerment concerns. Participation in multiparty politics in the 1990s has also increased awareness of the fact that incursions at the formal level of politics do not necessarily guarantee that women’s rights will suddenly acquire priority on a predominantly man-made agenda. Women cannot expect male-dominated party politics to create space for gender issues. Accordingly, in their postelection agenda, women have devised strategies that involve initiating alternative political space for their issues within their organizations and groups. In Kenya, as in many African countries, women’s struggles are still taking place in an undemocratic context despite multipartyism. Democratic rules of tolerance, mutual respect, accountability, and transparency, and respect for basic human rights and freedoms, have not yet been accepted by the major political players. This indicates the resilience of the autocratic Kenyan state and its capacity to resist reform, despite pressures from civil society groups. Yet the reforms of the 1990s have also revealed the first fissures in that capacity, and thus opened the door to a process of reconfiguring state-society relations. The situation affords both opportunities and challenges for the advancement of an agenda of women’s human rights and empowerment in the 1990s and beyond.

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Ghana: Structural Adjustment and State (Re)Formation DANIEL G REEN

As in many other African countries, Ghana’s political and economic development since independence in 1957 has been tumultuous and disappointing. By the early 1960s, the visionary leadership of Kwame Nkrumah had become authoritarian, ending in 1966 with what would be the first of Ghana’s many coups. Redemocratization and the country’s Second Republic were brought to a halt by a second coup in 1972, and the rest of the 1970s were a “lost decade” of corruption, economic mismanagement, and decline. By the time of Ghana’s Third Republic and third attempt at democracy in 1979, the country was in profound economic and political crisis. Many observers now argue that Africa’s current international marginalization and general economic decline have precipitated a nearly continent-wide plague of economic crisis, political decay, and incipient “anarchy” (Callaghy 1994; Kaplan 1994; Reno 1995a; Zartman 1995a), producing the “critical juncture” that this volume explores. Yet interestingly, Ghana was in many ways already at this stage of crisis and institutional breakdown in the 1978–1983 period. Since the crisis of the late 1970s, Ghana has been slowly rebuilding itself, rejuvenating and liberalizing its economy, and redesigning its political system and state-society relations. These changes have taken place under the governments of Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, as chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) from 1982 to 1992, and then as President Rawlings after his victory in the 1992 presidential elections. In addition, central to Ghana’s political evolution since Rawlings’s December 1981 military coup has been the country’s ambitious structural adjustment program, launched in mid-1983 and continuing to the present, under the sponsorship of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), or World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This chapter explores the impact of the Rawlings governments (authoritarian and democratic) and the structural adjustment program on political reconstruction and state formation in Ghana after the institutional breakdown of the late 1970s. 185

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Altering and reconstructing state-society relations is part of the historical process of state formation, the ongoing process by which the state as a set of institutions (the state apparatus) and as an ordering idea (the state-idea) is formed and the lines of its authority, power, and purpose are drawn and redrawn (Abrams 1988; A. K. Clark 1994; Denis 1989; Dyson 1980). While current developments in comparative political science suggest a “state-in-society” approach and emphasize the power of society and internal forces in the state formation process (Migdal 1994), the perspective taken here highlights the influence of government decisions and external factors and constraints on state formation. This perspective views the state and state-idea as being at the nexus of national and international system forces, with state development highly influenced by both arenas (Cerny 1990; Cochrane and Anderson 1986; Palan and Gills 1994; Putnam 1988). For Ghana, external pressures since 1983 have brought a “logic of structural adjustment” into play, a logic of governance that expects fiscal stringency and efficient performance from government and is conducive to authoritarianism. Internal pressures—for relief from adjustment austerity as well as for distributive politics and democracy—have generally not prevailed in the face of the state and its external allies. Rather, the government’s decision to adopt and implement a thorough adjustment program has significantly reshaped the state in Ghana, with important implications for understanding Ghanaian politics today. A structural adjustment program of even moderate length and rigor will constitute a significant period in the formation of the subject state, affecting the institutional arrangement of the state apparatus and the stateidea. In Ghana, the adjustment effort has helped to create a more limited state, with a reduced role in the national economy and in the provision of social services, and with political legitimacy based more on macroeconomic performance and state neutrality in economic accumulation. Adjustment has also brought rupture and renewal in state-society relations. In the preadjustment phase, the Rawlings/PNDC government was initially revolutionary-populist in orientation. It then began to sever its links with society after the onset of adjustment, simultaneously building ties with its new external allies, the World Bank and the IMF. The process of reconstructing government links with society hesitantly began again in 1987, under the heavy influence of the adjustment program then at its peak. This reconstruction process has subsequently accelerated and taken interesting turns since the transition to democracy after 1991. Today, as states around Ghana are crumbling, it is important to examine the Ghana case for what it may reveal about ways of reconstructing African polities and ways of dealing with the dual challenge many countries have faced in the 1990s: that of continuing neoliberal adjustment reforms while simultaneously consolidating political democracy. It is often argued that loyal adherence to neoliberal austerity requires some kind of

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authoritarian politics, that real democracy makes economic discipline in poor countries difficult (Haggard and Kaufman 1989; Nelson 1994). The current democratic government of President Rawlings’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, although it has suffered from some bouts of indiscipline, appears to have been able to resolve internal and external pressures through the adaptation of its adjustment program to politics and of its politics to the logic of adjustment. Changes in the state apparatus (the creation of a more limited central state and of a local state) and in the state-idea (a shift to performance legitimation and its use as an electoral strategy via a “rural bias” in policy) may make Ghana better able to cope with these stresses. These developments in turn have important implications for Ghana’s future and for the continent as a whole.

Ghana in Crisis Since independence, Ghana has suffered political instability and gradual economic decline. Its experiences with democracy (the four Republics of 1960, 1969, 1979, and 1993) have in turn been punctuated by successful military coups d’état, in 1966, 1972, 1979, and 1981.1 Political upheaval did little to help an increasingly ailing economy and the country slowly sank into economic decline and a “patrimonial” politics of excessive centralization and corruption.2 Ghana’s final paroxysm came in the decay brought by the military government of Colonel Ignatius Acheampong (1972–1978), manifested in extreme tendencies toward economic statism and rent-seeking. Growing balance-of-payments problems were an excuse for increasing control of trade and prices, such that Ghana under Acheampong would soon become a textbook case of the problems of inept government intervention in the economy (Bates 1981). This was compounded by the endemic, personal corruption of the regime itself, described by Jeffries as a “kleptocracy” (1982). Inflation, which had averaged 4.8 percent in the 1969–1971 period, rose to over 50 percent in 1976 and to over 100 percent for 1977– 1978 (Jeffries 1982, 312). The Acheampong regime eventually selfdestructed over its effort to institutionalize its own rule with the infamous Union Government or “Unigov” initiative of 1976 (Owusu 1979). This was fiercely opposed by Ghanaian civil society and when the government rigged the results of a March 1978 referendum on the plan, the country was reduced to near-anarchy (Chazan and Le Vine 1979). In July 1978, Acheampong was quietly removed from office by fellow officers. Ghana was in fundamental political and economic crisis by 1979, and public exasperation and disillusionment were at an all-time high (Rothchild and Gyimah-Boadi 1986). The general population had been forced by this time to develop a variety of “coping strategies” to deal with the complete

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breakdown of the economy and of state institutions (Chazan 1983, 191–203). These included varieties of kalabule—petty corruption and illegalities to make ends meet—and outright “disengagement” or withdrawal from the state, in which extended families and whole villages withdrew to local self-reliance and insular, local problem-solving mechanisms.

Rawlings’s Arrival on the Political Stage Into this crisis atmosphere came the revolutionary populism of Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. A charismatic junior officer in the Ghana Defence Forces who was popular with his peers and enlisted men, Rawlings first seized power on 4 June 1979 in a coup against the military government of Acheampong’s successor, General Fred Akuffo. His second takeover came on 31 December 1981, after two years of elected civilian government—the Third Republic of President Hilla Limann, to whom Rawlings had handed power in September 1979 in a planned transition to democracy. In the 1979 seizure, Rawlings headed the brief military government of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). His “Second Coming” produced the PNDC. Propelled by popular disgust with economic crisis, corruption, and mismanagement, both Rawlings’s AFRC and PNDC governments promised major reforms along similar lines. Both pledged to bring a “moral revolution” to sweep out corruption and the politicomilitary elites who were felt to control the country (Chazan 1992b, 126–127; Jeffries 1989). AFRC rule was brief but eventful. In an unprecedented move that shocked the nation, eight major military leaders, among them three former heads of state (Afrifa of 1966–1969, Acheampong, and Akuffo), were executed by the AFRC in late June. The civil service was attacked as corrupt and incompetent, and many senior officials were dismissed, others placed under investigation. Economic “crimes” such as hoarding, black marketeering, and tax evasion were investigated and punished.3 Rawlings’s second coup d’état on 31 December 1981 launched the “December 31st Revolution” and the PNDC.4 The style of PNDC rule varied considerably over the next eleven years, in many ways influenced by the structural adjustment program. The period before adjustment measures were first announced in the national budget of April 1983 is often termed “PNDC Phase I” (Chazan 1991; Rothchild 1995a). This initial revolutionary period resembled the AFRC, but differed in that a nascent revolutionary base of numerous leftist-populist organizations—from which ideas, personnel, and support were drawn—had developed in the two intervening years (Ray 1986; Yeebo 1991). Also new was Rawlings’s own commitment to intervene in politics on a more permanent basis: the PNDC pledged another “housecleaning,” but this time the cleaning was to be a lasting one and would therefore take more time.5

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The chosen course during PNDC Phase I was an ambitious people’s revolution with new institutions and revolutionary committees of various kinds (based on Cuban and Libyan models), in neighborhoods, towns, and workplaces.6 These bodies were to be the watchdogs of the revolution, implementing PNDC policies and investigating corruption. Official rhetoric also stated that they would eventually be the vehicles by which average Ghanaians would be empowered and achieve economic and political justice, in a national democratic revolution that would remake Ghana. On the economic front, the PNDC’s plans were less defined but strongly populist and interventionist, relying, for example, on price controls and monitoring of traders to control inflation and hoarding. The grander plan for the economy was unclear but broadly antiimperialist, favoring indigenous, self-reliant development over closer connections to the capitalist world economy (Ahiakpor 1985; Yeebo 1985). But by mid-1982 the Ghanaian economy was in serious trouble, with worsening balance-of-payments problems and shortages of foreign exchange and crucial imports, such as fuel, medicine, and spare parts. Some kind of external assistance was clearly needed.7 The PNDC’s first inclination was to turn to the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, and an official delegation came back from these countries with commitments for industrial investment and other assistance. But large-scale development financing was not available from these sources. After much agonizing, Jerry Rawlings took the momentous decision to “go the IMF way”—embrace neoliberal structural adjustment reforms—in late 1982, and the outlines of agreement with the IMF were reached by February 1983.8

Implications of Adjustment The choice to embrace adjustment opened the door to what might be called “the logic of adjustment” and its influences (Herbst 1990). The logic of adjustment promotes a system of political and administrative praxis that depoliticizes economic governance, allows autonomy for the economic sphere, and eschews rent-seeking. This implies noninterference in the working of markets, with policymaking that reflects economic rationality and a fundamental concern for enhanced economic efficiency and productivity.9 It draws from liberal, minimalist theories of the state, which hold that the state must be limited and “neutral,” impartially enforcing property rights and contracts (Evans 1992; Willams and Young 1994, 94). The logic of adjustment is thus fundamentally antipatrimonial in both the economic and political spheres and, if taken seriously, a great deal must change when adjustment is adopted. Reinforcing expectations of probity and productivity are requirements for government fiscal stringency and balance, achieved through spending cuts and a rollback of government obligations and services.10

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These changes have important political ramifications. It has long been argued that adjustment reforms reduce the discretion of political leaders to control and distribute resources for political purposes (Haggard 1986; Nelson 1984, 105–106). Hampered by their new orientation and liberalizing loan conditionality, governments have few means of assisting their friends and supporters. This creates a propensity for governments to reduce the size of their support coalitions, since a smaller, more homogeneous coalition will be easier to supply with resources, and to shift coalitions to include the beneficiaries of reforms (Waterbury 1989).11 Austerity and a neutrality ethic also tend to force governments to deal with their constituents differently, relying less on resource payoffs to win support and more on macroeconomic performance (Herbst 1990, 956; Moon 1988).12 This shift to what might be called a “performance legitimation strategy,” if enduring, may mark an important change in the stateidea—a positive one, since it means that the central state has taken on a genuine concern for development (Gadzey 1995, 86–87), in marked contrast to the dysfunctional patrimonial state (Callaghy 1988; Sandbrook 1986). Finally, while liberal and antipatrimonial in many ways, it is important to note that the logic of adjustment is conducive to the centralization of decisionmaking power and requires insulation or autonomy from societal forces so that the reform “package” is not jeopardized by political pressures (Haggard and Kaufman 1992; Nelson 1993). It could be argued that it therefore has an elective affinity for authoritarianism. This assertion is controversial, however, and some have found that there is no “authoritarian advantage” in economic reform, given such regimes’ problems in collecting information and feedback, for example (Maravall 1994, 19). Such arguments, however, confuse implementing developmentally successful programs—which may indeed require flexibility and information from the subject economy—with implementing reforms primarily to satisfy conditionalities and external pressures. A government following what is largely someone else’s formula for reforms (the standard package of IBRD/IMF adjustment reforms in the case of most developing countries) is less concerned with getting feedback from its economy than in meeting loan conditionalities and deadlines. In Ghana’s case, the logic of adjustment would have several important effects after 1983, along the general pattern discussed above: (1) the state was reconstructed along limited, liberal lines; (2) there was an accompanying shift to a more general performance strategy for garnering support; but also (3) a government effort to disconnect itself from societal elements against reform and a deepening of authoritarianism. From early on, Ghana adopted an unusually comprehensive reform program and implemented it relatively faithfully, particularly before the changed international circumstances that gave rise to democratization pressures after 1991.13 The next

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sections discuss changes in the state under PNDC authoritarianism and its enthusiastic adjustment program in the 1983–1991 period.

Building a Limited State, 1983–1991 With the advent of adjustment, the process of reconfiguring the state’s role in the economy and building a more liberal, limited state began. Politically, this involved severing the links with much of the PNDC’s initial support base and increasing the isolation of the government. Economically, the process of creating a separate economic sphere unfolded slowly over the coming years. The first evident change was the gradual destruction of the fledgling revolutionary coalition of PNDC Phase I. This was precipitated and aided by internal strife caused by the turn to the IMF itself—which the leftist faction inside the PNDC termed a “great betrayal.” The 1983–1987 period in state-society relations can be considered “PNDC Phase II” (Chazan 1991, 1992b). Early in this phase, the various people’s committees were considerably reshaped and made more amenable to adjustment. Their class nature was changed and they were made completely open to the previously excluded economic establishment (Green 1992; Ninsin 1987; Yeebo 1991). They received a new service orientation, with an emphasis on production and economic development. In late 1984 the people’s committees were disbanded completely, in favor of a new set of nonthreatening bodies called Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), carefully subordinated to the PNDC. The definition of “the revolution,” the role of “the people” in it, and the tone and character of state-society relations had clearly changed by 1983–1984. “Participation” in public affairs was increasingly defined simply as participation in production, in local self-help efforts to provide material amenities, rather than as influence in important decisions. It meant mobilization, largely confined to the local level, for activities compatible with goals that were determined by the PNDC leadership. Government slogans calling for “discipline and productivity” were calls for obedience to the new order. Since adjustment had laid out the policy course for the country, consultation with the public was unnecessary. Accompanying this change away from revolution and participation was the increasing repression of the PNDC regime. The government established monopoly control of the media in 1985, when the last independent paper was closed down. Throughout 1986–1987, trade unionists and leftist leaders were frequently arrested and often detained for months (Green 1992, 157–161). By 1988 a “culture of silence” had developed in which Ghanaians were afraid to speak against the government in any way (Gyimah-Boadi 1990).

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In the economic sphere, adopting adjustment meant immediately embarking on an expansive set of neoliberal reforms that continue to the present, one of the longest running World Bank/IMF reform efforts to date. In the second half of 1983, basic reforms prepared for the Economic Recovery Program (or ERP) of 1984–1986, ultimately followed by an ERP II for 1987–1989. The ERP I and II, like any World Bank/IMF–sponsored economic liberalization, emphasized a shift to market pricing of goods and services, liberalization of trade and foreign exchange arrangements, and strong efforts to trim the public sector and improve its performance. Because a great deal was actually achieved, this period saw significant changes in the structure and purpose of the Ghanaian state and in the rights and expectations of its citizens. For example, the Ghanaian state has almost completely withdrawn from the determination of exchange rates, long one of its more important and politically charged powers (Younger 1993). Devaluation was among the first tasks taken on by the PNDC in 1983, and for the first three years of adjustment the government continued to control exchange rates and devaluation, with seven more devaluations between October 1983 and early 1986. In September 1986, however, the government made a conscious decision to depoliticize the issue—always a sensitive one because of the negative impact of devaluations on prices and real wages—by switching to auction-determined rates for most imports (Agyeman-Duah 1987; Herbst 1993a, 48–50). Since then the state has almost completely withdrawn. Private foreign exchange bureaus were legalized in 1988 and import licensing was abolished shortly thereafter. The government gradually increased the role of banks in the foreign exchange system, until 1992 when the auction system was completely abandoned in favor of an interbank market (Younger 1993, 11). In consumer and commodity pricing, government withdrawal was nearly complete by 1991, with some important exceptions. Most price controls in effect under PNDC Phase I were quickly eliminated thereafter. Fertilizer subsidies were reduced but not eliminated and utility rates were drastically increased but not liberalized. Government-set producer prices for all export commodities were frequently increased, with particular emphasis on cocoa, a crucial export. By 1991 the government had completely withdrawn from the pricing of cotton and tobacco, and was planning a limited liberalization of cocoa marketing, though it continued to set cocoa producer prices. Privatization of Ghana’s large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector showed the least progress in the authoritarian period, although the operations of many SOEs were reformed through corporate plans and performance contracts (Gyimah-Boadi 1991; World Bank 1991). Nonetheless, by January 1991 only fifteen small enterprises had been privatized, and another twenty-three liquidated (World Bank 1991, 28).

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Strengthening the financial sector was another important element in the creation of an independent private sphere. The financial sector was extensively restructured after 1987, under the auspices of a World Bank financial sector adjustment credit. To increase the availability of credit, the setting of interest rates was liberalized, bad loans were written off, and bank operating standards and regulations strengthened (World Bank 1994b). Most significantly, a stock exchange began operations in November 1990. These developments came late in adjustment but would facilitate further progress in establishing a working private economy. (The stock market would later be used to float companies for privatization, for example.) Programs to reform the economy were accompanied by efforts to revise the functions and services performed by the state and to restructure public expectations of what the public sector should provide. The PNDC began to shed many elements of the Ghanaian “welfare state,” such as it existed. “Cost-recovery” programs in health and education began, particularly in 1985–1986. In the public health sector, existing fees for various services were greatly increased (between 800 and 1,000 percent) and many new fees on previously free services were established (Ephson 1985). Government gave hospitals more financial and managerial autonomy. Changes in education were less extensive, though some cost-recovery measures (higher school fees and supply charges) appeared by 1985. Reforms in these areas deepened during the ERP II. Increasing the efficiency and administrative capacity of the state apparatus was a major goal of the ERP. The size of the state bureaucracy was reduced. The PNDC committed itself to laying off 15,000 civil servants per year for the 1987–1989 period, and although the results fell short, the PNDC did manage to remove approximately 12,000 employees per year from government payrolls in this period. A primary concern of the limited, enabling state was of course infrastructure, and new expenditure programs covered the gamut, in rehabilitation of ports, roads, and railways, as well as water and electricity supply. These were made possible by donor assistance, and by significantly increased government revenues. The tax net was widened and deepened and ambitious targets were achieved. Government also switched its tax base dramatically, from reliance on cocoa export duties to taxes on petroleum products (Kapur et al. 1991, 34). On the whole, government revenues exceeded 14 percent of GDP by 1989, a near-tripling from the rate of 1983 (Kraus 1991, 30).

A Performance Legitimation Strategy Another important change in the state under the PNDC and adjustment was the PNDC’s tacit adoption of a performance legitimation strategy to

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assist it in achieving control and compliance in the Ghanaian polity. This was the logical result of adjustment pressures for austerity and neutrality, the move toward a limited state, and the cutting of ties with society. Cut off from the revolutionary support base and failing to attract much middleclass support, Rawlings and the PNDC “remained suspended above society” and began to seek legitimacy indirectly, through economic performance and demonstrated management skills (Rothchild 1995a, 57; Jeffries 1991a, 168). It was hoped that economic performance would compensate for PNDC authoritarianism, which only worsened in the late 1980s. What is most significant is that the adoption of performance legitimation placed limits on the political strategies available to the government. It was an implicit rejection of those strategies—systemic clientelism, ethnic chauvinism, cronyism, and rent-seeking politics—that are fundamental to patrimonial politics in Africa. Analyses of the political behavior of the regime in this period bear this out. Many have noted the relative absence of corruption and patronage politics in the PNDC and in its handling of the economy or the adjustment program (Jeffries 1991a, 1991b; Martin 1991). Rawlings himself developed a personal reputation for honesty and probity (Martin 1991). These qualities were of course encouraged by the adjustment program and helped to improve the PNDC’s relations with international financial institutions (IFIs). “Most observers, including foreign donors whose money would be the target for major embezzlement, agree that the PNDC’s lack of corruption is one of its major assets. Rawlings’ personal reputation for probity provides the PNDC with much of its fragile legitimacy” (Africa Confidential, 7 October 1988, 4). A survey of urban, working-class Ghanaians also found that Rawlings was respected for his honesty, even after many years in power (Jeffries 1991b). One of the PNDC’s favorite propaganda catch-phrases of the time was “probity and accountability”; while the disconnected, oppressive PNDC was hardly accountable, the claim of probity appears justified. There is also considerable evidence that the PNDC rejected the politics of ethnic chauvinism in favor of a strategy of ethnic balancing. There was a great deal of balance in ministerial and other official appointments and the PNDC was popularly perceived as “nontribalist,” in marked contrast to previous governments (Jeffries 1991b, 222). The fact that the PNDC was a quasi-military government, with relatively firm control of the Ghanaian military, helped it maintain these politics. It must also be emphasized that the PNDC used repression and a variety of coercive tactics in conjunction with the performance orientation, for control purposes rather than legitimation. The performance strategy had its roots in Ghanaian politics before adjustment. The AFRC and early PNDC definitely displayed an interest in fundamental change and a concern for improving the lot of the average Ghanaian. Preadjustment PNDC documents rail against economic mismanagement,

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corruption, “trade malpractices,” and a “huge and parasitic Public Service” in need of pruning and reform (Government of Ghana [hereafter GOG] 1982). These goals were compatible with an IBRD/IMF–guided structural economic reform program and could (and eventually would) be addressed in the course of structural adjustment. The decision to adopt adjustment was thus not a complete reversal, as much as an alteration of some government goals and definitely of the means by which they would be achieved. As Rawlings has commented, defending himself against critics of the decision to embrace “the IMF way”: “Our objectives haven’t changed” (Chazan 1991, 28). Whether or not this method succeeded in gaining legitimacy for the PNDC and helping it hold on to power is not particularly important to our purposes here.14 What is significant is that the PNDC acted according to this strategy, and not another one, throughout the 1983–1991 period. It was an important progressive change that produced an authoritarian but “developmental” state in Ghana (Green 1991). But was it a more permanent change in the state-idea, or something only maintained by the conjuncture of external and internal forces at the time? Could patrimonial, clientelist politics be more permanently reduced to a trace element? This is a critical question for understanding contemporary Ghana. Changes in the state-idea are only achieved over time and are most clearly seen in the long view of history (Dyson 1980). However, in the near term, in Ghana after 1983, the logic of adjustment would at least help to sustain these changes.

Building a Local State The revival of the local state, principally through a major decentralization program begun in 1987, was another significant change in the Ghanaian state under the PNDC—a change in its institutional structure that reflected changes in the state-idea. Some argue that neoliberal restructurings of the state inherently promote decentralization (Schwartz 1994). In Ghana, decentralization was promoted and shaped by the logic of adjustment, but had also been on the political agenda before 1983 (Ayee 1995; Green 1992). Adjustment and concerns for fiscal balance and limiting the state greatly strengthened a policy trend present in PNDC Phase I, which emphasized local resource mobilization and local self-reliance. This could be seen in the production and self-sufficiency orientation of the people’s committees after 1983 and in the CDRs. It was also felt in local government policy from 1985, when the central government shifted responsibility for district employees’ salaries and allowances to the district level (Anyetei 1986). In mid-1987 the PNDC unveiled the basic guidelines for a new initiative, the District Assembly Decentralization Policy. This involved the

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creation of local government councils called “District Assemblies” in 110 newly created administrative districts throughout the country. Assemblies would range from forty to over 100 members, depending upon a district’s population. Two-thirds of the Assembly members in each district would be elected to three-year terms by secret ballot from their individual constituencies, called “electoral areas.” The remaining one-third of Assembly members would be appointed by the central government in Accra. The Assemblies would have considerable authority over local development and powers to tax and collect revenue. Accompanying the Assemblies’ establishment was the decentralization of twenty-two ministerial departments to the district level and to Assembly control. Finally, the Assemblies were also planned to be the first stage in a nonpartisan national governing system that the PNDC described as its project for “True Democracy.” A Local State in Adjustment’s Image The Assembly program rebuilt the local state in Ghana and was the major political activity of the PNDC in the 1987–1990 period, before democratization at the national level began. In design and operation, the Assemblies clearly reflected the style of governance that had developed from the PNDC’s political predilections, under the influence of its long relationship with donors and the logic of adjustment. They were to be apolitical, focused purely on development issues, efficient, and productive—in many ways, the logic of adjustment come to life. The new local state was to be kept separate from the central state and from national policy issues. It was made clear that Assemblies were to confine their activities to the “grassroots” and purely local concerns (GOG 1987, Para. 1.4). All their activity was to be “within the framework of policies determined by the national political authority” (GOG 1987, Para. 1.6), focusing almost exclusively on local economic development concerns. The separation between central and local state was also budgetary. The Assemblies were largely on their own financially and their revenue situation was a constant problem in these early years (1989–1992); they were plagued with penury and the urge to overtax (Green 1992; Haynes 1991). Fiscal decentralization and more revenue sharing were on the policy agenda but the PNDC was very reluctant, before democratization, to act on these demands. The Assemblies were also to be as apolitical as possible and protected from extralocal political forces. This was to keep national issues out of the Assemblies and also to prevent the Assembly project—a minor political opening on the PNDC’s part—from being used by opposition groups to attack the PNDC or the adjustment program, or to subvert the Assemblies themselves. The first Assembly elections, conducted in stages from December

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1988 to February 1989, allowed only limited, supervised campaigning, via public question-and-answer meetings staged in each electoral area by local District Election Committees. In accordance with the continuing ban on political parties, the elections were completely nonpartisan (GOG 1987, Section 7.3). They were also relatively free from central government interference, however, since this stricture also applied to the PNDC itself and its organs (i.e., CDRs) (West Africa, 19 October 1987, 2091). Reflecting the PNDC’s performance orientation, government expectations of the Assemblies and Assembly members were high. Propaganda and official statements called for hard work, self-sacrifice, and real development achievements from Assembly members.15 To the chagrin of many members, the majority of whom were quite poor, they were not allowed to receive salaries. Instead members simply received sitting fees and reimbursement for transportation and meals. Even then, there were criticisms from Accra if sitting fees were considered excessive or if the Assemblies used funds for other purposes than development. Finally, the Assemblies were clearly designed in accordance with the PNDC’s moralizing tendencies, which had persisted and strengthened under adjustment’s influence. Great pains were taken to thwart patrimonialist tendencies toward electoral corruption or elite dominance of the process. Having elections at the district level facilitated this, as Rawlings noted, because at that level voters would know “the honourable citizens in their midst” and not be fooled by “empty promises” or “a few tins of corned beef and sardines” distributed to secure votes (Rawlings 1987b, 261). Only upstanding citizens need apply: Anyone who is contemplating standing before his neighbours to offer himself as a candidate in these coming elections must know that he or she will stand naked before the scrutiny of the rest of the community. It is our responsibility, the men and women of this country, to look well at the candidates who will eventually present themselves to us and to accept only those who are clean, upright and committed in deeds as well as in words, to the transformation of our nation (Rawlings 1987a, 7; emphasis added).

The Assemblies were to be the first step on the road to “true democracy” and, though its institutional form at the national level was never fully elaborated, the PNDC conceived of the Assemblies as the dawning of a new order of clean, uncorrupt, popular democracy. Local State, Local Society It is often argued that the Assemblies were designed to tap a rural support base (Callaghy 1990; Gyimah-Boadi 1990; Chazan 1991). But for a variety of reasons, including their disconnection from the political center and

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their financial isolation, this was difficult for them to do in this early phase (Green 1992; Herbst 1993a; Ninsin 1991). They were successful, however, in “reengaging” people in the public sphere at the local level. The Assemblies were embraced at the local level (Green 1992; Haynes 1991). From the outset, much of the public was enthusiastic for the decentralization, especially in the rural areas. The creation of forty-five new districts (cut from the initial sixty-five, to total 110) helped make the initiative popular. People were excited about having their own new districts, towns enthused about being new district capitals, and national voter turnout for the first elections was good, at 59 percent. The Assemblies were open to the participation of all, which helped them to attract interest and involvement. With constituencies of 1,000–2,000 voters, Assembly election politics were extremely local and candidates were well known personally to the voters. By law, anyone who was eligible to vote could be nominated to candidacy. There was no literacy requirement, nor was knowledge of English particularly important, since each Assembly could decide the language of its meetings. The effort to open up the Assemblies to broad-based participation worked; the vast majority of those elected were farmers and teachers. A whole new group of average citizens had been brought into power. The government further legitimized the Assemblies by choosing quality candidates for positions as appointed members. This was important because many Ghanaians suspected early on that the Assemblies were designed as agents of the central government and that the PNDC would likely fill those positions with their own lackeys. In fact, while all the district heads of CDRs were appointed, most of the appointed Assembly members ultimately chosen in 1988–1989 had no particular loyalty to the PNDC and appeared to have indeed been chosen for their technical and administrative skills (Green 1992; Haynes 1991). The appointed members were generally well respected by their fellow members. Some 62 percent of Assembly “presiding members” (a kind of speaker of the house to be elected by each Assembly from its members) in the first year were appointed members (Ninsin 1991, 59). In spite of their financial weakness in the 1989–1992 period, the Assemblies could and did fulfill the vital function of mobilizing and coordinating local resources for infrastructure and economic development. The decentralization was the most significant change in the institutional structure of the Ghanaian state since the rollback of the revolutionary committees in 1983–1984. And the Assemblies as an institution persisted through democratization and the drafting of the Fourth Republic constitution. Their nonpartisan nature has also proved popular, and was incorporated into that document. Finally, the new local state would also prove useful to the PNDC under the political changes to come.

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Adjustment and State Formation in an Opened Polity The Assemblies were the last major political initiative of the PNDC before events slipped out of its control. Prodemocracy movements erupted throughout Africa beginning in early 1990. By the end of the year the PNDC would be fighting a rearguard action to control burgeoning prodemocracy forces in Ghana. While domestic discontent had been simmering all along, external factors were the crucial trigger for democratization. Central among these was an important sea change in the logic of adjustment, especially for Africa. With the publication of its 1989 report on adjustment in Africa (World Bank 1989), the World Bank targeted the political barriers to economic development and raised expectations for political reform, developing a new focus on “governance” that emphasized transparency and consultation in policymaking (Callaghy 1993, 477–479; Gibbon 1992, 140–141). The new “political conditionality” adopted by most donors after the democratization of Eastern Europe threatened to cut development assistance flows to countries that failed to show democratization progress. Ghana and the PNDC felt these pressures. Rawlings’s rigid rejection of multiparty democracy drew disparaging remarks from Western diplomats. The United Kingdom pressed for government consultations with Ghanaians on the future of the political system and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, Herman Cohen, warned that Ghana’s “allergy to multi-party politics” might jeopardize aid flows (EIU 1990, 16). External pressures on the PNDC for some kind of political opening tipped the balance in favor of long-suppressed societal demands for political freedoms and democracy. Political opposition groups formed after mid-1990 and were for the first time tolerated by the PNDC. By April 1991, the PNDC had given up one of its key political positions, abandoning the nonpartisan True Democracy project and accepting the idea of a multiparty democracy (days before Ghana’s 1991 Consultative Group meeting with donors, 14–15 May). While political parties were still banned, unofficial political “clubs” began forming. A Consultative Assembly was chosen in June to draw up the Fourth Republic’s constitution. The government allocated District Assembly members 117 seats in the 260-seat Consultative Assembly. District Assembly members proved less than fully agreeable to PNDC plans for the constitution (Africa Confidential, 2 July 1992), but their participation enabled them to secure important features beneficial to the rural areas, including the creation of a District Assembly Common Fund. This is a constitutional provision automatically allocating “not less than five per cent of the total revenue of Ghana to the District Assemblies for development” (Article 252). 16 A draft constitution was accepted overwhelmingly in a public referendum on 28 April 1992. The PNDC then finally lifted the ban

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on political parties on 18 May. Rawlings played his cards carefully and did not declare himself a candidate until the last minute, then joining the National Democratic Congress party as its presidential candidate. Political liberalization, in full swing by 1991, forced the government to play competitive politics and raised the possibility of seriously compromising the adjustment program. But the loss of government autonomy also meant dealing with the issue of reestablishing links with society and changing political strategies. The critical issue at this juncture was whether the government would continue to seek legitimation in its general performance, or resort to rent-seeking coalitions, ethnic chauvinism, and corruption. A Rural Strategy The PNDC answered this question by basically staying the course. PNDC election campaigning in 1992, far from repudiating or sidestepping adjustment, campaigned on it and promised it would continue. The PNDC also chose a rural-based political strategy, an option that would allow them to win the coming election without deviating too severely from their course of the previous ten years. PNDC figures campaigned heavily across the country throughout 1992, targeting the rural areas, villages, and towns, drawing attention to what they had already done for local development in a given area and promising more. Commitments and actual spending on the rural areas increased significantly in the election year. And, though they won the 1992 elections by a variety of means, the rural strategy was crucial and central to attracting mass voter support. The choice of a rural strategy was fortuitous but, in hindsight, not particularly remarkable—it was the logical option for an agricultural economy undertaking structural adjustment and for an adjusting government at election time (Herbst 1993a; Jeffries 1989, 97). In a number of ways, the very idea of structural adjustment is based upon the notion of reversing an urban bias to policy in developing countries (Toye 1992, 106–110; Varshney 1993). Any serious adjustment program is designed to assist the producers of “tradeables,” who can export to produce foreign exchange. In Ghana’s largely rural, agrarian economy, urban bias in economic policy should change to a “rural” bias, which would benefit the country’s smallholder farmers who constitute 50 percent of the national population and 70–80 percent of the rural population (World Bank 1995a). Data available to the government also pointed in this direction. Rural voters participated heavily in the Assembly elections while urban voters tended to boycott them, in silent anti-PNDC protest. The government knew by 1988–1989 that its policies had already achieved a great deal for the rural areas economically (Botchwey 1989). By the early 1990s devaluations and producer price increases had brought a near-100 percent gain in the real producer price for agricultural exports and a near-350 percent

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decrease in overall taxation (implicit and explicit) of the agricultural sector (World Bank 1994a, 79). As the efficiency of the Cocoa Marketing Board increased, farmers received better prices; for the 1990/91 crop year, cocoa farmers received 47 percent of the world market price, up dramatically from the paltry 9 percent of world price received in 1984/85. A rural strategy was also the logical result of the restructuring of the Ghanaian state and the shift to a more limited, neutral state with a performance orientation. A rural strategy, targeted at a broad sector that had gained from government economic achievements, fit nicely with the neutral, disconnected PNDC style. Finally, a rural strategy could also be waged cleanly and above board—a critical factor in the eyes of internal and especially external observers. A latent strategy of rural bias can thus be seen from 1983, the early devaluations, and improved crop prices. By 1987–1988, the government had established the redistributive pattern of raising rural incomes with higher cocoa producer prices while increasing its own revenue via increased petrol prices paid by largely urban consumers (World Bank 1991). And although the District Assemblies were given considerable responsibilities with very little funding, they indicate that the PNDC had turned its political attention to the rural areas. Winning the 1992 Elections The presidential elections took place on 3 November 1992, and Rawlings won in the first round with 58.3 percent of the vote. He had broad national support, losing only one region to his chief opponent, Adu Boahen, who won in his home base of Ashanti Region. As for the 29 December parliamentary elections, the main opposition parties boycotted these in protest over alleged corruption in the presidential balloting. The NDC thus won 189 of the 200 seats, though voter turnout was a very low 29 percent. The 1992 elections are surrounded in controversy regarding the extent of corruption in the presidential race and the opposition’s decision to boycott the parliamentary round. The opposition charged that there were serious irregularities and boycotted the parliamentary elections in protest. Several international observer groups found evidence of irregularities, but concluded that these were not significant enough to have changed the outcome (Jeffries and Thomas 1993; Oquaye 1995). Most observers attribute Rawlings’s victory to a combination of factors: his personal popularity, the PNDC’s relatively good economic management performance, popular nervousness about a change in leadership, the presence of a relatively strong Rawlings political machine around the country, the government’s advantage in campaign resources, and the uninspiring nature of the opposition candidates (Gyimah-Boadi 1994; Haynes 1993; Jeffries and Thomas 1993; Rothchild 1995a). The (P)NDC was also to a certain extent able to “buy”

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the election, by agreeing in 1992 to pay the accrued end-of-service benefits of workers dismissed from state-owned enterprises (Leechor 1995, 180) and by granting salary increases of 70–80 percent for civil servants and many workers.17 The rural strategy also figures prominently in Rawlings’s success; subregional election results show that Rawlings did relatively well in rural areas of regions where his urban performance was poor (Jeffries and Thomas 1993). The relatively successful use of a rural strategy is interesting, given the doubts regarding its potential success. Some observers argued that higher real producer prices were negated by increased credit and input costs, producing very marginal improvements in rural incomes (Fosu 1993; Herbst 1993a). Other critics noted the absence of institutional structures to build upon and the lack of autonomous societal organizations in the rural sector by which it might make itself heard (Herbst 1993a, 76–94; Ninsin 1991). In the end, the rural strategy’s viability stems from two factors. First, it was not based solely, or even predominantly, on crop prices. Instead, all that the limited Ghanaian state could do—based on its infrastructure orientation, connections with donors, and the new local state— was brought to bear to bring resources to the rural sector. Rawlings and other PNDC figures campaigned across the country pointing to the benefits of government-sponsored projects: extensive electrification of rural areas, increased road and school construction, and an industrialization policy favoring small and medium-size towns (World Bank 1993, 73; Parfitt 1995). Second, the rural strategy was very much a “top-down” rather than a “bottom-up” development (Sandbrook 1986; Toye 1992, 121). That is, it was not a government response to the demands of strong existing rural organizations (for these hardly existed), but rather something mobilized by the government, for the government’s political purposes (Herbst 1993b). The government also began to channel an ever-increasing amount of funding to the new local state. For District Assembly budgets, the central government’s ceded revenue disbursements ballooned from 300 million cedis in 1991 to 2.1 billion cedis in 1992, due to an April 1992 PNDC decision to pass some income taxes back to the districts. In addition, just one month before the elections the Ministry of Local Government announced that the Cocoa Marketing Board (Cocobod), with real estate assets throughout the country, would finally be paying its property taxes and arrears to the Assemblies; a windfall of additional millions of cedis. Finally, the government could also point to the massive largesse to come, in the shape of the District Assembly Common Fund. It is important to note that whether the rural strategy gave the NDC the final margin of victory in the 1992 presidential elections or not, it is significant in that it guided policy to a considerable extent. The incorporation of the rural sector into politics and the end of urban bias is a major change in the state-idea in Ghana. And the fact that the government continues to

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court the rural sector and play a rural strategy after the 1992 elections suggests that it will be an important legacy of the early 1990s.

The Fourth Republic The Fourth Republic was inaugurated on 7 January 1993, ushering in the new democratic era in Ghana. The great fear of many proponents of neoliberal adjustment programs is that with a democratic transition, democracy will “spoil” reform programs, as governments give in to popular demands for government spending, new protections, and new rents. Would the progress made with the development of a performance orientation in Ghana be given up? The challenge of the opening of 1991–1992 was more or less successfully met, but how would full democracy affect the reforms and the rural strategy? Could the state be both open and democratic and nonrentier? The State of the Limited State and Adjustment Neoliberal fears have come true in Ghana since 1992, in the sense that there has been a marked “politicization” of Ghana’s reform efforts and the appearance of a political business cycle. After its electoral victory the new NDC government, in classic “stop-and-go” reform fashion, clamped down again on spending and inflation. Gasoline prices were raised substantially, effectively wiping out the preelection salary increases. Two austere national budgets in 1993 and 1994 tried to correct the excesses of 1992. Some economic problems have resulted. Wage increases, the continuing devaluation of the cedi, and the abortive introduction of a value added tax, in 1995, have resulted in problems with inflation that have been a source of friction in relations with donors. However, the government continues to make progress in economic reforms and in rebuilding the economy. Adjustment proceeds, the state’s role in the economy continues to shrink, and economic performance has been respectable; real GDP growth was 5 percent in 1993, 3.8 percent in 1994, and a provisional 4.5 percent in 1995. There has been no reintroduction of state controls and liberalizing economic reforms continue, often in areas in which the government had been unenthusiastic before. Pressure from external donors has been important in maintaining this record, but one can also distinguish a domestic political rationale. The government continues to reform and liberalize agriculture. In the cocoa sector, reform of the Cocoa Marketing Board continues and is expected to further increase producer earnings. The government doubled the nominal price for cocoa in mid-1994, from 308,000 to 700,000 cedis per ton, and by 1996 the price was 1.2 million cedis per ton, or 51 percent of

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world market price. Liberalization of cocoa marketing now allows private traders (twelve firms by 1996) to compete with Cocobod in evacuation of the crop. The government retains control over the producer price, but there are plans to end Cocobod’s export monopoly (World Bank 1995b). The privatization of SOEs, long an area of government foot-dragging, has taken great strides with an accelerated divestiture program announced in the 1994 annual budget statement. Newfound enthusiasm for divestiture seems to be due to the revenue potential of asset sales, which help finance the national budget. The government has also become more serious about attracting foreign investment, in many ways the missing ingredient to its adjustment success by the early 1990s. A new, more liberal investment code was adopted in 1994. Rawlings and other government officials make frequent trips abroad to woo investors, and recent legislation establishing a free trade zone should also help attract investors. The private economic sphere has also been aided by an increasingly healthy financial sector. The stock market, critical in an era of global capital that can make or break “emerging markets,” is doing well. With the growing strength and autonomy of the financial sector, Ghana has begun to see the politics of the “finance capital state,” in which the government expresses frequent public concern about the health of the financial sector, acts to please investors, and the stock market becomes a barometer of political performance. The donor community is varyingly worried by the politicization of adjustment under democracy. To some extent they have been tough with the government, suspending disbursements for several months in 1993 and 1994 over missed financial targets (Botchwey 1995), but they also continue to support the government’s program. At the June 1995 Consultative Group Meeting, Ghana’s funding requests for the year were met, to the tune of $1.6 billion. The Rural Strategy Rural bias and the rural strategy have not been abandoned under the new democracy either. Rather, as striking evidence of the politicization of adjustment and the shaping of development expenditure to political needs, they have become even more accentuated. There is a continued pattern of using donor programs to finance or cofinance a variety of development projects throughout the rural areas. With the District Assembly Common Fund in place from 1994, substantial new resources are also available for the local state; the 1994 allocation to the Fund was a massive 34 billion cedis. In addition, in early 1995 the central government again took on responsibility for paying 100 percent of the salaries of District Assembly staff (MLGID March–April 1995, 17), relieving local government of the 50 percent they have had to pay since 1985. There is an obvious danger, however, that all this may

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come at the cost of local state autonomy and the effort to promote local self-reliance, seemingly a step backward. Flooding the rural areas with resources has certainly reduced the need for local self-reliance. Fortunately, key features of these policies will help to mitigate, though not eliminate, this problem. The spending of monies from Common Fund allotments is put under some important limits. In the first year, disbursements were required to be spent on unfinished projects before any new projects could be undertaken. The Fund administrator must also keep track of how funds are spent and, to combat embezzlement, the central government also announced plans to strengthen the Ministry of Local Government’s Inspectorate Division, to provide audit services (MLGID March– April 1995, 17). The donor projects are also not complete giveaways, since they mainly supply matching funds to locally generated resources. The emphasis on cofinancing helps promote local self-reliance, but also increases the sheer number of projects that can be funded throughout the country, spreading and localizing the impact of development expenditure. Democratic Consolidation The government maintains a moderately good record on the process of consolidating democracy. There has been an explosion of private publishing since 1991, and press freedom is generally maintained, although the government has also not hesitated to prosecute journalists for libel. After long delay, the NDC is now opening up radio broadcasting to nongovernment stations. The government has also announced that foreign observers will again be invited to monitor the 1996 elections, and many teams have announced plans to do so. There is considerable evidence of respect for the new constitution and for separation of powers. A variety of institutions, including the Supreme Court, the Electoral Commission, and an important, ombudsman-like “Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice,” have shown their independence. The government has been willing to accept decisions against it from these bodies. Thus, the Rawlings/NDC government has avoided the antidemocratic excesses of contemporary Kenya under Moi, for example. That said, the NDC government also has its disturbing, dark side, exhibiting features of the “neoauthoritarian” governments some identify as common in newly democratized developing countries (O’Donnell 1994; Petras and Vieux 1994; Van de Walle 1995): a strong executive, a still relatively weak, subservient parliament, and ill-established rules of political conduct. President Rawlings’s own positions and rhetoric reveal characteristics typical of a neoauthoritarian style. For example, Rawlings frequently complains about the constraints of constitutional rule that interfere with the proper management of the economy, as when he insisted in 1993

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that “the issue of the economy must be insulated from partisan considerations. We must not imagine that multi-party or Parliamentary democracy requires opposing views on the economy just for the sake of debate” (GOG 1993). While the government has seemingly acknowledged the principle of separation of powers in accepting a number of decisions against it from the Supreme Court (Gyimah-Boadi 1994), Rawlings has also threatened that same body. The NDC government, or elements of it, are also quite willing to engage in political “dirty tricks,” including various tactics to harass opposition leaders. There is also a growing volume of accusations of corruption in the government and bureaucracy. The auditor-general’s annual reports have found extensive corruption and embezzlement from the district level upwards. Most of these cases seem to involve small-scale activities rather than millions of dollars, but this could be due to the desire to cover up high-level corruption. To its credit, many of these charges are being dealt with by the courts and the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice in public hearings, with often explosive revelations. By late 1995 these investigations had reached the highest levels, to the person of P. V. Obeng, a Rawlings confidant and special adviser to the president. Nonetheless, there does not appear to have been anything close to a return to systemic rent-seeking. Ghana’s presidential and parliamentary elections in December 1996 were a crucial test of the viability and durability of the rural strategy and the performance state. President Rawlings was reelected with 57 percent of the vote, although the opposition’s “Great Alliance” of the NPP and some Nkrumahists was able to capture sixty-seven seats in Parliament, denying the NDC a full two-thirds majority. Though it had real advantages in campaign funding and influence over government-run media, Rawlings’s NDC largely kept to its proven strategies for competitive politics developed since 1991 and did not resort to machine tactics to rig the elections. Indeed, the electoral process was extremely transparent and the results were accepted by the numerous teams of domestic and international observers, as well as the opposition. Rural bias featured prominently throughout the election. Early on, President Rawlings’s State of the Nation address for 1996 had pledged a heavy emphasis on agriculture and cheaper credit and inputs for farmers. Programs to supply more vehicles to district administrations and build more regional and district hospitals were launched and publicized. Extensive NDC campaign tours to all corners of the country always featured the opening of new public facilities or announcements of coming projects. And Rawlings and the NDC again did very well in rural areas at election time. Other political strategic options were in many ways foreclosed. New safeguards made rigging the elections less possible. With donor assistance, the national electoral registers were updated and revised to remove many

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of the double registrations and other flaws in the 1992 voter rolls; free copies were given to all political parties. There was also a new system of voter registration cards and voting in transparent ballot boxes. In addition, donors were on the watch for a replay of 1992’s fiscal laxity and high NDC government officials came out publicly to pledge that they would not repeat themselves. For example, the government’s Policy Framework Paper for the June 1995 Consultative Group Meetings had pledged a target budget surplus of 1.5 percent (up from the existing deficit) and a reduction in inflation from 50 percent to 5 percent for 1997. As it was, election-year spending fueled inflation, but not to a great extent: year-on-year inflation actually dropped from 54 percent in May 1996 to about 35 percent in December. Also contributing to the NDC’s victory was confusion and disunity within the opposition alliance, and their inability to define a coherent alternative policy program. The presidential outcome was strikingly similar to that in 1992: Rawlings had a solid base of support throughout the country, and carried his home Volta Region by a landslide. The opposition did well in urban areas, but again carried only Ashanti Region. The 1996 iteration of the political business cycle was completed with renewed pledges of economic rigor after the election. In January 1997 President Rawlings pledged to reduce inflation to single digits within eighteen months. The VAT was to be reintroduced, fuel prices liberalized upward, and electricity rates to increase by 300 percent. These outcomes demonstrate that the NDC remains very attentive to the rural sector and sends a lot of resources its way, using a nonrentier, performance strategy to win rural votes. This is evidence that the general performance orientation persists and the state’s role continues to be an enabling one, expanding the sphere of the private sector, resisting the temptation to reassert controls for political ends. New questions loom in the wake of the 1996 elections, however. How will Parliament function with a sizable opposition? Rawlings is forbidden by the constitution from running for president in 2000. Will he walk away from power? What will happen to the NDC, the “Rawlings Tradition,” and the relatively neutral performance state at that point? Ghana clearly remains a crucial case to follow as we try to understand the future of democracy and economic development on the African continent.

Conclusions Structural adjustment, combined with the predilections of Rawlings and the PNDC, has had a tremendous impact on state-society relations and state formation in Ghana since 1982. The legacy of these years is seen in: (1) the development of a more limited central state; (2) the concomitant

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creation of a new local state; (3) the shift under the influence of adjustment to a neutral, performance orientation for the central state; and (4) the adoption of a rural strategy and rural bias, especially with the onset of democracy, to provide a societal base for the state. These have been important, positive steps in the historical process of state formation in Ghana. The limited, enabling state, though perhaps ultimately inadequate to the task of development, is well suited to Africa’s current crisis situation (Sandbrook 1993). The development of a limited state, even if it is purely the result of external pressures, at least means an end to the “economic centralization” that has smothered African capitalism (Gadzey 1995). In retrospect, we can see that the very low capacity of African states in the 1960s and 1970s was ill suited to the statist development strategies then in vogue. Africa’s weak states are clearly more suited to development approaches that expect less of the state. The challenges of the new global economy may require capable, high-capacity states, but these will likely be a very long time in coming in Africa (Callaghy 1994, 202). The development of a limited state and a separate, autonomous economic sector is also good for democracy. While adjustment promotes authoritarianism, in the short run (and especially in the context of a donorsponsored program with deadlines and conditionality), the broader impact on state-society relations in previously patrimonial polities is conducive to democracy. Rolling back the state creates a space for civil society, key to securing accountability and democratization from the state (Chazan and Rothchild 1993). Perhaps most significant, however, is the shift to rural bias in economic policy in the early 1980s and its elaboration and politicization—in the guise of a rural-based (P)NDC political strategy—after 1991. Looking at the ways in which Ghana has responded to the challenges of the 1991– 1995 period, we have seen that although elements of other political strategies are evident, the rural strategy has clearly emerged as a primary legacy of this period and shows little sign of flagging. As Chazan (1991, 22) has noted, a shift to rural bias, “expanding the political definition of the people in spatial terms to encompass residents of the countryside,” would be momentous, especially given the collective action problems of atomized rural dwellers and the resulting difficulty of dislodging urban biases (Colburn 1993; Varshney 1993). The end of urban bias and the privileging of the rural sector is a “historic shift” (Callaghy 1990, 278) and an important change in the state-idea in Ghana, a result of the “critical juncture” of the 1990s. The refocusing of the state on rural interests brings much-needed resources to Ghana’s underdeveloped rural sector. However, what is more immediately and practically significant for the consolidation of Ghanaian democracy is that the emphasis on rural bias as a basis for building government

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support means that other strategies less compatible with democracy were not chosen. The (P)NDC’s combination of a continued performance orientation, ethnic balancing, and the rural strategy has meant that the ethnic and regional factionalization and patrimonialization of politics that has plagued new democracies in Kenya and Zambia, for example, has not been very salient in Ghana. The rural strategy’s appeal, based on class or economic position, crosscuts more powerful ethnolinguistic loyalties and helps hold the country together. The rural strategy is also a way out of the problem of simultaneously adjusting and consolidating democracy. It is a winning solution in smallholder agrarian economies, since it can potentially achieve an electoral majority through legitimate means, even under the rigors of structural adjustment. As Chazan points out, rural bias allows economic and political rationality to become “more closely aligned” (Chazan 1991, 22). Since the early 1980s, the political and economic impact of adjustment in Africa has drawn tremendous and generally deserved criticism. While definitely a subject for further investigation, Ghana’s experience suggests that adjustment may be able to succeed politically in countries with predominantly rural, agrarian economies—particularly those with smallholder as opposed to more inegalitarian plantation agriculture—when urban bias is eliminated. Such a finding is obviously relevant to many developing countries. Ghana is admittedly an exceptional case in that it has gone very far in its adjustment reforms and has worked toward reform for a long time; beginning from a situation of deep crisis, it has benefited from substantial external financial assistance, and from a relatively skilled and antipatrimonial leadership. Nonetheless, the results of this conjuncture of circumstances and the subsequent direction taken by state restructuring suggest one way to travel the troubled road of the dual transition successfully. Ghana’s relatively good position is of course a tenuous one. The NDC government’s currently respectable adherence to democratic norms could crumble in the face of a strong challenge to their control of the presidency, for example. The continued presence of the external factor—of donor influence—is crucial, yet significant deviation from adjustment strictures might irrevocably damage relations with donors. All this notwithstanding, the record of the Ghanaian government in achieving good performance in democratization and economic management since the critical challenge of 1991 makes it an important African case of state reconfiguration, one whose origins and development must be understood.

Notes 1. For more detailed discussion of Ghana’s political and economic history in various periods, see Chazan 1983, 1988a; Rimmer 1992.

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2. For discussion of the characteristics of African patrimonialism, see Bayart 1993; Callaghy 1984; Chabal 1986; Jackson and Rosberg 1982a. 3. For more on the AFRC period, see Jeffries 1982, 1989; and Ray 1986. 4. The Provisional National Defence Council’s membership fluctuated between four and eight members in its ten-year existence. Council members were by no means of equal influence inside inner power circles and individuals not on the Council have been extremely influential in the past. Ranked below the Council was the Committee of Secretaries, made up of the heads (called secretaries under the PNDC) of all the governmental ministries. 5. See coverage of Rawlings’s first meeting with the foreign press, West Africa, January 25, 1982, pp. 224–225. 6. On politics in PNDC Phase I (January 1982 to March 1983), see Hansen 1987; Ninsin 1987; Ray 1986; and Yeebo 1991. 7. Finance Minister Kwesi Botchwey would later describe the PNDC’s problem in 1982–1983 as follows: “We had done our analysis, and we needed at least $450 million immediately to sustain a minimum level of real development—to launch any program that would begin to make a dent in the crisis we were facing. We needed this much money immediately in 1983 in order to arrest the decline in the living standards of the working people” (Botchwey 1989, 10). 8. Matthew Martin (1991, 241) states that tentative talks with the IMF took place as early as April 1982 and, as other alternatives failed to materialize, the IMF route was chosen and talks picked up again in earnest. 9. The logic of adjustment differs from general economic logic, however, in that it derives from pressure from external forces to change existing practices, to make a switch to economic logic. Second, because the external pressures typically have an institutional base in the World Bank, IMF, other donor agencies, and diplomatic missions, the logic of adjustment is mutable, as the priorities of the forces behind it change. This is significant, since as the political expectations of the donors changed in 1990, and they began to encourage democratization, Ghana and many adjusting countries also began democratic transitions. 10. Adjustment programs are in theory fundamentally antipatrimonial, but in practice can of course be patrimonialized, as experiences in a number of countries demonstrate. The greater the diligence with which an adjustment program is followed, the greater the impact of the logic of adjustment on governance in that country. 11. Contemporary Mexico is a classic example of the pattern of coalition narrowing and shifting. See Teichman 1992. 12. In Western industrial democracies, a similar trend is visible in the shift from welfare states to limited, liberal states (Schwartz 1994). This is an excellent example of substantial change in the state-idea. 13. The Economic Development Institute, the World Bank’s technical assistance training division, uses the entire ERP as an example of policy success in one of its educational publications, Successful Development in Africa (World Bank 1989). 14. Rothchild (1995a), for example, argues that adjustment did not help legitimize government. 15. Government admonitions and opinions about the Assemblies are readily available. See the many volumes of collected speeches of Chairman Rawlings and Secretary for Local Government Kwamina Ahwoi, as well as the Ministry of Local Government Information Digest and the government newspapers, which covered the Assemblies lavishly.

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16. In 1994, this amounted to 34 billion cedis, easily dwarfing the estimated 9.4 billion cedis the Assemblies themselves raised in that year (Ministry of Local Government Information Digest, No.1, 1995). In January 1995 the exchange rate was approximately 1,000 cedis to U.S.$1.00. 17. Finance Minister Kwesi Botchwey has said that the salary increases were to restore peace before the elections, not to buy votes, since the urban workers who benefited “are not typical NDC supporters” (Botchwey 1995).

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Coˆte d’Ivoire: The Crisis of Distributive Politics DWAYNE WOODS

A series of structural and ideological factors thrust students and teachers to the head of the “democratization” process in Côte d’Ivoire in the early 1990s. This chapter examines these factors and argues that the politics of democratization derived from a conflict over the attempts by the regime of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny to redefine its distributive relationship wth different social groups. Like the situation in Senegal in the late 1970s (Fatton 1987; Diop and Diouf 1990), the paternalistic one-party system in Côte d’Ivoire was faced with the difficult task of reconfiguring its costly system of political and social co-optation premised, as in so many other postcolonial African countries, on the distribution of a fragile but extensive array of material benefits to different social groups (Duruflé 1982; Fauré and Médard 1982). As with other African one-party regimes, throughout much of the postcolonial period the Houphouët regime had sought to be the motor for commercial and industrial development by serving as the principal vector for capital accumulation (Boone 1993); it attempted to stabilize elite relationships by defining access to state patronage and rent-seeking opportunities (Contamine and Fauré 1990); and finally, the regime attempted to expand its social base of support by promoting the development of an urban middle class, largely at the expense of the nation’s peasantry (Widner 1993). By the 1980s, this system of co-optation was in severe crisis. As the country’s economic problems deepened, President Félix Houphouët-Boigny sought to reconfigure state-society relations. In doing so, he inadvertently helped to link distributive issues to a narrative of democracy that students and teachers had started to articulate in the late 1970s as an alternative to authoritarian one-party rule. Under pressure from the international community to restructure the nation’s economy and open up its political system, Houphouët-Boigny begrudgingly introduced a number of reforms in 1990 that ended the political monopoly of the Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI) by recognizing 213

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the right of opposition parties to participate in national and local elections. Moreover, the regime accepted the principle of associational freedom. While the regime conceded a number of demands in the direction of democracy, it remained in control of events. By allowing for multipleparty competition in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in late 1990, Houphouët-Boigny succeeded in splintering the opposition and ensuring his reelection and that of the PDCI as the majority party in the National Assembly. At the economic level, the Houphouët regime gradually introduced reforms without bringing about a significant change in the country’s economic structure. Houphouët’s death accelerated the process of change and adaptation that the country had been undergoing since the onset of the economic crisis in the late 1980s and the student- and teacher-led democratization movement. His chosen successor, Henri Konan Bédié, has succeeded in consolidating his own political authority by partially remodeling the Houphouët system. Bédié has done this by institutionalizing a type of controlled political pluralism in which opposition parties and newspapers are allowed to exist but are sanctioned if they push their opposition too far. He has also accelerated the pace of economic reforms. Most of the country’s parastatals have been privatized and the role of the state in the economy sharply reduced. In this respect, Bédié has opted for a form of “regulated openness” at both the political and economic level.

The Houphouët System of Governance By the end of the 1960s, the PDCI had achieved a monopoly over associational life and had privileged groups under the party’s hegemony. President Houphouët-Boigny had established a mode of governance that linked regime-controlled social mobilization to the exchange of economic and political resources. While the objective of those in power was to organize social groups into a few national federations, their efforts rarely gave rise to a fully articulated corporatist system. As Bratton and Van de Walle (1994, 458) have explained, Africa has not seen the emergence of corporatism based on clearly defined “class interests within domestic society”: Leaders of postcolonial African countries may have pursued a corporatist strategy to the extent that they promoted an organic ideology of national unity and attempted to direct political mobilization along controlled channels. But African leaders have rarely used bureaucratic formulas to construct authoritative institutions or granted subsidiary spheres of influence to occupational interest groups within civil society. Contemporary African regimes do not display the formal governing coalitions between organized state and social interests or the collective bargaining over core public policies that characterize corporatism.

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Nevertheless, African leaders like Houphouët-Boigny have often attempted to shape interest group representation in such a way that the state has some effect on the articulation of social demands. In Côte d’Ivoire, associational developments were shaped by the following corporatist factors: (a) the organization of the group through functional associations, (b) the use of governmental policy to benefit the group, (c) the creation of new structural (often electoral) channels through which the group is linked to the political system, and (d) the co-optation of established group leaders into important positions within the political system and the development of such leaders if necessary (Huntington and Nelson 1976, 17). Although clientelistic, ethnic, and personal ties have clearly left their mark on how these associations operate and interact with one another and the state elite, corporatist rules are not entirely absent.1 State-society interaction in these types of regimes might thus be characterized as “quasicorporatist” (Bianchi 1989; Hammergren 1977). The trend towards quasi-corporatist arrangements in Côte d’Ivoire was already relatively clear to an outsider by the time of independence from France in 1960. Thus Zolberg (1964, 298) observed that: Electoral districts tend to be identified as the home of particular ethnic groups. For this reason, the Côte d’Ivoire began to enlarge constituencies until they disappeared altogether. An increasing number of representatives are designated as the spokesmen for occupational groups, “estates,” or sectors of the population defined on some other non-geographical basis: they represent government employees, workers in the private sector, women, youth, small or large farmers, coffee or banana growers, foreigners.

Over time this process of quasi-corporatist co-optation was extended to transporters, laborers, students, and teachers. Students and teachers, however, proved the most recalcitrant in resisting one-party hegemony over associational life. Youth Associations The Jeunesse Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine de Côte d’Ivoire (JRDACI) was officially created in 1958 as a subunit within the Ivoirien branch of the RDA, the dominant territory-wide party in French West Africa. Problems, however, quickly arose between elements within the JRDACI and other youth movements, notably the Association Générales des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (AGECI), which resisted the party’s attempt to control them. Initially it appeared that the more radical elements in the JRDACI and the AGECI had succeeded in maintaining some autonomy from the party hierarchy and even asserting a degree of autonomous authority within the party. The autonomy, however, was short-lived. To affirm its control over student leaders, in particular those studying abroad, the government

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withheld scholarships from radical students in the AGECI and rewarded “students willing to lead it [AGECI] with the gift of a station wagon” (Zolberg 1964, 265). At the 1959 party congress, more radical students were forced to leave the party. The purpose of the congress was to make explicit what had already been apparent for some time, namely that the party under the leadership of Félix Houphouët-Boigny was the main instrument of social mobilization. The AGECI remained moribund after its conflict with the party in the late 1950s, and was replaced with another student organization in 1964. The Union Nationale des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (UNEECI) was the only institution allowed to represent the interests of students; therefore, the UNEECI had a virtual monopoly on students’ political activities and the articulation of their demands. Any attempt to go outside the one-party framework was suppressed. The party’s domination over UNEECI remained tenuous, however, and a source of constant conflict between students and the state. At the 1968 congress of UNEECI, a radical faction took control of the leadership and openly demanded autonomy from the regime and the party. Houphouët-Boigny reacted to the students’ demands by closing the university and suppressing UNEECI. Several of the students tied to the radical faction were arrested and sent to a military camp in the north to undergo a program of “reeducation” (Gbagbo 1983). In December 1968, proregime students with PDCI support reorganized the student movement under the stipulation that it would be the only association to represent student interests in Côte d’Ivoire, supposedly with a greater degree of autonomy from the state than in the past. Subsequently, the Mouvement des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (MEECI) replaced the UNEECI as the sole representative of the student movement. The MEECI failed to maintain its autonomy from the party, however. The inability of the student organization to represent the interests and concerns of Ivoirien students effectively undermined its legitimacy as a representative body for most students. Teachers’ Associations In the ideal model of African one-party systems, control over associational activity went beyond labor and student associations; it also included professional groups, such as lawyers, engineers, bankers, and teachers. The relationship established between the state and the associations that represented the urban professional middle class had ranged from explicit incorporation into a quasi-corporatist subsystem to outright opposition to state efforts at political and ideological control. The associations of journalists, bankers, lawyers, and doctors conformed most clearly and consistently to the quasi-corporatist principles of the Houphouët regime. They organized

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into associations that were either closely tied to members of the party or to key state ministers. These associations were generally recognized by the state as the sole representative bodies of their professions. By contrast, secondary and university teachers’ associations conformed the least to the quasi-corporatist model. Their resistance to the Ivoirien state’s hegemonic drive, along with that of the students, ensured that a degree of pluralism survived. Due to the absence of independent political parties, professional associations such as the Syndicat National de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SYNARES) and the Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Secondaire en Côte d’Ivoire (SYNESCI) evolved into the major opposition forces in the country. These associations represented the interests of public school teachers and university professors. While other urban professional associations—such as those of doctors, dentists, and lawyers—had some impact on state policy, they did so in the context of the quasi-corporatist system. Not until the general strikes of the early 1990s did these associations play a major role in contesting the hegemony of the Houphouët regime over associational life (Kone 1991). The membership base for groups of lawyers, doctors, and journalists was much smaller than that of the teachers’ syndicates, which collectively could call on over 40,000 members. The role that each syndicate played in the political arena, however, was not determined only by its size. SYNARES, for example, had been the most vocal and antiregime association among the teachers’ unions, even though it only represented 1,500 individuals. In contrast, the Syndicat Nationale de l’Enseignement Primaire Public de Côte d’Ivoire (SYNEPPCI) is the largest of the teachers’ unions, but it has been the least politicized. SYNEPPCI’s nonpolitical stance was due to its historical links to the PDCI, dating from its central role in contesting French colonial rule in the early 1950s. In fact, some of the “barons” of the party, such as Philippe Yacé, came from this association. Unlike SYNARES and SYNESCI, it was already firmly in the grips of the party before independence in 1960 (Morgenthau 1964; Zolberg 1964). Teachers’ syndicates were able to influence the state because the regime placed a high priority on education. Like other one-party systems, the Houphouët regime sought to control the dissemination of ideas at the university. Not surprisingly, elites viewed the university as an instrument to influence the formation of the young (Mbembe 1985, 69). Special arrangements were first made to attract Ivoiriens into teaching and then to maintain their support for the state and its policies. Members of SYNESCI, SYNEPPCI, and SYNARES came to typify the urban middle class in the country, especially in Abidjan. As a social group, their formation grew from the state’s high expenditures on the educational system. Thus their material interest was directly tied the state. Nevertheless, in contrast with workers, members of the teachers’ syndicates

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generally adopted a much more critical stance toward the party and the regime. Secondary and university teachers, in particular, viewed themselves as an alternative elite; they saw themselves as having the intellectual competence and moral integrity that they believed was often absent within the ruling class (N’Da 1987, 118).

Distributive Conflicts and Associational Groups The quasi-corporatist system of co-optation rested on a distributive logic. In order to quiet student unrest, for example, the president increased the number of scholarships to students and improved living conditions at the University of Abidjan. Furthermore, student leaders were co-opted by the party with the promise of public employment after their graduation. Moreover, in the early 1970s, protests by secondary school teachers and junior military officers were dealt with by extending new benefits to them. An example was the free housing provided by the state (Cohen 1974, 151). President Houphouët-Boigny established a pattern of distributional politics that placed a heavy burden on the fiscal solvency of the state. With the rapid economic growth of the 1960s and early 1970s, it was possible to allocate public resources to various social groups. Yet, with the sharp drop in commodity prices in the late 1970s, such a strategy became increasingly untenable. By the late 1970s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had warned the president that public expenditures and foreign borrowing were out of control; the state could no longer afford to continue to subsidize education at such a high level, provide free housing, and engage in the construction of costly development projects. Simply put, the paternalistic mode of governance that President Houphouët-Boigny relied on to maintain control over associational activity had become too expensive in light of the country’s shrinking economic resources (Duruflé 1989, 90). By the 1980s, some 40 percent of the state’s budget supported education (see Table 12.1). Moreover, the quantitative development of secondary education in the country has been quite impressive. In 1950, there were only 1,268 secondary school students in the country (Désalmand 1989, 950). Twenty years later, the figure had grown nearly a hundredfold. By the 1980s, there were over a million primary school students, nearly 200,000 secondary school pupils, and 25,000 university-level students. At the University of Abidjan, the number of students by the end of the 1980s exceeded by three times the 6,000 places the university had been initially designed to receive (Magassouba 1994, 14–15).2 The quantitative development in education created a more differentiated society in terms of the number of Ivoiriens with some primary and secondary education, but the capacity of the system to absorb them into the country’s political and economic elite declined. The state was therefore partially responsible for the vicious cycle of student protests and social

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Table 12.1 Educational Expenditures in Côte d’Ivoire 1986

1987

1988

CFA francsa Percentage CFA francs Percentage CFA francs Percentage Primary Secondary Technical University Total Personnel Material Operations Total Percentage of National Budget

82,253 62,860 19,493 35,994 200,600 175,822 1,163 23,614 200,600

41.0 31.3 9.7 18.0 100.0 87.6 0.6 11.8 100.00 43.7

85,029 66,004 21,962 37,043 211,038 184,359 1,424 25,255 211,038

40.8 31.3 10.4 17.5 100.0 87.4 0.7 11.9 100.0 43.9

92,293 69,161 20,663 38,090 220,207 195,118 861 24,228 220,207

41.9 31.4 9.4 17.3 100.0 88.6 0.4 11.0 100.0 44.6

Source: Leconte 1989, 158. a. All francs in millions.

disruption that came to characterize youth and student politics in the 1980s and 1990s. This structural problem animated the tension and conflicts within MEECI, the proregime students’ association. For many students, MEECI became the center of intense competition for access to limited positions in the ruling class. Secondary and university students increasingly saw the privileges enjoyed by the bureaucratic/party elite as the principal cause of the dire job prospects they faced after they graduated. With the drop in commodity prices, the system of co-optation that had prevailed since independence began to unravel by the end of the 1970s. For the first time, the majority of students graduating from the university faced few, if any, job prospects. At this juncture, students and others faced a situation of declining opportunities. As Fauré (1993, 315) cogently puts it: Even taking into account over 300 state-sector enterprises and the boards of the 2,500 foreign companies which all experienced a similar expansion of personnel during the period, by the end of the 1970s it was becoming clear that the state’s capacity to absorb the flow of educated and increasingly demanding young Ivoirien job seekers was under severe strain. Employment prospects worsened as the country’s economic and financial stability was called into question.

The intensifying economic crisis in Côte d’Ivoire affected the character of the relationship between the state and civil society in a variety of ways. First, with the decline in the public sector, the types of cross-cutting linkages that the state had been able to establish in the past with different social groups were undermined. In other words, although the Houphouët regime always had a difficult time maintaining its legitimacy with students and youths, the regime was able to minimize this problem by co-opting

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younger elites into the system. The shrinking economic base limited the material incentives available to the regime to create organized interests and to control them. Second, the economic crisis sharpened the generational conflicts within the party and the state. Competition between juniors and elders became more intense as the number of offices available to juniors in the public sector diminished. Younger elements outside and within the party focused their attacks on the first and second generation of elites who had come to power with Houphouët-Boigny in the 1950s (Fauré 1985; Toungara 1995). Finally, the crisis opened up possibilities for student and youth associations to establish ties with other associations in their mobilization against the state (Bailly 1995, 109–111). While this had occurred in the past, it acquired a different dimension in the 1980s. Urban middleand lower-class groups, notably public sector employees, teachers, and transporters, were falling behind economically. Student protests in 1980 ignited a series of antiregime protests followed by a countermobilization of state-supported associations. The quasi-corporatist system of interest group representation had reached the breaking point.

The Retreat of the State Under pressure from the World Bank and the IMF in 1980, the Houphouët government had to make cuts in the state’s budget. Before cuts were announced, Houphouët believed that it was necessary to prepare the ground for these actions by tightening PDCI control over the country’s associations. The national labor federation, women’s groups, and farmers quickly indicated their support for the regime. Teachers and students, however, proved to be much more resistant. To bring students and teachers into line, the Houphouët regime turned to coercion. The state’s decision in 1981 to dissolve the largely autonomous research centers at the university sparked a series of confrontations between teachers and the state (Daddieh 1988, 640). These research centers served as an institutional environment in which many of the country’s leading intellectuals formulated criticisms of the state’s social and economic policies. They provided the teachers’ associations an independent space in a relatively closed society. The state, consequently, viewed them as a source of opposition to the party and to the president. Many of the research centers employed such well-known dissident intellectuals as Bernard Zadi Zahorou and Laurent Gbagbo. The tension between the state and the university teachers’ associations began to escalate in 1981 when the regime used a meeting organized by some students as a pretext to crack down. The university administration refused to allow students to hold their meetings on campus, claiming they were political in nature. The simmering crisis came to a head in late 1982

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with a conference organized by students who opposed the state-sponsored MEECI. Laurent Gbagbo was invited to debate with Balla Kéita, the minister of education, on the theme of “democracy and one-party rule” (Gbagbo 1983, 105). When Gbagbo refused, the students turned to Bernard Zadi Zahorou to debate the same theme with another state supporter, JeanJacques Bechio (who became minister for the civil service later that year). The regime reacted immediately to what it perceived as an affront to its hegemony by banning the meeting (Gbagbo 1983, 106). In an attempt to get around the ban, several independent student unions asked Professor Gbagbo to give a lecture on “Youth and Politics.” This time the rector of the university refused to grant permission to use the campus amphitheater for Gbagbo’s presentation. When the students decided to hold the meeting outside the university, state officials banned it outright. Angered over the state’s actions, students marched on the university’s main administrative building, protesting what they portrayed as an attack on academic freedom.3 The march was used as a pretext to send the military onto campus to reestablish order. In the ensuing melee, several hundred students were arrested and several university professors were beaten. The independent research centers were subsequently dissolved. Daddieh (1988, 643) explains why the regime reacted so strongly: It is important to recognize that unsanctioned conferences and lectures are politically sensitive in Côte d’Ivoire, as elsewhere in Africa. In Abidjan such meetings are invariably coupled with the clandestine production and distribution of polemical tracts, clearly one of the most effective means of communicating grievances to the public in an attempt to win their support. Some of the student leaflets not only invited Ivoiriens to express their disenchantment with the government, but also went as far as to call for the resignation of the president. Those circulated by the teachers were far more critical of state and party functionaries, accusing them of massive corruption.

The Houphouët regime feared that the students’ and teachers’ associations could become independent centers of political and social action in a progressively autonomous civil society. In reaction to the regime’s coercive actions, university students called for a strike, in which they were supported by the teachers’ unions (SYNARES and SYNESCI). In the resulting shutdown of the school system, the state faced its biggest crisis in the education sector since 1968, a conflict made worse when a plan by the Ministry of Public Works to do away with free housing for teachers was revealed. All of the teachers’ associations reacted vehemently. They accused the ruling class of being responsible for reckless land speculation and misallocation of public resources that had undermined the financial solvency of the parastatal in charge of building public housing for teachers. Moreover,

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“allegations were made against Houphouët-Boigny and his family concerning the accumulation of their personal fortunes, and secondary-school teachers were advised not to allow themselves to be made sacrificial lambs in the name of austerity while the president and other influential state personnel profited from real-estate speculation” (Daddieh 1988, 642). Teachers occupying state-owned housing were informed that they would be provided with a subsidy that they could use to purchase their homes (Fraternité-Matin, 20 January 1983, 9). On the other hand, free housing would still be provided to judges, policemen, French coopérants (aid workers), prefects, gendarmes, military officiers, and senior civil servants. Teachers were the only social group designated at this time to lose their housing benefits, and they interpreted the state’s actions as a punitive measure in response to their open opposition to the party’s domination and their support for the students. Laurent Gbagbo, an active member in SYNARES, noted that the state wanted to take away free housing from teachers because they had successfully resisted state efforts at total control. According to Gbagbo (1983, 106), police officers, military officials, French coopérants, and judges were spared for political reasons: It is impossible for Houphouët to do such a thing. Likewise, reducing the advantages of those in uniform could provoke trouble that the regime wants to avoid at all costs. If the president is seeking to reduce the perks of teachers, it is for political reasons. In 1970, he sought to integrate the university and secondary school teachers’ unions into the PDCI, but failed. In 1980, he again attempted to bring the unions under the PDCI wing. But his second try was hardly more successful. These unions were among the few organizations which were independent of PDCI tutorship, a state of affairs which Houphouët could not easily accept. And so his aim was to crush them.

Whatever the real reason for the regime’s decision to take away free housing from teachers, the latter responded by calling a general strike. This time the secondary school teachers took the lead. SYNESCI was soon joined by SYNARES as well as the Syndicat National des Cadres Supérieurs de la Santé de Côte d’Ivoire (SYNACAS-CI). With the crisis spreading to other groups, the president dissolved SYNARES and announced that university professors would be expelled from subsidized housing by the military if they did not call off the strike. Typical of Houphouët’s style of relying on associational groups under the control of the party for legitimation, in March 1983 he announced a meeting with members of the Conseil Economique et Social, the association of mayors, and the Union Nationale des Parents des Etudiants et Elèves en Côte d’Ivoire (UNPEECI),4 “to deliberate on what had happened and make recommendations to the president and the Bureau Politique of

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the PDCI.” The proregime associations were given a great deal of press coverage in the state-controlled Fraternité-Matin. Their actions were described as a positive example of how associations are supposed to interact with the regime and the party in a nation of “peace and dialogue” (Daddieh 1988, 643). The president announced that, although they were not binding, the recommendations from these groups would be taken seriously. The consultation between the regime and the nation’s major associational groups was quite different from the “national dialogues” of the late 1960s. At that time, participation was less controlled and “had sometimes produced startling and spontaneous expressions of popular discontent and revelations of abuses of political power by leading members of the régime” (Cohen 1974, 115). This time the associations that took part “had been chosen on the basis of their institutional connections to the state and party, and had been amply briefed, thereby ensuring that they were well aware of what officials thought about the crisis.” The president’s mobilization of these associations, however, was more than just symbolic; it was also used to “counter the opposition’s claim that democratic norms were lacking in a one-party state” (Daddieh 1988, 646). Moreover they served as an indication that the party and the regime had links with la société réel, real people. The proregime associations demanded that SYNESCI and SYNARES end their strike. UNPEECI, the parents’ association, asked the president to forgive their children for their participation in the strike and called for the immediate reopening of the nation’s schools. The association of mayors recommended that no further sanctions be taken against the teachers and that the regime avoid the notion of “collective culpability,” and instead punish those who were really responsible for the crisis (Daddieh 1988, 646). Right after the strikes had ended, the president called for a meeting of the Conseil National for which all of the nation’s major associations received invitations. While the strikes of 1982 and 1983 were discussed, the main purpose of the meeting was the announcement by the president that the state had no choice but to end subsidized housing for everyone. The 15,000 regime employees who had previously benefited from free housing would henceforth have to pay for their accommodations. The budgetary crisis had reached such a point that it was no longer possible to provide this benefit to state employees. In addition, the president announced new reforms of the parastatal sector. He explained that these measures were necessary because of the continuing drop in cocoa prices. Although it was probably not evident to President Houphouët-Boigny at the time, the state’s decision to decrease benefits would force the regime to concede more and more autonomy to the associational groups. Basically, the growing scarcity of material benefits would undermine one of

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the major pillars of the Houphouët system of governance: co-optation. The exchange of economic benefits for political compliance had been at the heart of PDCI governance since the 1940s. Within the context of the economic crisis and pressure from the World Bank and IMF to reduce state expenditures, Houphouët-Boigny initially turned to political repression and then social pluralism as a way out of the crisis. Between 1986 and 1990, Ivoirien teachers were thus largely responsible for bringing about the transformation of the country’s political system. Their resistance to the state’s efforts to control them opened up a social and ideological space that the regime, with declining material resources, was no longer able to close. In this period, a series of short-term crises between the regime and students’ and teachers’ associations gradually pushed the president toward a dialogue with social forces no long under his control. Following the strikes in 1982 and 1983 and facing an economic crisis, Houphouët-Boigny had sought to shore up the legitimacy of his regime by reinforcing the role of associations close to the regime and by weakening those hostile to it. In the mid-1980s, social and economic associations such as MEECI, SYNEPPCI, and UNPEECI were called upon to manifest their support for the president and the principle of dialogue. The regime’s mobilization of supportive associational groups, however, was not sufficient to overcome the crisis of legitimacy. Thus the Houphouët regime also pursued a strategy of tension with those associations that refused to abide by the quasi-corporatist rules by undermining associations such as SYNESCI and SYNARES from within. Both associations became the targets of severe internal power struggles and, with the support of the party, proregime factions staged coups in both SYNESCI and SYNARES in the late 1980s. A Strategy of Tension After the strikes of 1982 and 1983, it seemed as if the regime had arrived at a modus vivendi with SYNESCI and SYNARES. In reality, the regime had simply changed its tactics and launched a concerted effort to subvert antigovernment associations from within (Bailly 1995, 127–129). This strategy finally succeeded at the 1987 national congress of SYNESCI. Days before the congress convened, Laurent Akoun, director of SYNESCI, was arrested along with several other members of the national bureau and accused of defrauding the association of funds that had been collected to build houses for its members. Akoun was replaced by Djanwet Kouakou, who was able to constitute a national bureau that had close ties with the regime. A similar strategy of tension was adopted toward SYNARES. A minority faction close to the governing elite attempted to replace the organization’s leadership (Téré, 5 January 1991, 3–8). 5 Yet the strategy of tension pursued by the regime against recalcitrant associations produced

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results contrary to those desired. Instead of finally subduing the few associations able to escape from one-party control, the strategy of tension provoked a crisis that eventually led to a radical redefinition of state-society relations in Côte d’Ivoire.

The Collapse of One-Party Rule The economic crisis of the 1980s severely limited the possibilities of cooptation. Not only did the regime lack the resources to buy off individuals and groups hostile to the monopolization of power by the PDCI, the state was faced with making even more dramatic cutbacks than had been the case in 1982 and 1983 with the ending of state subsidies for housing. This created a social atmosphere in which associations that had traditionally abided by the quasi-corporatist system started to contest the limited range of action that the regime permitted. In 1989, Houphouët-Boigny tried to salvage the system by holding a “national dialogue” with the country’s socioprofessional associations. National dialogues had been introduced in 1969 as a way to hear the grievances of different social groups and allow them to direct their anger at different government ministers, while allowing the president to position himself as an arbiter above the fray (Cohen 1974, 115–116). Houphouët was at a serious disadvantage in 1989, however, since one of the purposes of the dialogue was to get the nation’s various social groups to accept drastic cuts in the state’s budget. The challenge in 1989 was thus to maintain a quasi-corporatist system of control in the context of shrinking resources. A National Dialogue As in the national dialogues of 1969 and 1980, the representatives openly criticized many aspects of the regime, pointed out the major problems affecting their members and Ivoiriens in general, and noted the impact of the economic crisis on their members. They blamed state ministers for the poor performance of the economy, accused them of arrogance and corruption, and held them responsible for the poor performance of state institutions. Representatives of UNPEECI complained about the poor quality of education, while others complained about the crisis in the nation’s health care system and rampant crime in Abidjan (Diallo 1989, 32). The president listened to each of the speakers without intervening. Everything was thus open to criticism except the president and the legitimacy of oneparty rule. Houphouët-Boigny had succeeded in getting the country’s major associations to reaffirm their support of him and the one-party system. The only exception came from the last independent association in the country.

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Marcel Ette, director of SYNARES, stated that the time had come “to put an end to the PDCI’s monopoly on Ivoirien public life, and to move the country towards a multi-party system that was truly democratic” (Diallo 1989, 34). Most of the other associational groups expressed their support for the president and indicated that they recognized that drastic cuts in the budget had to be made because of pressure from the World Bank and the IMF. With the support of the national federation of labor, the major teachers’ syndicates (with the exception of SYNARES), the national student association, and the business community, President Houphouët-Boigny believed that the stage was set for a series of public announcements indicating the degree of sacrifices that would be required from the country. Over the next several days following the national dialogue, the president announced four keys measures. First, the price paid to cocoa and cocoa producers would be cut in half (from 200 to 100 francs CFA)—the first time in twenty years that the price paid to rural producers had been changed. Second, a major reform of the public sector would begin, with the main objective of reducing its bloated numbers. Third, the privatization of public sector firms would be accelerated. Finally, public and private sector employees would be required to take a cut in pay.6 An Unexpected Rebellion In many ways, the president misunderstood the very system he had helped to create. Houphouët-Boigny assumed that the elaborate social benefits allocated by the state to different social groups were only part of the cement that held the system together; the other part was the regime’s ideology of la solidarité nationale. Reactions to the austerity measures announced by the regime in the first half of 1990, however, showed the opposite, as the intricate quasi-corporatist system constructed by Houphouët-Boigny over the years simply imploded. Not surprisingly, students and teachers once again led the charge. Foremost among the student associations was the Union Démocratique des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (UDEECI). Created in 1988, UDEECI was an amalgam of clandestine student groups that had contested the dominance of MEECI since the late 1970s (Bailly 1995, 110). In its newspaper, L’Etudiant, UDEECI openly critized the mismanagement of the country’s educational system by those in power. It criticized the lack of autonomy of MEECI. During the social and political crisis of 1990, the opposition terrain dominated by UDEECI became more cluttered with the appearance of other dissident student groups. The Organisation Nationale des Elèves et des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire, the Conscience Estudiantine et Secondaire de Côte d’Ivoire, and the Syndicat Libre et Autonome des Etudiants et Elèves de Côte d’Ivoire appeared on the scene. Like UDEECI, the new

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student groups attacked the regime for its mismanagement of the economy and for corruption. They criticized the poor academic preparation of Ivoirien students, noting that despite the high expenditure of the state on education, the results were deceptive. These new associations played a central role in mobilizing secondary and university students against the government’s austerity measures (Bailly 1995, 116–117).7 Among teachers’ associations, SYNARES openly opposed the austerity measures and threatened to strike if they were implemented. A similar reaction came from dissidents within SYNESCI, supported by the rank and file, who were still engaged in a power struggle with the leadership imposed by the regime. Unlike the crisis in 1982 and 1983, SYNARES and SYNESCI could not be isolated by the regime through a countermobilization of proregime associations. Along with SYNARES and SYNESCI, the SYNACAS-CI and dissident student associations manifested their support. By 1990, the social and political situation in the country deteriorated considerably as the dimension of the budget cuts became clearer to different segments of Ivoirien society. Although Houphouët-Boigny was able to rely on the military, the PDCI, the national labor federation, the national business association, and other groups that had close connections with the regime, the crisis quickly took on a popular dimension. First, primary students went on strike in February, then secondary and university teachers joined them in March. In March and April, the students organized protest marches that the urban unemployed joined. Leaders of SYNARES, SYNESCI, and the dissident student associations took the lead in calling for a suspension of the austerity measures, autonomy for all associational groups, and the introduction of a multiparty system (Bailly 1995, 132–135). Unlike the strikes of 1982 and 1983, students and teachers in 1990 were able to draw support from other sectors of the population affected by the austerity measures. Eventually the association of bankers, transport workers, and other public sector employees engaged in strikes and mass protests. While these social groups were primarily reacting to the austerity program, they nevertheless contributed to the effort of dissident student groups and secondary and university teachers in forcing the regime to introduce a broad range of economic and political reforms. Initially, Houphouët-Boigny responded to the crisis in the same way as he had in the past. He called out the army, threatened the students and teachers with severe sanctions, and sought to mobilize those associations the regime could still rely upon to resist the demands being made by its opponents. This time, however, his strategy failed. Toward the end of March there were a series of sporadic and uncoordinated protests, first in Abidjan and then elsewhere in the country, that attracted members from associations publicly supportive of the regime. By the end of May 1990, it was clear to the regime that traditional strategies of handling the crisis would not work. A mobilized Ivoirien society had forced the regime to

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concede. Faced with a social crisis increasingly bordering on open rebellion, Houphouët-Boigny made a number of concessions to the protesters. The austerity program would not be implemented.8 Multiple parties would be permitted to contest the upcoming presidential election, and the principle of associational freedom was recognized by the state (Conte and Lavenue 1992). Even after the announcement of multiparty elections, Ivoirien secondary and university teachers continued to play a central role in the political arena as Côte d’Ivoire witnessed an explosion of political parties. In many cases, the new parties had previously been unofficial associations. What is noteworthy about the numerous parties that came into existence is the disproportionate role that teachers played in their formation (Fauré 1993, 326). All the parties able to establish themselves as serious rivals to the PDCI by the time of the presidential and national assembly elections in late 1990 were controlled by secondary or university teachers. For example, Le Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI), considered the most serious opposition party, was led by the former history professor at the University of Abidjan, Laurent Gbagbo. In addition, L’Union des Sociaux Démocrates (USD) was led by Bernard Bottey Zadi Zahorou, a university professor, and Le Parti Ivoirien des Travailleurs (PIT) was led by François Wodié, a former secondary school teacher.

The Post-Houphouët Period: The System Adapts Despite the end of one-party rule in Côte d’Ivoire, the transition to democracy has been problematic. Houphouët-Boigny succeeded in cutting short the mobilization of opposition forces by allowing multiparty elections. In doing so, he avoided the national conference that opposition forces had been calling for. As Schraeder (1994, 80) aptly puts it: President Félix Houphouët-Boigny completely outmaneuvered his country’s prodemocracy movement by promptly legalizing all political parties, and acceding to their fullest demands—open presidential elections and legislative elections—rushing the democratic transformation before opposition leaders could expand and redefine their demands, sharpen their tactics, or properly organize for electoral contests.

Although he was quite ill during the presidential and legislative elections of October 1990, Houphouët-Boigny was reelected with 81 percent of the vote and the PDCI was able to capture 163 of the 175 seats in the National Assembly. This indicates that opposition forces were able to bring about some change in how the regime organized the country’s political space, but they did not achieve a total break with the past. While the quasi-corporatist system of control was in shambles, the regime was still able to utilize the resources of the state to stay in power.

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This is shown all the more clearly after Houphouët-Boigny’s death in December 1993 and the assumption of presidential authority by the president of the National Assembly, Henri Konan Bédié. He was able to assume the position legally: the constitution stipulates that in case of death of the sitting president, his position is assumed by the president of the National Assembly, who is allowed to serve out the remaining term (Bakary 1992). Like Houphouët-Boigny, Bédié set out to gain the upper hand by harassing, fragmenting, and isolating the opposition. First, he ousted his main rival for the presidential race by getting the National Assembly to pass a law that banned foreigners from voting and running for elective office. The law was aimed at Alassane Ouattara, who served as prime minister between 1990 and 1993. While Ouattara’s mother was Ivoirien, his father was from Burkina Faso. Ironically, Bédié seized upon an initiative that the opposition had demanded in 1990 in their drive to unseat Houphouët-Boigny and win seats in the National Assembly. 9 Then, the perception had been that the large foreign community in Côte d’Ivoire tended to vote for Houphouët-Boigny and the PDCI. Second, Bédié succeeded in taking control of the PDCI after indications that internal rivalries were weakening the party following the introduction of multiparty elections in 1990 and Houphouët-Boigny’s death in 1993. Bédié was successful because he reinforced his own ethnic base among the Baoulé (the same ethnic group as the defunct president), and he reconstituted the ethnic alliances that had catapulted Houphouët-Boigny to power thirty-three years earlier. Like Houphouët, he gained support from Muslims in the north and non-Muslim communities throughout most of the south. As in the past, the main source of opposition came from the Bété community in the center-west. Bédié has reduced Bété opposition through a combination of repression and co-optation.10 Finally, another factor that has contributed to Bédié’s consolidation of his political authority was the devaluation of the franc CFA right after Houphouët-Boigny’s death. The devaluation allowed him to gain a degree of legitimacy in the public’s eyes as an effective manager. Unlike many other francophone African states, Côte d’Ivoire had taken preliminary measures to absorb the shock of the devaluation. While most of these measures had been put into place by Alassane Ouattara, it was Bédié’s government that reaped the benefits: a growth rate hovering around 6.4 percent, a sharply improved domestic budget, a rise in the prices paid to farmers for their crops, and a sharp upturn in foreign investment.11

Concluding Observations The most significant question raised by the critical juncture that Côte d’Ivoire faced in the early 1990s was whether or not those in power were capable of adapting to a combination of political and economic pressures.

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Houphouët-Boigny responded by reluctantly opening the political process to opposition forces and instituting moderate economic reforms. After his death, his successor faced the dual task of continuing the changes introduced under Houphouët and establishing his own political authority. In acomplishing these tasks, Konan Bédié has adopted a strategy of “regulated openness,” similar to the limited political changes allowed by Houphouët-Boigny before his death. Bédié has faced similar patterns of mobilization from students and teachers. What has changed is that students and teachers have become the targets of the opposition parties that, like the government, have attempted to attract their support. The overall result has been internal fragmentation; they have split into different groups with increasing ties to the country’s multiple parties. In this respect, democratization has led to a partial reconfiguration of regime rules without leading to a significant change in the distribution of political power. Thus the country’s political and social space is much more pluralistic thanks to the politics of contestation led by students and teachers; however, opposition forces have not succeeded in changing those who govern. The limited political reforms pursued by both presidents suggest that Côte d’Ivoire is moving down a road similar to that of Senegal, where opposition parties are allowed to exist and social groups allowed to mobilize while the party in power refuses to concede on anything of substance. The Ivoirien opposition is sufficiently divided that this strategy has so far proven successful. This interpretation has been confirmed by the election of Konan Bédié to the presidency on 22 October 1995 with over 90 percent of the vote and the subsequent PDCI victories in legislative and municipal elections.12 Most of the country’s opposition parties refused to participate in the presidential election, and Bédié was elected without much difficulty (Faes 1995a, 32). It is at the economic level that the other dimension of “regulated openness” represents a significant reconfiguration of the previous regime. Houphouët used the state and its resources to maintain his own personal and political authority and to co-opt an array of social groups by integrating them into a costly quasi-corporatist arrangement. Even with renewed economic growth, Bédié has not tried to reconstitute this arrangement. He has instead gone much further than Houphouët-Boigny in deregulating the economy through the liberalization of prices and work rules and the almost total privatization of the public sector. While these changes have not led to a disappearance of the state, they have led to its becoming more a regulator of economic resources rather than a direct producer or distributor. The long-term significance of these changes in the role of the Ivoirien state remains unclear. Bédié has claimed that the objective is to stimulate the economy and transform Côte d’Ivoire into an economic “dragon” similar to East Asian countries. Whether or not President Konan Bédié’s strategy of “regulated openness” will result in more development remains an open

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question. Nevertheless, the fact that he has pushed through major economic reforms while containing the opposition shows that the Houphouët system was capable of responding to the critical juncture of the early 1990s via a partial reconfiguration of state-society relations, avoiding a slide into political and economic chaos.

Notes 1. Emile Boguinard, a close adviser to the president, argued that the role of the state was to provide encadrement (framing) for Ivoirien social groups in order to create a favorable environment for economic growth. The process of encadrement had a twofold dimension, legal and institutional. The Ivoirien constitution defined the limits of associational life; Article II states that associations can form freely, but they have to meet two conditions: declare themselves openly and have a public utility. It has been the latter aspect of Article II that has determined the state’s relationship to associations. Article II and Article XIV have provided the state with the right to transform any group into a public organ if its activities are deemed useful to the public order (Blaise and Mourgeon 1970, 73). Although Article II of the constitution guaranteed freedom of association and the right of all social groups to maintain their status independent of the party and the state, party leaders argued that since the main goal was to modernize the country, there was no need for a large number of independent groups. 2. Despite the large expenditure of public funds, the overall quality of education has remained relatively low. Nearly 30 percent of children of primary school age have no access to schools and many of the nation’s secondary schools are overcrowded, with an extremely high failure rate at the time of the baccalaureate. 3. This was the interpretation of events provided by speakers at SYNARES’s second congress, 13–15 May 1984, Abidjan. 4. Leaders of SYNARES were aware of the role that associations played in supporting the regime, and thus conferred with these associations in an effort to make their case. See the report of SYNARES’s “Deuxiéme Congrès Ordinaire,” 13–15 May 1984, 19. 5. With the ending of one-party rule in 1990, the country was flooded with new newspapers. Téré has close ties with the leftist wing of the teachers’ association. 6. For state ministers the reduction was 40 percent and for other public sector workers it was 15 percent. For the private sector, it was an 11 percent reduction. The money saved by the reductions would be treated as a solidarity tax and placed in a national fund in order to pay down the national debt. See Fraternité-Matin, 16 March 1990, 27. 7. These groups would unite into two unstable student federations, the Front Autonome de Solidarité des Etudiants en Côte d’Ivoire and the Fédération Scolaire et Estudiantine de Côte d’Ivoire. 8. Under pressure from the street, President Houphouët-Boigny decided to suspend the austerity measures. He named Alassane Ouattara, a former director of the African office at the World Bank and president of the Bank of West African States, to the position of prime minister. Houphouët-Boigny promised to implement reforms without the drastic austerity measures demanded by the World Bank and the IMF. See Fraternité-Matin, 18 April 1990, 1. 9. As Bédié noted in an interview in Le Figaro, “it was the opposition that made the demand for a new electoral law that excluded non-Ivoiriens from voting.

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We simply conceded to their demands.” Cited in Marchés Tropicaux, 20 October 1995, 2291. 10. See Marchés Tropicaux, 27 October 1995, 2340–2341. 11. In 1995, the treasury collected 96.4 billion francs CFA in taxes as opposed to 59.2 billion in 1994. The overall picture of the economy improved dramatically in the latter part of 1994 and throughout 1995. See Marchés Tropicaux, 3 May 1995, 2290–2291. 12. Bédié won the presidential elections with 96.44 percent of the vote, with a turnout of 56.03 percent of eligible voters against his only opponent, F. Wodié, leader of the Parti Ivoirien des Travailleurs. In the legislative elections, the PDCI won 147 seats out of 171 and the party won 158 municipalities out of 196.

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Uganda: The Catholic Church and State Reconstruction RONALD K ASSIMIR

Church and State as Paternalistic Institutions The national motto of Uganda, enshrined at independence in 1962 and reiterated in its new constitution of 1995, is “For God and My Country.” While a substantial Muslim community (10–15 percent) and a small number of practitioners of indigenous religions who do not claim affiliation with Christianity or Islam exist in contemporary Uganda, the God of this motto is largely a Christian God. This reflects the fact both that the overwhelming majority of Ugandans are Christians and that the nationalist elite who coined the motto were even more decidedly members of either the Roman Catholic or Anglican Church of Uganda denominations.1 Thus, for the purposes of this chapter, I will refer to the institutions that represent God and Country as, respectively, the Ugandan churches and the Ugandan state. I will further limit the discussion by concentrating on the Catholic Church, which is the largest religious community in Uganda (estimates range from 40 to 50 percent of the population). Of the many differences between church and state in Uganda, one is summed up poignantly in the way Ugandans, in their seemingly infinite capacities to apply wit to the dire circumstances of past political upheavals, transform in popular parlance their national motto from “For God and My Country” to “For God and My Stomach.”2 The fact that God remains—and the state does not—in the revised informal version, reveals an important difference in the popular perception of these institutions. Ugandans may have wondered where God had gone during their years of trial, but only the state is transformed into a punchline. There are signs that this image of the state may slowly be changing under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) of President Yoweri Museveni, which has restored a modicum of order to most of Uganda—following the successful guerrilla war fought in the mid-1980s by its military wing, the National Resistance Army (NRA)—and has implemented new 233

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mechanisms for political participation. The NRM has combined features of populism with an embrace of structural adjustment programs (see Chapter 2 of this volume) and a discourse emphasizing technocratic authority and a paternalistic orientation toward Ugandan society. These contradictory elements have been held together in large part by the popularity of Museveni himself, who was elected by a large majority in the first presidential elections held under the NRM in 1996. This popularity persists in spite of his occasional references to Uganda’s economy and politics, and to Ugandan society itself, as “backward.” In an interview in July 1992 with the Ugandan president, a BBC reporter brought up this dimension of NRM discourse and asked him, “What do you think of people who accuse you of taking an overly paternalistic attitude to Ugandans?” The president replied: These people lost 800,000 people in these upheavals. Surely they were not doing that for sport. If they knew how to sort out their matters, why did they have to lose so many people? In the last 30 years, during the time of Amin, during the time of Obote, we lost not less than 800,000 people, murdered for political reasons. So I am not paternalistic, I just simply know the patient. If a doctor says this person may die if you do not give him this treatment, if he does this, that is not paternalism. This is just diagnosis. We should call it a diagnosis. And it is a diagnosis with a history. We are not talking out of the air.3

Museveni’s technocratic self-image clearly relies on a paternal sense of Ugandans requiring a “political doctor” to keep them from harming themselves. The notion of society being divided between doctors and patients parallels in some measure the spiritual division of labor in the Roman Catholic Church, in which clerics who possess religious charisma by virtue of their training and ordination dispense grace and serve as intermediaries between lay members and God. Since the Second Vatican Council (1961– 1965), the Catholic Church has attempted to shed its paternalist image. Globally, the results have been mixed, especially since the rise of John Paul II to the papacy. In Uganda, Vatican II’s impact on this score has been relatively minimal, as the local Church’s paternalistic ethos and structure have been reproduced even while episcopal seats and the priesthood have been largely indigenized. Thus, the relative legitimacy of Christian institutions in Uganda, especially the Catholic Church, has little to do with any “structural adjustment” of the Church. Instead, the status of the Catholic Church rests mainly on its capacity to survive and its ability to act as a refuge for its members during the political turmoil that prevailed from the mid-1960s until 1986. Indeed, the Church’s official pronouncements imply that fidelity to its paternal roots enabled it to play this role.

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For twenty years, political life in Uganda was traumatic. The first regime of Milton Obote and his Ugandan People’s Congress (UPC), itself growing deeply authoritarian, was ended by Idi Amin’s coup in 1971. After almost a decade of tyranny and misrule, Amin was ousted by an invading Tanzanian force allied with Ugandan dissidents, themselves deeply divided. Several short-lived governments were quickly followed by the return of Obote and the UPC through what most Ugandans and observers regard as rigged elections in 1980. After the elections, Museveni (himself a candidate from a minor party) took to the bush to start the NRA’s guerrilla struggle. Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, mostly civilians, died in the ensuing conflict. The devastation ended in most parts of the country with the NRA’s capture of Kampala and its taking over the state in January 1986. In these times, the Church was a critical component of Ugandans’ survival strategies through its denunciation of human rights abuses under the second Obote regime, its provision of relief aid and services that the state no longer provided, and its intervention on behalf of citizens threatened by unaccountable soldiers, chiefs, and party youth wingers. The question then arises of what role the Church played under the NRM, in a context where political order had been largely restored (with the rebellions in Uganda’s northern districts as an important exception), and where experiments in participatory politics permitted a more open society, yet one with significant restrictions on what are typically considered democratic features (see Kasfir 1991). More broadly, the case of the Catholic Church raises questions about how state reconfiguration in Africa both affects and is affected by the transformation of important social actors. I will break this issue down into two components. First, what kind of institution is the Catholic Church in contemporary Ugandan society? That is, what is its place as it shifts from being virtually the only viable civil institution under authoritarian and repressive rule to one among a panoply of social organizations that have begun to revive or emerge under the NRM? As I will argue in the next section, the Church’s role in Uganda’s public sphere is deeply ambiguous, as its support for democratization and its advocacy for the poor are not sustained by a capacity to mobilize its members, or Ugandan society more generally, for these goals.4 Second, what is the Church’s relationship to the NRM regime and the Ugandan state in this new context? Under past regimes, the Church intermittently voiced a critique of abuses committed by government agents and provided an array of social services ignored by an enfeebled state apparatus. Since 1986, the Church has found itself in a close and cooperative relationship with the NRM, viewing its development work as complementary to government efforts. Church pronouncements with regard to the state are themselves ambiguous. As I argue below, Catholic bishops’ pastoral letters emphasize institutional autonomy in Church relations with the

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state and paternal authority regarding internal relations with the laity that parallel the NRM’s own paternalism. This emerges in both Church and state discourse on the need for Uganda’s “moral rehabilitation” in the face of its self-destructive past, with the Catholic Church announcing an ambitious project of renewed evangelization to effect it. On a deep ideological level, both institutions affirm the construction of their relationships with citizens/laity as one of restoring reciprocal relationships between groups of unequal statuses. In a sense, both the Church and the NRM represent their roles in terms of being responsible “fathers” to beleaguered but immature “children.” For the Ugandan Church, its own capacities, clerical interests, and the rules of the global Catholic organization of which it is a part have precluded a transformation of the paternal bases of reciprocity. Ironically, the NRM, in spite of its paternalistic political language, has implemented policies that could be interpreted as promoting the kind of political participation that might lead to such a transformation. This may imply a reconfiguration of the relative status of the dominant institutions of Church and state.

Social Control and Mobilization in Ugandan Catholicism An important sign of the Ugandan Church’s limited social capacities is that its recent campaign for moral rehabilitation has remained largely at the discursive level. That is, few major organizational innovations have actually been implemented, and disobedience of official Church norms has largely been unaffected. No longer needed as a refuge, reluctant to take a critical or prophetic role, and lacking the resources to effect its moral vision, the Church’s social “action” in Uganda’s reconstruction (aside from its social welfare provision and development projects) amounts to little more than exhortation. In fact, the very qualities that fostered the survival of the institution during the period of state collapse may impede its public role in a more stable and open political context. In ways parallel to Bratton’s discussion of the contradictions between the institutional autonomy and institutional capacity of African states, Church autonomy does not necessarily translate into organizational efficacy (Bratton 1994). The Ugandan Church largely lacks a capacity for either social control or the kind of social mobilization exhibited in parts of Latin America and Eastern Europe. The reasons are complex, and I will only summarize here what I have argued elsewhere in detail (Kassimir 1996). The internal organizing principles and practices of institutional Catholicism, when intersecting with the local Ugandan context, inhibit control and mobilization. The Church’s spiritual division of labor, which gives the clergy what Weber called a monopoly on the distribution of religious

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benefits, obstructs the development of officially “legitimate” lay religious charisma and leadership. At the same time, the priesthood is an avenue for social mobility in an economically depressed rural society. This has led both to difficulties in the control of personnel by bishops and to tensions with the laity. In addition, the Catholic Church has inclusive membership criteria (based on infant baptism) that allow baptized Catholics to retain membership despite a wide variation in perceptions of appropriate religiosity, commitment to the faith and the institution, and the intensity of identification to their religious organization. The partial and fluid nature of Catholic identity in Uganda has been reinforced in a context where local concerns with healing, spirit possession, and witchcraft have led many Catholics to practices that the Church—despite the post–Vatican II emphasis on “inculturating” Christianity—defines as out of bounds. Among other things, this situation has produced mostly moribund lay associations and movements when organized and controlled from the top down. In general, inclusiveness has allowed lay membership to grow at a much faster pace than Church personnel. In a rural environment with a poor infrastructure, lay Catholics thus have irregular access to religious benefits—namely, the sacraments—while the clergy cannot monitor lay practices effectively. Finally, the relative wealth of the Church, enhanced greatly by its access to the international Catholic donor community, has led to dependence on transnational Catholic networks, and to patronage relations with the laity that are not conducive to mobilization. Lay relations with the Church have varied widely from person to person. Ugandans are members of a variety of social networks and draw upon multiple social identities in their struggles for survival and mobility. This became a refined social logic during the years of instability, and has been enhanced by the NRM’s tolerance and encouragement of these associations. Under such conditions, the Church’s ability to command an intensive commitment varies greatly among individuals (including priests) who tend to diversify commitments over a range of sources of social support.5 In most of rural Uganda, the Church presence has been wide but diffuse. Because the Ugandan Catholic Church had major limitations in social control and mobilization, most of its engagement in the public sphere in the first years of the NRM was in the areas of social welfare programs on the one hand, and exhortation on the other. A useful mode for conceptualizing the sociopolitical role of the Catholic Church is provided in the recent book by José Casanova (1994), who analyzes the shifting relationship of the Catholic Church to the “public sphere” of four countries in Europe and the Americas. Drawing on Stepan’s tripartite distinction of state, political society (i.e., party politics and elections), and civil society, Casanova examines the public role of the Church on all three levels. 6 He traces the historical movement of the

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Catholic Church in his case studies from an emphasis on its establishment status and state alliances, to its involvement in party politics, to, most currently, mobilization and exhortation in civil society. In what follows, Casanova’s framework is used as an analytical tool with regard to the historical trajectory of Ugandan Catholicism.

Church and State In Uganda, the question of state alliances with religious identities and organizations has powerful historical resonance. In the colonial period, the Catholic mission’s main competitor, the Church Missionary Society of the Anglican Church, attained a quasi-establishment status, thus provoking a deep-seated grievance among Catholic missionaries and indigenous clerics and lay elites (see Welbourn 1965; Gingyera-Pincywa 1976). However, the rivalry between the two missions obscured a mutually favorable position— the colonial state subsidized both missions’ educational activities, suppressed practitioners of indigenous religions, and discouraged other Christian competitors, while at the same time granting both churches a fair degree of autonomy. While some of these trends continued in the early years of postcolonial Uganda, state favoritism shifted to Islam under Amin (1971–1979) and has since dissipated, as educational facilities have been taken over by the state, and as a large number of both foreign-based and homegrown Christian movements have entered the religious field, especially since the mid-1980s. Under the current NRM government, the Catholic Church maintains a close relationship with the Ugandan state, and only a small number of Catholics perceive any discrimination on the part of the regime toward Catholicism and the Church.7 This was not the case at the advent of the NRM’s rise to power. The Catholic Church’s initial trepidation toward the NRM was based not on suspicions of favoritism for Protestants, but on a perception that the new regime was hostile to religion in general, a position overtly expressed by some NRM leaders. Perhaps to dispel the fears of Church leaders, Museveni addressed a conference of Catholic bishops less than five months after taking power. He criticized the divisions the two Christian missions had introduced into Ugandan society, as well as Amin’s manipulation of Islam for political purposes. He spoke of the NRM’s “historic role” to “repair the distortion in Uganda politics,” including religious divisions: “In this role, we are sometimes against traditional ideas which have sustained the status quo” (Museveni 1992, 35). However, he went on to reassure the bishops regarding the security of the Church and the important function it had to play in Uganda’s reconstruction.

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The National Resistance Movement is not opposed to the role of the churches and religion, if they can be used positively. The Movement expects the churches to assume their rightful place in the development of nations and is indeed committed to the support and encouragement of the spiritual and moral rehabilitation of our society. This direction is exactly in consonance with the programmes of the National Resistance Movement which is concerned, among other things, with the restoration of morality and human dignity (Museveni 1992, 35).

Three weeks after Museveni’s speech, the Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter, With a New Heart and a New Spirit (Catholic Bishops 1986), which took up the president’s challenge to contribute to Uganda’s moral rehabilitation and material development and presented the Church’s views on appropriate Church-state relationships. The bishops referred to Uganda’s national motto and called on the new government to make a “formal acknowledgement” that “God is supreme Lord and [to] show gratitude for his favors. . . . In Uganda such acknowledgement of God’s place in our national life is traditional and is embodied in our motto ‘For God and my Country.’” The bishops continued: “This formal acknowledgement may in practice amount to some public worship or prayers on certain occasions, such as the official opening of Parliament, the swearing in of public officials and days of national petition and thanksgiving” (1986, 70). It should be noted that this demand was not for the establishment of the Catholic Church as a state religion, but for the recognition by the state that it was accountable to a higher power. As representatives of that higher power, Church officials were seeking to reinforce principles of religious freedom and the autonomy of religious institutions. The bishops accepted the secularization of the state, “insofar as it [meant] the legitimate autonomy of the State in its proper sphere” and connoted “that Uganda [did] not have an established religion.” However, they condemned “secularism,” or a “godless” state (1986, 69–70).8 The bishops articulated a demand for a constitutional acknowledgment of religion three years later in another pastoral letter on the making of a new constitution: “The deeply religious character of the Ugandan People should be explicitly recognized” (Catholic Bishops 1989b, 12).9 The demand that God be acknowledged is linked to the bishops’ subsequent admonition that the autonomy of religious institutions be respected. The Church insisted on its autonomy as a condition for performing its moralizing tasks: The political community and the Church are autonomous and independent of one another in their own fields. Since, however, the main object of their activities is the human person, who is expected to be loyal to both Church and State, it is desirable that both institutions cooperate with one

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another and enter into a sincere dialogue concerning local and prevailing situations (1986, 71; emphasis added).

Through their insistence on autonomy, the bishops established an equivalence between two dominant institutions—Church and state—both of which demanded loyalty “in their own fields.” As we will see, Church claims to autonomy were addressed not only toward the state, but also toward its own membership.

Catholicism and Political Society It is at the level of political society that Catholicism has received the most attention from analysts of Ugandan politics. To be sure, linkages did emerge between religious identity and political party affiliation in Uganda during the nationalist period of the 1950s and these continued after independence. For Catholics, this linkage was connected to their aforementioned grievances, which led to the formation of the Democratic Party (DP) with a predominantly Catholic leadership and support. As I have argued elsewhere, the social and political bases of these grievances have declined since the late 1960s, and with them any direct correlation between Catholic identity and party politics. The Church’s own role in political society has been ambiguous: while mobilizing support for Catholics to make up for past discrimination, it worried about any other social organization that could be seen as representing the interests of Catholics (Kassimir 1995). Since the NRM’s coming to power, the new regime has attempted to fashion a “political society” of democratic participation and elections without parties, partly because of the presumed “sectarian” behavior of past parties along religious and ethnic lines. All parties, including the DP, have been banned from campaigning and holding public rallies, although they are permitted to issue press releases and publish party newspapers. Uganda’s new constitution, which took force in October 1995, continues the no-party movement system of the NRM for five more years, when a referendum on the future of party competition will be held. Ugandan society itself is clearly divided over the desirability of parties; in 1996 over 60 percent of those elected to Parliament supported the “no-party” movement, and this is reflected in Church pronouncements and actions. Although they noted that Church leaders “will not identify themselves with any political grouping,” the Catholic bishops clearly advocated multiparty politics in their 1986 pastoral letter: “We look forward to the return of parliamentary democracy through the structures of universal suffrage (one person, one vote), general elections and political parties. We hold in fact that a multi-party system of government is an expression of the

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fundamental freedom of assembly and association guaranteed by our National Constitution” (1986, 68, 77). Three years later, however, and shortly after the creation of a Constitutional Commission, the bishops published their guidelines, Towards a New National Constitution. The support for universal suffrage and elections remained but no mention was made of parties. In fact, the bishops wrote: “As to the concrete question of what form of government Uganda should adopt, we must state clearly that the church does not advocate any one form” (Catholic Bishops 1989b, 19). This shift in position reflected both a concession to the NRM and a desire not to be seen as manipulating the constitution-making process, especially as it was by then clear that many Catholics did not support a return to multipartyism. The clergy, however, were permitted to express their own views publicly, and, after an all-Uganda meeting, made formal recommendations that resulted in a front-page story in the government daily that priests support a multiparty system (New Vision, 6 August 1990). The result was far from unanimous, however. In the diocese where I conducted research, Fort Portal in western Uganda, many priests supported the noparty movement system, with younger priests especially hostile to a return to multiparty competition. Fort Portal’s bishop, Serapio Magambo, referred to “cheap party politics” as one of Uganda’s many ills (Magambo 1988, 9). In general, Uganda’s churches took no clear position with regard to multiparty politics. John Waliggo, a Catholic priest and a member of the Constitutional Commission, reported a lack of consensus on whether to adopt a multiparty system in memoranda submitted to the commission by religious bodies. He added: “This was one indication that the gap between the institutional church and the members, the People of God, was becoming narrower in this democratisation process” (1995, 220). The most salient aspect of the Church in political society is that the DP’s relatively weak support, and its far looser identification with Catholicism, signals a long-term decline in the potential for organizing Catholics as Catholics in parties, although this cannot be known for certain until the ban on party competition is lifted. Especially for younger Catholics, religious identity is unlikely to provide a reliable measure of whether they support DP, NRM, or UPC, or whether they prefer a multiparty system or the movement system promoted by Museveni. The fact that the Church did not back the DP faction pushing for an immediate return to multiparty politics is evidence that it views the days of influencing the public sphere through political partisanship as over. Thus the public influence of the Church, and of Catholic identity, in political society—that is, in political party organization—is relatively weak, an outcome that most Ugandans welcome, including many Church officials and lay people. As the bishops themselves put it: “The church will seek not to allow herself to be dragged into the political arena of any groups but will try to find ways and means

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of cooperating with all honest and fair political parties or movements” (1986, 69).

The Church in Civil Society With the state relatively neutral regarding the status of religious institutions, and with religious identities no longer directly tied to specific political parties, the evolution of the Ugandan Church resembles the general pattern of Casanova’s argument regarding Catholicism globally. This raises the question of what the Church’s contemporary role is in the public sphere of civil society under the NRM. Here we can identify two salient arenas. First is the Church’s material provision of social welfare and services, and more broadly its contribution to “development.” Second is the issue of the Church’s exhortatory role in transforming Uganda’s political culture and what both it and the NRM refer to as “moral rehabilitation.” Both these arenas are relevant to the Church’s involvement in the reconfiguration of state-society relations. While the remainder of this chapter focuses on the latter, I will first briefly discuss the Church as a development agency. Both instances reveal the ambiguous status of the Ugandan Catholic Church in civil society. Development Attention has recently been called to “the ‘NGO-ization’ of the mainline churches” in Africa (Gifford 1994, 521; cf. Jenkins 1994; Fowler 1984). This is most evident in the area of social welfare provision and development projects. While Ugandan churches have historically been involved, even dominant, in health care and education, they have expanded their activities to encompass services that neither the state nor the market have been able and/or willing to provide. The financing of this expansion has been largely external through donor agencies, with the putative goal of making them self-supporting. Some examples from Fort Portal Diocese in western Uganda can illustrate this process. With the end of the civil war in 1986, support began to flow into Fort Portal Diocese from international Catholic aid organizations. Assistance ranged from relief supplies and second-hand clothes to cars and motorcycles for the priests, from cash to rehabilitate old churches or build new ones to tractors and wheat mills. Medical supplies were provided, and a team of Austrian nurses arrived to train rural health workers. Several parish priests threw themselves into developing their parish land, planting food crops as well as tea in conjunction with a state-sponsored smallholder program. The local branch of a Church-run savings and loan (the Centenary Rural Development Trust) began operations, with a new storefront on Rukidi Street in the center of Fort Portal town.

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The dominant role of African churches in health care and education is well known. Church hospitals and clinics are generally preferred by most Ugandans to state-run institutions, although the higher fees charged at religious medical facilities adds a class dimension to access to quality care. Since the mid-1960s, Church influence in education has been significantly reduced through the nationalization of the school system (although it retains ownership of schools and much informal influence on school governing bodies), but in a variety of other arenas it has expanded greatly. Many of these activities are encouraged by, but not coordinated with, local government bodies. Indeed, the resources that generate such activities flow from transnational sources to local recipients, bypassing state control. For example, mostly through the technical expertise of a U.S. priest and his access to imported technology, the diocese of Fort Portal has become one of the largest building contractors and providers of automotive repair services in the district. Using a Church-run vocational training school as a base, the missionary has bid on and won several lucrative construction contracts, including a few with the district administration. The same missionary also runs a wheat project for the diocese, making it one of the largest processors and marketers of wheat in the country. Originally begun as a way to supply the manufacturing of hosts used in the eucharistic celebration (previously made from imported wheat), the project has evolved into a Church-run wheat cooperative and extension program. The Church provides seeds, fertilizer, and technical advice in exchange for purchasing wheat from farmers. It then transports the wheat with Church lorries, mills it at the diocese with the largest wheat mill in the area (supplied by a Dutch Catholic donor agency), and sells it on the open market. Church development practices raise complicated questions regarding the reconfiguration of state-society relations. Until recently, extension work, cooperative organizing, and marketing were arenas claimed by the state as within its own domain. But with the NRM’s embrace of privatization, the boundaries between state and society have shifted. Important interpretive issues arise regarding the Church as a complement to or competitor of the private sector and the state. What is the effect of these Church projects on private sector building and crop-marketing enterprises? What do we make of the Church’s long-standing efforts in education and health care, which complement state action, make up for past inaction, and compete with it all at the same time? In reflecting on the Church’s NGOization, one Fort Portal priest regarded Church development efforts as risky: “In the future this might be a dangerous trend. People might start looking to the church as an organization taking over government responsibilities—technical schools, milling, and other things. It might make the government impotent to what it could do.”10 Further ambiguities emerge when analyzing the role of the laity in Church-sponsored development work. Goals such as the promotion of “self-reliance” and lay “participation” are voiced by Church officials, yet

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they take on contradictory connotations. Self-reliance is applied to projects that contribute both to (1) the reproduction of Church institutions and to (2) reducing the socioeconomic dependency of the laity. Participation is used to describe the laity as (1) clients or beneficiaries of development projects, and (2) active agents in planning and implementation. Church development in practice tends to privilege the first of these meanings of selfreliance and participation. These ambiguities are, in part, a product of the internal workings of the Catholic Church, which shape its capacity for action in the public sphere. To understand these internal dynamics, it is instructive to turn to the official Church discourse on what it has proclaimed as its primary contribution to Uganda’s reconstruction—moral rehabilitation. Church pronouncements have provided a window on how it imagines civil society and the institution’s appropriate role in it. At the same time, the public statements of Church officials reveal an overarching concern to assert the status quo in internal relations of authority and the reproduction of the institution’s spiritual division of labor. Exhortation for Moral Rehabilitation and Social Justice “In the past years our country has undergone many disasters as we all know. The greatest tragedy of all, however, has been the collapse in the moral standards of our people and loss of moral conscience” (Catholic Bishops 1986, 18). The Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter, With a New Heart and a New Spirit, was a self-described “call to action.” The bishops adopted the NRM’s slogan of “fundamental change,” and wrote that “We want the Church, then, to be actively involved in this change.” At the same time, the bishops saw the Church as not just one of many possible contributors to this process, but as a leading institution because of its moral and spiritual authority: “The Church’s proclamation of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most effective instrument for a fundamental change of the human person and human society, because it reaches the inner side of man” (1986, 10). In light of the Church’s special claims to a capacity to transform “the inner side” of Ugandans, the bishops emphasized that their primary contribution under the NRM was the “moral rehabilitation” of the nation (a term also used but with less emphasis by the NRM; see Okot Oburu 1987). The Church would rely on its magisterial, or teaching, authority on moral and social issues to heal Ugandan society in the aftermath of genocidal civil conflict. The bishops’ letter and subsequent public statements reveal a mixture of pre–Vatican II and Vatican II elements. While the content of With a New Heart and a New Spirit is dominated by the theme of moral rehabilitation, such Vatican II concerns as social justice and advocacy for the poor are

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present as well. The bishops declared a special responsibility for the poor and pledged cooperation with the government in the delivery of social services. They adopted Vatican II language in labeling some activities of the powerful, especially profiteering by businessmen, as “social sin” (1986, 21). They called for a social democracy “in which mass education, social services and a fitting standard of life are offered to all, eliminating in justice and fairness, the sharp divisions between rich and poor and any discrimination among citizens” (1986, 77). In addition, the bishops “personally commit ourselves to the just treatment of those who work for us” (1986, 82). Ambiguities emerge, however, in the elaboration of these themes. In a passage on social justice, the bishops equate this concept more with civil and political rights than economic and social rights, and emphasize the role of education (but not mobilization) in moving toward the realization of social justice (see Mukamwezi Kayonga 1989). More broadly, official discourse veers between discussing the poor in terms of rights and in terms of charity, and of defining the poor in class terms (small farmers and workers) or welfare terms (widows, orphans, the elderly and infirm).11 Church officials tended to combine a populist advocacy for the poor with paternalistic claims to represent them. For example, Fort Portal’s Bishop Magambo declared in a speech that “I speak for the poor of this country; both the laity and the clergy have the duty of giving them what is theirs by right” (Magambo 1988, 5). Similarly, in their letter on the constitution, the bishops wrote: “It is therefore important that, in seeking the common good, all the different forces and categories of people who make up the community, and especially those in authority, have particular regard to the weak and needy” (1989b, 17). Throughout Church discourse, there is an overarching theme of powerful institutions living up to their side of the bargain of paternal reciprocity, while a more equitable distribution of power remains a present but marginal subplot. This emphasis is linked to an understandable disavowal of any form of conflict, and, despite a preferential opting for the poor, an organic image of society. Within such a worldview, moral rehabilitation emerges as a priority and the primary function of the Church in civil society. Cognizant of the fact that much of the atrocities and exploitation in Uganda’s horrendous past were committed by Christians (both Catholics and Anglicans), without necessarily accepting blame for their conduct,12 the Church offers a more thorough evangelization as a major form of cooperation with the government in Uganda’s reconstruction. Moral rehabilitation is presented as the Church’s unique contribution to civil society, given its prophetic role as “the moral conscience of the nation” (1986, 69). The bishops’ statements reflect their belief that Uganda’s tragic history is largely the result of moral failure, as “both leaders and citizens

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have lost sight of KEY VALUES” (1986, 20). As Bishop Magambo wrote, “What we then need is inward renewal of heart and mind. Only the Holy Spirit can effect it” (Magambo 1988, 7).13 Stemming from this moral explanation of Uganda’s past and present ills, the bishops, as the administrators of God’s laws, called on Ugandan society to recognize God’s authority, as they call on their state later in their text: “So the community must acknowledge God and keep his laws. . . . Religion leads the human person to the fullness of life through his daily activities, private and social. . . . Participation in gatherings of prayer is not only an individual duty, but also a duty of the community. It is the public worship of God the Creator of the society” (1986, 32). Throughout their letters, the call to God and Christ merges with the call to the Church. What is striking about this discourse is the huge territory it stakes out for the Church in Uganda. I emphasize this because the tools the Church has deployed to attain its goals have not been up to the task. The principal means of achieving moral rehabilitation, as mentioned, has been evangelization, which itself is linked to education, catechesis, an emphasis on liturgy, and the sacraments. This has been the core of the Church’s “call to action.” However, this new evangelization has not actually been implemented to any significant degree. The Church’s exhortations are limited by the nature of its capacity for social control and mobilization. Its effect on civil society via moral rehabilitation has been, on the whole, negligible. Official Church discourse does serve another purpose, however: it reaffirms the institution’s spiritual division of labor and internal organization of authority. This is revealed in discussions of the role of the laity in the project of moral rehabilitation. While the Ugandan Church has strongly emphasized lay participation, the imagery of paternal relationships permeates its pronouncements. In opening the letter With a New Heart and a New Spirit, the bishops quoted from Acts14 and added that the words of the Apostle Paul express very well the responsibility which we, your bishops, have toward you. We have been set apart by the Lord within the Church precisely for this service: to watch over you, to build up your faith, to guide you to a true understanding of the events that took place and are still taking place here in Uganda, to stimulate and encourage you to throw yourselves with enthusiasm and courage into your apostolic and social responsibilities (1986, 7).

In referring to actions that the Church would take in evangelizing for moral rehabilitation, the bishops emphasized the division of labor by the use of separate headings to describe the role of each level of the Church hierarchy: (1) bishops, (2) priests, (3) religious, and (4) laity.15 On the role of the laity, ambiguities emerge in the bishops’ letter. On the one hand,

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they insisted that “The support, approval and blessing of responsible lay initiatives is not a privilege granted by the clergy; it is an acknowledgement of the rights of the faithful for the fulfillment of the mission they have received from God and the Church” (1986, 48; emphasis added). On the other hand, that very language signals that it was the clergy who would primarily determine what was “responsible.” Thus, in the four priorities for evangelization the letter describes—small Christian communities, family and marriage, youth, and religious education—all actions of the laity were to be coupled with clerical monitoring.16 The scope of lay autonomy thus had serious limits. Social control was seen as an integral component of lay mobilization and participation, reflecting the pre–Vatican II ideology of Catholic Action as much as Vatican II innovations. While, as I have argued, Church mechanisms to effect this control were largely absent, clerical pronouncements asserted that any other forms of lay participation could not be recognized as legitimate, which limited the possibilities for evangelization or mobilization within Catholic structures. Without a strong capacity for control and mobilization, the Church’s reliance on exhortation and its “NGO-ization” constituted it as an ambiguous member of Ugandan civil society in the 1990s. Before concluding, I will return to Church-state relations, and discuss the ways in which the contemporary Church has “collaborated” with the NRM while retaining its formal autonomy.

Church and State as Paternalistic Institutions Revisited In its transformation from a refuge under previous regimes to its current location in civil society, the Church’s oppositional role under the NRM has been muted. While certain members of the clergy have pointed out the abuses of NRA soldiers fighting rebellions in the north of the country, neither the bishops as a group nor the Catholic Secretariat’s Justice and Peace Commission have been particularly outspoken. To some extent, Catholic dioceses’ relationships to the regime vary with the degree of support for the NRM in the regions they administer. The ambiguities in the statements of the Joint Episcopal Conference of Catholic Bishops may reflect these different orientations.17 To be sure, there is less for the Church to criticize under the NRM than under previous regimes. But with the exception of the making of the new constitution, Church officials have been largely silent about major political events—the acceptance of IMF structural adjustment packages, the arrests of journalists and occasional harassment of multiparty advocates, and the NRM’s involvement in the Rwandan crisis. While this need not be characterized as collaboration, most Church leaders regard their relationship with the NRM as a partnership.

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Three years into NRM rule, Museveni reflected on this partnership. In a 1989 address to Catholic Church leaders, he stated: “There is a fundamental unity of interest between Church and State. The cooperation of Church and State in the promotion of the common good and the commonwealth of our nations, ought to be seen as cardinal principle, from which peace and prosperity can receive a stronger foundation and support.” He went on to echo Church officials’ concern with moral issues: “The upheavals of the past two decades have resulted into a degeneration in the morals of our society” (Museveni 1989a, 199, 207). As mentioned earlier, when first taking power Museveni openly encouraged and challenged the Church to take up the task of “moral rehabilitation.” He reiterated this in his 1989 speech: “There is today a moral crisis—which calls for a moral revolution. The young are especially susceptible to evil influence, particularly when they lack leadership. . . . We look to the Church to once again rise to the challenge of appropriately redirecting the energies of our young people into useful and creative channels” (Museveni 1989a, 208–209). He continued with a warning, complete with a biblical reference: In our pursuit of material goals, we have tended to neglect the spiritual development of our young people, with the consequence that a vacuum has been created in the minds and souls of these youth—a crying need for a sense of direction. If the Christian Church does not quickly meet this need, someone else will. There will be no accounting for the consequences. We will have sown the wind, and we will have to reap the whirlwind (Museveni 1989a, 208).18

Museveni’s statements on morality very much accord with the Catholic bishops’ own statements. In the division of labor between Church and state, the churches have the primary responsibility for enacting moral rehabilitation within a broader unity of interest. The NRM and the Catholic Church do not fully agree, however, on the means of achieving a moral revolution. Museveni has made no effort to respond to the Church’s demand for a constitutional “acknowledgement” of God, which is absent from the 1995 constitution. And he has resisted calls to return nationalized schools to the churches and to make religious education compulsory in secondary schools, as the Church has requested.19 But, in general, there are some powerful similarities between Church and regime statements on morality and development. The moralistic and developmentalist discourses used both by the NRM and the Church reinforce one another, constructing paternal images of dominant institutions acting on behalf of their charges, knowing what is best for them. As mentioned in the introduction, Museveni has converted this imagery into medical metaphors. Church leaders have also used this trope. Bishop Magambo, in referring to past political irresponsibility, has said: “Whereas no

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one would allow a non-surgeon to perform a surgical operation on him, we have, willy-nilly, allowed the politically ignorant to operate on the socioeconomic ills of our country or construct its destiny” (Magambo 1989, 3). The intersection of medical metaphors with paternalistic claims is found in the emphasis on technical solutions (in the case of economics and politics) and education (in the case of morality). Whether intentional or not, such discourses connote a depoliticized framework for political and social problems (although the actual effects on their audience cannot be assumed).20 The claim to technical mastery on moral issues by the Church stems from the position of bishops and clergy in the spiritual division of labor, their special training, and their responsibility for the Church’s magisterial role. Museveni’s public statements have included references to Ugandans’ “backwardness” and project an almost Enlightenment trust in the positive power of science. In his 1989 address, he emphasized the compatibility of “Science” with religion: “In this sense, Religion, Science and the State can form a harmonious trilogy to meet the spiritual, material and security interests of our people in the 21st century” (Museveni 1989a, 206).21 While in his political practice Museveni has often displayed his mastery of the “art” of politics, his discourse always refers to it as a science: “All our politics must be development-oriented. Demagoguery, cheap popularity, intrigues, obscurantism and corruption will simply not be tolerated anymore. In the NRM, we believe that politics is the science of the management of society” (Museveni 1990, 16–17). In their 1986 pastoral letter, the Catholic bishops themselves speak of politics as a science as they distinguish between the narrow function of party politics and a more global function. “The first and broad sense of politics is that science which teaches man to seek the common good. . . . Its task is to spell out the fundamental values of every community in the temporal sphere and to enable leaders of a nation to provide the community with ways and means for an honest, just and peaceful life” (1986, 67–68; emphasis added). With politics as a science principally concerned with management or values, there is little conceptual space for conflict or for politics as it is routinely practiced. The similarity in the discourses of these two dominant institutions, Church and state, can be seen as a collaboration (although perhaps an unintentional one) at a deep ideological level where the relationship between the strong and the weak is played out in terms of the responsible performance of paternal reciprocities by the relatively powerful.22 In this sense, the Church’s position in civil society is ambiguous, despite whatever oppositional stances it may take to defend its own institutional interests or the interests of broader sectors of Ugandan society. In fact, in spite of his paternalism, Museveni and the NRM have taken serious steps in restructuring modes of representation and participation in the polity. It is not possible to say to what degree this may transform the deep system of

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paternal reciprocity promoted in the ways that the dominant institutions of Church and state speak to their members/citizens. But the Church’s role in this process, other than its acceptance of it and “participation” in it, is a murky one.

Conclusion According to Casanova, one important role that “public religion” can undertake in civil society in a time of political transition is to provide “counterfactual normative critiques” of dominant institutions (especially the state and economic structures) that make claims to autonomy based on technocratic rather than moral criteria. By raising questions publicly about the autonomous pretensions of the differentiated spheres to function without regard to moral norms or human considerations, public religions may help to mobilize people against such pretensions . . . or, at the very least, they may force or contribute to a public debate about such issues (Casanova 1994, 43).

In other words, the two main forms of action available to churches are public discourse and social mobilization. Regarding discourse, the Catholic Church in contemporary Uganda has indeed promoted a “moralizing” of the public sphere, but this message is as often directed at Ugandan society in general as toward its elites and dominant institutions. As I have argued, the institutional Church is constrained in terms of social mobilization due to the nature of its power capacities. In one sense, the Church’s most consistent contribution to civil society is that, in its insistence on its own autonomy, it may have opened the way for other social organizations to make similar claims.23 On the other hand, the emphasis on moral rehabilitation may circumscribe the possible directions for Church action. In addition, it offers a restrictive definition of legitimate public practices that may influence debate on what constitutes Uganda’s “civil society.” Thus, the role of the Catholic Church in the reconfiguration of the Ugandan state under the NRM is an ambiguous one. Indeed, it may be accurate to say that the Church’s own status has been affected by the broad changes in its sociopolitical context since 1986 more than it has shaped that context. For example, with a few exceptions, the NRM has permitted and/or encouraged the pluralization of civil society in Uganda, which has affected the Church in two ways. First, new Protestant evangelical missions and independent religious movements have put the Church into conditions of competition that are unprecedented since the early days of mission activity. Second, the social peace fostered by the regime has allowed

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a more general expansion and public recognition of new (or previously submerged) social identities and organizations, enhancing the partial identification of the laity with the Church and opening new opportunities to diversify sources of social support. The Church unambiguously supports such measures under the banners of religious freedom and democratization; but whether or not the Church has been good for pluralism in Uganda, it is now ambiguous whether pluralism is good for the institutional Church. As a state whose collapse prefigured the more recent examples of state collapse discussed elsewhere in this volume, Uganda’s reconfiguration may or may not be a model for others (although there is evidence that the new regime in Rwanda, dominated by former Tutsi exiles who were once NRA soldiers, is consciously adopting some of the NRM’s ideas and policies). It has been the argument here that those institutions that have been crucial to society’s survival in times of crisis may not easily adopt new leadership roles in the peace that follows, no matter how much that role is proclaimed.

Notes The fieldwork on which this chapter is based was carried out between 1989 and 1991 with assistance from a United States Department of Education FulbrightHays Dissertation Fellowship and from the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. I wish to thank the participants of the conference that led up to this volume, as well as Nelson Kasfir, David Laitin, and Aili Mari Tripp for their comments on earlier drafts. 1. Of course, under Idi Amin (1971–1979), Islam experienced a temporarily privileged existence far exceeding its demographic reality. 2. The resonance with Bayart’s (1993) notion of “the politics of the belly” is significant. 3. The interview was on 18 July 1992, and the transcript is in FBIS, 24 July 1992. 4. Similar characterizations have been made by observers of the Christian churches elsewhere in Africa. Paul Gifford emphasizes “the ambiguous political role that Christianity has played in Africa’s recent political restructuring” (1994, 530). Drawing on Bayart’s work in Cameroon, Richard Joseph argues that, in their relationship to the state and their status as “essential components of civil society,” Christian churches combine aspects of rivalry and challenge to the state, the performance of complementary tasks, and direct collaboration. “In short, there was an inherent ambiguity in these relations which made the churches simultaneously a major ally of the party-state and also its greatest rival, actual or potential” (1993, 247, 233–234). 5. This social logic strongly resonates with the work of Sara Berry (1989, 1993). 6. Stepan (1988, Ch. 1). Stepan defines civil society as “that arena where manifold social movements (such as neighborhood associations, women’s groups, religious groupings, and intellectual currents) and civic associations from all classes

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(such as lawyers, journalists, trade unions and entrepreneurs) attempt to constitute themselves in an ensemble of arrangements so that they can express themselves and advance their interests” (1988, 4). As indicated by the use of the word “civic” in the definition of civil society, Stepan is giving no weight to the adjective “civil”—i.e., no a priori analytical content. I agree with this conceptualization, and will use “civil society” as a shorthand term for organized groups in society with interests in the public sphere (including the definition of the boundaries of that sphere). 7. See the debate on the number of Catholic cabinet ministers in the government-owned daily New Vision, 3 and 6 April 1991. 8. As mentioned, at this time radicals within the NRM were criticizing the churches as fronts for imperialist interests. In their pastoral letter, the bishops pointed to elements of the NRM’s political education program that made these criticisms, calling them “false and baseless” (1986, 75). Such attacks soon disappeared from NRM discourse. 9. However, later in the same paragraph, they write that “it is inconceivable that a constitution, here in Uganda, would not respect, safeguard and guarantee freedom of worship to all, or that it would give preferential status to any one religion.” Since constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion need not be accompanied by a formal acknowledgment of the country’s religious character, the bishops’ position is ambiguous, as they do not specify the positive effects of this acknowledgment. 10. Interview, 1 June 1990. 11. In Burdick’s superb case study of Brazil, he found that, among both clergy and laity, there was a continuity of pre–Vatican II conceptions “of social movements as works of charity or sociability, rather than as the implementation of liberation theology” (1993, 193). 12. “We have seen, in fact, that in spite of the faith we have preached, as a norm of life and a total way of living together, little impact has been exerted on the personal and social conduct of many Christians. Injustices, abuses of human dignity and violations of human rights have also been perpetrated by Christians” (1986, 71). 13. In a similar vein, the bishops’ letter on AIDS, while explicitly stating that the disease should not be seen as a punishment from God, argues that AIDS is “mainly due to the breakdown of family life and traditional values” and that its “real cause” is “the permissiveness which corrodes the moral fibre of the people” (Catholic Bishops 1989a, 3, 11). 14. “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock which the Holy Spirit has placed in your care. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he made his own through the sacrificial death of his Son” (Acts 20:28). 15. On the role of priests, the bishops write: “Between the bishop and his priest there exists a relationship based on the sacrament of Holy Orders. In this way, the priest makes present, as it were, the bishop in the place where he works and he takes upon himself the bishop’s pastoral role according to his capacities and personal gifts” (1986, 40). 16. On Christian communities: “When we come on Pastoral visitation we shall be happy to see the progress made by these groups” (1986, 52). On families: “Pastoral workers should intensify the regular and systematic visitation of all families” (54). On youth: “In all parishes one of the priests, usually the youngest will have particular care of young people. He will organize proper associations and movements for those in school and for those who have left school” (60; emphasis added). On religious education: “Parish clergy will supervise the teaching of religion in schools and as far as possible add to what is given by the teachers” (62).

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17. Fort Portal Diocese has a close relationship to the NRM. A striking example is that when Bishop Magambo returned to Uganda from Austria, where he was undergoing medical treatment, he was flown from Entebbe Airport outside Kampala in an army helicopter that landed on a soccer pitch at the edge of the diocesan headquarters. 18. Museveni is from an Anglican mulokole (saved) background. While his own religiosity is not publicized, he has demonstrated his knowledge of the Bible in many public speeches. 19. “Religious education is very useful, because it can foster a sense of discernment between right and wrong. It is proper that religious education should be given to young people, but it should not be imposed: because imposing it upon them could create other problems” Museveni (1989b, 19). 20. For a detailed discussion of how developmentalist discourse “depoliticizes” politics, see Ferguson (1994). 21. Museveni’s ability to combine scientistic and folksy ways of communicating is often impressive. “You will, I am sure, agree with me that while a person who has caught malaria should certainly pray hard to God for assistance, it would also be a good idea for him or her to take chloroquine. After all, God helps those who help themselves” (1989a, 207). 23. Karlström (1996, 488) argues that, in Buganda at least, such reciprocities resonate with popular notions of legitimate authority. Ganda conceptions of democracy include a view of Museveni “as a ruler who consults with the people he rules, [which] does not in any way qualify his power or authority. There is no conception of a reversal or equalization of authority relations between subjects and rulers.” 23. Joseph has argued in general terms that under authoritarian conditions, African churches have not merely been refuges but “zones of liberty” that helped set the stage for political liberalization: “they [the churches] became repositories of the very idea itself of the entitlement to freedoms of conscience, association and assembly, and expression. By struggling to advance their own institutional interests, they invariably sought to limit the reach of the state. The process of extending the room in which churches were able to act required pushing back the boundaries of the party-state, thereby creating more space for non-governmental associations” (1993, 245).

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Zimbabwe: Women, Cultural Crisis, and the Reconfiguration of the One-Party State S ITA RANCHOD-N ILSSON Since 1992 political scientists and political observers have described the trend toward democratization in sub-Saharan Africa in the most enthusiastic terms. Some have even referred to this period as Africa’s “second independence.” But an overview of African states at mid-decade calls for less optimism, particularly where women are concerned. For while recent research suggests that women’s political activism and women’s organizations have proliferated (Geisler 1995; Nzomo in Chapter 10 above; Tripp 1994a), these changes need to be set against the backdrop of the broader political environment. During the early 1990s political changes prompted by external pressures in some African states may have created a climate that is not only less democratic, but particularly inhospitable to women’s agendas. While the trend toward greater participation would suggest increased opportunities for women to influence politics at the level of the state through various democratic means, this chapter will argue that, in Zimbabwe, changes in the state have not only curtailed those possibilities but have made women the scapegoats for a whole host of social and political problems. Any benefits women might have derived from greater participation were ultimately curtailed by those in power who put forward a facade of multipartyism while manipulating government institutions and the electoral process to maintain control. In the process women have gone from being one important constituency of a fledgling democracy to scapegoats for a variety of social and economic problems. In 1965, the European settlers who controlled Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe’s colonial name) declared their “Unilateral Declaration of Independence” from British rule to pursue South African–style apartheid policies. Indigenous Africans immediately organized themselves into a resistance movement that won liberation from settler rule in 1980 and promised a more democratic, egalitarian sociopolitical system. After nearly two decades of independence, however, only the most optimistic observers would include Zimbabwe as part of a trend toward political liberalization. 255

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Although the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union, or ZANU(PF), dropped its plans to hold a referendum on a legal one-party state in 1990, it continues to dominate state and local politics, at least in part by manipulating the rules of political involvement, by harassing opposition and independent candidates, and, in some cases, by outright violence and thuggery. After the parliamentary elections of April 1995, the political situation was summed up by John Makumbe, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe: “This election underlines that Zimbabwe is a de-facto one-party state. Our constitution gives too much power to the president and the ruling party. The state has too much control over the newspaper and broadcast media. Our civil society is not strong. We have a political culture of fear so that people are afraid to oppose the ruling party.”1 Zimbabwe’s transformation from a democratically elected government with guaranteed minority representation, imposed under the terms of the Lancaster Agreement at independence in 1980, to the de facto one-party state described by Makumbe is only one dimension of the state’s reconfiguration since independence. Ideologically, the state has all but dropped its commitment to socialism, except in those instances where socialist rhetoric carries little or no cost.2 In practice, since independence, the state has never really deviated from its embrace of capitalism, and its early efforts to alleviate social inequality through the provision of subsidies for education and health care have basically been abandoned. More recently, the state has undergone one of the harshest forms of capitalism, an International Monetary Fund (IMF)–sponsored structural adjustment program (referred to as the Economic Structural Adjustment Program [ESAP] in Zimbabwe). In the context of these changes, this chapter will focus on another area of state transformation, that associated with gender, specifically related to changes in state structures and ideology. At independence Zimbabwe distinguished itself by committing state resources to helping women attain equality with men. The state’s proactive stance on women’s issues was largely based on their prominent participation in the decade-long armed struggle. Toward the end of the war, ZANU’s commitment to women was clear. Robert Mugabe himself stated that “the national struggle . . . became as much a process towards the liberation of the nation as towards the emancipation of women” (Mugabe 1979). This commitment included the establishment of state structures to advocate for women’s issues and legal reforms, and to explicitly challenge those aspects of African culture, such as bridewealth (lobola), which under colonialism had been reconfigured in ways that disadvantaged women.3 Despite this promising beginning, the state’s commitments in this area have waned in the years since independence. In fact, more recent public discourse has been filled with criticisms of women. Prior to the 1995 parliamentary elections, the state-controlled media was filled with vitriolic

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attacks on women—criticizing them for being prostitutes, for “dumping” babies, and for being “Western influenced.” This gender crisis has been couched in terms of an ongoing debate over “authentic” African culture that heated up prior to the parliamentary elections in April 1995 and continued through the 1996 presidential elections. More than anything else, the debate seems to focus on gender, more specifically on the appropriate roles and identities for African women. In this chapter I suggest that the struggle over gender identity has been integral to state transformation in Zimbabwe in ways that are linked to the reconfiguration of the de facto one-party state, to popular dissatisfaction with the lack of progress on land resettlement, and with declining standards of living in the wake of ESAP. These connections have been observable even in the limited coverage of African politics in the news media in the United States. Several stories about Zimbabwe were featured in such publications as the New York Times and the Washington Post, where two stories in particular captured media attention. The first, in April 1995, involved the third election in Zimbabwe’s independent history. Accounts of the election varied; while a few sources praised the country’s apparent embrace of democratic processes, many others denounced the efforts of the dominant party to squash the activities of fledgling opposition parties (Drogin 1995; Meldrum 1995). The second story in July 1995 involved President Mugabe’s virulent antihomosexual remarks at the opening of the annual International Book Fair in Harare. Mugabe banned a gay group’s bookstand from the fair and denounced homosexuals as “sodomists and perverts,” and as “worse than dogs and pigs” (McNeil 1995; Duke 1995). These remarks took many by surprise in a society that, while not openly supportive of homosexuality, could at least be characterized as tolerant. These two seemingly unrelated events are not entirely coincidental. As the de facto one-party state seeks to consolidate its position in the context of declining economic circumstances, the state is more concerned than ever to maintain a particular gender order, one that implies compulsory heterosexuality, based on increasingly narrow and proscribed roles for both women and men.4 It would be simplistic to see the state’s renewed attention to gender and sexuality as simply a diversionary tactic on the part of a political party and a president facing reelection in economically tough times. If, in a very general sense, gender can be understood as a way of signifying relations of power, not only between individuals or within households but also at the level of the state, then in specific historical contexts state mobilization of gender meanings can signal a broader shift in relations of power. For example, the Zimbabwean case suggests that in those states that are resisting internal and external pressures for political liberalization, the manipulation of gender ideology may be a key strategy for creating and main taining existing authoritative power relations. Zimbabwean women are, of course, responding individually and collectively to worsening economic

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conditions and are demanding greater political inclusiveness. Women have been very active in these areas since independence, as they have been in other African countries (see Weiss 1986; Batezet and Mwalo 1989; Geisler 1989) But the activities of women and state responses tell only part of the story. In seeking to understand state reconfiguration, questions need to be asked not only about women’s political participation and organizational efforts, but also about the context in which these women’s efforts take place. What role does the state play in shaping the possibilities of women’s political involvement? What role does the state, or its constituent parts, play in shaping gender relations and how does this work either to encourage or discourage political liberalization? Answers to these questions are crucial to women’s political participation as international financial and political pressures cause states to abandon the option of a de jure one-party state while devising other means of maintaining their control. This chapter will highlight the transformation of the state’s institutional and ideological commitments to women in the context of efforts to maintain political control by an increasingly narrow and distant de facto one-party state. In what follows, I will first discuss what it means to talk about a gendered state in theoretical terms and in the specific historical and cultural context of Zimbabwe. The following sections then provide an overview of the development and entrenchment of the de facto one-party state and the worsening economic conditions affecting the majority of Zimbabweans, particularly since 1990 under the IMF-sponsored structural adjustment program. Against this backdrop, I suggest that the state has successfully reconstructed the “nationalist woman” and that this is reflected in institutional and ideological terms. Finally, the chapter will touch on the current debates about “authentic” African culture and how those debates focus on the “appropriate” (e.g., subordinate) role for women.

Gender and the State What does it mean to think about the state in gendered terms? Although recent feminist work in this area has not produced a consensus, it has illuminated many ways in which gender relations and gender meanings pervade state policies and, more fundamentally, the whole concept of the state as institutionalized relations of power. Some of the work in this area highlights the ways in which gender relations and gender dichotomies are constructed and continuously reconstructed by the state. This means, at perhaps the most obvious level, that the state is male-dominated, that those bureaucrats and political authorities who run the institutions of the state are predominantly men. As a result of this male domination, state actions may intentionally or unintentionally disadvantage women. Or, to put it another way, men and women experience state policies and actions in different

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ways. The outcomes of state policies are not gender-neutral, regardless of intentionality. Parpart and Staudt point out that “through their ideological, legal and material efforts, states foster the mobilization of certain groups and issues. This mobilization usually benefits men rather than women” (1989, 6). This privileging can take a variety of forms involving, for example, laws that define sexuality, mobility, and marital relations, including rights to property and child custody, or access to land resettlement schemes, education, and economic resources. Finally, states are characterized by gender ideology that is revealed through “the norms, laws, ideologies and patterns of action that shape the meaning of politics and the nature of political discourse” (Charlton, Everett, and Staudt 1989, 12). In this view, notions of femininity and masculinity are central to the social order that states are charged with creating and maintaining. That does not mean, however, that gendered identities are static; feminine and masculine identities are fluid and take on different meanings in historically specific circumstances (Charlton, Everett, and Staudt 1989; Parpart and Staudt 1989). Others scholars have been critical of seeing the gender dimensions of states solely in terms of the different ways that men and women experience the policies and practices of state institutions. Rather, the state itself is premised on particular assumptions about gender. Feminist critics of Western liberal democracy see the state not as an arena in which relations between gender-neutral individuals are mediated, but as a set of institutions that uphold gender inequality through the division of public and private spheres. In notions of both citizenship and the legal system, the liberal state is unable to address issues specifically affecting women.5 In another line of analysis, postmodernism has thrown both the categories of “women” and “the state” into question so that, at the very least, the use of these categories must be disaggregated and explained. In this view, the premise of state—understood as a differentiated set of institutions and agencies with often contradictory policies—is based on power and is infused with gender meanings as well as race, ethnicity, class, locality, and age (Manicome 1992, 456). The task at hand, then, as Manicome argues, is not to explain what the (male) state did to “African women” but to explain “how and why different social concerns got taken up in policy in terms of particular constructions of gender and how gender difference and subordination were regulated” (1992, 458). This perspective allows for a less rigid, less instrumental understanding of what may be at stake when gender relations or issues related to gender identity are invoked by one or more facets of state power. The emphasis on disaggregating or “unpacking” the state also reminds us that the state retains powerful mechanisms for shaping gender relations and creating political spaces for women that can be used to advantage by particular women. Exploring the gender dimensions of the state in Africa is further complicated because the contemporary state has its roots in the colonial experience; that is, the state did not emerge from indigenous social structures,

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but was imported by outside forces with their own imperialist agendas. Historians have illuminated the ways in which gender and sexuality were central to the colonial enterprise, not only in terms of the ways African relations were altered in light of colonial notions of gender and sexuality, but also in terms of the ways in which gender relations among Africans set the parameters for economic relations and the state.6 Thus assumptions about gender that shape state institutions, policies, and practices are rooted in the colonial experience, and continuities and changes must be explained. This is true in the case of Zimbabwe, where the policies and practices of European settlers in what was then called “Southern Rhodesia” fundamentally reshaped gender relations among Africans. Incorporation into expanding markets, creation and codification of African customary laws, colonial education, and increased demands for labor not only affected men and women differently but were premised on particular meanings of gender that changed over time. Throughout the colonial period state authority, institutions, and practices were premised on particular assumptions about race and gender. There is also ample evidence that the colonial state was keenly interested in and involved in shaping gender relations among Europeans and Africans.7 The struggle against settler rule created a kind of political opening for women and formed the basis for the independent state’s initial commitment to women. Many young women joined the liberation armies of the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), the two principal organized movements in Zimbabwe’s complex liberation struggle. Some estimates put the number of women combatants as high as 25 percent of the total military forces, although ZANU and ZAPU had different approaches to women in training and combat (Seidman 1984; Moore 1991; Ranchod-Nilsson 1992a). In the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), the military wing of ZANU, women combatants trained together with men, shared daily camp chores with men, and some advanced through the ranks of military hierarchy. By the middle of the war publications from the liberation movement began to include items that linked national liberation and women’s liberation, as in Robert Mugabe’s statement quoted above. The roles of women combatants during the liberation struggle were a marked departure from what was considered acceptable behavior for women in “traditional” terms, and women’s involvement in the military provoked some conflict, both within the liberation forces and among rural dwellers during mobilization efforts.8 Rural women supported the struggle while maintaining their homes. In addition to sustaining the guerrillas with food and other supplies, rural women provided them with valuable information and logistical assistance (Staunton 1990; Ranchod-Nilsson 1992a). During the war, every village where ZANLA guerrillas were active was responsible for organizing a support

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committee, often comprised mainly of women, to coordinate village members to meet the guerrillas’ needs for food and other supplies and also to make sure that no local people were acting as “sell-outs.” For most women, these committees provided their first experience of participating in organized political authority at the village level. Through the process of rural mobilization, women were also able to raise their own agendas involving gender relations within households. As the guerrillas established their authority in rural areas, women went to them with domestic problems involving lack of financial support from their husbands, domestic abuse, jealousy over girlfriends, and unwanted divorces. The guerrillas were most often sympathetic to women in their advice and intervention.9 Although none of the liberation movements initially addressed women’s concerns, women combatants and rural women supporters were able to insert their agendas into the broader liberation struggle through their active involvement. But the gender ideology that emerged from rural mobilization was quite different from that which emerged from the military component of the liberation struggle. Whereas women combatants had proven themselves the equals of men and wanted equal economic and educational opportunities, rural women were less interested in issues of equality. Rather, in numerous interviews I carried out in 1989, rural women made it clear that they were more interested in regaining autonomy and control over certain areas of their lives that had been eroded during the colonial period. Thus, the gender ideology of the new state was one more area where the legacy of the liberation struggle was, in Ian Phimister’s words, “profoundly ambiguous” (1988, 8).

The Rise of the De Facto One-Party State The competing and contradictory gender ideologies confronting the Zimbabwean state at independence were only part of a whole spectrum of contradictions and ambiguities that provide the backdrop for a discussion of state reconfiguration. But reconfiguration from what to what? Many argue that there has been surprisingly little transformation in Zimbabwe. The self-proclaimed scientific socialism of ZANU, the liberation movement, and ZANU(PF), the political party, has not—with the exception of early efforts at equalizing access to education and health care—led to a transformation of the economy or the society. The need to reconcile with whites, who held most of the economic resources and technological expertise, also flew in the face of years of antiwhite, antisettler rhetoric that had been at the core of mobilization efforts during the war. Even the form of democracy imposed on the new state in the Lancaster Agreement, the negotiated settlement that brought an end to the liberation war, could be viewed not as something entirely new, but as the expansion of a kind of

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democracy that had already existed for the minority white population during settler rule (Moyo 1991). With independence in 1980, the promise of democratic participation was held out to all Zimbabweans regardless of race, ethnic affiliation, or gender. Since then, however, changes in state institutional arrangements and the rules of electoral participation—together with reduced tolerance for dissent—have curtailed opportunities for meaningful political participation and have effectively concentrated state power with the president and the dominant political party. At independence in 1980 the Lancaster Agreement provided for the establishment of an elected government based on a Westminster model, with guaranteed white minority representation—whites were guaranteed twenty out of 100 parliamentary seats for at least seven years—and a bill of rights that guaranteed rights to assembly and multiparty organization. The first elections were successful in that they involved nine political parties and did not include evidence of widespread election irregularities. ZANU carried the election by winning 62 percent of the vote, while its main rival ZAPU demonstrated strong regional support in the primarily Ndebele areas, Matabeleland and Midlands (Sylvester 1991). The words most often used to describe Zimbabwe’s politics in the first five years of independence are “ambiguous” and “contradictory.” On the one hand, immediately after the election Mugabe moved quickly to offer reconciliation between blacks and whites and to build coalitions with ZAPU. On the other hand, Mugabe also maintained his position that ZANU(PF) was a Marxist-Leninist party committed to building scientific socialism in Zimbabwe through a single party based on grassroots organization, although during that period there was no clear policy initiative reflecting this commitment. The new government moved quickly to Africanize the state and to address some dimensions of inequality by expanding the civil service bureaucracy to include blacks, expanding primary and secondary education systems (including the elimination of school fees for primary education), and expanding the health care system (including subsidized health care for those with low or moderate incomes). Yet there was almost no movement to nationalize industry, and the government’s high-priority land resettlement program moved very slowly. Perhaps the most troubling development during this period was the government’s response to dissident activity in Matabeleland, where government forces moved against long-time ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo and ex-combatants from ZAPU’s military wing in a violent manner that greatly escalated ethnic and regional tensions. The events in Matabeleland between 1982 and 1983 earned the Zimbabwean government “a reputation for mixing democratic socialist policies with considerable authoritarianism” (Sylvester 1991, 77) and also foreshadowed later moves to de fine political “insiders” and “outsiders” in ways that reflected ethnic and regional loyalties and increasingly resembled neopatrimonial political authority.

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After the first five years, the quest to build national unity became the guise for building a one-party state. As political power became concentrated in the dominant political party and the executive branch of government, formal, institutional channels for participating in politics were circumscribed. Constitutional changes and the escalating antiopposition activities by ZANU(PF) supporters illustrate this trend. Following another decisive victory in the 1985 elections, ZANU(PF) moved toward a de jure one-party state by formally merging with its main rival, PF-ZAPU, under the terms of the Unity Accord of December 1987. This merger was not based on true power sharing; it was presented by ZANU(PF) as almost a fait accompli in light of their victory in the previous elections. This was followed by constitutional changes that removed the twenty seats reserved for whites and changed the Westminster parliamentary system to an executive presidency, where the selection of the president was separated from the legislature and allowed six-year terms that could be repeated without limit. The new system also increased the size of the cabinet from twentyfour ministers (including five in the president’s office) to thirty-one ministers (including three senior and seven regular ministers in the president’s office). Prior to the 1990 elections additional changes resulted in a legislature where thirty out of 120 seats, 25 percent, were appointed by the president. The power of the presidency now far eclipsed the power of the legislature and ZANU(PF) was all but assured control of the state. The same period also witnessed a growing intolerance of those who were critical of either President Mugabe or ZANU(PF). Following ZANU(PF)’s victory in the 1985 elections, party supporters went on a postelection rampage in communal areas and high-density (black) townships, led by the ZANU(PF)’s Women’s and Youth Leagues. Those who were not active supporters of ZANU(PF) were threatened or beaten, and had their homes ransacked. In 1989 public revelations of corruption among high government officials in the Willowgate scandal led to the resignation of five key ZANU(PF) officials (and the suicide of one of them) and a crisis of confidence in the Mugabe government. Out of this crisis came the first significant challenge from an opposition party in the form of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), led by former ZANU(PF) MP, Edgar Tekere. Tekere and other ZUM candidates sought to challenge ZANU(PF) in the 1990 elections. Throughout the election period, ZANU(PF) harassed opposition parties and their supporters, and refused permits for election meetings and speeches. Not surprisingly, ZUM made a very poor showing in the 1990 election, capturing only four seats. The 1990 election was also the first election based on single-member constituencies where candidates were selected in a primary election prior to the general election. While Zimbabweans were thus given some latitude in selecting their representatives, “the party did not tolerate too much democracy if it meant that senior party members could be rejected by their constituents” (Sylvester

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1991, 88). Although Mugabe initially claimed that the 1990 landslide victory was a mandate for a one-party state, internal and external pressure led the party officially to abandon its plans to transform Zimbabwe into a legal one-party state. In 1990 the provisions of the Lancaster Agreement formally ended. Since that time three issues have dominated Zimbabwean politics: (1) land resettlement, specifically government seizure of white-owned commercial farm land, (2) the ESAP initiated in 1990, and (3) the debates over race relations and African “cultural authenticity.” Although the Zimbabwean economy was strong at independence, government spending quickly outpaced economic growth. This spending, combined with periods of severe drought, contributed to a debt crisis and the subsequent structural adjustment program. By 1995 the Zimbabwe dollar had been devalued to nearly one-third its 1990 value, inflation was rampant, unemployment had risen to 30 percent, and Zimbabwe’s human development index had slipped back to 1980 levels (UNDP 1996, 83). The primary burden of these declining economic conditions has fallen on women, who must cope on a daily basis with the realities of 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line (Daily Gazette, 1 November 1994). In April 1995 parliamentary elections were held; although pronounced “free and fair” by international observers, they were widely criticized both internally and externally for numerous irregularities. As Andrew Meldrum (1995, 60) reported, Before a single vote had been cast in the April 8 and 9 elections, President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party . . . had already chalked up a majority of seats. This extraordinary situation came about because 55 ZANUPF candidates won by default when they were unopposed by opposition parties. With those 55 seats added to the 30 parliamentary seats appointed by the president, ZANU-PF had a majority of 85 in the 150-seat House of Assembly even before Zimbabweans went to the polls.

Opposition parties won just two seats in the legislative body. In addition, the preelection campaign was characterized not only by manipulation (as in the 1990 elections) but by thuggery and violence directed against independent and opposition candidates as well as those members of ZANU(PF) who were critical of the party.10 Since independence Robert Mugabe and the ZANU(PF) government have framed many of the state’s goals in terms of national unity. But the quest for unity has been based on “the desire for a legislated one-party state and thus the concentration—rather than the broadening—of power in the hands of a few” (Moyo 1991, 87). During the years since independence, the hegemony of ZANU(PF) has not worked to build national unity or to foster national political debate, rather it has focused on the identification of “insiders” and “outsiders” and worked to silence or intimidate

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outsiders. The one-party dominant state has become the de facto one-party state, which arguably represents only the interests of a few.

Gender Dimensions of State Reconfiguration What has the rise of the de facto one-party state meant in terms of the state institutions, practices, and ideologies associated with women? Earlier I suggested that at independence, the state had no clear-cut gender ideology based on its earlier experiences in the liberation struggle. Rather, there were competing and contradictory ideologies based on the different experiences of women who were ex-combatants and rural women who stayed in the countryside during the war. In addition, there was the institutional framework of the bureaucracy and the legal system inherited from the colonial state. Even within the framework of these contradictions, it is possible to discern the state’s institutional and ideological commitment to women in the period shortly after independence—a commitment to equality of women and men that at the same time maintained respect for “traditional” values, and a commitment to involve women in the process of economic development and growth, even if that involvement was not central. Over time, however, the nature of the state’s commitment has changed as the political order became based on the de facto one-party state and the increasingly narrow concentration of power. Women who were “insiders” at independence have since been relegated to “outsider” status. This change can be illustrated by looking at the Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs and at official discourse surrounding legal reforms meant to improve the circumstances of women. Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs/Women’s League In 1981 the government established the Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs (MCDWA). The purpose of MCDWA was to “facilitate the involvement of women in national development through the removal of all legal, cultural and socio-economic barriers that hinder the full participation of women” (MCDWA 1983, quoted in Batezat, Mwalo, and Truscott 1988). The new minister was Teurai Ropa Nhongo, one of the first women combatants, one of the highest-ranking women in ZANU’s military wing during the liberation struggle, and secretary of the ZANU(PF) Women’s League. Until the creation of this ministry, the bureaucratic structures of the government had been virtually identical to those of the former settler government. The creation of the ministry followed high expectations that the new government held out opportunities for truly meaningful participation for women. Seidman points out that Zimbabwe

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appeared “to be unusual in the extent to which government leaders, especially women, have been willing to declare themselves committed to feminist goals” (1984, 431). The new ministry immediately embarked on a massive data-collection exercise to document and expose the circumstances of women. The resulting report, The Situation of Women in Zimbabwe, identified numerous problems affecting women: land alienation, lack of agricultural resources (including inputs and extension), lack of formal employment opportunities, poor health care, low literacy levels, and lack of legal rights in relation to property, child custody, inheritance, and bridewealth (MCDWA 1982). Based on this information, the MCDWA set out to address these problems through government initiatives in a number of areas, including legislation to promote women’s equality; lobbying for women’s access to agricultural resources, such as land and agricultural extension services; implementing “women and development” strategies; advocating removal of discriminatory labor practices; and launching a literacy campaign and a variety of community education initiatives (MCDWA 1985). The staff of the Department of Women’s Affairs was comprised of professional women, many of whom had been educated abroad and who “were well qualified to not only contribute to the gender debate, but also to push for legal changes affecting their own status as professional women” (Geisler 1995, 556). Yet, despite its impressive qualifications, the staff was small and funding for the new ministry was meager. From the outset critics charged that the MCDWA was marginal to national development efforts. Instead of addressing issues that would place women centrally in national development priorities, such as access to land and agricultural inputs, the ministry tended to focus on meeting short-term goals that most often involved “piecemeal isolated projects” (Muchena, quoted in Batezat and Mwalo 1989, 66). Indeed, in one of its own reports, MCDWA officials acknowledged that “there is need for an integrated planning system with a much greater awareness at the policy-making level of the role of women in development. The development of women must of necessity be seen as a national planning issue in order to ensure that resources are earmarked at this level for the integration of women in all sectors of activity” (MCDWA 1985, 42). Although officials at the ministry voiced this concern at various government levels, it never resulted in any changes in national development policy. In 1987 the new Ministry of Cooperatives was merged with MCDWA to create the Ministry of Cooperatives, Community Development and Women’s Affairs (MCCDWA). Teurai Ropa Nhongo (having shed her fighter’s name and using her given name of Joyce Mujuru), remained as minister but the restructured ministry was still weak in terms of funding and its role in defining national development priorities. Because of the strong connection between the party and the state, the fate of MCDWA/MCCDWA was intertwined with the ZANU(PF) Women’s

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League from its inception. The Women’s League had been formed in 1977, toward the end of the liberation war, and was charged with overseeing the “total liberation of women.” But after independence, the mandate of the league quickly shifted to social welfare and party mobilization.11 According to one MP, “they have transferred the role of the kitchen to the Women’s League” (quoted in Geisler 1995, 553). The shift in the league’s mandate put them at odds with the MCDWA. The two organizations appealed to very different groups of women. Geisler characterizes the divisions as being between independent professional women and uneducated dependent women, and points out the stark contrast between the early MCDWA staff and photos from a 1984 Women’s League conference that “show row upon row of elderly women, clad in party colors with the face of their president prominently displayed on their garments” (1995, 556). League women had become what Hirschmann has called “key women,” women whose access to political power is mediated through men (Hirschmann 1991). During the consolidation of the one-party state, Women’s League members have regularly been among Mugabe’s staunchest supporters. They figured prominently in the post-1985 election rampage targeting those who did not support ZANU(PF) and in the pre-1995 election harassment and violence. In 1990, the Women’s League was one of the few groups where Mugabe received support for a legal one-party state. The close connection between party and state and the growing prominence of the Women’s League eventually constrained the ministry’s efforts to act as advocate, in a broad sense, for all women. This was further complicated by the fact that the same person, Joyce Mujuru, headed both the ministry and the league. The ministry was limited in its ability to be overtly critical of government actions against women. For example, in 1983 the government arrested thousands of women in “Operation CleanUp” and charged them with vagrancy and prostitution. Not only were the methods employed exceptionally brutal, but it was clear that many of the women arrested as “prostitutes” were in fact single professional women who were earning their own living as nurses, teachers, and secretaries (Jacobs and Howard 1987). 12 There was a broad public outcry against the raids from both black and white women as well as some men. However, the ministry claimed not to have known about the raids and never issued any public condemnation of them, because the minister declared it improper to criticize a government of which it was part and parcel (Geisler 1995, 557). The MCDWA was not able to stop subsequent raids in 1985 and 1987. These episodes suggest that apart from advocacy, the ministry had little power to either represent women’s concerns or to protect them from detrimental state actions. Prior to the 1990 parliamentary elections, the Department of Women’s Affairs was moved from the Ministry of Cooperative and Community

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Development to the new Ministry of Political Affairs in the ZANU(PF) headquarters. While the shift received little attention, it was most significant in that it entailed the redefinition of the purpose of the Department of Women’s Affairs to be primarily the “political mobilization of women.” Gone was any reference to promoting the equality of women or even improving their economic circumstances. Whereas the MCDWA and MCCDWA had been charged with promoting economic development, albeit at the margins of national development, all connections between women’s affairs and economic development were now officially severed. This shift was pivotal in redefining “women” in light of the de facto one-party state. The Department of Women’s Affairs moved even closer to the party, and its functions “now overlapped with the Women’s League” (Geisler 1995, 558). Sally Mugabe, the wife of the president, became the leader of the Department of Women’s Affairs. After the change, one woman asked, “Has [Women’s Affairs] now become a party function and not a government body? . . . Why the shift? . . . Is it a form of check and balance to curb the newly emerging ‘power’ of women in the political arena?” (Jirira 1990, 19–20). The creation and subsequent demise of the MCDWA, seen as part and parcel of state reconfiguration, illustrates the changing gender meaning embodied in the context of a state institution. One dimension of the reconfiguration is that the cast of women “insiders” has changed from the professional, educated women and women ex-combatants of the postindependence period, to “key women,” women who are in positions to directly benefit from the consolidation of the one-party state. Women who fall outside these groups have been excluded altogether. Another dimension of state reconfiguration is that at a time when women are coping with the combined fallout from their secondary status in the government’s resettlement schemes, three periods of severe prolonged drought and the inflation and unemployment related to ESAP, their official space in the context of the state is no longer concerned with economic development. Rather, the only official political space for women is now focused on political mobilization. Legal Reforms After independence, the new Zimbabwean government drew international attention with the creation of the MCDWA and further distinguished itself by undertaking a series of legal reforms to improve the circumstances of women. Initiated by the MCDWA with support from the Ministry of Justice, these included the Legal Age of Majority Act (1982), which conferred adult legal status on all Zimbabweans at the age of eighteen; the Matrimonial Causes Act (1985), which gave women rights to property in marriage and changed the practice of automatically giving fathers child custody in

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the event of divorce; and the Labor Relations Act (1985), which contained provisions for paid maternity leave and nursing mothers. In addition, the Customary Law and Primary Courts Act (1981) repealed the judicial authority of chiefs, headmen, and district commissions and amended the Maintenance Act to ensure financial support for deserted and divorced wives and their children under customary law. On one level, these laws were meant to end discrimination against women in the public realms of work and politics. These legal reforms also had implications for African customary law; more specifically, they promised gains for women in terms of laws governing marriage, inheritance, child custody, and divorce, areas where the colonial codification of African customary law had put them at a disadvantage. Like most former colonies, Zimbabwe inherited a complex legal system at independence. During the period of settler domination, civil matters could be adjudicated under one of two systems that were largely determined by race: African customary law or the general law. African customary law applied only to Africans and was based on male, European interpretations of precolonial “customs and traditions,”13 while the general law applied to civil matters involving non-Africans and to constitutional and criminal matters involving all inhabitants. African women were most affected by the codification of customary law, which applied to areas involving marriage, family, and related property relationships. As “custom and tradition” were interpreted under this legal system, African women were perpetual minors under the guardianship of men. Marriages most often occurred under the terms of customary law and included the payment of bridewealth. In the event of divorce or the death of a husband, his wife had no rights to property, with the exception of the cooking implements she brought to the marriage, and no rights to child custody. After independence this dual legal system remained, albeit in slightly different form. Which legal system cases get tried under now “largely depends on the individual circumstances of each case,” although the structure of the court system, the choice-of-law rules, and women’s general socioeconomic condition mean that most women still have their rights determined by customary law (Steward et al. 1990, 167–168). The Legal Age of Majority Act (LAMA) has been one of the most controversial pieces of legislation since it was enacted in 1982, and has had the most far-reaching implications for African cultural practices. By making women legal majors at the age of eighteen, LAMA effectively ended African women’s status as perpetual minors and gave them the right to own property, to contract a marriage without parental or family consent, to become the guardians of their own children, and to sue or be sued as individuals. The most enduring complaints about LAMA are that it allows women over the age of eighteen to get married without (male) parental involvement in bridewealth negotiations and that it abrogates a father’s right

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to sue a man for “seduction damages”—for having sex with his daughter in contexts that are not socially sanctioned (e.g., prior to bridewealth negotiations, or if the daughter is married). The confusion over LAMA led to an uproar from men and some women who were concerned about the denial of their parental rights. According to a 1984 survey by the government-controlled daily paper, The Herald, “the Legal Age of Majority Act was seen as ‘corrupting and unafrican.’ Interviewees disapproved in particular of girls becoming adults in their own right at the age of 18. Most fathers considered the age too young and felt that a girl still needed consent and guidance from her parents” (quoted in Batezat, Mwalo, and Truscott 1988, 159).14 These complaints were not anticipated by the ZANU(PF) leadership, who were initially more focused on getting women’s votes. Although the law has not been repealed, there are few marriages that take place without bridewealth. In the course of the ongoing debate about LAMA and other legal reforms, policy statements by Mugabe and members of the government have radically shifted. From early criticism of African cultural practices that disadvantanged women, state discourse now emphasizes the value of African customs and the key role women play in maintaining tradition. The issue of legal reform was revisited in April 1993 when a coalition of women’s groups brought their proposals for reforming the laws governing marriage and inheritance to the government. Their suggestions were circulated for debate in a government White Paper; it included proposals to incorporate the two marriage laws (customary and civil) into one that would include provisions for community property and inheritance, and for the banning of both bridewealth and polygamy. The White Paper has rekindled debates about African culture, but unlike the earlier legal reform initiatives, this time President Mugabe and government representatives have been far more conciliatory to those calling for protection of traditional cultural values. National newspapers have been running stories that highlight opposition from chiefs who claim the proposals “will destroy the intrinsic cultural and family values while promoting divorce for personal gain” (Sunday Mail, 13 November 1994), as well as from rural women who are “particularly incensed by the suggestions that lobola be abolished . . . such a move would destroy the family, as lobola bonds the family” (Sunday Mail, 20 November 1994). Perhaps most revealing however, was the outburst against “feminist extremism” by President Mugabe in response to a request from the National Association of Non-Governmental Organizations that property be registered in the names of both the husband and wife. In response Mugabe asked, “Where in the world have you ever seen such a division in the family?” and warned women not to listen to “terrible ideas” from abroad (Chronicle, 2 August 1994). One of the national papers described women in the audience and women’s groups, who had been used to a certain level of support from the president, as “stunned,” “shocked,” and “disappointed” with his statements (Chronicle, 2 August 1994).

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The state’s shift in gender ideology was also evident in the resolutions of the 1989 ZANU(PF) Congress in the areas of economic development, land reform and agriculture, social services, and natural resources. Women were only mentioned in the context of social services and, then, in ways that contradicted the party’s earlier commitments to women’s equality. The 1989 Resolutions, for example, directed the government to review the Legal Age of Majority Act so that it takes further account of our cultural background, with a view in particular to raising the age of majority to 21 years . . . to revise and amend the Maintenance Act to limit the number of children for which unmarried mothers can claim maintenance from different fathers . . . [and] to restore the powers of chiefs and headmen so that they can preserve and maintain rural family life, as well as control stock theft, deforestation and other social evils (Jirira 1990, 24; emphasis added).

The vague mention of “social evils” here no doubt refers to social problems involving prostitution, “baby dumping,” and out-of-wedlock births, topics that are frequently addressed in the national press. The latter resolution is eerily reminiscent of the ways in which the colonial state ceded power to African men to control women.15 The state’s own discourse on legal reforms affecting women has changed in ways that parallel the decline of the MCDWA and the rise of the one-party state. From an initial concern with women’s equality, the debate on the 1994 White Paper demonstrates a shift in concern that now relegates women to the home and family, to be keepers of the national culture and tradition, outside the scope of politics and economic development.

The Crisis of African Culture and the “New” Nationalist Woman Since 1990 the debates on the “cultural crisis” and African authenticity have been at the forefront of national political life. These debates have taken place on three interconnected fronts. First, since the end of the Lancaster Agreement freed the government to confiscate commercial farm land, there has been renewed attention to the continuing hold of whites on the economy and calls to “indigenize” the economy. Second, during this same period newspapers have printed numerous articles exhorting women to “strengthen family ties and retain traditional and customary traits” (Robert Mugabe in The Herald, 6 August 1994). Finally, the media has also been filled with virulent attacks against women for causing a variety of social ills associated with the “influence of Western feminists.” While the first area of debate focuses on race, the other two focus on the gender

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identity of African women and suggest that state construction of a “new nationalist woman” goes hand in hand with the emphasis on unity and the rise of the de facto one-party state. The previous discussions of the MCDWA, the ZANU(PF) Women’s League, and legal reforms suggested that since independence, women have become more closely tied to “traditional” customs and African cultural identity. This was made explicit at the opening of the 1994 Congress of the ZANU(PF) Women’s League when President Mugabe declared that “women must strengthen family ties and retain traditional culture . . . the family unit, where the women play a crucial role, continues to be an important foundation for the society . . . women, in their roles as mothers, should assist with the preservation of culture and the perpetuation of the national identity” (Herald, 6 August 1994). This is a marked shift from the inclusion and even limited celebration of women ex-combatants, who have all but disappeared from a public discourse that frequently invokes the heroic nature of the liberation struggle. In this construction of the new nationalist woman, the women warriors, armed and strong, have been replaced by the “mothers of the revolution,” proud bearers of African culture. The resurgence of nationalist politics is no longer posed against the colonial settler state, but in a new context shaped by the exigencies of eliminating political opposition and the demands of internal and external economic forces. The definition of insiders and outsiders is thus evolving, but it seems clear that African women have lost their early, albeit limited, claims to insider status as they have been relegated to the role of cultural keepers. The new nationalist identity politics is defined by men and, unlike the liberation war, holds little promise that women will be able to raise their own agendas. But the construction of the nationalist woman is a double-edged sword. In the postmobilization period, woman as potential traitor becomes a common icon (Enloe 1994, 237). This is the other side of casting women as the bearers of national culture and is evident in looking at the ways in which social problems have been framed in Zimbabwe. We have seen that since 1980 there has been a tendency to blame women for a range of social problems, and this tendency has become more frequent and intense over time. In sources that can be attributed to the state—comments by President Mugabe, ministers, and members of Parliament, and articles and editorials in the state-run press—women are increasingly coming under attack. As early as 1983, an editorial in The Herald was entitled “Kill the Beasts” and read, “the grisly discovery of 13 babies at Chitungwiza raises a powerful question: have some of our women become possessed by the devil? Mothers, aunts or sisters should have known or at least suspected that the girls were pregnant, aborted or given birth. Yet they engaged in a complicity of silence and continued to cohabit with murderesses and abortionists” (23 November 1983). Jacobs

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and Howard point out that “very few letters or articles critical of such labelling were published so an atmosphere hostile to young women generally and a consensus of opinion blaming women for social problems was successfully fostered” (1987, 40). Such attacks continued through “Operation Clean-up” in 1983, 1985, and 1987. After 1990 members of the government openly engaged in antiwoman rhetoric. For example, in March 1994, the suggestion by Dr. Timothy Stamps, minister of health, that abortions should be available for pregnant women with AIDS prompted one member of Parliament to suggest that, “since abortion is against local tradition, women with AIDS should be shot” (The Economist, 19 March 1994, 50). In response to the growing problem of domestic violence, women have also come under fire. In discussing the problem of wife-battering, members of Parliament have been quoted as saying the following: You will never see a man hitting his wife for nothing. In most cases it would be sexual intercourse . . . she was sleeping with another man (S. Marwodzi, Wedza). Authentic women say, “If your husband does not at one time beat you, he does not love you” (M. Bhebe, Bubi). . . . battering is love, that is our culture (S. Marwodzi, Wedza). Mr. Speaker, some of the females really ask for it because they nag. That alone will make any man angry (M. W. Zengeni, Chipinge South).16

Earlier in this chapter I pointed out the contradictions of gender ideology during the liberation war; in light of that contradiction, one could interpret the debates on women and African culture as the state shifting its focus from one group (women ex-combatants) to another (rural women). After reviewing the antiwoman rhetoric, however, it is clear that the implications are broader than deciding which experiences represent the “true” Zimbabwean woman. The government is not simply realigning itself with rural women, who make up 80 percent of the female population. First, the government is doing little to meet the economic needs of rural women in terms of the land resettlement program or national development strategies, and ESAP is hitting rural women the hardest. Second, public discourse blaming women for social problems affects all women, since it casts them all in negative terms—as potential traitors to the cause of nation building and national unity, and as potential threats to national economic development. Press campaigns against baby-dumping and squatting/prostitution have implications for all women. The crisis of African culture in Zimbabwe is a battle waged in largely symbolic terms but with very real material consequences. The state’s casting of the “new nationalist woman” gives certain women—“key women,” or women embedded in patron-client relations within the dominant party—access to power and resources associated with

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the state. However, the greater impact will be felt by the majority of women who do not gain access to state power and resources but who reap the consequences of being blamed for social problems.

Conclusions In nearly two decades of independence, the reconfiguration of the oneparty state has had clear gender dimensions. As access to state power has become more narrow and exclusive, the state’s gender ideology has also been transformed. This chapter has illustrated the transformation by looking at the demise of the MCDWA and the changing rhetoric surrounding legal reforms focused on women. Moreover, this political transformation has gone hand in hand with internal and external pressures for economic reforms, specifically structural adjustment. Since independence the cast of state insiders and outsiders has drastically changed, as young, educated women and ex-combatants have been replaced by the co-opted key women as regime insiders. Moreover, the new outsiders, professional and rural women, are the hardest hit by the worsening economic circumstances. They are also the ones who were promised a great deal during the liberation war. In the midst of all this, gender has emerged at the center of an escalating crisis of cultural identity. It is difficult to predict ultimately what this will mean either for the state or for various groups of women in Zimbabwe. As professional women and many rural women lose access to their “official” space within the state, their struggles for resources and control over their lives will increasingly take place outside the parameters of the state. The experiences of women in Latin America suggest that one outcome of casting women outside the parameters of the state is that they have more spaces to organize and effectively put pressure on the state (Waylen 1994; Alvarez 1990). As other African cases have shown, women’s collective organizing can have a decisive impact on social movements seeking to influence, or even topple, the state. But, on a less optimistic note, the de facto one-party state’s movements to exclude and even malign Zimbabwean women in recent years will likely lead to problems ranging from increased popular discontent with the state to economic development policies that overlook the important contributions of women. It is difficult to imagine a long-term scenario that does not involve an increasingly authoritarian state.

Notes 1. Quoted in Meldrum 1995. 2. Many have pointed out that ZANU’s commitment to socialism, as a liberation movement and as a political party, was weak at best. See, for example, Moore 1991; Herbst 1989; Sylvester 1990; Stoneman 1988; Davies 1988.

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3. In theory, the practice of lobola (or roora) gave a woman status as a provider for her family, since the bridewealth received for her marriage could be used to provide the bridewealth for her brother’s marriage, thus ensuring the continuation of the lineage. The exchange of bridewealth between families also created a network of reciprocal obligations between groups that, among other things, ensured that women were not mistreated. The shift to the cash economy diminished the status and protection of women associated with bridewealth and instead helped create circumstances where they were treated more like property. 4. Sexuality is certainly one dimension of gender meaning and many have argued that states are based on particular kinds of sexual and social relations between men and women, e.g., heterosexual relations within the context of a patriarchal family. In certain circumstances, such as political transition or military crisis, particularly rigid conceptualizations of gender may prevail that exclude homosexuality or lesbianism. Cynthia Enloe (1993) discusses this in terms of the debates surrounding gays in the U.S. military. Also see Adrienne Rich’s classic work (1980) for a discussion of heterosexuality and patriarchal domination. 5. For a discussion of how the public/private dichotomy positions women in liberal democracy, see Pateman 1988. For a discussion of the weaknesses of liberal states in addressing issues that specifically affect women, see MacKinnon 1983. A similar argument is also made by Bronwyn Winter in her analysis of legal cases involving female genital mutilation in France (1994). 6. For examples of this scholarship, see Chaudhuri and Strobel 1992; Callen 1984; Hansen 1992. Belinda Bozzoli (1983) discusses the limits placed on the particular forms of economic relations and the state. 7. For detailed accounts of colonial interests in reconfiguring gender relations in Makoni District, see Ranger 1982 and Schmidt 1992. An interesting contrast in the meanings of domesticity associated with African women in the 1920s and the 1950s is brought out in Schmidt 1992 and Ranchod-Nilsson 1992b. 8. Within ZANLA the early involvement of women in the military struggle was used to shame men into joining; later, the original leaders’ treatment of women was also an issue raised in the context of the November 1974 Nhari rebellion. During rural mobilization, women combatants were occasionally excluded from positions of authority when adjudicating disputes among villagers. See Ranchod-Nilsson 1992a. 9. The reasons for rural women raising these issues and for the guerrillas supporting them are too complex to elucidate in this paper. For a broader treatment of this issue see Ranchod-Nilsson 1992a; Krieger (1991) also discusses gender issues in the context of rural mobilization. 10. For example, Margaret Dongo was a popular, rising star within ZANU(PF). She was an ex-combatant who worked in the president’s office and was elected to Parliament in 1990. Later, she was appointed to the prestigious executive body, the central committee. However, in 1994 her success came to a halt after she criticized the government’s lack of attention to issues facing ex-combatants. In 1995 she stood for election in the Harare South constituency where she was very popular. Prior to the election her district was redrawn and she complained that both she and her supporters were harassed by party loyalists. After losing the primary she ran as an independent and waged a vigorous campaign, despite receiving death threats. Intimidation and attacks by ZANU(PF) supporters continued through the election. She lost with 5,190 votes to her opponent’s 6,287 votes amidst charges of widespread voting irregularities. Subsequently the High Court overturned the election results and ordered a new election in Harare South. Dongo won that election and has claimed her seat. As of April 1997, however, she had not been reinstated to the party.

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11. The changing character of the Women’s League was also evident in rural areas. In 1988–1989 I conducted small group interviews among women in rural areas. In one village twenty-three women turned up to discuss their experiences during the liberation war and their current concerns. The exchange was lively and critical and because we ran out of time, the women asked me to return the next day. When I returned all of the women came back and there was one new woman. None of the women would say a word, not even to repeat what they had said the day before. After we ended, several of the women came forward to tell me that the new woman was a member of the district ZANU(PF) Women’s League and they did not trust her. They explained that whereas they supported the league after independence because they felt that it was democratic and responsive to their concerns, they no longer felt that way and would not talk about their concerns in front of this woman (interview conducted by author, 11 February 1989). 12. The use of the term “prostitute” is grounded in the colonial history of Zimbabwe, when the only Africans allowed to live in urban areas were African men who were employed. There were few legal economic opportunities available to African women, and, in most cases, those who resided in towns did so illegally. Under these circumstances, African women who lived in towns were often deemed “prostitutes” whether or not they were engaged in sex for money. That label of prostitute still carries a great deal of power in Zimbabwe to control the behavior of single women. For details of the 1983 “Operation Clean-Up,” see Women’s Action Group 1984. 13. African customary laws were mediated through the lens of African and European men and thus reflected considerable bias. Customary law was distorted in this process, highlighting certain practices and disregarding others. According to May (1979, 13), “it seems certain that the models of that [African] society constructed by white males are more revealing of the attitudes of their makers and their informants than they are of the position of women.” Also see Chanock 1982 and Schmidt 1990. 14. Zimbabwe’s major papers, the Herald, the Chronicle, and the Sunday Mail, are owned by the state through the Zimbabwe News Trust. Although not fully controlled by the state, they are generally good indicators of government policy and ideology. 15. Schmidt (1992) claims that the colonial state sought to bolster the authority of African men over women in the colonial period up until 1939. 16. These quotes are taken from Speak Out 15 (1991, 5). They are quotes from the Hansard, the official record of debates in Parliament.

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The African State Toward the Twenty-First Century: Legacies of the Critical Juncture PHILLIP A. H UXTABLE Scholars have been proclaiming the “crisis of the state in Africa” for so long now that the phrase has become a cliché. As Catherine Boone points out in Chapter 8, despite the myriad challenges faced by the leaders of sub-Saharan African countries in recent years, most have found some way to muddle through. Even the countries in which state collapse is most severe, discussed here by Joshua Forrest in Chapter 3, contain some entity that is generally recognized as “the state.” The state as an institution for organizing politics certainly appears robust, despite predictions of its imminent demise. Nonetheless, the states of sub-Saharan Africa are indeed at a “critical juncture,” as suggested by the title of this volume. The critical juncture concept implies a confluence of pressures that will reconfigure the structure of state-society relations in African states for some time to come. Furthermore, this reconfiguration will produce different outcomes in different states, depending both on differences among the antecedent conditions and differences in the ways African elites respond to the stresses of this critical juncture.1 Use of the critical juncture concept to study the trajectories of political transition prompts one to consider the “path-dependent” nature of political and social change (Collier and Collier 1991, 27). That is, past reconfigurations of sociopolitical structures constrain the possible paths contemporary political transitions may take; decisions taken today will limit the choices of elites facing significant challenges in the future. Indeed, one of the questions underlying many of the case studies in this volume concerns the latitude elites possess to manage changes in their political environments. On one hand, the resources of international financial institutions (IFIs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), domestic political actors, and the wealthier states of the North allow them to exert considerable leverage as they attempt to influence the policies of African states. On the other hand, African elites have often been able to resist pressures for reform that threaten their hold on power, 279

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while shifting the costs of resistance to other sectors of society; some even turn these pressures into political resources. Critical junctures produce challenges to elites in that new constraints weaken existing sociopolitical structures, but often they simultaneously offer opportunities for innovative elites to develop resources that enhance their abilities to achieve desired goals. In this conclusion I address some of the questions raised by using the critical juncture approach to study contemporary African states. In the next section I discuss the factors that led us to proclaim the present period a critical juncture in the evolution of the states of Africa and also evaluate the extent to which these factors are new phenomena. I then draw on the case studies in this volume to examine the responses of elites, within both the state and civil society, to the challenges and opportunities of evolving state-society relations. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of some of the paths African states may take as they emerge from this critical juncture.

Elements of the Critical Juncture Some of the factors thought to be straining the political systems of African states have been around for decades; others are fairly recent developments. One of the principal insights of the cases discussed in this volume is that once-effective means to manage pressures on the state are now often inadequate. Furthermore, in some cases the means used to manage previous crises have left regimes in positions from which it is difficult to take the actions necessary to deal with current threats. In this section I discuss these factors and the extent to which the current period is qualitatively different from the recent past. Many of the challenges faced by African leaders originate within the African states themselves. The economies of Africa are unable to generate adequate wealth to meet the material needs of the citizens, leaving African states dependent on foreign aid and INGOs. This problem is compounded by maldistribution of the wealth that is produced. Most of the income from the relatively few profitable enterprises goes to transnational corporations (TNCs) or to a small group of indigenous elites; very little is used to further economic development or ends up in the pockets of the citizens. The weakness of African economies, in conjunction with their need to import most capital and many consumer goods, has left nearly all African states with severe external debt and balance-of-payments problems. The debt/export ratios of most countries have become unmanageable. This produces three problems for African states. First, the states are dependent on IFIs, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to finance balance-of-payments needs in the short term and to help refinance and restructure external debt in the middle and long terms. The implications

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of this dependency is discussed in more detail below. Second, African states have few discretionary funds with which to invest in economic development that would help legitimize the state. Finally, this same lack of funds prevents the states from providing benefits to potential domestic rivals, the strategy often used in the past to ensure loyalty to the regime in power. The economic problems of African states are obviously not recent developments. Africa emerged from the colonial period with economic structures that were poorly adapted for competition in the global economy. The states of Africa, along with much of the Third World, began developing severe external debt and balance-of-payment problems during the 1970s. What differentiates Africa from the rest of the Third World, however, is that while many countries appear to be emerging from the debt crisis and producing economic growth at a respectable rate, few such success stories can be found in Africa. The second aspect of the critical juncture is the rise of organized and semiorganized groups to challenge the status quo. The most visible aspect of this factor is the increasing vitality of democratization movements throughout Africa, although democracy is not necessarily a goal of all organizations challenging the state. Groups organized, however loosely, along ethnic, occupational, religious, gender, and ideological cleavages appear to be gaining strength all over Africa. The existence of these groups does not constitute a new phenomenon; indeed, many of these groups were organized during the colonial period, or even earlier. These organizations do appear, however, to be gaining in visibility and influence on governmental decisionmaking. Groups that the state could once ignore—either because they were too weak actively to challenge the state or because their leaders had been co-opted into support for the status quo—have begun to propel their concerns more effectively onto the government agenda. In many cases increasing demands for access to state decisionmaking processes is a response to the state’s declining ability to co-opt potential rivals with material benefits. Dwayne Woods’s discussion (Chapter 12) of increased student and teacher association opposition to the Houphouët regime in Côte d’Ivoire shows how former supporters of the regime can turn to active opposition when the rewards of support are diminished. Not all opposition movements are based purely on material considerations, however, as many of the case studies included in this volume show. Prodemocracy and human rights groups exist in virtually every state in Africa, although their influence varies widely. On the other hand, very few of the groups pressing demands on African states limit their agenda solely to noneconomic issues. Groups organized to improve the status of women in Kenya and Zimbabwe are concerned with symbolic and moral issues as well as with economic matters (see Chapters 10 and Chapters 14). The case study of Senegal included here (Chapters 9) shows the potential of a

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group organized around religion to mobilize urban youth who are disenchanted with the current regime for mostly economic reasons. If successful, this movement could have effects on state-society relations in the economic, religious, and political spheres. Many of the pressures on the African state originate outside its borders. Nyang’oro and Shaw (Chapter 2) note the expanding influence of “global civil society” on the internal politics of African states. INGOs concerned with democracy, human rights, religion, environmental policies, the provision of health services, and other issues wield significant resources as they attempt to affect state policymaking. INGOs may influence policies directly or indirectly through their influence in other countries. One tactic commonly used by INGOs is to press African states to adopt desired policies by lobbying countries that have influence in the target state, particularly the wealthy donor states of the First World. Where policymakers in the First World have resisted putting pressure on African allies, INGOs have often employed appeals to public opinion by publicizing conditions in African states in an attempt to move issues onto the policymakers’ agenda. INGOs also pressure African governments more directly. In many African countries, INGOs, or domestic NGOs with international support, have become the principal suppliers of many social services once assumed to be the state’s responsibility. The African governments’ role is then reduced to coordination and regulation of the INGOs’ programs; even this role is often minimal. This can produce an uneasy partnership between INGO networks and the state. The state depends on the INGOs to provide the social “safety net” that keeps the population at least minimally acquiescent, strengthening the autonomy of the state. On the other hand, this gives the organization some leverage with which to press its demands on the state, reducing state autonomy. At other times, INGOs are more explicitly involved with the opposition movements within a state. Many domestic NGOs, especially religious, human rights, democracy, and women’s rights groups, benefit substantially from their association with wider international NGO networks. INGOs supply training, skilled personnel, and material resources that help local organizations pressure the government and build support among the populace. 2 Furthermore, international organizations can, to some extent, help protect local activists from government repression by monitoring state violations of political and human rights and publicizing abuses in the outside world. Perhaps the most-often-cited external threat to the African state is the IFIs’ imposition of structural adjustment programs (SAPs). The weaknesses of their economies leaves the states dependent upon outside loans and aid. To maintain the needed flow of loans, African states are required to adhere to the liberal economic principles demanded by the IFIs. SAPs, discussed here in more detail by Nyang’oro and Shaw (Chapter 2) and

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Green (Chapter 11), limit states’ discretion in monetary and fiscal policymaking, often disrupting the patronage networks that form the bases of the state’s support in society. Structural adjustment–type programs, however, are not new challenges for African countries. As Dwayne Woods points out in Chapter 12, the IMF has been putting pressure on the states of Africa to reform their economies since the 1970s. More recently, however, the donor countries and IFIs have begun to attach political conditions to the eligibility criteria for economic aid and loans. Many policymakers in the wealthier countries now believe political and economic liberalization to be mutually reinforcing. Others seek democratization and increased government accountability as worthwhile goals in themselves, and are willing to use economic pressure to achieve those goals. Thus African government elites find themselves in the unenviable position of being pressured to implement unpopular economic reforms that, at least in the short term, bring hardship to much of the population while simultaneously granting opposition groups more latitude to challenge them for control of the state. With varying degrees of commitment, the countries of the First World have been pressing African states to reform their political systems and to respect the rights of their citizens for decades. These concerns, however, were generally superseded by the perceived need to support anticommunist allies during the Cold War. African leaders—Zaire’s President Mobutu being a prime example (see Chapter 7)—were often able to use Cold War competition to play the superpowers against each other and thus to avoid significant political and economic reform. In the post–Cold War era, however, African leaders no longer have this leverage; thus they are much more vulnerable to the demands of First World states. Furthermore, African leaders fear that the West will “decouple” completely from African states to focus on relations with the states deemed more important to First World economic and security interests (Goldgeier and McFaul 1992). Indeed, the First World has pulled away from Africa somewhat. The U.S. reluctance to take a more active role in Liberia’s crisis and its shortlived intervention in Somalia indicate the limits to its willingness to support former Cold War allies. The aggregate economic aid transferred from the wealthier countries to the Third World has decreased steadily since 1990 as the wealthy countries have faced budget deficits and public resistance to cutbacks of domestically oriented government services. The United States in particular has cut back both the number and size of diplomatic missions in Africa as part of its more general reduction in the federal bureaucracy devoted to international affairs. One should not overstate the First World’s “decoupling” from Africa, however. The major powers have interests in the countries of Africa that are unaffected by the end of the Cold War. Indeed, for many First World countries, Cold War concerns were relatively unimportant stimuli for their

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activities in Africa. In Japan and many European countries, economic considerations take precedence over strategic concerns when formulating policies toward African states. For a few European countries, particularly the Scandinavian states, policy toward Africa is largely concerned with humanitarian issues. The leaders of francophone African states should be reassured (or worried) by French president Jacques Chirac’s inclusion of Jacques Foccart in his entourage during his 1995 tour of Africa. It appears that Foccart, the architect of France’s policy toward African states for most of the postcolonial period, was included to signal France’s continuing commitment to its former colonies. Nonetheless, the leaders of African states can, and do, expect material support from the First World to decline. Overall, direct aid and official loans from the First World to the Third World are declining and are being replaced by an explosion of private sector investment. Very little of that investment goes to Africa, however. African states find themselves losing external support while simultaneously facing increasingly vigorous internal challenges. In the next section I turn to some of the directions African states have taken as they react, or fail to react, to these challenges.

State Responses to the Critical Juncture If a universal law of politics exists, it is that those in power strive to stay in power. There are few examples of African heads of state willingly relinquishing power to anyone other than a hand-picked successor.3 Nearly all leave office because they are forced out or because they miscalculate their ability to win an election, by fair means or manipulation. In this section I discuss some of the means by which African elites seek to maintain their control of the state. These elites have exhibited a diverse repertoire of responses to the challenges of the current critical juncture, ranging from retreat to a narrow arena of action to innovative ways of reconfiguring the relations between state and society. As Joshua Forrest points out in Chapter 3, some states have simply collapsed in upon themselves, unable to meet the challenges of the critical juncture. Somalia and Rwanda (discussed in Chapters 4 and 5) represent the extreme cases of state collapse; rebel forces in these countries swept the government out of power, and as of early 1997 had made very little progress toward reestablishing a central government. In other states, represented in this volume by Sierra Leone (Chapter 6) and Zaire (Chapter 7), there is only the pretense that the government formally rules the state’s territory. Those at the apex of the state hierarchy use their positions to extract wealth for self-enrichment while the bulk of the population is left to fend for itself or is dependent on INGOs to sustain minimal levels of health and nutrition.

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The cases of Zaire and Sierra Leone illustrate “privatization” as a tactic by which state elites endeavor to both preserve their positions of power and to maximize the wealth extracted from the country. The term privatization is used to describe two related but distinct concepts in this volume. First, privatization, in the sense used by Forrest in Chapter 3, refers to state agencies abandoning their public service functions in favor of activities that produce wealth for state elites. The state becomes the site, perhaps the principal site, of private profitmaking activity through its connections to transnational extractive industries, tax collection, and the distribution of foreign aid. Second, privatization is used to describe the strategy of turning some state functions over to privately owned, usually foreign, corporations. Reno (Chapter 6) demonstrates how the weak government of Sierra Leone under Strasser was able to isolate itself somewhat from political factions that pose a challenge to the state by employing private corporations to provide security and tax collection services, although this strategy ultimately failed. This approach is not limited to states nearing collapse, however. The relatively strong Côte d’Ivoire uses the same strategy to deny resources to the government’s rivals (see Chapter 12). Although nearly all African states have resorted to violent coercion to stifle opposition movements, repression appears to be especially common in the weaker states discussed above. In Rwanda, the regime’s massacre of its opponents after Habyarimana’s mysterious death is a manifestation of the extremes to which Africa’s weak states have gone to maintain power. Occasionally, however, violence by state agents is not intended to stifle political dissent; its primary purpose is to expropriate wealth from the hapless targets. In some African countries, Zaire being the most obvious example, service in the military or police force is a “license to steal,” the street-level apparatus of the extractive state (see Chapter 7). Officers and lower-ranking personnel who benefit from the system are thus co-opted into support for the system and distracted from posing any threat to the regime in power. When the regime faces a serious threat, however, that support quickly dissipates and the regime is left with few resources with which to maintain control. Most African countries have avoided the extreme deterioration of the states described above. Indeed, politically adept elites have used aspects of the current critical juncture to strengthen the state’s autonomy. Some leaders have even turned SAPs, previously identified as one of the principal factors weakening the contemporary African state, to their advantage. Structural adjustment demands a reduction in state personnel. In both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire state elites were able to “downsize” the state selectively, cutting potential rivals out of positions of authority and denying them access to political resources. On the other hand, structural adjustment may increase the power of technocrats at the expense of those at the top of the state political hierarchy. Recently, Costello (1996) has argued that

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Tanzania’s SAP has so strengthened the power of administrative elites relative to political elites that the outcome of elections will have little effect on economic policy. Pressures for democratization, originating both within and outside the state, would seem likely to produce new leadership in many African countries, yet the old guard endures in most states. African leaders are scrambling to find innovations to preserve their positions, however. The patronage relations most African states used to maintain the support of potential rivals are simply no longer feasible. Furthermore, the generation responsible for leading the state out of the colonial period is being replaced by a younger cohort (see Chapter 1). No longer can state elites use their role in the independence movement as a basis for presumed legitimacy; new justifications must be offered to legitimize authority. A few elites, particularly those surrounding Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, are basing claims to legitimacy on the state’s role in generating economic growth. For most African leaders, however, this is not an option, given the dismal economic performance of their countries. Lacking material resources with which to obtain popular support, many elites are turning to symbolic issues to buttress their claims to legitimacy. Some are claiming a role in protecting traditional “African values,” which resonate with a significant portion of the population. Ranchod-Nilsson (Chapter 14) shows that the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe had turned away from its former progressive position on the status of women as it attempted to build electoral support by advocating policies to promote “authentic African culture.” In a similar vein, political elites attempt to manipulate the symbols of ethnicity, clan ties, and religion to bolster their support, as Boone discusses in Chapter 8. As many have feared, as African states weaken, these cleavages have resurfaced and regained prominence in the politics of many countries, usually with traumatic results. Although many state elites have been able to maintain a core of support through this strategy, in the long run politics along these cleavages have tended to further the deterioration of the state, as the examples of Rwanda and Somalia so starkly illustrate. The internal and external pressures on African states to democratize have become too intense to ignore. Although some elites have reacted by stalling and allowing only the appearance of democratic institutions, others have found that a quick “transition to democracy” works to their favor. Côte d’Ivoire’s Houphouët-Boigny was long a master at keeping potential opposition groups divided among themselves. When pressures to liberalize the system became intense, Houphouët quickly acceded to the opposition’s demands and moved to elections. The opposition was thus caught unprepared to mount an effective campaign and unable to overcome internal divisions to form a united front. Houphouët’s successor, Henri Konan Bédié, has successfully continued the same tactics (see Chapter 12).

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Côte d’Ivoire also offers a good illustration of another state response to the challenges of this critical juncture: an attempt to shape state-society relations along corporatist lines.4 States seek to control conflict with civil society by controlling which groups get access to the state and which do not, and by regulating both the internal politics of these groups and their relationships with the state. Thus, state elites hope to manage political conflict by limiting the scope of state concerns to those issues the state is able and willing to address. As many of the cases in this volume show, however, many groups in civil society are able to pressure the state to include their issues on the agenda, restricting the power of the state to limit the scope of politics. Another way in which states respond to the concurrent challenges of economic decline and pressures for democratization is to adopt a “rural strategy.” That is, African elites are moving away from an urban bias in their economic policies and search for political support to focus on the rural sector, both as a site for economic growth and as a political support base for the incumbent regime.5 Although the Senghor and Diouf regimes of Senegal have relied upon rural support since independence, for most other African regimes the rural strategy is a more recent innovation. The rural strategy is in part a natural consequence of structural adjustment. One of the principles of SAPs is to reduce taxation and price controls in the agricultural sector, generally benefiting farmers.6 Adept politicians use structural adjustment reforms as a base for mobilizing rural support as a resource in electoral politics. The responses to the critical juncture discussed above focus on the domestic side of politics; state elites are also turning outward as they attempt to manage current challenges. The themes of African unity and economic integration have been prominent in official discourse since the colonial period, yet very little integration has occurred. There are some signs, however, that the pace of integration among the states of Africa will increase (see Chapter 2). Many African leaders fear that the economic marginalization of Africa will only increase in the future. Thus, one hope for the economic development of the continent lies in the economies of scale and efficient investment inherent in a truly regional free-trade area. Regional integration requires states to surrender sovereignty in some areas, which thus far African leaders have been unwilling to do. It may well be, however, that the pressures of the current critical juncture will lead elites to accept a diminution of state sovereignty in order to save their regimes. On the other hand, successful regional integration will require the active participation of the three regional powers in Africa: South Africa, Zaire, and Nigeria. Given the chaotic political atmosphere in these last two countries, significant integration in the near future is unlikely. The responses of state elites to the challenges of the current critical juncture have varied widely, from severe repression and avoidance of

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change to embrace of change and utilizing aspects of the current period to further their goals. One should remember, however, that state elites are not acting in a vacuum; groups in civil society are also reacting to the opportunities and challenges of the critical juncture. The behavior of state elites affects the behavior of groups in civil society and vice versa. In the next section I discuss some of the effects of the critical juncture on civil society.

Societal Responses to the Critical Juncture An observer could reasonably assert that organized groups in civil society have increased their power relative to the state in the 1990s. Associations with diverse ambitions are strengthened by external pressures on the state to liberalize politics, by the inflow of resources from INGOs with similar interests, and by the expansion of their domestic political resources, including the expertise of group activists and popular support. As the state weakens in many African countries, it becomes less able to resist pressures from other organized groups within society. On the other hand, some aspects of the current critical juncture are detrimental to the interests of organized groups within civil society. As Nzomo’s study (Chapter 10) of the women’s movement in Kenya shows, SAPs may be detrimental to social movements in two ways. First, the Kenyan women’s movement depended upon the state for many of its resources; structural adjustment gives the state an opportunity to reduce funding to groups that challenge the status of the incumbent regime. Second, SAPs decrease the state’s capacity in many areas. Thus, ironically, at a time when civil society’s ability to influence the state is expanding, the state’s ability to address many societal needs is declining. The groups within civil society represented in this volume vary greatly in their goals and tactics. Many groups’ activities are primarily focused on maintaining autonomy from the state. Particularly in the extractive and/or inverted states like Zaire, some groups organize simply to escape predatory state actions that threaten people’s ability to survive. In other cases, groups coexist comfortably with the state. The Catholic Church in Uganda is generally content to limit its actions to spiritual concerns and development projects that do not threaten state authority; the state grants the Church autonomy in these spheres. Occasionally, however, the Church issues proclamations of a more secular nature to assert its role as a political force (see Chapter 13). Still other groups pursue their goals outside the state arena because they lack the resources necessary to wield any significant influence. Some women’s groups in Kenya, for example, have shifted their focus to programs with local economic benefits because they feel that these activities will produce more benefits than lobbying the resistant Kenyan state.

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Another category of associations in civil society includes those who, while generally content with the structure of state-society relations, wish to increase their own influence on the state. These groups wish solely to get greater attention paid to their issues; they do not necessarily see replacement of the incumbent regime as necessary, although challenging the regime in elections is one tactic employed. Examples of this type of group include religious groups in Senegal (Chapter 9), student and professional groups in Côte d’Ivoire (Chapter 12), and some women’s groups in Zimbabwe and Kenya (Chapters 10 and 14). Conflict between these groups and the state varies inversely with the state’s willingness and ability to meet group demands. The case studies in this volume indicate that each of these groups has gone through periods in which relations with the state were mutually supportive. In the current period of government downsizing and austerity, however, conflict is likely to increase. While associations of this type are generally in the vanguard of democracy movements in African countries, it is important to note that a genuine commitment to democracy varies widely among the groups. Indeed, the internal structure of many of these groups is far from democratic. While democratization is valued in itself for some factions within civil society, others have in the past been satisfied with authoritarian regimes as long as their own needs were met. Since the ability of authoritarian regimes to co-opt significant portions of civil society is in decline, many excluded groups are using political liberalization to pressure the state to maintain or restore the flow of resources. Although the competition among various associations for state favors may be far from an ideal democratic system, it is nonetheless more pluralistic as sectors of civil society that were formerly excluded from access to the state are now able to compete with former state allies on a more even footing. A final category of organizations includes those that do want ultimately to take control of their respective states through violence. Obvious examples discussed in this volume are the Tutsi rebels (now government) of Rwanda, rebel forces in Sierra Leone and Liberia (who in both states now appear likely to gain a place in the ruling regime), and some factions of clan groups in Somalia. Although it is not clear that the state installed by any of these groups would be radically different in structure from the regimes they wish to replace, the configuration of state-society relations would be substantially altered should any of them prevail. With the exception of Rwanda, however, in most states facing rebel factions no single group is strong enough to dominate the others militarily. Prevented from achieving complete domination of the state, at least in the short term, rebel leaders are content to carve out areas for economic exploitation, free from interference by the state (see Chapter 6). Thus, we see a kind of uneasy stalemate in many African states. No single group possesses enough power to take control of the state, but two

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or more groups retain the resources to prevent others from doing so. In a very real sense, these groups possess sovereignty in the areas under their control. Rebel leaders find that they can lead relatively prosperous lives through exploiting the population and resources in their areas. This reduces their willingness to gamble on a negotiated settlement and contributes to the potential breakup of African states into the ministates of the “new sovereignty game” foreseen by Reno (Chapter 6) and Forrest (Chapter 3). The dissolution of African countries into smaller, more decentralized political spaces is but one of the possible trajectories suggested by the contributors to this volume. As Boone notes (Chapter 8), it is no longer possible to speak of the future of the African state; the countries of the region appear headed on multiple, widely divergent paths. In the next section I briefly discuss some potential futures for the states of Africa and the implications of the choices made today for directions taken tomorrow.

The Legacy of the Critical Juncture One of the principal benefits of the critical juncture approach is that it prompts analysts to look at the future choices foreclosed by contemporary decisions. The future of African states will be greatly affected by the choices African elites make today as they attempt to cope with current crises. In this concluding section I discuss two questions that recur throughout the chapters in this volume. (1) What forms will political organization take in the states of Africa? Here I discuss some of the possible scenarios raised by this book’s contributors. (2) What forms should the states of Africa take? Although the authors are unanimous in their desire to see improvements in the lives of the people of Africa, they differ considerably regarding the best form of governance to achieve these goals. Finally, I discuss the potential effects of the evolving world system on the states of Africa. It is indisputable that all African states have implemented processes of change, some incremental, some radical. In the critical juncture of the 1990s, one of the principal challenges facing Africanist scholars is to evaluate how and how far the state will be transfigured. Reno (Chapter 6) adopts Krasner’s (1984) notion that radical change in state-society configurations occurs in a process of “punctuated equilibrium.”7 That is, states remain fairly static until pressures become so intense that old state forms give way quickly to radically new forms. But, as Lentner (1984) has pointed out in a reply to Krasner, incremental change can, and does, occur. Furthermore, incremental changes may accumulate into substantial reconfigurations of the state over time. The Ghanaian state of 1997 is significantly different from that of 31 December 1981, the date of Jerry Rawlings’s “Second Coming,” yet it is difficult to point to a single brief period

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in which radical reconfiguration occurred. Conversely, the deterioration of Mobutu’s Zaire occurred incrementally, but the extent of the state’s collapse was monumental; when faced with an organized, well-supplied rebel alliance, Mobutu lacked the resources to prevent being swept rapidly from power. Furthermore, it is unclear how, or if, Laurent Kabila will rebuild the state he inherited. Indeed, thus far his regime’s policies in many ways resemble those of his predecessor. State reconfiguration and reform in Africa over the last two decades have occurred in an atmosphere of crisis management. Tactics adopted by state elites have been intended to deal with immediate challenges to the regime. Although these innovations have often been successful in the short and medium term, it is not necessarily the case that the resolutions of today’s crises will be sustainable in the long term. Indeed, as Collier and Collier argue in their analysis of critical junctures in Latin America, the resolution of a critical juncture may contain the seeds of its own selfdestruction (1991, 34). This is apparently the situation in Sierra Leone in mid-1997. Strasser’s strategy of replacing his military with foreign mercenaries appeared successful at preserving the state against multiple challenges (although not at protecting individual heads of state). The coup of May 1997, however, was initiated primarily by junior-level officers and enlisted personnel who resented the relatively high salaries earned by the mercenary troops while their own benefits were being cut (Washington Post, 11 June 1997). While few observers were suprised by state collapse in Zaire or Sierra Leone, other, more apparently secure, regimes may also be implementing policies that are not stable in the long term. The rural strategy discussed in several chapters in this volume addresses many of the challenges of the current critical juncture, but perhaps only in the short term. This strategy fits well with the principles of structural adjustment and helps the incumbent regime remain in power while liberalizing the political system. The political logic that previously led states to adopt an urban bias is still relevant, however. As Villalón and Kane (Chapter 9) and Woods (Chapter 12) show, associations of urban youth can be mobilized quickly to oppose state policies that reduce the benefits people have come to expect. Furthermore, the economic benefits of the rural strategy are likely to reach their limits in a short period of time. Although an expanding agricultural sector will have spillover effects that benefit the urban economy, this sector alone is insufficient to generate the employment needed for the masses of urban poor. To move African urban dwellers out of poverty will require diversification, modernization, and expansion of urban economies; it is unavoidable that the state play a major role in economic development. As Nyang’oro and Shaw (Chapter 2) point out, given the shortage of domestic African capitalists, unless the state takes responsibility for economic investment, that role falls to transnational corporations, which

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entails another set of problems. Urban economic growth, in conjunction with programs to manage crime, health, and other quality-of-life issues, is essential if African states are to avoid regime-threatening urban unrest. Several contributors to this volume suggest that the dissolution of certain African states might actually be a desirable outcome. As Forrest, Longman, and Clark (Chapter 3, 5, and 7) contend, the state is often the problem, not the solution. As Clark puts it, from the point of view of many Africans “simply to be left alone would represent progress.” Many students of African politics predict that some African states will dissolve into multiple political entities. Some scholars, represented here by Forrest and Longman, see this as a positive development. It is thought that smaller, more locally oriented polities would produce better governance and improved lives for the citizenry. Although in the short term the lives of many African people would benefit from escaping predatory, repressive states, in the longer term this would perpetuate the economically marginal existence of people in resource-poor areas. Economic development requires that the surplus gained from productive enterprises be used in underdeveloped areas to build infrastructure, human capital, and modern industries. If politics (and thus economics) were reorganized on a smaller scale, those areas that already possess wealth-generating enterprises would perhaps continue to develop, but the more marginal areas would remain poor far into the future. Finally, while the state in Africa is at a critical juncture, the global nation-state system may be entering a new era as well. International relations scholars have been examining the decline of state sovereignty for two decades (Keohane and Nye 1977). More recently, some scholars have begun to debate the future of state sovereignty in the post–Cold War era.8 It is argued that the nation-state has outlived its usefulness as a means to organize political and economic life and will soon be replaced by a more functional political structure (see Ohmae 1995). The postcolonial African state was modeled on the nation-states of the First World and has been supported by the global norm that the state is the only legitimate form of political organization (Jackson 1990). If that norm were to collapse in the rest of the world, so too would the state in Africa. The African state may disintegrate, not because of the failure of Africans to adapt to the world system, but because the state itself has become inadequate for the realities of the current world system.

Notes 1. See Villalón’s introduction to this volume and also Collier and Collier 1991 for more thorough discussions of the concept of “critical juncture.” 2. Nzomo (Chapter 10) discusses the role of international women’s groups in organizing parts of Kenya’s women’s rights movement. Villalón and Kane (Chapter

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9) describe the ability of Islamic groups in Senegal to attract resources from other Islamic states. 3. General Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Professor Amos Sawyer of Liberia are two examples of leaders who stepped down willingly. 4. See Chapter 12 for a description of corporatism in Côte d’Ivoire and Chapter 2 for a more general discussion of corporatism in Africa. See also Nyang’oro and Shaw 1989. 5. See Bates 1981 for an explanation of the political logic of the urban bias. See also Boone (Chapter 8) for a more complete discussion of the shift from an urban to a rural focus in many African states. 6. On the other hand, government assistance for inputs like fertilizer and equipment are reduced, reducing the state’s ability to reward supporters in rural areas. 7. Krasner, of course, adapted the idea of punctuated equilibrium from the work of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (1980). 8. See the Summer 1995 issue (Vol. 17, No. 3) of the Harvard International Review for a sample of this debate.

s

AFRC AGECI CDR CDR CFA CFD COMESA DP DSP EAC ECOWAS EPRDF ERP ESAP FRELIMO GATT GDP GNP IBRD IFI IGAD IMF INGO ISI JRDACI KANU LDC MCDWA MDR MEECI MPR MRND

Acronyms

s

Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Ghana) Association Générales des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire Coalition pour la Défense de la République (Rwanda) Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (Ghana) Communauté Financière Africaine Coordination des Forces Démocratiques (Senegal) Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Democratic Party (Uganda) Division Spécial Présidentielle East African Community Economic Community of West African States Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Economy Recovery Program Economic Structural Adjustment Program Mozambique Liberation Front General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gross Domestic Product Gross National Product International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) International Financial Institution intergovernmental authority on development International Monetary Fund International Non-Governmental Organization Import Substitution Industrialization Jeunesse Rassemblement Démocratique African (Côte d’Ivoire) Kenya African National Union Less-Developed Country Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs (Zimbabwe) Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (Rwanda) Mouvement des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (Zaire) Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement (Rwanda)

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ACRONYMS

MYWO NCSW NCWK NDC NGO NIC NIDL NIDP NPFL NRM ODA OLF PDCI PDS PF-ZAPU PNDC PS PSD PTA RENAMO RPF RUF SADCC SAP SNM SOE SPLA SYNACAS-CI SYNARES SYNEPPCI SYNESCI UDEECI UDI UNDP UNEECI UNITA UNPEECI UPC USC USOR WTO ZANLA ZANU ZANU(PF) ZAPU ZUM

Maendeleo Ya Wanawake [Progress for Women] (Kenya) National Commission on the Status of Women (Kenya) National Council of Women of Kenya National Democratic Congress (Ghana) Nongovernmental Organization Newly Industrialized Countries New International Division of Labor New International Division of Power National Patriot Front of Liberia National Resistance Movement (Uganda) official development assistance Oromo Liberation Front (Ethiopia) Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire Parti Démocratique Sénégalais Patriotic Front–Zimbabwe African People’s Union Provisional National Defence Council (Ghana) Parti Socialiste (Senegal) Parti Social Démocrate (Rwanda) preferential trade area Mozambique National Resistance Movement Rwanda Patriotic Front Revolutionary United Front (Sierra Leone) Southern African Development Coordination Conference Structural Adjustment Program Somali National Movement State-Owned Enterprise Sudanese People’s Liberation Army Syndicat National des Cadres Supérieurs de la Santé de Côte d’Ivoire Syndicat National de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (Côte d’Ivoire) Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Primaire Public de Côte d’Ivoire Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Secondaire en Côte d’Ivoire Union Démocratique des Elèves et Etudiants de la Côte d’Ivoire Union des Démocrates Indépendants (Zaire) United Nations Development Program Union Nationale des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire National Union for the Total Independence of Angola Union Nationale des Parents des Etudiants et Elèves en Côte d’Ivoire Ugandan People’s Congress United Somali Congress Union Sacrée de l’Opposition Radicale (Zaire) World Trade Organization Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army Zimbabwe African National Union Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union Zimbabwe Unity Movement

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s

The Contributors

s

Catherine Boone is associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. She has done extensive research in Senegal and in Côte d’Ivoire, and is the author of Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930–1985 (Cambridge University Press, 1992) as well as numerous articles on African political economy. John F. Clark is associate professor of international relations at Florida International University and has done field research in Zaire and the Congo. He is the author of various articles on political reform in Africa and co-editor, with David E. Gardinier, of Political Reform in Franco phone Africa (Westview, 1997). Joshua Bernard Forrest is associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont. He has done extensive research in Africa, most recently as a Fulbright faculty research fellow, on postapartheid politics and state building in Namibia. Daniel Green is assistant professor of political science at the University of Delaware. He has done extensive fieldwork in Ghana and Cameroon. His dissertation on Ghana received the 1993 American Political Science Association’s Gabriel Almond award for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics. Phillip A. Huxtable is a postdoctoral associate in political science at the University of Kansas. His current research focuses on regional integration in West Africa, and he has done fieldwork in Liberia and Senegal. Ousmane Kane is assistant professor of political science at the Université de St. Louis, Senegal, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Kansas as well as a visiting scholar at the School of Oriental and 323

324

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

African Studies, London. He has done extensive research on West African and transnational Islam, in particular on Islamic movements in northern Nigeria and Senegal, and is the author of numerous articles on these topics. Ronald Kassimir is program director for Africa at the Social Science Research Council. Previously, he was assistant director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, where he also taught political science. From 1989 to 1991 he carried out field research in Uganda. Timothy Longman is assistant professor of Africana studies and political science at Vassar College. In 1992–1993 he conducted dissertation research in Rwanda on churches, the state, and democratization, and in 1995–1996 he worked for Human Rights Watch and the Féderation International des Ligues de Droits de l’Homme in Rwanda. He is the author of numerous chapters and articles on Rwanda. Julius E. Nyang’oro is professor and chair of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous works, including The State and Capitalist Development in Africa (Praeger, 1989). Maria Nzomo is associate professor of political science at the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies of the University of Nairobi, Kenya. In 1995 she was a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of numerous articles on women and politics, structural adjustment programs, and democratization in East Africa. Sita Ranchod-Nilsson is assistant professor and director of the International Studies Program at Denison University. She carried out fieldwork in Zimbabwe in 1988–1989 and in 1991, and is the author of several chapters on women and politics in Zimbabwe. William Reno is assistant professor of political science at Florida International University. He has done research in numerous West African countries, and is the author of Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Warlord Politics and African States (Lynne Rienner, forthcoming). Timothy M. Shaw is professor of political science and director of the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University. He is the author of numerous works on African political economy, including Reformism and Revisionism in Africa’s Political Economy in the 1990s (St. Martin’s, 1993), and is general editor for a Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press series on international political economy.

THE CONTRIBUTORS

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325

Anna Simons is assistant professor of anthropology at UCLA. She has traveled extensively in Africa and conducted fieldwork in Somalia. She is the author of Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone (Westview, 1995.) Leonardo A. Villalón is associate professor of political science at the University of Kansas. He has carried out research on state-society relations and democratization in Senegal, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, and is the author of Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Dwayne Woods is associate professor of political science at Purdue University. Author of numerous articles on Côte d’Ivoire and on civil society and the state in Africa, he has also published articles on Italian politics, and spent the 1995–1996 year in Bologna, Italy, on a Marshall Fund Research Fellowship.

s

Index

Abacha, Sani, 17, 94 Acheampong, Ignatius, 187, 188 Afar (ethnic group), 50, 51 AFRC. See Armed Forces Revolutionary Council Africa Demos, 4, 25n1 African Economic Community, 38 AGECI. See Association Générale des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire Ahwoi, Kwamina, 210n15 AIDS, 252n13, 273 Akoun, Laurent, 224 Akuffo, Fred, 188 Algeria: Islam and 1991 elections, 163 Amhara (ethnic group), 50–51 Amin, Idi, 235, 238, 251n1 Anglo-American Corporation, 37 Angola: failure of transition in, 17, 18–19; external intervention in conflict, 51, 53 Animation rurale, 131 Arabisants, 156–157 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) [Ghana], 188, 194 Arusha, 83–84 Association Générale des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (AGECI), 215–216 Association of African Women for Research and Development [Kenya], 178 Banda, Hastings, 12 Banyamulenge (ethnic group), 123 Baoulé (ethnic group), 229 Baramoto, Kpama, 120 Bechio, Jean-Jacques, 221 Bédié, Henri Konan, 135–136, 137, 214, 229–230, 231n9, 232n12, 286

s

Benin: national conference in, 17–18, 113 Berg Report, 27, 31 Bété (ethnic group), 229 Birindwa, Faustin, 114 Blumenthal Report, 115 Boahen, Adu, 201, 202 Boguinard, Emile, 231n1 Branch Energy Mining Company, 104 Bridewealth, 256, 269, 270, 275n3 Buffalo Battalion, 107 Butchwey, Kwesi, 210n7, 211n17 Catholic Church, 233–253 passim CDR. See Coalition pour la Défense de la République; Committees for the Defense of the Revolution Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 124n3 CFA franc: devaluation of, 150, 229 Chad: civil war in, 52–53 Child soldiers, 53 Chiluba, Frederik, 29 Chirac, Jacques, 284 Chitungwiza [Zimbabwe], 272 Church Missionary Society, 238 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency Ciokaraine, 170 Civil society, 22–23, 28; and corporatism, 41; as international phenomenon, 40; transnational dimension of, 22 Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR) [Rwanda], 82–83, 84 Cocoa Marketing Board [Ghana], 201, 202, 203 Cohen, Herman, 199 Colonial state, 31

327

328

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Colonialism: persistence of borders of, 24 COMESA. See Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice [Ghana], 205, 206 Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) [Ghana], 191, 198 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), 36, 38 Congo, Democratic Republic of. See Zaire Conscience Estudiantine et Secondaire de Côte d’Ivoire, 226 Continental Grain, 122 Coordination des Forces Démocratiques [Senegal], 144 Corporatism: in Côte d’Ivoire, 214–215; defined, 40–41; origins of, 41; resurgence of, 23, 39–32 Côte d’Ivoire, 213–232; democratization process in, 225–229; education in, 218–219; elections in, 228, 230, 232n12; Houphouët regime, 214–215; quasicorporatist structure of, 214–218; structural adjustment in, 220–225; teachers’ associations, 216–218, 220–224; youth associations in, 215–216, 220–224 Critical juncture, 6–8, 28, 29, 279–292; defined, 6; state inversion as component of, 45; threat of disintegration in, 47; and women’s politicization, 168 Customary Law and Primary Courts Act [Zimbabwe], 269 Daaira, 153, 159, 165n13 Dahiratoul Moustarchidine wal Moustarchidaty, 137, 143, 144, 145, 150, 151, 156–164, 165n13 Da’wa, 158, 166n16 Deby, Idriss, 52 Democratic Party (DP) [Uganda], 240, 241 Democratization: in Africa, 3–4, 14, 15–21, 135–136; and gender relations, 167, 176–182; international pressures for, 140 Desert Storm. See Operation Desert Storm Diagne, Souleymane Bachir, 165n7 Diouf, Abdou, 143, 144, 147–151 passim, 156, 160, 161, 287 Division Spéciale Présidentielle [Zaire], 120 Djibouti: civil war in, 50 Doe, Samuel, 98 Dongo, Margaret, 275n10 DP. See Democratic Party

EAC. See East African Community East African Community (EAC), 36 Ebola virus, 116, 123 ECA. See Economic Commission for Africa Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), 36 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 38 ECOWAS. See Economic Community of West African States Episcopal Conference of Catholic Bishops [Rwanda], 80 Equateur [Zaire], 119, 120 Eritrea: boundaries of, 24; independence of, 50; territorial basis of, 51 ESAP. See Structural adjustment programs Ethiopia: ethno-regionalist movements in, 50–51; federalism in, 18 Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front, 50, 51 Ette, Marcel, 226 Executive Outcomes, 104–105, 107 Fédération Scolaire et Estudiantile de Côte d’Ivoire, 231n7 Foccart, Jacques, 284 France, 22; arms shipment by, 76 Fraternité-Matin, 223 FRELIMO. See Mozambique Liberation Front Front Autonome de Solidarité des Etudiants en Côte d’Ivoire, 231n7 Frontline Security Services, 103 Front Populaire Ivoirien, 228 Gakuru, Wamayu, 170 Gambela (ethnic group), 51 GATT. See General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade Gbadolite [Zaire], 120 Gbagbo, Laurent, 220, 221, 222, 228 Gécamines, 116, 121 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 39 General Motors, 119, 122 Ghana, 185–211; decentralization in, 195–198; democratization of, 199–207; difficulties of economic reform in, 30; District Assemblies in, 195–198, 199, 202, 204; elections of 1992, 201–203; elections of 1996, 206–207; Fourth Republic of, 203–207; performance legitimation strategy of, 193–195;

I NDEX political evolution of, 187–189; structural adjustment in, 189–193 Goodyear, 122 Green Belt Movement [Kenya], 175 Garde Civile [Zaire], 120 Gulf Oil Company, 121 Gurkha Security Guards, Ltd., 103, 104 Habré, Hussein, 52–53 Habyarimana, Juvénal, 78–84 passim, 285 Harambee, 131 Harare International Book Fair, 257 Harry Thuku uprising, 170 Hausa (ethnic group), 24 Haut Conseil de la République–Parlement de la Transition, 123 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 107 Hobbes, Thomas, 54, 138 Homosexuality, 257, 275n4 Horn of Africa: conflict in, 71 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix, 9, 12, 213–231 passim, 286 Hutu (ethnic group), 78–90 passim; refugees in Zaire, 123 IFIs. See International financial institutions IMF. See International Monetary Fund Import substitution industrialization, 31 Inga-Shaba power project, 113 Inkatha, 107 Interahamwe, 82, 84 Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, 36 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). See World Bank International Business and Professional Women’s Organization, 171 International Conference on Muslim Youth, 160 International Council of Women, 171 International Federation of Women Lawyers–Kenya Chapter, 182 International financial institutions (IFIs), 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 134 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 9, 13, 30, 48, 112, 185, 186, 192, 210n9, 218, 220, 224, 226, 231n8, 247, 256, 258, 280 Islamic Call Society [Libya], 160 Issa (ethnic group), 50 Jeunesse Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine de Côte d’Ivoire, 215

▲

329

John Paul II, Pope, 234 Kâ, Djibo, 144 Kabbah, Tejan, 108n1 Kabila, Laurent, 109 Katanga [Zaire], 110 Kaunda, Kenneth, 20, 29 Kayibanda, Grégoire, 78 Kéita, Balla, 221 Kengo wa Dondo, Léon, 122, 123, 124 Kenya, 167–184; elections of 1992, 169, 177–181 passim; multiparty politics in, 176–181; political evolution of, 168–169; women’s organizations in, 169–182 Kenya African National Union, 168–184 passim Kenya Business and Professional Women’s Club, 171 Kenyatta, Jomo, 168, 169, 172 Kerekou, Matthiew, 20 Kikwit [Zaire], 116, 123 Kinyamataka, 80 Kivu [Zaire], 114, 123 Koromah, Johnny Paul, 108n1 Kouakou, Djanwet, 224 Labor Relations Act [Zimbabwe], 269 Lancaster Agreement, 256, 261–262, 264, 271 Layène Sufi order, 165n9 League of Women Voters [Kenya], 178, 182 Legal Age of Majority Act [Zimbabwe], 268–270, 271 Liberia: involvement in Sierra Leone, 97–98; state collapse in, 16 Libya: support for Sierra Leone rebels, 98 Limann, Hilla, 188 Lobola. See Bridewealth Lonrho Corporation, 37 Lubumbashi [Zaire], 120 Lumumba, Patrice, 120, 121, 124n3 Maada Bio, Julius, 105, 108n1 Maathai, Wangari, 175–176 Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization (MYWO) [Kenya], 170–171, 172, 174–175 Magambo, Serapio, 241, 245, 248, 252n17 Mainassara Barre, Ibrahim, 19 Maintenance Act [Zimbabwe], 269, 271 Makumbe, John, 256 Malawi: elections in, 17; women’s movement in, 23

330

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I NDEX

Mali: transition in, 20 Mandela, Nelson, 15 Marabout, 143, 151–153 Matabeleland [Zimbabwe], 262 Matrimonial Causes Act [Zimbabwe], 268–269 Mau Mau, 170 Mauritania: tensions with Senegal, 155 Mazrui, Ali, 24 Mbuji-Mayi, 116 MCDWA. See Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs MEECI. See Mouvement des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire Mengistu, Haile Marriam, 60 Mfizi, Christophe, 83 Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs (MCDWA) [Zimbabwe], 265–268, 271, 272, 274 Mobutuisme, 112 Mobutu Sese Seko, 12, 94, 106, 107, 109–125 passim Mogadishu, 58; central importance of in Somalia, 67, 69 Moi, Daniel arap, 12, 137, 168, 169, 181 Momoh, Joseph, 97–105 passim Mothers in Action [Kenya], 178 Mouride Sufi order, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 165n10, 165n12 Moustarchidine. See Dahiratoul Moustarchidine wal Moustarchidaty Mouvement Démocratique Républicain [Rwanda], 82 Mouvement des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (MEECI), 216, 219, 221, 224, 226 Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR) [Zaire], 112, 118, 123 Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement (MRND) [Rwanda], 79, 81–84 Mozambique: external intervention in, 51, 53 Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), 53 Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO), 51, 53 MPR. See Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution MRND. See Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement Mugabe, Robert, 136, 256–274 passim, 286 Mugabe, Sally, 268

Mujuru, Joyce, 265, 266, 267 Museveni, Yoweri, 18, 80, 136, 233–234, 235, 238, 247–248, 253n18, 253n21, 253n23 Muslims: in Côte d’Ivoire, 229; in Senegal, 143–166 passim; in Uganda, 233 Muthoni, Field Marshall, 170 MYWO. See Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization National Commission on the Status of Women [Kenya], 178, 180, 182 National conferences, 17–18, 22, 148 National Council of Women of Kenya, 171, 180 National Democratic Congress (NDC) [Ghana], 187, 203–209 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 98 National Resistance Army (NRA) [Uganda], 80, 233, 235, 247 National Resistance Movement (NRM) [Uganda], 233–253 passim National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. See União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola NDC. See National Democratic Congress Ndigal, 154, 155, 165n10, 165n12 New International Division of Labor (NIDL), 28, 29, 32, 34, 36 New International Division of Power (NIDP), 29, 34, 36, 39 Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), 28; role of state in development of, 32 Ngbandi (ethnic group), 118, 119–120, 122, 125n10 Ngilu, Charity, 181 NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations Nhongo, Teurai Ropa. See Mujuru, Joyce Niasse maraboutic family, 152, 165n11 NICs. See Newly Industrialized Countries NIDL. See New International Division of Labor NIDP. See New International Division of Power Niger: elections in, 19; transition in, 19; uranium resources of, 14 Nigeria: failed elections in, 17; petroleum resources of, 14 Nkomo, Joshua, 262 Nkrumah, Kwame, 185 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 37, 174; international spread of, 40

I NDEX NPFL. See National Patriotic Front of Liberia NRA. See National Resistance Army NRM. See National Resistance Movement Nsengiyaremye, Dismas, 81, 84 Ntaryamira, Sylvestre, 84 OAU. See Organization of African Unity Obeng, P. V., 206 Obote, Milton, 235, 236 Ogaden war, 59, 60 Operation Desert Storm, 98 Operation Restore Hope, 69 Organisation Nationale des Elèves et des Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire, 226 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 36, 38 Oromo (ethnic group), 50–51 Oromo Liberation Front, 50 Ouattara, Alassane, 231n8, 229 Ousmane, Mahamane, 19 PARMEHUTU [Rwanda], 82 Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), 12, 213–231 passim Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS), 147–148, 150–151, 164n2 Parti Ivoirien des Travailleurs (PIT), 228, 231n12 Parti Social-Démocrate [Rwanda], 84 Parti Socialiste (PS) [Senegal], 146–150, 161, 164n2 PDCI. See Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire PDS. See Parti Démocratique Sénégalais PIT. See Parti Ivoirien des Travailleurs PNDC. See Provisional National Defense Council Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) [Ghana], 185, 186, 188–189, 191–202, 207–209, 210n4 PS. See Parti Socialiste Qadiriyya Sufi order, 151 Radio Mille Collines, 84 Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine (RDA), 215 Rawlings, Jerry, 136, 140, 185–210 passim, 286 RDA. See Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine Regionalism: in Africa, 35–39

▲

331

RENAMO. See Mozambique National Resistance Revolutionary Unity Front (RUF) [Sierra Leone], 97–98, 99, 100, 104, 106, 108 Robertson, Pat, 121 RPF. See Rwandan Patriotic Front RUF. See Revolutionary Unity Front Rumor: political importance of, 64–66 Rwanda, 75–91; coup of 1973, 78; ethnic relations in, 78–86; Habyarimana regime in, 78–86; massacres in, 84–86; popular mistrust of state in, 87–89; refugee flows from, 85; resistance to political reform in, 80–86; state collapse in, 15, 16 Rwandan Armed Forces, 76 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), 80–86 SADCC. See Southern African Development Coordination Conference Sankoh, Foday, 98 SAPs. See Structural adjustment programs Savimbi, Jonas, 17 Sékou Touré, Ahmed, 12 Selous Scouts, 104 Senegal, 143–156; crisis of legitimacy in, 147–151; democratic evolution of, 145–147; elections of 1993 in, 148–150; ethnic violence in, 155; Islamic revival in, 156–158; religion and politics in, 151–162 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 136, 146, 164n5, 287 SIEROMOCO, 101 Sierra Leone, 93–108; collapse of Momoh regime in, 97–100; effects of IFIs on, 100–102; effects of Liberian war on, 97–98; juridical sovereignty of, 102; privatization of state functions in, 101–105; reduction of state agencies in, 95–96; Strasser regime, 100–105; structural adjustment program in, 99– 102 Sierra Rutile, 101, 103 SNM. See Somali National Movement Somalia, 57–73; cleavages in, 57–59; dissolution of, 59–61, 66–70; importance of genealogy in, 58–59, 61–66; information flows in, 64–66; state collapse in, 16 Somaliland, 58; ethnic origins of, 50; formation of, 62–63; and state boundaries in Africa, 24 Somali National Movement (SNM), 60, 70

332

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I NDEX

Somali Patriotic Movement, 61 Somali Salvation Democratic Front, 60 South Africa, 101; transition in, 15 Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), 36, 38 SPLA. See Sudan People’s Liberation Front Stamps, Timothy, 273 State in Africa: capacity of, 6; centralization of, 12; challenges to, 9–10; as client, 11–12; Cold War origins of, 10; colonial legacy in, 10, 86; empirical versus juridical statehood, 10–11, 61–62, 129–130; extractive nature of, 13–14; gendered nature of, 23, 258–261; inversion of, 45–56; “nonstate politics” as alternative to, 54, 290–292; overdeveloped nature of, 12; personalized nature of, 9, 12; prebendal nature of, 13; process of formation of, 130–132, 186; reconstruction of, 55–56; role in development, 27–28; as source of violence, 77–78, 86–87; subnational threats to, 49–52; theories of, 8–9, 76–77, 110–111; ultraprivatization of, 48–49 State inversion, 21; elements of, 45–47, explanations for, 47–52; as source of violence, 52–54 Stevens, Siaka, 99 Strasser, Valentine, 93, 97–105 passim Strategic Resources Corporation, 104 Structural adjustment programs (SAPs), 28, 30, 31, 34, 133–134, 140, 180, 182, 185, 189–193, 234, 247, 282–283, 285–286, 287, 288; in Zimbabwe (ESAP), 256–257, 258, 264, 268, 273 Sudan: conflict in, 50, 52 Sudan People’s Liberation Front (SPLA), 50, 52 Sufism, 151–152; place of Moustarchidine movement in, 156–162; in Senegal, 152–155 Sy, Ababacar, 159 Sy, Abdoul Aziz (elder), 156 Sy, Abdoul Aziz (junior), 143, 160 Sy, Cheikh Tidiane, 144, 156, 161, 162, 163, 165n14, 166n21 Sy, Habib, 161 Sy, Moustapha, 143, 144, 150–152, 155, 156–162, 163, 166n17, 166n21 SYNACAS-CI. See Syndicat National des Cadres Supérieurs de la Santé de Côte d’Ivoire

SYNARES. See Syndicat National de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur Syndicat Libre et Autonome des Etudiants et Eleves de Côte d’Ivoire, 226 Syndicat National de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SYNARES) [Côte d’Ivoire], 217, 221, 222–224, 226, 227, 231n3, 231n4 Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Primaire Publique de Côte d’Ivoire (SYNEPPCI), 217, 224 Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Secondaire en Côte d’Ivoire (SYNESCI), 217, 221, 222–224, 227 Syndicat National des Cadres Supérieurs de la Santé de Côte d’Ivoire (SYNACASCI), 222, 227 SYNEPPCI. See Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Primaire Publique de Côte d’Ivoire SYNESCI. See Syndicat National de l’Enseignement Secondaire en Côte d’Ivoire Taylor, Charles, 98, 108 Tekere, Edgar, 263 Terms of trade: for Africa, 31–32 Tijaniyya Sufi order, 151, 152, 155, 158 Tivaouane [Senegal], 143, 155, 156, 159 Touba [Senegal], 152, 155 Tshisekedi, Etienne, 113, 114, 123 Tutsi (ethnic group), 78–90 passim; in Zaire, 123 Twa (ethnic group), 78 UDI. See Unilateral Declaration of Independence Uganda, 233–253; Catholic Church in, 233–251; civil society and churches in, 242–247; civil war in, 52; party system and role of church in, 240–241; political history of, 235; reconstruction of, 18; state-church relations in, 238–239, 247–251 Ugandan People’s Congress (UPC), 235, 241 Ujamaa, 131 UNEECI. See Union Nationale des Elèves et Etudianrs de Côte d’Ivoire União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), 17, 53, 107, 151 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) [Rhodesia/Zimbabwe], 255

I NDEX Union Culturelle Musulmane [Senegal], 157 Union Démocratique des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire, 226 Union des Démocrates Indépendents [Zaire], 123 Union des Sociaux Démocrates [Côte d’Ivoire], 228 Union Minière, 116, 121 Union Nationale des Elèves et Etudiants de Côte d’Ivoire (UNEECI), 216 Union Nationale des Parents des Etudiants et Elèves en Côte d’Ivoire (UNPEECI), 222–224, 225 Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social [Zaire], 113 Union Sacrée de l’Opposition Radicale [Zaire], 113 UNITA. See União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola United Nations, 102; 1985 Women’s Conference in Nairobi, 172, 175; 1995 Women’s Conference in Beijing, 173; Women’s Decade, 172 United Somali Congress, 61 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 4 University of Abidjan, 218, 220–221, 228 University of Dakar, 157 UNPEECI. See Union Nationale des Parents des Etudiants et Elèves en Côte d’Ivoire UPC. See Ugandan People’s Congress Uruguay Round, 39 USAID. See United States Agency for International Development Uwilingiyimana, Agathe, 84 Vatican II (Second Vatican Council), 234, 244–245, 247, 252n11 Venduawve Te Pemako, 120 Wade, Abdoulaye, 147–148, 150–151, 162 Waliggo, John, 241 Wanjiku Nyanjiru, Mary, 170 Warlordism: as result of state decline, 132 Wodié, François, 228, 232n12 Wolof (ethnic group), 147

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Women’s Bureau [Kenya], 171, 172 World Bank, 9, 13, 27, 48, 101, 112, 185, 186, 192, 199, 210n9, 218, 220, 224, 226, 231n8, 280 World Trade Organization (WTO), 39 WTO. See World Trade Organization Yacé, Philippe, 217 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) [Kenya], 171, 178 YWCA. See Young Women’s Christian Association Zahorou, Bernard Zadi, 220, 221, 228 Zaire, 109–125; beneficiaries of state of, 118–122; collapse of state infrastructure in, 16, 116–117; critical juncture in, 113; ethnic tensions in, 49–50; extractive nature of state in, 106, 114–117; independence and Congo crisis, 110; national conference in, 113–114; political history of, 111–114; political models of, 110–111 Zambia: elections in, 17 ZANLA. See Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army ZANU. See Zimbabwe African National Union ZAPU. See Zimbabwe African People’s Union Zenawi, Meles, 18 Ziaara Tamxarit, 159, 160, 166n17 Zimbabwe, 255–276; difficulties of economic reform in, 30; legal reforms in, 266–271; one-party state in, 261–265; political evolution of, 255–258; women and liberation struggle in, 260–261; women and political change in, 265– 274 Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), 260, 275n8 Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), 255–276 passim Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), 260, 262–263 Zimbabwe Unity Movement, 263

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About the Book

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While pressures to reconfigure the political order have provoked significant political crises in virtually every country in Africa, the consequences of these pressures have ranged from tragic cases of state collapse to the remarkable—if still fragile—construction of democratic regimes. This book comparatively explores the sources, patterns, and likely evolution of political change in a variety of African cases. After establishing the historical and international context, the authors examine four cases of state collapse and six of state reconfiguration. Each case focuses particularly on the relations of state structures with a wide array of new social actors (or with preexisting social groups with redefined powers), including not only the classic formulations of “civil society,” but also religious, ethnic, and gender-based groups. A final chapter traces the patterns discernible in the comparison of these cases and sketches likely scenarios for the future. Leonardo A. Villalón is associate professor of political science at the University of Kansas. He is author of Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal. Phillip A. Huxtable is a postdoctoral associate in political science at the University of Kansas. His current research focuses on the role of ECOWAS in West African regional security.

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