UTAFITI [New Series] Special Issue, Vol. 4, 1998-2001: 151-178
                          Nation Building and Ethnicity:
       Towards a Re-conceptualization of Democracy in Africa I
                                     C. S. L. Chachage      *
       Abstract
       This paper presents a critique of current conceptualizations of democracy in
       Africa by tracing their antecedents in colonial anthropological
       characterizations where Africans were as a people in their unity and in their
       diversity. It then proceeds to offer a critique of the social, economic, and
       political policies and practices which have characterised post-colonial Africa.
       It finally outlines an alternative conceptualization of democracy in African. In
       this conceptualization of democracy, focus is put on peoples' rights as
       individuals and as communities rather than putting inordinate emphasis on
       multipartism and period electioneering. The paper argues that what have been
       termed as democratic transitions in Africa have often amounted to movement
       from the authoritarianism of one state party to that of many state parties, with
       issues of social justice left unattended. It concludes by an appeal to
       intellectuals to recognise other sites of emancipatory politics such as factories,
       schools, farms, households, streets, villages, and universities. It argues that
       such emancipatory politics tend to take their inspiration from a discernible
       renewal in the search for a Pan-Africanist identifY against the backdrop of the
       marginalization to which various social forces and communities are being
       subjected by the so-called "globalization".
Introduction
The war that erupted on the night of 6 April 1994 in Rwanda resulted in the
massacre of more than half a million people and another two million or more
forced to flee their homes. This carnage which was genocidal in scale was one of
the many civil wars going on and still going on in the African Continent. On lOth
November 1995, the political activist and writer, Kenule Saro-wiwa and eight co-
defendants of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP)
were executed by the Nigerian military regime. Their sin was to accuse the
military government-together              with the international oil companies--of
genocide (through ecological destruction and pollution of the Ogoni lands). Both
• Associate Professor, Departmentof Sociology,Universityof Dar es Salaam.


  C.S.L.Chachage
  events drew massive international publicity. Thus has been the news "out of
  Africa". As we enter the new millennium, most popular and academic studies on
 Africa are preoccupied with "the plight of Africa", "the crisis in Africa", the
 existence of tension/conflict and civil war areas (Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda,
  Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Angola, Namibia, etc.) etc. Frantz
  Fanon's prophetic words, that the "last battle of the colonized against the
  coloniser will often be the fight of the colonized against each other" seem to be
 truer today than ever (Prunier, 1995).
 A more serious crisis facing Africa relates to the fact that a search for a theory of
 society is no longer central in contemporary discourse: it is simply taken for
 granted and not problematized. We are living in an era when the ideology of
 "globalization" which leads to giving up, is quite perverse and internalized. This
 myth is a conquering one, to the extent that a search for alternative policy
 solutions, values and truths, which would lead to the possibility of a construction
 of humane societies devoid of all forms of arbitrariness, has become real
 difficult. Today, these issues are viewed as not so chic to discuss about. We are
 told that knowledge is no longer a cognitive appropriation of socially determined
 material transformations for life processes. Instead, it has become simply a post-
 industrialforce of production, since the real substance of knowledge is informed
 by the so-called developments in science (global cyberspace, theories of
 everything and progress in genetics and its aims).
 The dominant and popular politics are those of the New or Respectable Right,
 accompanied by the so-called triumph of liberal democracy and a free market
 economy. It is an era when cosmologies of the human subject are completely
 marginalized, since technology and economics are supposed to have merged,
 appearing under labels such as computer economy, electronics, services,
 information, etc. In sum, it is an era of celebration of the end of history (as
 Francis Fukuyama would put it), even though all other histories (such as those of
workers, peasants, pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, women, children and the youth)
are excluded. Popular, academic and political thinking in Africa has increasingly
ceased to debate on emancipatory politics-those politics, which would lead to
the transformation of societies so that we reach a stage where one's humanity is
no longer an issue of contestation.
The so-called post-modernism, under whose influence, many of us seem to have
surrendered to, has more or less accepted multiplicity of cultures, societies, etc.
to the extent that one might just as well come to the conclusion that: "Anything
goes!" Important questions, such as, how is society possible or what is the nature
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization                   of Democracy
of society, are taken for granted. I am of the opinion that it is simply difficult, if
not impossible, in contemporary situation to grasp the essence of issues such as
nation building, ethnicity, democracy, social justice, equality, etc. without taking
into consideration the critique being constantly generated by our sisters and
mothers in Africa. Listen to this:
        The time has come to say to the male storytellers, the male praise-singers, the male
        poets, the male novelists, the male historians, the male politicians-you have
        miserably failed this continent. You allowed the divide to continue between the
        exploited labour and profitable labour; those who toil for nothing and those who get
        rich on oil and diamonds and words; you allowed the divide between public and
        private-where women against all odds get family lives and intimacies going, building
        private capacities of all their children, while the male formulators of public spaces
        have failed to establish a public narrative of humanity.
        After the oppressors left, the structures of oppression were intact except for the
        colour-the oppressor was no longer white but black. There remains a link between
        men of the continent and the money men of the colonies. No narrative has shattered
        them. The time has come for women's voices to set up plans for changing the sound of
        the continent.2
What is this, if not a call to theorise on and about Africa from the point of view
of historical forms of consciousness of material transformation necessary for life
process? Is this not a summon for us to come out with theoretical and material
arms to equip those who go to bed with empty stomachs, the oppressed,
exploited, the marginalized-in short, those in the twilight zone?
"Civilization" and the "Invention Tribes"
The "invention of tribes" became a popular theme in historiography in Africa in
the 1970s, following the studies by Ranger and Iliffe (Ranger, 1983). These
studies revealed that particular ethnic identities have come into existence in the
relatively recent past as a colonial creation: that, these ethnic categories are
constructs, which have been changing over time given the nature of the state. It
was further demonstrated that accounts (by ethnologists, travellers and
missionaries) on 19th century pre-colonial Africa rife with "tribal wars";
descriptions of whole populations perpetually at each other's throats was an
imperial creation to justify the intervention and colonisation of Africa (Kjekshus,
 1977). All this was constructed by the so-called "humanitarian movements",
advocating for colonisation as a means to bring "civilization" to Africa (in the
name of spreading Christianity). It was what the imperial writer, Kipling termed,
"white man's burden"-to "civilise" those "half-devil, half-child" peoples of
Africa (Wright, 1976). Today, we witness the same thing, whereby, USA can
intervene in Somalia under the guise of humanitarianism, a country which it had
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  C.S.L.Chachage
 previously ceremoniously denied aid). It does so with claims of high moral
 authority ("doing God's work" as George Bush puts it!).3
 Simply, the history of the past 400 years has been the history of intervention of
 some "superior races" into other areas of the world, within the process which
 "race", "civilization", "nation", "tribe", ethnicity" became the catchwords.
 Beliefs, prejudices and stereotypes associated with this process-whether
 religious or simply idealistic-were by the 19th century being transformed into
 scientific categories, as an expression of real inequalities and forms of
 domination. Biology, in the 19th century was mostly concerned with the theories
 of "monogeny", "hybridisation", and "miscegenation" with the aim to provide
 the foundation of the genetic differences between "superior" and "inferior"
 beings.4 This elevation of racial categories to science was to find its culmination
 in the writings of Robert Knox the Scottish anatomist and Arthur de Gobineau
 the French pseudo scientific racist in 1850 and 1853-55 respectively (Milbury-
 Steen, 1980).
 Fundamentally, these racial and exclusivist categories had gender and sexuality
 implications. In this regard, women were very central in the representation of
 these categories as the biological "carriers" of a "race" or a "tribe". They
 concerned material practices of the exploitation of labour and the creation of the
 states in the colonies. This entailed a racist discourse within reconstruction of
 patriarchal relations, which defined the private (women) and public (men)
 spheres, translated into political definitions of identities. The preoccupation by
the colonial agents and anthropologists on themes such as kinship, marriage,
 fertility, sexuality and African religions was central in this process. Their studies
 resulted into the introduction of so-called customary (native) laws, which led to
 important changes in "primary group" structures and created new forms of
patriarchal powers, reinforcing the so-called cultural identities.5 Colonial
mythologies of the African male sexual threat to white femininity were one of the
main focuses in the process of categorisation of African communities. Not only
that: the conquest and domination over the land and people of Africa modelled
itself upon the power relations of masculinity and femininity. Simply,
racialisation and stereotyping of race and gender went hand in hand with the
theorisation of tribes and ethnic identities in Africa, in the process, finally
producing an African male hegemonic discourse, associated with the formation
of tribes, nations and states. The state was the medium of cultural and political
identity.
For these "scientific racists", the inferiority of other races could be explained
from the point of view of psychology and intelligence and their incapacity in this
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization                       of Democracy
respect derived from original inequality. The views that Africans were a cursed
people whose humanity needed to be questioned, and about African barbarism,
superstition, treachery, moral depravity, paganism, sexuality, cunningness,
laziness, fatalism, undeveloped intellectual faculties, ugly, etc., entered the
scientific vocabulary. In sum:                                                                   .
        For at least three hundred years, propositions on the inequality of the biological
        endowments of varieties of men (sic! -C.S.L.) have been put forth in some
         'scientific' guise or other ... the hypotheses come and go, but they tend to cluster in
        time and to be associated with crises about relations of different ethnic and/or racial
        groups. The first bursts of contentions about the natural inferiority of a racially defined
        population came with the spread of the Europeans into the New World. The discovery
        of the American Indians, and the domination, exploitation, or extermination of them,
        precipitated the classic controversy Las Casas and Sepulveda ... in 1550-51 .... Other
        clusters in history turn up at the time of the French Revolution, with Gobineau and the
        aristocrats decrying the inferiority of the less privileged; the controversy between the
         abolitionists and the pro-slavery elements in the American South prior to the Civil
         War; the rising howl at the flood tide of Eastern and Southern immigration to the
         United States (Nash, 1972).
 After the partition and colonisation of Africa from 1884, these conceptions found
their material expression in promulgation of outrageous laws related to native
 (and creation of such courts), detention without trial, prevention of vagrancy,
 native pass regulations, land laws which invested the radical title of all land in
 governors, etc. Violent, brutal massacres and other forms or reprisals of natives
 ("as a means, of bringing tribesmen to parley", as some colonial officers put it) in
 the name of civilization were the norm under colonialism right from its
 establishment. Naked examples are such as those took place in Congo during the
 time when it was run as a private possession of Leopard II, King of Belgians,
 from 1885 to 1908 and continued after that. Or take the thousands of people
 sacrificed during the building of the rail connecting Brazzaville with the port of
 Pointe-Noire. Characteristically, such massacres have not entered Western
 historical and moral memory like their later counterparts like Lidice in the former
 Czechoslovakia-the         Nazi Massacre in World War II!
 It was within this context that categorisation and definition of African
 communities and their relationships were done. The conceptualization of "race",
 "nation", "tribe" "ethnicity" and "ethnic identity" became the main pre-
 occupation of the colonial agents. In the case of Rwanda and Burundi, for
 example, explorers, missionaries and other colonial agents who reached these
 areas were confounded by the fact that people in these areas were linguistically
  homogeneous, living together and often intermarrying, even though they were
 differentiated into three groups. These social groupings consisted of the Hutu,
 Tutsi and the Twa, without any "Hutuland", "Tutsiland" or "Twaland". Their
                                                                                               155


 C.S.L.Chachage
division was simply in terms of their modes of livelihood-as               peasants, cattle
herders and hunter-gatherers respectively, a context that placed the cattle-herders
at higher social rank as rulers. The explorers and colonial agents, so much
obsessed with race issues re-categorised them, alluding, for example that the
Tutsi were of Oromo descent from Ethiopia or descendants of ancient Egypt or
 Middle East. Gerald Prunier quotes some of the obscene things Europeans had to
say about these people:
       The Bahima (a Tutsi clan) differ absolutely by the beauty of their features and their
        light colour from the Bantu agriculturarists of an inferior type. Tall and well
        proportioned, they have long thin noses, a wide brow and fine lips. They say they
        came from the North. Their intelligent and delicate appearance, their love of money,
       their capacity to adapt to any situation seem to indicate a Semitic-origin (Prunier,
        1995: 8).
 In sum, anthropologists, missionaries, administrators, diggers, planters, etc. spent
most of their time competing with each other in the production of African racial
and tribal theories and histories that suited the colonial enterprise, in attempts to
find elements among Africans that would collude with imperialism.
The above amounts to the fact that colonial powers in Africa created states,
which were based on arbitrary and contradictory classification of people.
Distinctions were made between what were considered to be conquerors and
conquered, natives and citizens; backward and enlightened "tribes"; etc. From a
people who were organized in the form of social groups (sometimes language
being the basis of that organisation) and not ethnic groups, colonial powers (in
different ways) ethnicized these groups by creating social political conditions that
would lead later to discriminatory tendencies.
It was absolutely imperative to divide and rule these people. In many of the
British colonies, this was to take the form of "indirect rule". When expressed in
political terms, as some of the colonial agents were to put it bluntly in
Tanganyika (Tanzania) in the 1920s, the biggest fear they had was that of Pan-
African ideals of the Ethiopian church and the possibility of Africans holding the
conception of Africa for Africans. The paranoia to the emergence of a
"detribalised" African (sometimes called the Europeanised African) reached a
pathological level. In 1917, for example, the Private Secretary to the East African
Protectorates (Kenya) Acting Governor, for example, was to put a suggestion on
the best way to implement a "definite policy of encouraging strong and isolated
tribal nationalism (as) one of the most effectual barriers against a Pan-African
upheaval.. .." (1. Lonsdale, 1977). It was fear of the impact of the ideas being
widely read and reproduced in the colonies hv Pan-African papers and journals
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization               of Democracy
such as, the New Leader, The Keys, International African Opinion. Negro
Worker, etc., replete with accounts of struggles of African masses all over the
world. People who openly proclaimed "Africa for Africans!" spearheaded these.
Response of the "Wretched ofthe Earth"
The evolution, the systematisation and belief in certain forms of identities and
finally their institutionalisation in Africa, is best grasped as part ofthe reality of a
predatory, despotic, totalitarian and destructive imperialist domination, and the
struggles of Africans against it. This was a process, which involved attempts to
negate African cultures as an expression of real material domination and Africans
defending themselves within the context of material resistance. This resistance
was expressed in various forms. It included armed struggles, fought almost
throughout Africa by communities that often co-operated. The Maji Maji
rebellion fought throughout the Southern part of Tanganyika between 1905 and
 1907, for example, is a demonstration of the fact that co-operation among
communities existed prior to colonial conquest.6
Numerous examples can be drawn all over Africa to demonstrate the above. The
African masses rebelled against forced labour, land alienation, taxation, etc. The
millenarian movements, such as the Watchtower; the movements led by John
Chilembwe in Nyasaland, Simon Kimbangu in Belgian Congo, Hanoc Sindano in
Tanzania, and many others, were also part of these struggles. Sindano's
movement (part of Watch Tower, which had followers in most southern and
central African parts of the continent), for example, believed that The world was
in its last age; the great empires and nations were instruments of Satan; so were
the historic churches, All these would fall in one last struggle. The world would
then become the inheritance of the true believers, the witness of the true
believers, irrespective of colour or race" (Ranger, 1969).
While the African masses were rebelling, the educated Africans who emerged
within the colonial forms of exploitation and oppression as a product of
manual/mental division of labour (as producers of ideas-real or illusory) in a
racially discriminatory system, initially surrendered and adopted the colonisers'
culture. The elements had internalised and swallowed the stereotypes Europeans
had on them and their quest, as Frantz Fanon put it, was to become European
(civilised) (Fanon, 1967). The paradox is that, Europeans regarded them even
more disdainfully than the uneducated because of their tendency to regard
themselves as equal to the masters after acquiring a sense of western civilization.
In Tanganyika, Governor Donald Cameron considered them to be a "bad
imitation of a European", while what the colonials needed was a "good African",
bound to his/her culture and race (Chachage, 1986).
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 C. S. L. Chachage
 The educated Africans were outcasts: alienated from the African masses'
 resistance against exploitation and domination and denied a place in the
 "civilised circles" as a result of the paternalistic colonial racial forms of
 discrimination and domination. Whatever they did, they were done! And there
 was no other future for them, except to turn to rebellion. Henceforth, to be
 civilised was to be African and proud of the heritage. The solution lay in the
 discovery of Africa's history and culture to counter Europe's lies. They turned to
 searching those forms of civilization that did not necessarily contradict
 westernality. There was no other future, except to remain African and civilised.
This was a transformation of race thinking aimed at combating the negative
 stereotypes, in the form of interrogation of modes of representation.
 Colonialism's racial condemnation of Africans was continental in its scope, as
 reflected in Hegel's contention, for example, that "Africa ... is no part historical
part of the world; .... Africa is the unhistorical, undeveloped spirit .... " (Hegel,
 1956:91-2); or the claims about the "Dark Continent" as far as pre-colonial
Africa was concerned. Logically, the reaction of Africans took the form of
continental rehabilitation. Fanon' s summation of this:
        The efforts of the native to rehabilitate himself and to escape from the claws of
         colonialism are logically inscribed from the same point of view as that of colonialism.
         The native intellectual who has gone far beyond the domains of Western culture and
         who has got it into his head to proclaim the existence of another culture never does so
         in the name of Angola or Dahomey. The culture which is affirmed is African
        culture....
         ... .Colonialism did not dream of wasting time in denying the existence of one national
        culture after another. Therefore the reply of the colonized people was continental in its
        breadth. In Africa, the native literature of the last twenty years is not a national
        literature but a Negro literature.... Because the New Guinean or Kenyan intellectuals
        found themselves above all up against a general ostracism and delivered to the
        combined contempt of their overlords, their reaction was to sing praises in admiration
        of each other.
        The poets of Negro-ism will not stop at the limits of the continent. From America,
        black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The 'black world' will see the
        light 6f B'usia from Ghana, Birago Diop from Senegal, Hampate Sa from Sudan and
        Saint-Clair Drake from Chicago will not hesitate to assert the existence of common
        ties and a motive powet'that IS identical (Fanon, 1967:171).
They too adopted the identity of African masses forms of resistance to European
domination, which up to the 1940s tended to take place within the context of
Pan-African identity and not "tribal", "ethnic" or "national". When Italy invaded
Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, Africans from all the three continents reacted by
volunteering to fight in Emperor Haile Selassie's army. Kenneth Kaunda, Franz
Fanon, etc. are among many examples of people who were to be part of
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization             of Democracy
independence movements away from their countries of birth. The workers strikes
in the late 1940s in many African countries were pan-territorial,     and not simply
country-based.     Sembene Ousmane's God\' Bits (if Wood (Ousmane,          1986) for
example, is one of the most beautiful testaments of struggles of people, who did
not stop at being Bambara or Oulof, Malian or Senegalese. Or in this case, one
does not need to belabour about the relations between Joshua Nkomo and the
African National Congress of South Africa.7 The fear by the Europeans of a Pan-
African upheaval, was a result of the fact that most anti-colonial struggles, even
when localised, tended to emphasise on race as opposed to place or territory.
Pan-African identity in the hands of the African educated elements had its own
contradictions.    Rather than aiming at grasping the nature of African social
formations and understanding their driving force; in order to grasp the kind of
transformations     which had taken place under colonialism, they only sought to
demystify the myths of the "civilising mission" and intermarry pre-colonial
cultures and Western Civilisation.         In other words, they rejected Western
civilization in so far as it denied them equality and appropriated from African
civilization what was acceptable in universalistic paradigms. Their demands after
World War II, transformed into economic demands in the form of creation of
"modern economies"         of their countries by governments     and the control of
resources, translated into what were to become nationalist politics, territorially
defined by the 1884 states created thereafter.
 It was no longer "civilization",   since the educated Africans had become perfect
candidates for it, by demonstrating the existence of African civilizations that did
 not contradict westernality (the existence of empires (Songhai, Mali, etc.) before
colonialism, but "self-government"      and "modernization" as the new challenge. In
a way, World War II marked the beginning of the period of "second colonial
occupation". For the British colonies, the Development and Welfare Act of 1940,
 was to constitute the manifesto of what was to be termed "modernizing
 imperialism". Sir Arthur Dame, a senior official responsible for East Africa in the
 Colonial    Office was to declare in 1942 that the old nineteenth             century
 conceptions     were dead. The War was increasingly demonstrating          that self-
 government was becoming an expectation of all colonies. Thus for him, Britain
 was faced with the problem of formulating methods to reconcile the new forces
 and the future of British interests in Africa. He rhetorically posed the question:
 "How are we to bind these people to us in such a way that their material
 resources of strength will continue to be ranged on the side of Great Britain?"
 (Chachage,     1986:254). For Britain and other imperial powers, the answer was
 found in the famous Import Substitution Industrialization     (ISI). In essence, this
 was an imperial reorganisation      of the colonial societies getting ready for Pax
 Americana.
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C.S.L.Chachage
This period coincided with the emergence of studies in Europe and USA dealing
with "social change", "patterns of development" and "development strategies"
which promote economic prosperity. Modernization thinking's anchorage was in
the reality ofthe experiences of the epoch. It was in fact, an extension of earlier
concepts-"civilization", "progress", etc.-under other circumstances. Like in
the past centuries, these studies conceptualised change in terms of shift from one
type of society to another, one stage to another, etc. It was a continuation of the
universalization of European modernity in the name of emancipation of "man",
with "enlightenment" being seen as a struggle against superstitious beliefs
(religious doctrines were, of course, not included here!), darkness and ignorance.
 It was a globalization of modernity. Societies were viewed in terms oftraditional
and modem, community and society, agricultural and industrial, tribal and
national, rural and urban, particularistic and universalist.s Development thinking
 in Africa was summarized in the slogan of "War against ignorance, disease and
poverty." Henceforth, the idea of "tribe" was essentialized and considered
premodial. The notion of modern/tradition dichotomy, which became the
dominant paradigm in viewing societies associated tribes with traditionalism,
which was an impediment to modernization and progress. Nations were supposed
to be "modern", therefore, they had rights-social, political and economic, and
their demands were considered legitimate. Tribes and ethnic groups were
supposed to be "pre-modem", primitive and archaic. Their demands were
 illegitimate, reflecting some barbaric premodial sentiments. These were
essentially racist, exclusivist conceptions, which were internalized in our
countries because of the failure to transcend the territorial elitist history of the
colonial masters. It was partly the internalization of those that legitimated some
of the most outrageous, repressive, anti-human, undemocratic practices, under
colonialism, but now paraded under the banner of "nation building",
"modernization" and "development".
The nationalist leaders who took power after independence were nurtured in the
modernization tradition. Their main concern was development of their countries
in the very modernization fashion. For this process to take place, capital and
technology from the West had to be lured into investing in these countries, and
the barriers to this process were related to the existence of "traditional
subsistence economies". It was in this way that it became necessary to redefine
relations related to land and natural resources. Policies on land tenure, for
example, began to increasingly focus on productivity issues and specifically, on
the relationship between individualisation of land tenure on the one hand, and the
use of credit, land improvements and yields on the other. while ignoring
completely issues of equity and justice. In this process, foreign investors and
"modem" Africans had more rights over agricultural lands and other natural
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
resources than peasants, cattle-herders, hunter-gatherers and above all, women.
These groups of people, accordingly, represented relations that militated against
"modem" forms of property ownership. From being called "backward" countries
in the 1940s, these countries were baptised emerging "undeveloped" in the
1950s, only to be rebaptized "less developed" in the 1960s and "developing"
"nations" in the 1970s (also "third world" or "underdeveloped" "nations").
After independence, the state for the nationalists, became the sphere of moral
"universalism"; a representation of some specific interests in the name of general
interests-so--called     "nation". These were the interests of the powerful classes
in already differentiated communities. With these new conceptions, identity
among the African intellectuals took territorial forms. The state was the defining
character of nationalism and the nation--corporate in character. Modernization
was termed "nation building". If Europe had nations, why not Africa?
The paradox of the challenge to colonial rule from the 1940s and 1950s was, Pan
African identity was being supplanted by other "imagined communities,,9-the
nation and nationalism. In a way, this more or less marked the beginning of the
defeat of the rebelling masses. It was an acceptance of the violation of people's
rights committed in 1884 by the imperial powers. The 1963 OAU Charter
recognized these territories, and in the process, condoned the domination of
Eritrea by Ethiopia and Western Sahara by Morocco. This, in turn had
implications, as far as other independent countries were concerned. The new
rulers were free to oppress their own people without interference from other
African countries. Once identity was reduced to a territory, it was a short step to
 exploiting "ethnicity"-as     a vehicle for accumulation (meaning concentration of
wealth and power in a few hands and the ruination and disempowerment of the
 majority). Henceforth, communities and groups were ranked according to their
 differential access to resources and power and became hierarchical. The concept
 ethniclty entered the dictionary for the first time in 1972. "In everyday language
the word ethnicity has a ring of 'minority issues' and 'race relations', but in
 social anthropology it refers to aspects of relationships between groups which
 consider themselves, and are regarded by others, as culturally distinctive.,,10
 Independence and the "Uncivil Republics"
 The World Bank formulated the models for accumulation and accelerated
 development in Africa in the first decade of independence. These models stressed
 the need for state intervention as means to achieve industrialization. They were
 being implemented as part of what the nationalists considered to be
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C.S.L.Chachage
"Africanism", claimed to represent some forms of African exceptionalism-
neither capitalist nor communist (African democracy, African socialism, African
way of life, African personality, negritude, authenticity, etc.). The Atlantic world
found no problem with these "Africanists" (or even the Mobutus and Bokassas)
since they did not necessarily contradict western civilization. It was an
"Africanism" which colluded with imperialism, i.e. that of the westernised
section of the colonized.ll
Developmentalism (or so-called nation-building which was the neo-colonial
model) was premised on the need to concentrate powers in the executive arm of
the state, and within that, the presidency, while at the same time pledging to
deliver social services, industries and infrastructure to the people. In return,
people were expected to accept a high degree of social and economic control at
the same time offer unified political loyalty. In practice, this meant erosion of
political space for the masses to exercise their rights. Bureaucratic reproduction
of laws rather than popular participation and political representation without
hindrance became the norm. Within such conceptions, the party and the
government apparatuses became the central organs in the struggles against
"poverty, ignorance and disease". Development could be only effected if there
was unity among the people, expressed in the form of state project. Conflicts and
opposition to state were foreign elements as far as the nationalists were
concerned. The state had to become monolithic on the one hand and it was
necessary to weaken the organisational capacities of the "civil society"-the very
basis under which these ruling parties emerged.
Starting with Ghana from 1954, official opposition was refused under the claim
that it had no "national basis". Other African governments followed the same
measures. To enforce this further, most of these governments promulgated bills,
such as detention without trial, which militated against the rights of people in the
name of development. Other bills were those that sought to control or abolish
workers, peasants, youth, women, mass, students and professional organizations
(e.g. trade unions, co-operatives, etc.). Broadly, this concentration of powers in
the executive arm of the state which was taking place after independence was in
response to the profound conflicts which were taking place within these
countries. The conflicts brought to the fore the social, economic and political
questions in relation to the meaning of self-determination as grasped by the
different social groups within attempts to control social processes. The leaders of
the nationalist movements were committed to modernization, and their general
tendency was to view the mass of the people as ignorant, primitive, lazy,
superstitious, resistant to change and backward.'2
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    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization            of Democracy
Therefore, for development to take place, it was necessary to defeat the masses
by concentrating the powers in the state and eroding the independence of the
"civil societies". Workers were not supposed to ask for more wages as this
endangered capital investment and accumulation, and peasants and pastoralists
were supposed to desist from demanding for better prices and better conditions of
production for the sake of development. Nor were these supposed to defend their
lands and resources, when they have to be expropriated for the interests of the
investors-foreign    and local. It was in this way that the powers of the parliament
were also broken alongside the independent mass and political movements and
all other autonomous local forms of self.determination so as to create "unity and
tranquillity" .
For external purposes, the governments had to institute laws that regulated the
outward and inward movements of Africans. Under colonialism, it was
Europeans-as      an aftermath of World Wars I and II-who could be granted a
refugee status (mainly from Eastern Europe or so-called enemy territories).
Africans movements were considered to be part of the movement of labour-
simply immigrants or labour migrants. Of course, there were deportation laws for
Africans if considered undesirable elements. With independence, Africans from
neighbouring countries were increasingly being elevated to the position of
"aliens", and their movements were being controlled and administered. In the
case of Tanzania, for example, a Refugees (control) Act was enacted in 1966. It
was essentially a reproduction of the colonial legislations, but now justified by
"national security" and other ideological reasons. Rwandan, Congolese,
Ugandan, Kenyan, etc. problems, were no longer African problems, but internal
problems that other African countries had no right to interfere.
This developmentalist model seemingly registered some rates of growth in a
number of countries. Industry in Africa grew at the rate of 7.5 per cent between
 1960 and 1975 and the GDP growth rates between 1965 and 1973 was 6.1 per
cent. The state was the major source of investments, employment and social
 services and these grew substantially by then (Bangura, 1992). This accumulation
 model resulted in a profound crisis by late 1970s when most Sub-Saharan
 African countries began experiencing negative per capita GDP growth. These fell
 from 6.1 per cent in 1965-73 to -1.3 per cent in 1987. This crisis was
 accompanied by a drastic decline in the rates of growth in agriculture, industry
 and services. Exports began to decline to the extent that the total debt of Sub-
 Saharan African countries increased from USD 21.1 billion in 1976 to USD
 137.8 billion in 1987 (Bangura, 1992:91-95). This, in essence, was not a mere
 economic crisis, but as Nzongola Ntalaja suggested it was a "crisis of the state
 and that the neo-colonial state itself constitute[d] the major obstacles to
                                                                                 163


 C.S.L. Chachage
 development" (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 1989: 18). Put in other words, it was a crisis of
 the state that was not responsive and accountable to its subjects. This was a result
 of the demobilisation of the organisational capacities of the civil society
 politically and socially, hence leaving very little or no space at all for alternative
 cha Ilenges/ questions.
 What did such state forms entail? Those who manned the state power, did so by
 virtual of conquest, all sorts of repressive forms, corruption, nepotism and
 arbitrariness. In many ways, the states manipulated the so-called ethnic
 sentiments. There was no legal succession as such, but only coup d'etat and army
mutinies. Fanon had predicted such outcome as far back as 1961. He saw then the
tendency for the independent states was to disarm everybody politically, bully
them, etc. and institute the single party system which was the "modem form of
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unmasked, unpainted, unscrupulous and cynical".
According to him: " ...Such a dictatorship does not go very far. It cannot halt the
process of its own contradictions. Since the bourgeoisie has not the economic
means to ensure domination and throw a few crumbs to the rest of the country;
since moreover, it is preoccupied with filling its pockets as rapidly as possible,
the country sinks all the more deeply into stagnation." (Fanon, 1974:133)
It was these forms of authoritarian rule and their accumulation forms that brought
about the crisis in Africa. Fanon had broken off from those forms of
"Africanism" being paraded by many African governments by the late 1950s. He
regarded "Africanity" in the manner in which it was being consolidated then as
part of the pitfalls of national consciousness given that it championed the
interests of the wealthy. The task, according to him, was to complete the
liberation of Africa in terms of total transformation of society. Rather than a
creation of black republics, the issue for him was the place people would be
given by these African leaders, "the kind of social relations they decide to set up
and the conception that they have of the future humanity .... Adherence to
African-Negro culture and the cultural unity of Africa is arrived at in the first
place by upholding unconditionally the peoples' struggle for freedom" (Fanon,
1974: 188-89).
By the end of the 1960s the modernist conceptions of development had reached
an embarrassing situation, and a few regimes had been toppled by the armies
which instituted the worst forms of dictatorship and abuse of human rights in the
name of stamping down "tribalism", corruption and exploitation. In many
African countries corruption, embezzlement, fraud, abuse of power, abuse of
human rights and unaccountability had become endemic. People had been left
defenceless vis a vis the states, and hence they had reached a position whereby
164


    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
they could not fight against the arbitrary actions of the states and their violation
of the independence contract, or defend their living standards, wages, prices of
their produce, working conditions, etc.
Thus, the Kenyan moral philosopher Oruka, was to point out by the early 1980s
that the average man and woman in Africa had become a citizen of an "Uncivil
Republic", who did not have the right to liberty which embraces "freedom of
thought and opinion, freedom of speech and assembly and freedom of
emigration". These did not exist for the average man or woman in Africa:
        Those who live below the economic base line of humanity are denied the right to
        liberty. The average person in the uncivil republic has no complicated thought and
        opinion. They have but one concern: they are hungry and jobless. This is what he or
        she wants to express but which they cannot express because they lack the means and
        the right to liberty. Those who stand up to speak for them are easily silenced or wiped
        out by the tools of legal terrorism. 13
 Oruka was to further point out that all rights to work, minimum standards of life,
fair wages, social security, freedom from hunger, and freedom to join trade
 unions and other associations are absent. Instead, the only right guaranteed is the
 right to property, which is meaningful, to the few wealthy ones (Oruka, 1985:
 117-18).
 There are other philosophers in Africa who had also articulated Oruka's position
 earlier on (1970s). For Paulin Hountondji and Marcien Towa, for instance, "the
 necessity of freedom of thought and freedom in general for development of
 science" is absolutely important (Hountondji, 1983:69). They were of the view
 that it was simply impossible to have any meaningful development (including
 development of thought and philosophy) without freedom of expression.
 Freedom of expression, for them, was seen as the precondition for the
 development of science, theoretical development and real economic and political
 progress. To achieve any meaningful development, they suggested, it was
 necessary to "begin at the beginning; we must restore the right to criticism and
 free expression which are seriously threatened by our regimes of terror and
 ideological confusion" (ibid).
 Renewal of Resistance and Struggles for Democracy
 With the crisis of developmentalism the state legitimacy was in the collapse by
 late 1970s. From this period onwards, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa
 began to witness an increasing tendency of active and passive resistance, most of
 which were in response to the implementation of the World Bank/International
 Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)
                                                                                           165


 C.S.L.Chachage
 since mid-1970s. SAPs insisted that liberalization and further reliance on the
 market forces with less state intervention as the only way to stimulate production
 of traditional exports and overcome the crisis. Therefore, it also meant the
 intensification of the processes already taking place under the independence
 model. This process was accompanied by the devaluation of the currencies, price
 decontrols, imposition of various forms of taxation, introduction of user charge
 fees (so-called cost-sharing in health, education, etc.), removal of subsidies for
 inputs for the rural producers or food for the urban working people, as well as the
 retrenchment of the workers in the civil and public sector.
 Active and passive resistance which was taking place in Africa aimed at
 reshaping and restructuring power relations within these countries. It was the
 reawakening of the masses at grassroots level and their mobilisation for
 democratic rights against the monopolisation of politics by the dominant
 structures of the state. This process was accompanied by a "growing critique of
 the role of the state and its role in human liberation" (Kothari, 1984: 14) The
 developmentalist model of the state was no longer credible; instead, there was
 increasingly a "reconsideration of the relationship between the state and civil
 society." There was a "rediscovery of the civil society as an autonomous
 expression of human social will: the whole process of decentralisation and of
 rediscovery of identities." This process was also enriched and enlivened by a
range of social movement which have become important contemporarily-in
particular, women, ecological and peace movements (ibid).
In many countries in Africa (as exampled by Sudan, Zaire, Zambia, Cote d'Ivoire,
etc.) internal pressures for democracl and respect for human rights Irtid been
simmering covertly for many years. I These pressures in some instances were
accompanied by a redefinition of the societies, and the direction tended towards
viewing society as a self-creative entity. It was, therefore necessary to create
social and political capacities to challenge state monopolisation of politics and
decision-making. Civil society as concept by early 1980s had been transformed
to embrace social and political movements, and the whole question of
emancipation of the people. IS
It may be the case that in some military state ruled countries such as Nigeria and
Ghana the question of democracy and human rights was posed in terms of
establishment of a multi-party system. Otherwise, this question was posed in
broader terms. Beyond the demand for various freedoms (of speech, conscience,
thinking, press, etc) there was a challenge of the need to create autonomous civil
organizations and the need to re-conceptualise the type of politics and political
organizations which would enable these countries to transcend the colonial and
neo-colonial established arrangements.
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     Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
The popular democratic opposition to SAPs that emerged in the 1980s seemingly
was in some instances threatening to destroy the fundamental basis of the liberal
order and the institutions of privatization and market forces. For the Atlantic
world, this was support for totalitarianism and against political and civil liberties
as it was against economic freedom for private capital. The history of the las~
fifty years or so demonstrates one fact: authoritarian (or totalitarian) regimes of
the Right which protect private capital even if they go against political and civil
liberties are more preferred than the so called Left authoritarian (or totalitarian)
regimes, that may mess around with private property for the sake of the majority
of the mass of the oppressed people.
For the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and their local supporters in
Africa, the problem was not lack of mass democracy; rather it was that of how to
put forward a defence of capitalism by trying to justify economic liberalization
and commercialisation of public and civil institutions and its consequences as far
as the majority of the people are concerned. SAPs, if anything, merely
restructured capital (private and public) which benefited from the statist model of
the 1960s and 1970s around newly deregulated branches (mainly import-export
activities and the plunder of natural resources). For the working people these
meant further marginalization, aggravation oftensions and more hierarchization.
The practical problem for the IFIs and their local supporters was how to win
popular support for the SAPs measures and the market order, which are
essentially anti-people and anti-human rights.
As demonstrated in the history of the Atlantic world in terms of safeguarding the
so-called "economic freedoms", the struggle for or against democracy and human
rights has always been in terms of how to institute/elect regimes which would not
set out to destroy the fundamental basis of market economies and the functioning
of capital in general. The struggle over the nature of democracy and human rights
at the time of independence was more or less dominated by this assumption
covertly or overtly. Regardless of whether we are talking about the Western
world or Africa the biggest fear is the rule of the majority of oppressed.
Democracy and the struggle for human rights in this sense are regarded as
principles, which can undermine the ideals of economic liberty. Therefore, even
 in the case of Africa, the problem has been how to safeguard economic liberty in
a mass democracy situation (ifthis can not be prevented). In other words, how to
make the modern state, which claims to represent the interests of all, exercise its
 legitimacy in the face of mass opposition. It is in this way that the struggle for
broad democracy was derailed in Africa by the late 1980s. Instead, the whole
question of democracy was reduced to multi-partism.
                                                                                 167


  C.S.L.Chachage
  The fact that single or multi-party regimes all over the world have made some
 totalitarian demands on their members/groups/sections of groups/classes and
  even individuals at every time in the interests ofthe nation/country (read govern-
  ment) is indisputable. And the struggle since the emergence of the modern state
  has been in terms of whether the state can dominate the "civil society" or the
  "civil society" dominates the state (not as dichotomies, but as mutually exclusive
  entities) (Gamble, 1981: 151 ff.). SAPs and their implementation and civil and
 political liberties are incompatible, since the former strives to go against the very
 rights that the majority of the poor people are struggling for.
 Towards a Reconceptualization of Democracy
 Literature emerging currently on the experience of democracy in Africa indicates
 that there is a dire need for critique of multi-party politics in Africa (Olukoshi,
  1998). While the emergence of opposition parties that aim at constitutional
 changes in Africa is an important turning point in the process of political change,
 however, without exception, most of the parties that have emerged/exist so far
 are elite parties. There are hardly any organic representatives of mass or
 community organizations in these parties. There is a clear acceptance of the
 universal concept of liberal democracy and human rights among most of these
 parties, whereby the connotation is simply accountability of the ruler as the major
 issue. Democracy and human rights are viewed in terms of forms of rule that
 includes the right of representation, organisation and expression. It is individual
rights that override in this conception, rather than peoples' rights as individuals
and communities. It is a matter of the ballot box, and it does not matter what
means one uses to get the votes.
In essence, the forms of democracy which have been introduced in Africa in the
 1990s, rather than deal with the crisis facing the continent, have sowed more
seeds of discord given that they defend politics of exclusion and inclusion,
privileges and denials. The winning and losing of votes is based on mobilisation,
which includes mobilisation of even forms of identities, imagined or real. The
simple game is, who ever is in power will definitely exclude the community that
voted against them. Thus, in this context, the issues of "Who originates from
where among those in power" or "which party represents which people", become
the real stuff. In other words, the situation, like in the past the issue becomes that
of which interest group is in a position to influence legislation. The result is
reinforcement of discriminatory tendencies. Here, I have in mind the "Zanzibar
Question" in Tanzania, whereby, with multi-partism what has emerged is what
some people have termed "Pemba nationalism". Tanzania as a country that was
said to have dealt with problems related to "ethnicity" is today marred with
168


     Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
politics that tend to raise such issues. Not only those, but even religious (inter and
intra) conflicts have increasingly arisen with multi~partyism.
It is the cult of the "universal" that dominates in the conceptualization           of
democracy and human rights. This "universal" is defended unquestionably
without seeking to uncover its anchorage in Africa. The fact that democracy has
always existed as a historical mode of politics is completely forgotten.
Democratic revolutions in the world have always taken place within the context
of redefining relationships, so that the oppressors have always been the enemies
and the masses have always been those in the oppressed camp (even if these are
also differentiated). In this way, for example, struggles for democracy in France
in the 18th Century were directed against the feudal aristocracy and the monarch,
and the bourgeoisie was part of the masses. The major issues being dealt with
were political ones. When the issues of social justice came to the fore later on,
the bourgeoisie was already representing different interests, other than those of
the oppressed masses. In Africa today, democracy has to be viewed from the
point of view of those who are victims of the prevailing systems.
Democratic "transitions" in Africa currently have not taken into account issues of
social justice. That is they are not directed at questions of redressing imbalances,
 inequalities, exploitation, etc, and all the talk is simply about setting-up
"democratic institutions" and "good govemance.16 Clearly, the change taking
place in Africa is in terms of movement from the authoritarianism of one state
 party to that of many state parties. The existing and emerging parties, without
 exception have confined themselves to the realm of fighting to remain or to enter
 the state houses (read the treasury). As far as popular politics are concerned, the
 broad masses are only mobilised for voting or support of policies.
 These parties have even put a wedge between politics and economics by insisting
 that the only site of politics is the parliament. They have even failed to organize
 or facilitate the emergence and consolidation of independent labour, peasant,
 women, youths and peoples' movements. Often than not, the tendency for these
 parties has been to distance themselves from such organizations and such
 activities. Inevitably, such forms of politics are resulting into further social and
 political demobilisation ofthe civil organizations, as it is happening in countries
  such as Zambia and Tanzania where all attempts have been/ are being made to
 muzzle the trade unions and other more organic organizations. Clearly, multi-
  party politics are still imprisoned in the state-controlled conceptions of politics.
  These politics are doing even more harm by reinforcing the politics of "them"
  and "us". As it turns out now, for example, Kenneth Kaunda's citizenship is
  being questioned. Not only that, Ivorians are now cIamouring for Cote d'Voire
  for Ivorians only! In South Africa, it is the Makwerekwere (foreigners from
                                                                                   169


 c. S. L. Chachage
"Africa") who are causing hardships in the country! Citizenship and "ethnic"
 issues are being politicised than ever before, and in the process, some people or
communities becoming the scapegoats while the real oppressors are let to go free
with impunity. The milieu of racism under which these conceptions were
conceived is completely forgotten!
In actual fact, political liberalization that continues currently in Africa is taking
the form of another monopolisation of political participation by very narrow
circles of elites. This process is also increasingly accompanied by further
weakening of the civil society's organisational capacities. The reason is, this
political liberalization does not preclude the predominance of state repressive
relations to the civil society, since most of the emerging parties are pro-
liberalization in one way or another. The SAPs measures in Africa in general
cannot be sustained without repressing the producers who demand for better
working/production conditions or provision of the social services as community
based rather than individual responsibilities. I have in mind here the Nigerian
experience of 1989 when the people rejected SAPs through a referendum and the
government had to use force, including shooting those who protested against the
measures, to implement them.
People who are concerned with a serious social project need to consider the
question of people's rights and democracy with a sense of social and political
determinism rather than economic determinism. Emphasis should be on viewing
society from a relational point of view, whereby collective phenomena are seen
primarily as expressions of enduring relationships. Such a conception entails a
 "transformational model of social activity" with emphasis on the question of
change and history (Bhaskar, 1979:34). With such premises, democracy and
peoples rights can only be viewed from the point of view of relations among
people and how they treat/resolve their differences and also between the people
and the state. The issue is how the differences between workers and bosses,
peasants and merchants, students and teachers, men and women, youths and
elders, Moslems and Christians, Africans and Asians/ Arabs/Europeans, majority
and minorities, people and state, etc are resolved/treated. It is in this light that
one can understand why workers, peasants, professionals, students, youth,
women, communities have been demanding for autonomous organizations
against party and state authoritarianism as a means to reconstruct the relations
between the people and the state, and create the possibility of domination of the
state by the civil society.
In this regard, democratisation as a process involving relational aspects is
inevitably a political process that must focus on the people rather than the state.
Its central problem should be the question of treatment/resolution of differences
170


     Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
among the people themselves in society, rather than the question of forms of
governance/state. One of the most important issues, within this context, should be
the question of a social project in terms of the possibility to conceptualise the
type of society people would like to build. Questions like what is the motive
force of society (intellectuals? bureaucracy? economic forces? social struggles?).
Transition to what? In what way do people want their societies/communities
organized? Which is the most advanced class/group to undertake such a project
politically? are quite pertinent.
Democracy and human rights as a process of transforming the state, requires one
to focus on the politics of social and political emancipation of the people. We
need to deal with issues such as: in which way is production organized? Who is
producing, and who is appropriating the surplus? What forms of accumulation
are taking place? -In sum, the relations of subordination and resistance at the
 level of production. Questions such as who is demanding for democracy and
human rights are quite legitimate. Therefore, of paramount importance are the
questions of the historical experiences and the practices of concrete social groups
 in terms of how they define their social and political project, or how they arrive
 at one position as opposed to another (including their ideological expressions).
 I believe democracy and the quest for human rights has to make sense to the
 interests of the contending groups. It has to be linked to the whole question of
 restructuring social relations so that individuals, groups and organizations are
 able to pose the questions of the control of resources and those of social and
 political emancipation more sharply. Politics of "nation-building" and multi-
 partyism in Africa simply reduce politics to the number of parties and the number
 of votes. It is for this reason that such politics are elitist, since their assumption is
 people do not and are incapable of thinking, and therefore, they must be
 represented. People are incapable of making their own history; it is only the
 parties and the state which are capable of doing so. Here the attempt is to deny
 the existence of politics outside the parties and the state. I?
 Emancipation politics require that one recognises that the other sites of politics
 beyond the parliamentary building are such as the factory, the farm, the
 household, the street, the village, the school, the university, etc. They require the
 involvement of all the people in resisting state arbitrariness and all forms of
 domination and exploitation. Such politics, in this world today, requires a
 renewal of Pan-African politics, which aim at redressing the wrongs under which
 Africa has been subjected for centuries. "Nation building", in its current form
 leads to balkanisation. Salvation lies in the renewal of a militant Pan-Africanist
 identity (of those who have been enslaved, colonized, dominated and neo-
 colonized historically), which singles out the collaborators and those who have
                                                                                      171


 C. s. L. Chachage
benefited or still benefit from the current chaos,18 organized around the questions
of redressing imbalances in their various ramifications. Wole Soyinka has made
the following observation:
         Beginning with the Organization of African Unity, which formally consecrated this act
         (the division of Africa-CSL)        of arrogant aggression, reinforced by civil wars on
        varied scales of mutual destruction in defence of imperial mandate, the continent as a
         whole appears, however, to have swallowed intact this explosive seed of disunity-
         under the iron banner of unity. If only African leaders could become acquainted with
         how much-just     to illustrate the hollowness of such beginnings-the    division of India
         and Pakistan (and the allocation of their respective boundaries) owed to the whimsical
        decisions of a mere civil servant imported straight from Whitehall, someone who had
        never even visited the Asian continent until then, but was selected for the 'objective'
         distancing that that very arrogance was presumed to confer on him, was given a
         deadline of a mere twenty-eight days to complete his task in order to ensure that the
         continent was effectively divided before Independence           Day-such      leaders and
        cheerleaders would learn to be less cocky about the mangy claims of 'national
        sovereignty'. Much of the division of Africa owed more to a case of brandy and a box
        of cigars than to any intrinsic claims of what the boundaries enclosed (Soyinka, 1999:
        36-7).
These words must be taken seriously. In this case, the first and foremost task is to
reconstruct our history to demystify and combat the "nation-building"                     histories
that are leading to more partitioning of Africa. We need historical forms of
knowledge whose content represents an intervention in the current social reality;
historical knowledge that analyses possibilities of social transformations,                helps to
present the social identity of the African masses beyond these 1884 false
boundaries. The current fundamental issue is to examine the weaknesses                          and
strengths of the rebelling classes and seek ways to equip them as history makers,
within the specific historical moment and in a specific social milieu (class,
gender, caste or race specific). We need forms of historical knowledge which will
equip us with such knowledge that would enable us to struggle for building a
future that has no place for contesting one's humanity.
"Globalization"       in this epoch is mere reinforcement            of the universalistic      cult
(which has always defined and categorized us) of a program of desired than an
empirically supported understanding               of more general trends in international
relations. As it is increasingly revealed in many African countries, the paradox of
globalization is that the inclination of the state to intervene in economic affairs
has tended to increase over the years. This is regardless of the political, economic
and ideological         rhetoric.     This tendency       has been increasing           when      its
effectiveness has been on the decline. The intervention has been in terms of
adjustments to cope with inflation, trade policies, land and natural resources
policies and laws, labour laws, tax incentives, export subsidies, privatization,
172


    Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
sectoral policies (in terms of planning and integration of activities), research
policies, regulations and controls. Part of the reason is, measures which seek to
reduce public expenditure, human development and welfare are incompatible
with democracy and people's rights. People have been resisting against these
measures. This has, on the whole, meant the expansion of state bureaucracy with
a weakening power in the economic sphere.
Notes
1.   This paper was originally prepared for the Pan African Civic Educators Network (PACE-
    NET) Conference (7-10 September 1999), on behalf of Tanzania Gender Networking
     Group Programme (TGNP). The author was then based at the University of Cape Town
     (Department of Sociology). He is wholly responsible for the views expressed. One of the
     criticism the author anticipates is that the whole issue of "citizenship" both as a judicial
     concept (statist) and as a concept of civil society (social and civil) is not adequately dealt
     with as a prelude to discussing ethnicity and nation building in post-colonial Africa. The
     issue of 'ethnicity', 'nation', and 'identities' are also not treated adequately in this paper.
     All of these issues merit treatment in a separate paper which will be submitted to
     UTAFITI in the near future.
2.   This was sounded by Angie Krog in the Book Fair in Harare (Zimbabwe) in early August
     1999. The theme of the Book Fair was on "Women Voices, Gender, Books and
     Development". Quoted by The Sunday Independent, 8 August1999.
3.   P. Williams & Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory,
     Columbia University Press, New York, 1994, p. 3. They further on state that, " ... articles
     and editorials in respectable newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph can call the West
     to go back to Africa and sort out the mess into which their national governments have led
     them-all these indicate how much of the room for manoeuvre of the colonial period
     remain in place."
4.   H. Spencer, "The Primitive Man-intellectual" in Source Book for Social Origins,
     University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967, p. vi. Spencer drew an analogue between
     Africans and children in his account.
5.   The concept "extended family", for example, which is today taken as given is a
     eurocentric one It defined other primary relations from the point of view of European
     forms of organization-the "nuclear family". In reality, this meant redefining the social
     roles. Thus, today, "civilized Africans" call their father's brothers and mother's sister's
     uncles and aunts respectively, instead of elder or younger father and mother. This has
     resulted into the creation of exclusionist relations in wider relations and negation of
     social roles attendant with them. To be "civilized" is to belong in a "nuclear family"!
     Very few African languages have the equivalence of the concept "family" and concepts
     are an expression of social relations.
                                                                                               173


C.B.L. Chachage
6.  G.C.K. Gwassa, "Kinjikitile and the Ideology of M1lji Maji", in T.O. Ranger & 1.
    Kimambo (eds) The Historical Study of African Religion, Heinemann, London, ]972. On
    pg. 203, he noted: "Most of the peoples of the Maji Maji area were organized on small
    scale, usually clans which constituted political units .... Yet despite this apparent diversity
    and extreme disunity, the effects ofthe slave trade and of raids ofthe Ngoni and Yao and
    the constant movements of peoples had produced so complex an ethnic admixture that it
    became impossible to draw meaningful ethnic boundaries ... the Ngindo, who played an
    important role in Maji Maji ... were scattered over the whole area between Rufiji and
    Ruvuma rivers and between the coast and Lake Nyasa ....
    " ... the old view that southern Tanzanian peoples had had little in common, that they were
    perpetually at each other's throats, that they were so divided and weak that it was
    impossible to combine, falls away.... a complex web of cultural inter-mixture, and of
    wide ranging social and marital relationships had been woven by events taking place
    before and during the nineteenth century."
7.  It is ironical that after his death on 1st July 1999, the South African press hardly covered
    the event the way that it deserved. It pains one to imagine that the South African
    Broadcasting Corporation had to look for Ian Smith and interview him about Nkomo,
    rather than activists from Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere who worked with him.
    Compare this with the coverage ofthe death of J.F. Kennedy Jr. by the same press!
8.  For details on modernization theories, see M. Blomstrom & B. Hettne, Development
    Theory in Transition, Zed Press, London, 1985; A. Webster, Introduction to Sociology of
    Development, MacMillan, London, 1984. Even Marxism was an Universalist theory of
    modernity, which conceived history as universal and globalizing. His comments (together
    with Engels) on the Latin American Spaniards whom he considered as degenerates;
    Engels' view that the conquest of Algeria by the French was "an important and fortunate
    fact for the progress and civilization " of those Bedouins; Marx's remarks on the
    "civilizing mission" of British imperialism or his remark that the Chinese had to be fed
    with opium in order to be brought to civilization; etc. are quite revealing in this regard
    (see Jorge Larrain, Ideology and Cultural Identity: Modernity and the Third World, Polity
    Press, Cambridge, 1994).
9.  This concept was introduced by Benedict Anderson in his, Imagined Communities:
    Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso Press, London, 1983. On
    page 15 he stated that a nation "is an imagined political community-and imagined as
    both inherently limited and sovereign." " It is imagined because the members of even the
    smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear
    of them, yet in their minds of each lives the image of their communion".
10. T. H. Ericsen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, Pluto Press,
    London, 1993, p. 4. According to him, the concept is derived from Greek word ethnos,
    which originally meant heathen or pagan. That is how it was used in English from mid-
    14th century until mid-19th century, when it began to refer to racial characteristics. In
    USA, the word came into currency after WW II, as a polite term to refer to Jews, Italians,
    Irish, and other people who were considered inferior to dominant groups-the British.
11. No wonder Senghor (the first President of Senegal), one ofthe founders of Negritude and
    African Socialism, once said, he could sing his negritude better in French.
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   Nation Building and Ethnicity: a Re-conceptualization of Democracy
12. Andreas Fuglesang in "The Myth of People's Ignorance" in Development Dialogue
    (1984: 1-2, pAS) states that "the myth that poverty somehow results from ignorance is an
    elitist, ethnocentric interpretation of an international problem, the roots of which lie not
    in reality but in prevalent middle-class attitudes originating in the North. The attitudes are
    espoused by professionals educated in European traditions." Within the North this
    elitism, according to E.P. Thompson in The Poverty of Theory (Merlin Press, London,
    1978, p.377) "stands as direct successor in the old lineage: Benthamism, Coleridgean
    'clerisy', Fabianism, and leavisism of the more arrogant variety. Once again, the
    intellectuals--a chosen band of these have been given a task of enlightening people-(it
    is) marked by...very heavy emphasis upon the ineluctable weight of ideological modes of
    domination which destroys every space for the initiative or creativity of the mass of the
    people--a domination which only the enlightened minority of intellectuals can struggle
    free."
13. Henry Odera Oruka, Punishment and Terrorism in Africa. Kenya Literature Bureau,
    Nairobi, 1985, p.117-18. By legal terrorism Oruka is referring to the state.
14. Peter Anyang' Nyong'o (ed), Popular Struggles for Democracy in Africa, Zed Books,
    London, 1987. According to Nzongola-Ntalaja (Revolution and Counter-Revolution in
    Africa, Zed Books Ltd, London, 1987 p. 92.), Congolese ordinary people had come to the
    conclusion that what was required in their country was a "second independence."
    According to them, the 1960s independence had failed; that independence was
    "meaningless without a better standard of living, greater civil liberties, and the promise of
    a better life for children. Instead of making these promised benefits available to the
    masses, the politicians who inherited state power from the Belgians lived in much greater
    luxury than most of their European predecessors and used violence and arbitrary force
    against the people."
IS. I.G. Shivji, Fight my Beloved Continent: New Democracy in Africa, SAPES, Harare,
     1988. This civil society/state relationship discourse is radically different from the other
    one that supports liberalization and the operation of market forces in response to what
    they termed "informal".or "second" economy. The World Bank and the IMF mainly
    promote the latter conception of civil society. Examples of authors who use the concept
    in this manner are: R.H. Bates (Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa, CUP,
    Cambridge, 1983) and Janet MacGaffey, ("Initiative from Below: Zaire's 'Other Path' to
     Social and Economic Restructuring", in G. Hyden & M. Bratton (eds). Governance and
    Politics in Africa: Perestroika Without Glasnost? Lynne Rienner, Colorado)
16. The political vocabulary in Africa nowadays is devoid of words such as exploitation,
    oppression, domination, class interests, neo-colonialism and imperialism. Instead, words
     like participatory/grassroots development, economic liberalization and donors/partners in
    development have become so ubiquitous.
17. Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, (Heinemann, London, 1987) which sought to
    transcend the elitist politics remained trapped in the power games within the state. lfi
     Amadiume's ("Class and Gender in Anthills of Savannah: A critique", Pal Platform Vol
     I No I, 1987, pp. 8 ff) criticism of the book is very interesting on this regard.
18. Current literature by Western analysts seems to be celebrating the chaos in Africa by
     coming out arrogantly with open racist conceptions. One of the example is the book by
     Patrick Chabal & Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as a Political Instrument,
                                                                                             175


 C.S.L. Chachage
     James Curry in Association with the International African Institute, Oxford, 1999.
     According to them, "disorder", rather than being viewed negatively-as "a state of
     dereliction. It should be seen as a condition which offers opportunities for those who
     know how to play that system." (p. xix) They even talk openly about the fact that there is
     this thing called "Black Africa"-"that is former European colonies lying south of the
     Sahara-excluding, thereby, the countries of North Africa (from Morocco to Egypt). We
     also leave South Africa, whose history is so distinct as to make comparison difficult at
     this stage." (p. xxi)
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