African Conflicts, the Role of Ethnicity
Tribal conflicts and the Politics of chaos in Africa
Apr 30, 2009 Tongkeh Joseph Fowale
When Plato observed that “only the dead have seen the end of war,” the Greek philosopher seemed to have seen modern Africa from a distance. Conflicts have become so regular in Africa that they almost constitute a pattern. The roots of African conflicts are many and diverse but very few are as strong as ethnicity. It is a very powerful force that has been harnessed negatively to deform Africa.
The Roots of Ethnicity in Africa
Conflicts have been driving forces throughout human history. Africa as community of people experienced its own share of conflicts before the coming of Europeans. Before this encounter, however, the concept of ethnicity did not exist in Africa. As a linguistic construct, ethnicity is a creation of colonialism. This explains the amount of controversy surrounding the use of the term.
Bruce J. Berman has thrown considerable light on the roots of ethnicity in Africa. In his words, “… modern African ethnicity is a social construction of the colonial period through the reaction of pre-colonial societies to the social, economic, cultural and political forces of colonialism.” (African Affairs, 1998). As an instrument of policy, ethnicity was adapted to enhance the “divide and rule” system of colonial administration in Africa.
As a creation of colonialism, ethnicity sowed new seeds of conflict in Africa. It also facilitated the subjugation of African masses because ethnic strife provided an excuse for military intervention by colonial powers. European colonialists set Africans against Africans by hand-picking pliable collaborators, giving them traditional titles and using them as agents of colonial administration. The result was chieftaincy disputes within and across ethnic groups throughout Africa.
The intensity of Ethnicity after Independence
As “divide and rule” served colonialism, so does ethnicity serve neo-colonialism. Ethnic conflicts in Africa have provided an ideal environment for the plunder of Africa’s resources. In his article “Ethnicity: An African Predicament,” Francis Deng of the Brookings Institution observes; “Today, virtually every African conflict has some ethno-regional dimension to it. Even those conflicts that may appear to be free of ethnic concerns involve factions and alliances built around ethnic loyalties.”
This confirms the thesis that many African conflicts trace their origins to the agenda of tribalism/ethnicity established under colonial rule and exploited thereafter. All African leaders who struggled for the “independence of the nation” met a common fate – death. These included Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara among others. The rest who qualified for leadership in Africa constituted the group which Frantz Fanon calls the “benis oui oui” or the “yes yes men.”
Grappling with the challenges of Ethnicity
Many African leaders have left an impressive record in the fight against the deadly scourge of ethnicity. Under Nkrumah for example, political parties formed along ethnic lines in Ghana were outlawed. In many other countries, one-party systems were seen as a solution to ethnicity and regionalism. Post-apartheid South Africa succeeded to draft a constitution that gave a blind eye to race, region, color and ethnicity.
These efforts notwithstanding, present realities in Africa show that ethnicity is still alive and strong. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 tells how deep ethnicity has eaten into Africa. The ethnic chaos in Kenya in 2008 and the politics of butchery in Zimbabwe suggest that ethnicity will not die any time soon in Africa except urgent attention is paid to this problem at the national, regional, continental and global levels.
Further Reading
Benjamin, Bruce J. “Ethnicity; Patronage and the Politics of Uncivil Nationalism.” African Affairs. Vol. 97, No 388, July 1998.
Deng, Francis M. "Ethnicity: An African Predicament." The Brookings Institution, 1997 at http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/summer_africa_deng.aspx
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York, 1980.
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