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by Young, Crawford

  At the time of Ghana and Guinea independence the colonial hegemon in the Belgian Congo still appeared an impregnable fortress. Almost overnight, by the beginning of 1960, bula matari dissolved, surrendering its status as leviathan and turning itself into a supplicant to the fragmented Congolese nationalists in order to assure social peace in return for immediate independence: a further fillip to anticolonial enthusiasm and a spectacular warning to all remaining colonial occupants. But the shattering meltdown that began five days after independence eviscerated euphoria: the new state within a fortnight lost control of its mutinous army, its richest province and primary revenue source, Katanga, through secession, and its bureaucracy through the panic flight of most of the Belgian cadres still occupying its top ranks. The global crisis and multiple external interventions that ensued foregrounded new apprehensions about the stability of the new African states, and their vulnerability to outside forces.

  The durability of the decolonization settlements thus came into question. In a number of other significant cases, compromise formulas for the independence transition had unraveled by the mid-1960s, resulting in civil wars in Nigeria and Sudan and ugly impasse in Uganda, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, and Benin. A clear trend to single-party rule was already evident; so also was a visible drop in mass enthusiasm for once popular independence leaders. Not long after, the military coup emerged as a mechanism for regime change, since the one-party formula made leadership change impossible. The imposition of army rule perhaps solved the problem of political turnover but at the price of a new and unpredictable form of autocracy. Whether through single-party monopolies or military rule, all paths seemed to lead to authoritarianism by the later 1960s. By 1970, only in three independent countries—Botswana, Gambia, and Mauritius—did the ostensibly representative democratic constitutions of the independence transition remain truly operative; elsewhere, nearly 40% of the countries were led by military figures who frequently created their own single parties. In almost all other countries single parties either held legal standing as the sole political organ or were on a path clearly moving in that direction.

  THE FATE OF MONARCHIES

  Before turning to single-party consolidation and the rise of military rule, I pause for a brief reflection on the virtual disappearance of monarchy as a modality of rule at the territorial state level soon after independence, despite the historical importance of kingship in Africa.2 In eight countries, at the moment of independence, monarchs served as heads of state. In four—Egypt, Tunisia, Burundi, and Libya—kings were swept aside in favor of single-party or military regimes in the early independence years. Ethiopia and Morocco had a rich history of monarchies of millennial depth; both were lynchpins of the political systems, though the last emperor of Ethiopia was ousted and killed by the army in 1974. Swaziland had a more shallow precolonial history but managed to outwit decolonization constitutionalists and swiftly consolidate royal autocracy. Finally, kingship survived in Lesotho but in a much reduced capacity. These last four cases—Ethiopia, Morocco, Swaziland, and Lesotho—that deviate from continental patterns merit brief scrutiny.

  In Morocco, the singular legitimacy of kingship, and the advantage found by sultans in managing a complex society through limited though real political pluralism, resulted in an unusually stable form of rule. Three successive sultans survived serious challenges, both at the time of independence and again in 1971 and 1972 when military coup efforts narrowly failed. The monarchs proved astute political managers, beginning with Mohammed V, king at the moment of 1956 independence, through his successors Hassan II (1965) and Mohammed VI (1999). Though Mohammed V overcame the stigma of royal collaboration with the French by developing ties with emergent nationalists beginning in the 1930s, the critical rehabilitation of the king (sultan) came through his deposition and exile in 1953. Despite strong republican currents in nationalist circles, demand for the return of Mohammed V became the popular rallying cry; confronted with rapidly deteriorating circumstances and a liberation war in neighboring Algeria, the French were compelled to return him to the throne, from which place he then brokered the restoration of Moroccan sovereignty. The sultan maneuvered with consummate skill to prevent the leading nationalist party, Istaqlal, from achieving sole power. Throughout, the monarchy has favored political pluralism, deriving its power from its remarkable capacity to orchestrate diverse social forces: Berber tribes, the restless mountain redoubts (siba, or zone of dissidence historically), an organized urban labor force, Islamist currents, and a factionalized bourgeoisie.

  In achieving a relative mastery over the Moroccan political landscape, the monarchy drew on a deep historical narrative, dating from the ninth century. The present Alawi line has held the throne since the seventeenth century. Its contemporary kings invoke a potent repertoire of powerfully resonating symbols and beliefs. As sharifs, or presumed descendants of the Prophet, they incarnate intertwined religious and political legitimacy. As commander of the faithful, the sultan also embodies the charismatic supernatural force of baraka, the mystical currents of Sufism, and the administrative force of the modern state. John Waterbury appropriately opens his masterful monograph with article 19 of the 1962 constitution: “The King, Commander of the Faithful, symbol of the unity of the Nation, guarantor of the perennity and continuity of the state, watches over the observance of Islam and the Constitution. He is the protector of the rights and liberties of the citizens, and of social groups and collectivities.”3 A more recent study dissecting the performative powers of the monarchy concludes that the “immense capacities of a late twentieth-century technological state, combined with the effective authority of an age-old theocratic-based legitimacy, synthesized to give the regime the capacity to govern with few constraints other than those imposed by economic necessity.”4

  The Swazi kingdom emerged under King Sobhuza only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the wake of the Nguni wars in southern Africa and reign of the legendary Zulu conqueror Chaka. Early in the colonial period, kings compromised their legitimacy through extravagant land deals under dubious circumstances; by 1908 some two-thirds of the kingdom was in the hands of foreign concessions. King Sobuza II (1922) launched a land buyback scheme, which recovered a portion of the lost territory; he also irritated the British through repeated demands for recognition as king, not just paramount chief, the habitual colonial designation for a customary ruler. His increasingly prickly relations with the colonizer helped erase the earlier stigma of his predecessor’s reckless land cessions and restored the customary prestige of the monarchy sufficiently to allow it to assert regalian claims to postcolonial authority. Though the independence constitution provided for a modicum of representative democracy under royal rule, the royalist party, the Imbokodvo National Movement, won all the seats in the 1967 independence elections (with only 80% of the vote). By 1973, Sobuza II—annoyed by the 1972 election of three opposition Ngwane National Liberatory Congress members—suspended the constitution and began ruling by royal decree. A couple of new constitutions offering some representation through customary channels were subsequently drafted but then quickly set aside, and there was hope for a time that King Mswati III, who ascended the throne in 1986, would institute a less autocratic rule, but today Swaziland remains an autocratic monarchy.5

  The Ethiopian monarchy, whose antiquity extends back to the sixth century BC, vanished following a military coup in 1974. More than any other African kingdom, the emperor relied on a legendary prominence in classical historical accounts. During two periods of vitality, between the first and eighth and then again from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries AD, the empire was a regional hegemon. Then after three turbulent centuries of warring factions another moment of renewal came in the mid-nineteenth century. The revival of the empire coincided with the imperial partition of Africa, in which the renovated empire became an important participant, expanding in all directions under Emperor Menelik II in the 1890s. In an epic battle at Adwa in 1896, Menelik’s forces inflicted a humili
ating defeat on a large Italian army of conquest, a rare event in the annals of colonial occupation memorialized in innumerable popular paintings of this combat.

  He was succeeded by the last emperor, Haile Selassie I, in 1930. Under his rule, the empire engaged in a modernization project that ultimately generated a restive military and a radical intelligentsia who took offense at what it perceived as the feudal backwardness of the country. Though under Italian occupation from 1935 to 1941, the imperial throne survived in British exile, from where the emperor led an Ethiopian force in alliance with British units to restore the kingdom. The new social forces unleashed by the modernization project backed a military coup in 1974 that destroyed the imperial throne and, with it, most of the landlord class.6

  Lesotho is the other country that remains a kingdom. Its kings have been important players, though not the primary rulers. As in Swaziland, the monarchy emerged only in the nineteenth century. Mainstream nationalist parties were much stronger than in neighboring Swaziland, partly because many Sotho men spent part of their lives as migrant laborers in the more politicized environment of South Africa. Chiefs as well are an important force in its unstable politics, and the military has twice intervened. Strikingly, Lesotho ranked last among the nineteen countries surveyed in the 2008 Afro-barometer study both in support for democracy among the population and appraisal of government conformity to norms of democracy. The authors of the study conclude that despite “the façade of parliamentary institutions, the country’s political culture still manifests monarchical and military cultures from the past.”7

  Kingship had been a central institution both in precolonial and colonial Africa, though in most cases other than those noted the orbit of monarchy did not coincide with the territorial demarcations of the colonial partition. In these instances, colonizers normally recognized kings and other customary rulers as “chiefs” and incorporated them as intermediaries at the lower echelons of the colonial apparatus. A number remained loyal to the colonizer until late in the decolonization process, and they were often regarded with suspicion by African nationalist movements. The unitary and centralizing impulses of the postcolonial states often led to attempts to reduce or even eliminate the chiefs, an ambition that frequently floundered on the incapacity to replace their influence over rural populations. In some cases, customary rulers achieved recognition as leaders more august than mere chiefs and had their kingly titles acknowledged and greater latitude conceded to them (the emirs of Northern Nigeria, the monarchs of Buganda in Uganda and Barotseland in Zambia). In the Buganda case, its king (kabaka) served as head of state from the 1962 independence until 1966. The conflict between their regal claims and the reach of the sovereignty doctrines embraced by new rulers produced acute postcolonial conflict in both Uganda and Zambia.

  Recourse to a monarchical ethos was to have an unexpected revival later, when long-ruling auocrats groomed their sons for succession. By 2010, such dynastic practice had occurred in Togo, Congo-Kinshasa, and Gabon; similar plans took visible form in Egypt, Libya, Senegal, Niger, Uganda, and Angola. Public sensibilities were offended by such schemes; even in the successful instances, there was substantial opposition, and especially in Egypt and Senegal clear antipathy to dynasty plans was voiced.

  TOWARDS SINGLE-PARTY MONOPOLIES

  These particular instances noted, we may turn to the great majority of cases where the tendency to one-party rule set in, usually swiftly. Though most countries had clearly dominant parties at independence, in many there was significant opposition. In the largest countries—Nigeria, Sudan, and Congo-Kinshasa—no party came close to achieving a majority in the independence elections. In Uganda, the Uganda Peoples Congress, though ascendant, needed a coalition with the Buganda-based Kabaka Yekka to form a government. In francophone Africa, Benin, Togo, Chad, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville lacked clearly dominant parties in 1960, though regime measures to impose them soon followed.

  Nonetheless, despite these numerous examples of a multiparty reality, the doctrine of single-party rule became continental dogma almost at once. Already in 1959, at a major gathering of African leaders and intellectuals from around the world organized in Ibadan by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a noted intervention by American scholar David Apter on the political value of an effective opposition encountered almost universal rejection; only a fraction of the Nigerian participants diverged from single-party orthodoxy. Congo-Kinshasa leader Patrice Lumumba argued that “divisions lead to the suicide of Africa;” a Togolese participant warned that “too much freedom kills freedom; too much democracy kills democracy,” while others claimed that opposition movements were Trojan horses for imperialism.8

  An explanation of the swiftness of this trend might begin by noting the shallow commitment to liberal constitutionalism on the part of the new leadership. Doubtless the independence constitutions lacked the iconic status of basic laws in long-established democracies. The colonial state always had “constitutions,” which from the perspective of the subject were boundless reservoirs of arbitrary power. One often hears the independence constitutions dismissed as imposed copies of the metropolitan models; there is some truth to this claim, in the sense that the point of departure in the designing of decolonization institutions was inevitably the template provided by the imperial centers: Britain’s Westminster model, France’s more presidential Fifth Republic, Belgium’s parliamentary system. Further, the withdrawing colonizers used the ransom of independence to vest the property rights of colonial interests and in the British case frequently to entrench protection for regions or components of the population to whom it had made special commitments: Barotseland in Zambia, Buganda and the kingdoms in Uganda, smaller communities in Nigeria and Kenya, white settlers in Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Though in many respects the independence constitutions were liberal democratic documents, they lacked affective standing for African publics as well as elites; they reflected bargains struck with the colonizer rather than a negotiated compact between state and society. Thus, with little popular outcry, they were quickly subject to amendment or replacement, such revision being a means of restricting opposition and reinforcing what became single-party rule.

  New rulers were conscious of the fragility of their power and naturally tended to seek its consolidation; the single party was the favorite mechanism. At the same time, they became swiftly aware of the limits of the single party. The authority of the colonial state ultimately rested upon force, including the hypothetical capacity to summon additional military detachments from the imperial centers. The bureaucracies and colonial constabularies were under secure command of colonial governors, and the local chiefly intermediaries remained for the most part reliable clients. But these coercive capacities did not instantly transfer to the new African leaders. Ostensibly to provide security guarantees, the French army initially set up permanent bases in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Central African Republic, and Djibouti, but its intervention in support of regimes was not automatic; Fulbert Youlou in Congo-Brazzaville and David Dacko in Central African Republic made desperate appeals to the French to block coups in 1963 and 1965, respectively, and were turned down. In 1964, the British army put down mutinies in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. But recourse to such security backing was at best a humiliating admission of weakness. The initial postcolonial African armies were small, and they often still had European officers, even commanders, who were reluctant to engage their forces in domestic political conflict. Political activity was off limits for African soldiers and bureaucrats in late colonial times; not only were they mostly not participants in nationalist mobilization, but they were viewed with suspicion as allies of the colonial state and even as agents of repression. Chiefs as well were frequently hostile to nationalist parties, and thus their fidelity to the new order was hardly guaranteed. Thus new rulers could not fully trust the established armature of the state. A common and almost reflexive response was reinforcement of the personal powers of the president, both within state and party.

&
nbsp; Presidents soon heard whispered warnings from their entourage of possible conspiracies taking form, contributing to the sense of insecurity surrounding power exercise. Parliaments were difficult to manage, even with apparently secure majorities. Patrice Lumumba, for example, stitched together an alliance of Congolese nationalist parties constituting a large majority of the assembly in pursuit of confirmation as prime minister in June 1960; however, in the actual vote he gathered support from only 74 of 137 members. The discipline of parliamentary parties was far from assured.

  Further, in a number of instances political impasses soon emerged. In Senegal in 1962, Prime Minister Mamadou Dia sought to oust President Léopold Senghor by mobilizing the left wing of the ruling Union progressiste sénégalaise (UPS). His attempted parliamentary coup was thwarted by the army and triggered a crackdown on dissidents within and without the UPS, followed by a move to full single-party rule. A similar effort to oust Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda through parliamentary maneuver in early 1966 led to a comparable imposition of a single party. In many other instances, ruler fears of constitutional paralysis or opposition conspiracies fueled the move to enforce single-party rule.

  Parties achieving dominance in the terminal colonial period necessarily did so as broad alliances spanning regions and ethnic communities; their success as anticolonial national fronts did not erase the regional particularities of the movements. Once established as panterritorial frontrunners, dominant parties did not see the need to make concessions to ethnoregional appeals, thus enabling their competitors to make use of them and thereby gain a foothold. Virtually everywhere the competitive campaign for electoral support to some degree gave new political content to ethnic identity, convincing incumbents of the perils of uninhibited political competition.