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Explaining Ethnic Political Participation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Nelson Kasfir
Nelson Kasfir
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Abstract

Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a study of the Nubians of Uganda because of the intermixture of class and ethnic features involved in their fall from status at the beginning of the colonial period and their subsequent sudden rise following the 1071 coup d'état of Idi Amin. The fairly recent creation of the Nubians as an ethnic category and the relative ease with which others can become members illustrate other features of the proposed concept of ethnicity. Finally, this concept is used to examine and criticize overly restrictive notions of ethnicity found in theories based upon both cultural pluralism and consociationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , April 1979 , pp. 365 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1979

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References

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2 Mamdani, Mahmood, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (New York and London: Monthly Review Press 1976), 3.Google Scholar

3 The concept of participation is analyzed in Kasfir, , The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1976), 5–14Google Scholar; six ethnic case studies from Uganda are presented, 119–52.

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5 An explicit comparison showing the similarity of “nationalist” movements in Europe and “tribal” movements in Africa can be found in Argyle, W. J., “European Nationalism and African Tribalism,” in Gulliver, P. H., ed., Tradition and Transition in East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Element in the Modern Era (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969), 41–58.Google Scholar

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10 In his research, Mitchell used objective indicators (based on rural criteria) to establish the ethnic units whose social distance he then measured in an urban area by asking respondents to classify others. Both the uncritical reliance on objective indicators and the use of rural definitions in the urban setting make his findings dubious, though the conceptual implications greatly advanced the study of ethnicity. Mitchell rediscusses his own work, though without reference to these difficulties, in “Perceptions of Ethnicity and Ethnic Behavior: An Empirical Exploration,” in Cohen, Abner, ed., Urban Ethnicity (London: Tavistock Publications 1974).Google Scholar

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12 The point is developed by Barth, Frederick, “Introduction,” in Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: George Allen & Unwin 1969).Google Scholar

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17 For a typical example, despite careful attention to definitional problems, see Allen, V. L., “The Meaning of the Working Class in Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, X (July 1972), 177–78.Google Scholar

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28 Melson, and Wolpe, (fn. 13), 1116.Google Scholar

29 See Cohen, (fn. 19), 250–52.Google Scholar It seems unnecessary to accept his additional categories of class structure within ethnic groups and of interethnic hostility within a class, as these can be adequately handled within the four types of situations identified here.

30 Pain, Dennis, “The Nubians: Their Perceived Stratification System and Its Relation to the Asian Issue,” in Twaddle, Michael, ed., Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians (London: Athlone Press 1975), 177–79.Google Scholar Barri A. Wanji disagrees on the name of the people, calling them “Nubis,” and locating the origin of their original military officers in the Nuba mountains in what has become Southern Kordofan province in central Sudan. “The Nubi Community: An Islamic Social Structure in East Africa,” Sociology Working Paper No. 115 (Makerere University, n.d.), 21–22. Shinnie, P. L. (Uganda Argus, December 23, 1957, p. 4)Google Scholar, also argues for nominal origin in the Nuba mountains. However, cultural influences emanating from the homelands of the founders are slight enough to make irrelevant the question which place happened to be the origin of the name. Both terms seem to be in use in Uganda.

31 Southall, Aidan, “General Amin and the Coup: Great Man or Historical Inevitasbility?” Journal of Modern African Studies, XIII (March 1975), 87.Google Scholar

32 Pain, (fn. 30), 179.Google Scholar

33 Some British felt they owed “a very real obligation to these natives who have followed and fought under our flag, and who are now strangers in a strange land; and that obligation, I claim also, extends in some degree to their children …” Postlethwaite, J. R. P., I Look. Back. (1947)Google Scholar quoted in Pain, (fn. 30), 228.Google Scholar

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36 Uganda Argus, December 18, 1957, p. 4.

37 Uganda Argus, December 28, 1957, p. 4. Mustapha Ramathan is himself an example of the Nubian network (discussed below) on which Amin relies heavily. A teacher at about the time the letter was written, he became the Ugandan Ambassador to the United States in September 1971; in October 1973 he was recalled to Uganda to become Minister of Cooperatives and Marketing.

38 Uganda Argus, December 31, 1957, p. 2.

39 Pain, (fn. 30), 184.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 183.

41 Wanji, (fn. 30), 22.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., 8–9. Southall asserts that “the core tradition of the Uganda army is a Nubi tradition” (fn. 31), 89.

43 Amin, like many Nubians, can choose between two accepted ethnic identities—in his case Kakwa as well as Nubian. The Kakwa, unlike the Nubians, have land and a traditional history on which to draw in constructing their ethnic identity. Amin's birthplace is often asserted to be in the Northwest corner of Uganda (or in Sudan), because large numbers of people objectively identifiable as Kakwa live there. But Ugandans who have known Amin for a long time maintain that he grew up in Bombo, which became the site of a large Nubian settlement because it was the headquarters of the King's African Rifles until 1939. Amin himself has said that he was born in the Police Barracks in Kampala, and, significantly, that his father had been a policeman. As explained below, these facts suggest that he had close early associations with Nubians—which are entirely consistent with his Kakwa ties.

44 Martin, David, General Amin (London: Faber and Faber 1974), 27–66Google Scholar, offers an excellent account of the coup d'état that includes details of Amin's reliance on Nubian noncommissioned officers in its execution.

The widespread assertion (accepted by Martin), that Anya-nya guerrillas fighting in the southern Sudan secessionist forces helped Amin to take over the government, is probably false. As it happened, the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement was under heavy military pressure from Sudan's national army at this time, and the site of the SSLM's headquarters was taken in battle by Khartoum forces on the same day as the Ugandan coup d'état. After March 1972, when the civil war in Sudan ended, 6,000 members of the SSLM (Anya-nya guerrillas) were admitted into the Sudanese national army as one of the terms of settlement. Far more than this number presented themselves for potential induction; most of the excess were attracted by the job opportunity and had not been part of the guerrilla forces during the past decade. It is entirely plausible that some of those rejected then found their way across the border and were recruited into the Ugandan Army.

45 Data on the social composition of those to whom abandoned Asian businesses were allocated have been collected by Horace Campbell and E. A. Brett.

46 Mazrui, , Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications 1975), 127–44.Google Scholar

47 The general category of southern Sudanese in Uganda overlaps but is not identical with Nubian: the former includes many non-Muslims as well as persons not attracted to trade or the military.

48 Whether insiders among the Nubians are making efforts to close the group's boundaries, particularly in light of their current good fortune, would be of great interest. Investigation might also indicate other cultural traits held by outsiders that facilitate (or prevent) their full assimilation into Nubian status. Wanji, (fn. 30, 71–72)Google Scholar points out that many Nubian cultural traits are identical to those found in southern Sudan, and unlike those in East Africa.

49 Voice of Uganda, April 23, 1973, p. 1. Wanji, (fn. 30, 69–70)Google Scholar found that Nubians discourage marriages with those whom they objectively identify as Baganda—even if Muslims—though not with most other Bantu or Nilotic speakers.

50 Pain, (fn. 34), 19.Google Scholar Nubians also formed the only unit all of whose members could speak Swahili, which has always been the official language of the Ugandan Army. They did poorly, relative to other ethnic categories, in the number of respondents who could speak English well—a further indication of their low access to formal education.

51 For a recent statement, see the essays in Kuper, Leo and Smith, M. G., eds., Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969).Google Scholar

52 See the useful collection of articles in McRae, Kenneth D., ed., Consociational Democracy: Political Accommodation in Segmented Societies (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Carleton Library 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 The positive correlation is argued in Morrison, D. G. and Stevenson, H. M., “Cultural Pluralism, Modernization, and Conflict: An Empirical Analysis of Sources of Instability in African Nations,” Canadian journal oj Political Science, V (March 1972).Google Scholar The absence of correlation (with the exception of the relationship of “ethnic pluralism” and instability when controlling for the category of “civil servants/wage earners”) is asserted in Barrows, Walter L., “Ethnic Diversity and Political Instability in Black Africa,” Comparative Political Studies, IX (July 1976).Google Scholar Indeed, Barrows (pp. 161–62) concludes from the lack of statistical association that researchers ought to examine other variables instead of ethnicity in studying instability.

54 Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” in McRae, (fn. 52), 70–89.Google Scholar For one appeal in support of extending this particular approach to ethnically divided societies, see Young, (fn. 13), 527–28.Google Scholar

55 Lijphart, (fn. 54), 82–84.Google Scholar

50 Cf. Lustitk, Ian, “Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism versus Control,” World Politics, XXXI (April 1979), 334.Google Scholar

57 “South Africa's Answer to the World,” Johannesburg Radio broadcast, October 5, 1977, British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 4B, ME/5634/B/1–2, October 7, 1977.Google Scholar In an extremely interesting paper, “Consociational Authoritarianism: Incentives and Hindrances toward Power Sharing and Devolution in South Africa and Namibia,” John Seiler reviews efforts by Afrikaner intellectuals to make use of consociationalism. American Political Science Association Conference, Washington, D.C., September 1977, pp. 21–22.

Lijphart left himself open to this sort of interpretation by referring approvingly to“a kind of voluntary apartheid policy as the best solution for a divided society,” in his argument that separation of subcultures may reduce conflict (fn. 54), 83.

58 Barry, , “Political Accommodation and Consociational Democracy,” British Journal of Political Science, V (October 1975), 502–3.Google Scholar

59 Oddly, Barry insists (ibid., 504) that political parties in Northern Ireland are ethnically (rather than religiously) based. In so arguing, he appears to plant the seeds of a tautology by implying that all cleavages too intense to be amenable to consociational solutions are ethnic.

60 There is evidence that political disagreements produced demands among those objectively identified as Ibos that the 1975 panel considering the number of new states divide the old East Central state into four new ones. Daily Times (Lagos), June 27, 1977. p. 3.