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________ CHAP T E R ON E ________

Introduction:
Thinking through Africa's Impasse
DISCLTSSIO:--JS on Africa's present predicament revolve around two clear
tendencies: modernist and communitarian. Modernists take inspiration
from the East European uprisings of the late eighties; communitarians
decry liberal or left Eurocentrism and call for a return to the source. for
modernists, the problem is that civil society is an embryonic and mar
ginal construct in Africa; tor communitarians, it is that real flesh-and
blood communitites that comprise Africa are marginalized from public
life as so many "tribes." The liberal solution is to locate politics in civil
society, and the Afficanist solution is to put Africa's age-old communi
ties at the center of African politics. One side calls for a regime that will
champion rights, and the other stands in defense of culture. The impasse
in Africa is not only at the level of practical politics. It is also a paralysis
of perspective.
The solution to this theoretical impasse-between modernists and
communitarians, Eurocentrists and Africanists-does not lie in choosing
a side and defending an entrenched position. Because both sides to the
debate highlight different aspects of the same African dilemma, I will
suggest that the way forward lies in sublating both, through a double
move that simultaneously critiques and aHirms. To arrive at a creative
synthesis transcending both positions, one needs to problematize each.
To do so, I will analyze in this book two related phenomena: how
power is organized and how it tends to fragment resistance in con
temporary Africa. By locating both the language of rights and that of
culture in their historical and institutional context, I hope to underline
that part of our institutional legacy that continues to be reproduced
through the dialectic of state reform and popular resistance. The core
legacy, I will suggest, was forged through the colonial experience.
In colonial discourse, the problem of stabilizing alien rule was politely
referred to as "the native question." It was a dilemma that confronted
every colonial power and a riddle that preoccupied the best of its minds.
Therefore it should not be surprising that when a person of the stature
of General Jan Smuts, with an international renown rare for a South
African prime minister, was invited to deliver the prestigious Rhodes
4 CHAPTER 1
.Memorial Lectures at Oxford in 1929, the nati,"e question t()rmed the
core of his deliberation.
The African, Smuts reminded his British audience, is a special human
'"'"type" with "some wonderful characteristics," which he went on to cel
ebrate: '"'"It has largely renlJined a child type, "'jth a child psychology and
outlook. A child-like human can not be a bad human, for are we not in
spiritual matters bidden to be like unto little children? Perhaps as a di
rect rcsult of this temperament the African is the only happy human I
haye come across." E,'en if the r.lCism in tbe language is bliuding, "e
should be wary of dismissing Smuts as some South African oddity.
Smuts spokc from within an honorable \Vestern tradition. Had not
Hegel's Philosophy of History mythologized '"'"Africa proper" as "the land
of childhood"? Did not settlers in British colonies call eyery Mrican
male, regardless of age, a ""boy"-houseboy, shamba-boy, office-boy,
ton-boy, mine-boy-no different from their counterparts in Franco
phone Africa, who used the child-familiar tu when addressing Mricans
of any age? "The negro," opined the venerable Albert Schweitzer of
Gabon fame, "is a child, and with children nothing can be done without
authority." In the colonial mind, however, Africans were no ordinary
children. They were destined to be so perpetually-in the words of
Christopher Fyfe, "Peter Pan children who can neYer grow up, a child
race. ,,1
Yet this book is not about the racial legacy of colonialism. If I tend to
deemphasize the legacy of colonial racism, it is not only because it has
been the subject of percepti,'e analyses by militant intellectuals like
Frantz Fanon, but because I seek to highlight that part of the colonial
legacy-the institutional-which remains more or less intact. Preeisely
because deracialization has marked the limits of postcolonial reform, the
nonracial legacy of colonialism needs to be brought out into the open so
that it may be the focus of a public discussion.
The point about General Smuts is not the racism that he shared with
many of his class and race, for Smuts was not simply the unconscious
bearer of a tradition. More than just a sentry standing guard at the cut
ting edge of that tradition, he was, if anything, its standard-bearer. A
member of the British war cabinet, a confidant of Churchill and Roose
velt, a one-time chancellor of Cambridge University, Smuts rose to be
one of the framers of the League of Nations Charter in the post-\Vorld
War I era.
2
The very image of an enlightened leader, Smuts opposed
slavery and celebrated the "principles of the French Revolution which
had emancipated Europe," but he opposed their application to Africa,
for the Mrican, he argued, was of "a race so unique" that "nothing
could be worse for Africa than the application of a policy" that would
,
IKTRODCCTIOK 5
the Aftican and turn him either into a beast of the field or
into a pseudo-European." '"'"And yet in the past," he lamented, '"'we ha,"e
rried both alternatives in our dealings with the Africans."
FIrst wt looked upon the African as essentIally inferior or as
having no soul, and ,1S bting fit to be a e" ... Then we changed [0
the opposite extreme. The Afric.1n now became a man and J. brOl her. Reli
gion and politics combined ro shape [his new African polit'y. The principles
of the French Revolution whit'h had emancipatcd Europe \\'ere ,1pplicd to
Africa; liberty, equality and frattrnity could turn bad Atrieam. into good
:\
Smuts was at pains to underline the negatiyc consequence.... of a policy
formulated in ignorance, e,'en if coated in good faith.
The political system of the natives ruthlessly destroyed in order to in
corporate them as equals into the white system. The African was good as a
potential European; his social and political culture was bad, barbarous, and
only desen'ing to be stamped out root and branch. In some of the British
pmsessions in Africa the native just emerged from barbarism was accepted
as an eqnal citizen with full political rights along with the whites. But his
native institutions were ruthlessly proscribed and destroyed. The principle
of equal rights was applied in its crudest t(xm, and ",hile it ga .... e the native
a semblance of equality with whites, ,vhich was little good to him, ir de
stroyed the basis of his African system which was his highest good. These
are the two extreme native policies which have prevailed in the past, and [he
second has been only less harmful than the first.
If "Africa has to be redeemed" so as "to make her own contribution to
the world," then "we shall have to ptoceed on different lines and evolve
a policy which will not force her institutions into an alien European
mould" but "will preserve her unity with her o,,"n past" and "build her
future progress and ci,'ilization on specifically African foundations."
Smuts went on to champion '"'"the new policy" in bold: "The British Em
pire does not stand for thc assimilation of its peoples into a common
type, it does not stand for standardization, but f()r the fullest freest de
velopment of its peoples along theit own specific lines."
The "tullest freest development of [its 1peoples" as opposed to their
assimilation "into a common type" required, Smuts argued, '"'institu
tional segregation." Smuts contrasted with
"territorial segregation" then in practice -in South Mrica. The"'problem
with "territorial segregation," in a nutshell, was that it was based on a
policy of institntionaI homogenization. Natives may be territorially sep
arated from whites, but native institutions were slowly but surely giving
6 CHAI'T1:::R i
WdY to an aJien institutional mold. As the t::t:onomy be(ame
iz..:d, it gave rise to "th..: colour problem," at the root of which were
"urbanized or detribalized point was not that racial
segregation ("'territorial segregation))) should be done away wah.
Ratha it was rh..ll it should be made part of a broader scg
regation') and thereby set on a Secure footing: "Institutional segregation
carries with it territorial segregatbn." The way to preserve native
tutions while rneeting the labor demands of a growing economy was
through the institution of migrant labor, tor "so long as the nath-e fam
ily home is not with the white man but in his own area) so long the
organization will not be materially affined."
It is only when segregation breaks do\'>'n; \",hen the \vhole family migrare:s
from the trib;;d home and out of the tribal jurisdiction to the white man's
farm or the white man's town, that rhe tribal bond is snapped) and rhe
rraditional system f..lIs into decay. And it is this migration of thl: native
fam lIy, of the females and children, to the farms and the towns \vhich
should be prevented, As soon as fhb migration is permitted the proce:ss
commences which ends in the urbaniud detribalized native and the dis
appeardncc of the native organization. It is not white employment ofnative
males that works the but the abandonmt"nt of I he native tribal
home bv the women and dJildren.
4
l'ut simpJy, the problem with territorial segregation was that it rendered
raciaJ domination unstable: the more the economr developed) the more
it came to depend on the ....urbanized or detribalized natives. '>1 As that
happened, the beneficiaries of ruk an alien minority and its
victims evidently an indigenous majority, The way to raciaJ
domination (territorial segregation) was to ground it in a politically
enforced system of ethnic pluralism (institutional segregation), so that
everyone, victims no less than beneficiaries, may appear as minorities,
However, with migrant Jabor providing the day-tn-day institutional link
bct\veen narive and white society. native institutions -fashjoned as so
many rural trihaJ composites-m;y be conser\"ed as separate but would
function as subordinate.
At this point) however, Smuts faJtered, tor} he believed, it was too late
in the day to implement a policy of institutional segregation in South
Afrka; urbanjzation had already proceeded too far, But it was not too
late tor Jess developed colonies to the north to learn from the South
Airican experience: ....The situation jn South Africa is therefore a Jesson
to all the younger British communities farther north to prevent as much
as possible the detachment of the native from hIS triluj (onnexion, and
to cnfon:e from the very start the system of segregation with its conser
vation of scparate native institutions."
fNTKODl'CTIO:S 7
The Broed..:rbond, howen:r, disagreed. To this brotherhood of Boer
'iupremacists, to stabilize the system of racial domination was a question
of life and death, a matter in which it could never be too What
Smuts termed institutional segregation the Broederbond caBed apart
heid. The context in whkh apartheid came to be implemented m.ade for
its particularly harsh fix to rule natives through their own insti
tutions' one first had to push natives back into the of native
institutions. In the context of a semi-industriafize,d and highly urban
ized South Africa, this meant, on the one hand, the forced removal of
those marked unproductive so they may be pushed out of white areas
back into nath'C' horneIands on the other, the forced straddling of
those deemed productive between workpJace and homeland through an
ongoing cycle of annual migrations. To eftcct these changes required a
degree of force and brutaHtv that seemed to place the South African (0
lonial experience in a class of its own.
But neither institutional segregation nor apartheid V\:as a South Alri
can invention, If anything, both idealized a form of rule that the British
Colonial Office dubbed "jndirect rule" and the French
Three decades before Smuts, Lord Lugard had pioneered indirect rule
in Uganda and ::-Jigeri', And three decades after Smuts, Lord Hailev
would sum up the contrast between forms of colonia) rule as turning on
a distinction between "'identity'" and '"differentiation" in organizing the
relationship between Europeans and Africans: "The doctrine of identity
conceives the future sodal and political institutions of l\fi'icans as des
tined to be basicaHy similar to those of Europeans; the doctrine of
entiarion aims at the evolution of separare institutions apprupriate to
African conditions and differing both in spirit and in form from those of
Europeans, '"5 The emphasis on differentiation meant the fi>rging of spe
cifically institution.s through which to rule subjects\ but the in
stitutions so defined and enforced wae not raciaJ as much as ethnic, not
as rnuch as "tribal.'" Racial dualism was the-reby an..:hored in a
politically enforced ethnic pluralism,
To emphasize their offensive and pejorative I put the
native and tribal in qllotation marks. Rut after first usc, 1 have dropped
the quotation marks La avoid a cumbersome read, instead relying on the
reader's continued vigilance and good sense.
This book, then, is about the regime of differentiation (institutional
segregation) as fashioned in colonial Africa-and reformed after inde
pendence-and the nature of the resistaIKe it bred. Anchored histori
cally, it is about how Europeans ruJed Africa and how Africans
sponded to Jr. Drawn to the it is about the structure of power
and the shape of resistance in Africa. Three sets of ques
tions have guided my labors. To what extent was the structure of power
8 CHAI'fr.Rl
Hl Atdca shaped in the colonial period farher thall born of
the anticolonial rnolr? 'Vas the notion that inrroduced the ruk of
law to African colonies no more than a chenshed illusion of co!oni.l!
powers? Second, rarher than just uniting din'rse ethnic groups in a com
mon prcdl{-:amenl, WdS not radal domination actnal1y mediated through
a variety of ethnically organized local powers? If so, is it not too simple
even if tempting [() think of the anticolonial (uationahst) Struggle as juSt
a ()lie-sided repudiarion of ethnieity rather than also a series of ethnic
revolts agaimn so nuny cthnically organized and cel1traHy rcinfor..:ed
loca! powers-in other words, a string of ethnic dvil wars? In brief: was
not ethnicity a dimension of both power and resistance, of both the
problem dnd the solution? finaliy, if power reproduced itself by
gerating difference Jnd dcnying: the existence of an oppressed majority,
is not the btl rden ofprotesr to transcend these differences without deny
ing them?
I have written this book with four objectives in mind. 1\1y first
tive is to que&tion the writing of history by analogy) a method pcrvJsi\"e
in contemporarv Atricanist studies. Thereoy, I seek to est:Jblish the his.
toricallcgitimacy of Africa as a unit of My second objective is to
establish that apartheid, usuaUy considcred unique to South Africa, is
a..-:tllally the form of the colonjal state jn Afrka, As a form ofrule,
apartheid is what Smuts called institutional segregation, the British
termed indirect rule, and the French association. It is this common state
form that r (all decl;':lltralized despotism. A coronary is to bring some of
the lessons finm the of Africa to South Mrican studies and vice
vcrsa and thereby to question the notion of South African exceptional
ism. A third objectivc is to underline the contradictory character of eth
nicity. In disentangHng Wi. two possib11ities, the emancipalory from the
authoritarianl my purpose is not to identif}r emandpatory movements
and avail them for an uncritical embrace. Rather it is to problematize
them through a critkal analysis. J\1y f(lurth and final objective is to show
that although the bifi] rcated stale created with co10niaHsm was deracial
izcd after independence, it was nor democratized. Postindependcncc re
t()rm led to diverse Outcomes. No nationalist government was content
to reproduce the colonial1egacy unlTitically. Each sought to reform the
hifurcated state that lnstitutionally crystallized a state-enforced separa
of the rural from rhe urban and of one ethnicitr from another. But
in doing so each reproduced a part of that legacy. thereby cre.lting its
own variety of despotism.
These questions and object!yes are very much ar the root of the
cussion 1n the chapters fhat foBow. Before sketching in fttlJ lhe outlines
of my arglunCnt) howc\"er, I find it necessary' to claril1' my theoretical
point of departure.
9
BliYOND A H1STORY BY ANALOGY
In dtkrmath of the Cuhan Renl!urion, dependency theory emerged
J<; d po\\erfiJl critique Ofy.lriolls form& of unilincar evolutionism. It reo
jeered both the claim that the ks::. dC\'eJoped countries were traditional
in need of modernization and the con"jctlon that they were
backward precapitatist societies on the threshhold of a
bourgeois revolution. CndcrdeveJopmcnt, argued proponents of de
was hi<;tof1c3Uy produced; as ;1 creation of modern imperial
ism, it was as modern as industrial capitalism. Both were outn)mcs of,-l
process of ;lCl..:umulation on a world scale.,,6
Its emphasis on historical specificity notwithstanding, dependency
!'loon Japsed into yet another form of ahistoricaJ structuralism. iJongside
modernization theory and orthodox Marxism) it came to vlew social
rCJlitr through a series of binary oppositcs. If modernization theorists
thought of society as modern or premodern; industrial or preindustrial,
and orthodox Marxists conceptualized modes of production as capitalist
or dependency theorists juxtaposed development with
underdevelopment. Of the bipolarirYl the lead term- --'<modern/" ""in
'''capitalist,'' or "dereIopment"-was accorded hoth analytical
value and universal status. The other was residual. Making little sense
without Its lead twin, it had no independent conceptual existence. The
tendency was to understand these experiences as a series of approxima"
tions
j
as replays not quite etncie.nt, understudies that fell short of the
real perfomancc. Experiences summed up by analogy were not just con
sidered historica1latecomers on the scene, but were aiso ascribed a
destiny. \Vhereas the lead term had analytical content, the residual term
lacked both an original history and an aUlhentic future.
In the event that a real-life performance did not corre.spond to the
prescribed rrajectory) it was understood as a deviation. The bipolarity
thus turned on a douhle distinction: bet\veen experiences considered
universal and norma) and those seen as residual or pathological. The re
sidual or deviant case was understood nor in terms of what jt was, but
with rekrence to what it was not. thus became '<not yet
modern)" and (.<not yet capitalism." But can a student,
for example be understood as not yet a teacher? Put differently, is being
y
a profeSSional teacher the true and necessary destiny of every
The residual term in the evolutionary enterprise-c"premodern," prein
dustrial," or "'underdeveloped"-really summed up the
"'etc." of unilinear social science) that which it tended to explain away.
A unilinear social science \ however, involves a double maneuver. If if
tends to caricature the expaience summed up as the residual term. it
10 CHAPTER
also mythologizcs tht: experience that is the Jead term If the fiJrmer is
rendered ahistoricJ.l, tht: latter a.:;crihed a suprahi:.torical trajectOry of
dcn::iopmcllt, a nece<;:;dry path whose main line of dC\'('lopment un
affected by strllggles th.1t happened JIang the wav There ;l sense in
\vhich both .1r(" robbed of history.
The ende;n'()f to restore historicity, agency, to the suhject has been
the cutting edge of a variety of critiques of structuraHsm. But if struc
turalism tended to straitjacket agency within iron laws of history, a
srrong tendency in poststrllcturaHsm is ro diminish the significance of
historical constraint jn the name of sah'aging agency. ""The dependent
entry of African societies into the world system is not especially unique,"
argues the French Africanist Jean Francois Bayan, j'\md should be ;fcien
On one hand" "ineqnality has existed through
out and-it should be stressed ad fltlztJcztm-----does nor negate his
toridty"; on the other "deliberate recourse to the strategies of
extrayersion'" has been a phenomenon in the history of the
cOHtinent. Dependency theory is thereby stood on its head as mod
ern imperialism is-shaH I say celebr'ltcd? the outcome of an African
jnitiative! Similarly, In another recent historical rewrite, slavery too is
explained away as the result of a local initiative. "The African role in the
development of the Atlantic, ,+ John '""would not
simply be a secondary 011 either side of the Atlantic," for ""we must
an:cptl) both "that African participation In the slave trade was voluntary
and under the control of African decision makers" on this side of the
Atlantic and that "the condition of slavery, by did not necessarily
prevent the development of an Afrkan-oricnted culture" on the fur side
of the Atlantic
R
It is one thing ro argue th.at nothing short of death can
extinguish human initJative and creativity) but quite another to see in
every such gesture evidence of a historical initiativc, .... Even the inmates
of a concentration camp are ahle, in this to live by their own cuI
tural logic,'1 remarks TalaJ Asad. ""But one may be torgiyen for doubting
that they are therefore their own history.p'9
To have crhiqued structuralist-mspired binary oppositions for giving
rise to waHed -off sciences of the nonnal and the abnormal) the civilized
and the sa\'age, is the chief merit of poststructuralism. To appreciate this
critique} however, is not quite the s;une as to accept the claim that in
seeking to transccnd these epistemological oppositions embedded 1n
notions of the modern and the traditional. po.'astructtudUsm has indeed
created the basis of a health!' humanism. That daim is put forth by its
Africanist adherents; they say, must '"deexotidze''' Africa
and banalize it.
The s\\'ing from the exotic to the banal ( .... Yes, banal Africa--cxoticism
be damned!")lO is from one extreme to another, from seeing the flow of
events in Atrica as exceptional to the g(;neral flow of world history to
11
it as routine) as simply dissolving in that general flow, contirmlng
its trend, Jnd in the process presumabiy confirnllng the of the
African people. In the process, AI1ican history and reality IO!'le any speci
ncity) and with it, we also lose Jny but .H1 invented notion of Atric,l. Bur
it is only when abstracted from structural constraint that agency J.ppeJ.rs
as lacking in historical specificity, At this polnr, abstract unJvcrs:disIll and
intiI11ate particularism turn Ollt to be t\vo sides of the same coin: both
see in the specificity of experience nothing but its idiosyncrasy.
The Patrimonial State
\Vhereas poststructuralists fixus on the intimate and the
shunning metatheory and metaexperience, the mainstream Africanists
are shy of neither, The presumption that developments in Africa ,-'.an best
be understood as mirroring an earlier history is widely shared among
American Africanists, Before the current preoccupation with civil
society as the guarantor of democracy-a notion I will comment on
1atcr.. -Africanist political sdcnce \vas concerned mainly with two issue'S:
a tendency toward corruption among those \\'ithin the system and
ward exit among those marginal to it.
The literature on corruption makes sense of its spread as a
rence of an early European practice: ""patrimoniaHsm'" or '''preben
daHsm."ll Two broad tendencies can be discerncd.
12
For the state
centrists, the state has failed to penetrate- society sufficiently and is
therefore hostage to it; fi)r the society has t'J.iled to
hold the state accountable and is therefore prey to it. [ will argue that
the former fail to sec the form of power, of how the state does penetrate
society, and the latter the form of revolt, of how society docs hold the
state accountable, because both work through analogies and are unable
to come to grips with a historically specific reality.
Although I will return to the society-centrIsts, the present day
pions of civil society as: the guarantor of democracy, it is worth tracing
the contours of the state-centrIst argument. O,ferwhelme.d by societal
pressures, its institutional integrity compromised by individual ot sec
tional interest, the stare has turned into a "'weak Leviathan),"13
pended above society."14 Whether plain "'soft"15 or in "decline" and
"decay,"16 this creature may be ""omnipresent"" but is hardly "omnipo
tent. "17 Then fol1ov.1> the theoretical condusion: variously rermed as the
""early modern authoritarian state," the .... early modern absolutist state,"
or '''the patrimonial autocratic state," this form of state power is likened
to its ancestors in seventeenth-century Europe or early postcolonial
Latin America, often underlined as a political feature of the transition to
capitalism.
12 CHAPTER 1
\ Vhat happens if yon takc a historical process unt{)lding 11 nder COil
crete conditions this case, of to Eu
rope-as a v.lntage point trom which to make of sub&equcnt &ociat
deyelopmentt The outcome is a hiHory by analogy rather than history as
process. Analogy seeking turns into a substitute f()r theory fC)fmJtion.
The Africanlst lS akin to those learning a t(Jrcign language who must
translate new word back lnto their mother tongue, in the process
missing precisely what is new in a new experience. From sllch .1 stand
point, the most intense cOl1troYersies dwell on what is inrterd the most
appropriate translation, the most adequate the most appropriate
analogy that will capture the meaning of the phenomenon under obser
vation, Mricanist debates tend to tocus on whether contemporary
can reality moSt closely resembles the transition to capitali&m under
enteeuth-century European ahs.olutism or that under other Third \Vorld
experiences,18 or whether the postcolonial state in Africa should be la
beled Bonapanist or absolutist, t9 Whatc.Tt:r their djfferences" both sides
agree that African reality has meaning only insofar as it call be seen
to reflect a particular stage in the development of an earlier history.
Inasmuch as it privileges the European historical experience as its tollch
stone, as the historical expressl0n of the contenlporary unilin
ear evolutiollism should more concretely and appropriately be character
ized as a Eurocentrism. The central tendency of such a method01ogical
orientation is to lift a phenomenon out of context and process. The re
sult is a history by analogy.
The Uncaptured Peasanr.-y
Whereas the literature on corruption is mainly about the state in
that on exit is ahout the peasantry. Two diametrit.:ally opposed perspec
tives can be discerned here. One looks at the African countryside as
nothing but an ensemble oftransactjons in a the other sees
it as a collection of households cOIneshed in a nonmarket miJieu of kin
relations. For rhe the market is the defining feature of
rural life; for the latter, the intrinsic realities of village Africa have little
to do with the market, The same tendency can appear clothed in sharply
contrasting ideoJogical garb. Thus) t()r exampJe
r
the argumenr that rural
Africa is reaJly precapitalist, 'With the ma.rket an e:xternal and artificial im
was first put forth by the proponents of Mrican socia.lism, most
notab)y Julius Nyererc, Largely discredited in the when
dependency theory reigned supreme} this thesis was resurrected in the
eighties by Goran IIyden,20 who echoed Nyerere-once again relying
on empirical material from Tanzania--that the "intrinsic of
'"Mrica" have little to do with market re1ationshlps. he argued,
INTRODl'C'} ION 13
the\' ,1fe J unique expre:;sioll of J premarkct "c(ononw of aftcction."
theorks wcre championed by L\1F theorists daimcd that
the of grollnd-levc:J Illarkets was being simultaneously sup'
pn:ssed and distorted b,' but all-powerful states. The
:lrgument was <lca'demie respectability by Robert Bates's
circulated study Afarket.f and States in Africa. \Vhcreas the latter ten
dency cOlltillues to enjoy the status of an offil.:iai truth in polky-nlilking
cirdc.s, the tormer snr\'ln.:s as a marginal but fashionable preoccupation
in <Kademia.
intcn:s.t is ill the method that guides these contending pcrspec
\Vith market thcorists, the method is transparent. They presume
the market to exist, as all ahistorical and uni\'t":rsal construct: markets are
not but tI'eed; African countries arc market societies, like those
in Europe, pexiod. Goran lIyden, ho\ycyer, claims to be laying bare tht
intrinsic realities of Africa. Yet he proceeds not by a historical t:xamwa
tion of these realities but by formal analogies. Searching for the right
<lnaJogy to fit Africa, he proceeds by dismissing, one after another, those
that do not fit. In the process, he establishes his main conclusion: Africa
js not like Europe, where the peasantry was "captured'> through wage
nor is it like: Asia or Latin .America, where it was "captured"
through tenarlCY arran gements, But this search stops at showing what
dots not exlst. ''It is the argument of this writes Hyden,
Africa is the only continent where the peasants have not been captured
by other social classes. ,,11 In hot pursuit of the riglll historical analogy
the point will become clear latcr--- Hyden ll1isses prcciseJy [he relations
through which the: peasantry is "captured" and reprodlh.. cd.
In this book, I seek neither to set [he African experience apart as ex
and exotic nor to absorb it in a hroad corpus of theory as rou
tine and banal. For both, it seems to me, are different ways ofdismissing
it. In contrast) I try to underline the specificity of the African experience,
or at icast of J slice of it. This is an argument not against comparativc
study but against those who would dc:historicizc phenomena by titling
them from context, whether in thc name of an abstract lllliversalism or
of an intimate particularism, only to make sense of them by analogy. In
my c:ndcavor is to establish the historical legitimacy ofAfrica as
a unit
Civil Society
The current Afrkanist discourse on civil society resembles an earlier dis
course on socialism. It is more programmatic than analytical, more ideo
logical than historit.:al. Central to it are two claims: ciyii society exists as
a fully formed construct in Afnca as in Europe, and the driv1ng force of
14 CHAPTER 1
denlOCratizaLion c\'erywherc is toe contention between civil ::iociety <ll1d
the state.
12
To come to grips wilh thc:se claims rt:quires a historical allal
tor these cnncJusions arc arrived aL through seeking.
The notion of civil socieTy came to promincnce the Eastern Eu
roptan uprisings of the late 1980s. These events were taken as signaling
a paradigmatic shill) from J. SLatc-cenlertd to a perspee
tive, from a strategy of armed struggle that seeks to capture state power
to one of an unarmed civil struggle that seeks to create a self-limiting
power. In the Jatc 1980s) the theme of a s.ociety-state struggle re\'erber
through Africanj::;t circles in North America and became lhe new
prismatlc lens through \'>'hich to gauge the SIgnificance of events in Af
rica. EYen though the shiH irom armed struggle to popular civil protest
had occurred in Somh Africa a decade earlier, in the Course of the Dur.
ban strikes of 1973 and the Sowcto uprising of 1976, the same obsen'ers
who tended to exceprionalize the signifi(ance of these c\,ents eagerly
generalized the import of later events in Eastern Europe!
For the core civil society was a historical
construct) the result of an all-embradng process of diftercntiation: of
power ill the state and division of Jabor in the economy, giving rise to an
autonomous legal sphere to govern civil life. It is no exaggeration to say
that the HegeJian notion of civil society is both the summation and the
springboard of main currents of Western thought on the subject,24
Sandwiched between the patriarchal family and the universal state) civil
society was fc.)r Hegel the historical product of a pro
cess, On one hJud, the spread of (ommoditr relations diminished the
weight of extra-economic coercion, and in doing so, it freed the econ
omy-and broadlY society--ftom the sphere of politics. On the other
hand, the centralization of means of vjolcnce within the modern state
\Vcnt alongside the settlement of differences within sociel)' without di
rect recourse to vlOience, \Vjth an end to force
ceased to he a direct arbiter in day-to day life. COIuractual rclarions
among free and autononl0US inujviduaJs were hencd(xth regnlated by
civil law, Bounded hy law, the modern state recognized the rights of
citizens. The ruk offaw meant that lawgo\"erned behavior was the rule.
It is in this sense that civil society was understood as civllized society,
As a meeting ground of contradictory interests, ci,-n society in Hegel
comprises two related moments, the first explosive, the second integrJ
tive; the first in the arena of the market, the second of publk opinion.
These two moments resurface in Marx and Gramsci as two different con.
ceptions of dvH society, for Marx civil society is the ensemble of rela
tions embedded in the market; the agency that defines its character is the
bourgeoisie. For Gramsci (as for Polanyi, TakotL Parsons\ and later
Habermas) the differentiation that underlies civiJ socieT), is triple and
lI'\TROD('CTIO!\,' 15
not double: between the statt:, the c{:onol11Y, and !-'OClCtY- The 1"1...:11111 of
cl\'il sodety js not the market oot puhlic opinion and cl1lture. It" agent.,
;\:re intellecTuals) \Yho figure predominantly in the cstabli,hmem ofhege
mony. Its hallmarks arc \,o!unt;.1fY assOt:iation and fn.:e the
bJsis of an autonomous orgdlliz,1tion.1J Jnd life. au
tonomous of the state) this lite C;J.nnot be independent ()fit) f()r the gU,lr
e
antor of the .mtonomy of civil (:In he none other than the
or, to put matters difterentiy, although its guamntor may he .1 specific
constellation of sodal fi:m:es organized in Jnd through ei\'il sockty, they
can do so by ensuring a t{)flll ofthc and a corresponding kgal
rcgimt; to undergird the autonomy of (inl <;ociety,
The Gr.lmscian notion of civil society as puhlic opinion and culture
Ius been formulated simultaneously as construct ,md pro
grammatic agc:nda in Jurgen Habcrmas's work on the puhHc sphere.
2
.:i
Habermas accents hoth structural processes and strategic initiatives in
explaining the historical fOrmation of civil society. In the context of a
structural changc "embedded In the transformation of state and econ
the strategic initiati\'es of;ln embryonic bourgeois class shaped
....:m asso(iationai lite'" along and democratic principlesyl At
first) thi::; "public sphere'" was largely apolitical, revoj"inp; "around liter
.uy anJ art criticism.'" The Frcndl R{TOlutioll, howcrcr, "triggered a
movement" leading to its '''politiciz,ltion,'' thereby underlining its
oeratic significance.
Critics of Habermas have tried to disc:ntangJe the analytkal from the:
programmatic strands in his argument by relocating this movement in
its historical context. Thus, argues Geoff EJey, the upublic sphere" was
from the vcry outset "an arena of contested meanings," both in that
"different and opposing publics tor spate" within it and in
the sense that <\:ertain (women, subordinate nationaHties, pop
ular classes like the urban the working class, and the peasantry)
may ha\'e been excluded altogether" trorn it. This pro(css of exclusion
was one of "harnessing _.. public lite to the interests of
one particular group.',Z7
The exclusion thil.t defined the specificity of civil society under colo
nial rtile \vas that of race, Yet it is not possihJe to understand the nature
of colonial power simply by focusing on the partial and exclusionary
character of civil society. It rei...juires, rather, coming to grips with the
specific nature of power through \\'hich the population of subjects C"X
cluded from civil sodetr was actuaHy ruled, This is why the f<:)(us In
thj$ book is on how the suhject population was in(orporated into-..
and not excluded arena of colonial power. Th{: Jccent is on
incorporatIon, not marginalization. By emphasizing this not as an
sion but as .1nothcr J01"m of pO\v(':r} I intend to argue th,lt no reform of
16 CHAPTER 1
contemporary ch'jl society institutions C.1I1 by it<.;df unravel this decen
rralit:ed despothnL 1'0 do so \\ill require nothing less than disrn.:mtlillg
that form of power.
TilE BIl:'lJRCATED STATE
Tht.": (olonial W;lS in every insL;lnce J historical fom13tion. Yet irs
structure e\ctywhere came to share eettain fundamental features, I \\ilI
argue that this was so because cn:rywhere the orgamLltion and
nization of the colonial Slate Was a response to a central and overriding
(jilcmma: rhe native question. Btiefly put, how fan a tiny and toreign
minority rule over an indigenous majority? To this there wcre
two broad answers: direct and indirect rule.
Direct rule was initial response to the problem of admlnfs.
I:crtng colonies. There would be a single legal order, deHned by the "civ
ilized" laws of Europe. No insthutions would be recognized.
Although would have to -confonn to European only
lhose would have al:CCSS to European rights. Ch'il society, jn
this sense, \vas presumed to be civitized society, from whose tanks the
UIKJ"jJlzed wcre excluded" The ideologues of a civilized nati'"e poHc)'
rationalized segregation as less a racial than a cultural 3.ffair. Lord
Milner, the colonial secretary, argued that segregation was "desitable no
less in the interests of soda! comfort and convenience than in those of
health and sanitatjon."'" Citing Lugard concurred:
On the one hand 1Ilt: policy docs nut impose any restriction on 011(;" race
which is not appJicable to thi: other. A European is as strictly prohibited
from !i,ing in the natin: rescn'alioll, JS a native is from living in the
pe.
lll
quartt:r. On the other hand, since this feeling exists, it should in my
opinion be made abundantly dt:ar that what is aimed at i,.1 segregation of
social standards, and nOI segregarion of r.lees, The InJj.1n or the l\frican
gentleman \\ ho .ldopts the higher standard of d\'iliZ:.iItlOJl and to
partake in such immunity from infection as st:gn::gatJ()l1 may COI1yq', should
he .1.'3 free and we!rome lO liye in dle civjlized reservation as the European)
provided, of course, that he does not bring with him t.::oncoutse of t()l"
Jowers, The natiw peasant often shares hls hut with his gOAt) Or sheep, or
fi)wls. He loves 10 dmm and dance at night, which deprives fhl.: Enropean
of sleep. He: is skeptical of mosquito theories, "God made the mosquito
lan-at'," said a Moslem delegation to me, "'for God's sake let the lanae
Iive.)l For these people, sanitary mles ate nccc5sJ.ry bur hatdill" Th.:\' have
no desire to abolish scgregation"18
1.>.i'I ROl1L'l."t 10:\1 17
ltLlCnSI1Jp would be .1 pri\"ikge of the ci\ilized; the lllKivilll.ed would
to all all rotlfld tutelage, may h"l\"c .1 modicum of Cl\'iJ
hUL not political t(W J. propertied fr.lnchise sepJ.rateu the
civilized from the UlH:iYililcd. The resulting \ ision was sl1l11Il1cd up in
Cecil t:''lI110US phrase, "FqU<11 rights t{)r .11l ehilized men."
CoJonin were territorie::; of EuropeJ.11 sntiem,(:l1l. In the tCf
of European domination-but not of known
protectorates, In the context of J settler cJpiuUsm, the social pre
requisite of direct rule \\ dS J rather drastic anair" It inndn.:d J.
hensivc sway of market in:;;titlltlons: the .1pprOpri.1tlol1 of Lmu, the de,
strLlction of comlllunal and the defeat and dispersJ.l of tribal
popuLations. In practice, direct rule meanr the reintegration and domi
Ildtion ofn.Hires in the illstitlltionJl (,'Ontext ofsemisCfvile and
talist agrarian relations. For the vast majority of nath"es, tlut is, for
uncivilized who were c:xduded from the rights ofcitizellship, dirc.ct rule
signified an
In contrast, jndirect ruk came to be the mode of domination oyer a
"'free" peasantry. land rern.lined a
possession. The markct was restricted to the products of Jabor) only
Hl3rgjnaHy incorporating land or hlbor itself Peasant communIties were
reproduced within the context of a spatial and institutional autonomy.
The tribal leadership was either selectively reconstituted as the hierarchy
of the k}(;)i SLate or freshly imposed where none had existed, a5 in
less societies.'" Here political inequality went alongsidc civil inequality.
Both werc. grounded In a legal dualism. Alongside reccl\'ed Jaw was
plemented J customary Jaw that regulated ll(Hlmarket in
in personal (famiJy\ and in community affaIr:;;. For the subject popu
lation of nati,"es, rule signified a medjatcd-decentralized
despotIsm.
Even historically, the division bctween direct and indirect rule neycr
coinCIded neatly with the one between settler J.nd nonsettkr colonies.
True, ;}grarian settkr capital did prefer direct rule premised on "'freeing"
land while bonding lahor, but indirect rule could not be linked to any
specific fraction or capital. It came to rnark the jndination of seyeral frac
dons of the bourgeoisie: mining, finance. dnd comrncrce. The main
tllres of direct and indirect rule, and the contrast between them, are best
illustratc.d hy the South African experIence:. Direct ruk was the main
mode ofcontrol attempted over nati\"es in the eighteenth and early nine
teenth cenwries" It is a form of control best exemplified by the Cape
experience. The bask features of indirect rule, howe\"er
1
emerged
through the experience of in the second half of the nineteenth
(entnr\'. The distinction is also captured in the contrast between the
18 CHAPTER I
(')..peril'llCe of the nineteenth-ccntury coastal encla\'t's (colonies) of
Lagos, Freeto\\l1, and D..1kar and the illland prOtel>
torat('s acquired in the course of the Scramble, The Cape dIvide
Over how to handle the native qnestion was resolved in f.wor of the
model. Key to thdt resolution \vas the emcrgence of the Cape as the
largest single n:servc fl.)! migrant labor in South Africa, f()[ the domi
nance of mining over agrarian capital in late-nineteenth-century SOLlth
Afrlca- and elsL\vhere-poscd afresh the question of the reproduction
of <lutonomous peasant communities that would regularly male,
and single migrant labor to the mines.
Debated as alternativc modes of controHing in the early colo
nja1 period, direct and indirect rule actuaHy e\'olved into
tary of native control Direct rule was the form of urban civil
power. It was about the exclusion of nati\'es from civil freedoms guaran
teed to citizens in civil society. Indirect rule, however, s1gnified a rllfal
tribal authority. It was about incorporating natives into a stale-eni(}rced
cllstomary order. Reformulated, djrect and indirect rule are better
understood as variants of despotism: the tormer centralized, the Jatter
decentralized. As they learned from experience-...of both the ongoing
resistance of the colonized and of earHer and paralleJ colonial encoun
ters-colonial powers generaUzed decentralized despotism as their prin
cipal answer to the native question.
The African colonial experience came to be crystaHized in the nature
of the state tbrged through that encounter. Organized difterwdy in
rural areas from urban ones, that state was hifurcated. lr
contained a duality: two forms of power under a singJe hegemonic
thority. Urban power the language ofciviJ society and civH rights"
rural power of community and culture. Civil power claimed to protect
rights, customary power pledged to eniorce tradition, The fiJrmer was
organized on the principle of differentiation to check the concentration
of power, the latter around the prindpJe of fusion to ensure a unitary
authority. To grasp the relationship betvveen the two) civii power and
customary power, and between the language each empJoyed --rights
and custom, freedom and need to consider them sepa
rately while keeping in mind that each signified one face of the same
bHitrcated state.
Actually Existi1Jg Civil Society
The rationale of civil power was that it \Vas the source of civil Jaw that
framed c1vij rights in civil society. I have already suggested that this
ideaJizatiol1-- aJso shared by contemporary AlTicanist discourse on civil
[t-:TRODUC flOX 19
sodety--rcminds one of an earDer dIscourse on !>.octalism, l\Inre pro
gr,l1
11
m"ltic than analytical) more ideological than historical, hs clJims
(.111 t{X a historical analysis, Thus the I have sug
an analysis of actually existing ch"ll society so as to underw
'0
t
.:
U1d
it in its actual formation, ramer than as a promise.d agenda tor
ch.lnge,
To grJ.sp ma,jor shifts in the history of the relationship between civil
sot;icty and the state, one needs to move away lrom the assumption of a
generalizable moment and identify different and eyen contradic
tory mOlnents in that historical flow, Only through J, historically an
chored query is it possible to problematize the notion of civil society,
thereby to approach it analytically rather than programatically.
The history of civil sodetv in colonial Africa is laced with racism. '[hat
is, as it were, its original sin, for dvil society was first and f()[emost the
sociery of the coJons. Also, it was primarily a creation of the colonial
state. The rights of free association and free publicity. and eventually of
political representation, were the rights of citizens under direct rnIe, not
of subjects indirectly ruled or a customarily organized tribal authority.
Thus, whereas civil society was Native Authority was
izcd. Between the rightsbearing colons and the subject peasantry was a
third group: urban-based nanves, mainly middle- and working-class per
sons, who were exempt from the lash of customary law but not from
modern, racially discriminatory civil1cgislation. Neither subject to cus
LOrn nor exalted as rights bearing citizens, they languished in a juridical
limbo.
In the main, however, t11C coJonial state was a double-sided aftair. Its
one side) the state that governed a racially defined citizenry, was
bounded by the mk of law and an associated regime of rights. Its other
side) the state that ruled over subjects, was a regime of extra-economic
coercion and adminisrratively driven justice. No wonder that the
gic of subjects was both against customary authorities in the local state
and against racial barriers in civil society. The latter was particularly
acute in the settler colonies, where it often took the fbrm of an armed
struggle, but it was not confined to settler colonies. Its
theoretician was Frantz [anon, This then was the first historical moment
in the development of c1\'11 society: the colonial state as the protector of
the society of the colons.
The second moment in that deveJopmcnr saw a marked shift in the
relation between civil society and the state. This Was the moment of the
anticolonial for the anticolonial struggle was at the same time
a struggle of embryonic middle and working classes, the native strata in
for entry into civil society. That entry, that expansion of ciyil so
ciety, was the result of an antis tate struggle, Its consequence was the
20 CHAPTER 1
creation of an indigenous ciyil society. A set into motion with
the postwar colonial reform, this deyelopment \yas of limited signifi
cance. It could not be othenyisc, for any significant in the crea
tion of an indigenous civil society required a change in the feJrm of
the state. It required a deracialized state.
Independence, the birth of a deracialized state, the context of the
third moment in this history. Independence tended to deracialize the
state but not civil society. Instead, historically accumulated privilege,
usually racial, \yas embedded and defended in civil society. \Vhereyer the
struggle to deracialize civil society reached meaningful proportions, the
independent state played a central role. In this context, the state-civil
society antagonism diminished as the arena of tensions shifted to within
civil societv.
The key policy instrument in that struggle \yas \yhat is today called
afllrmative action and what was then called Africanization. The politics
of Africanization was simultaneously and fragmenting. Its first
moment involyed the dismantling of racially inherited privilege. The ef
fect was to unif1' the victims of colonial racism. i\ot so the second mo
ment, which turned around the question of redistribution and divided
that same majority along lines that reflected the actual process of redis
tribution: regional, religious, ethnic, and at times just familial. The ten
dency of the literature on corruption in postindependence Africa has
been to detach the two moments and thereby to isolate and decontextu
alize the moment of redistribution (corruption) from that of expropria
tion (redress) through ahistorical analogies that describe it as the politics
of patrimonialism, prebendalism, and so on. The eHect has been to cari
cature the practices under imestigation and to make them unintelligible.
Put back in the context of an urban civil societv encircled by a country
side under the sway of so many customary powers-thus subject to the
twin pressures of deracialization and retribalization-patrimonialism, as
we will see, was in fact a form of politics that restored an urban-rural link
in the context of a bifurcated state, albeit in a top-down fashion that
facilitated the quest of bourgeois fractions to strengthen and reproduce
their leadership.
There is also a second contextualized lesson one needs to draw from
that period. The other side of the politics of affirmative action was the
struggle of the beneficiaries of the colonial order-mainly colons in the
settler colonies and immigrant minorities (from India and Lebanon) in
nonsettler colonies-to defend racial priYilege. This defense, too, took
a historically specific form, for \yith the deracialization of the state,
the language of that defense could no longer be racial. Racial privilege
not only receded into civil society, but defended itself in the language of
civil rights, of individual rights and institutional autonomy. To victims
I:-.J"lRODUCTIO:\ 21
of racism the yocabulary of rights rang hollO\\, J. lullaby for perpetuating
raciJI privilege. Their demands were formulated in the language of nk
tiOluJism and social justice. The result was a breach between the dis
course on fights and the one on justice, \yith the language of rights ap
peJring JS a fig leaf over privilege and power JPpearing as the guarJntor
of social justice and redress.
This is the context of the fourth moment in the history of .lctually
existing ci\'il society. This is the moment of the collapse of an embryonic
indigenous civil society, of trade unions and Jutonomous civil orgJniza
tions, Jnd its absorption into political society. It is the moment of the
marriage between technicism and nationalism, of the proliferation of
stare nationalism in a context where the claims of the state-both devel
opmentalist and equalizing-had a powerful resonance, particularly for
the t:lst-expanding educated strata. It is the time when civil society
based social movements became demobilized and political movements
statized.
1
<,1
To understand the limits of deracialization of civil society, one needs
to grasp the specificity of the local state, which was organized not as a
racial power denying rights to urbanized subjects, but as an ethnic
power enforcing custom on tribespeople. The point of reform of such a
power could not be deracialization; it could be only detribalization. But
so long as the reform perspective was limited to deraciJlization, it
looked as though nothing much had changed in the rural sphere,
\yhereas e\erything seemed to have changed in the urban areas. V\le will
see that wherever there was a failure to democratize the local state,
postindependence generations had to pay a heJvy price: the untefc:'rmed
Authority came to contaminate civil society, so that the more
civil society was deracialized, the more it took on a tribalized form.
True, the deracialization of the central state was a necessary step to
ward its democratization, but the two could not be equated. To appreci
ate what democratization would have entailed in the African context, we
need to grasp the specificity of tribal power in the countryside.
Customary Authority
Late colonialism brought a wealth of experience to its African pursuit.
By the time the Scramble for Africa took place, the turn trom a civilizing
mission to a law-and-order administration, trom progress to power, was
complete. In the quest to hold the line, Britain was the first to marshal
authoritarian possibilities in native culture. In the process, it defined a
\,"orld of the customary from which there was no escape. Key to this was
the definition of land as a customary possession, for in nonsettler Africa,
22 C H A PT E R 1
the Africa administered through X.1tiyc Authorities, the general rule ,\'as
that iand could not be J private posse.,sion, of either landlords or pe.1s
ants. It was defined .IS a customary communal holding, to which every
peasant household had a Cllstomary acccss, ddincd by state-.1ppointed
CllSlOJ1l.lry <lllthoritks_ As we will see, the creation of ,111 all-emhracing
\vodd of the customary had three notable consequences.
First, more than any other colonial subiect) the African was cOlltainer
Lzed, not as a native., but as a tribespcrsOiL Every colony had two
systems: one modern, the other customary. Customary law was defined
in the plural, as the law of the and not in the singular, a law for
all nniycs. Thus, there was not one customary I,H\' for all natives, but
roughly many sets of laws as there were said to be tribes.
The genius of British rule in Afri..::a-we will hear one of its semiofficial
historians daim--was in seeking to civilize Africans as communities, not
as individuals. More than anywhere else, there was in the African colo
nial experience a ont:>sided opposition between [he individual and the
group, ciyil society and communit}', rights and tradition.
Second, in the late nineteenth-century Afflcan there were
severa} traditions, not just one. The tradition that colonial powers
leged as [he customary was the one with [he least historical depth, that
of conquest states. But this authoritar
jan, Jnd patriarchal notion of the we will see, most accurately
mirrored colonia1 practices, In this it was an ideological construct.
Unlike civil Jaw, customary taw was an administratively driven atIlir,
for those who enfon.:ed custom were in a position to define it in the first
place. Custom, 1n other words, was state ordained .and state enforced. I
wish to be understood dearly. I am not arguing for a conspiracy theory
whereby custom was always defined '''from above," always "invented" or
'constructed" by those in power. The customary was more otten than
not the site of struggle. Custom was often t he outcome of a contest be
tween various forces l not jnst those in power or its on-the.scenc agents.
.My point, is about the institutional conteyt jn which this con
test took place: the terms of the contesl> its institutional frame'work,
were heavny skewed in favor of state-appointed customary authorities. It
was, as we will see, a game in which the dice were loaded.
It should not be surprising that custom came to be the l<:lIlguage of
force, masking the uncustomary power of Native Al1thoritJes. The third
notable conseqUi..;IlCe of an all-cmbradng customary power was that the
Afikan colonial experience was marked by torce to an unusual degree.
vVherc Jand was defined as a CllStOmary possession, the market could be
onJy a partial construct. Beyond the market, there was onJy one way of
driving land and labor out of the world of the customary: t(ncc. The
day-to-day yiolencc. or the colonial system was embeddcd in customary
r;:-"TRODt'CTION 23
Anttloritie, in the loc.:d )otatc, not in e1\il powcr at the C('ntef. "'f("t
we not forget that customary Im:al Juthority \\;)5 reinfo]"..:ed .md
hJcked up by central L-]yil PO\\ cr. Coloni.:ll despotism highly dc
cc:ntralizeJ.
The scat of pm\"i..'r in the rnral areas thc local state: the
district in British colonies, the ccrelf til French colonies_ The fllm.:tionary
of the locdl apparatus was cverywhere called the chief One shonlo
not be misled by the nomenciature into thinking of this <tS a holdon:r
fronl the precolonLll era. :;s"ot onJ)' did the chief ha\'c the fight to pass
ruks (bylaws) governing nndcr his domain, he also cxcLuted all
IJWS and was the administrator in "'"his" are;L In which he settled all dis
pntes. The authority of the chief thus fused in ;1 singh." person aU mo
mcnts of jlldidal, legisJati\"e, executiye, J.nd adminisnatin::. This
,1llthority \Ya!) a clenched fist, necessary because the chief stood at
the intersection of the market economy and the nonmarket 011C. The
administratiye jnstice and the ildministratiyc (OCrCiOll that were the sum
and substdnce of his authority lay behind a regime of
a regime that breathed life jnto a whole range of compulsions;
iorc.:d tabor, torced crops) i<)I"ccd sales., forced contributions, and forced

ETHNICITY AND THE ANTICOLONIAL REVOLT
To onderstand the nature of struggle and of agency} one needs to un
derstand the n3(ure of power. The latter has something to do with the
nature of exploitation but 15 not reducihle to it. I started writing this
book with a on difterentiated agrarian systems on the continent.
from the perspectiyc that has come to be known as poIitjc<tl economy)
r learned that the nature of poJiticaJ power hL'com.es intelligible when
put in context of concrete 'accumulation processcs and the struggles
shaped by these.
30
From this point of view, the starting point of analysis
had to be the labor question.
I began to question the completeness of this propositIOn when I came
to realize that the form of the state that had evolved over the colonial
period \vas not specific to any p'lrticular agrarian system. Its specificity
poJitical; more than anything else, the form of the state was
shaped by the African (olonia) experience. l\lorc rhan the labor ques
tion
j
it was the natiYe question that illumin.ltcd [his experiencc. My
point is not to set up a false opposition between the but I do main
tain that political analysis C"lllnot the nature of power from
<In analysis of political economy. i\lore than the labor qnestion, the or
ganiz<ltjon Jnd reorganization of power tllrned on the imperltive of
14 CHAf'TE R I
tJJI1IJH! politi...:J.l order. This is why to understand the 101'111 of [he
cojoniahsm one had to
at the center of analysis
that was the nati"c
'1 'he form of ruk thl::" f(xm of revolt against it. Indirect rille at
once reintorced bound institutions or control and led to their
explosion from within, Ethnicity (tribalism) thus t.:ame to be
ously the form of colonial control over and the tiJrm of reyolt
agaiost it, It defined the of both the Natiyl::" Authority in
charge of the loc.,l state appar'dtlls and of resistance to it.
Every'where, the local apparatlls of the colonial state was organized
either on an ethnic or on a rdigious basis. At the same time, one finds it
dltlicult to rccall a single major peasant uprisil1g over the colonia I period
that has not been either ethnic or religious in inspiration. Peasant insur
rectionists organized around what they claimed \\"a5 an
compromised, and genullll::" custom, again!>t 11 state-cnforced ,1mi cor.
rupted version of the customary. This is so for a simpk but basic reason:
the, anticolonial struggle was first and a struggle against the
hierarchy of the local state, the tribally organized Natiye Amhoritv,
which ent<:Jrced the colonial order as customary. This is \vhy
where-although the cadres of the mO\'ement werc recruited
mainly from urban area..'l-thc. movement gained depth the more it was
anchored in the peasant srruggle against Xative ,Authorities.
Yet tribalism as revolt hecame the source of a profound dilemma
cause local populations were usually multiethnic and at times multireli
gious. Bthnldty, and at times was reproduced as a problem in
side every peasant movement. This is \\"hy it is not enough
separate tribal power organized from above from tribal reyolt
from belo\v so that we may denounce the former and embrace the latter.
The revolt trom below needs to be problemized
j
tor it carries the seeds
of its o\vn fragmentation and possible self destruction.
1 have already suggested that the fragmentation is not jllst ethnic
Rather. the interethnic divide is an etreet of a larger split, also politically
bet\\"cen town and country. was this double divide,
and interethnic, t()rtuitous. claim is that cye.ry move
ment against decentralized dfspotlsm bore the institutIonal imprint of
that mode of rule. Eyer), movement of resistance was shaped by the very
structure of power against \vhkh it rebelled. 110\\" it came to understand
lhis historIcal taer, and the capacity it marshaled to trans(end it, set the
tone and course of the movement. I will make this point through an
analysis of two types of resistance: the rural In Uganda and the urban in
South Atrica.
We arc nO'\v in a positlon to answer the (luestion, \Vhat would democ
ratization ha\"e entailed in the African conlext: It would havc CI1taile,d
{}.;] 1{ODl'f:T10l' 25
the derad.llization of ci .... il power Jud the detribalizatiol1 of
power. JS p:)ims, an O\"Cr.111 thJt tr:
ll1

s(t:nd tile legacy ot a hliurcJtcd po\ycr. A conSIstent ...kmocratLlallon


\\'ollld han.: required. disn1antling J:nd reorgJnizing: the 10c.11 stJtc, the
In'.l'\" of .\uthorities organized around the principle of fusioll of
, t()rtilied bv <HI administratiydy driycn ulStomJr\, justit.:e <.1nd
through" .
the pace in tapping <1uthorit,uian possibilities in
culture J.nd in culture an authoritJfian bent, Britain led the
in fashioning '.1 that cl.1imcd its particular f()rlI1 of colonial dOlIH
n,ltion to be m.uked hy an enlightencd 'dnd pcnnisslye recognition of
culture. Although its capacit-y to dominat\..' grew through J
5.11 of Its own power
1
the colonial statt: claimed this process to he no
lJlon.> than a deterence to local tradition Jnd custom, To grasp the con
trJ.dktlon in this I haYe needs the analysis of insti
tutions within which onidal custom was t()rged and reproduc.ed. The
most important institutional legacy of coloniJl ruk, I argue) may lie in
the inherited jmoedimcnts to demoa;ltizfltlon.
VARIETIES OF DESPOTISM
AS POSTINDF,PENDENCE REFORM
Clearly, the t()rm of the state that emerged through post independence
rd()l"m was not the same in every instance. Then': was a Yari3tion, lfwc
\vith the lan!Suage that powcr enlploycd lO describe itselC we can
t\'\'o distinct constellations: the conservative and the r<HiicaL In
the case of the consen'<tti\"e African the hierarchy of the locaJ state
from chiefs to headmen, continued after independence. In
the radical African states, though, there seemed to be a marked change.
In some lnstam:es, a constellation of tribally ddincd customary Ll\VS was
discarded as a single customary Jaw transcending: tribal boundaries was
n)(lified. The result, was to a l.H1it()rJ11) countrvwide
cLlstom'Jry law, applicable to aU peasants of ethnic
functioning alongside a modern law for urban dwellers. A version of the
hifurcated {()rged through the I.:olonial remained.
\Vhereas the consen'ati\'e regimes reproduceJ the decentralized despo
tism that was the torm of the colonial state in Atrica, the radical regimes
to relorm it. The outcome, waS not to Jisll1alltle
potism through a democratic rather it was to reorganize dcccn
tralized power so as to unity the through a rdorm thJt tended
to centra)ization. The antidote to a decentralized despotism turned out
to be a centralized despotism. In the back and -f(Jfth movement between
26 CHAPTER j
a decentralized <H1U centralized despotism, each n:gimc claimed to be
reforming; the negative ie,)tures of its predeces.sor. This, we will sec, is
best illustrated by thc seesaw !1lO\'emcnt between chiJj;n1 and military
in ::\igcria,
The cOlltinnjry between tht form of tht: colonial state: the 1'O\\'er
fashloned through radlCJ.1 rci!)[nl was ul1dediw.:d by the despotic nature
of power. For lna.<.;much as radical regimes shared with colonJaJ powers
the conviction to effect a revolution from alJo\'c, they cnded lip intensi,
t)'ing the adrninistratiyely drin:n nature ofjustice
1
cust()fllary or modem.
If anythhlg} the radicaJ eAperience built on the legacy of itlSed power
enforcing admillistratl\'c imperatine:s through extra economic cncr
ciou-except thJ.t., this time, it was done in the name not of enforciug
custom hut of maklng development and waging revolutiou. E\'cn if
there was a change in the title of timctlonaries, from chiefs to cadres,
there was linle change in the nalUre of power. If anything, the fist of
colonial power that was the iocaJ state was tightened and strengthened.
Even jf it did not employ the JanguJ.ge of custOm and enforce it through
a tribal ;:\,uthority, the more it centralized coerciYe authority in the n..lme
of deveJopmcnt or rcvoiution, the more it enforced and deepened the
gulf between tOWI1 and country, Ifthe decentralized conservative variant
of despotism tended to bridge the ufhan-rufal divide through a cHen
te1jsm whosc effect was to exacerbate ethnk divisions, its centralized
radical variant tended to do the opposite; dewcmphasizing the customary
and ethnic difference between rural while deepening the chasm be
tween town and country in the pursuit of an adminislratively driYen de
velopment. The bifurcated state that was created with colonialism was
deracialized, but it was not democratized. If the two-pronged division
that rhe colonial state enforced on the town and
and between erhnkitles--,was its dual legacy at jndependence,
each of the [".co versions of the post(olonial stare tended to soften one
pan of the legacy while eXJcerbating the other. The limits of the (on
servati\"c stJ.tes were obvious: they rcmoyed the sting of racjsm from a
colonially lashioned stronghold but kept in place the Native Authori
ties, which entorced the division between ethnkittes. The rJdical states
went a step further, joining deracialization to delribalization, But the
deradahzed and detribalized power they organized pm a premium on
administrat)ve decision-making. In the name of dctJ'ibaliz<ltloll, they
tightened central control over Jocal authorities. Claiming to herald de
velopment and \>,:age they intensified extra-economic pres
sure on the peasantry. In the process, they inflamed the division between
town and country. If the prototype subject in the conservatiyc states
bore an ethnic the prototype subject in the radical states Wa.<; sim
IS"TRODU<:TION 27
the rUfJl peasant. In the pr(KCSS, both expf.'ricl1ces reprodw.:cd 0111:
p:Hr of the dtrallegacy of the bifurcated stale and (re,ned their O\\'U dis
rersion of despotism,
SOUTH AFRICAN EXCEPTIONALlSM
Thr bittersweet fruit of .AJrican lndependence also defines one po.;;sibh:
fnWff.' for postJ.partheid South AJfica. Part of my argument is that .lpart
IH."id usuaUy considere:d the exceptional feature in the Somh African
1
experience, is actually its one aspect that is uuiqudy African, As ,1 form
of the state, apartheid is neither self-evidently objectionable nor self
t;yidentJr identifiable, Usually understood as institutionalized racial
domination, apartheid was aetuaily an attempt to soften racial antago
nism by mediating and thcreby retheting the impact of racial
tion through a range of Authorities. Not surprisingly, the: dis"
course of both General Smuts, who anticipated it, and the
Broroerbond, which engineered it-ideaJize,J the practice of indire,(,l
role in British colonies to the north, As a form of fule, apartheid-like
the indirect rule colonia1 state-fractured the ranks of the ruled along a
dOLlble dh'ide: ethnic on the one hand, rural-urban on the other.
T'he notion of South Atrican cxceptionalism is a current so strong in
South African studies that it can be said to have taken on the character
of a prejudice, 1 am painfully aware of the arduous labor of generations
of researchers that has gone into the making of South African studies:
someone new to that field must trcad gingerly aud modestly Yet we all
know of the pro\'erbiaJ child who combines audacity with the prid1ege
of seeing things anew; perhaps this child's oniy strength is to take notke
when the emperor has no dothes on. !vir claim, simpty put, is that South
Africa has been an African country with spedt1c differen{,es.
The South African literature that has a bearing on the question of the
state comprises three related currents. The first is a body of writings
largely economistic. It focuses on the rural-urban interface Jnd the di
minishing significance of the countryside as a source of livelihood for its
inhabitants, Its accent is on the mode of exploinulon, not of rule. ,\Vith
its eye on an irreversihle process of proietJrianization, it sees rural areas
as rapidly shrinking in the: face of a uniHnear trend. Becausc it treats rllral
areas as largely residual, it is unable fully to explaIn apartheid as a form
of the state, It is only from an economistic perspective-one lhat
lights levels ofindl1strialization and proletarianization onc-sidedly-that
South African exceplion'.liisn1 makes sense, Convcrsely, the same
tJollalism masks the colonial nature of the South African expe.rience.
28 CHAPTER 1
The point is worrh elaborating. It is only from a thdt fo
cuses single mindcdly on the labor question that the South African ex
perience appears exceptiOlUL For the labor question docs 1l!llminatc
that \\hich sets South Africa apart more or less in a catcgory of its
own: SCllli industrialization, semi-nrbJnizJtion,
capped by <1 strong civil This is why it takes .1 shift of focus
from the labor question to the natino: question to underline that which
is Afrkan and unexcl.,:ptionai in the South All'iean experience. That com
monality, I argue, lies not in the political economy but ill the tt)[m of the
state: the bifl1n:ated stare. forged in response to the ever present di
iermn..1. of how to secure political order, the bifurcated state was like a
spidery beast that !)onght to pin its to the ground, using a minimum
of -judicions, some wOllJd say-to keep In check its most dynamic
tendencies. The more dynamic <lnd assertive these rendencies, as they
ineyitahly were in a semi-industrial setting like South the greater
the f()rce it nnleashcd to keep them in check. Thus rhe bifurcated srate
tried to keep apart fordbly that which socioeconomic processes tended
to bring together freely: rhe urban and the rur,ll , one erhnkity and
another.
There is a second body of scholan:;hipl \yhich is on the ljuestion of
chicfship and rural administration. It is a specialized and ghetroized
erature on a particular InstitUtional tt)fI11 or on local government, whose
findings and insight are seldom integrated into a comprehensive analysis
of the state, And finali)\ there is a corpus of gl."neral political
ings that is \\"holistic but lacks 1n depth aud explanatory power, This is
the literature on "internal of a speciaJ
and "'setder (,u10nia11$I11," No longer in vogue in academia, this kind of
writing has tended to hecome increasingly mor.11istit:: it is preoccupied
with the search tor a not the mode of colonial control. V\lith
a growing emphasjs on non-racialism in the mainstream of popu lar
srruggle in South Africa, it appears embarrassing at besr and di\'isivc
at worse As a failure to analyz,e apartheid as a form or the state, this
triple legacy is simultaneously a failure to re<1Hzc that the bifurcated state
does not have to be tinged with a radal ideology. Should that anaJyti
cal faUure be translated into a political one, it wilJ leave open the
bHity tor such a t()rm of control and containml."nt to sunive the current
transition.
The specificity of the South African experience lies in the strength of
its civil society, both wbite and black. This 1S in spite of the artificial
deurbanizatioIl attempted by the apartheid regime. The sheer numerical
weight of white settler presence iu SOllth Atnc.1 sets It apart trom settler
minorities elsewhere in colonial Africa. Black however, has
29
bc("n J direct by-protinG of first following \.lisco\
cry of gold Jnd diamonds at the end of the lltnt'teenth then
Juring the dCC.1des ofr.1pid secondary under Boer "n;1
ruk. One testimony to the strength of black cidl society was
the:: urban nprising that built W;lV(' upon wase following Soweto 1976
and that was at the basis of the shift in the paradigm. of resistance from
armed to popular struggle. The strength of urban t{)rces ,md ci,-ii soci
(ty-b,lSed movements in South AfriCJ. meant thdt unlike in most African
countries, the center of grnxity of popular struggJe \\'as in the townships
.md not against Authotities in the countryside. The depth of re
sistance in South Africa W.IS tooted in urban-based worker and student
not in the peasant t('volt in the countryside. \Vhereas in most
;\frican countries the formation of an indigenous civil was
a postindependence affair, following the deracialization of the state, in
South Africa it is both cause and consequence of that deradalization.
Yet c.ivil sociery-based movements in apartheid South Africa mirror the
key weakness of similar prodemocracy mo\'el1).ents to the north: shaped
by the bifurcated nature of the state, they lack an agenda for
ing customaty power gelled in indirect rHie authorities and thereby a
perspective for consistent democratization.
The contemporary outcome in South Africa reflects both
those generically African and those specifically South African. The situ a
tion leading to the nonracial elections of 1994 js a confluence of fi\'e
historical developments, first is the shift to apartheid rule in the late
19408. Most analysts have seen this as an exception to th\.' "wind of
then blowing across the cOIltinent, a wind that in its wake
bronght state inJependent:e to nonsettler coJonies. In
though, apartheid-the upgrading of indirect rule authoritv in rural
areas to an autonomous status combined with police control o\'cr "na
tive" movement henvcen the rural and the urban1an attempt to convert
a raciai into an ethnic contradktion-was the National Party's attempt
to borrow a leaf from rhe history of colonial ruk to the north of the
Limpopo. \tVhat gave apartheid its particularly crud twist was its attempt
artificially to deurbanize a growing urban Mrican population. This re
quired rhe introduction of administrarively driven justice and fused
power in African the experience can be summarized in two
words, forced YCmOlHJls
,
which must chill a black South African spine
even today_
Second} fi:)fced removals notwithstanding) the processes of
tion and proletarianization continued. The repression that administra
tively driven justice and fused power made possible-particularly in the
'(decade of peace" that followed the Sharpc\'i1k massacre of 1960-
30 CHAl'TbR l
created .1 climate of gre.n il1';estor confidenl.::e. A.s rates of capital dCCU
111111ationlcaped JhcaJ ofpreYious levels, so did rates ofAt'ric an proletar
ianization and urbanization.
the decade of peace ended with the Durb,u) strikes of 1973
and the SO\\:cto uprising of 1976. For the next decade, South Africa \Vas
in the throes of a protracted and popular urbdn uprising, The paradigm
of resistance shifted from an -based armed struggle to an internal
popular struggle.
the original and main social base of independent unionism
that followed the Durban strikes of 1973 was migrant labor. The trajec
tory of migrant. labor politics illuminates the broad contours of the
tics of resistance in aparthdd South Africa. From being the spearhead of
rural struggles against newly upgraded NJth'e Authorities in the 1950s,
migrant labor provided the main energv that propelled fiJrward the in
dependent trade union movement in the decade fi>ll()\ving the Durban
strikes. But by the close of the next decade, hostel-hased migrants had
become marginal to the revolt. As tensions between
these two sf.crors of the urban African population exploded into antago
nism in the Reef violence of 1990-91, hostels were exposed as the soft
underbelly of both unions and township civics. Seen in the 1950s as
urban -based militants spearheading a rural struggle-an explosion of
the urban in the rural-by 1990 migrants appeared to many an urban
militant as country bumpkins hent on damming the
waters of urban township resistance: the rural in the urban.
If mv objective in looking at the South African experience were simply
to bring to it some of the lessons from African studies, the result would
be a one-sided endeavor. If it is not to turn into a Self-serving
the objectjve must be-and indeed is-also to bring some of the
stren!,>Ths of South African studies to the study of ,".friea. For if the
lem of South African studies is thar it has been exccptionalized,
African studies is that it was originally exoticized and is now banalized.
But unlike African studies, which continues to be mainJy a turnkey im
port, South African studIes has been more of a homegrown import sub
stitute. In sharp contrast to the rustic and close"to-the-ground character
of South African studies, African studies have tended to take on the
character of a speculadve vocation indulged in by many a stargazing
demk perched in distant ivory towers.
This lesson was driven home to me \vith the forceful impact of a dra
matic and personal realization in the early] 990s, when it became possi
ble for an Afrkan academic to visit South Africa. At close quarters,
apartheid no longer seemed a selfevident exception to the African colo
nial experience. As the scales came I realized that the notion of
South African exceptionalism could not he an exclusively South Alrican
INTRODt:CTJON 31
The argument was also rcintorccd-regul.ldy -from the
northern side of the hoth by those who hotd the gun and by
those who wield the pen. This is why the cre:Hion of ;! truly African
a study of Africa whose starting point is the cOI11.monality of the
Afrk.lIl experience, seems imperative at this historical moment. To do
so, requires that we proceed from a recognition of our
legacy which is honest enough not to deny our
1 f the reader should wonder why 1 have devoted so much space to
African 1 need to point out that the South Ati"ican ex
1'erie11.ce plays a key analytical and explanatory rok in the argument
I will put torrh. It is precisely hecause the South l\.!rican historical expe
rience is so difterent that it dramatically underlines what is common
in the Atrican colonial experience. Its brutality in a semi-industrialized
setting notwithstanding, apartheid needs to be understood as a form of
the state) the result of a rerorm in the mode of rule which attempted
to contain a growing revoh, first by repackaging the native
population under the immedlate grip of a constellation of autonomous
Native Authorities so as to fragment it, and then by policing its mo\'e
ment between country and town so to treeze the division betwecn
the two. Conversely, it is precisely because black civil society in South
Africa is that much stronger and more tenacious than any to the north
that it illustrates dramatically the limitations of an exclusively civil soci
ety-based perspective as an anchor for a dernocratic movement: the
urban uprising that unfolded in the wake of Durban 1973 and Soweto
1976 lacked a perspective from which ro understand and transcend
the interethnic and the urban -rural tensions that would mark way
ahead.
Finally) the seesaw struggle between state repression and the urban
uprising had te.ached a stalemate by the mid- 1980s. It was as if the
waters of the protracted uprising had been checked and frustrated by the
walls of indjrect rule Native Authorities. The uprising remained a
dominantly urhan affair, At the same time, the international situation
was changing fast with glasnost coming to the Soviet Union and rhe
cold war thawing. In t.his context the South African go\'ernment tried to
recoup a lost initiative through several dramatic refi>rms. The first was
the 1986 removal of influx control and the aholition of pass laws,
thereby reYCTsing the legacy of forced removJls. It was as if the gov
ernment, by throwing open the floodgates of urban entry to rural mi
grants, hoped they would flock to townships and PUt out the fires of
urban revolt. And so thev flocked: bv 1993, according to most esti
mates, the shanty population encircling many townships was at around
seven ncarly a fifth of the total popuJation. J'vlany were migrants
from rural areas.
31 CHAP'l ER I
Thc second initi,ui\'c cam(' in 1990 with the reic;asc of political pri . .,
Oners and the unhanning of cxik-hased organizations. The government
had jdentHied a (<.)[(.:c highly credible in the urhan uprising but not
born of it and sought to work out the terms of an aJliance with it, That
fixec was the :\friean N.ltional Congress (ANC) in exile. Those terms
were worked out in the course of a tCHlr year negotiation process" caJled
the C01l\'Oltioll for a Democratic South Africa ICODESA). The result
ing constitutional consenSllS ensured the National Party suhstantial
po\vcrs in the state f()r at least fiye years after the nonracial ciections
of 1994. lvlany critiques of the transition have tOcm.;cd on this blemish,
but the real import of this transition to nonracial rule may turn out to be
the tact that it v,,,f111cave intact the :.tructures of indirect rule. Sooner
rather than it will liquidate radsrn in the state. With free
ment between town and country, but with Native Authorities in charge
of an ethnically gm"crncd rural population) it will reproduce one legacy
of apartheid -in a nonracial f()[m. If that happens, this deracialization
without democratization \\'ill haye been a uniquely African outcome!
SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION
T'his book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the strunure of
the state. FoHowing this introduction is a chaprer that reconstructs the
moment of the late-nineteenth -century scramble as a conHuence. of two
interrelated developments. The first was the end of slavery, hoth in the
""estern hemisphere and on the African continent. This Shlft of his tori
cal proportions both underlined the practical need t()f a new regime of
compulsions and deart::d the ground for it. The seeond contributory fac
tor was the set oflessons that late colonialism drew from its Asian expe
rk:nce. Tht:: hisLorical context illnminates what was distinctive ahout the
nature of colonial power in Africa.
The political history of indirect rule) from its genesis in equatorial Af
rica to its completion in South ['[rica, is traced in chapter 3. J should
perhaps clarilV at this point that I do not claim to have wtitten a book
that is cncydopedic and panoramic in its empirical reach. The point of
the examples I narrate is illustrative. As a mode of ruie, decentralized
despotism was perfected in equatorial Afdca, thc real focus of the late
nineteenth-century Only later did ltS scope extend north and
parts of the continent colonized earlier. The examples 1 nse from
the colonial period are clustered around the period of incubation of
direct rule in equatorial Africa, with an extended discussion of South
which is usually presumed to be an c).(cption to the Mrican cxpe-
I;"'; fROOUC f101\ 33
rit::r1C
C
.1nd which I c011t(:no was the last to implement a n:rsion of dcccn
tr.l!izcd despotism.
As its pioneers, the British theorized the colonjal state as a territo
ri.1.1 .."onstrIlCI than ..l cultm;'11 one, The du.llity netween ciyil Jl1d cllstom
.In' power \\'".15 best described in legal ideology, the subject of chJ.pter 4.
dll.1Jism juxtflposcd received (modcrn) law with (ustomar\" law.
But (llstomJry law was formulated not .15 a sin.gle of rutin:- laws but
JS so many .\cts of tribal laws. Com colonial authorities defined a
tribe or an ethnic group as .1 group with its own dist!!1ctl\"C Jaw. RdcrreJ
to as custom, this law was usua.Hy unwritten. Its source, however, was
the Authority, those in charge of managing the local state appara
tns. Oftcn installed by the colonizing power and always sanctioned by
this N.Hire Authority was presented as the traditional tribal Authority.
vVhel"c the soun:e ofthc law \yas the authority that administered the
la\\, there (ould be no ruk bound authority. In such In arrangement)
there could be no rule of law.
Thi, first part of the book doses with a chdpter (5) on the relation
oa!;ic to decentralized despotism, that between the free peasant and the
:\Iati\'e Authority. Through an illustrative exploration of extraeconomk
coercion) chaptcr 5 sums up the distinctive feature of the economy of
indirect rule. Together, chapters 3) 4\ and 5 sum up thc institutional
triad through which this decentralized mode of rule operated: a fusion
of power, an administratively driven notion of cusLomary bw, and a
range of extra econoIllIc compulsions. Each chapter also doses with
a discllssion of the variety and the overall limit of postindependence
reform.
The second part of the book explores the changing shape of opposi
tional moyt::ments as they grow out of the womb of the bifutcatcd state.
I tonls on twa paradigm cases to iHuminate the rural and urban contexts
ofresistancc: Uganda and South AfricJ. Within the context of exploring
different ways of bridging the urbanrural divide, my obje:ctiye is two
fold: first) to connterpose the: earlier discussion of authoritarian possibil
ities in culture (custom,ary law) ta a discllsslon of emancipatory possi
bilities in second, to problematize ethnicity as resistance,
pre:cisdr because it on:urs III mulriethule contexts.
The Ugandan material forms the hulk of case studies ill chapter 6 OIl
rural-based movements in equaturial Africa. My primary accent is on
movements that sce.k to reform customary power in rural areas, so as lO
out both melr crcari\'e moments and the:ir limitations. The South
African material in chapter 7 focllses on urban-based mO\'cments)
nizcd the first time as rrade unions and the second time as political par
ties. Through a combination of secondary sonrce material and primary
34 HAP "1 R 1
111 some.: of the .... violent" hostels in Joh.umesbllrg)
Durban, j explore the dialectics of migrant politics (the
rurJ.f in the urban) through the turning points of the 1970s and the carly
1990, In rhe overall context of the polItics of South Africa,
The conclusion (chapter 8) is a reflection on how oppositional mo,'c
mCnt5 and postindcpl'l1dence states hayc tried to come to terms wirh the
tensions lhal the structure of power tends to reproduce in the social
anatomy, 1\1\ point is that key to a reform of the bifurcated state and to
any theoretical that would kad to such a rd()[111 must he an
cndc.1\'or to link the urban and the thereby a series ofrelared
binary opposit<'s stich as rights and custom, rcpres-entation and partici
pation, cenLraUzJtion and dccentralization) ch-il society and commu
nity-in ways that havc yet to be done.
rr'
Part One ________
TH E S'l RcefCR!:: Or POWER

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