But if this is the case, how does one understand secessionist movements or projects such as Biafra or South Sudan? Although intermittent or occurring not permanently but periodically, ethnic conflicts are nevertheless recurrent and are invoked typically at moments of crisis of state power. In this way, such conflicts become a political culture and an ideological tool to maintain or to gain power. Not only does this entail the centralisation of power, it also leads to ethnic competition. According to Mafeje, ethnic competition does not necessarily translate into ethnic conflict even when certain modes of existence or specialised fields of endeavour (pastoralism, arable agriculture, fishing) have become part of certain communities. With the possibility of competition for access to resources, such communities might also, by virtue of their specialisation, need to co-operate. From this perspective, ethnic diversity could contribute to social division of labour, but in post-independence Africa this is not to any extent the case, even if it might be true of pre-colonial Africa.
Mafeje claims that whatever conflict may arise in these situations, it is never widespread; that ethnicity does not occur at local level in mundane activities, but at national level where there is serious political competition. But this is not entirely accurate – when killings begin, they do so as local phenomena. It is significant, however, that ethnic antagonisms connote a state of national politics that deviates from the objectives of liberation movements and thus undermines nation building as envisaged at the moment of independence. For Mafeje, ethnicity is more the progeny of modern African politics than of African antiquity, and from a historical point of view it is hard to say that there is any organic link between the phenomenon of ethnicity and what are called ethnic groups. There are parallels between ethnicity and what people are called or what they call themselves. Ethnicity is peddled by African political elites in order to gain power or to maintain it. Only then do people embrace it as a result of classificatory systems or categorical identities. Political elites are fully aware of these weaknesses and proclivities, and take advantage of them to further their own ambitions.
Mafeje considers that ideology as false consciousness cuts both ways. This is so because the kind of falsity peddled by elites obscures objective reality such as class differentiation and group conflicts among the same people – and it also undermines co-operation among people of differing ethnic origins. Mafeje’s claim, however, casts the political elites as all-knowing and consummate masters of history whereas sometimes they are both initiating and responding to social crises, and could be hapless beings swept up in the current of history, just like everyone else. Ultimately, the sorriest casualties of the ideology of ethnicity are the ordinary people and not the elites. The reproduction of ethnic identities is a work of serious indoctrination. As ethnicity may lead to disaster, the question that confronts sociologists is why African elites continue with what would suggest a level of irrationality in the elite mobilisation of ethnic jingoism. Self-aggrandisement on the part of the elites is not a satisfactory answer.
Part of the reason for this, Mafeje argues, is not just class interests, but sectional interests. Where class interests are vital to the class as a whole, sectional interests, if not managed carefully, could jeopardise the interests of the whole. Mafeje’s claim does not really address the question. It would seem extraordinary that elites would want to jeopardise not only their opponents’ interests, but their own interests as well, for sectional interests could threaten not just sections but also the whole. Mafeje does not immediately address this issue, but he argues that Africans in sub-Sahara have been the slowest in the world in developing an authentic class and although African ruling elites had bourgeois aspirations, they nonetheless demonstrated no consistent capitalist outlook, discipline and ethics. Instead, they plundered state resources and engaged in corrupt activities. Mafeje suspects that the real problem lay in their inability to ‘convert states revenues into real capital’.53 Tellingly, there is no qualitative difference in patterns of investment between mineral-rich and mineral-poor African countries.
Mafeje reasons that ethnicity is either an admission of failure or an excuse to cover up shortcomings. He calls this an ‘ideological ploy’ and not a class ideology. In the context of cunning manoeuvres by African elites, he considers the use of the term ‘ideological ploy’ more than justified, but the question is what makes it ideological – and it is ideological because of its ideational or cognitive impact on the people. What the elites believe or do not believe is somewhat irrelevant – it is the impact of what they say to their target constituencies that matters. This, in Mafeje’s language, is an ideological reflex and not ideology itself. Although he said this, Mafeje still believed in the explanatory value of ideology in the classical sense, and by ideology he refers to the rationalisation of class interests, which, in the main, applies to hegemonic classes since they wish to remain dominant. The term ‘rationalisation’ refers to both practical considerations and normative claims to justify them; ideology can be used in a positive sense and also in a negative sense. Given this ambiguity, Mafeje reasons that it is difficult to tell what the guiding ideology of the emergent African elites is supposed to be. The absence of a broader societal and regional vision has led to the ‘degenerative political culture’ of ethnicity and to petty dictators. In this sense, African elites have no competitive advantage over others in the world. The disintegration of African states and economic decay can be explained similarly. The effects of ethnicity are typically acknowledged, but are hardly seen as ideology per se – it is ethnic-consciousness, instead, that is seen as ideology proper, and ethnicity is seen in negative terms because it is used to gain power by manipulating people’s sentiments. In this sense, it can be described as antipathetic. Mafeje thought that it was important to note that there exist sympathetic forms of organisation among people of the same ethnic origin. He gives examples of mutual-help associations, burial associations and social clubs, which tend to be inward looking and are usually found in urban areas where newcomers might suffer alienation and anonymity, and social and emotional insecurity.
In colonial anthropological parlance these organisations are called tribal associations; anthropologists refer to them as voluntary associations. Yet they miss the contradictory nature of such a label in that, by their own admission, tribal organisations are prescriptive while voluntary organisations are discretionary insofar as individuals have freedom to choose. Voluntary organisations were seen as affirmations of the discourse of social change, the supposed progress from barbarism to civilisation. Aside from these colonial epithets, Mafeje notes that the underlying issue here is that the so-called tribal associations are people’s organisations and not intended for exploiting or oppressing others. From the members’ point of view the value of the organisations ‘was instrumental rather than ideological’; ‘their relations were personal rather than categorical’.54 Mafeje considers it is incorrect to refer to solidarity of their kind as ethnicity since this term connotes an evocative, impersonal and pernicious force. Above all, it could be argued that ethnicity is the exact opposite of these associations because it militates against their mundane and innocent interest.
Mafeje analyses what he calls, in anthropological terms, ‘exegetic texts’, authored by living subjects in their own context, excerpts and quotations based on views from ordinary people who were involved in ethnic conflicts in Africa, specifically the Bahutu-Batutsi clash that led to the Rwanda genocide and the majimboism in Kenya.55 Having discussed these texts, or verbal reports, which, he concedes, are ‘very scanty’, Mafeje notes that the problem in Africa is not necessarily the existence of multi-ethnicity but, rather, that African leaders supposedly dealing with the national question in their own countries are the very people at the root cause of political conflicts. African elites are the cause, or ‘authors’ in Mafeje’s language, and not the bearers of ethnic identity because socially, economically and politically they are too far from and free of the conflicts they fuel. Mafeje