What is a "Natural" Country?

Everywhere you go, you hear people say that African countries are unnatural colonial constructs. Many Africans believe this explains many of our post-colonial problems; non-Africans who perceive themselves to be "liberal" or "progressive" say the same thing. [Of course many other non-Africans quietly believe racial theories of intelligence explain Africa's difficultues, though they would never admit it openly in the world of 21st century politically correctness -- some don't even admit it openly to themselves. But that particularly brand of persistent insanity is not the focus of this blog post.]

No, this post focuses on the theory that most every problem in Africa flows from the multi-ethnic, multi-religious, "artificial" borders of post-colonial African federal or unitary republics. They say the borders split contiquous geo-culture zones apart, and forced other geo-culture zones together, that the borders do not follow any rational geographic or geologic sense. That the borders are a causal factor in our post-colonial crises.

Yeah, that theory. It is very popular. I don't think a single person argues against it.

Which is one of the key reasons our different crises take the (false) appearance of being insoluble. It is difficult, oft impossible, to solve a problem if you deceive yourself about what the problem actually is and about what actually causes the problem. You end up deceiving yourself about what will treat the symptoms and stop the causative factors, and investing a lot of energy, effort and resources on roads that do not take you anywhere.

Somalia is a country with only one ethnicity and only one religion, yet it is the most extreme example of post-colonial crisis in Africa. The causal factors behind the persistent Somali crisis (and for the record, it began decades before the events depicted in Black Hawk Down) are the same causal factors behind crises elsewhere in Africa. I could go into detail here (trust me I can), but surely this is enough to let everyone know that it has nothing to do with having many ethnic groups within your borders.

But lets stick with Somalia for a second so I can tell militant atheists and fundamentalist Christians that Islam is not the issue either. The Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda and Burundi are all predominantly Roman Catholic. Come to think of it, the Hutus and Tutsis also share a single language known as Kinyarwanda in Rwanda and Kirundi in Burundi. Think about that for a second. For all the media and pop culture descriptions of Hutus and Tutsis as irrevocable foes bent on each other's destruction, in fact these are two peoples that share the same language, the same religion, the same black skin, and have lived together in the same geographic space for centuries; are they really "two" peoples are just one? Not surprisingly, the same people who blame colonial borders also blame the Belgians for the Rwanda-Burundi post-colonial crises. I know the Belgians did a lot of physical, economic and psychological damage in Ruanda-Urundi and the Congo, but 34 years after the "Independence" era, we should be looking elsewhere for causality -- or did the Belgians create the "Ivorite" ideology that helped speed the Cote d'Ivoire along to civil war? At the very least we should look squarely at Rwanda and Burundi and ask why the "Belgian problem" (if that is what it is) persisted so long after Independence, or perhaps more properly why there were no social/political/cultural/economic developments to wipe out the supposed "Belgian problem".

So Africa's crises, past and/or present are not a function of multi-ethnicity or religious plurality; the same things happen in mono-culture countries.

You know what? It isn't a Sub-Saharan or Black African thing, either. There has been violence (particularly in Algeria), repression and autocracy in the Maghreb and Egypt. There has also been disputes over language and culture between the Imazighen (once termed "Berbers") and Arabs in those countries. And as much as I criticize and ridicule Nigerian politics, the political situation in Madagascar is so much worse.

I feel I should make something clear at this point, given the fact that any number of non-Africans (and Africans, sadly enough) think there is something wrong with us as a people. Forget the subliminal messages embedded in the international news coverage -- violence and warfare are not unique to Africa. Historically, the wars of the Europeans and the European settlers in the Americas and Australasia, in Europe and outside it, against themselves and near-genocidally against non-European peoples, have wrought more death on Earth than the wars of any other global region. And ditch the myth of Europe learning from World War II and embracing peace; Europe was not at peace, and and the "Cold" War was never actually Cold -- the Europeans and Americans continued fighting each other after 1945, but were careful to do it in other people's countries (the so-called proxy wars), using the rest of the world's cities and villages as their theatres and the rest of the world's bodies as their cannon fodder. More recently, the war of the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians was not too dissimilar from those of the Rwandans and Burundians (peoples who speak the same language, in their case Serbo-Croatian) or from the recurrent violence in Nigeria (pitting people who are basically the same against each other based on which external religious proselytizers reached which regions first).

But this is another digression. This blog post is not about humanity's addiction to strife, dischord and violence. It is instead about the assertion that African countries are "artificial", and that this artificiality is the source of much of our post-colonial angst.

Here is a newsflash for you: Every country in the world is artificial, and every ethno-cultural group is artificial too. All of them were created, directly or indirectly, by war -- just like the modern borders of post-colonial Africa.

Every boundary on the global map was created by vicious, bloody war. No nation just miraculously came to be. Every one of them was created by armies, empire-builders, would-be monarchs, warlords, slave-raiders, colonizers, occupiers, genocidaires and others skilled at warfare and killing. The nations of the Americas, North and South, are all "artificial creations". Seemingly "natural" island-nations, like Japan and Britain, were created from pre-existing smaller entities that were merged forcibly through war.

The massive landmass of Eurasia has seen the ebb and flow of uncountable "national" boundaries over thousands of years, with a prodigious number of changes taking place over the last 110 years alone. War was the source, peace the confirmation, of all of these borders and boundaries. Part of Russia used to be Finland; all of Taiwan used to be (how do I put this?) governed from Beijing. "Saudi Arabia" came into being not too long before Nigeria's Amalgamation. And while there were always Kazakhs in Central Asia, there was no "Kazakhstan" until the Cold War (there is that word again, "war") came to an end -- leading to the dismantling of a Russian Empire that was itself created in war.

The idea that Africa's problems arise from "unnatural" borders ignores the fact that all of the world's richest nations have borders that are just as "unnatural" as ours. What is "natural" about the United States or Canada? Is there something "natural" about the Korean peninsula (home to South Korea) being divided in two?

When some Africans look at France (for example), they see everyone in the country speaks French, and they conclude that a reason for French success (and African difficulty) is the "natural" effect of a single culture living in the boundaries of a nation-state.

This is laughable.

Firstly, France is itself a product of external colonialism and empire-building.

Secondly, the "single culture" of France was imposed on peoples who were initially as diverse as the peoples within post-colonial African borders. The "French people" descend from Scandinavian Norsemen, Celtic peoples, Germanic people, Latin people and even Central Asian peoples. If you see them speaking French today, know they do it for the same reason "Francophone" countries in Africa do -- a central government and/or economic system that directly or indirectly forces a single language onto people who used to speak other tongues. And even after condition made the crayfish bend (as we say in Nigeria), with French emergent as the dominant language in the area, as recently as the era of Jeanne d'Arc, the modern-day French region of Burgundy de facto insisted upon its independence and separation from France, with an eye on recovering the sprawling empire controlled by previous generations of Burgundians in a prior age when "France" was considered an unnatural idea. Oddly enough, it was the Jeanne-d'Arc-assisted victory of the French over the English in the 100 Years Wars (there it is again, "war") that confirmed the existence of "France" as we know it today. Had they lost, a large portion of today's France would either have been a mainland Europe equivalent of Northern Ireland, a mainland equivalent of the Republic of Ireland, or an English-speaking cross-channel variant of the Austria-Germany dynamic.

That everyone in France speaks French today is about as "natural" as everyone in tdoay's Nigeria speaking English and Pidgin English. Our ancestors did not speak English. What happened between then and now was the British military invasion, and the after-effects of that invasion. Provided the effects of the wars last long enough, the passage of time (and the centralization of commerce and government) tends to produce a homogenization of previously disparate peoples, a convergence to a new socio-political norm.

This tendency towards covergence is how every modern ethnicity came to be. The vast "Arab" peoples of today are descended from a variety of peoples, ranging from Phoenicians and other Aramaics to Greeks, Turkic, South Asians and Black Africans. The sprawling Kanuri peoples of Nigeria are also the result of homogenizing changes brought to conquered peoples by the over-a-millennia-old empire of Borno-Kanem.

Which bring up an important point. At least it is important to me. You see, one of the things I most love about Nigeria is its rich, incredible cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. However, if "Nigeria" lasts long enough, the same thing that happened to "France" or "United States of America" or even "China" will happen here too -- a drift towards homogenization and convergence. One could argue that underneath a surface of visible internecine strife, said convergence has already been occuring; and perhaps a lot of the reflexive traits when term "tribalism" derive from a fear of this convergence, a fear that it means "we" will lose "our" culture as it gets swamped by "their" culture (or by Euro-American "Western" values, or by Saudi Arabian values).

The ideal, transformative constitution for Nigeria must be constructed such that our geo-cultural groups are the building blocks; provided there is a Tiv province or district, for example, there will be a Tiv social, political, cultural,educational and economic construct. The new federal republc we create must be built on these pillars of our traditions, languages and cultures; the act of governance itself must reinforce our diversity. Accomplishing this without strangling our unity is not as hard as it appear -- and is a topic for discussion another day.

The point is, all countries are artificial creations. Even if you revise Africa's boundaries to make them all single-ethnicity republics, the new republics will be artificial too, as they would correspond to NO historic kingdom, empire or political unit in African history. The idea that doing so would constitue restoring the precolonial past is fallacious. There was no Republic of Hausa or Republic of Igbo in the past; the city-states of Hausaland and the Igbo village republics were independent entities. A similar truth held for other peoples, like the Ijaw and Tiv. The only constant in our history was change, with the Yoruba and Jukun, for example, going through different political iterations over the centuries. Which one of these is the "authentic" one we are supposed to restore? Why should we assume that "Republic of Yoruba" would not be prone to the same divisionist and irredentist pressures as the Federal Republic of Nigeria? After all, the Oyo Empire split apart at the end of the 19th Century pretty much the same way the Russian Empire did at the end of the 20th.

And why are we obsessing over these borders, when the crucial, critical issues (the issues that made Somalia what it is today, the issues that hobble Nigeria's march to its potential) continue to be ignored? I mean, who gives a rat's nyash about the borders?

Yes, the borders cut through "natural" geographic and economic zones. But you know what? We can TRADE across those borders so freely that it doesn't matter that a border is there.

Yes, the borders cut across "natural" ethno-cultural groups. Again, you know what? With free movement across the borders, peoples with shared traditions can practice those traditions together, even if a "border" putatively exists across their lands.

Nothing stops nomadic herdsmen from moving between Nigeria, Chad and the Niger Republic, interacting with peoples and environments the way they always have. The same could apply to other social, cultural and economic groups.

At the end of the day, the borders are not as important as they are made out to be. In fact, any "barriers" as exist are created by us, by human beings, by our governments and by governmental policy. That is what is not natural.

It is not natural for our governments to behave as if the borders are the Great Wall of China. It is not natural for our governments to make economic policy as if they were islands disconnected from their neighbours.

In fact, our post-colonial governments have continued the colonial-era practice of making policy as if the most important relationship is that between us (the colonized) and the Euro-American "West". Where this colonial bond has weakened, it was replaced by new colonial bonds to the erstwhile Soviet Union or to the 21st century Peoples Republic of China. Saudi Arabia may lack political clout on the continent, but its cultural influence is strong in particular regions.

We have politicians, businessmen, and (to be honest) citizens as well, who downgrade intra-African relationships, and then blame inanimate political borders for the lines that separate us.

I am sorry, but I am sick and tired of hearing about "Pan-Africanism", "Black Unity", "NEPAD", "United States of Africa" and all the rest of the malarkey. These empty phrases and ideologies have become crutches. Instead of doing the practical and substantive things that build intra-African development, we invest our time repeating the same tired phrases that have never translated into anything practical.

You know what? If Rwanda (currently led by Paul Kagame) and Burundi (currently led by Pierre Nkurunziza) were serious about "integration" and "unity", their two countries would long since have merged to become one. But this has not happened. They very deliberately sidestep this, in favour of blandishments about East African Unity and a "Union Government" of Africa -- two "unnatural" concepts favoured over that most natural of unions joining the Kinyarwanda/Kirundi peoples (they can't even give their shared language a single name). Seriously, if two people who are exactly the same cannot come to the decision to share a government, what makes anyone think they will manage it long-term in a much broader, much less "natural" setting?

Now I am digressing AND rambling.

Actually, no I am not.

The "East African Federation" project is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. If I made a list of the things holding Kenya back, a list of the thing hobbling Uganda, and a list of priorities for Tanzania, the creation of new supra-national borders will not make any of the lists.

There is a lot of talk in East Africa about the larger market, and how it will solve all of their problems. The thing is, Nigeria is a larger market (alone we are as populated as all of East Africa), so they should trust me when I say their problems will still be waiting for them after they create this larger market.

We have got to face the core problems, and stop playing around with borders or using them as an excuse or crutch. You might have noticed I did not actually make lists of the core issues Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania or Rwanda/Burundi need to address, because such a list would turn this blog post into a multi-volume set of thick e-books. And the lists (items, analyses, prescriptions and recommendations) are that long precisely because they continue to pile up, decade after decade, while we obsess about borders and "artificiality".

Put down the crutch and WALK. We might then discover that there was nothing wrong with our legs all along. Heck, we might even begin to RUN to development, instead of shuffling along slowly, telling ourselves that our legs are "artificial".