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