Mamdani: Creating a National Citizenship

Look, when somebody says that these countries fared better under the colonial masters, of course, it is an offensive statement. But you have to ask what informs that misguided, and deliberately mischievous statement. There is something in their experience, which makes them make that incredible statement. I would say that the credible part of the statement is that under colonialism, there was an effective centre. Today, we don't have an effective centre; it doesn't mean that colonialism is better; it means that we have to create an effective centre.

What does it mean to create an effective centre; some people think it means to create a dictatorship, a strong power. I don't think so; I think it means to create a national citizenship. The entire political project of colonialism was to prevent, to forestall the coming into being of a national citizenship. It was to create political institutions, which were not even regional, but tribal, and this was summed up in this institution called the Native Authority. So, every African colonial state was created as a tribal federation, not just South Africa; every state was patterned with the idea that the national territory was a composition of tribal homelands, and each homeland was being ruled by  the Native Authority. The rights of the people who live in the homelands are based on tribal identities; the only rights are customary rights. There are no civic rights, and customary rights include the rights to learn, and the rights to participation in governance, meaning whether you could compete for the position of a chief or not, the requirement is, you must be indigenous to that tribal homeland; that was the colonial project.

More than that, unlike with religion, nobody can convert; the lines are firm. The lines were never firm before colonialism, all over Africa. I know in Uganda, that one could become a Muganda; you could come from somewhere else, you speak Uganda, you married to Uganda, your children are Baganda; they were not fixed boundaries. People talk of one of the problems of colonialism as having created fixed boundaries inside Africa. But that is not the only problem, there is the problem of the boundaries inside each country; fixed boundaries between tribes, fixed ethnic boundaries, not just on the ground, but also blood boundaries. Colonial powers claimed that this was Africa's tradition and the law was called customary.

In my view, colonialism began as a racial discrimination project, a civilizing mission, but it was not tenable because the privileged were too few and those who were out of the system were too many. Then the system in the 20th century created a second layer of discrimination, and that was what they called tribe, not ethnic group. Ethnic group is cultural, it is about language, it has a long history. Way before colonialism, people had their own languages and their cultures, but the idea of transforming this into a political allegiance and make it the basis of discrimination by saying that any piece of land, it is only those with a particular identity called customary (that have rights to the land) and the others would not have rights, even if they were born there.

The Problem of Federal Character

The problem after independence, I think is typified in Nigeria, and I will give you my example. Nigeria had a Civil War, and then it had a Constitution after the war. The constitution was supposed to be an antidote to the war, and the provision, which was supposed to be the antidote, is what we call Federal Character. It said very reasonably that key institutions in the Nigerian federation should reflect the federal character of Nigeria. That is fine. What are the key institutions. The army, the civil service, and federal universities that is also fine.

What does it mean to reflect federal character? It means that every part of the Nigerian federation, every state must have representation within that institution that is also positive. What does it mean to have representation? It means the weight of the population of the state must be reflected. Now comes the difficult question, which is: who in the state has the right to compete for these positions? And the answer is: only those indigenous to the state. Who is an indigene or how do you define who the indigene of a state is? Is it anybody who was born there or of a father who was born there? This, in my view, creates political dynamite.