Is Violence Inevitable in Africa?: Theories of Conflict And Approaches to Conflict Prevention (African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies) (African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies)

253 Pages·2005·0.87 MB·English

Is Violence Inevitable in Africa?
African-Europe Group for
Interdisciplinary Studies
VOLUME 1
Is Violence Inevitable
in Africa?
Theories of Conflict and Approaches to
Conflict Prevention
Edited by
Patrick Chabal
Ulf Engel
Anna-Maria Gentili
A E GI
B D
U E
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UT. .SSAA
BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2005
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
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Diverse histories of American sociology / edited by Anthony J. Blasi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-14363-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Sociology—United States—History. I. Blasi, Anthony J.
HM477.U6D58 2005
301’.0973—dc22
2005042082
ISSN 1574-6925
ISBN 90 04 14450 1
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CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................ vii
Introduction
Violence, Power and Rationality: A Political Analysis
of Conflict in Contemporary Africa .............................................. 1
Patrick Chabal
PART ONE
EXPLAINING CONFLICT AND UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT
PREVENTION IN AFRICA
1. Angola and the Theory of War .................................................. 17
Christopher Cramer
2. Ethnicity and Citizenship in Sub Saharan Africa .................. 35
Anna-Maria Gentili
3. Natural Resources, Scarcity and Conflict: A Perspective
from Below .................................................................................... 55
Mirjam de Bruijn & Han van Dijk
4. Empirical Perspectives on African Conflict Resolution ........ 75
Klaas van Walraven
5. Area Studies, the Analysis of Conflicts and the Evaluation
of Preventive Practice in Africa ................................................ 99
Andreas Mehler
vi CONTENTS
PART TWO
MANAGING CONFLICT AND IMPLEMENTING
CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN AFRICA
6. The Social Cost of Conflict in the Democratic Republic
of Congo ........................................................................................ 127
Theodore Trefon
7. Assessing Africa’s Two-Phase Peace Implementation
Process: Power-sharing and Democratization ........................ 147
Donald Rothchild
8. Administrative Decentralization and Political Conflict
in Mali ............................................................................................ 171
Gerti Hesseling & Han van Dijk
9. Principles for Conflict Transformation: Practitioners
in Africa .......................................................................................... 193
Shamil Idriss
Conclusion
Violent Conflict and Conflict Prevention in Africa:
An Alternative Research Agenda .................................................... 213
Ulf Engel
List of Contributors .......................................................................... 235
Index .................................................................................................... 241
PREFACE
This volume is an attempt to analyse the causes of conflict in Africa,
to review the various approaches to conflict prevention or conflict
resolution and to discuss some of the practical difficulties in ending
violence. It brings together a wide range of scholars and practition-
ers, with specialist knowledge of a large number of African countries.
The study of conflict and conflict resolution has, over the years,
resulted in the publication of a large volume of material, extending
from NGO reports to theories of war. As a result, books on the sub-
ject often lack a clear focus. For this reason, the editors have been
careful to ask the contributors to address the question in a way that
would ensure not just that the chapters were complementary but that
the book as a whole should be coherent.
The intention here is to provide, within a single volume, a survey
of the various approaches to conflict in Africa, a systematic discus-
sion of some of the root causes of violence, as well as case studies on
the consequences of violence and the effects of conflict resolution.
The book is in four parts. The Introduction develops a political analy-
sis of violence in Africa. Part I discusses a variety of theories of con-
flict and outlines the main approaches to conflict resolution. Part II
presents case studies of conflict management and resolution. The
Conclusion reviews the literature and offers an original way forward.
The editors

INTRODUCTION
VIOLENCE, POWER AND RATIONALITY:
A POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICA
Patrick Chabal
Conflict today seems to be a hallmark of African societies. Indeed, the
continent now endures a greater degree of violence than at any time
since independence. From large-scale regional conflicts (as in the
Central African region) to intractable civil wars (as in Angola or Liberia),
by way of genocide (as in Rwanda), warlordism (as in Sierra Leone)
or seemingly generalized anomic criminal activity, African men and
women have endured inordinate suffering. Not only is there now-
adays more civil discord, more fighting, but there is also an extra-
ordinary degree of strife in everyday life, ranging from the abuse
dispensed by police and other authorities to the increasing use of
religiously sanctioned or witchcraft driven brutality. Finally, there is
now more death due to hunger (sometimes, as has happened in the
Sudan, deliberately engineered) on the continent than at any time in
the past few decades. Government neglect and callousness inflict
untold damage upon the fabric of society and the lives of innumer-
able individuals. Why?
There are many possible ways of approaching this question—of
which the best known, though not the most convincing, is the ‘greed
versus grievance’ debate—discussed later in the book. I propose to
limit my discussion to the two broader arguments. The first links vio-
lence with the social and political pangs of development: all societies
have evolved in this way. It is enough to look at the history of Europe
since the sixteenth century to establish that such is truly the way of
historical ‘progress’. The consolidation of the state and the transfor-
mation of society cannot be achieved without force. The second is to
ask whether there are features of the modernization of the African
continent that make it prone to a greater degree (and range) of vio-
lence than might ‘historically’ be expected. Are we, in other words,
confronted with a situation in Africa that differs substantially in sys-
temic terms from that experienced elsewhere in the world?
2 PATRICK CHABAL
Of course, conflict is a multi-faceted process and not one amenable
to simple explanation. From state-controlled warfare to psychological
brutality, there is a wide range of social, economic, political and per-
sonal factors that can account for what is taken to be a single phe-
nomenon. Equally, the question of cause and effect, and of possible
motivation, invites careful consideration. The issue of why force
is meted out, collectively or individually, is always intricate, even if
its consequences are plain to behold. Seen as morally wrong, evil,
socially disruptive and politically unsustainable, violence neverthe-
less forms part of the everyday (political and economic) calculus of
life and, as such, deserves analysis, rather than mere (albeit sincere)
condemnation.
I specifically want to examine here the relation between conflict
and the practice of politics in contemporary Africa. What this means
is that I am leaving aside other, equally significant, aspects of the
phenomenon in question such as the sociological, economic, psy-
chological, religious or the personal. Whilst, clearly, various aspects
of violence are connected, in that they impinge on all the areas men-
tioned above, as well as on areas of individual and collective life that
are not so easily explained by social science, it is useful to circum-
scribe one’s enquiry analytically. Privileging the political, as I do, does
not in any way imply that I neglect the link between all the above
mentioned facets of the question, but only that I study violence by
analysing the exercise of power on the continent. Thus, for instance,
an explanation of the genocide in Rwanda would focus on the polit-
ical configuration that made this appalling event possible. Clearly,
however, any comprehensive study of genocide ought to delve as well
into the individual and psychological causes of killing.
Concentrating attention on the connection between violence and
power means analysing the ways in which it is politically meaning-
ful and the political implications it may have. It is, inevitably, to limit
one’s focus on what may appear to be an excessively instrumental
view. There are many instances where the political dimension of the
phenomenon seems to be secondary to the personal, psychological
or moral: witness the chopping off of hands in Sierra Leone. There
are indeed serious questions to be asked about what has happened
in that country in the past decade—not least whether the ‘drug’ of
violence did not become an end in itself—but what concerns me here
is what political significance these events may have had in the his-
torical context of contemporary Sierra Leone. Others may, quite jus-