STRUCTURES AND ASSUMPTIONS OF COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION

British rule in colonial Africa was generally carried out through what is commonly known as “indirect rule,” whereby colonial authority was exercised through local structures, including “recognizing” existing chiefs, appointing new, more compliant chiefs, or establishing new “native administrations” often with no African correlates for that purpose.

The irony is that the theoretical or ideological rationale for these strategies of colonial domination was presented as consistent with European constitutional and democratic ideals. The British doctrine of indirect rule was claimed to “recognize” and even respect indigenous culture, customs and authority. The British colonial administrators “were skeptical that their own institutions could survive when transplanted to Africa, and they deeply believed that any system of government must take into account African institutions and traditions. In theory, at least, indirect rule was a happy combination of “expediency and high purpose” (Collins 1994: 102). The French policy of assimilation claimed, in contrast, to include all colonial subjects in consonance with the universalist ideals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment ideas of the power of reason and universal equality of all men (but not necessarily women). These egalitarian principles were supposedly “applied to the French colonies that were promptly incorporated as constitutional and administratively equal parts of continental France” (Collins 1994: 103).

The authoritarianism was justified by the belief that the assimilation of the African masses to French culture and civilization, though still the ultimate justification for colonialism, was hardly feasible within the practicable future. So long as Africans remained attached to their traditional or Muslim customs, ways and civil laws, they could hardly become French citizens. The best that could be hoped for was that they could be associated with France as her subjects, men and women possessing the obligations of citizenship but not its rights. The acquisition of citizenship became a formal process, involving education in French schools, performing military service, and agreeing to be monogamous and to forswear traditional or Islamic law and custom. (Fage 2002: 411; emphasis original)

The fact that colonial rule was itself a total and egregious violation of the constitutional ideal of the sovereignty of a people was conveniently overlooked by assuming the inherent civilizational superiority of Europe and the unquestioned value of its civilizing mission of ushering Africans into modernity. The logic of such rationalizing ideologies of colonialism nevertheless required some lip service to be paid to the values of modernity and constitutionalism, thereby indirectly contributing to the evolution of African constitutionalism out of the myth of colonial constitutionalism in Africa, though that was incidental to the colonial project itself.