TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITIONAL AFRICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
As the colonial state began to consolidate its domination after conquest, it sought political alliances “in existing African political structures. Those holding authority, or having some locally recognized claim to it, could rely on a reservoir of legitimacy and the familiarity of prescriptive usage” (Young 1994: 107).
But this colonial policy of employing intermediaries had important consequences for traditional political structures and the local operations of political power because “the colonial state insisted that those chiefs it recognized were the sole authority holders within the reconfigured political space subject to its design” (107; emphasis added). The power of the chief came to flow under colonial control from above and not from the people. In societies with no chiefs, the equation of power between political authority and the people was radically altered.For example, four traditional societies that had no chiefs in the precolonial context, the Kikuyu, Kamba, and Maasai of Kenya and the Ibo of Nigeria, were administered as fragmented autonomous communities. “They [British colonial administrators] gave wide political influence to men of singular authority, but the influence of these men was not hereditary or authoritarian. Their positions depended on tendering good advice and having it accepted by their peers” (Tignor 1971: 342). In contrast to centralized societies such as the Hausa-Fulani emirates in Northern Nigeria, the Yoruba of southeast Nigeria, and the Ashanti of Ghana, royal lineage was not a prerequisite for political leadership among the decentralized societies. While centralized societies had “formal bureaucracies of judges, military leaders, and tax collectors, with specially designated functions,” acephalous or “headless” societies had “democratic, conciliar, and diffused government of elders” (342).
Since British colonial administrators were more familiar with societies headed by chiefs, and thought it essential to rule through a single local authority, they tended to establish local leaders in order to rule through them (Tignor 1971: 342).
The creation of chiefs was accompanied by colonial restructuring of administrative political and legal structures. Regardless of the differences between the administrative systems of the Kikuyu in Kenya and the Ibo in Nigeria, in both places “chiefs had extensive powers until the later 1930s, when many of their functions began to be taken over by specialist colonial officials” (343). This was necessary for colonial administrators because the chiefs essentially were instruments of colonial government for introducing and collecting taxes, recruiting labor for projects of a public nature, and maintaining order (346). Chiefs also worked in recruiting wage labor for Europeans, and people were coerced by violence if they resisted. In these ways, chiefs’ rule was a factor not only in widening the scope of political activity, but also in forcing previously autonomous communities into new political units.This is not to say, however, that the chiefs themselves always brought about political integration, for they engendered antagonisms as well as loyalties. They did, however, sometimes undermine ancient local allegiances and direct people’s vision toward the location, district, province, tribe, and even nation (Tignor 1971: 346). This new role of chiefs as the farthest extension of the colonial administration and agents of social change had three important consequences: “the creation of para-administrations and military organisations on the local level; corruption; and a zero-sum game in local politics” (348). With minimal administrative support from the colonial administration, the chiefs developed their own coercive apparatus of young men or “retainers” (349). To maintain that apparatus, the chiefs were compelled to extract what colonial administrators deemed appropriate tribute from local populations (351). The third outcome, the “zero-sum” game, was a function of the unfair distribution of obligations such as taxes and communal labor among the community (354).
Those with influential connections or in a position to pay bribes could escape these obligations, while “the poor, the young, very old, and women—in short, those who lacked economic and political power—shouldered these burdens” (354). The impact of this form of administration “was largely negative and coercive for it distributed hateful obligations rather than largesse. Since in neither Ibo nor Kikuyu societies were those duties distributed equitably, local administration inevitably meant that those who held office were exempt from obligations and those outside the confines of power felt the weight of coercive administration” (355).Some African societies like the Kamba and Maasai, however, managed to avoid this scenario according to Tignor’s analysis. For example, Maasai chiefs were not able to wield the same kind of authority because they were unable to develop a similar paramilitary coercive apparatus. Maasai warriors held a special cultural position, with a strong sense of identity and “a considerable amount of political autonomy, buttressed by living in special villages separate from the rest of Maasai society” (1971: 359). They not only refused to operate as the arm of colonial power, but also sometimes rose in opposition to unpopular colonial policies that chiefs tried to forcibly implement. As a result, Maasai society did not display the three characteristics seen in Ibo and Kikuyu society, namely, coercive supporting apparatus, political corruption, and politics as a zero-sum game.
Therefore, as Mamdani points out, “Though presented ideologically as a continuation of ‘traditional’ precolonial authority on the continent, any examination of the division between clan and administrative authority in most precolonial African state systems reveals this claim to be hollow” (1991: 242). He argues that this mode of authority was at the heart of the colonial system because it was the basis of the economic exploitation of the peasantry which continues in the independent period. Mamdani also raises an important rhetorical question: “Is it then surprising that almost every rebellion in rural Africa, had, if not the principal then one of its chief targets, this personal embodiment of fused state authority: the chief? Was it not a demand for democracy?” (243). Although such movements were unlikely to articulate formal demands for political rights, equality, or sovereignty at that time, they were at least seeking autonomy on specific issues, if not expressions of opposition to an external, alien power as such. In any case, whether consciously or not, those movements were certainly part of the decolonization struggle, and of the continuing process of building African constitutionalism, as envisioned in this book.