Leaders, Violence, and the Absence of Change in Africa

This article puts forward ideas on violence and leadership in Africa. It does not ask what causes violence in Africa and it does not systematically explore the consequences of violence, although consequences are discussed. Rather, an argument is made here that violence in Africa is a function of leaders trying to stay in power in systems where institutions are weak. Because the struggle for power takes place in a context where the resources most easily at hand to be mobilized are ethnic ones, conflict is often ethnic conflict. What differs from context to context are the amounts and kinds of resources available for competition and the structures through which people compete. It is the form of the struggle and the relative weight of factors that lead us to describe conflict as class or communal.' In Africa it is easier for elites to organize around communal ties (ethnic/ geographic) than it is to organize around class ties (income and occupational). That African societies remain easier to organize on communal rather than class bases is not a subject taken up here. The elements of an answer have to do with cultural and value systems, institutions, patterns of scarcity, growth, and conflict.2