State Collapse, Post-conflict Peace-building and Sustainable Democracy in Africa

Abstract

At the dawn of decolonization in 1963, Frantz Fanon predicted that ‘this ethnicisation of the central authority, it is certain encourages regionalist ideas and separatism. All the decentralising tendencies spring up again and triumph, and the nation falls to pieces, broken to bits’.¹ The target of his observation was the post-colonial African state and his prognosis was to prove insightful. The scenario is not unfamiliar to Africa. Over-centralisation and the consolidation of authoritarian power at the centre has presided over the emergence and growth of sub-national ethnic mobilisation against the state. The self-destructive tendency of the centralised predatory state is increasingly coming to the fore. There has been a decline of constitutionalism in the post-colonial era and the increasing prominence of institutionalised repression in Africa. This in turn instigates the gradual delegitimisation of the state and fuels intense competition to capture the state. The African continent unfortunately is becoming familiar with the phenomenon of disintegrating states. This study will assess this phenomenon and the difficult challenge this poses for post-conflict peace-building with regard to democratisation.