B009THJ1WI EBOK

by Young, Crawford

  Another measure of this territorial attachment is the insistence of all Congolese insurgent groups on the notion that is reflected in their choosing names for their parties that invoke the nation, for example, Alliance démocratique pour la libération du Congo, Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie, and Mouvement pour la libération du Congo, even though their original following was distinctly regional. Even more striking is the nomenclature of a pair of rebel militias locking in a bloody battle for control of the northeastern city of Bunia in 1999 and the years following, that resulted in fifty-thousand casualties. Although each party represented an ethnic contender for urban dominance, both concealed their communal projects under names proclaiming a fidelity to nation: the Union des patriotes congolais (Hema) and the Front des nationalistes intégrationistes (Lendu). This contrasts with the independence elections in 1960, when any number of parties adopted without hesitation ethnic labels (Alliance des Bakongo, Balubakat, Union des Mongo).

  The same pattern holds true elsewhere. In the African civil wars of the 1990s, virtually all contenders, even those in Sudan, relied on such nomenclature: the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led the second southern revolt. The main Darfur rebel movements bear the names of Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement. The Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, the Forces nouvelles of Ivory Coast, the diverse fragments in Somalia all follow the same mode. The major exception is the Mouvement des forces démocratiques de Casamance in Senegal, initially a rare explicitly separatist (Diola) uprising.

  These illustrations of the vitality of territorial attachments suggest the need to seek their origins in a now globalized doctrine of nationalism and its importation into Africa. “Nation” as one of the defining attributes of the state was introduced in chapter 2. Metaphorically, it transforms the state from an arid abstraction, whose corporeal representation is found in the institutions of rule, into a living organism embodying its human population. Students of nationalism agree that the ideology took form in Europe, and most date its visible emergence to the French Revolution.31 In its initial forms, the idea of the nation was intertwined with the cultural personality of its core ethnic group. With few exceptions, across the Eurasian land mass from Ireland to Japan nations are defined in name and content in terms of their dominant ethnonational group. When by the nineteenth century “nation” rather than dynasty identified a country, populations transformed from subjects of the king into a “people.” The people in turn, through the alchemy of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, became the nation as wellspring of state legitimation.32

  The idea of nationalism then diffused throughout the world, mutating in form to respond to particular circumstances: it yielded the doctrine of unification for the principalities of Italy and Germany, and it brought explosive challenges for the three vast multinational empires, the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman. In Japan, China, and Thailand, ruling groups seized on nationalism as a doctrine of self-strengthening to resist imperial expansion. In the Western hemisphere, populations immigrated from the imperial centers but required a script of difference to justify revolt; this they found in territorially grounded ideals of liberty, though they simultaneously denied such rights to slave and indigenous populations. Civic political values also became defining elements in some versions of nationalism: secular republicanism in France, parliamentary rule in United Kingdom, constitutional federalism in the United States.33 These liberal or civic forms of nationalism gave rise to distinctions contrasting these virtuous forms and the more pathological ethnic nationalisms of Eastern Europe.34 But in all the early versions of nationalist ideology a project of homogenization lurked: the premise of the nation as one and indivisible.

  Nationalism as global force thus evolved as a potent yet protean construct; it had varying content and took divergent pathways, and the valence of its symbolic resources differed from one country to the next. For Africa, the crucial genetic adaptation of the idea of nationalism was its fusion with anticolonial revolt in tandem with its embrace of the doctrine of self-determination. Initially in the Americas, then in Asia and the Middle East, and finally in Africa, independence struggle assimilated the idea of nationalism as its doctrinal foundation. In the process inhabitants of a colonial territory became a people.

  The colonial state never invested resources in fostering such an outcome, offering only a subordinate role in imperial administration to the educated African; indeed, the French and Portuguese sought with some success to inculcate the metropolitan identity by promising assimilation to schooled Africans who adopted the cultural repertoire of the colonizer. In the French case, such a prospect held attraction for elements of the elite until late in the colonial period. In the late 1930s, subsequent Algerian nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas could still write, “If I had encountered the Algerian nation, I would be a nationalist, and, as such, have nothing to be ashamed of. Men who have died for a patriotic ideal are honored and respected every day. . . . And yet I will not die for the Algerian fatherland, for this fatherland does not exist. I have not en countered it. I have questioned history. I have questioned the living and the dead. I have visited the cemeteries. No one has spoken to me of such a thing.”35

  In the sub-Saharan territories under French rule, some form of federated autonomy within a French ensemble was still the ostensible objective of much of the political leadership as late as 1958. A British Colonial Office document in 1944 noted that with growing contacts and travel educated Africans had “a dawning realization of themselves as Africans, even as ‘nationals’ of a territory.”36 But even in 1947, leading Nigerian politician Obafemi Awolowo could famously declare, “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographic expression.”37

  However, the accelerating dynamic of decolonization forced the African nationalist into the territorial compartment. When the campaign for liberation succeeded more quickly than most anticipated, the colonial territory became sovereign state. The colonial occupant as negative focus for mobilization receded into the background, and the legitimation of the newly conquered institutions of rule became paramount. Appropriation of a territorial interpretation of the idea of nationalism was critical to consolidation of the rule of the postcolonial successor elites: in a word, nation-building became a critical project.

  The now universalized international state system had come to rest on a premise that its individual components were “nations.” In everyday language, “state” and “nation” were interchangeable terms. If states fell short of corresponding to a recognizable version of nationhood, then they were summoned to improve themselves. African states thus required nation-building not only for internal legitimation but also for international respectability.

  In the classical definitions, the original “nations” were based on such shared attributes as culture, language, ancestry, history, myths, narrative, memory, territory, or religion. Around these symbolic resources, the pioneers of nationalist ideology erected a dogma of commanding emotive resonance. In its fullest forms, the nation claimed the supreme loyalty of its subjects, obligating them to fight, even die, in its defense. In his classic study of Afro-Asian nationalism, Rupert Emerson writes: “In the contemporary world the nation is for great portions of mankind the community with which men most intensely and fervently identify, even to the extent of being prepared to lay down their lives for it, however deeply they may differ among themselves on other issues.”38 As nationalism became a global export, not all the original constitutive elements were available, yet the idea proved amenable to different circumstances. The crystallizing global premise that states should be nations fostered its diffusion. Once assimilated, “nation” transformed the arid, juridical state into a warm, living collective person. Through the alchemy of the nation, civil society acquired a vocation of unity.

  In the African adaptations of nationalism, many of the raw materials were not available. A deep historical narrative is found only in three states: Mor
occo, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Neither shared culture nor language could play the same role as they did in polities lacking relative ethnonational homogeneity, found only in the Arab states, Somalia, and a few of the smaller polities (Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland). Nor was religion necessarily a useful component. Religious diversity was the most frequent pattern; even in the overwhelmingly Muslim states of northern Africa, divisive understandings of Islam make it a problematic defining element of the nation. Thus territorial identity itself became the primary component, erected with few exceptions on a shallow historical narrative, recent shared memories, and a limited repertoire of common icons: major episodes of resistance to colonial occupation, the anticolonial struggle, epic political leaders like Nkrumah, Senghor, Nyerere, or Bourguiba for some, unique historical events such as the national conferences for others.

  Acutely conscious of the potential fragility of their polities, the postcolonial leadership resolutely embarked on the path of nation-building. The pedagogical resources available the state for such purposes are considerable; Africa in part merely retraced a path followed in the heartlands of older nationalisms. Eugen Weber persuasively demonstrates that even in the French cradleland of nationalism, a consciousness of French national identity was far from permeating peasant consciousness even in the late nineteenth century. Deliberate nation-building by the center was central to its diffusion; the prime instruments were the republican schoolhouse and universal military conscription.39 The oft-cited adage of the founders of the Italian state could apply to many others: “We have created Italy; now we must create Italians.” One may cite as well the place of the common school in the United States in fostering the assimilation of successive generations of immigrants. These ventures in national construction were grounded on the premise of homogenization; the modern nation required for its collective purposes a standardization of culture and a common idiom.

  However, in a crucial respect creating Nigerians or Congolese differed from fabricating Italians, French, or Americans: for most countries outside the Arab north, homogenization was not just problematic but downright perilous. Some small island polities enjoyed a creolized homogeneity, but most were multiethnic. Only five countries bear the name of a preponderant group or, in erstwhile Soviet parlance, a “titular nationality” (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Somalia, Comoros).40 Most African versions of nation-building needed to project cultural neutrality, a territorial consciousness devoid of ethnic referents, and so avoid drawing on the extensive cultural resources of a nation-forming group. And African states did have at their disposal a number of resources to achieve this purpose.

  The celebration of the liberation movement is one such resource, often personified by the leader of the independence movement. Armed liberation movements provided a particularly compelling script, when they were unified and effective. The iconography derived from the dramaturgy of struggle is well illustrated by the obelisk and statue of the unknown liberation fighter in Namibia at Heroes’ Acre in Windhoek.41

  Everywhere in Africa, school systems were rapidly expanded after independence. Curriculums were reformed in the name of “Africanization,” although its real content was territorialization. School systems once largely the domain of missions were often nationalized or at least brought under closer supervision of education ministries, who prescribed the curriculum and texts. The schoolhouse assiduously promoted an attachment to the new nation. Its buildings were adorned with national symbols: flags, maps, portraits of the national leader. Daily routines included rituals of national affiliation, such as singing the newly created national anthems. Even after the early years, the national language (usually the former colonial tongue) was the medium of instruction. The educational system was an important instrument in the construction of national attachments.

  Seemingly banal symbolic resources also operated. The iconography of currency, stamps, and flags communicated a silent message of state presence. The ubiquitous presidential portraits decorated the walls of government buildings, and even shopkeepers found it imprudent to fail to display the official photograph. Uniformed state personnel were widely visible. Many enterprises bore the country designation: airlines and many parastatals. Most countries had obligatory identity cards of government issue; travelers had to have passports. Thus placed in the citizen’s pocket, the state could hardly fail to also find a way to his or her head.

  The nation is also present in many domains of popular culture. International matches of the national soccer team attract intense excitement, especially the global competitions of the World Cup or its African counterparts. The movie Invictus captures the role of rugby as a reinforcing emblem of a multiracial South African nation in a world competition. In symbolic terms, the national team performs a ritualized, regulated limited war against the external other, capturing as a surrogate collective self, in the process, the mobilized identity of the citizenry. A symbolic pedagogy is found in various other cultural domains: local films, street literature, such territorially specific art forms as Congolese urban popular painting or Senegalese glass paintings. Distinctive genres of urban popular music are likewise subliminal registers of national identity.

  Even though the territorial nation has shallow historical roots, there has been a gradual accretion of memory now for more than a century. No living person can remember a different territorial frame. Successive sedimentary layers of shared experience enter historical recollection. The territory becomes the location for social memory and for recording the major events defining the past. As such, at an unconscious level it becomes an assumed, unreflected identification, or what Michael Billig perceptively terms banal nationalism: “In so many little ways the citizenry are reminded of their national place in the world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed in the public building.”42

  The African project of nationhood is usually compelled to differentiate itself from ethnicity. At first, leaders normally assumed that ethnicity was an artefact of a traditional worldview and that the relentless march of modernity would reduce its importance. For example, Guinean leader Sékou Touré declared at the time of independence that “in three or four years, no one will remember the tribal, ethnic or religious rivalries which, in the recent past, caused so much damage to our country and its population.”43

  Such illusions did not long survive, but the nation-building project generally did succeed in representing territorial nationalism as a higher form of identity distinct from ethnicity, existing on a different identity track. Ethnicity was deemed legitimate within a purely cultural and private kinship realm but not as a discourse of statehood. In the linguistic realm, sub-Saharan states invariably retained the language of the colonizer as official medium. In the unusual cases in which a single lingua franca had currency throughout the territory (most notably Tanzania), it could assume the role of state language, but elsewhere the linguistic distancing that came with adopting the colonizer’s language as the official language insulated the nation from having to identify with its largest groups. The corresponding cost was identification of the state with a medium that a number of citizens could not speak.

  Nonetheless, the exceptional place of multilingualism in African societies provides an important support for territorial nationalism. The widespread pattern described by David Laitin of a three-layered linguistic universe, each with distinctive domains, diffuses the tensions often generated by language diversity elsewhere. Maternal language operates as medium for hearth and local community. A regional lingua franca, now spoken by most, facilitates urban and marketplace communication. The European language operates as medium for government and high politics. The everyday reality of multilingualism inhibits the crystallization of aggressive forms of language ideologies.44

  In the first decades, the
single-party system of rule was another mechanism of state containment of ethnicity. Even after political opening in the 1990s, many countries retained a constitutional prohibition on party organization based on ethnicity or religion. Such rules could not entirely succeed, and in instances where a particular region or ethnic community was perceived as unduly dominating the state apparatus, groups sensing exclusion expressed their resentment, though generally without withdrawing their identification with the territorial nation.

  In arguing the thesis that the internalization of a form of territorial identity among African citizenries partly explains state persistence, I do not wish to overstate its weight, force, or even its necessary permanence. In states afflicted with unending crisis and prolonged failure, a progressive detachment of the abandoned citizen from a territorial attachment is conceivable; whether the young men in Kivu will still dance the frontier ten years from now if there is no return to peace and security in eastern Congo-Kinshasa is uncertain. Indeed there is some recent evidence in that country of higher levels of ethnic or regional assertion in Katanga and the Kongo areas.45 The recent reappearance of an Igbo separatist movement, MASSOB, discussed in chapter 7, is another symptom of potential restiveness, even though few Igbo view secession as a realistic possibility.46 But, except for Sudan, there is no evidence of a widespread defection from the territorial nation as yet.

  The territorial nationalism thus normalized has some limits. In terms of its emotional intensity, perhaps it falls short of the more assertive and deeply rooted versions of nationalism in the world such as the American, French, Japanese or Chinese forms that are equipped with vibrant historical narratives mostly lacking in Africa. We find little comparable to the 1389 “field of blackbirds” that served as a foundational mythology for Serbian nationalism, nor such lyrical historical epics like Nehru’s Discovery of India that inspired Indian nationalism.47 Rather than an active, aggressive consciousness, territorial nationalism is a more passive, unreflected attachment.