Africa’s prime political problem

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33033, 28 September 1972, Page 23

Africa’s prime political problem

(By

ROY LEWIS,

of “The Times/* through N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON. When a British Prime Minister constructs his Government, he puts a Scot in the Scottish Office and a Welshman in the Welsh Office, but otherwise he selects his Ministers on their purely political merits, though he may keep an eye on regional affiliations to ensure that the Government is responsive enough to the people as a w'hole. In most African countries the process is very different. An African President or Prime Minister, or even military dictator, usually has to put tribal claims ahead of merit. Either he is obliged to reflect the broad tribal make-up of the country, so that, for the sake of peace, every tribe is getting a proper share of the power and perquisites of office, or he is ensuring that a dominant tribe will remain dominant.

He has rather more freedom of choice if the country is made up of a medley of small tribes (Tanzania is often cited) than if two or three powerful and selfconscious ethnic groups are rivals for power. Only a minority of the African States have boundaries co-terminus with one tribe, such as Swaziland. Tribal rivalries African intellectuals and Governments dislike foreign emphasis on their tribal problems. Some ban the very word. The fact remains that over

most of Africa the prime political problem is to create nations out of congeries of tribes, and it is generally impossible to explain changes in African domestic politics or personalities without some knowledge of the tribal setup.

Post-colonial African politics are largely tribal politics, as the major events of the decade suggest. The collapse of the British-made Nigerian Federation (designed to create a unity embracing diversity), the military take-overs under Ironsi and Gowon, and the Ibo-led Biafran secession, were the result of tribal rivalries which the strained Constitution could no longer contain. (Sir Abubakar tried to include almost every interest

in an enormous Cabinet and Government. The Katanga secession in the Congo stemmed from tribal hostilities against the Balubas. The East African mutinies of 1964 were sparked off by a tribal revolt in Zanzibar, and the appalling massacres in Rwanda in 1964 and Burundi in 1972 arose from deep seated, and apparently ineradicable, tribal differences between the Bahutu and Batutsi.

Reaction to challenge

Even when tribal rivalries do not produce such dramatic disasters, they underlie and explain day-to-day political developments in many States.

The tendency for African Presidents progressively to strengthen their power is often a reaction to tribal challenges.

President Kaunda of Zambia has had to face successively a Lozi challenge and a Bemba challenge: to keep the peace he has been forced to take personal control of the ruling and intertribal Unip Party—and to plan a one-party State. Nkrumah faced a strong challenge from the Ashanti, or a section of them, and attempts were made on his life. He centralised power in his own hands until his behaviour became intolerable. When, after the military interlude elections were again held, the Akan-speak-ing peoples asserted themselves for a time behind Dr Busia’s leadership. The pressure of the Bemba for predominance in Zambia, held in check by a nonBemba President, finds echoes among strong tribes in other States.

Dominance in Kenya

The Kikuyu dominate the Kenyan Government and civil service, despite discontent among the Luo, the next strongest tribe, but they have not the same position in the Army, and this might affect events when President Kenyatta — who, though strongly Kikuyu, is also a revered leader “above tribe” — departs from the political scene.

In Ethiopia, the historic dominance of the Amhara continues under the overriding prestige of the Emperor, but on his departure, the Galla, already restive, will want a new deal.

In Uganda, tribal war broke out within the Army after General Amin seized power from Dr Ob .te, whose Lango and Acholi kin in the officer corps were shot up. Amin has, on the other hand, appealed to the West Nile peoples, and to the Baganda, whose tribal institutions and pride Obote repressed.

Tribalism was overlaid in the common struggle against the colonial masters, which produced “the African revolution,” and “pan-African-ism,” and many Africans, therefore, grievously underestimated the grip of “old Africa” on the modem generation.

Call to Bantustans It is interesting that Chief Matanzima of the Transkei has sounded a call tor the co-operation, or union, of all the Bantustans — a brotherhood of Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Tswana and other tribes — against white South Africa.

The South Africans have sedulously encouraged tribal separatism —• indeed, to the extent of calling the tribes “nations,” although they do not, on precisely the same criteria, designate the Eng-lish-language whites as a separate tribe or “nation” from the Afrikaners.

The problems of tribalism, for the African statesman, are the obverse of what na-tion-building Africans are trying to do. to fit into the modern world, what took the various peoples of Britain, France or Italy centuries (and even now tribal problems remain, as in Ireland or in Belgium, of an acute kind).

Their anxieties make them touchy, and it is fair to recognise how much they have accomplished. One problem is that the desire to create, or recreate, a genuine African culture or Negritude — something to back up the new. nationhoods of the 40 successor-States, must inevitably hark back to recent tribal times.

The banning of mini-skirts or wigs, or insistence that the Chagga wear trousers, are futile gestures. The strength of nonAfrican patterns is rather ironically shown in the inability of Gambia and Senegal to merge into a single, more or less homogenous, Wolofspeaking Senegambia. Each clings to its English or French institutions. Significant interrelation The complexities of tribal politics, in terms of 3000 (ethnic groupings identified by anthropologists (who differ) and possibly 500 to 600 languages in two score of groupings cannot easily be shown graphically. (More-

over, tribal frontiers, though frozen by colonial rule, still shift—e.g., witness the Somalis). But the interrelation of tribal and national boundaries is significant, and though no map can show more than the broad outlines, it may provide a guide to a vital factor in African development (provided the numbers and talents of tribes, on which facts are not precise, are taken into account). These problems should be followed sympathetically. The pride many Africans take in their often illogicallydefined national States does derive from a sense of liberation from the narrowness of tribalism.

Equally, these States set problems so severe to statesmen that it is no wonder the Nkrumahist visions of wider African federations comparable to the United States or India have come to nothing, and that African nationalism is even more segmented than is Latin America.

The result, which disappoints many African leaders, is an inevitable loss of diplomatic leverage in world affairs, though in the nontribal atmosphere of the United Nations and elsewhere there is often more cooperation than in African capitals.