Introduction
Colonial
policies of divide and rule had to be replaced after independence by
the more positive but more difficult task of building new nations out
of ethnically and culturally diverse communities. Several new African
states have had to face that most serious of challenges to national
unity: a civil war. We may here distinguish between two categories of
civil wars: those waged for secessionist purposes and those waged out
of regional ethnic rivalry within the state. Secessionists have fought
civil wars in the southern Sudan (1955 and 1962-72), the Eritrean
province of Ethiopia (since 1961), in the Katanga (Shaba) province of
Zaire (1960-5) and in Eastern Nigeria (1967-70)- in each case because
of a belief that justice for their ethnic group or region could only be
achieved in a separate state.
Other civil wars have been fought in Chad (since 1965) and Uganda
(1966) as a result of the unwillingness of a region or an ethnic group
to submit to a central authority dominated by a rival ethnic group, and
in Angola (1975-6) because of a clash between a socialist and
non-ethnic central government on the one hand and regionally-based
ethnic supremacist groups on the other.
National Movements and New States in Africa