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The African Concept of Balkanisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Benyamin Neuberger
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Political Science, Tel-Aviv University

Extract

In modern African political literature there is a recurrent reference to the dangers of ‘balkanisation’. Already during the 1920s the Gold Coast nationalist Kobina Sekyi compared Africa with the Balkans, and warned not to follow the ways of ‘balkanisation’ Later Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Sékou Touré, and other anti-colonial leaders continued to employ the term which rapidly became a basic part of the phraseology of modern African nationalism. I shall attempt to analyse the concept, and to show its use, definition, ambivalence, and implications.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

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page 523 note 4 Deutsch, op. cit. p. 50.

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page 524 note 3 I have checked all Obafemi Awolowo's books, and all the speeches of Anthony Enahoro contained in Kirk-Greene, A. H. M., Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: a documentary source book, 1966–1969, Vols. I and II (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

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page 524 note 5 See Foltz, William, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation (New Haven, 1965), p. 117.Google Scholar

page 524 note 6 Cf. Senghor, Léopold Sédar, On African Socialism (New York, 1964)Google Scholar, where the President of Senegal speaks on p. 16 about the fear of balkanisation (implying that it does not yet exist), and on p. 19 about the Africans' responsibility for balkanisation (implying that it does).

page 524 note 7 Legum, Colin, Pan-Africanism: a short political guide (New York, 1965), pp. 321 and 273–4Google Scholar.

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page 525 note 4 See, for example, Modibo Keita's reactions to Biafra in Afrique contemporaine (Paris), 36, March/April, 1968, p. 20.

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page 525 note 6 According to Mudola, D., ‘The Search for the Nation–State and African Peace’, in East Africa Journal (Nairobi), VI, 11, 11 1969, pp. 27–22Google Scholar, the creation of Biafra did not encourage other secessions. On the other hand, it is difficult to know what would have happened if Biafra had survived. The Sanwi movement in the Ivory Coast quoted the Biafran ‘precedent’, which had been recognised by the Government of Houphouét-Boigny. President Maclas of Equatorial Guinea said that the Biafran ‘precedent’ encouraged a Secessionist movement in Fernando P. Because both movements were much older than the civil war, the rôole of the ‘precedent’ is questionable.

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page 527 note 1 Yakubu Gowon, in Kirk-Greene, op. cit. Vol. II, p. 318.

page 527 note 2 Uganda Argus (Kampala), 3 February 1960. This was said during the Buganda crisis, when secession was threatened.

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page 527 note 9 Touré, quoted in ibid. p. 121.

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page 529 note 1 Ghana Today, 10 March 1965.

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page 529 note 3 Ibid. p. xx.