POPULARRESISTANCE TO COLONIALISM AS A LEGACY FOR CONSTITUTIONALISM
As noted earlier, African populations reacted to the colonial encounter in different, sometimes internally inconsistent ways. Boahen, for example, argues that during the first phase of colonialism (from the 1880s to the end of the First World War), the “illiterate and traditional rulers of the rural areas and the educated elite and the urban intelligentsia reacted differently in terms of objectives, leadership, and strategies” (1987: 63).
Rural rebellions were in the context of specific colonial policies and actions, whether “taxation, land alienation, compulsory cultivation of crops, the tyrannical behavior of colonial officials, or the introduction of Western education and with it the condemnation of African culture and traditional ways of life” (1987: 63). Boahen lists numerous such rebellions in different parts of Africa (1987: 64—65), which often cut across ethnic lines, most notably in the case of the famous Maji Maji rebellion in East Africa, which sought to remove German power from Tanganyika—”the rebellion spread over an area of more than 10,000 square miles and involved over twenty different ethnic groups” (1987: 65). Traditional religious authorities also played a key role in some of these rebellions.In his analysis of the Ndebele-Shona (1896–97) mass anticolonial uprising in what is now Zimbabwe, and the Maji Maji (1905) in East Africa, Ranger argues that two traditions of charismatic authority in particular played a key role in giving these movements their mass character cutting across social groups. These were prophetic authority, with its revolutionary potential, and witchcraft eradication movements, which had the ability to spread rapidly across clan and tribal boundaries, sweeping people into a unity that overrode suspicions and allegations of sorcery (1967: 231).
There were also several forms of passive resistance, like refusal to comply with orders or to cultivate compulsory crops, and rejecting all the “civilized” notions introduced by or connected with the colonial system (Boahen 1987: 67).
An important form of protest was “hidden or everyday struggles... work slowdowns, pilfering, sabotage, dissimulation, flight, and the other weapons of the weak were more than just a nuisance to the powerful. The sum total of these otherwise insignificant acts could and sometimes did have far-reaching consequences” (Isaacman 1990: 31, emphasis original). Such localized forms of insurgency were not classified as rebellions, revolutions, or other broad-based social movements. To their perpetrators, however, “these actions embodied at least some vague notion of collective identity and possessed an internal structure and logic even if it is not easily discernible to scholars” (32). In Isaacman’s assessment, none of these recurring and localized actions “attacked the structures of class, racial, and gender oppression. In this respect they have been characterized as weak forms of resistance. Yet to varying degrees they did enable embattled peasantries to protect a measure of autonomy, and they reduced the level of oppression, however marginally” (40).Translating such events into the formal vocabulary of political opposition is theoretically problematic, especially in constitutional terms of struggles for accountability and rights. If constitutionalism is understood as fundamentally concerned with the operation of law and order, then the gains procured via reform by the educated elite of colonized societies might be viewed as more properly “constitutional.” However, it may be possible to envision an African legacy of mass-based “ordinary” protest as a positive political force from colonial, and even precolonial, to contemporary times. In the colonial period such resistance was itself mobilized on the basis of established ideas of justice and traditional political values as Isaacman (1990) has suggested. Regarding the post-colonial period, Cheru argues that
It would be a great mistake to attribute the growth of democracy movements in Africa strictly to the mobilization efforts of elite-led parties that have sprung up in recent years.
Rather, the movements owe their success to the debilitating economic impact of the “silent revolution” on the part of ordinary peasants in protest at the incapacity of African governments to provide even the most basic services to previously protected groups (teachers, civil servants, doctors etc.).... The impact of such resistance to the policy decisions of government may not always be visible on the surface; its significance must be measured by long-term effects. In reality, these actions have been effective in eroding the foundations of many autocratic regimes. (Cheru 2002: 45–46)The main point I am drawing from the preceding review is that earlier, more diffused, forms of popular political protests provide historical depth and indigenous meaning to current forms of “civil society” agitation that appears more coherent to constitutional theorists. New actors in civil society like civic and peasant associations and human rights and environmental groups have now become important agents promoting social change and demanding it from the state. “The overall consensus among these social movements is that the process of poverty alleviation must go hand-in-hand with the institution of far-reaching political change” (Cheru 2002: 46). The additional point I am making is that there is historical depth for these modern forms of organization and objectives if we are flexible and imaginative about where and how to look for that in the histories of African societies under colonial rule.
My concern so far in this chapter has been to integrate precolonial and colonial manifestations of civil society into the same narrative, and appreciate the continuity of the process of building constitutionalism by each society in its own locally relevant and coherent terms. Some of the issues and concerns about the continuation of this narrative to the present time are discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. However, while the next phases of these ongoing processes cannot be anticipated or predicted with certainty, it may be helpful at this stage to reflect on the underlying values and institutions by which “relative success or failure” may be judged.
The next question for now is whether the conception of sovereignty on which present African states are founded is conducive to constitutionalism or whether there is a need for rethinking this principle, and to what ends. That discussion is followed by a focus on issues of accountability, human rights, and dignity. To my mind, these are elements of the “standards” by which the success or failure of African constitutionalism should be judged, though such evaluations should be specific to the context of each society. As I have already emphasized in Chapter 1, the need for a deeply contextual understanding and evaluation does not mean there are no identifiable standards that can be applied in judging the constitutional “performance” of present African societies. But such evaluations are to be made with a view to implementing strategies to improve performance, instead of accepting the status quo as somehow inevitable or permanent.