In recent months the international news media has again focused on refugees and internally displaced people in Mozambique, Angola and the Horn of Africa. Many of these are “hunger migrants,” people on the move in search of food. But hunger is only one form of forced displacement. It is clear that drought and famine are the companions of war and civil conflict, which disrupts water supply, planting, harvesting and the patterns of economic life in the countryside. In some instances, this disruption is chosen as the means of warfare carried on against the population.

The papers in this symposium develop different aspects of the dynamics of displacement and repatriation. The first paper focuses on forced displacement in Africa, with special consideration of the situation in southern Africa. The second two papers take up the questions of repatriation and reintegration of refugees into their home communities. Together they raise the central issues, which governments and international agencies often are unwilling, or unable, to address.

The first paper presents a general overview of the refugee/displacement map in Africa and develops the general thesis that contemporary displacements in Africa, as elsewhere, are caused by economic and political forces which generate oppressive and dehumanizing situations. It evaluates the instruments which the international community has developed to protect refugees and notes the politics of refugee definition. The central thesis analyzes the geo-political forces involved in refugee generation in Africa, specifically in the southern African context. The conclusion looks at implications for collaborative action on the part of the university and nongovernmental communities in both northern and southern countries.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Elie Wiesel (1986)

The consequences of this state of affairs [the division of the world into competing blocks and an arms traffic which knows no borders] are to be seen in the festering of a wound which typifies and reveals the imbalances and conflicts of the modern world: the millions of refugees whom war, natural calamities, persecution and discrimination of every kind have deprived of home, employment, family and homeland.

Pope John Paul II (1987: para. 24)

Africa is sometimes called “a continent on the move.” But this is not a recent phenomenon. Africans have always been “on the move,” long before any regular contact with Europe. In a vast and sparsely populated continent, people and communities relocated to maintain ecological balance, to seek a more secure environment and to achieve better conditions of living. Almost every region of Africa at one time or another has been affected by various streams of population distribution and redistribution. It is neither possible nor important to define these movements precisely or to delineate their frontiers exactly (for an overview based on archeological and linguistic studies see Devise and Vansina, 1988: 750-93, and Cambridge Encyclopedia, 1981: 57-86).

Population displacements and human migrations are neither unique to Africa nor confined to the 20th century. They are the inevitable companions of war, civil conflict and prolonged economic deprivation.

Refugees in Africa number about four million. Some of them, uprooted during the struggles for independence, have been in refuge for over 30 years. Others were uprooted during the post-independence period, when their views were considered revolutionary and dangerous to the regimes in power. As an attempt to solve the refugee problem, some countries, like Tanzania, have granted refugees the status of naturalized citizens. Other countries, like Zimbabwe and Uganda, have encouraged immediate return and repatriation. Others have a wait-and-see attitude. In all cases, refugees are placed in a very awkward postion. They have little say and their material possessions are meager. Uprooted from their motherland, they view educational attainment as, in most cases, their only hope for survival and for earning a respectable livelihood, either in the country of asylum or after they are repatriated. This desire is strengthened by their awareness that the educated in the young independent African states hold the reins of power. Refugees and returnees, therefore, look at education with great hope and expectations (Kabera, forthcoming).

Most of the refugees in Africa come from rural areas where educational facilities are, on the whole, deficient or non-existent. The situation does not improve when they leave home. The hope of making up for an insufficient education while in asylum is curtailed when the refugees are placed in remote reception areas devoid of educational facilities. Other places simply offer few chances for educational attainment (CIMADE et al., 1986: 110). Arrangements to organize and run schools take more time and resources than are available.

…What excites me…is the presence of refugees amongst us who have arrived here straight from refugee camps. It strikes me as quite extraordinary that we should be hailing this as such an innovation. But innovation it is. I would hope that experts will never again have the effrontery to sit down together to discuss refugees without refugees being present, but I doubt it. Refugee work remains, perhaps, the last bastion of the ultra-paternalistic approach to aid and development. It is hard to think of another area where the blinkered nonsense of the “we know what's best for them” approach survives so unchallenged.

Mark Malloch-Brown, as quoted in Harrell-Bond and Karadawi (1984)

I believe that if you want political action, you must get governments together. Their deliberations will be the springboard for action. In my opinion, it is quite unrealistic to expect them to meet together with individual refugees (or groups representing refugees) and NGOs [non-governmental organizations]. Where the adoption of recommendations for political action is concerned, it does not work like that. Eagles don't consort with sparrows. It's a law of nature.

Anon.

…Thanks for your copy of the [above] letter. Eagles: birds of prey, prone to wander alone, high above the world of everyday events, remote, lofty and unadapted to human civilisation. Sparrows: friendly, sunny, engaged birds, spending time in social intercourse, feet on the ground, contributing to variety of life and human happiness.

Of the three “durable” solutions to refugee situations—voluntary repatriation, integration, and resettlement—the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) proclaims voluntary repatriation to be the most desirable.

It is currently assumed by many scholars that the British ruled northern Nigeria through the indirect rule system. The essence of this system, according to our authorities, was to maintain the cultural and religious status quo (Perham, 1960; Temple, [1918] 1968; Crowder and Ikime, 1970). This assumption has fostered the belief that the British administration in northern Nigeria had very little impact on the traditional political system and society. Hence, many writers who have written on the British administration in northern Nigeria have tended to ignore the traditional political system and society. Thus, while we have scholarly works on the relationship between the British officials and the chiefs of northern Nigeria (Heussler, 1968), little work has been done on the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects.

Yet we cannot adequately assess the impact of the British administration on the status of the Hausa-Fulani feudal aristocrats by simply examining the aristocrats' relationship with the British officials. We also need to examine the extent to which the British administration affected the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects. British rule in northern Nigeria, like any other alien rule in Africa, whether it was French or Portuguese, was a culturalizing agent which affected every fiber of the society. The British as colonizers had to create a sequacious society, which would be conducive to the chief aim of their rule, i.e., economic exploitation, from the restive communities of the precolonial days (Last, 1970: 345-57).

Among the Laws that rule human societies, there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.

Tocqueville (1955: 118)

A purely contemporary view of any problem is necessarily a limited and even distorted view. Every situation has its roots in the past… the past survives into the present; the present is indeed the past undergoing modifications.

Phillipson and Adebo (1954: 49)

The elusive and aggravating problem of instituting a viable political order based on effective, legitimate and authoritative government in Nigeria has no doubt become in recent times one of the most pressing and fundamental preoccupations of its decision-makers and the public alike, as the ongoing political debate attests. This paper represents essentially an attempt to analyze and comprehend the social dynamics that generate the persistent syndrome of political instability in Nigeria, and on that basis to hazard a conjecture about the future of the Nigerian state from past and current trends, as this might be shaped by systematic challenges.

Stated differently, the primary objective of the present analysis (in terms of its explanatory and projective dimensions) is in response to the intriguing question of why a state once considered a “showpiece of decolonizing Africa” could then manage to “plummet from such an apogee of grace” (Kirk-Greene, 1976: 7) and come perilously close first to collapse, then to constitutional chaos and a bloody civil war, and finally to a rapid interchange between civilian and military regimes.

I would like to thank my dear friend Adell Patton, Jr., whose advice and support I have enjoyed for over 20 years, for having suggested the title of this address: “The African Crisis: The Way Out.” Many other people, including colleagues in the African Association of Political Science, have helped shape most of the ideas that I present here. Needless to say, any errors or shortcomings are my own.

Last year, my predecessor delivered a brilliant critique of the dominant ideology of development. The theory and practice of development in the West have reduced Africans to the status of perpetual dependents, unable to stand on their own or to achieve “sustainability” of development programs and projects initiated by outside experts. Characteristic of the fads and slogans proper to this trade, “sustainability” is one of the current watch words in the development community of public agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, the Washington Beltway Bandits and like-minded consultants elsewhere, and fellow travelers in the academic community. The irony of the situation, as Aidan Southall so cleverly pointed out by analogy to Alur claims of rainmaking, is that our people were capable of taking care of themselves before these development experts set foot in Africa.

While listening to Southall, I concluded that the issue of development deserved further attention from members of this Association. In celebrating continuity and change in African studies in honor of Melville J. Herskovits, it behooves us to ask critical questions on the African predicament and on the responsibility of scholars engaged in policy-relevant research.