Minorities and the State in Africa By Michael U. Mbanaso and Chi ...

subsequent African human rights treaties do not consider minorities as a legal category recognized in African human rights law.”⁹ Even in very stable democracies in Africa such as Botswana, noted for its adherence to the rule of law, Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo noted in a report of the Minority Rights Group International of January 7, 2009, that Botswana laws still “permit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, language and culture,” where eight Tswana ethnic groups (a numerical minority in the country) enjoy the privileges associated with official recognition, while as many as 38 other groups have experienced “culture and language loss, disproportionate poverty, and invisibility on the national scene.”¹⁰

The structure of African nation-states in the context of the emerging discourse on human rights of both individuals as persons and groups that share common identities calls for a critical examination of the rights of individuals and groups that have become minorities as a result of the emergence of states in Africa at the end of colonialism. In fact, notions of minorities which attempt to limit the categories to ethnic and linguistic identity neglect the changing meanings and fluidity of notions of belonging and vis-à-vis the control of political and economic power. Yet a narrow association of minorities with disadvantaged position neglects the significant ways that minorities have paradoxically used state institutions to dominate numerically advantaged groups in some parts of Africa. It is a reality of the African experience that the numerical “minority” have in some cases dominated the majority, as was the case under the apartheid system in South Africa and former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).¹¹

III

Our framework consists of themes that present minorities' issues as fluid, contested, and under continuous transformation, especially when articulated within the larger context of a globalized human rights agenda and Africa's historical experience. This is the thread that ties these papers together. The volume begins with a critical look at the interactions of ethnicity, minorities, and the state as significant actors in Africa.