Notes on Ethnicity, Democratisation and Nation Building ::

CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS (2005)

Home > Conferences & Workshops > 2005

6-7 March, 2005

Amman, Jordan

Notes on Ethnicity, Democratisation and Nation Building: Experience in Africa and relevance to West Asia:
The case of Cameroon and Ghana

By John G. Nyuot Yoh

Notes presented at a conference on:
A Vision to Enhance Peace and the Human Environment in the Middle East “Territoriality and extra-Territoriality: Instruments for Changing Attitudes”.
6th-7th - March, 2004
Venue: Four Seasons Hotel, Amman, Jordan

Introduction

Before discussing the relevance of the African experiences in terms of ethnicity, democratisation and nation building to West Asia, one should try to highlight the current trends of ethnic politics on Africa continent. It is also important to highlight the historical evolution of ‘ethnicisation’ of politics on the continent and how this process affected the current state of affairs in Africa.

Moreover, the regional political system which emerged in the 1950s and 60s as embodied by the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) or regional organisations such Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) or the transformation of the OAU to African Union (AU) in early 2000s, seem to have also impacted on how the role of ethnicity in African politics has developed. The fact that programmes such as New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) or for that matter the AU have emphasised the importance and the relevance of conflict resolution to the stability of the continent, is by implication an indication that the continent has identified the question of ethnicity as one of the important issues which should be dealt with.

While ethnicity has had great impact, more than other factors, on how politics and nation building processes were/are pursued in Africa, the issues of religion and ethnic identity dominated the politics of democratisation and nation building in West Asia.

In West Asia there seem to be a tied link between religion and identity question, whereas ethnicity and in some rare occasions, religion are closely linked to national politics.

Colonialism and Ethnicity in Africa

The colonial reaction to ethnicity in Africa has varied: the British adopted the indirect rule, commonly known as ‘divided and rule’ policy; while the French and Portuguese opted to assimilate their subjects into French and Portuguese cultures through policy of ‘assimilation’.

The existing political map of Africa is a Western colonial creation, drawn with little regard to the boundaries of historic ethnic homelands or ethnic compositions of the subject population.

These artificial multiethnic nations lack the internal political cohesion necessary for survival as nations.

Some colonial apologists argue that the colonial state acted as glue in keeping the ethnic groups together within the framework of new artificially established centralised states. At independence, once the glue was removed through decolonisation, each state began to disintegrate and to fall into regional parts (Cohen 1969: 8). Such arguments of course deny the historical co-existence of thousands of African ethnic groups bond not only by kinship, but also by principles.

What the colonial state system did not want to acknowledge was that there is always a conflict between moral ethnicity and political ethnicity or tribalism. Ethnicity has a moral core which constitutes a requirement for states that want to construct nations of citizenship with local roots.

Building a national consciousness or nationalism to sustain the nation state is complicated since there are competing ethnic nationalisms. The belief of a superior-inferior group makes consensus-building more difficult.

Building strong and viable resources of political association and mass-based political parties is difficult, as the challenges of ethnic loyalty may determine them.

If the representatives of the big ethnic groups are only interested in themselves and their groups, the resolution of divisive issues and the protection of minority interests are difficult.

The political elite regard the manipulation of ethnic loyalty as the cheapest and most reliable strategy to acquire and consolidate power.

The challenge is not use the nation state against ethnicity, but how to develop more plural forms of nationalism which can incorporate ethnic variations.

The appeal of ethnicity as an instrument of political mobilisation is largely seductive because of its emotional content.

Ethnicity in African politics

In terms of nation building and creating of conducive and enabling environment to open up African states to democratic processes, the question of ethnicity and management of ethnic relations among various ethnic groups in each country, have been in the centre of African politics during the past five decades:

Since independence of most African states and governments on the continent had hoped to tame ethnicity, bring together self-respecting peoples in a spirit of confidence, mutual trust and respect, equality and peaceful co-existence.

However in practical terms, the over all response to ethnic conflicts in Africa from the part of African governments has been reactive rather than proactive.

Attempts were made on the continent to institute one part system with the aim to reduce ethnic tensions and conflicts, the results were not impressive as ‘minority and majority politics’ dominated the main discourse in most nations on the continent.

The collapse of the East Europe one-party system has had a great impact on the inter-relations among African ethnic groups and on African nation states. Some of them reacted defensively to local and global politics by increasingly articulating similar demands fro human and cultural rights and equity in access to resources ( Liberia and Somaliland).

In most parts of Africa today, ethnic nationalism and ethnicity have become important political issues as many ethnic groups are struggling to move from being groups of common culture to groups of political will and are striving to give territorial expression to the inalienable sovereignty of the groups to which they belong.

Ethnic nationalism is indeed gaining ground in Africa, hence demonstrating that people who share one or more cultural traits become conscious of their internal cohesion and difference from others

Ethnicity and politics in Ghana and Cameroon

In 1960 roughly 100 linguistic and cultural groups were recorded in Ghana. Although later censuses placed less emphasis on the ethnic and cultural composition of the population, differences of course existed and had not disappeared by the mid-1990s

Competition to acquire land for cultivation, to control trade routes, or to form alliances for protection also promoted group solidarity and state formation. The creation of the union that became the Asante confederacy in the late seventeenth century is a good example of such processes at work in Ghana's past.

One of the legacies of Kwame Nkrumah era was that his regime made it a point to keep ethnicity outside in national politics. A Ghanaian was employed in government institutions as Ghanaian, with no regard to his ethnic origins.

For this reason, ethnically based political parties are unconstitutional under the present Fourth Republic. This is one of the legacies of Kwame Nkrumah who detribalised politics in Ghana by making it illegal to organise political parties along tribal lines.

Ethnic rivalries of the pre-colonial era, variance in the impact of colonialism upon different regions of the country, and the uneven distribution of social and economic amenities in post-independence Ghana have all contributed to present-day ethnic tensions.

In February 1994, more than 1,000 persons were killed and 150,000 others displaced in the northeastern part of Ghana in fighting between Konkomba on one side and Nanumba, Dagomba, and Gonja on the other. The clashes resulted from longstanding grievances over land ownership and the prerogatives of chiefs. A military task force restored order, but a state of emergency in the region remained in force until mid-August 1994.

Although this violence was certainly evidence of ethnic tension in the country, most observers agreed that the case in point was exceptional. As one prolific writer on modern Ghana, Naomi Chazan, has aptly observed, undifferentiated recourse to ethnic categories has obscured the essential fluidity that lies at the core of shared ties in the country. Evidence of this fluidity lies in the heterogeneous nature of all administrative regions, in rural-urban migration that results in interethnic mixing, in the shared concerns of professionals and trade unionists that cut across ethnic lines, and in the multi-ethnic composition of secondary school and university classes.

Urban centers are the most ethnically mixed because of migration to towns and cities by those in search of employment. Rural areas, with the exception of cocoa-producing areas that have attracted migrant labor, tend to reflect more traditional population distributions.

One overriding feature of the country's ethnic population is that groups to the south who are closer to the Atlantic coast have long been influenced by the money economy, Western education, and Christianity, whereas Gur-speakers to the north, who have been less exposed to those influences, have came under Islamic influence. These influences were not pervasive in the respective regions, however, nor were they wholly restricted to them.

The debate in Cameroon on the concept of “electoral village” whereby urbanised people cast their votes along ethnic lines enhances that the village, the lineage, the clan and the ethnic group still constitute vital variables in the political system (Nkwi 1997: 140). This decision has given rise to new political struggle within the ruling class.

The concept of indigenous versus the strangers, built in the new constitution makes certain Cameroonians strangers in their own country, has further exasperated the already tense situation.

Religion in Ghana and Cameroon

In the absence of viable structures of justice in many African countries that are struggling to evolve new democratic systems, the church claims to speak for the silent majority. It also calls on its adherents to participate in the political process to help create just social structures. A review of the literature on religion and politics in Ghana reveals that since the 1980s, the church has taken a more activist role in national politics than at any other time in its history. Much of the church's political activity was initiated collectively under the umbrella of the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) and Ghana Bishops' Conference (GBC), with it's related body, the National Catholic Secretariat (NCS).

Religion has a double function of legitimating both the status quo and protest. According to the church, Ghanaian civil liberties such as the protection of human rights, concern about the poor and the oppressed, and freedom of the press had been seriously jeopardized by the military. Therefore, the church undertook a dual responsibility. First, it insisted on its prophetic role (i.e., as a social critic) in the political arena and challenged unparalled military violence. Thus, Ghanaian Christian political participation had primarily been based on social justice issues. Second, the church educated Christians about their civil rights and motivated them to participate in the democratic process. In fulfilling this educational objective, the church avoided partisan politics.

The spread of Islam into West Africa, beginning with ancient Ghana in the ninth century, was mainly the result of the commercial activities of North African Muslims The empires of both Mali and Songhai that followed ancient Ghana in the Western Sudan adopted the religion. Islam made its entry into the northern territories of modern Ghana around the fifteenth century. Mande or Wangara traders and clerics carried the religion into the area. The northeastern sector of the country was also influenced by Muslims who escaped the Hausa jihads of northern Nigeria in the early nineteenth century.

Most Ghanaian Muslims are Sunni, following the Maliki version of Islamic law. Sufism, involving the organization of mystical brotherhoods ( tariq) for the purification and spread of Islam, is not widespread in Ghana. The Tijaniyah and the Qadiriyah brotherhoods, however, are represented. The Ahmadiyah, a sect originating in nineteenth-century India, is the only non-Sunni order in the country.

Despite the spread of Islamism (popularly known as Islamic fundamentalism) in the Middle East, North Africa, and even in Nigeria since the mid-1970s, Ghanaian Muslims and Christians have had excellent relations. Guided by the authority of the Muslim Representative Council, religious, social, and economic matters affecting Muslims have often been redressed through negotiations. The Muslim Council has also been responsible for arranging pilgrimages to Mecca for believers who can afford the journey. The Ghanaian Ahmadiyah Movement, which has established a number of vocational training centers, hospitals, and some secondary schools, is an exception.

Conclusions:

Although the ethnicization of state power is a reality in many African countries, however, in some cases the component of the multi-layered character of ethnicity does crystallize in the creation of a trans-ethnic group which lays claim to state power and actually holds that power. The creation of a trans-ethnic group may undermine the particularistic ethnic factor, and this would be conducive to the strengthening of democracy. (In Iraq and Syria for example there are Kurds and Turkuman).

Another challenge is the ways in which ethnicities are constituted and transformed through confrontation or struggles over the organisation of political community, power, and resources in colonial and post-colonial state formation.

The imprints of ethnicity on nation building and politics are state-society relations, and popular perceptions of inter-relationship of class and communal differences.

Although the nature of the transition to democracy varies from country to country, there have been common sociological, political, and economic constraints on developing democratic societies throughout Africa. Some of these constraints include inefficient bureaucracies, fragile institutions, economies in serious trouble, and an undemocratic political culture wherein people live in fear with little trust or pride in government.

One significant ingredient of democratic transitions identified in Africa was the creation of an enabling environment, which would permit citizens to live in accordance with their beliefs and rights without obstruction from government. There are certain prerequisites for an enabling environment, which include a legal order based on human rights, societal awareness of the instrumental and intrinsic values of democracy, a competent state, a committed minority, courage, and a culture of tolerance. (In Egypt the question of Copts being treated as minority)

In most African countries, it is recognized that information does not circulate beyond a small portion of the urban population, owing to illiteracy, language barriers, and costs. Because, as one person commented, the "individual ignorance of personal rights and understanding of what democracy means has encouraged authoritarianism in Africa, there is the need for political education at the grass roots level about democracy.

Culture is central to conflict (and therefore to conflict resolution) as well as to development both by determining the identity of the peoples involved as groups and individuals and by shaping the techniques and mechanisms that they evolved over a long period (http://www.ossrea.net/development/chap2-6.htm).

An African perspective treats ethnicity as a form of African identity. Countries such as Nigeria, Zaire, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi have suffered decades of misrule and conflicts due to an inadequate understanding of ethnicity and the management of ethnic relations. Indeed, if properly guided, politicised ethnicity can serve various objectives, such as mobilising resources to do away with oppressive rule and assisting in economic development. (In Lebanon some religious sects over time have acquired some sense of ethnic identity such as Maronites and Druze)

In countries like Ethiopia, Liberia, and Somalia, ethnicity has proved a potent weapon for sorting out the vagaries of personal rule although not without lamentable repercussions. (conflicts in Iraq, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey)

African states should cautiously respond to ethnic demands by equitably distributing national resources in order to ensure economic and social justice. States which tend to ignore or fail to accommodate ethnic claims are almost certainly doomed to political instability and perhaps collapse. Ethnicity in Africa: Towards a Positive Approach. Seyoum Y. Hameso. iUniverse.com. 2001. Pp. 120 (Iraqis and Lebanese attempts to shift power relations in 1990s and 2000s between the Christians, Shiites and Sunnis)

Attempts by some groups to impose their languages and cultures on others, the personalisation of the postcolonial state and its diminished capability in recent years have led to the revitalisation of ethnicity and kinship relations as meaningful systems for maintaining meaning and security. (conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Turkey, Kurds, etc.)

It is not ethnicity per se that is the cause of Africa’s problems, but the lack of meaningful development. Conflicts were mainly responses to failed development projects within which ethnicity is entangled and held as scapegoat for almost everything that went wrong. This is not to say that ethnic conflicts are not responsible for the displacement of people and disruption of economic activities or other problems in Africa.

References

Bailey, G. “Rebirth of the Non-western World.” Anthropology Newsletter 35, no. 9 (1994).

Bekker, S. “The Politics of Ethnicity.” Indicator South Africa 10, no. 3 (1993): 81-83.

Bening, R. B. Ghana Regional Boundaries and National Integration. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1999.

Boaten, Abayie. Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts in Africa: Ghana’s Example. Legon: University of Ghana, 1995. MOST Ethno-Net Publication: Anthropology of Africa (http://www.ethnonet-africa.org/pubs/p95boaten.htm)

Chazan, Naomi. The State, ethnicity and politics in Ghana. Paper presented at African 24 th Meeting of Studies Association, Bloomington, Indiana, 1981.

Cohen, A. “The Lesson of Ethnicity.” In Urban Ethnicity, ix-xxiv. London: Tavistock Publications, 1974.

Dovlo, Elom. “Christian Missions and Nation Building in Ghana: An Historical Evaluation.” In Uniquely African? : African Christian identity from cultural and historical perspectives, edited by James L. Cox and Gerrie ter Haar. Trenton, Nj: Africa World Press, c2003.

Elonge, Henry A. “Visions of Change in Cameroon with the Context of a New World Order.” In Issues and trend in contemporary African politics: stability, development and democratisations, edited by George Akeya Agbango, 173-190. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.

Falola, Toyin. “Ethnicity and Nigeria Politics: The Past in the Yoruba Present.” In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Bruce Berman et al, 148-165. Oxford: James Currey Ltd, 2004.

Longdale, S. Moral Ethnicity and Political Trabilism: The case of the Kikuyu. Paper of Wissenschaftliche Tagung Vereingung der Afrikanisten Deutsch, Duisburg, 1995.

Marks, Shula. “The dog that did not bark, or ‘why Natal did not take off”: Ethnicity and Democracy in South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal.” In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, edited by Bruce Berman et al, 183-199. Oxford: James Currey Ltd, 2004.

Nkwi, Paul Nchoji. Traditional diplomacy: A Study of inter-ethnic relationships. Yaounde, 1986.

________. “Ethnicity and Party Politics in Cameroon: The Politics of Divide and Rule.” In Regional Balance and National Integration, lessons Learned and the Uncertain Future, edited by Paul N Nkwi and F. B. Nyamnjo, 138-149. Yaounde: ICASSRT, 1997.

Nwel, Pierre Titi. “Churches and the Democratic Upheaval in Cameroon 1982-1993.” In The Christian Churches and the Democratisation in Africa, edited by Paul Gifford,168-187. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.

Oelbaum, Jay. “Ethnicity Adjusted? Economic Reform, Elections and Tribalism in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 42, no. 2 (July 2004): 242-273.

Okafor, Gabriel Maduka. Christians and Muslims in Cameroon. Wurzburg: Echter Verlag Altenberge:Oros-Verag, 1994.

Smith, A. D. “Chosen Peoples: Why ethnic groups survive.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, no. 3 (1992): 436-456.

Wilks, Ivor. Wa and Wala: Islam and polity in northwestern Ghana. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.