Social Movements and Nation-building in South Africa and Nigeria (African Renaissance, Volume 8 No 1 2011)
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Social Movements and Nation-building in South Africa and Nigeria
In the lecture that he gave at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa to mark this year’s Africa Day, Ali A. Mazrui, who is also one of Africa’s foremost scholars observed inter alia:
“Among the intriguing paradoxes of South Africa’s history is that this land is the last country on the African continent to be liberated, and yet it is also among the first to be truly democratized. In our context here, liberation is either from racial minority rule or from colonialism in the imperial sense. On the other hand, democratization is either the quest for, or the consolidation of a system which combines government’s accountability, with popular participation, and links the pursuit of social justice with open society.”
Ali A. Mazrui’s assertion above portrays quite aptly the arguments that the authors of the four articles in this issue of African Renaissance have raised in their respective discourse on Nigeria on the one hand, and South Africa on yet the other.
Nigeria, which emerged from colonial rule more than fifty years ago, is still mired in serious political instability that poses real threats to its existence. The prevalent scenario is one in which the distinct nationalities that British colonialism carved it out from are pitted against the Nigerian state in a struggle that indicates the extent to which state building amongst them remains unfinished. On the other hand, South Africans who achieved multi-racial democracy after the demise of the apartheid regime less than twenty years ago are seriously engaged, hands on with the task of consolidating their multi-racial democracy.
Evident in E. C. Ejiogu’s article on the Ogoni struggle is clearly the argument that the bases of legitimacy perception of the Nigerian state by inhabitants of the Niger Delta are non-existent, putting it mildly. The state of affairs in the Niger Delta reflects the tip of the iceberg in this context if we recall that all but one of the nationalities that were made to constitute Nigeria are consistent in their refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Nigerian state to wield political authority over them and their affairs.
There is indeed a contrast between Ejiogu’s article and the other three articles by Gilingwe Mayende on attempts being made by South Africa’s post-apartheid governments to formulate and implement policies that are aimed at transforming the labour reserves that apartheid-inspired policies carved Black South Africans into prior to the demise of the apartheid state. The same is true about the article that Kwandiwe Kondolo co-authored with Mashupye Maserumule on Kgalema Motlanthe’s brief presidency sequel to Thabo Mbeki’s recall by the African National Congress (ANC), as well as the former’s sole-authored article on the outcome of the negotiated settlement, which dismantled the apartheid regime.
Although South Africa is still grappling with the issues that derive from that negotiated settlement, unlike what obtains in Nigeria, in South Africa, those issues do not indicate political instability or the refusal of the constituting nationalities to recognize the state as legitimate. Instead, those issues are the evidence of the challenges that South Africans must confront and deal with as they engage in the inevitable task, which is associated with transforming their multi-racial democratic state.