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Strangers in West African Societies1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Elliott P. Skinner
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Extract

The difficulties attending the attempt of the new African polities to weld their disparate elements into viable nation-states have been popularly attributed to ‘tribalism’. Certainly, in some cases groups indigenous to a region did come into conflict as new states arose there, but a hard look at tribal relations in modern Africa shows these relations to be of a different order from those of pre-European times. One element in the so-called ‘tribalism’ in modern Africa, and one which has so far escaped systematic treatment, is the conflict which arose between Africans indigenous to an area and African ‘strangers’—those groups which for various reasons had moved out of their homelands and had established relatively long-term residence in the territories of other groups—as political autonomy and independence became a reality. An examination of the factors which made for conflict between ‘locals’ and ‘strangers’ in West African societies would not only give us the opportunity to understand this phenomenon in a time-perspective, but would also enable us to see whether the status and role of the ‘stranger’ in these societies could throw light on the universal problem of the ‘stranger’.

Résumé

LES ÉTRANGERS DANS LES SOCIÉTÉS OUEST-AFRICAINES

Cette communication analyse les modifications qui se produisent actuellement dans le statut et le rôle des étrangers vivant dans les pays d'Afirique Occidentale, et plus particulièrement au Ghana, en Côte d'Ivoire et en Nigéria. Autrefois, ces étrangers étaient des marchands et leurs families, qui se livraient au commerce local et extérieur et qui habitaient des quartiers réservés sous le contrôle de leurs propres chefs et des chefs de village. Ils exerçaient souvent les fonctions d'interprètes et introduisaient des caractères culturels nouveaux — notamment la religion islamique — d'origine africaine et non-africaine. Par suite de l'établissement de gouvernements coloniaux en Afrique Occidentale, le nombre d'étrangers augmenta. Ils pénétrèrent dans des régions étrangères sous l'égide des Européens et nʼeurent que des rapports d'ordre secondaire avec les autorités politiques africaines locales qui étaient également sous la domination des Européens. La plupart d'entre eux travaillaient pour des maisons de commerce européennes ou pour des Africains qui s'occupaient des activités non-traditionnelles, telles que les plantations des denrées destinées à l'exportation. Les étrangers essayaient même d'évincer les habitants de la région des activités économiques purement africaines, telle que l'industrie de la pêche en Côte d'Ivoire, mais ils continuaient à se considérer comme des étrangers sans responsabilité civique. Après la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale beaucoup d'étrangers soutinrent les partis nationaux sans se rendre compte que l'autonomie et l'indépendance compromettaient leur statut dans les pays où ils vivaient. Beaucoup d'entre eux ont été déportés du Ghana et de la Côte d'Ivoire et les rapports se sont tendus en Nigéria entre les méridionaux habitant le nord du pays et les septentrionaux.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1963 , pp. 307 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1963

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References

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page 308 note 6 Barth, op. cit. iii. 663.

page 309 note 1 Elliott P. Skinner, ‘West African Economic Systems’. Unpublished manuscript prepared for Conference on Indigenous and Induced Elements in the Economics of Subsaharan Africa, Northwestern University, 1961.

page 309 note 2 Park, op. cit., pp. 36, 205–7; Caillié, op. cit. i. 461 ff.

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page 311 note 2 Stapleton, op. cit., p. 175.

page 311 note 3 Busia, op. cit., p. 73.

page 311 note 4 Ibid., pp. 82–83.

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page 312 note 6 Ibid., p. 184. Rouch reports that the strangers in Ghana could not understand why the C.P.P. did not keep its promise to support them.

page 313 note 1 Africa Digest (The Africa Bureau, London), v, no. 2 (Sept.–Oct. 1957), p. 73.

page 313 note 2 Ibid. v, no. 5 (Mar.–Apr. 1958), p. 197.

page 313 note 3 Ibid. v, no. 2 (Sept.–Oct. 1957), p. 73.

page 313 note 4 ‘Two Alhajis Deported from Ghana are flown to Kano ’, West Africa, London, 31 August 1957, p. 831. Interestingly enough the strangers in Kumasi still voted against the C.P.P. as late as 1958. For example, the results of the Kumasi municipal election during that year showed a heavy vote in the strangers' quarters or zongos for the United Party: ‘The seven wards which the U.P. actually won were Odum (ward 2), Ashanti New Town (5), Manhyia (8), Sabon Zongo (7), New Zongo (10), Aboabo (13), and Suame (16). A point worth noting is that the four latter wards contain most of Kumasi's Muslim population’ (West Africa, 1 Mar. 1958, p. 201).

page 314 note 1 Carter, op. cit., pp. 107–17. See also ‘Trouble in French West Africa ’, The World Today (Royal Institute of International Affairs), xiv, no. 12 (Dec. 1958). pp. 513–18.

page 314 note 2 Time, loc. cit.

page 314 note 3 Coleman, op. cit., p. 361.

page 314 note 4 Ibid.

page 315 note 1 Report on the Kano Disturbances, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th May 1953. Published under the Authority of the Northern Regional Government, Nigeria, 1953. Cf. Coleman, op. cit., pp. 399–401.

page 315 note 2 For the concept of ‘super-tribalism ’ in West Africa, see Rouch, op. cit., p. 164. People from French colonies in Ghana even formed a ‘United French African Committee ’.

page 316 note 1 Coleman, op. cit., pp. 375, 403.

page 317 note 1 Africa Digest (The Africa Bureau, London), vi, no. 5 (May–Apr. 1959), p. 201.

page 319 note 1 Carter, op. cit., p. 114; The World Today, loc. cit., pp. 517–18.

page 319 note 2 The Daily Times of Nigeria, 26 Sept. 1959, p. 6. Italics added.

page 319 note 3 Skinner, op. cit., pp. 380–1.

page 320 note 1 ‘Ghana and Upper Volta Agree to Open Border’, Africa Report (Washington, D.C.), July 1961, p. 10.

page 320 note 2 Op. cit., p. 114.

page 320 note 3 There remains, however, some opposition among the educated young men of the Ivory Coast to those of their numbers who ‘collaborated ’ with the Dahomeyans. At a meeting called to select leaders for one of the many youth groups which were reorganized after Independence in the Summer of 1960, there was opposition to one candidate on the grounds that his wife was Dahomeyan and that he had favoured her group during the colonial period.