The photograph, taken inside Cameroon’s parliament, shows the bloodied face of a member of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement. He is clutching his head after an object, likely a shoe, was thrown at him in anger. That this parliamentary budget debate in late 2017 was not going to go as planned became clear when members of the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), chanted and blew vuvuzela horns. Then the object came hurling.
At the heart of this turmoil lay “the Anglophone problem”—a perceived pattern of discrimination against Cameroon’s two Anglophone provinces and the subsequent secessionist ambitions of some among their population. The turmoil in parliament marked the latest wave of secessionist tensions; this last wave had started in October 2016 when strikes and protests brought public life in the Anglophone provinces to a standstill.1
Cameroon is far from alone in facing secessionist agitation of late. Namibia continues to grapple with the high-treason trial over the failed 1999 secession of the Zambezi Region, formerly known as the Caprivi Strip. The trial entered its 13th year in 2017 with an appeal trial expected for June 2018. Morocco, meanwhile, is pushing within the African Union (AU) to have Namibia’s jurisdiction over the Zambezi Region investigated because of Namibia’s stance in the past over Morocco’s own challenges linked to Western Sahara. Kenya’s high court was asked to rule on whether to allow an independence referendum in its Western Province, formerly part of Uganda’s Eastern Province, which had been merged with the British East African Protectorate in 1962.2 In November 2017, South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies felt compelled enough to ask about a country whose political crises are not usually associated with territorial challenges: “Could Parts of Kenya Really Secede?”3
Colonial history proves to be a continuous inspiration for legitimizing such claims in contemporary political arenas. In the last five years alone, Tuareg separatists (briefly) controlled and declared the independence of Azawad, the part of Mali north of Mopti, which they claim as historically theirs;4 the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) has increased armed attacks against Angolan forces;5 the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation (UAMSHO) has demanded a referendum on the separation of Zanzibar from Tanzania; and Boko Haram has called for the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria . Meanwhile, Somaliland—unrecognized by all since its breakup from Somalia in 1990—endures as a “de facto” state, and also as one of Africa’s few democracies, having completed its presidential election in November 2017.6
Secessionist narratives, aspirations, and activities have been a permanent, if changing, feature of African politics. The continent’s first independent decade saw the secession of Katanga a mere few days after Congo acquired sovereignty (1960–63), followed shortly thereafter by the humanitarian disaster of the Biafra War, which cost about one million lives from 1967 to 1970.7 More than 50 years later, secessionist discourse and activism remain alive in Katanga, where a self-described separatist insurgency, Kata Katanga (“cut off Katanga”), briefly marched into Lubumbashi in 2013,8 and in Biafra, where several groups, not least the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), continue to keep the dream of independence alive and regularly clash with the Nigerian armed forces.9
These are more than unrelated anecdotes from past and present. They are emblematic of the larger picture of increased alienation and pushback against the African post-colonial state. And there are many more, albeit often smaller, similar instances. Throughout the continent, including in places where it would not be expected, secessionism has reemerged on political agendas.
Secessionism has been high on the agenda in other continents, too, with the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence from the UK, and Catalonia, which unilaterally declared independence from Spain on October 27, 2017, after a referendum in which 92% voted in favor of secession. The aspirations of certain Kurdish groups for a united and independent Kurdistan are also well known. Although throughout the world secessionism continues to be a powerful source of mobilization and a popular way to channel political grievances, there is, however, a distinct African dimension to the issue on which we elaborate in this volume.
The Many Faces of Secessionism in Africa or the Myth of the Simple Solution
Contemporary African secessionism extends far beyond the purview of historic cases. Recent claims suggest that South Sudan’s catastrophic first few years as an independent nation do not appear to have tempered the secessionist aspirations of others on the continent. If anything, we discern a small uptick in the public currency of African separatist grievances.10 Despite the argument that Africa experiences fewer secessionist conflicts than one would expect, given that many African states struggle to deliver on a state’s expected duties and the heterogeneity of their societies,11 secessionism—as dream, discourse, argument, and activity—remains a fundamental theme of African politics.
Yet, despite its aspirational simplicity—Give us a new nation!—secessionism is a complex political phenomenon. At its core, it is a subnational group’s demand for the separate sovereignty of a piece of a country’s territory. This claim is often legitimized by invocations of the right to self-determination.12 But while the basic material consequence of a call for secessionism is territorial—a redefinition of boundaries of the space upon which state power is projected—the foundations for such claims lie in political grievances, sentiments of marginalization, historical narratives, and economic projects that are engineered by members of the subnational group often operating from far beyond the stated spatial claims. The consequences of such claims vary greatly—including whether or not the claim is supported violently—and yet the effects almost always resonate transnationally and in regional and international political arenas.
The Shifting Legal Interpretations of Secessionism
Discussions about secessionism in Africa are particularly intriguing because the phenomenon is essentially outlawed. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) famously settled in 1963 on maintaining colonial borders at independence.13 Its 1964 Cairo Declaration affirmed the principle of uti possidetis—the notion that borders would be maintained as they were —as a way of avoiding future border conflicts. With a few notable exceptions, this approach of avoiding border conflicts has largely helped African states endure. But while the borders have lasted, problems have continued to fester for people living within, without, or across the uti possidetis borders. Paradoxically, the maintenance of territorial integrity and rejection of identity-based territorial claims promoted by uti possidetis have crystallized arbitrary colonial borders in a manner that has continued to feed identity-based secessionist grievances. Along with the OAU, the international community, in general, has never been keen to confer the entitlements that come with sovereignty on peoples that aspired to it. Where one might hope that international law dealing with the subject of self-determination would offer clarity on the matter, the opposite is true .
The UN’s stance at first glance seems clear—until it is not. The 1960 UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 1514 (XV) —also known as the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples—is often referenced throughout this volume. It states the right to self-determination but also stresses that “any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”14 Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights restates that “All peoples have the right of self-determination,” but fails to define what constitutes a people and whether the right to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” necessarily implies sovereignty.15
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