Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa

Charles G. Thomas, Toyin Falola

• Publisher: University of Calgary Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781773851266
• eBook ISBN: 9781773851297
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Wars fought for political separation have become omnipresent in post-colonial Africa. From the division of Sudan, to the continued fragmentation of Somalia, and the protracted struggles of Cabinda and Azawad, conflict over seccession and separation continues to the present day.

This is the first single volume to examine the historical arc of secession and secessionist conflict across sub-Saharan Africa. Paying particular attention to the development of secessionist conflicts and their evolving goals, Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa draws on case studies and rigorous research to examine three waves of secessionist movements, themselves defined by international conflict and change. Using detailed case studies, the authors offer a framework to understand how secession and separation occur, how these are influenced by both preceding movements and global political trends, and how their ongoing legacies continue to shape African regional politics.

Deeply engaging and thoroughly researched, this book presents a nuanced and important and important new overview of African separatist and secessionist conflicts. It addresses the structures, goals, and underlying influences of these movements within a broader global context to impart a rich understanding of why these conflicts are waged, and how they succeed or fail.

Part I

The Civil Secessions

The idea of the Civil Secessions was one that had relevance within a very specific time and place in Africa and involved an ideological framework that no longer really exists. As such they are a concept that is no longer extant. This is not to say that they are no longer important to study— the absolute opposite in fact is true. The arc of the Civil Secessions, including their birth, their existence, and their extinction, does just as much to inform us about the historical dynamics of secession in Africa as any of the still-existent long-term conflicts or even the small ethnic separatist insurgencies still occurring on the continent. In fact, they may prove more informative by showing us, at a scale rarely matched since, the factors that have shaped the idea of secession and made it such a contentious and rare issue on the continent of Africa. As such, this overview will outline the general historical arc and characteristics of the Civil Secessions, allowing for a theoretical look at the context in which they occurred before giving way to the case studies of Katanga and Biafra that allow for specific exploration to be done.

History and Self-Determination

The central point in understanding the historical context of the Civil Secessions is the idea of self-determination and its evolution in the postwar world. Prior to the Second World War, the idea of self-determination had found limited support within the Great Powers that defined the international community. The rise of liberals such as US President Woodrow Wilson had helped define self-determination as an international goal, with his Fourteen Points being largely agreed to in principle by other global powers during the First World War. However, following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the turn to isolationism in the United States, the Fourteen Points, including their conception of self-determination, largely fell by the wayside. The idea re-emerged during the Second World War with the circulation of the Atlantic Charter, the formal statement of the Allies’ war goals. Among the shared listed goals of the United States and the United Kingdom was the statement that there would be no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, a statement in support of self-determination. However, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was not pleased with such an inclusion, leading to significant questions as to whether all of these postwar goals would be pursued with equal vigour.

Following the end of the Second World War, the remaining powers were left uncertain where to proceed in terms of economic and diplomatic relations. While the majority of the developed world was rapidly framing itself into camps around the two rival superpowers of the United States and Soviet Union, it became obvious that the old interwar practices of closed borders and isolationism had been disastrous. It had not lessened the desperation of the Great Depression and had not prevented any power from becoming embroiled in the general conflict. As such, the idea of “interdependence” became the watchword in postwar diplomatic relations, and structures began to be put in place to facilitate the desirable international connections. While there were scattered organizations either still in existence following the collapse of the League of Nations, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), or newer groups intended to facilitate the increasing interdependence of the states such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there still was no unified political instrument to bring these states together. It was in this context that the major international powers convened at San Francisco in 1945 and on 24 October formally signed into existence the United Nations, creating a political framework for the interactions of 50 of the 51 nations present at its drafting.1

The Charter of the United Nations was to prove a decisive document in the processes of both decolonization and secession in Africa. The former was specifically due to chapters I, XI, and XII. Chapter I, article 1 specifically spelled out the idea of Self-Determination, noting under the purposes of the United Nations the intentions “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.”2 Thus, the signatories of the new organization, including the major colonial powers such as Britain and France, were suddenly obliged to respect the ideology of self-determination being demanded by their colonized peoples. However, a small loophole was evident within the differentiations of chapters XI and XII. Chapter XII explicitly called for the UN to “promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence,”3 which would seem to call for decolonization in terms of the independence of the states involved. However, chapter XII only dealt with the trustee territories, which were those territories that were either Mandate Territories (which were generally those ex-colonies of Central Powers lost to the Allies in the First World War), those detached from the defeated Axis powers (as such mostly just Japanese-held islands), and those explicitly given to UN trusteeship by their colonial controllers.4 As to the remainder of the colonized world, these fell under chapter XI, which only stated the political goals as “to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement.”5 No mention of independence was given, simply the idea of self-governance. As such, there was the possibility of a much lengthier period of control by the former colonial powers.

However, the writing was increasingly on the wall as the colonies of Africa emerged from the Second World War with robust economies and an increasing awareness of their political situation. The populations of most colonies had been rising over the previous decades and had also been increasingly urbanizing. These trends helped foster increasingly educated and organized mass movements that would agitate for better living conditions, better labour conditions, and increasing access to political power. Following the war there were demonstrations and increasing attempts to claim the self-determination promised within the United Nations charter. The first regions of decolonization were the ex-Italian possessions in Libya and the Horn,6 with Tunisia and Morocco following shortly after. It was also in this early period that the Sudan was finally relinquished by Britain under pressure from the increasingly radical Egyptian government.7 However, the first real stone to fall in sub-Saharan Africa was Ghana, which, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, asserted its self-determination over several years and finally claimed its independence on 6 March 1957.8 This was to prove a milestone in the minds of Africans, a moment when the most prominent spokesperson of Pan-Africanism emerged at the head of Africa’s first formally decolonized nation. Finally, a sub-Saharan country that was part of article XI and not article XII, one that had been a colony and not a mandatory territory, had been released after its own homegrown agitation and lobbying. After this the French Empire in Africa began to follow suit, with the autonomy and independence of its long-time colony in Guinea in 1958.9 Following these initial decolonizations, the floodgates truly opened in 1960, which has been dubbed the “Year of Africa” due to the independence granted to seventeen separate African states, including such notables as France’s Senegal, Britain’s Nigeria, and Belgium’s long-tormented Congo. In the decade following this massive step, the entire British African empire and the vast majority of the French colonies would gain their independence. By 1970 the only major formal colonial presence in Africa was the Portuguese, who under the Estado Novo fascist government founded by Antonio Salazar in the 1930s claimed that their holdings were not colonies at all but overseas provinces of Portugal proper.10 In this single decade the concept of self-determination was grasped as an essential right and advanced by the colonized African states until they were granted the control of their own political destinies.

Nature and Character of Civil Secessions

It is no coincidence that it was this same decade from 1960 to 1970 that spawned the Civil Secessions. These secessions attempted to follow the example of the decolonized states of Africa, claiming their right of self-determination to emerge as fully functioning states with international rights and recognitions. At the time this claim of statehood was not necessarily an impossible idea: the UN charter specifically stated that it recognized and supported the self-determination of peoples, with little specific definition of the term. Beyond this, there was at the time no specific mention that the already determined (and possibly illegitimate) political boundaries that had been in place since the Berlin Conference of 1885 were necessarily those of postcolonial Africa.11 As such, the general idea of the Civil Secessions was that the secessionist governed territories could and would fulfill the role of the state and in doing so gain the recognition required to join the international community while separating themselves from what they considered a disadvantageous (or even genocidal) connection with their previous colonial collective.

In each case it is clear that the Civil Secessionist conflict was about the secessionists attempting to maintain the theoretical and practical functions of their separated “proto-state” in the face of the aggressive actions of their previous host states to reintegrate them. In maintaining these functions, they hoped to both keep domestic legitimacy with their populations and gain the international recognition that would give them the material and diplomatic support they needed to complete their political and territorial separation from their host states. These theoretical and practical functions the secessionists were attempting to fulfill can be brought forth from a variety of texts delineating the concept of a state. An earlier definition works off the idea that “the State as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter relations with other states.”12 It was enough, then, that the states had seceded and had entered into attempted diplomatic relations; however, one can argue that the denial of formal recognition of the Civil Secessionist states meant they never fulfilled the full requirements of statehood, while the military struggle meant that one by one the other attributes were swept away.13

Perhaps a better delineation of the attributes giving legitimacy and existence to a state may be found in the more theoretical realm of academics such as Charles Tilly, Max Weber, Perry Anderson, Ali Mazrui, and Crawford Young. By linking their theories of the functions of a state together, we may get a list of attributes that a state fulfills. When taken together, these authorities’ concepts can be listed as follows:

1. A State defends its nationals or citizens from external enemies through the use of an effective army.

2. A State regulates crime and disorder through the use of a police force.

3. A State develops an effective civilian bureaucracy to administer the functions of the state.

4. A State raises revenue and creates an economic infrastructure to pay its army, its police force, and its civilian bureaucracy.

5. A State resolves disputes through a system of law and a judiciary that enforces the law.

6. A State creates laws through a legislative process.

7. A State provides public services such as safety, education, health care, transportation and roads, and postal service.

8. A State acquires and sustains political legitimacy, which allows the state to govern with lower attendant social costs.14

Given this list of attributes, one can easily see the structure of the Civil Secessions, leaving one to only conclude that the Civil Secessions indeed were attempts to declare a state and then garner recognition.

Of course, in attempting to create a politically separate but yet viable African state, the Civil Secessions created a series of parallel practices that let them fulfill these requirements of legitimacy both domestically and internationally. These practices were the separation of a pre-existing political unit that was both multi-ethnic and with assumed legal legitimacy for self-rule, that is, a historically justified civil nation; a leadership created out of the “New Men” of Africa, the Western-educated and wealthy bourgeoisie of the state; a standing professional army and/or gendarmerie; and conventional military tactics based around the taking and defending of territory. Each of these would in its own way parallel the existing African states and at the same time serve as an attempt to establish or maintain the new secessionist state.

In terms of standard African statehood, those states emerging from decolonization were granted legitimacy and recognition based on the same list of attributes enunciated above. Their borders were fixed by the earlier 1885 Berlin Conference, to which the majority of the newly independent states formally agreed in the mid-1960s. Within these borders was a multi-ethnic population, which was the only acceptable option in the postwar anti-nationalist ideology of the colonial powers. Their legislative processes, systems of taxation, and public services were all also inherited from their colonial structures and then built upon by their African administrations. Britain left parliamentary democracies and efficient civil services in states as diverse as Nigeria, Botswana, and Kenya. France left a legacy of republicanism and Gallic public service in their own former colonies as well as general regional structures of cooperation. While these were then altered or simply evolved under African leadership, at the time of decolonization, the states were defined by their inherited state functions. In addition, their formal separation was built upon the legal idea of the voluntary renunciation of colonial agreements and the idea that they now assumed their own rightfully self-determined autonomous statehood.

The Civil Secessionist States built along these same lines. While the decolonized African states inherited the colonial systems of governance, taxation, and public services, the Secessionist State inherited these attributes from its host state, usually in regional form. Katanga and Biafra had both had their own regional administrations reaching back into colonial days and thus had a legacy of these structures that allowed them to define their statehood.15 Beyond this they too defined themselves as a multi-ethnic Civil State, not a nation-state, on the assumption that a nation-state would not be granted recognition in the postcolonial Cold War environment they found themselves in.16 Lastly, to parallel the legitimacy of the accepted colonial boundaries, the new secessionist states needed their own accepted international boundaries. In their case they often argued historical precedent, such as in the case of Katanga’s separate administration from the rest of the Congo or the Sudan’s separate administration of the North and South.17 In each case the Civil Secessionist state attempted to assume the proper structure of African statehood and thereby also assume the acceptance given to the postcolonial African state.

Of course, these systems of taxation, legislation, and public works were not mechanical creations within the decolonized African state; they were run by the newly emergence professional African bourgeoisie, the “New Men” of Africa with Western educations. Kwame Nkrumah, whose efforts were pivotal in both the decolonization of Africa and the creation of a Pan-African identity, serves as a central example of these f...

Table of contents

• List of Maps
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Conclusion: Secession and the Secessionist Motive into the Twenty-first Century
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index