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At the time of writing this article, the state of Azawad had been roundly rejected by the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the European Union.
Azawad was announced by the Tuaregs following a two-month-long military campaign by the hardy, semi-nomadic Sahara desert dwellers (Tuaregs) about nine months after the formally independent state of Southern Sudan was proclaimed on 9 July 2011. Southern Sudan was a result of a protracted armed struggle by the predominantly black people of that region against the mainly Arabic north.
On the African continent’s eastern sea coast, Somalia has been in tatters since the fall of the former strong man, General Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
In one of Sudan’s southern neighbours, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), civil war has been going on at varying degrees of intensity in one or other part of that vast country virtually since its attainment of independence on 30 June 1960. Some of its 60 million people are attempting to secede.
In West Africa, a million Nigerians were killed in a war precipitated by the secession of their country’s eastern region, which called itself Biafra when it publicly declared the secession on 30 May 1967.
The predominant ethnic group in that region are the Ibo. They eventually capitulated and their territory returned to the Nigerian federal state on 12 January 1970.
Secession has been mentioned by some politicians in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip where the Tswana-related Subiya tribe was cut off from Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) by the German and the British colonialists in the late 1880s.
During Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, a rather insignificant political party led by a well-known traditional Ndebele chief, Kayisa Ndiweni, advocated dividing the country into two more or less along the (then) Gwelo (some say Kwekwe) River and grant its independence on a federal constitution.
Ndiweni party’s proposed federal boundary was based on what was perceived to be the border between the Ndebele-ruled territory and Shona-administered areas before the defeat of King Lobengula by Cecil John Rhodes’ British South Africa Company in 1893.
Chief Ndiweni’s party’s proposal was, however, not secession but a federal set up similar to the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland of which Chief Ndiweni had been a prominent supporter. That federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963.
It is of historical interest to note that some two months before the British Government convened the 1979 Lancaster House Constitutional Conference in London, a few British Government officials consulted Dr Joshua Nkomo who was the Zapu leader on whether his organisation would like the UK administration to grant the country (Zimbabwe) independence as it (the UK) found it in 1890 or as it created it into one state in 1894.
Dr Joshua Nkomo most vehemently rejected the idea of taking the country (Zimbabwe) to the pre-colonial period. He told the British Government officials in the most emphatic terms that his party wanted Zimbabwe granted sovereignty as a unitary state and not as bits and pieces. He opposed Ndiweni’s proposal.
He was a macro-nationalist in word, thought and deed. He and other pioneering African nationalists such as Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, Malawi’s Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Zambia’s Dr Kenneth Kaunda and Mali’s Modibo Keita were all for macro- as opposed to micro-nations.
What are the causes of secessionism? The causes are many and range from a very strong wish by some political leaders to get their ethnic communities to revert to the status quo- ante the colonial era when they were ruled by hereditary leaders.
It was some of those leaders who organised and led the very first anti-colonial armed campaigns.
Most were chiefs.
Some of them sought and got what was known as “protectorate” status from the relevant colonial powers.
In Southern Africa, six territories were granted that status by Britain.
They were Basutoland (now Lesotho), Swaziland, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Nyasaland (now Malawi), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Barotseland (now a part of Zambia).
A couple of weeks ago, some of Zimbabwe’s print media reported that some traditional and political leaders in that region, now called Western Province of Zambia, were calling for its secession.
Barotseland became a protectorate of Britain in 1890 following negotiations between its king, Lewanika, and Rhodes British South Africa Company (BSAC) that led to Lewanika granting the BSAC mineral concessions and rights, even over royalties, in a vast region that covered virtually the entire territory which later became Zambia.
Needless to point out that most of the mineral-rich area lay outside the actual ethnic and linguistic borders of the territory of Barotseland.
The area stretched as far as the Copperbelt, with the lead-rich Kabwe sector lying well within it, actually in its centre.
Attempts to pull Barotseland out of Northern Rhodesia during talks to dissolve the federation in 1963 failed. In one such discussion between the federal delegation led by the Prime Minister Roy Welensky and the British side headed by the Commonwealth Relations Secretary, a Mr R A Butter, a Barotseland prince asked Mr Butter bluntly: “Are the British Government going to allow Barotseland to secede from Northern Rhodesia?”
Mr Butter replied: “No decision has yet been taken on Barotseland. The question is being examined.”
Prince Lewanika, who was a minister in Welensky’s federal administration, continued: “Barotse wishes are being ignored while those of Nyasaland and those of Northern Rhodesia nationalists are being agreed to.
“The Barotse are not prepared to be ruled by Kaunda or any other African nationalist. My father (King Lewanika) at his own request, made treaties with the British Government which you are now going to break.”
Mr Butter said he had discussed the need to introduce some reforms of the Barotseland administration, which the Barotse “head of state” (known as the Litunga) had agreed to consider.
“I’m awaiting the result of that consideration. But although we haven’t taken any decision yet, it’s difficult to see a solution which doesn’t link Barotseland with Northern Rhodesia. There are so many economic and administrative ties aren’t there?” he said.
With those sentiments, the political fate of Barotseland was irretrievably sealed with that of the rest of Zambia.
Prominent Barotse personalities who vigorously associated themselves with this policy included the two Wina brothers, Arthur and Sikota, whose father was at one time the Litunga’s Chief Counsellor, Barotseland’s prime minister in effect.
Arthur Wina became the first black finance minister in Kenneth Kaunda’s government when Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964.
Sikota was appointed information minister. Another son of Barotseland, a brilliant, Indian-educated economist, Munukayumbwa Sipalo, became Zambia’s minister of economic development and yet three others were also given ministerial posts.
One of them, Nalumino Mundia, had been with that country’s liberation struggle led by Kaunda for years.
Princess Nakatindi, who died recently, was given a junior ministerial post.
These were Barotseland’s intelligentsias, the cream of that society whose origins are in the dim, distant past of the Zimbabwe of the Rozvi of the mambos.
Those of them calling for secession from Zambia are without any doubt by and large ethno-centric groups yearning for bygone days when some Barotse would derogatively call people from outside their area “manyukunyuku” a name usually given to the Luvalis (amaRubali), the Lunda and the Luba people all of whom live in regions west and north-west of Barotseland (now called Western Province).
It is most interesting that Zambia’s provinces are now named according to the four cardinal points: western, eastern, southern, northern, north-western and central. The former names included those with the tribal identification such as BaLuvale and of course Barotseland. The new names were a follow-up of Kenneth Kaunda’s “one Zambia, one nation” slogan.
Another cause of secession is a feeling that the region or province concerned is being left behind in the national social, economic, cultural and political development schemes. That was what the Ibos said was their reason to attempt to pull out of Nigeria in 1967.
They accused the predominately Moslem north of virtually monopolising Nigeria’s natural and fiscal resources as well as political power. There have been cases in some African states where governments have developed roads, schools, hospitals and have supplied electricity and piped water to areas where the party in power is most popular to the exclusion of those where opposition parties thrive.
That type of policy generates secessionism or fuels it. It is always wise to be equitable in the use of national resources and the development of personnel and material whatever the political and ethnic landscape is.
It is of much practical and academic interest whether or not a government may be vindictive against its opponents by deliberately denying them some social benefits and rights. To some social commentators that would be tantamount to a punitive measure to coerce the affected people to support the party in power.
Secession may be deemed a better option by some radical elements of that society in spite of its indescribable risks and imponderables.
A cause of secession associated with a human weakness is avarice coupled with insatiable love of power. Africa and the world at large experienced that in the 1960s in Congo (Zaire) especially during the heady days of the secession of its province of Katanga.
An incredibly rich part of the Congo, Katanga was at that time led by Moise Tshombe, a very well-to-do man of the Lunda tribe who was married to a chief’s daughter. A businessman in his own right, Tshombe loved both money and political power. He was irrevocably opposed to Patrice Lumumba’s doctrinaire socialist pronouncements and slogans.
Although very critical of the way the Belgians treated the Congolese people, he became their ally against Lumumba and his anti-secessionist nationalist based in the then Congolese capital city, Leopoldville, now known as Kinshasa.
He took over the top local party leadership from Godefroid Munongo who became his hatchet man and actually killed Lumumba on the night of 17-18 January 1961 near the Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) airport in the then Katanga province.
Another attempt at secession in the Congo was by Albert Kalonji who declared South Kasai province an independent state with himself as its “mulopwe”, a Kasai word for “King”.
Journalists who met Kalonji at the height of the Congolese national crisis described him as an unscrupulous, shamelessly flamboyant man whose heart was in his area’s diamonds.
After Lumumba was brutally murdered by the self-centred Katangese secessionist in Elizabethville together with his two cabinet ministers, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, very strong rumours circulated in south Kasai that Tshombe and Munongo had cut off Lumumba’s ears and sent them as proof to Albert Kalonji that the Congolese arch-enemy of secessionism had been liquidated.
A large number of innocent and defenceless people were killed and many more were displaced because of the Katangese and south Kasai secession attempts caused by the massive greed of mainly three men, Tshombe and Munongo in Katanga, and Kalonji in south Kasai.
Cultural differences in such matters as religious and marriage are other causes of secessionism. Those two among others brought about the secession of south Sudan from the Arab-dominated Sudan, a word which literally means “the land of the black people” in Arabic.
Sudan was indeed a “land of the black people” before the ancestors of the current generation of Sudanese Arabs descended on the African region from Arabia centuries ago.
They brought with them a culture that was alien to that of the indigenous population, especially in the religious field. That led to friction and conflict, and, ultimately, to secession and current armed clashes over the ownership of resources — land and oil — in that part of the Sudan where Khartoum has declared war on Juba.
Since the Sudan is the land of the black people, one would have thought that, ipso facto, its resources also belong to the black people. By resources in this particular regard we mean specifically oil.
In the event of secession in cases where resources — ownership is in dispute, the original inhabitants of the African continent ought to be given preferential consideration in that if the worst came to the worst, Arabs can be admitted into Arab states much more readily than (black) Africans.
Another cause of secession could be ideological differences. This factor featured a great deal during the Cold War days when wars particularly on the Asian continent resulted in pro-western states such as South Korea and Japan emerging as counter to communist states, North Korea and China respectively.
In Africa, western European states accused Lumumba of trying to take the Congo into the communist bloc. They encouraged and supported Tshombe to pull his fabulously rich province out of the Congo.
While it is actually debatable whether or not Lumumba was pro-communism, we cannot avoid acknowledging that the ideological factor played a big role in the abortive secession of Katanga. In African states, not much importance if any at all, is attached to ideology. T
he countries are still in the national democratic stage and most do not yet have a clearly definable working class — the proletariat. The exceptions to this are South Africa, Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria. So political campaigning based on clearly defined ideologies as is the case in many European nations is not yet the norm in Africa.
Finally, secession is, at times, ignited by self-centred political demagogues. Such highly self-centred people belong to the category of ethno-nationalists. They appeal to the base instincts of especially the ignorant and urge them to support them for unattainable idealistic objectives achievable; they will agitate, through secession.
It is most unusual that such demagogues succeed to sway the masses from a tried and tested political path to their uncharted cause. Some demagogues adopt a pseudo-religious approach. Alice Lenshina of Zambia was an example of this type of self-centred, pseudo-religious demagogue.
It is easy for a state with a truly enlightened political leadership to handle such a development. Identification of a cause or causes of a call or calls for secession will enable the government to correct or modify its relevant policy or practice, policies or practice so that it can give highest satisfaction to a maximum number of its nationals in all its territory most of the time.
*Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted through cell 0734328136 and email [email protected]
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