Sources for a Study of the Congo since Independence

Hoskyns, Catherine

doi:10.1017/s0022278x00001750

Cited by 4 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…To all the inhabitants of Katanga, without distinction of Race or Color, we ask that you gather around us to lead our country and all its inhabitants forward to political, social, and economic progress, to the betterment of all. 11 With this statement, the first secessionist conflict in Africa began. Although the central government opposed the secession, it was powerless to enforce its will while the mutinous army was rampaging throughout the nation.…”

Section: The Roots Of Katangan Secessionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The second factor has to do with the advantages offered within what is now known as the "Weak State" in Africa. 11 Whereas state structures remained relatively robust throughout the Cold War because of outside aid and the lack of credible threats to their sovereignty, following the collapse of the Soviet Union the states faced a lack of foreign support and an increasingly turbulent world outlook. This combination produced the paradoxical Introduction weak state, which continues to be reproduced throughout Africa due to the advantages it affords elites.…”

Section: The Absence Of the Secessionist Motive In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond this, there was at the time no specific mention that the already determined (and possibly illegitimate) political boundaries that had been in place since the Berlin Conference of 1885 were necessarily those of postcolonial Africa. 11 As such, the general idea of the Civil Secessions was that the secessionist governed territories could and would fulfill the role of the state and in doing so gain the recognition required to join the international community while separating themselves from what they considered a disadvantageous (or even genocidal) connection with their previous colonial collective.…”

Section: Nature and Character Of Civil Secessionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…General Ironsi and his host in Ibadan, Lt. Col. Fajuyi, were both beaten and killed by a young Northern officer and his men. 11 At army garrisons in Abeokuta, Ibadan, Ikeja, Lagos, Kaduna, and Kano, Eastern troops and officers were arrested, tortured, and killed by their Northern colleagues. The final toll was reported as 43 officers and 170 other ranks killed.…”

Section: The Context Of Biaframentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Viet Minh victory was seen as a remarkable feat: a non-industrialized proto-state had organized itself and waged war on an imperial power that had the backing of the United States. 11 By constructing a social and political apparatus to sustain a protracted war and avoiding direct conventional conflict with the stronger enemy, the Vietnamese won their independence and inflicted a decisive defeat upon their previous colonial overlords. 12 While the rest of the colonized world could take notice of Mao's victory in China over a Western-backed opponent and appreciate the victory, it would always be possible to dismiss it as a victory against a rotten and corrupt regime.…”

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Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa

Thomas,

Falola

2020

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War and PoliticsAs clichéd as it may be to begin with a quotation from an eminent voice from the past, it seems appropriate to start this section with Clausewitz's famous observation that "war is the pursuit of politics by other means." War is the ultimate expression of political violence, an organized effort to drive forward a political ideal, supported by a political body and carrying forth a conscious or unconscious ideology. Therefore, a war must of necessity carry a political goal within its execution, the grand strategy of the aggressor that then defines the rhetoric, structure, and execution of the violence, whether it be one of external projection of power against another state or an internal conflict advancing a particular political objective. Viewed in such a way, it is no surprise that Africa, which has seen such political turbulence beginning with its rapid decolonization, has also seen a subsequent abundance of conflict. The African state, like any other state, creates and maintains its prerogatives by control of the means of violence, and in this sense all conflicts can and must be viewed in their political relation to the states involved.This relation is readily apparent when one examines the various major conflicts that have dotted the continent since independence. The most obvious of the struggles within Africa are those of state against state, which despite their visibility are generally rare upon the continent. These include the formal conflicts between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden in 1977-78, where two centralized and powerful states fought a conventional war over territory historically claimed by both nations. This conflict was followed in short order by the often overlooked struggle between Uganda and Tanzania in 1979, where the Tanzania People's Defence Force drove Amin's Ugandan Army from the Kagera salient and toppled the dictator's regime. Beyond these eastern conflicts, the multiple wars between Libya and Chad in the 1970s and 1980s fall into this category. Qaddafi's conventional Libyan forces were attempting to claim a strip of Chadian territory and were ultimately frustrated over the course of multiple incursions. The Horn even saw what might be termed a continuation of an earlier conflict in the recent Ethiopian-Eritrean War of 1998-2000, where the borders of the recently separated states became the subject of a violent disagreement. Of course, dwarfing all of these, in both political meaning for the continent and scale, end of the Cold War. The author, Henry Hale, argued that the dissolving Soviet Union served as a perfect petri dish for observing the increasing calls for secession, separatism, and sovereignty within an unstable region. His study, "The Parade of Sovereignties: Testing Theories of Secession in the Soviet Setting," identified seven separate material and cultural factors purported to be involved in the creation and maintenance of secessionist motivation and searched for their actual effects in the new states emerging in the Eastern Bloc. These seven factors inc...

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Section: The Roots Of Katangan Secessionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: The Absence Of the Secessionist Motive In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Nature and Character Of Civil Secessionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Context Of Biaframentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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