1990s Africa and the Limits of Community

This was first published by Retrospect Journal in their Autumn/Winter 2017 issue, Individuals and Communities. This can be found here.

A pro-Biafra protester in the 2000s

During the 1990s national and community identities drastically shifted. National resurgence was shown in a variety of ways ranging from the peaceful referendums on Quebec’s independence and the creation of a Scottish parliament in 1995 and 1997 respectively, to the bloody genocides in the Balkans following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Africa too saw the reshaping of community. For example, a more inclusive community was created in South Africa following the first multi-racial election in 1994 formally ending Apartheid, but in other areas this change became increasingly exclusive. European powers at the 1884 Berlin Conference carved Africa between themselves disregarding ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, and initiated divide-and-rule policies in the colonised regions. The legacies of this are still felt today. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the end of the Cold War, and the IMF’s adoption of neo-liberal and free market ideologies caused dramatic changes in Africa, and the world, which brought ideas of identity and community into question. In particular, this article will focus on Rwanda, Nigeria, and Somalia showing the shifts in communal identity in these regions.

     The Rwandan Genocide is perhaps the most infamous post-war genocide costing the lives of up to a million people in a month long massacre. Before colonial rule the idea of ‘Tutsis’ and ‘Hutus’ had become class distinctions, but the arrival of German, and later Belgian colonisers had made this distinction firmly racially based. In 1916 Belgian colonial authorities handed out identity cards making someone either a Hutu or Tutsi with the Tutsis in a dominant role. Years later this would lead to moderate Hutus, the Tutsi and Twa populations were murdered en masse in 1994 although it was not the first ethnic violence to strike the ‘land of a thousand hills.’ During the Rwandan Revolution – the revolution to overthrow the Tutsi monarchy and Belgian rule – 130,000 Tutsis fled abroad where exiles formed insurgent groups called inyenzi (cockroaches) to raid Rwanda which led the new president, Grégoire Kayibanda, to seek reprisal on the Tutsi community with the World Council of Churches estimating that 10,000 were killed by the end of 1962. The fear of Tutsis increased when a Tutsi extremist seized power via a military coup in neighbouring Burundi in 1965, causing the massacre of 200,000 and another 200,000 to flee to Rwanda. For thirty years Tutsis and Twa faced discriminated which reached fever pitch in the 1990s.

     The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had been formed in exile by largely Tutsis and invaded Rwanda in 1990, ostensibly to allow exiled Tutsis, (and political exiles), to return home and to potentially end the one-party rule of President Habyarimana initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Under French pressure Habyarimana had been softening his hard-line stance towards multi-party democracy allowing newly forming Hutu opposition groups, like the Social Democratic Party (PSD), to court the RPF. Fighting led to the signing of the Arusha Accords in 1993 which aimed to create a coalition government with Habyarimana’s Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Dévelopment (MRND), the RPF and other opposition parties. Hutus were also allowed to remain in power, being the largest ethnic group, where 60 per cent of upper ranks in the army would be given to Hutus. However, here the limits of community in Rwanda were shown. ‘Hutu Power’ had become a dominant force in Rwandan society and viewed the Arusha Accords as a betrayal. They viewed it as giving too much to Tutsis who they viewed as traitors and not even being human. The Coalition pour le Défence de la Republique (CDR) and the militia Impuzamugambi were formed with the aim to ‘rid’ Rwanda of Tutsis, Twa and Hutu ibyitso. Editor of the paper Kangura, Hassan Ngeze, laid out ‘The Hutu Ten Commandments’ calling any Hutu who worked with, married, or were friends with a traitor, and that only Hutus should have positions in government, administration and the army. Meanwhile, 500,000 machetes were being imported into Rwanda to initiate genocide. On 8 April 1994 Habyarimana and the new president of Burundi were killed when their plane was shot down over Kigali, possibly by Hutu Power ideologues, which initiated the genocide. Willingly or not neighbours killed neighbours, husbands killed wives, and families tore each other apart. For example, several Tutsi pastors wrote to the church president in Mugonero asking for help to receive the reply, ‘There is nothing that I can do for you. All you can do us prepare to die, for your time has come.’ The fear of different communities overshadowed familial, communal and even religious links. Only when the RPF captured Kigali did the genocide stop.

Biafrans in the 1960s

     Like Rwanda, Nigeria has been unable to create a united national community in the same way in which Tanzania or Botswana has. Unlike Ghana, Tanganyika or Algeria, which mostly had one independence movement, what would become Nigeria had several. The British conquest of Nigeria was through ‘colonial violence and metropolitan arbitrariness’ where divide-and-rule policies were most drastically seen. The north was given autonomy due to fierce resistance from the Sokoto Caliphate with an autarkic economy; the west had a cocoa cash-crop economy dependent on foreign markets; and the east had intense British economic penetration with market firms dominating the region. After independence in 1960 Nigeria’s fledgling system was beset by problems of identity. The three main parties were split along regional, and by default ethnic and religious lines. In 1967 this led to the secession of Biafra who feared northern domination following several coups and counter-coups in a civil war made infamous by images of the famine which it caused. In 1999 elected civilian rule returned following over twenty years of military rule, excluding a brief five year period of elected civilian rule, with prospects seeming bright. However, the changing government brought uncertainty with it. The new constitution left many regional groups feeling unrepresented and the new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was accused of showing favouritism towards his own ethnic group, the Yoruba. Figures pointed to how Nigerian Telecommunications, the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company were at one point ran by Yoruba under Obasanjo. Across Nigeria new ethnic and religious groups have formed in response to state corruption or underrepresentation. Even before this period protests in Ogoniland in 1990 against Shell's destruction of the environment were perceived entirely in separatist terms, and the peaceful protests were harshly crushed. Even when civilian government returned the government continued with executions of Ogoni protesters. Since then Nigeria has seen increased regionalism due to central government misrule. The Igbo People’s Congress in the early 2000s started flying the Biafran flag, and most disturbingly is the rise of the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in the north which bases its identity on Hausa-Fulani and Wahhabism.

Siyad Barre

     Somalia is a unique case. Unlike Rwanda and Nigeria Somalia had a very strong sense of national identity upon independence possessing a strong communal identity based on a shared culture. In 1969 a military coup brought to power Mohammad Siyad Barre who proclaimed Somalia to be a Marxist republic. However, he made a mistake by invading Ogaden, a region in Ethiopia populated largely by Somalis, as the USSR switched to supporting Ethiopia. Revolutionary groups, many of them Marxist, rose up to oppose Barre, and when the Cold War ended US ceased sending funds to Somalia in 1988. With a bleak situation the army split into factions, guerrilla groups took control of Somalia’s regions, and Barre became a glorified ‘Mayor of Mogadishu.’ Following the failed US-led UN mission, glamorised in Black Hawk Down, Somalia became a failed state. To this day Somalia still lacks a true central government. However, when the national government failed people created local communities. For centuries Somalia has had a strong clan-family society which Somali scholar Ioan Lewis described as, ‘No other bond of mutual interest had so many far-reaching ramifications in all aspects of private and public life.’ As described by Stephen Ellis, the collapse of the state caused people to turn to clans to recreate the community. Although this has contributed to the rise of Al-Shabaab it has allowed Somalians to continue to have a community to rely on. Colonial rule failed to destroy the Somali clan system which has prevented a total collapse of society.

     Rwanda, Nigeria, and Somalia faced dramatic changes in society in the 1990s following either democratisation or the collapse of the state changing the idea of the community. Each case highlights the legacies of colonial rule on these societies – Somalia relying on clan ties which were not destroyed by colonial rule, while Nigeria and Rwanda saw ethnic conflict caused by the legacy of European divide-and-rule. Like the challenges to community shown throughout the rest of the world in the 1990s challenges to community in Africa were shaped by legacies of the past.

Bibliography:

-‘Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened,’ 2011, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13431486; accessed 07 November 2017

-Lucky E. Asuelime, Ojochenemi J. David, Hakeem Onapajo, Boko Haram: The Socio-Economic Drivers, (Cham: Springer, 2015)

-Stephen Ellis, ‘Africa after the Cold War: New Patterns of Government and Politics,’ Development and Change, 27:1, (1996), 1-28

-Patricia Daley, ‘Rwanda and Burundi since 1994: An end to the Discriminatory State?’, in Lindsey Whitfield and Abdul Raufu Mustapha (eds.), Turning Points in African Democracy, (Oxford: Boydell & Brewer, 2009)

-Martin Meredith, The State of Africa, (London: Simon & Schuster, 2005)

-Abdul Raufu Mustapha, ‘Nigeria since 1999: A Revolving Door Syndrome or the Consolidation of Democracy?’, in Whitfield and Mustapha (eds.), Turning Points in African Democracy, (Oxford: Boydell & Brewer, 2009)

-Charles Ukeje and Wale Adebanwi, ‘Ethno-Nationalist Claims in southern Nigeria: insights from Yoruba and Ijaw nationalisms since the 1990s,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31:3, (2008), 563-591

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