Is Africa the Continent of Conflict Or the Continent of Struggle?

Is Africa the continent of conflict or the continent of struggle?

Allison Drew

Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town

Professor Emerita, University of York

Keynote speechfor the

IV African Studies Association of Italy conference

‘Ebullient Africa: Conflict, Modernity, Religion’

Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania

22-24 September 2016

Sicily is a very apt site for the fourth conference of the African StudiesAssociation of Italy. Sicily’s history has long been interconnected with Africa’s history – most recently, with Sicily being a landing point for African migrants fleeing war, terrorism and poverty.

This wave of migrants into Sicily and across Europe is often presented in the media as an invasion, and this may be how it feels for those who are long-settled in an area. The recent Italian documentary Fire at Sea (Fuoccoamare), set on Lampedusa, movingly depicts this influx both from the perspectives of the islanders going about their daily lives, and the immigrants, in their desperation.

But Africa has its own experience of invasion and emigration from Europe – for example, Italy’s colonization of Libya,Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, and the various French, British, Portuguese and German colonies and settler societies.So perhaps this present wave of migrants leaving Africa and moving across Europe is simply a case of history being turned on its head.However, it also signals that African conflicts cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the world.

Conflict in Africa

As highlighted by the conference theme,‘Ebullient Africa: Conflict, Modernity, Religion,’ Africa is often seen as a continent of seemingly endless political conflict. The present influx of African migrants fleeing political unrest reinforces this image.

Yet for much of the 20th century, conflict in Africa was seen as heroic, and guns were presented as tools of liberation – as the following two images illustrate. The first (Sherurcij 2007) depicts apaintingcommemorating the 1896 Battle of Adwa between Ethiopia and Italy, which was won by Ethiopia.

The second (Freedom Archives, n.d.) is a flyer showing an Eritrean woman with a gun engaged in struggle for independence from Ethiopia – gained in 1991 – almost a century after the Battle of Adwa. The motif of an African woman with a gun was very common during the 1970s through the 1990s – the peak years of Africa’s armed national liberation struggles – even if relatively few women engaged in those military struggles. Indeed, they were and are more often the victims of gun violence (Turshen and Twagiramariya: 1998).

But in the twenty-first century, the critical problem is Africa’s long-running post-colonial conflict.Undoubtedly, some of Africa’s conflict is a legacy of colonialism – military conquest followed bythe squashing of indigenous political structures and their replacement with hastily constructed Western-style institutions within arbitrarily-imposed state boundaries.This produced weak states with inadequate capacity to promote development. In turn, this has contributed to political instability.

But Africa’s colonization – a relatively short period for most of the continent – is but one part of its long-term relationship with the rest of the world, which has generally been very violent. Thus, pre-colonial Africa was incorporated into the world political economy through the Atlantic slave trade, while post-colonialAfrica has been increasingly militarized,firstly by the Cold War superpowers and,later,by state and non-state arms suppliers.Indeed, Adebayo Adedeji (1999:3) noted that from the 1960s through the 1990s, Africa ‘earned the reputation of a continent perpetually at war against itself.’ And Daniel Volman (1998:150) described post-Cold War Africa as ‘literally awash in arms.’

In the late Cold War years, political violence seemed to peak, undoubtedly reflecting political conflict in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa,exacerbated by the rival superpowerswho supplied heavy military equipment.Although armed conflict declined following the Cold War,it began increasing in the 21st century, especially during the years 2011-2014.By 2014 Africa had more than half of world’s conflicts – despite having only sixteen percent of the world’s population. So Africa’s disproportionate share of the world’s armed conflicts does,indeed,make it the continent of conflict.

Moreover, in the post-Cold War years, the diffusion of small arms by state and non-state actors has had horrific consequences for civilians – the mass rape of women and the seizing of children to become child soldiers being graphic examples.However, in absolute terms, the number of conflicts across the world has decreased since end of Cold War.Likewise, the number of African conflicts has also declined (Dörrie 2016).

Acloser examination shows that Africa’s conflicts are clustered in particular regions.For example, along with northeast Nigeria, the Maghreb countries of Mali, southern Algeria and Libya are plagued by terrorist groups. In central Africa, the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo andBurundi are torn by civil wars, as are South Sudan and Somalia. In contrast, Southern Africa isnow relatively peaceful after long-running wars, althoughauthoritarian regimes repress their own societies. Indeed, presently, most African countries are relatively peaceful and free of armed conflict (Dörrie 2016; Cilliers 2015).This underlines the need to avoid quick generalizations.

Framing the problem

To move beyond suchhastygeneralizations, it is importantto consider how conflict is framed and understood. What do we mean by conflict?Is it necessarily negative or irreconcilable?Or can it be resolved constructively?

This brings to mind an African parable about a tortoise who had the misfortune of crossing a leopard’s path (Achebe 1988:128). Knowing that he was doomed, the tortoise asked the leopard for one final request. The leopard agreed, andthe tortoise began furiously scratching the soil. When the puzzled leopard asked why he was doing that, the tortoise replied, ‘I am leaving my mark because after you have killed me, I want everyone passing by to see that I struggled.’

Conflict can be defined as an active disagreement between people with opposing opinions, principles or aims. In itself,active disagreement is neither necessarily good nor bad–assuming that it can be resolved before it spirals out of control.The parable concerns conflict between the powerful and the weak, and many people would sympathize with the tortoise precisely because it is slow-moving and can’t flee.

However, the parablealso stresses struggle as a positiveact of agency. To struggle means toexperience difficulty and to make a great effort to overcome it. Thus, the tortoisestruggledto leave a legacy.This parable illustrates that an event can be framed and understood in multiple ways, as I have seen in my research on South Africa and Algeria.

On the one hand, twentieth-century South Africa can be understood primarily as a long-running racial conflict between black and white.However,I framed my research question in terms of a political struggle – a struggle against apartheid and capitalism and for democracy and socialism. Similarly, Algerian politics has often been seen primarily through the lens of religion. Thus, in one sense,its war of independence from France was part ofa centuries-long religious conflict between Muslims and Christians – but it was also a struggle for political freedom and freedom of worship.

The importance of comparative analysis

Both these national liberation struggles achieved their primary aims –independence for Algeria and democracy in South Africa. Yet the subsequent political trajectories of the two countries have diverged sharply. Algeria’s fate has been far more conflict-prone than South Africa’s.

Comparative analysis allows us to explore the reasons for this, by revealing similarities and differences and uncovering patterns.The comparison of Algeria and South Africa challenges a key tenet of African Studies, namelythehistorically constructed divisionbetween North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa – a divide that is ostensibly geographic.

But this divide is also seen as a political division that follows purported racial lines between black and white Africa.

Despite theirdifferent positions at either end of the African continent, Algeria and South Africa shared striking similarities. Both countries,rigidly-divided settler societies, were subjected to massive land expropriation. Theyhad significant migrant labour systems, working classesthat were divided along ethnic lines, and, unusually in Africa, communist parties.

These similarities allow a basis for comparison, and in the 1950s and 1960s,Algerian and South African political activists were aware of those similarities.Across the continent, Africans were divided on the use of violent or non-violent methods to fight colonialism, but those in settler societies tended to use violence.South African anti-apartheid activists sought to learn from Algeria’s armed struggle, launched in 1954. Nelson Mandela himself went north to study the experiences of Algeria’s Front de Libération Nationale (FLN).

However, despite the similarities of their political economies and the parallels of their national liberation struggles, the two countries have since followed divergent political paths. Algeria, independent in 1962 after a bloody eight-year war, has seen hopes for democracy postponed by militarized authoritarian rule and civil war. Nominally a multi-party system, its political elite is still tightly tied to the military.South Africa, by contrast, pursued an armed struggle whose impact was largely symbolic and became democratic in 1994 following a negotiated transition. Civilian authority controls the military, but the dominant political party has been mired in corruption scandals.

Comparing the two countries on the basis of selected criteria offers a means to explain why violence is seemingly more endemic – and democratization more difficult – in Algeria than in South Africa.The nature of their colonial states, thestructure of their class and ethnic divisions, and their geopolitical positions provide important guides in explaining this problem.The strength or weakness of communism and its ability or inability to forge alliances with nationalists reinforces these structural factors.

What has been the legacy of the colonial statein each country?

Both countries experienced protracted military conquest and had what Mahmood Mamdani (1996) has called a bifurcated colonial state in which two forms of power operatedunder a single authority – direct rule for urban settlers and indirect rule for rural indigenous majorities. This bifurcation was never absolute, it should be noted. European and white settlement was not confined to urban areas, and migrant labour broke down the urban-rural distinction.But crucially, the French state claimed Algeria as part of France, while South Africa was politically autonomous within the British Empire.Moreover, French indirect rule in Algeria was more militarized than South African indirect rule, which operated under civil law.The impact of the colonial state on each countryvariedsignificantly – in Algeria it left a strong legacy of military rule.

What was the impact of class structure in each country?

The class structure ofboth countries shows striking similarities. They both had important mining and manufacturing sectors, large-scale European or white farming sectors, commercial classes, significant numbers of impoverished peasants, sharecroppers and farmworkers, and rigidly-divided working classes.

But there were significant differences. Algeria had an indigenous Muslim landed elite, and a significant section of itslabour force migrated to France and remained there, becoming a displaced proletariat.South Africa, by contrast, had no equivalent to the Muslim landed elite – there was no indigenous black landed class, and its labour migratedinternally, within the country.South Africa’s indigenous class structure was thus more uniform than Algeria’s, and its urban working class, potentially stronger.

What does the pattern of ethnic divisionsreveal?

ColonialAlgeria was the site of two religions,Christianity and Islam, both of which were imagined international communities with global aspirations.Religious divisions overlay and reinforced the great social and political divisions between the settler and indigenous populations.On the one side, was European nationality, French citizenship, and Christianity; on the other, Algerian nationality and Islam.The French state and European settlers imposed an anti-Islamic secularization that attacked local identity.Islam provided a discourse for anti-colonialism. Defence of Islam became a means of anti-colonial resistance, and this contributed to the strength of cultural nationalism.

By contrast, South Africa had cross-cuttingethnic divisions. Christianity became dominant, enveloping the pre-existing localized African religions and cutting across the racial and national divide – black leaders such as Mandela were educated in Christian mission schools. This common religious and educational framework provided a basis for communication between black political leaders and tiny numbers of democratic whites. Both countries had Jewish minorities, but South Africa, which also had Hindu and Muslim minorities, wasmore religiously diverse than Algeria. Instead of cultural nationalism, South Africa’s national liberation movement promoted a secular non-racialism as a counter to the state’s racist policies.Communication across Algeria’s reinforcingethnicdivisionswas undoubtedly more difficult than in South Africa, with its cross-cutting divisions.

What was the impact of geopolitics on each country?

The significanceof geopolitics wasevident in the Second World War. Because of Algeria’sclose relationship with France and its geographic proximity to Europe, it was pulled directly into the war-time politics, which reinforced the country’s militarization. Thus, Algeria experienced the Vichy Regime, the Anglo-American military landing in November 1942 and the Free France movement.

In South Africa, the outbreak of war in Europe led to discord between English-speaking and Afrikaner political leaders,culminating in a change in government. Nonetheless, because of South Africa’s political autonomy within the British Empire and its distance from the war’s geographic arena,the war’s main impact was economic.During the war, the French state banned the French and Algerian communist parties, while the South African state tolerated its communist party.

The impact of geopolitics was also pronounced during the Cold War.The armed struggles unfolding in Algeria and South Africa reflected very different political-military traditions. During this period the relationship of nationalism and communism in each country became especially important, accentuating the impact of other factors.

Twentieth-century communism contained a double set of tensions. Firstly, communism was an imagined international community with global aspirations. Yet building communist movements necessitated starting at the local and national levels.Secondly, communism was a doctrine of emancipation, paradoxically tied to a ruthless state whose suppression of human rights was symbolized by the gulag.

Both the Algerian and South African communist movements – inspired by the doctrine of emancipation and impressed by the Soviet Union’srapid industrial development – looked to the Soviet state for inspiration and support. But the AlgerianCommunist Party was also tied to the French Communist Party. Only in the late 1940s and 1950s did it achieve real political autonomy from its parent party.Not surprisingly, the FLN was generally suspicious of the Algerian Communist Party.Their relationship remained verydifficult throughout the war of independence – in marked contrast to South Africa.

The FLN, formed in 1954, specifically to launch armed struggle, was militarized in its very conception. During the war both the French and the FLN used terror against civilians. The FLN’s armed strugglebecame a guerrilla movementwith bases inside and outside the country. The French created a physical barrier between the FLN’s internal and external military forces, cutting off contact between them. Thus, while the internal guerrillaswere starved of resources, Soviet and Eastern bloc military support enabled the growth of the external national liberation army – although Soviet and communist ideological influence within the FLN was non-existent.

By contrast, South Africa had a long tradition of non-violence and passive resistance –in no small part a legacy of Gandhi’s twenty-one years there – and the African National Congress(ANC) was founded in 1912to use non-violent methods.

South African communists studied the experience of Algerian communists and strengthened their relationship with African nationalists.The ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP)jointly launched armed struggle in 1961; their armed wing deliberately rejected terrorism and promoted non-racialism.Armed struggle was limited to sabotage and remained a minor factor in the overall political struggle. The long duration of the anti-apartheid struggle andSoviet funding and education for the ANC and its allies allowed the diffusion of Soviet and communist ideas over several decades.Thus, South Africa’s armed struggle was 1less violent than Algeria’s, and its liberation movement was more ideologically influenced by communism, reflecting the close relationship of the ANC and SACP.